Laurence Rivers's eyes rested rather wistfully upon the scene. It belonged to the great, good-natured, uninspired Commonplace upon which he was just agreeing with himself to retire; and it offered a comely and wholesome enough example of the same. Mrs. Bellingham also had turned towards the window, and the expression of her neat face had softened. The self-consciousness, the worldliness therein usually displayed, were in abeyance, while the beautiful content of motherhood was regnant, visibly enthroned. Laurence had never supposed she could look so charming, and he could have found it in his heart to envy his friend Jack Bellingham. Very early in their connection Virginia had pointed out to him, with consummate tact but entire lucidity, that the modern husband, who marries a fascinating woman of society and really appreciates her, will give proof of such appreciation by relegating the matter of child-bearing to a dim and distant future. It will come all in good time no doubt, but it can wait. For is not it really a little too much, in these days of enlightened equality between man and woman, to require the latter to forego amusement, to endure serious discomfort, risk her freshness and her figure, even come within measurable distance--in not infrequent cases--of the supremely foolish calamity of death?--Political economy and the health of the race notwithstanding, let the poor breed; let the obscure breed; let that innumerable company of women, to whom life offers so much of a trial and so little of a pastime, that in the sum-total of their infelicity one pain or peril the more cannot make any appreciable difference--let these breed. But spare the fair Virginias, those fine flowers of wealth and worldly circumstance, to whom Fortune shows so radiant a face! It is simple justice and reason so to do--at least such had been Virginia's argument.
But as Laurence now reflected--wiser by some year and a half's experience of woman and matrimony--if life on the lines of the Commonplace is to afford its legitimate compensations, it must not be trained too fine, or jockeyed too carefully. The man's ear must not be too ready to hear specious arguments, nor his imagination to entertain too elaborate sympathies. He must compel those said fine flowers to bow their heads to the common yoke. All his life he--Laurence--had been liable to stultify himself by permitting his imagination to turn up in the wrong place. What good luck to have been born, like his friend cheery Jack Bellingham, devoid of that embarrassing faculty! Good luck for Jack himself, and for his wife--who just looked so delightfully pretty--and for those three nice, shouting, scarlet-coated, small Bellinghams, otherwise only too probably non-existent.