The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1937-07-23
CHAPTER vi

lie I1dTuISLy IlOuSe vi washing
ton street overlooked the Preside
wall, and the long lines of pines
inside the military reservation, and
the shoulders of the hill ranges that
descended on either side Of the
Golden Gate. There was plenty of
fog out here on the summer morn
ings, and Victoria's back garden,
descending behind the house beside
other hillside gardens was often
dripping with milky mist. Each one
of the five floors had three rooms
except the basement floor, where
there were a kitchen, two maids
rooms, laundry, and servants
sitting room. .l...
In the beginning of her marriage
she had said that she hoped to be
busy; idleness was what jeopardized
so many women's happiness. If her
duties and responsibilities in con-
nection with Quentin and Gwen and
the house were not sufficient to
keep her occupied, then, she threat
ened, she would positively take on
some work for the blind, or for
the city S orphanage.
But the blind and the orphanage
had had no opportunity to expert
ence her kindly charity. For from
the Sunday night when she and
Quentin had ended their thirty-hour
honeymoon with a sleepy, slow trip
to the city, and had found tempo
rary quarters in large hotel, there
had seemed to be no moment in
which Vic, to use her own words,
had had time to sit down for five
minutes to ask herself whether or
not she was happy, whether or not
she was glad that she had married
as she had
So the first year had flown, and
at the end of it Vic had awakened
Quentin in the early dawn of a
spring morning, and had given him
charge of her waiting suitcase and
her somewhat silent, frightened
SELF. There had been a hospital
then; bright, clean rooms, fiat
clean beds, everyone telling her that
she was behaving splendidly, every
one sure of it except herself. And
after a while the readiness of all
these things, and the city, and
Gwen, and the big house and even
Quentin had all disappeared into a
hot, hurtful fog, and still later,
ashamed and bewildered and apollo
getic, Vic had gratefully slipped
away into nothing-just nothing
just blackness and oblivion and re-
lief from the task that was too
hard.
Then there had been Kenty, and
Vic had lain staring at him thought
fully, thinking not of him but of her
mother. "My mother-she was so
beautiful and young; she must have
been so frightened, and she went
through all that for mel"
After the long struggle she had
said to Quentin: 81 don't want an
other baby. This ones darling; I
want him. But never another!" But
the unexpected ecstasy of having
one child, after all, had made the
possibility of having another seem
nothing less than a miracle. Susan
40 11dA 04oLy AezO oWuSAy AOt1QWGQ I6T
brother, and on Susan's second
birthday, the crowded Hardisty
nursery had been enriched by the
arrival of Richard and Robert to-
gether. Even the mother of what
she sometimes described as the
Light Infantry" had been tempo
rarily left breathless and startled
by this promptitude. Vic lived now
in a world of small beds, small
stamping footsteps, small shrill
voices. Kenty and Sue, Dick and
Bobs had filed her life to overflow
ing; she adored them even while she
toiied herself into daily state of
exhaustion for their sakes.
Quentin meanwhile was busily
building UP for himself the most