Lament for a lost lover

The babies were a great absorption. Madame Lambard discussed at length confinements she had attended. She declared herself satisfied with us both, and the idea of having two babies in the house at once was a double rejoicing, she told me, never mind if one of them was making a rather unconventional entrance into the world. The summer was slipping away.

I had had to tell my mother that Harriet was pregnant. She wanted to know who was the father of the child, and I told her that it was a young man who had been at the house party at Villers Tourron. He had offered marriage to Harriet, but she had found she did not love him enough for marriage and had bravely decided that she would care for their child without him.

My mother did not criticize her and agreed with me that she must be cared for. Lucas was a little bewildered, but his devotion to Harriet was complete. I believe he would have married her himself if she would have had him. As for the little ones they were not so surprised. Harriet was so clever, and they were sure that if I was going to have a baby, it was only natural that Harriet should have one too. Fenn announced that he reckoned he would be a double uncle if Harriet would let him. She hugged him and said that he should be the uncle of all the children she would have. He confided to Angie that he thought Harriet would have ten children, and he wondered if they would all cry at once, but he was confident of his avuncular abilities to keep them smiling, and he did wish they wouldn’t wait so long before coming. They were happy days-days of serenity. Christmas came and it was January.

Madame Lambard was in a state of preparedness. “It can’t be long now,” she kept murmuring.

It was typical of Harriet that she should be the first. On the fifteenth of January she gave birth to a healthy boy.

I sat by her bed, deeply aware of the child within me. She lay back, her lovely hair damp on her forehead, triumphant in a way and somehow rueful. Madame Lambard brought the baby and showed him to me. “If it had been a girl I should have called it Arabella,” she said. “Now I’m going to call him Leigh. You see I want to call him after you in some way, and you are Arabella Eversleigh. Have you any objections?”

“Of course not. It’s a lovely name and a lovely idea. How proud you must be of your little Leigh. If mine is a boy, you know what I shall call him.”

“Edwin,” she said.

And I nodded.

It was two weeks later when my son was born. I kept my word and he was christened Edwin.

Those were strange yet happy days, - everywhere the excitement was intense. I had to admit that I could not take as great an interest in what was happening as most people did because I was so completely absorbed in motherhood. I was exultant when I held my baby in my arms and he smiled at me; if he .cried I would be filled with terror. I called Madame Lambard ten times a day for reassurance. She laughed at me. “Ah, madame, you suffer from First Baby Fears,” she told me. “It is always so with a first baby. When the second comes, the third and the fourth ... oh, it is a different matter then.”

I said soberly, “I shall only have one, Madame Lambard, for I shall never marry again.” Then having raised a sad subject, she tried to cheer me by telling me that young Monsieur Edwin (whom she called Edween) was the most healthy and most happy baby it had ever been her joy to deliver.

It was a happy house, she said, that sheltered two young babies like Messieurs Edween and Leigh-though she had to admit that the last named gentleman’s appearance was a little indiscreet.

Harriet imitated her perfectly, and I must confess we laughed a good deal during those months. Harriet loved her baby, I was sure, but differently from the way in which I loved mine. She was proud of him; I detected a smug satisfaction if he was better tempered or appeared to have grown more than Edwin. She wanted to be proud of him rather than to love him, I thought. I suppose because the circumstances of his birth were so different from those of my own child. I wondered whether Harriet often thought of Charles Condey. Matilda Eversleigh naturally was eager to see her grandson, and because I could not travel to her, she came to Congreve. Harriet grimaced when she heard she was coming. “She’ll hold up her hands in horror at the sight of Leigh,” she said.

“Harriet, I really think you should marry the father. After all, you must have liked him to begin with.”

“I never did like Charles much,” she admitted.

“And yet you did ... that.”

“Careless of me, wasn’t it? Still I do love my little Leigh, and I can’t help feeling pleased he’s here.”

“Harriet, you are incorrigible. But what can we say to Lady Eversleigh?”

“That I was secretly married.”

“To whom?”

“Not Charles Condey. For Heaven’s sake, keep him out of it. Someone who came here for a few days on his way to England. We fell in love, we married and this is the fruit of our union.”

“You have so little regard for the truth.”