THE GREAT SECRET
Just as I thought this, wonderful to relate, the door was pushed wholly
open, and there stood master. His face was on fire--all lit up by his
blazing eyes.
Mrs. Wasp rose pretty quickly to her feet, although master had seemed
to take no note of her excitement.
“I’ve got such news,” he said, “I couldn’t wait to be announced.
Stanna, I’ve got a son--a little son.”
“A baby,” she screamed--“impossible--you’re dreaming,” and she went up
to him, and shook him.
“It’s true, true,” he said, and he stared at Mr. Bonstone who had
grasped his hand and was shaking it heartily.
“Take your hat off, take your hat off,” ejaculated Mrs. Bonstone, and
her husband helping her, they pushed my dear master into the middle
chair by the fire, and sat down each side of him.
Here he was at home in the heart of his friends, and one of them he had
seen only once before. But that made no difference. If Mr. Bonstone had
had a brother, he could not have surveyed him more affectionately than
he was surveying my dear master.
I was licking his shoes, his hands--I was nearly crazy with delight,
and even Gringo and Walter Scott were grinning.
“Now, tell us all about it,” said Mrs. Wasp, clapping her hands, “but
first, are you hungry? You look as pale as a ghost. When did you last
have something to eat?”
“I don’t know,” said master faintly.
“The bell, Norman,” she said. “Quick now, Jeannie,” she said to the
maid who appeared almost instantaneously; “a tray right here--soup, tea
and toast, for the present. In two hours we will have supper in the
dining-room--chicken salad, cold meats, hot rolls, anything else nice
that cook can get us.”
Master, who was listening, murmured, “How very kind you are, Stanna.”
“No, Rudolph, not kind,” she said sweetly. “Just returning some of your
many attentions to a tiresome girl. Now, tell us about it--tell us.
You’re quite sure about the baby, you’re not deluded--that would be too
cruel.”
“I’ve seen it, handled it,” said master starting up in his chair and
pushing his hair back from his forehead with both hands--a trick he had
when he was greatly excited. “It’s a beauty.”
“Boy or girl?” cried Stanna.
“Boy.”
“And Clossie--tell us about her. I thought she was so very ill.”
“She has been. She is worn to a shadow. Her flesh is gone----”
“Clossie thin!” ejaculated Mrs. Bonstone.
“As a wraith. I scarcely knew her. She hid her face from me, the poor
child. She cried--she thinks she is disfigured for life. She, the
mother of my child. I tell you, she’s glorious--absolutely glorious. I
never saw a more beautiful woman.”
Mrs. Bonstone exchanged a glance with her husband. Master was
frightfully excited. Then she passed a hand over her forehead.
That was a hint to her husband not to excite their friend, and the poor
man had never opened his lips. Ladies are queer, even the best of them.
To cap the climax, she said, “Norman, you mustn’t stimulate Rudolph.
You two are to be good friends, and will have plenty of time to talk
bye and bye.”
Mr. Bonstone gave her one of his speaking glances, then as master was
breaking again into animated speech, he said, briefly, “You’re done
out. Rest for a bit. I’m going to get you a drop of stimulant,” and he
with his wife vanished from the room.
Left alone with me, for Gringo and Walter Scott with exquisite dog
propriety had followed their owners, master gave me the whole story.
“Come up, Boy,” he said patting his knees, and I jumped up.
It seems he had rushed to a train in the morning, reached the country
place where the hospital is situated, and driven rapidly there.
A smiling nurse had led him to a room where there were ever so many
baby cots all tagged and numbered. She showed him one lovely, weeny
child tagged Granton. Master nearly went crazy. He couldn’t, and
wouldn’t, believe at first that it was his, and the head physician
explained, that after consultation with master’s own physician in New
York, they had decided to gratify Mrs. Granton, who had wished to
surprise her husband, and not let him know that a baby was coming to
her. It was unusual, the doctor said, but it had to be done, as they
feared for her reason, if they deceived her.
“Take me to her, take me to her,” said my master. “I forgive the
deception. The mother of my child can do no wrong.”
At first he had great trouble. She longed to see him, yet did not
want to. There was a great change in her appearance. Finally, after
sending message after message, he prevailed upon her to let him pay a
five-minute call.
He did not tell me everything just here, but I knew by what he did say,
that dear mistress had lost all her pretty looks, and yet now she was
more attractive than ever in his eyes.
“It’s the soul shining through, Boy, that counts,” he said with tears
in his eyes. “She is a madonna now.”
When was the baby coming home, that is what I wanted to know, but I did
not find out till the Bonstones came back in the room.
Mistress and young master were to return home in three weeks.
“And the baby’s name?” asked Mrs. Bonstone, when master was taking his
soup and looking much refreshed.
Master dropped his spoon. “There’s only one name in this country good
enough for my boy,” he said intensely.
“Oh! George Washington, of course,” she replied. “I might have known.”
After master took his soup and crackers, or “biscuits,” as Walter Scott
calls them, he simply collapsed with fatigue. He couldn’t wait for
supper.
You see he had been up all the night before in the cathedral, but he
did not tell them this. Even with one’s best friends, I notice, human
beings have reticences.
“I tell you everything, Boy,” said master to me afterward, “for you
can’t repeat. If dogs could talk, they would not be such valuable
friends to us.”
Mr. Bonstone was just going to take master upstairs, and put him to
bed, when to the amazement of the men, Mrs. Bonstone began to cry.
“Stanna,” said her husband in a frightened way.
“I want a baby,” she said in a choked voice.
They stared at her, and so did we three dogs.
“Perhaps, if you wait,” said master kindly.
“I want one to-night,” she said mopping her eyes. “There are so many
poor little babies without a home--unhappy little creatures, crying in
the night. I want to adopt one.”
Mr. Bonstone, as if he were telling her he would go down town and buy
her a present, said, “Wait till I come downstairs. I’ll get you one.”
She threw herself in a big chair, and cried harder than ever. I think
she was overwrought, and was having a spell of nerves. I followed my
master and Mr. Bonstone upstairs.
“Look here, Bonstone,” said my master, “it isn’t so easy to pick up a
baby at a minute’s notice. You’d better put her off till to-morrow.”
“She’s got to have it to-night,” said he, pressing his thin lips
together in his inflexible way.
“There are all kinds of difficulties,” continued my master, “signing
contracts, proving life support and legacy after your death, giving
references and so on.”
“There are babies ready to jump into a home,” said Mr. Bonstone.
“I have it,” exclaimed master as he sat on the edge of the bed, in a
magnificent guest room. “Go to old Ellen, I’ll give you her address,
and take my dog. He’ll lead you to her apartment.”
This just suited me. I hadn’t been out all day, except for my little
walk before dinner, and I jumped and fawned round Mr. Bonstone.
“Who is she?” he inquired in his short way.
Master explained how much he thought of her, and even wrote her a note,
introducing Mr. Bonstone.
“Does she know?” inquired Mr. Bonstone.
“About the baby?” said my master with a heavenly smile. “She was the
first one to get a telegram.”
Mr. Bonstone didn’t understand this, but I did. Old Ellen would be in
the seventh heaven, and Robert Lee and Beanie would be half way there.
I danced downstairs, and danced up to Mrs. Bonstone, and she let her
handkerchief fall on the floor like a little damp cobweb. Then she
sniffed, and asked her husband to lend her his.
He took out his big one for her, then he telephoned for a taxi-cab.
“If you let the baby get cold, I’ll never forgive you,” said Mrs.
Bonstone.
“It won’t get cold,” he said, and seizing her satin, fur-trimmed cloak,
he doubled it all up, and put it under his arm.
Gringo wanted to come too, but Mr. Bonstone said, “Go back, your face
might frighten it.”
Gringo wasn’t very well pleased, though he saw the wisdom of this
remark. I often had long arguments with him about the bulldog visage.
I claimed that bulldogs, Boston terriers, any dogs with lay-back
noses and undershot jaws, were displeasing and terrifying to timid
human beings. Give me a dog with a good facial expression, and a head
not running all to jaws. Of course, I loved Gringo because he was my
friend, but I would rather have had him a long-headed, amiable-looking
fellow, if I’d been making him.
I scampered down the steps and out-of-doors like the wind, and was
waiting by the taxi when Mr. Bonstone came. One would have thought
that his wife would have accompanied him on so important a quest, but
strange to say she did not seem to want to come, and Gringo, who heard
her talking to herself after we left, said that her staying behind was
a bit of feminine mother-wit. She wanted a little poor child to make
it happy. There was no doubt of her loving it, but she wasn’t so sure
of her husband. If he chose it, he would be more interested, and if
at any time he found fault with the child, she could say, “Why, it was
your choice.”
It didn’t take us very long to get to old Ellen’s avenue, which was
quite bright and lively, but her flat was dark and quiet, when we
mounted the long stairs. She had evidently gone to bed.
Mr. Bonstone had a hard time to find the bell, for, as he was not a
smoker, he did not carry matches. After a long time of ringing, Robert
Lee appeared and asked drowsily what was wanted.
As Mr. Bonstone spoke to him, he flashed me a glance of recognition,
then went to his mother’s bed-room, where Beanie was barking lustily.
Mr. Bonstone and I entered, and he sat in Ellen’s rocker while I ran to
greet Beanie, and talk over the joyful news with him. The dog was, as I
thought he would be, wild with delight.
“I want to see it--I want to see it,” he said over and over, and I
promised that by hook or by crook, I would manage so that he might see
this little baby of his dearly loved mistress.
“I should think you’d be jealous,” I said. “Mistress will never want
you home again, if she has a baby to play with.”
He looked thoughtful, but he said bravely, “I can’t help that. The main
thing is to have her happy.”
“Beanie,” I said, “you are a much better dog than I thought you were,
when I first knew you.”
“I guess troubles improve one,” he said, “and I feel better since I
lost my flesh.”
“Too much fat is bad for dog or man,” I said, then I ran to old Ellen
who was coming in dressed in her neat cotton wrapper, and looking as
calm as if she was used to being routed out of her bed every night of
her life.
Mr. Bonstone explained his errand, and her face lighted up. “If you’se
a friend of my dear Mister Granton,” she said, “old Ellen will do
anything she can for you.” Then she wrinkled her brow. She was doing
some thinking.
“Would your lady take a little dark child?” she asked.
“Do you mean a coloured child?” he said.
“Oh, no, sir,” and she smiled; “no, no--I mean dark like Sicilian or
Syrian. I know a Syrian baby--”
“Good healthy child?” asked Mr. Bonstone.
“Yes, sir--a monstrous fine child, and not so very dark complected--but
considerable darker than you.”
“I’ll go telephone,” said Mr. Bonstone, with what for him, was quite an
amount of eagerness.
He got out of the room so quickly, that I could not follow him. In a
few minutes he came back smiling. “My wife says she doesn’t care what
the shade is--to bring it quickly.”
“I’ll go first, sir,” said Ellen, “it’s close by,” and she stepped out
into the hall, and crossing to a near by flat, knocked on a door and
went in.
After some time she came back, and asked Mr. Bonstone to follow her. I
pushed after him, for this was wildly interesting to me. I took good
care, though, to keep in the background, lest I should be driven out.
This other flat reminded me of the nests of boxes ladies buy--one box
inside another, and another inside that, till you get to the tiniest
box. It seems a Syrian family renting it, took boarders, and at first
it was quite an effort to single out the various members of the various
families.
They all looked respectable and fairly clean, but they were certainly
very crowded. I think they were all peddlers of fruit and vegetables
or trinkets. There was a roaring coal fire in a kitchen stove, and
they all sat round it. One man was playing on a queer-looking musical
instrument, and the others were listening to him. One big girl had a
baby in her arms. This probably was the baby Ellen had spoken of, and I
looked at it anxiously.
It was a healthy, happy-looking little object in a ragged, but not too
dirty frock.
Ellen motioned to this girl, and she followed us into an inner room, or
rather a closet, where a young woman with a dark, eager face lay on a
tiny bed. It was a poor place, and smelt stuffy, but not unclean.
I knew by the girl’s face she was the baby’s mother. Oh! what a
devouring glance she gave Mr. Bonstone.
He said never a word, but opening his coat, took a picture from his
pocket and laid it before her. That was Mrs. Bonstone, I knew. I could
imagine how the picture of this pretty, rich young woman impressed this
sick, poor young woman.
The young woman’s eye just burnt into the photograph. That probably was
what she would like to be, and here she was laid up with an injured
back, Ellen told us, suffering untold torture most of the time, and
likely to die any hour.
She was not related to the other persons in the house. She was merely
boarding with them. Her young husband had died while on the way to this
country, and she had been struck by a trolley car a few days before,
and knew she must die and leave her baby.
Her anxiety was frightful, yet there was a kind of comfort in it for
her, for she gazed from Ellen, whom she knew, to Mr. Bonstone whom she
did not know, as if to say, “You are all right, if she recommends you.”
“Ask her if she has any relatives here or in her own country,” said Mr.
Bonstone to Ellen.
Ellen, making use of a lingo I did not understand, put the question to
her.
The woman made vehement gestures, “No, no, the baby is free.”
“Her father was well off,” said old Ellen in a low voice. “He had
cattle and sheep, but he was cruel. He beat her, when she said she
would not marry a rich, old man. She hated them both, and ran away with
a poor young man who helped with her father’s flocks. Then he died.”
“Did she tell you this?” asked Mr. Bonstone.
“No, sir, the other Syrians. She asked them to take her baby after she
died, not to let the old grandfather know. He likely would not have it,
anyway.”
“But these people are poor,” said Mr. Bonstone, “and that room seems
half full of children.”
“They are very good to each other,” said Ellen simply, “but they would
be very glad to get rid of it. She wants you to have it, too. See her
face.”
The poor young woman, brushing back her long, thick, black hair from
her clammy-looking forehead, motioned to the girl to give her the baby.
She could not hold it properly, on account of the pain in her back. Her
groans were dreadful, but she steadied herself, and pulled a cross out
of the breast of her gown--the poor creature had no nice white nightie
like rich ladies. She was in bed with her street dress on.
She wanted Mr. Bonstone to swear on the crucifix that he would be good
to her child.
The scene was pitiful, and Mr. Bonstone, strong man as he was, almost
broke down. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he bit his lip painfully.
He took the cross in his hands--he promised solemnly to provide for the
child, and if he could not keep it himself, to find a good home for it.
The poor creature could not understand a word he said, but she knew
just as well what he was saying, as if she had been born in America.
Her child was safe, and something told me that her mother-soul was
deeply gratified that a person evidently rich and of good position
would stand between the cold world and her little, helpless, brown baby.
She took the baby on one arm, and began to kiss and caress it for the
last time, for Ellen had told her that the gentleman wished to take it
away. Her moans of pain, and her broken exclamations of mother-love
were too heart-rending. I could not stand it, and ran out into the
hall.
Mr. Bonstone came out presently with the baby in his arms. “This is
awful,” he said to Ellen. “Why did they not send her to the hospital?”
“You don’t understand these people, sir. They don’t know what hospitals
are. If they do, they are frightened of them. She begged to stay with
her child. She has had good attention, sir. You see she wasn’t brought
up like you.”
Mr. Bonstone’s lip drooped. Ellen didn’t know what an adventurous,
strange career he had had.
How carefully he went down the steps with the baby, after he had
thanked Ellen for her interest, and had slipped something into her
hand. He held it quite nicely to him all the way home. I think he liked
it.
Mrs. Bonstone must have been listening for the taxi, for she met us in
the doorway.
She never said a word, just held out her arms. Her husband put the baby
in them, and she ran to the smoking-room.
There she was, unwrapping it when Mr. Bonstone came in.
“Oh, Norman, Norman, Norman,” she said over and over again, “what a
dear little brown baby!”
She kissed it, and squeezed it, and asked how old it was, and where he
had got it.
He said it was a year old.
“Ah!” she said profoundly, “then I am twelve months ahead of Clossie.
Isn’t it a darling,” she went on, “such liquid eyes, and such lovely
hair, and it isn’t a bit frightened.”
“It’s been used to living in a crowd,” he said dryly.
“But its clothes,” she said, “they’re old, and faded, and just a little
smelly. Norman, we shall dress her like a princess--what’s her name?”
Alas! he had forgotten to inquire.
“Never mind, dear,” she said consolingly. “It doesn’t matter. I’d like
to name her myself. You say she’s Syrian. She shall be Cyria, spelt
with a ‘C’ instead of an ‘S’--C-y-r-i-a--isn’t that pretty?”
He acknowledged that it was.
“Now, tell me all about the mother,” she said, “but first drag that
little rocking-chair near the fire, so I can rock her.”
It was hard for Mr. Bonstone to describe the intensely painful scene
with the mother, but he did so manfully.
“Norman,” she screamed, “you didn’t take this baby from a dying woman!”
“You said you wanted it to-night,” he replied bluntly.
“Isn’t that like a man,” she said tragically. “Take it back,” and she
held it out to him.
“You don’t understand,” he replied. “I offered to leave it. The mother
kissed your face in the photograph, and refused to have me keep the
baby from you. I think she was afraid something might happen after she
died to prevent your getting it.”
“I shall go right to her,” said Mrs. Bonstone. “Call another taxi.”
The dear, patient man got another taxi, and with him, Mrs. Bonstone
flew off to the mother. I did not go this time, but I heard her telling
my master the next morning all about it.
It seems the Syrian mother was frightfully ill when they got there.
Mrs. Bonstone stayed with her, and sent her husband to get a nurse for
the mother, and one for the baby. He spent a part of the night in this
agreeable pursuit, and by breakfast time the Bonstones, nurse and baby
were comfortably settled on Riverside Drive.
Money does certainly oil the wheels of life. How long it would have
taken a person on foot to accomplish what the Bonstones did that night!
I could not help thinking of some further lines the English greyhound
taught me--
“As I sat in my café, I said to myself,
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf.
But help it, I can not, I can not help thinking,
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money!”
A little while before lunch, Mrs. Bonstone called us dogs to go to the
nursery with her. It was a room that had been quickly fitted up for the
brown baby. What a transformation in the little creature! Some one had
been up bright and early, shopping for Miss Cyria. She looked a little
aristocrat in lace and muslin, and how deliciously she smelt--just like
a faint lily of the valley. What an up-bringing that child would have!
Mrs. Bonstone, or that good little Wasp, as Gringo called her now,
paid two long visits every day to the baby’s mother as long as the poor
thing lived.
Sometimes Mr. Bonstone went with her. As I have said before, the man
was no talker, but I heard him one day in the smoking-room, which both
men haunted, though neither smoked. (I have forgotten to say that we
had been invited to spend a week at the Bonstones, and the two men got
to be great friends.) Well, this day Mr. Bonstone was telling my master
of the Syrian woman’s actions when her beautiful child was brought in
to her tiny room that first night.
“I never saw anything like it,” he said, “that poor wretch racked by
pain. She draws herself up--stares at that old Ellen, at the child--at
my wife’s picture--then she gets out that cross. ’Pon my word I nearly
broke down--she’s a living martyr, but the awful joy of her face. I
say, Granton--there’s something about mothers, men can’t comprehend.”
“There’s nothing like it,” my master said softly, then he went on to
tell about his wife and his baby.
“Queer, isn’t it, more of the well-to-do don’t adopt these youngsters,”
said Mr. Bonstone. “Cyria is going to be a beauty.”
“You’ll bring her up as your own child, I suppose,” said master.
“I guess so--after that mother.”
“You’re not afraid of heredity?” said master.
“Fudge, no--it’s up to us to shape her.”
“Frightens one, doesn’t it,” said master.
Mr. Bonstone smiled one of his rare, peculiar smiles.
“Yes, and leads you on, too, like a beacon. If Stanna and I have no
children, that child may be the light of our old age.”
At that moment, she came in the room with the brown baby in her arms.
“I just wanted you to see her this morning, Norman,” she said, “she’s
so unusually sweet.”
Her adopted father chuckled to her, and clucked quite like a real one.
Master examined her with the eye of a connoisseur, then as he could
never help dragging in his own young one, he said, “She seems like a
giantess compared to my small son.”
“Just look at her dimples, Norman,” continued Mrs. Bonstone. “Aren’t
they fetching this morning, and that cute little way her hair curls
round her forehead? Seems to me, it’s more curly than usual.”
“And her lovely dark skin,” said Mr. Bonstone grimly. “Say,
Stanna--you’re not planning any nonsense about keeping the knowledge of
her people from her?”
“Do you suppose I would ever allow a child of mine to be ashamed of its
origin?” said Mrs. Bonstone. “I have taken her several times to see
those good creatures who were willing to adopt her. They are not a bit
envious, and finger her pretty clothes with the utmost satisfaction.
It reminds me of the first day her poor mother saw her dressed up. Oh!
Norman, if you could have seen her face. Cyria did look like an angel
in her white silk cloak and bonnet.”
“That’s fine,” said her husband, then he nudged master to listen to the
song his wife had begun to sing.
She had dropped into her little rocker that she kept in the
smoking-room among the men’s big chairs, and she was going over
something of her own composition in a low voice, holding the baby’s
face against her own as she sang--
“I never had a baby, but I know a little song,
And I sing it to my baby that does to me belong,
She’s the sweetest little baby that ever I did see,
The brownest, sweetest baby and she’s all the world to me!”
Now, I didn’t think this was so very clever, and I don’t think master
did, but Mr. Bonstone was so enraptured that he paid a young man a
handsome sum to round out this song about the brown baby and set it
to music, and strange to say, the simple words and the air became so
popular that I even heard boys whistling it in the streets of New York.
After a time, the poor mother died, and was buried at Mr. Bonstone’s
expense.
“My! my! what a funeral they gave her,” said old Ellen. “If ever the
Bonstones want anything from the Syrians on this avenue, all they’ve
got to do is to say it.”
I was greatly excited about our own baby, and oh! how I longed to see
it, but my turn did not come for several weeks.
Master used to motor out every afternoon to see how mother and child
were getting on, but I was always left in the car, till one day, when
I squealed wildly for permission to go in, master took me into the big
hospital, and a nurse wiped me all over with a damp cloth which had
something on it that smelled queer. I think she was afraid of germs.
When I was ushered into the sunny, lovely room where sat my mistress, I
felt all broken up. She was as thin as a scarecrow, and just about as
good-looking.
“See, Rudolph,” cried the poor thing, “even the dog scarcely knows me.”
After that, there was nothing to do but to run up to her, wag my tail,
twist my body, and pretend that I was charmed to see her. Perhaps I
should not say pretend. I really, by this time, had gotten to be so
sorry for my poor mistress, that I pitied her--and when a dog pities
any one, it is only a step to love. Then I was sincerely and truly
delighted about the baby, because it had made my master happy, quite
happy. Of course, I should be jealous of it, but truly, when master
held it down for me to look at it, and I saw how gentle, and harmless
and helpless it was, with nothing but those two balled-up fists to
defend itself against the big, powerful world, something swelled up
inside me, and I vowed a good dog vow, that if any other dog started to
molest that little lump of flesh, I’d tear him limb from limb.
I licked its little dress, and the nurse ran to get a dish with some
solution in it to wash the place I’d touched. Really, these nurses
and doctors carry things too far with their germ theories. Why wasn’t
master just as likely to have germs as I. We had both come through
the same parts of the city. Besides, I’m as clean as a whistle. Every
day Louis brushes me, and cleans my ears, and occasionally I have a
bath. Not too often, for it is not natural for dogs to be kept in soak.
Well--to come back to the day of my first visit to the baby. Master
was so pleased to think I liked the baby, that I got an extra share of
petting on the way home.
We were alone in the car, and I was sitting close up beside him. As we
were passing through Mount Vernon I began to think of the Lady Gay cat.
That cat had been on my mind for a long time, and one evening I had
scampered down to her eating-house on Sixth Avenue to see how she was
getting along.
She was not there. She had left some time ago, another cat told me,
after I had persuaded him to stand long enough for me to question him.
I wondered what had become of her. Had she found her way back to this
pretty place to her own good mistress, or was she dead or perhaps
stolen again?
[Illustration: THE LADY GAY CAT]