A fortnight after the birth of Jenny, her three great-aunts, black and
stately as ever, paid a second visit to the mother.
"And how is Florrie?" inquired Aunt Alice.
"Going on fine," said Florrie.
"And what is the baby to be called?" asked Aunt Fanny.
"Jenny, and perhaps Pearl as well."
"Jenny?"
"Pearl?"
"Jenny Pearl?"
The three aunts disapproved the choice with combined interrogation.
"We were thinking," announced Aunt Alice; "your aunts were thinking,
Florrie, that since we have a good deal of room at Carminia House----"
"It would be a capital plan for the baby to live with us," went on Aunt
Mary.
"For since our father died" (old Frederick Horner, the chemist, had been
under a laudatory stone slab at Kensal Green for a quarter of a
century), "there has been room and to spare at Carminia House," said
Aunt Fanny.
"The baby would be well brought up," Aunt Alice declared.
"Very well brought up, and sent to a genteel academy for young--ladies."
The break before the last word was due to Miss Horner's momentary but
distinctly perceptible criticism of the unladylike bedroom, where her
niece lay suckling her baby girl.
"We should not want her at once, of course," Aunt Fanny explained. "We
should not expect to be able to look after her properly--though I
believe there are now many infant foods very highly recommended even by
doctors."
Perhaps it was the pride of chemical ancestry that sustained Miss
Frances Horner through the indelicacy of the last announcement. But old
maids' flesh was weak, and the carmine suffusing her waxen cheeks drove
the eldest sister into an attempt to cover her confusion by adding that
she, for one, was glad in these days of neglected duties to see a mother
nursing her own child.
"We feel," she went on, "that the arrival of a little girl shows very
clearly that the Almighty intended us to adopt her. Had it--had she
proved to be a boy, we should have made no suggestions about her,
except, perhaps, that her name should be Frederick after our father, the
chemist."
"With possibly Philip as a second name," Miss Mary Horner put in.
"Philip?" her sisters asked.
And now Miss Mary blushed, whether on account of a breach of sisterly
etiquette, or whether for some guilty memory of a long-withered
affection, was never discovered by her elders or any one else, either.
"Philip?" her sisters repeated.
"It is a very respectable name," said Miss Mary apologetically, and for
the life of her could only recall Philip of Spain, whose admirable
qualities were not enough marked to justify her in breaking in upon Miss
Horner's continuation of the discussion.
"Feeling as we do," the latter said, "that a divine providence has given
a girl-child to the world on account of our earnest prayers, we think we
have a certain right to give our advice, to urge that you, my dear
Florence, should allow us the opportunity of regulating her education
and securing her future. We enjoy between us a comfortable little sum of
money, half of which we propose to set aside for the child. The rest
has already been promised to the Reverend Williams, to be applied as he
shall think fit."
"Like an ointment, I suppose," said Florrie.
"Like an ointment? Like what ointment?"
"You seem to think that money will cure everything--if it's applied. But
who's going to look after Jenny if you die? Because," she went on,
before they had time to answer, "Jenny isn't going to be applied to the
Reverend Williams. She isn't going to mope all day with Bibles as big as
tramcars on her knees. No, thank you, Aunt Alice, Jenny'll stay with her
mother."
"Then you won't allow us to adopt her?" snapped Miss Horner, sitting up
so straight in the cane-bottomed chair that it creaked again and again.
"I don't think," Aunt Fanny put in, "that you are quite old enough to
understand the temptations of a young girl."
"Aren't I?" said Florence. "I think I know a sight more about 'em than
you do, Aunt Fanny. I am a mother, when all's said and done."
"But have you got salvation?" asked Miss Horner.
"I don't see what salvation and that all's got to do with my Jenny,"
Mrs. Raeburn argued.
"But you would like her to be sure of everlasting happiness?" inquired
Miss Fanny mildly, amazed at her niece's obstinacy.
"I'd like her to be a good girl, yes."
"But how can she be good till she has found the Lord? We're none of us
good," declared Miss Mary, "till we have been washed in the blood of the
Lamb."
"I quite believe you're in earnest, Aunt Alice," declared Mrs. Raeburn,
"in earnest, and anxious to do well by Jenny, but I don't hold and never
did hold with cooping children up. Poor little things!"
"There wouldn't be any cooping up. As a child of grace, she would often
go out walking with her aunts, and sometimes, perhaps often, be allowed
to carry the tracts."
Mrs. Raeburn looked down in the round blue eyes of Jenny.
"Perhaps you'd like her to jump to glory with a tambourine?" she said.
"Jump to glory with a tambourine?" echoed Miss Horner.
"Or bang the ears off of Satan with a blaring drum? Or go squalling up
aloft with them saucy salvation hussies?"
The austere old ladies were deeply shocked by the levity of their
niece's inquiries.
Sincerely happy, sincerely good, they were unable to understand any one
not burning to feel at home in the whitewashed chapel which to them was
an abode of murmurous peace. They wanted everybody to recognize with
glad familiarity every text that decorated the bleak walls with an
assurance of heavenly joys. Their quiet encounters with spiritual facts
had nothing in common with those misguided folk who were escorted by
brass bands along the shining road to God. They were happy in the
exclusiveness of their religion, not from any conscious want of charity,
but from the exaltation aroused by the privilege of divine intimacy and
the joyful sense of being favorites in heavenly places. The Rev. Josiah
Williams, for all his liver-colored complexion and clayey nose, was to
them a celestial ambassador. His profuse outpourings of prayer took them
higher than any skylark with its quivering wings. His turgid discourses,
where every metaphor seemed to have escaped from a store's price-list,
were to them more fruitful of imaginative results than any poet's song.
His grave visits, when he seemed always to be either washing his hands
or wiping his boots, left in the hearts of the three old maids memories
more roseate than any sunset of the Apennines. Therefore, when Mrs.
Raeburn demanded to know if they were anxious for Jenny to jump to glory
with a tambourine, the religious economy of the three Miss Horners was
upset. On consideration, even jumping to glory without a tambourine
struck them as an indelicate method of reaching Paradise.
"And wherever did you get the notion of adopting Jenny?" continued the
niece. "For I'm sure I never suggested any such thing."
"We got the notion from above, Florence," explained Miss Fanny. "It was
a direct command from our Heavenly Father. I had a vision."
"Your Aunt Fanny," proclaimed the elder sister, "dreamed she was nursing
a white rabbit. Now, we have not eaten rabbits since, on an occasion
when the Reverend Williams was taking a little supper with us, we
unfortunately had a bad one--a high one. There had been nothing to
suggest rabbits, let alone white rabbits, to your Aunt Fanny. So I said:
'Florence is going to have a baby. It must be a warning.' We consulted
the Reverend Williams, who said it was very remarkable, and must mean
the Almighty was calling upon us as he called upon the infant Samuel. We
inquired first if either of your sisters was going to have a baby, also.
Caroline Threadgale wrote an extremely rude letter, and Mabel Purkiss
was even ruder. So, evidently, it is the will of God that we should
adopt your baby girl. We prayed to Him to make it a little girl, because
we are more familiar with little girls, never having had a brother and
our father having died a good while ago now. Well, it is a girl. So
plainly--oh, my dear niece, can't you see how plainly--God commands you
to obey Him?"
Then Miss Horner stood up and looked so tall and severe that her niece
was frightened for a moment, and half expected to see the flutter of an
angel's wing over the foot of the bedstead. She nerved herself, however,
to resist the will of Heaven.
"Dreaming of rabbits hasn't got nothing to do with babies. I forget what
it does mean--burglars, or something, but not babies, and you sha'n't
have Jenny."
"Think, my dear niece, before you refuse," Miss Horner remonstrated.
"Think before you condemn your child to everlasting damnation, for
nothing but the gates of Hell can come from denying the Heavenly Will.
Think of your child growing up in wickedness and idle places, growing
old in ignorance and contempt of God. Think of her dancing along the
broad ways of Beelzebub, eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree,
kissing and waltzing and making love and theater-going and riding
outside omnibuses. Think of her journeying from vanity unto vanity and
becoming a prey to evil and lascivious men. Remember the wily serpent
who is waiting for her. Give her to us, that she may be washed in the
blood of the Lamb, and crying Hallelujah, may have a harp in the Kingdom
of Heaven.
"If you reject us," the old lady went on, her marble face taking on the
lively hues of passion, her eyes on fire with the greatness of her
message, "you reject God. Your daughter will go by ways you know not of;
she will be lost in the mazes of destruction, she will fall in the pit
of sin. She will be trampled under foot on the Day of Judgment, and be
flung forever into wailing and gnashing of teeth. Her going out and
coming in will be perilous. Her path will be set with snares of the
giant of Iniquity. Listen to us, my dear niece, lest your child become a
daughter of pleasure, a perpetual desire to the evil-minded. Give her us
that we may keep her where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and no
thieves break in and steal."
The old lady, exhausted by the force of her prophecy, sank down into the
chair, and, elated by the splendors of the divine wrath, seemed indeed
to be a noble and fervid messenger from God.
In Mrs. Raeburn, however, these denunciations wakened a feeling of
resentment.
"Here," she cried, "are you cursing my Jenny?"
"We are warning you."
"Well, don't sit nodding there like three crows; your cursing will come
to nothing, because you don't know nothing about London, nor about life,
nor about nothing. What's the good of joring about the way to Heaven,
when you don't know the way to Liverpool Street without asking a
policeman? I say Jenny shall be happy. I say she shall be jolly and
merry and laugh when she's a mind to, bless her, and never come to no
harm with her mother to look after her. She sha'n't be a Plain Jane and
No Nonsense, with her hair screwed back like a broom, but she shall be
Jenny, sweet and handsome, with lips made for kissing and eyes that will
sparkle and shine like six o'clock of a summer morning."
Mrs. Raeburn was sitting up in bed, holding high the unconscious infant.
"And she _shall_ be happy, d'ye hear? And you sha'n't have her, so get
out, and don't wag your bonnets at my Jenny."
The three aunts looked at each other.
"I see the footprints of Satan in this room," said Miss Horner.
"Not a bit of it," contradicted her niece. "It's your own muddy feet."
Outside, a German band, seduced from hibernation by St. Luke's summer,
played the "March of the Priests" from "Athalie," leaving out the more
important notes, and soon a jaded omnibus, with the nodding bonnets of
the three Miss Horners, jogged slowly back to Clapton.
When the Miss Horners withdrew from the dingy bedroom the swish and
rustle of their occupation, Mrs. Raeburn was at first relieved,
afterwards indignant, finally anxious.
Could this strawberry-colored piece of womanhood beside her really be
liable to such a life of danger and temptation and destruction? Could
this wide-eyed stolidity ever become a spark to set men's hearts afire?
Would those soft, uncrumpling hands know some day love's fever? No, no,
her Jenny should be a home-bird--always a home-bird, and marry some nice
young chap who could afford to give her a comfortable house where she
could smile at children of her own, when the three old aunts had
moldered away like dry sticks of lavender. All that babble of flames and
hell was due to religion gone mad, to extravagant perusal of
brass-bound Bibles, to sour virginity. With some perception of human
weakness, Mrs. Raeburn began to realize that her aunts' heads were full
of heated imaginations because they had never possessed an outlet in
youth. The fierce adventures of passion had been withheld from them, and
now, in old age, they were playing with fires that should have been
extinguished long ago. Fancy living with those terrible old women at
Clapton, hearing nothing but whispers of hell-fire. All that talk of
looking after Jenny's soul was just telling the tale. There must be some
scheme behind it all. Perhaps they wanted to save money in a servant,
and thought to bring on Jenny by degrees to a condition of undignified
utility.
Mrs. Raeburn was by no means a harsh judge of human nature, but her
aunts having arrived at an unpropitious moment, she could not see their
offer from a reasonable standpoint. Moreover, she had the proud woman's
invariable suspicion of a gift; withal, there was a certain cynicism
which made her say "presents weren't given for nothing in this world."
Anyway, she decided, they were gone, and a good riddance, and she
wouldn't ask them to Hagworth Street again in a hurry. The problem of
getting in a woman to help now arose. Mrs. Nightman was off to-morrow;
Alf and Ede would be back in a week, and Charlie's breakfast must be
attended to. Mrs. Nightman informed her she knew where a likely girl of
fifteen was to be found--a child warranted to be willing and clean and
truthful. To-morrow, Mrs. Raeburn settled, this paragon must be
interviewed.
To-morrow dawned, and in the wake of sunrise came the paragon. She still
wore the dresses of childhood, but paid toll to responsibleness by
screwing up her mouse-colored hair to the likeness of a cockle-shell,
adding thereby, in her mother's estimation, eighteen months, in her own,
ten years, to her age. She was a plum-faced child, with glazed cheeks.
Her nose, Mrs. Raeburn observed with pleasure, did not drip like palings
on a wet day. The paragon was just an ordinary old little girl, pitched
into life with a pair of ill-fitting boots, a pinafore, and half a dozen
hairpins. But she would do. Wait a minute. Was she inclined to loll or
mouch? No. Was she bound to tilt a perambulator? No. Must she read light
fiction when crossing a road? She didn't like reading.
Mrs. Raeburn decided more than ever that she would do.
Was she good at washing unwilling children? She washed many brothers and
sisters with yellow soap and dried them thoroughly every Saturday night.
Did she want the place? Mother would be glad if she got it. What was her
name? Ruby. Mrs. Raeburn thanked goodness she had abandoned Ruby as a
possible suffix to Jenny. Her surname? O'Connor. Irish? She didn't know.
Yes, she should have a week's trial.
So the paragon became a part of the household as integral as the
furniture and almost as ugly, and, as she grew older, almost as
unnecessarily decorated. Alfie, the young Tartar, tried to break her in
by severe usage, but succumbed to the paragon's complete imperviousness.
Edie was too young to regard her as anything but an audience for long
and baseless fits of weeping.
The two children were brought back by Aunt Mabel from her house at
Barnsbury, where they had sojourned during the birth of their sister.
Mrs. Raeburn was softer and plumper and shorter than her sister. She had
a rosy complexion, and eyes as bright as a bird's. She had, too, the
merriest laugh in the world till Jenny grew older and made it sound
almost mirthless beside her own. It was this capacity for laughter which
made her resent the aunts' attempt to capture Jenny for melancholy.
Although, before the child's birth, she had not been particularly
enthusiastic about its arrival, the baby already possessed a personality
so compelling that the mother esteemed her above both the elder
children, not because she was the last born, but because she genuinely
felt the world was the richer by her baby. If she had been asked to
express this conviction in words, she would have been at a loss. She
would have been embarrassed and self-conscious, sure that you were
laughing at her. She did venture once to ask Mabel if she thought Jenny
prettier than the other two; but Mabel laughed indulgently, and Mrs.
Raeburn could not bring herself to enlarge upon the point.
She wished somehow that her mother could have lived to see Jenny, and
her father, too. Of this desire she was not aware when Alfie and Edie
arrived. She felt positive her father would have considered Jenny full
of life. Paradoxically enough for a butcher, Mr. Unwin had admired life
more than anything else. Perhaps Mrs. Raeburn experienced an elation
akin to that felt of old by wayside nymphs who bore children to Apollo
and other divine philanderers. She knew that, however uneventful the
rest of her life might be, in achieving Jenny she had done something
comparable to her dreams as a girl in the sunny Islington window that
looked away down to the Angel. She could not help feeling a subtle pity
for her elder sister, whose first-born was due in May. Boy or girl, it
would be a putty statuette beside her Jenny. The latter was alive. How
amazingly she was conscious of that vitality in the darkness, when she
felt the baby against her breast.
Her own eyes were bright, but Jenny's eyes were stars that made her own
look like pennies beside them. Such fancies she found herself weaving,
lying awake in the night-time.