May 1. Baby is more bewitching every day. She is so wonderful and so
lovely that I am never tired of watching her. The miracle of a baby's
growth makes one stand speechless in delight and awe. When this little
morsel of life, hardly as many days in the world as I have been years,
coos and smiles, and stretches out those tiny rosebud fingers only big
enough for a fairy, I feel like going down on my knees to the mystery of
life. I do not wonder that people pray. I understand entirely the
impulse to cry out to something mighty, something higher than our own
strength, some sentient heart of nature somewhere; the desire to find,
by leaning on the invisible, a relief from the oppressiveness of the
emotions we all must feel when a sense of the greatness of life takes
hold on us. If it were but possible to believe in any of the many gods
that have been offered to us, how glad I should be. Father used to say
that every human being really makes a deity for himself, and that the
difference between believers and unbelievers is whether they can allow
the church to give a name to the god a man has himself created. I cannot
accept any name from authority, but the sense of some brooding power is
very strong in me when I see this being growing as if out of nothing in
my very hands.
When I look at baby I have so great a consciousness of the life outside
of us, the life of the universe as a whole, that I am ready to agree
with any one who talks of God. The trouble is that one idea of deity
seems to me as true and also as inadequate as all the rest; so that in
the end I am left with only my overwhelming sense of the mightiness of
the mystery of existence and of the unity of all the life in the
universe.
May 2. To-day we named baby. I would not do it without consulting her
father, so I sent for Tom, and he came over just after breakfast. The
day has been warm, and the windows were open; a soft breath of wind came
in with a feeling of spring in it, and a faint hint of a summer coming
by and by. I was upstairs in the nursery when Tom came; for we have made
a genuine, full-fledged nursery of the south chamber, and installed Rosa
and the baby there. When they told me that he was here, I took baby, all
pink and sweet from her bath, and went down with her.
Tom stood with his back to the parlor door, looking out of the window.
He did not hear me until I spoke, and said good-morning. Then he turned
quickly. At sight of baby he changed color, and forgot to answer my
greeting. He came across the room toward us, so that we met in the
middle of the floor.
"Good God, Ruth!" he said. "To think of seeing you with her baby in your
arms!"
The words hurt me for myself and for him.
"Tom," I cried out excitedly, "I will not hear you say anything against
baby! It is neither hers nor yours now. It is mine, mine! You shall not
speak of her as if she were anything but the sweetest, purest thing in
the whole world!"
He looked at me so intently and so feelingly while I snuggled the pink
ball up to me and kissed it, that it was rather disconcerting. To change
the subject, I went straight to the point.
"Tom," I said, "I want to ask you about baby's name."
"Oh, call it anything you like," he answered.
"But you ought to name her," I told him.
He was silent a moment; then he turned and walked away to the window
again. I thought that he might be considering the name, but when he came
back abruptly he said:--
"Ruth, I can't pretend with you. I haven't any love for that child. I
wish it weren't here to remind me of what I would give anything to have
forgotten. If I have any feeling for it, it is pity that the poor little
wretch had to be chucked into the world, and shame that I should have
any responsibility about it."
I told him he would come to love her some time; that she was after all
his daughter, and so sweet he couldn't help being fond of her.
"If I ever endure her," he said, almost doggedly, "it will be on your
account."
"Nonsense, Tom," I retorted, as briskly as I could when I wanted to cry,
"you'll be fond of her because you can't help it. See, she has your
eyes, and her hair is going to be like yours."
He laughed with a trace of his old buoyant spirit.
"What idiocy!" was his reply. "Her eyes are any color you like, and she
has only about six hairs on her head anyway."
I denied this indignantly, partly because it was not true, and partly,
I am afraid, with feminine guile, to divert him. We fell for a moment
almost into the oldtime boy-and-girl tone of long ago, and only baby in
my arms reminded us of what had come between.
"Well," I said at last, "it is evident that you are not worthy to give
this nice little, dear little, superfine little girl a name; so I shall
do it myself. I shall call her Thomasine."
"What an outlandish name!"
"It is your own, so you needn't abuse it. Do you agree?"
"I don't see how I can help myself, for you can call her anything you
like."
"Of course I shall," I told him; "but I thought you should be
consulted."
He shrugged his shoulders with a laugh.
"Having made up your mind," he said, "you ask my advice."
"I shouldn't think of consulting you till I had made up my mind," was my
retort. "Now I want you to give her her name."
"Give it to her how?"
"Her name is to be Thomasine," I repeated.
"It is an absurd name," Tom commented.
"That's as it may be," was all I would answer, "but that's what she's to
be called. You're to kiss her, and"--
He looked at me with a sudden flush. He had never, I am sure, so much as
touched his child with the tip of his finger, much less caressed her.
The proposition took him completely by surprise, and evidently
disconcerted him. I did not give him time to consider. I made my tone
and manner as light as I could, and hurried on.
"You are to kiss her and say, 'I name you Thomasine.' I suppose that
really you ought to say 'thee,' but that seems rather theatrical for us
plain folk."
He hesitated a second, and then he bent over baby in my arms.
"I name you Thomasine," he said, and just brushed her forehead with his
lips. Then he looked at me solemnly. "You will keep her?" he said.
"Yes," I promised.
So baby is named, and Tom must have felt that she belongs really to him,
however he may shrink from her.
May 3. I have had a dreadful call from Mrs. Webbe. She came over in the
middle of the forenoon, and the moment I saw her determined expression I
felt sure something painful was to happen.
"Good-morning," she said abruptly; "I have come after my son's infant."
"What?" I responded, my wits scattering like chickens before a hawk.
"I have come after my son's infant," she repeated. "We are obliged to
you for taking care of it; but I won't trouble you with it any longer."
I told her I was to keep baby always. She looked at me with tightening
lips.
"I don't want to have disagreeable words with you, Ruth," she said, "but
you must know we could never allow such a thing."