THE BABY
Our grandniece, Enid, is older than Lisa, her sister. Indeed, Enid was twenty-two that Spring, and had been for two years happily married in spite of the fact that Pelleas and I had had no hand in the wooing. To see Enid with her baby in her arms was considerably like watching a wild rose rock a butterfly, and no one can fancy how tenderly we two observed her. I think that few sweet surprises of experience or even of wisdom have so confirmed our joy in life as the sight of our grandniece Enid with her baby.
It chanced that when the baby was but a few weeks old David, Enid’s young husband, was sent to The Hague upon some government business, a state of affairs for which it seemed to Pelleas and me that the United States should be called to account. For experience shows that the government will go irresistibly forward but I protest that the baby’s father never can be compensated for that absence; and I would like to have any one object who can believe differently.
For all his impatience to see whether the little child had grown to manhood in those six weeks or so, David was obliged to report at Washington immediately upon his return. When the steamship was almost due Enid found that she could wait for him to see the baby not one day longer than that on which the boat was to arrive. So she took train from somewhere in Connecticut with that very little child and arrived at our house in a sad state of collapse, a few minutes before her telegram. Enid has no nurse maid. They are very young married people indeed.
The night on which Enid and her baby reached us Pelleas and I had been sitting in the dark of our drawing-room, with the fire almost burned out. It was one of the nights when all the little shadows that live near come creeping forth. They came when we were not aware and there they were in the room, saying nothing. The ghosts that come to the platforms of Elsinore do not often speak.
“We dreamed it differently, Etarre,” Pelleas had said.
I knew what he meant. Have we not all dreamed it differently? And then we sat thinking of the Great Dream which we had had and lost. For there was a time, when Pelleas could model and I could write so that a few were deceived, that the Great Dream for one radiant year was in our home and went away when little Cedric died. In all the years since then we have gone wondering where he may be now, and where now, without us. For he was so very tiny when he left us; he could hardly take a step alone even by clinging to my finger, with Pelleas’ hands outstretched before him. I think it is partly lest he be needing us as he needed us then that we are never very far from him in thought, and that night we talked long of him until one by one all the other shadows went away in the presence of his little figure on our hearth.
So we were sitting with “Do you remember?” and “But do you remember?” on our lips when the door-bell rang and Nichola came upstairs to answer it, talking all the way. We wondered somewhat, for we have no unexpected visitors and no small excitements. We wondered the more when she appeared on the threshold of the drawing-room, bearing in her arms a white bundle which wore long and alarmingly fluffy skirts.
“Nichola!” we both cried; for you do not know how pleasant it is when the days grow colourless to have something happen which you yourself did not bring about. “Nichola! What is it?”
“It’s a babby,” Nichola informed us grimly, and laid it in Pelleas’ arms—face downward, he afterward told me. Then she beckoned me to the hall and I went, barely able to stand; for I was certain that it had been left in a basket on the steps with nothing but a locket.
“Nichola,” I begged, “whose baby?”
Nichola was bending over the bench where sat poor little Enid, crying helplessly.
“N—nobody told me,” Enid sobbed on my shoulder, “what it would be like to travel with a ten-weeks-old baby. He cried every m—mile of the way here—and he is a good baby, too!”
Bless the little mothers. I have never yet known one who would not assure you, though in the presence of a child exhibiting a most dreadful temper, that her baby was “usually so good, too.”
Together, though I suppose that I hindered far more than I helped, Nichola and I got Enid upstairs and put her in bed, dear little thing, hardly more than a baby herself for all her wise use of the most advanced baby terms. Nichola hurried downstairs and in a few minutes bustled back with a steaming bowl of some mysterious compound, hot and savoury in a bowl. How do some people always know what to bring you, hot and savoury, in a bowl? If I had gone down to the kitchen I protest that I could have devised nothing but eggs.
Nichola insisted on feeding Enid—the impertinent old woman had observed that when I am excited my hands tremble. But whose do not? As for Nichola I had often told her that she would not show emotion if an army with banners were to march in the front door. Instead of fear or sorrow or agitation Nichola’s way of emotion is anger; and I should have expected her to remind such an army of the purpose of the door mat.
“You’d best,” Nichola said to me over her shoulder, “go downstairs and see after that—babby.”
Nichola dislikes a great many things, but the greatest of these dislikes is babies. When she passes one in its perambulator I have seen her take the extreme edge of the walk.
“They ain’t a bone in ’em,” she once explained; “when you go to pick ’em up, they slimpse.”
I deplored this failing of Nichola’s as I hurried downstairs to Pelleas, but I was chiefly concerned to know how he had got on in my absence—Pelleas, who will not even hold my Angora.
No sound came from the drawing-room. I entered fearfully, for even a man of genius is sometimes helpless. I have never known my own alarm more swiftly rebuked.
He had managed to turn on the lights and furthermore he had contrived to take off the baby’s cloak and bonnet and veil, though usually he could as easily embroider a thing as to untie it, save after a very long time. And there sat Pelleas on the sofa with the baby in one arm, and he was gravely holding a lighted match a foot from its face.
As I looked he threw the burned match in the grate, soberly lighted another and repeated the performance. Evidently he construed some movement of the baby’s face to be an answering smile, for he looked vastly pleased and encouraged and instantly said clearly:—
“Well, tol, tol, tol, tolly tol! Yes!” And then added in a tone of the simplest conviction, “Of course.”
I hurried forward, laughing at him in spite of the sudden lump in my throat. It is sad for Pelleas to be nobody’s grandfather when he looks so precisely like a grandfather on the stage.
“What are the matches for, Pelleas?” I cried.
He looked up with the adorably abashed expression that I love to bring to his eyes.
“They keep its attention,” he murmured apologetically, “nothing else would. I think it’s hungry.”
“‘It’!” I cried scornfully; “why, it’s a boy.”
“Ah, well now,” Pelleas argued placidly, “you said ‘It’s a boy.’ And I said, ‘It’s hungry.’ What’s the difference?”
And to this there was really no response.
The baby’s disturbed babbling waxed to a steady fretting which increased in volume and violence. Hungry he undoubtedly was.
I remembered that Enid’s black bag lay on the bench in the hall. I hurried to it, and there was the baby’s empty bottle. When I came back, though Pelleas was lighting matches at a furious rate, the baby was crying at the top of his small strength.
“He’ll disturb Enid,” I said. “Pelleas,” I added, as one proposing revolutions, “we must take the baby down to the kitchen and feed him.”
You to whom such sweet offices are the joy—or the burden!—of every day, what can you know of the thrill of that moment to one whose arms have been empty for so long? I protest that holding the keys to The Hague and all Europe and the other continents is not to be compared to the radiant responsibility of that moment.
Pelleas promptly stood up and extended his arms.
“Take it,” he said, with enchanting masculine helplessness. Pelleas will not even let me carry my primroses up and down stairs, but merely because this was a baby he resigned his rights. I had almost forgotten how humble men are in such a presence.
I took the baby in my arms, and he settled down with that contented little gurgle which always attends a baby’s changing hands, most subtilely flattering the new nurse until the storm breaks afresh harder than before. This the storm did next, and I looked at Pelleas a little wildly. For whatever was to be done I must do.
“Go first,” said I firmly, “and open the kitchen door.”
I followed him down the stairs, one foot at a time, and when he opened the door the sight warmed my heart. The kitchen was cheery and brightly lighted, a hot fire was blazing in the range, and the teakettle was singing away to make the most miserable at peace. Sometime I shall write a letter to those who are of all men the bluest, and the substance of it will be: Go and put on the teakettle.
I sat by the fire while Pelleas, by devious ways of pantry and refrigerator, sought out the milk, and we were very merry over warming it, for it was a wonderful occasion. Pelleas spilled a great deal of milk on Nichola’s perfectly polished griddles—O, I could not have loved him if in such a pleasant experience his hands had been perfectly firm and indifferent. Nichola’s hands would have been quite firm. That brown old woman has no tremors and no tears. And just as Pelleas had filled the baby’s bottle, she appeared at the stair door.
“The babby’s mother,” she said, folding her arms, “says you’d know about mixin’ in the lime water an’ the milk sugar, an’ boilin’ the bottles up, an’ washin’ out the babby’s mouth with carbolic acid.”
“Nichola!” we gasped.
“That’s what she says,” Nichola maintained firmly, “some kind o’ acid. I think she says her Aunt Septy told her. She says I’s to tell you or the babby’d starve. The young leddy acts like a cluck-chicken.”
When she had gone back upstairs Pelleas and I looked in each other’s faces.
“I had forgotten,” I said weakly, “Pelleas, they boil everything now.”
“They do?” said Pelleas helplessly.
“And they use two separate bottles,” I recalled anxiously. “And they—”
Pelleas wrinkled his eyes at the corners.
“Fudge!” he said.
O, I loved Pelleas for that “Fudge!” Not that I do not believe in every improvement in the world. I do. And Pelleas holds the most advanced doctrines. But now and then I do love a “Fudge!”
“Would you dare give him this warm milk?” I asked him bravely.
“I certainly would dare,” Pelleas answered clearly; “we would take the baby to ride in an automobile, would we not? and as for danger—”
“But, Pelleas,” I hesitated, “I don’t like to think we’re behind the times, undermining the progress of Society and Science and—”
By then the displeasure of the baby was like that of a young god, neglected of Hebe. Pelleas handed me the bottle.
“I am the last not to sympathize with these details,” he said gravely, “but it’s hungry, Etarre. Feed it. The situation seems to require something more than a boiled bottle.”
So, being unregenerate, we hesitated no longer. And Pelleas sat beside me, and the baby drank with little soft, shuddering breaths at the painful memory of how hungry he really had been. I bent above him and so did Pelleas, our heads quite close together as we watched him, and heard the little soft noises and sighs and met the eyes’ grave, wondering criticism. So long, so long it had been since I had seen that one serious eye lifted to mine as a little face lay against my breast.
Pelleas put out one finger and the funny little hand caught it and clung to it. Pelleas wrinkled his eyes at the corners and smiled up at me—I had almost forgotten how he used to do that and then wait for me to tell him that at that rate I could never get Cedric to sleep. When Pelleas did that now we sat silent; for very little babies are never unlike, and if I had really let myself I might have imagined and so I think might Pelleas have imagined ... that which for more than forty years we have only dreamed.
At last the baby moved his head, gurgled a brief grace, stared up at us unwinkingly, and then wrinkled his face astoundingly. Pelleas rose and looked wildly about for matches. One would have said that we were fugitives from justice crouching behind a panel and that our safety depended upon keeping that baby quiet during the passing of the men-at-arms. I cannot tell how it is with others, but when one is seventy a baby affects one like this and to prevent it crying seems all the law and a fair proportion of the prophets. So that when Pelleas came with a box of paraffin matches and lighted whole handfuls before Enid’s baby’s eyes I said very little; for he did stop crying, though he looked at these humble pyrotechnics somewhat haughtily and as if he knew more about them than he cared to give out.
The stair door does not creak, and this time Nichola was quite in the kitchen before we heard her. She looked at us once and then hurried to the other side of the room and busied herself at the dresser. We have seldom seen Nichola laugh but, if it were not that we cannot imagine her laughing, I would have thought and Pelleas would have thought that her voice sounded ever so slightly muffled.
“Its mother wants it right straight off,” she remarked, with her back toward us.
We rose promptly, and meekly made our way upstairs. Old Nichola dictates to us all day long in matters in which, as I think, we are really far wiser than she; how then should we not yield in crises of which we may be supposed to know nothing? Though I am bound to confess that save in matters of boiling I felt myself as wise as little Enid who, as I have said, is a baby herself. And this suggests something about which I have often wondered, namely, when the actual noon of motherhood may be? For I protest it seems to me that all the mothers of my acquaintance are either themselves babies, or else I catch myself thinking that they are too old and even spinsterish in their notions to be able perfectly to bring up a child. Yet it cannot very well be that I was the only mother neither too young nor too old to train youth properly.
I laid the little thing in Enid’s bed, and Enid smiled—that tender, pitiful, young-mother smile which somehow breaks one’s heart no matter how happy the young mother may be. But I was certain that the baby would disturb her. And an hour later while the doctor was with her an idea came to me that set me in a delicious flutter. I had forgotten that there are such sweet excitements in the world. I hugged the hope in silence for a moment and then shared it with Pelleas.
“Suppose,” I said, “that Enid should need her rest to-night?”
I looked at him tentatively, expecting him to understand at once as he almost never fails to do. I did not remember that it is far easier to understand in matters of design, rhythm and the like, which had occupied us these many years, than to adjust one’s self without preparation to the luminous suggestion which I was harbouring.
“I hope that she will have a good night,” Pelleas advanced, with appalling density.
“But suppose,” I persisted, “that she should need her rest and that the doctor thought the baby would be certain to disturb her?”
“If it cries,” Pelleas suggested then with magnificent generosity, “you might get it and rock it awhile.”
“Pelleas!” I cried, “don’t you see? Maybe we can have the baby with us all night.”
Pelleas looked up in surprise; then his dear face shone.
“Could we, do you think?” he said, as we say when we want a thing very much.
“We will,” I promised.
Therefore when we heard the doctor coming downstairs we hurried to the hall and waited for him at the foot of the stairs. Between us we must have laid the matter before him, though I do not in the least remember what we may have said; but some way we made him know for he nodded and smiled in a surprising fashion.
“Yes,” said he, “yes—by all means! I really am persuaded that it would be an act of charity for you to keep that baby with you to-night.”
“On our niece’s account, you know,” said I with dignity.
“Certainly,” said he gravely, and caught up his hat and rushed away. At the time it seemed to me that he was curiously moved about something and I feared that Enid might be very ill.
As for Pelleas and me we could hardly wait to go upstairs. Of course Nichola had to know; she brought up the milk and the alcohol lamp and we were obliged to tell her. To tell Nichola that you mean to do anything which she considers foolish is very like a confession that your whole point of view is ignorant and diseased. Still, in some fashion, Pelleas and I together told her. Our old servant regarded us with the disapprobation which it is her delight not to disguise. Then on her brown fingers she checked matters off.
“No sleep for neither one of you,” she cast up the account. “Headaches to-morrow all day. Death o’ cold dancin’ in an’ out o’ bed. An’ a smothered babby by mornin’.”
“O, no, no, Nichola,” said we, gently but sweepingly.
I brought the baby in our room to undress him. Our room was cheerful and warm. An open fire was burning; and Pelleas had lighted all the candles as we will do on the rare occasions when we are dressing for some great event. On a table beside the bed stood the alcohol lamp and the glasses and the baby’s bottle—I had not even mentioned lime water and boiled bottles to Enid—and strange enough they looked where only my Bible and my medicine have lived for so long. The baby was asleep when we took him from Enid, but he waked and smiled impartially and caught at the air in perfect peace. I took off the little garments, feeling all the old skill come back to my hands idle to all such sweet business for more than forty years. Pelleas insisted on drawing off the tiny socks and stockings and when I saw the little feet in his palm I could almost have believed, for one swift moment, that the years had indeed rolled back. Then we wrapped him warmly and laid him in the great bed. And Pelleas spent a long while happily tucking in and tucking down and pretending to be very useful.
We had thought to read for a little while as is our wont and we did try to do so; but neither of us could keep our eyes anywhere near the book or could listen to the other read aloud. For the unwonted sound of that soft breathing was wholly distracting. And once a little hand was thrown up over the edge of the covers. What did we care about the sculptures at Ægina then?
Nichola looked in.
“Best leave a lamp burnin’,” she said crossly. “An’ if it should cry, you call me.”
By which, as Pelleas said afterward, she by no means intended to provide for the possible emotion of the lamp.
I was longing to feel that little head in the hollow of my arm. I laid it there presently and tucked my hand between the two pillows as I had been wont and held away the covering from the baby’s face. There was the fine dark hair, and there was the tiny hand uplifted and—as I live!—there was the identical ruffle of lace which had always used to bother about the little chin. In that first ecstatic moment I looked up at Pelleas almost frightened, half-expecting the buoyant, youthful face and the dear eyes that were wont to look down upon Cedric and me. And the dear eyes smiled, for they have never changed.
I lay very still listening to that quiet breathing, to the rustle and turning which is a tender language of its own. When one is seventy and closes one’s eyes it is wonderful how the whole world grows youthful. And when I had almost dozed that tender rustling brought me back so happily that I could hardly tell which was memory of that other little head upon my arm and which was now. At midnight and twice later when the baby’s food had to be warmed it was I who did this, and the old familiar helplessness of Pelleas in this little presence delighted me beyond measure. Though when the baby grew impatient and cried, Pelleas valiantly lighted matches before him, and he fell silent and even smiled, and slept again. I record it as a mere matter of history that in the intervals of these ceremonies I had not slept for a moment. For there had come thronging back such a company of memories, such a very flight of spirits of the old delight of our wonderful year when there was Cedric, that the world had no room for sleep at all. Sleep! I do not suppose that any one would chide me for being wakeful at a ball? And nothing in the world could have been so delightful to me as were those hours when that little head lay on my arm.
Sometime after daylight he awoke. Cedric had been wont to lie quietly as long as ever I would do so, but Enid’s baby—for it was Enid’s baby for all our pretending—awoke and played with his fists. Then a fancy that had hovered over me all the night took shape, and I told it to Pelleas.
“Dear,” I said, “you know the things in the bottom drawer in the closet?”
“Yes,” he answered at once, “I have been thinking about them.”
“Suppose,” I suggested, “that we were to—to try some of them on the baby.”
“I have been thinking the same thing,” Pelleas said.
It was not cold in the room, for we had kept the hearth alive all the night. When we were warmly wrapped and had drawn chairs before the fire, Pelleas brought from the closet that box filled with the tender yellow muslins that Cedric had worn such a little time. I chose the white batiste gown that I had made myself, every stitch; and over his little nightgown we put it on Enid’s baby. He was very good, and crowed and nestled; and so we found the long white cloak that I had embroidered and a bonnet that Pelleas had once selected himself, all alone, at a shop. And Enid’s baby’s arm doubled up in a ball when I tried to put it in a sleeve—I suppose that there never was a baby’s arm that did not do this, but I have known only one little arm. And when the pink hand came creeping through the cuff Pelleas caught it and kissed it—O, I had not thought for years how he used to do that.
“Now!” I said, “Pelleas—look now.”
Enid’s baby sat on my knee, his back to us both. The little bent back in that white coat, the soft collar crumpling up about the neck in spite of me, the same little bonnet with the flower in the back and the lace all around—
Pelleas and I looked at each other silently. And not so much in grief as in longing that was like the hope of heaven.
We did not hear Nichola coming with our coffee. So she opened the door and saw the box on the floor and the things scattered all about. She knew what they were. She was with us when little Cedric was here, and she had not forgotten. She stood still, and then set the tray down on the table.
“Drink your coffee!” she called sharply, and was out of the room before we could speak.
In a moment, when I could, and because Enid’s baby cried then I laid him in Pelleas’ arms and went out to tell Nichola to bring more milk.
And leaning against a bureau in the passage Nichola stood crying as if her heart would break.
“Go on away!” she said, shaking her old gray head. “Go on away!”