She put her hand lightly on his arm, out of her far distance.
And out of the distance, he felt her touch him. They walked on,
hand in hand, along opposite horizons, touching across the dusk.
There was a sound of thrushes calling in the dark blue
twilight.
"I think we are going to have an infant, Bill," she said,
from far off.
He trembled, and his fingers tightened on hers.
"Why?" he asked, his heart beating. "You don't know?"
"I do," she said.
They continued without saying any more, walking along
opposite horizons, hand in hand across the intervening space,
two separate people. And he trembled as if a wind blew on to him
in strong gusts, out of the unseen. He was afraid. He was afraid
to know he was alone. For she seemed fulfilled and separate and
sufficient in her half of the world. He could not bear to know
that he was cut off. Why could he not be always one with her? It
was he who had given her the child. Why could she not be with
him, one with him? Why must he be set in this separateness, why
could she not be with him, close, close, as one with him? She
must be one with him.
He held her fingers tightly in his own. She did not know what
he was thinking. The blaze of light on her heart was too
beautiful and dazzling, from the conception in her womb. She
walked glorified, and the sound of the thrushes, of the trains
in the valley, of the far-off, faint noises of the town, were
her "Magnificat".
But he was struggling in silence. It seemed as though there
were before him a solid wall of darkness that impeded him and
suffocated him and made him mad. He wanted her to come to him,
to complete him, to stand before him so that his eyes did not,
should not meet the naked darkness. Nothing mattered to him but
that she should come and complete him. For he was ridden by the
awful sense of his own limitation. It was as if he ended
uncompleted, as yet uncreated on the darkness, and he wanted her
to come and liberate him into the whole.
But she was complete in herself, and he was ashamed of his
need, his helpless need of her. His need, and his shame of need,
weighed on him like a madness. Yet still he was quiet and
gentle, in reverence of her conception, and because she was with
child by him.
And she was happy in showers of sunshine. She loved her
husband, as a presence, as a grateful condition. But for the
moment her need was fulfilled, and now she wanted only to hold
her husband by the hand in sheer happiness, without taking
thought, only being glad.