"But baby is so young"--
"This is no laughing matter," she interrupted with asperity, "even if
the child is young. I must do my duty to her from the very beginning. Of
course it will be a cross for me, but I hope I shall bear it like a
Christian."
Something in her voice and manner exasperated me almost beyond
endurance. I could not help remembering the day Mrs. Webbe came to the
Brownrig house, and I am much afraid I was anything but conciliatory in
my tone when I answered.
"Mrs. Webbe," I said to her, "if you cared for baby, and wanted to love
her, I might perhaps think of giving her up, though I am very fond of
her, dear little thing."
Mrs. Webbe's keen black eyes snapped at me.
"I dare say you look at it in that way," she retorted. "That's just it.
It's just the sort of worldliness that would ruin the child. It's come
into the world with sin and shame enough to bear, and you'd never help
it to grace to bear it."
The words were not entirely clear, yet I had little doubt of their
meaning. The baby, however, was after all her own flesh and blood, and I
was secretly glad that to strengthen me in my resolve to keep Thomasine
I had my promise to the dead mother and to Tom.
"But, Mrs. Webbe," I said as gently as I could, "don't you think the
fact that baby has no mother, and must bear that, will make her need
love more?"
"She'll need bracing up," was the emphatic rejoinder, "and that's just
what she won't get here. I don't want her. It's a cross for me to look
at her, and realize we've got to own a brat with Brownrig blood in her.
I'm only trying to do my duty. Where's that baby going to get any
religious training from you, Ruth Privet?"
I sat quiet a moment, thinking what I had better say. Mrs. Webbe was
entirely conscientious about it all. She did not, I was sure, want baby,
and she was sincere in saying that she was only trying to do her duty.
When I thought of Thomasine, however, as being made to serve as a living
and visible cross for the good of Mrs. Webbe's soul, I could not bear
it. Driven by that strong will over the thorny paths of her
grandmother's theology, poor baby would be more likely to be brought to
despair than to glory. It was of course right for Mrs. Webbe to wish to
take baby, but it could not be right for me to permit her to do so. If
my duty clashed with hers, I could not change on that account; but I
wished to be as conciliatory as possible.
"Don't you think, Mrs. Webbe," I asked, trying to look as sunny as a
June day, "that baby is rather young to get harm from me or my heresies?
Couldn't the whole matter at least be left till she is old enough to
know the meaning of words?"
She looked at me with more determination than ever.
"Well, of course it's handsome of you to be willing to take care of
Tom's baby, and of course you won't mind the expense; but you made him
marry that girl, so it's only fair you should expect to take some of the
trouble that's come of what you did."
"You don't mean," I burst out before I thought, "that you wouldn't have
had Tom marry her?"
"It's no matter now, as long as she didn't live," Mrs. Webbe answered;
"though it isn't pleasant knowing that one of that Brownrig tribe
married into our family."
I had nothing to say. It would have hurt my pride, of course, had one of
my kin made such a marriage, and I cannot help some secret feeling that
Julia had forfeited her right to be treated like an honest girl; but
there was baby to be considered. Besides this, the marriage was made, it
seems to me, by Tom's taking the girl, not by the service at her
deathbed. Mrs. Webbe and I sat for a time without words. I looked at the
carpet, and was conscious that Mrs. Webbe looked at me. She is not a
pleasant woman, and I have had times of wishing she might be carried off
by a whirlwind, so that Deacon Webbe and Tom might have a little peace;
but I believe in her way she tries to be a good one. The trouble is that
her way of being good seems to me to be a great deal more vicious than
most kinds of wickedness. She uses her religion like a tomahawk, and
whacks with it right and left.
"Look here," she broke out at last, "I don't want to be unpleasant, but
it ain't a pleasant thing for me to come here anyway. I suppose you mean
to be kind, but you'd be soft with baby. That's just what she mustn't
have. She'd better be made to know from the very start what's before
her."
"What is before her?" I asked.
Mrs. Webbe flushed.
"I don't know as there's any use of my telling you if you don't see it
yourself. She's got to fight her way through life against her
inheritance from that mother of hers, and--and her father."
She choked a little, and I could not help laying my hand on hers, just
to show that I understood. She drew herself away, not unkindly, I
believe, but because she is too proud to endure pity.
"She's got to be hardened," she went on, her tone itself hardening as
she spoke. "From her cradle she's got to be set to fight the sin that's
in her."
I could not argue. I respected the sternness of her resolve to do her
duty, and I knew that she was sacrificing much. Every smallest sight of
the child would be an hourly, stinging humiliation to her pride, and
perhaps, too, to her love. In her fierce way she must love Tom, so that
his shame would hurt her terribly. Yet I could not give up my little
soft, pink baby to live in an atmosphere of disapproval and to be
disciplined in the rigors of a pitiless creed. That, I am sure, would
never save her. Tom Webbe is a sufficient answer to his mother's
argument, if she could only see it. If anything is to rescue Thomasine
from the disastrous consequences of an unhappy heritage, it must be just
pure love and friendliness.
"Mrs. Webbe," I said, as firmly as I could, "I think I know how you
feel; but in any case I could not give up baby until I had seen Tom."
A deeper flush came over the thin face, and a look which made me turn my
eyes away, because I knew she would not wish me to see the pain and
humiliation which it meant.
"Tom," she began, "Tom! He"--She broke off abruptly, and, rising, began
to gather her shawl about her. "Then you refuse to let me have her?" she
ended.
"The baby's father should have something to say in the matter, it seems
to me," I told her.
"He has already decided," she replied sternly, "and decided against the
child's good. He wants her to stay with you. I suppose," she added, and
I must say that her tone took a suggestion of spite, "he thinks you'll
get so interested in the baby as sometime"--
She did not finish, perhaps because I gave her a look, which, if it
expressed half I felt, might well silence her. She moved quickly toward
the door, and tightened her shawl with an air of virtuous determination.
"Well," she observed, "I have done my duty by the child. What the Lord
let it live for is a mystery to me."
She said not another word, not even of leave-taking, but strode away
with something of the air of a brisk little prophetess who has
pronounced the doom of heaven on the unrighteous. It is a pity such
people will make of religion an excuse for taking themselves so
seriously. All the teachings of theology Mrs. Webbe turns into
justifications of her prejudices and her hardness. The very thought of
Thomasine under her rigorous rule makes me shiver. I wonder how her
husband has endured it all these years. Saintship used to be won by
making life as disagreeable as possible for one's self; but nowadays
life is made sufficiently hard by others. If living with his wife
peacefully, forbearingly, decorously, does not entitle Deacon Webbe to
be considered a saint, it is time that new principles of canonization
were adopted.
Heavens! What uncharitableness I am running into myself!
May 4. I told Aunt Naomi of Mrs. Webbe's visit, and her comments were
pungent enough. It is wicked, perhaps, to set them down, but I have a
vicious joy in doing it.
"Of course she'd hate to have the baby," Aunt Naomi declared, "but she'd
more than get even by the amount of satisfaction she'd get nagging at
it. She's worn Deacon Daniel till he's callous, so there can't be much
fun rasping him, and Tom won't listen to her. She wants somebody to
bully, and that baby'd just suit her. She could make it miserable and
get in side digs at its father at the same time."
"You are pretty severe, Aunt Naomi," I said; "but I know you don't mean
it. As for troubling Tom, he says he doesn't care for baby."
"Pooh! He's soft-hearted like his father; and even if he didn't care for
his own child, which is nonsense anyway, he'd be miserable to see any
child go through what he's been through himself with that woman."
It is useless to attempt to stay Aunt Naomi when once she begins to talk
about Mrs. Webbe, and she has so much truth in her favor I am never able
successfully to urge the other side of the case so as to get for Mrs.
Webbe any just measure of fair play. To-night I almost thought that Aunt
Naomi would devour her green veil in the energy with which she freed her
mind. The thing which she cannot see is that Mrs. Webbe is entirely
blind to her own faults. Mrs. Webbe would doubtless be amazed if she
could really appreciate that she is unkind to Deacon Daniel and to Tom.
She acts her nature, and simply does not think. I dare say most of us
might be as bad if we had her disposition.--Which tags on at the end of
the nasty things I have been writing like a piece of pure cant!
May 6. It certainly would seem on the face of it that a woman alone in
the world as I am, of an age when I ought to have the power of managing
my own affairs, and with the means of getting on without asking
financial aid, might take into her house a poor, helpless, little baby
if she wished. Apparently there is a conspiracy to prevent my doing
anything of the sort. Cousin Mehitable has now entered her protest, and
declares that if I do not give up what she calls my mad scheme she shall
feel it her duty to have me taken in charge as a lunatic. She wants to
know whether I have no decency about having a bachelor's baby in the
house, although she is perfectly well aware that Tom was married. She
reminds me that she expects me to go to Europe with her in about a
month, and asks whether I propose to leave Thomasine in a foundling
hospital or a day nursery while I am gone. Her letter is one breathless
rush of indignation from beginning to end, so funnily like her that with
all my indignation I could hardly read it for laughing.
I confess it is hard to give up the trip abroad. I was only half aware
how I have been counting on it until now I am brought face to face with
the impossibility of carrying out the plan. I have almost unconsciously
been piecing together in my mind memories of the old days in Europe,
with delight in thinking of seeing again places which enchanted me. Any
one, I suppose, who has been abroad enough to taste the charm of travel,
but who has not worn off the pleasure by traveling too much, must have
moments of longing to get back. I have had the oddest, sudden pangs of
homesickness when I have picked up a photograph or opened a magazine to
a picture of some beautiful place across the ocean. The smallest things
can bring up the feeling,--the sound of the wind in the trees as I heard
it once when driving through the Black Forest, the sun on a stone wall
as it lay in Capri, the sky as it looked at one place, or the grass as I
saw it at another. I remember how once a white feather lying on the turf
of the lawn brought up the courtyard of Warwick Castle as if a curtain
had lifted suddenly; and always these flashing reminders of the other
side of the world have made me feel as if I must at once hurry across
the ocean again. Now I have let myself believe I was really going, and
to give it up is very hard.
It is perhaps making too much of it to be so disappointed. Certainly
baby must be taken care of, and I have promised to take care of her. I
fear that it will be a good while before I see Europe again. I am sorry
for Cousin Mehitable, but she has never any difficulty in finding
friends to travel with. It is evident enough that my duty is here.
May 10. Rosa has not yet come to the end of her matrimonial
perplexities. The divorced wife of Ran Gargan is now reported as near
death, and Rosa is debating whether to give up Dennis Maloney and wait
for Ran.
"Of course Dennis is gone on me," she explained last night in the most
cold-bloodedly matter-of-fact fashion, "and I'd make him a main good
wife. But Ran was always the boy for me, barring Father O'Rafferty
wouldn't let me marry him."
"Rosa," I said, with all the severity I could command, "you must not
talk like that. It sounds as if you hadn't any feeling at all. You don't
mean it."
Rosa tossed her saucy head with emphatic scorn.
"What for don't I mean it?" she demanded. "Any woman wants to marry the
man she likes best, and, barring him, she'd take up with the man who
likes her best."
I laughed, and told her she was getting to be a good deal of a
philosopher.
"Humph!" was her not very respectful reply; "it's the only choice a
woman has, and she don't always have that. She's better off if she'll
take the man that's sweet on her; but it's the way we girls are made, to
hanker after the one we're sweet on ourselves."
Her earnestness so much interfered with the supper which she was giving
to Thomasine that I took baby into my arms, and left Rosa free to speak
out her mind without hindrance.
"I'm not going to take either of 'em in a hurry," she went on. "I'd not
be leaving you in the lurch with the baby, Miss Ruth. I'd like to have
Ran, but I don't know what he's got. He'd make me stand round awful,
they say, and Dennis'd be under my thumb like a crumb of butter. I
mistrust I'd be more contented with Ranny. It'd be more stirred up like;
but I'd have some natural fear of him, and that's pleasant for a woman."
I had never seen Rosa in this astonishing mood before, and so much
worldly wisdom was bewildering. Such generalizations on the relation of
the sexes took away my breath. I was forced to be silent, for there was
evidently no chance of my holding my own in a conversation of this sort.
It is strange how boldly and bluntly this uneducated girl has thought
out her relations with her lovers. She recognizes entirely that Dennis,
who is her slave, will treat her better than Ran, who will be her
master; yet she "mistrusts she will be more contented with Ranny." The
moral seems to be that a woman is happier to be abused by the man she
loves than to be served by the man who loves her. That can only be crude
instinct, the relics of savagery. In civilized woman, I am sure, when
respect goes love must go also.
No; that isn't true! Women keep on loving men when they know them to be
unworthy. Perhaps this applies especially to good wives. A good woman is
bound to love her husband just as long as she can in any way compass it,
and to deceive herself about him to the latest possible instant. I
wonder what I should do? I wonder--Well, George has shown that he is not
what I thought him, and do I care for him less? He only showed, however,
that he did not care for me as much as I thought, and of course that
does not necessarily prove him unworthy. And yet--
What is the use of all this? What do I know about it anyway? I will go
to bed.
May 12. It is amusing to see how jealous Hannah and Rosa are of baby's
attention. Thomasine can as yet hardly be supposed to distinguish one
human being from another, and very likely has not drawn very accurate
comparisons between any of us and the furniture; but Rosa insists that
baby knows her, and is far more fond of her than of Hannah, while of
course Hannah indignantly sniffs at an idea so preposterous.
"She really laughed at me this morning when I was giving her her bath,"
Rosa assured me to-day. "She knows me the minute I come into the
nursery."
It is beautiful to see how the sweetness and helplessness of the little
thing have so appealed to the girls that prejudices are forgotten. When
I brought Thomasine home I feared that I might have trouble. They
scorned the child of that Brownrig girl, and they both showed the fierce
contempt which good girls of their class feel for one who disgraces
herself. All this is utterly forgotten. The charm of baby has so
enslaved them that if an outsider ventured to show the feelings they
themselves had at first, they would be full of wrath and indignation.
The maternal instinct is after all the strongest thing in most women.
Rosa considers her matrimonial chances in a bargain-and-sale fashion
which takes my breath, but she will be perfectly fierce in her fondness
for her children. Hannah is a born old maid, but she cannot help
mothering every baby who comes within her reach, and for Thomasine she
brings out all the sweetness of her nature.
May 15. I have been through a whirlwind, but now I am calm, and can
think of things quietly. It is late, but the fire has not burned down,
and I could not sleep, so Peter and I may as well stay where we are a
while longer.
I was reading this afternoon, when suddenly Kathie rushed into the room
out of breath with running, her face smooched and wet with tears, and
her hair in confusion.
"Why, Kathie," I asked, "what is the matter?"
Her answer was to fly across the room, throw herself on her knees beside
me, and burst into sobs. The more I tried to soothe her, the more she
cried, and it was a long time before she was quiet enough to be at all
reasonable.
"My dear," I said, "tell me what has happened. What is the matter?"
She looked up at me with wild eyes.
"It isn't true!" she broke out fiercely. "I know it isn't true! I didn't
say a word to him, because I knew you wouldn't want me to; but it's a
lie! It's a lie, if my father did say it."
"Why, Kathie," I said, amazed at her excitement, "what in the world are
you saying? Your father wouldn't tell a lie to save his life."
"He believes it," she answered, dropping her voice. A sullen, stubborn
look came into her face that it was pitiful to see. "He does believe it,
but it's a lie."
I spoke to her as sternly as I could, and told her she had no right to
judge of what her father believed, and that I would not have her talk so
of him.
"But I asked him about your mother, and he said she would be punished
forever and ever for not being a church member!" she exclaimed before I
could stop her. "And I know it's a lie."
She burst into another tempest of sobs, and cried until she was
exhausted. Her words were so cruel that for a moment I had not even the
power to try to comfort her; but she would soon have been in hysterics,
and for a time I had to think only of her. Fortunately baby woke. Rosa
was not at home, and by the time Hannah and I had fed Thomasine, and
once more she was asleep in her cradle, I had my wits about me. Kathie
had, with a child's quick change of mood, become almost gay.
"Kathie," I said, "do you mind staying here with baby while I take a
little walk? Rosa is out, and I have been in the house all day. I want a
breath of fresh air."
"Oh, I should love to," she answered, her face brightening at the
thought of being trusted with a responsibility so great.
I was out of doors, and walking rapidly toward Mr. Thurston's house,
before I really came to my senses. I was so wounded by what Kathie had
thoughtlessly repeated, so indignant at this outrage to my dead, that I
had had strength only to hide my feelings from her. Now I came to a
realization of my anger, and asked myself what I meant to do. I had
instinctively started out to denounce Mr. Thurston for bigotry and
cruelty; to protest against this sacrilege. A little, I feel sure,--at
least I hope I am right,--I felt the harm he was doing Kathie; but most
I was outraged and angry that he had dared to speak so of Mother. I was
ashamed of my rage when I grew more composed; and I realized all at once
how Mother herself would have smiled at me. So clear was my sense of her
that it was almost as if she really repeated what she once said to me:
"My dear Ruth, do you suppose that what Mr. Thurston thinks alters the
way the universe is made? Why should he know more about it than you do?
He's not nearly so clever or so well educated." I smiled to recall how
she had smiled when she said it; then I was blinded by tears to remember
that I should never see her smile again; and so I walked into a tree in
the sidewalk, and nearly broke my nose. That was the end of my dashing
madly at Mr. Thurston. The wound Kathie's words had made throbbed, but
with the memory of Mother in my mind I could not break out into anger.
I turned down the Cove Road to walk off my ill-temper. After all Mr.
Thurston was right from his point of view. He could not believe without
feeling that he had to warn Kathie against the awful risk of running
into eternal damnation. It must hurt him to think or to say such a
thing; but he believes in the cruelty of the deity, and he has beaten
his natural tenderness into subjection to his idea of a Moloch. It is so
strange that the ghastly absurdity of connecting God's anger with a
sweet and blameless life like Mother's does not strike him. Indeed, I
suppose down here in the country we are half a century or so behind the
thought of the real world, and that Mr. Thurston's creed would be
impossible in the city, or among thinkers even of his own denomination.
At least I hope so, though I do not see what they have left in the
orthodox creed if they take eternal punishment out of it.
The fresh air and the memory of Mother, with a little common sense,
brought me right again. I walked until I had myself properly in hand,
and till I hoped that the trace of tears on my face might pass for the
effect of the wind. It was growing dusk by this time, and the lamps
began to appear in the houses as I came to Mr. Thurston's at last. I
slipped in at the front door as quietly as I could, and knocked at the
study.
Mr. Thurston himself opened the door. He looked surprised, but asked me
in, and offered me a chair. He had been writing, and still held his pen
in his hand; the study smelled of kerosene lamp and air-tight stove.
Poor man! Theology which has to live by an air-tight stove must be
dreary. If he had an open fire on his hearth, he might have less in his
religion.
"I have come to confess a fault, Mr. Thurston," I said, "and to ask a
favor."
He smiled a little watery smile, and put down his pen.
"Is the favor to be a reward for the fault or for confessing it?" he
asked.
I was so much surprised by this mild jest, coming from him, that I
almost forgot my errand. I smiled back at him, and forgot the bitterness
that had been in my heart. He looked so thin, so bloodless, that it was
impossible to have rancor.
"I left Kathie with baby while I went for a walk," I said, "and I have
stayed away longer than I intended. I forgot to tell her she could call
Hannah if she wanted to come home, and she is too conscientious to
leave, so I am afraid that she has stayed all this time. I wanted you to
know it is my fault."
"I am glad for her to be useful," her father said, "especially as you
have been so kind to her."
"Then you will perhaps let her stay all night," I went on. "I can take
over her night-things. I promised to show her about making a new kind of
pincushion for the church fair; and I could do it this evening. Besides,
it is lonely for me in that great house."
I felt like a hypocrite when I said this, though it is true enough. He
looked at me kindly, and even pityingly.
"Yes," he returned, "I can understand that. If you think she won't
trouble you, and"--
I did not give him opportunity for a word more. I rose at once and held
out my hand.
"Thank you so much," I said. "I'll find Mrs. Thurston, and get Kathie's
things. I beg your pardon for troubling you."
I was out of the study before he could reconsider. Across the hall I
found his wife in the sitting-room with another air-tight stove, and
looking thinner and paler than he. She had a great pile of sewing beside
her, and her eyes looked as if months of tears were behind them, aching
to be shed.
I told her Mr. Thurston had given leave for Kathie to pass the night
with me, and I had come for her night-things. She looked surprised, but
none the less pleased. While she was out of the room I looked cautiously
at the mending to see if the clothing was too worn for her to be willing
that I should see it. When she came in with her little bundle, I said,
as indifferently as I could, "I suppose if Kathie were at home she would
help you with the mending, so I'll take her share with me, and we'll do
it together." Of course she remonstrated, but I managed to bring away a
good part of the big pile, and now it is all done. Poor Mrs. Thurston,
she looked so tired, so beaten down by life, the veins were so blue on
her thin temples! If I dared, I'd go every week and do that awful
mending for her. I must get Kathie to smuggle some of it over now and
then. When we blame these people for the narrowness of their theology,
we forget their lives are so constrained and straitened that they cannot
take broad views of anything. The man or woman who could take a wide
outlook upon life from behind an air-tight stove in a half-starved home
would have to be almost a miracle. It is wonderful that so much
sweetness and humanity keep alive where circumstances are so
discouraging. When I think of patient, faithful, hard-working women like
Mrs. Thurston, uncomplaining and devoted, I am filled with admiration
and humility. If their theology is narrow, they endure it; and, after
all, men have made it for them. Father said once women had always been
the occasion of theology, but had never produced any. I asked him, I
remember, whether he said this to their praise or discredit, and he
answered that what was entirely the result of nature was neither to be
praised nor to be blamed; women were so made that they must have a
religion, and men so constituted as to take the greatest possible
satisfaction in inventing one. "It is simply a beautiful example," he
added, with his wonderful smile which just curled the corners of his
mouth, "of the law of supply and demand."
I am running on and on, although it is so late at night. Aunt Naomi, I
presume, will in some occult way know about it, and ask me why I sat up
so long. I am tired, but the excitement of the afternoon is not all
gone. That any one in the world should believe it possible for Mother to
be unhappy in another life, to be punished, is amazing! Surely a man
whose theology makes such an idea conceivable is profoundly to be
pitied.
May 19. Hannah is perfectly delightful about Tomine. She hardly lets a
day go by without admonishing me not to spoil baby, and yet she is
herself an abject slave to the slightest caprice of the tyrannous small
person. We have to-night been having a sort of battle royal over baby's
going to sleep by herself in the dark. I made up my mind the time had
come when some semblance of discipline must be begun, and I supposed, of
course, that Hannah would approve and assist. To my surprise she failed
me at the very first ditch.
"I am going to put Tomine into the crib," I announced, "and take away
the light. She must learn to go to sleep in the dark."
"She'll be frightened," Rosa objected.
"She's too little to know anything about being afraid," I retorted
loftily, although I had secretly a good deal of misgiving.
"Too little!" sniffed Hannah. "She's too little not to be afraid."
I saw at a glance that I had before me a struggle with them as well as
with baby.
"Children are not afraid of the dark until they are told to be," I
declared as dogmatically as possible.
"They are told not to be," objected Rosa.
"But that puts the idea into their heads," was my answer.
Hannah regarded me with evident disapprobation.
"But supposing the baby cries?" she demanded.
"Then she must be left to stop," I answered, with outward firmness and
inward quakings.
"But suppose she cries herself sick?" insisted Rosa.
"She won't. She'll just cry a little till she finds nobody comes, and
then she'll go to sleep."
The two girls regarded me with looks that spoke disapproval in the
largest of capitals. It is so seldom they are entirely united that it
was disconcerting to have them thus make common cause against me, but I
had to keep up for the sake of dignity if for nothing else. Thomasine
was fed and arranged for the night; she was kissed and cuddled, and
tucked into her crib. Then I got Hannah and Rosa, both protesting they
didn't mind sitting up with the darling all night, out of the room,
darkened the windows, and shut baby in alone for the first time in her
whole life, a life still so pathetically little.
I closed the nursery door with an air of great calmness and
determination, but outside I lingered like a complete coward. The girls
were glowering darkly from the end of the hall, and we needed only
candlelight to look like three bloodthirsty conspirators. For two or
three minutes there was a soothing and deceptive silence, so that I
turned to smile with an air of superior wisdom on the maids. Then
without warning baby uplifted her voice and wailed.
There was something most disconcertingly explosive about the cry, as if
Thomasine had been holding her breath until she were black in the face,
and only let it escape one second short of actual suffocation. I jumped
as if a mouse had sprung into my face, and the two girls swooped down
upon me in a whirl of triumphant indignation.
"There, Miss Ruth!" cried Hannah.
"There, Miss Privet!" cried Rosa.
"Well," I said defensively; "I expected her to cry some."
"She wants to be walked with, poor little thing," Rosa said
incautiously.
I was rejoiced to have a chance to turn the tables, and I sprang upon
her tacit admission at once.
"Rosa," I said severely, "have you been walking Thomasine to sleep? I
told you never to do it."
Rosa, self-convicted, could only murmur that she had just taken her up
and down two or three times to make her sleepy; she hadn't really walked
her to sleep.
"What if she had?" Hannah demanded boldly, her place entirely forgotten
in the excitement of the moment. "If babies like to be walked to sleep,
it stands to reason that's nature."
I began to feel as if all authority were fast slipping away from me, and
that I should at this rate soon become a very secondary person in my own
house. I tried to recover myself by assuming the most severe air of
which I was capable.
"You must not talk outside the nursery door," I told them. "If Thomasine
hears voices, of course she'll keep on crying. Go downstairs, both of
you. I'll see to baby."
They had not yet arrived at open mutiny, and so with manifest
unwillingness they departed, grumbling to each other as they went. Baby
seemed to have some superhuman intelligence that her firmest allies were
being routed, for she set up a series of nerve-splitting shrieks which
made every fibre of my body quiver. As soon as the girls were out of
sight I flopped down on my knees outside of the door, and put my hands
over my ears. I was afraid of myself, and only the need I felt of
holding out for Tomine's own sake gave me strength to keep from rushing
into the nursery in abject surrender.
The absurdity of it makes me laugh now, but with the shrieks of baby
piercing me, I felt as if I were involved in a tragedy of the deepest
dye. I think I was never so near hysterics in my life; but I had even
then some faint and far-away sense of how ridiculous I was, and that
saved me. Thomasine yelled like a young tornado, and every cry went
through me like a knife. I was on my knees on the floor, pouring out
tears like a watering-pot, trying to shut out the sound. There is
something in a baby's cry that is too much even for a sense of humor;
and no woman could have heard it without being overcome.
I had so stopped my ears that although I could not shut out baby's cries
entirely I did not hear Hannah and Rosa when they came skulking back.
The first I knew of their being behind me was when Hannah, in a
whispered bellow, shouted into my ear that baby would cry herself into
convulsions. Demoralized as I was already, I almost yielded; I started
to my feet, and faced them in a tragic manner, ready to give up
everything. I was ready to say that Rosa might walk up and down with
Tomine every night for the rest of her life. Fortunately some few gleams
of common sense asserted themselves in my half-addled pate, and instead
of opening the door, I spread out my arms, and without a word shooed the
girls out of the corridor as if they were hens. Then the ludicrousness
of it came over me, and although I still tingled with baby's wailing, I
could appreciate that the cries were more angry than pathetic, and that
we must fight the battle through now it had been begun. The drollest
thing about it all was that it seemed almost as if the willful little
lady inside there had some uncanny perception of my thought. I had no
sooner got the girls downstairs again, and made up my mind to hold out
than she stopped crying; and when we crept cautiously in ten minutes
after, she was asleep as soundly and as sweetly as ever.
But I feel as if I had been through battles, murders, and sudden deaths.
May 20. Baby to-night cried two or three minutes, but her ladyship
evidently had the sense to see that crying is a painful and useless
exercise when she has to deal with such a hard-hearted tyrant as I am,
and she quickly gave it up. Rosa hoped pointedly that the poor little
thing's will isn't broken, and Hannah observed piously that she trusted
I realized we all of us had to be treated like babies by our Heavenly
Father. I was tempted to ask her if our Heavenly Father never left us to
cry in the dark. If we could be as firm with ourselves as we can be with
other people, what an improvement it would be. I wonder what Tom would
think of my first conflict with his baby.
May 25. I went to-day to call on Mrs. Weston. Although I am in mourning,
I thought it better to go. I feared lest she should think my old
relations to George might have something to do with my staying away.
It was far less difficult than I thought it would be. I may be frank in
my diary, I suppose, and say I found her silly and rather vulgar, and I
wonder how George can help seeing it. She was inclined to boast a little
that all the best people in town had called.
"Olivia Watson acted real queer about my wedding-calls," she said. "She
doesn't seem to know the rich folks very well."
"Oh, we never make distinctions in Tuskamuck by money," I put in; but
she went on without heeding.
"Olivia said Mrs. Andrews--she called her Lady Andrews, just as if she
was English."
"It is a way we have," I returned. "I'm sure I don't know how it began.
Very likely it is only because it fits her so well."
"Well, anyway, she called; and Olivia owned she'd never been to see
them. I could see she was real jealous, though she wouldn't own it."
"Old lady Andrews is a delightful person," I remarked awkwardly, feeling
that I must say something.
"I didn't think she was much till Olivia told me," returned Mrs. Weston,
with amazing frankness. "I thought she was a funny old thing."
It is not kind to put this down, I know; but I really would like to see
if it sounds so unreal when it is written as it did when it was said. It
was so unlike anything I ever heard that it seemed almost as if Mrs.
Weston were playing a part, and trying to cheat me into thinking her
more vulgar and more simple than she is. I am afraid I shall not lessen
my unpleasant impression, however, by keeping her words.
Mrs. Weston talked, too, about George and his devotion as if she
expected me to be hurt. Possibly I was a little; although if I were, it
was chiefly because my vanity suffered that he should find me inferior
in attraction to a woman like this. I believe I am sincerely glad that
he should prove his fondness for his wife. Indeed fondness could be the
only excuse for his leaving me, and I do wish happiness to them both.
I fear what I have written gives the worst of Mrs. Weston. She perhaps
was a little embarrassed, but she showed me nothing better. She is not a
lady, and I see perfectly that she will drop out of our circle. We are a
little Cranfordish here, I suppose, but anywhere in the world people
come in the long run to associate with their own kind. Mrs. Weston is
not our kind; and even if this did not affect our attitude, she would
herself tire of us after the first novelty is worn off.
May 26. George came in this morning on business, and before he went he
thanked me for calling on his wife.
"I shouldn't have made a wedding-call just now on anybody else," I told
him; "but your association with Father and the way in which we have
known you of course make a difference."
He showed some embarrassment, but apparently--at least so I thought--he
was so anxious to know what I thought of Mrs. Weston that he could not
drop the subject.
"Gertrude isn't bookish," he remarked rather confusedly. "I hope you
found things to talk about."
"Meaning that I can talk of nothing but books?" I returned. "Poor
George, how I must have bored you in times past."
He flushed and grew more confused still.
"Of course you know I didn't mean anything like that," he protested.
I laughed at his grave face, and then I was so glad to find I could talk
to him about his wife without feeling awkward that I laughed again. He
looked so puzzled I was ready to laugh in turn at him, but I restrained
myself. I could not understand my good spirits, and for that matter I do
not now. Somehow my call of yesterday seems to have made a difference in
my feeling toward George. Just how or just what I cannot fully make out.
I certainly have not ceased to care about him. I am still fond of the
George I have known for so many years; but somehow the husband of Mrs.
Weston does not seem to be the same man. The George Weston who can love
this woman and be in sympathy with her is so different from anything I
have known or imagined the old George to be that he affects me as a
stranger.
The truth is I have for the past month been in the midst of things so
serious that my own affairs and feelings have ceased to appear of so
much importance. When death comes near enough for us to see it face to
face, we have a better appreciation of values, and find things strangely
altered. I have had, moreover, little time to think about myself, which
is always a good thing; and to my surprise I find now that I am not able
to pity myself nearly as much as I did.
This seems perhaps a little disloyal to George. My feeling for him
cannot have evaporated like dew drying from the grass. At least I am
sure that I am still ready to serve him to the very best of my ability.