The day on which Howard learned that Maud would bear him a child was a
day of very strangely mixed emotions. He saw how the hope dawned on the
spirit of Maud like the rising of a star, and he could rejoice in that
with whole-hearted joy, in the mere sharing of a beautiful secret; but
it was strange to him to see how to Maud it seemed like the realisation
and fulfilling of all desire, the entering into a kingdom; it was not
only the satisfaction of all the deepest vital processes, but something
glorious, unthinkable, the crowning of destiny, the summit of life.
There was no reasoning about it; it was the purest and finest instinct.
But with Howard it was not thus. He could not look beyond Maud; and it
seemed to him like the dawning of a new influence, a new fealty, which
would almost come in between him and his wife, a division of her
affections. She seemed to him, in the few tremulous words they spoke,
to have her eyes fixed on something beyond him; it was not so much a
gift that she was bringing him as a claim of further devotion. He
realised with a shock of surprise that in the books he had read, in the
imagined crises of life, the thought of the child, the heir, the
offshoot, was supposed to come as the crown of father's and mother's
hopes alike, and that it was not so with him. Was he jealous of the new
claim? It was something like that. He found himself resolving and
determining that no hint of this should ever escape him; he even felt
deeply ashamed that such a thought should even have crossed his mind.
He ought rather to rejoice wholly and completely in Maud's happiness;
but he desired her alone, and so passionately that he could not bear to
have any part of the current of her soul diverted from him. As he
looked forward through the years, it was Maud and himself, in scene
after scene; other relations, other influences, other surroundings
might fade and decay--but children, however beautiful and delightful,
making the house glad with life and laughter, he was not sure that he
wanted them. Yet he had always thought that he possessed a strong
paternal instinct, an interest in young life, in opening problems. Had
that all, he wondered, been a mere interest, a thing to exercise his
energy and amiability upon, and had his enjoyment of it all depended
upon his real detachment, upon the fact that his responsibility was
only a temporary one? It was all very bewildering to him. Moreover, his
quiet and fertile imagination fl