A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [31]
It was a personal question, but the doctor merely shrugged. “My nerves have lived in a state of high tension for nine months now. Every morning when I wake up I’m afraid until I check that all’s well, and every night I lie in bed worrying. At school, were you nervous during the examinations? I was always worse off the day before.”
“From all Jane says, things have gone well. My one regret about the summer is that we couldn’t be here with you and Toto.”
“We saw very few people—it was nice, very nice.” Unsaid was that they had grown more comfortable with each other, that the pregnancy had consecrated their rapprochement. “Her parents have been wonderful.”
“Did you let them know?”
“This evening? Yes, I telegrammed them straight away, same to my father and mother. Her parents are on their way, and my father sent back his felicitations. Really I desire it to be two days from now and all well. What a terrible thought, to wish time away when life has so little of it anyway…”
“Why don’t I step out and find a doctor?”
Just as Lenox said this, though, there was a wail at a far corner of the enormous house. Both men rose to their feet by instinct, and McConnell took a few steps to the door, pain and worry fresh again in his eyes.
“I’ve no doubt all is well,” said Lenox.
There was another wail, long and loud. “One day men will be in the birthing room,” said McConnell.
Lenox was shocked but said only, “Mm.”
“I’ve seen a birth.”
“It’s better to let the doctors and the women handle it.”
“Don’t be retrogade, Charles.”
Don’t be radical, Lenox wanted to say. “Perhaps I am,” was all he uttered in the event.
There was a third wail, and then a fourth some seconds later. McConnell paced to and fro as Lenox sat down again.
“The noises are quite normal,” the doctor said, “but I never cared when I heard them before. It’s awful to say—these women were patients of mine—but it’s true.”
A fifth wail, and then an even more terrifying sound: footsteps in the stairwell.
McConnell rushed to the door and flung it open. In his mind Lenox said a short prayer.
Outside of McConnell’s study was a wide, rarely used salon, covered with eighteenth-century paintings in the bold Continental style. The doctor striding across it seemed like a figure out of myth, his loud steps and white robe in the dark room somehow laden with meaning.
“I congratulate you!” he called when he was close enough to be heard. His voice echoed across the vast empty room. “It’s a girl!”
Chapter Fifteen
By the time Lenox left at 6:00 A.M. several things had happened. McConnell had burst out of the room and gone to see his wife and child, and come back fifteen minutes later positively beaming (“An angel! Both of them, two angels!”). Lady Jane, eyes rimmed with red, had come down to see Lenox and tell him all about the child, and then the two had agreed, in a hushed embrace, never to fight again. At last Lenox himself had seen the baby, a rosy-skinned, warm-bodied dab of human life.
Most importantly, the child had a name: Grace Georgianna McConnell. Already they were all calling her George (“Though we must never let the child think it’s because you wanted a boy,” admonished Jane). Her father seemed ready to burst with pride, happiness, and, perhaps most powerfully, relief, while her mother was (apparently) a composed, albeit slightly shaken, picture of maternal bliss. Lenox himself was immensely happy.
He left early to try to get home so that he could sneak a few hours’ sleep. There were important meetings to attend that morning. As he went, Lady Jane was curled up in the second bed in Toto’s room, sleeping across from the new mother, the crib in between them. Toto’s hand was draped into it. As for McConnell, he had let the women sleep and been full of action. He gave the servants the day off, handed each of them a double florin, and ordered a crate of Pol Roger for them from the shop down the street, then sent eight telegrams to his friends and family. After that he ordered his horses up (apparently forgetting the day off—but nobody minded)