II

There was an extraordinary division in his mind at this time. Two cognate currents of suspicion ran side by side and would not mingle.

His wife was at once associated with and separated from his general line of thought. If, for instance, Dr. Holdman Stedding had asked him outright: 'Do you think your wife is one of these people who have been touched in their natal phase by the magic of the cosmic vibrations?' he would have answered at once with almost perfect honesty that these Martian speculations of his had absolutely nothing to do with her. But he would not have answered the question calmly; he would have had a touch of defensive indignation in his voice. And it was not a question he would have asked himself. It was a question he could not have asked himself; there was some barrier against that.

He was resisting a very obvious impulse to complete the link of association and fear that linked his long–standing sense of some strangeness about his wife, with this Martian idea. The two lines of suggestion were in reality connected and consecutive, but by some self–protective necessity he would not see that his extreme readiness to accept the suggestion of a Martian influx had any direct relation to his long–incubated sense of the elfin quality of his wife. They were groups of ideas in different spheres.

But these spheres, of which the Martian one was not spinning so busily, were drawing closer and closer together in his mind. Within a measurable time they were bound to collide, to coalesce into one common whirlpool, which might be a very tumbled whirlpool indeed. Then he would be bound to face the realization that had already projected itself in his words to the doctor: 'So that presently our very children may not prove to be our own.'

This intimation, breaking through his resistances, evoked first the dread of an abnormal child, prematurely wise, macrocephalic, with dreadful tentacular hands…. So his essential humanity presented the thing. If the thing was a monster, what should he do?

He thought of doing some very dreadful things.

Such nightmare ideas haunted him more and more distressingly until the birth of his child. The immediate advent of that event filled him with almost uncontrollable terror. By an immense effort he concealed it and behaved himself.

He was amazed—even Dr. Holdman Stedding was amazed—to have the young man brought into the world after a labour of less than an hour. No monstrous struggle. No frightful crisis. No Caesarean operation.

'Is he—is he all right?' he asked incredulous.

'Fit as a fiddle,' said Dr. Holdman Stedding almost boisterously. Because he had found something contagious in the father's uneasiness.

'No malformations? No strangeness?'

'On my honour, Mr. Davis, you don't deserve such a child! You don't. When they've done a little washing you shall see it. I'm not often enthusiastic. I've seen too many of 'em.'

And it looked indeed a perfect little creature. When they put it into his parental arms a great wave of instinctive tenderness surged up in the heart of Joseph Davis. Like endless fathers in his position before him, he was overcome by the wonderful fact that the creature's little hands had perfact nails and fingers.

Why had he ever been afraid?

'I feel I'd like to see her,' he said.

'Not just yet. A little while yet. Though she's doing splendidly.' Whereupon Dr. Holdman Stedding said a slightly unfortunate thing: 'There's not a painted Madonna in all the world with a lovelier bambino than hers.'

Mr. Joseph Davis's expression became thoughtful.

Silently he handed back his precious burden to the hovering nurse.

He was minded to go out and not to see Mary for a time.

Then by a great effort he overcame this impulse and stayed indoors in his study downstairs, and presently he was taken in to her, and when he saw her, tired but flushed and triumphant, with the child laid close to her, some long–standing restraint seemed to break between them and he called her his darling and knelt down beside her, weeping.

'Dear Joe!' she said, and her hand crept out and ruffled his hair gently. 'Queer Joe!'