“Well, that’s marvelous,” he said, and I knew that he meant it.
In truth, I’d cried when I’d first found out, feeling unprepared to do it all again so soon. Knowing the years it had taken for my parents to find their own hopes fulfilled, I had been stunned that Adelaide had come as quickly as she had; I’d never even considered that we would welcome two at such a pace. Adelaide was still so tiny. It would mean we would have two who were both babies. “So then, are you…” I hesitated. “Well, do you really think it’s good news?”
Ed walked back toward me and knelt down beside where I sat. “I don’t think it’s good, Marjorie, my dearest.” And then he took my hand in his and placed a soft kiss on top of it with his lips, those lips that I had loved from the start. “Why, I know it’s good.”
I softened at this, squeezing his hand. “I agree,” I said, a tear blurring my eye.
“I only hope this one’s as lucky, and also comes out looking like Mother,” he said. Then, after another kiss, he rose and said: “I’ll just go ring the fellows to count me out for dinner.” With that, I was left alone in the room with a feeling of deep contentment. More than that: hope. Adelaide had brought us more joy and love than we’d ever shared before in our marriage. Wouldn’t a second baby mean that much more?
* * *
She was a December arrival, our little Eleanor, and like her sister, she arrived strong and hearty. But unlike her sister, she did not stay that way.
Pearcie first came to me with news of the fever in the middle of the night, just a week after the baby was born. “Mrs. Close, I think we need to fetch the doctor. Immediately.” I saw it in her face—Pearcie, my unflappable Pearcie, was frightened, and that sent me headlong into a panic. She went on: “It sounds as though the poor babe can barely breathe… Her little lungs…” But a stifled sob kept the nurse from finishing her dreadful sentence.
I snapped to alert. Eddie had gone to supper at the club hours earlier. Of course he was not at home. I could have wrung his neck; his daughter was staring down grave illness, and he was not there for her—not there for me. I called a male servant to wake the chauffeur and sent him out into the night with two urgent errands. First, he was to fetch the doctor and bring him to The Boulders straightaway. Then he was to go to the club to find my husband and bring him home, dragging him by the coattails if necessary.
The doctor arrived within an hour, and Pearcie brought him up to where I sat in the nursery, rocking my baby. Eleanor had finally slipped into a restless but steady sleep. I gladly handed over her care to the doctor, with Pearcie urging me to return to my own room to try to rest for a spell. She’d fetch me as soon as the baby awoke. I knew I wouldn’t sleep while my daughter was locked in such a struggle, but I did return to my own room to wait for Ed; I needed to speak to him when he arrived, without disturbing Eleanor’s tenuous rest.
An hour passed and then another, and still no sign of my husband. Finally, as dawn was just beginning to purple the wintry view outside my window, giving the leaf-stripped trees the look of thin, brittle bones, I heard the crunch of gravel in the forecourt. I flew to the window and peered out, watching as Ed hurled himself out of the car and careened up the front steps toward the door.
Before Ed could make it up the stairs, a light, muffled knock sounded on my bedroom door. “Mrs. Close?” It was Pearcie. Her face was weary, but smiling.
“Yes, what is it?”
“The doctor wishes for me to tell you he has good news. He suspects pneumonia, but the fever has broken. Eleanor’s breathing is now coming more easily. He believes we have every reason to hope that the worst has come and gone for our precious little one.”
I flew to the nursery, not stopping until I stood over the cradle and saw, tucked there inside, my sleeping baby. She was breathing; though my heart galloped, I quieted my own panting breath so as not to disturb her. Somewhere in the house, I didn’t know where, Ed was stumbling around. On most nights like this, I helped him out of his clothes and into his bed, mostly to spare him—or perhaps to spare myself?—the indignity of his being found by a servant the next morning, curled up in some chair in the rumpled clothes of the night before. But that night he would fall asleep in his dressing room or study. I didn’t care. Let him sleep it off, I figured, and I’d speak to him about it once he was back in his right mind. As I stared down at my precious child, watching her chest rise and fall at a steady pace, I knew I didn’t need Ed’s slurred attempts at comfort. I had what I needed—the comfort of knowing my baby would survive. Even if I did not know whether I could say the same about my marriage.