THE NEW BABY.
I will not attempt to describe the astonishment of the members of our
household, each in succession, as the news of the child spread. Charlie
was heard shouting across the stable-yard to his brother:
“Harry, Harry! Mamma has got a new baby. Isn’t it jolly?”
“Where did she get it?” cried Harry in return.
“In the parsley-bed, I suppose,” answered Charlie, and was nearer right
than usual, for the information on which his conclusion was founded had
no doubt been imparted as belonging to the history of the human race.
But my reader can easily imagine the utter bewilderment of those of
the family whose knowledge of human affairs would not allow of their
curiosity being so easily satisfied as that of the boys. In them was
exemplified that confusion of the intellectual being which is produced
by the witness of incontestable truth to a thing incredible--in which
case the probability always is, that the incredibility results from
something in the mind of the hearer falsely associated with and
disturbing the true perception of the thing to which witness is borne.
Nor was the astonishment confined to the family, for it spread over the
parish that Mrs. Walton had got another baby. And so, indeed, she had.
And seldom has baby met with a more hearty welcome than this baby met
with from everyone of our family. They hugged it first, and then asked
questions. And that, I say, is the right way of receiving every good
gift of God. Ask what questions you will, but when you see that the gift
is a good one, make sure that you take it. There is plenty of time for
you to ask questions afterwards. Then the better you love the gift, the
more ready you will be to ask, and the more fearless in asking.
The truth, however, soon became known. And then, strange to relate, we
began to receive visits of condolence. O, that poor baby! how it was
frowned upon, and how it had heads shaken over it, just because it was
not Ethelwyn’s baby! It could not help that, poor darling!
“Of course, you’ll give information to the police,” said, I am sorry to
say, one of my brethren in the neighbourhood, who had the misfortune to
be a magistrate as well.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why! That they may discover the parents, to be sure.”
“Wouldn’t it be as hard a matter to prove the parentage, as it would be
easy to suspect it?” I asked. “And just think what it would be to give
the baby to a woman who not only did not want her, but who was not her
mother. But if her own mother came to claim her now, I don’t say I would
refuse her, but I should think twice about giving her up after she had
once abandoned her for a whole night in the open air. In fact I don’t
want the parents.”
“But you don’t want the child.”
“How do you know that?” I returned--rather rudely, I am afraid, for I
am easily annoyed at anything that seems to me heartless--about children
especially.
“O! of course, if you want to have an orphan asylum of your own, no one
has a right to interfere. But you ought to consider other people.”
“That is just what I thought I was doing,” I answered; but he went on
without heeding my reply--
“We shall all be having babies left at our doors, and some of us are not
so fond of them as you are. Remember, you are your brother’s keeper.”
“And my sister’s too,” I answered. “And if the question lies between
keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that,
I venture to choose for myself.”
“She ought to go to the workhouse,” said the magistrate--a friendly,
good-natured man enough in ordinary--and rising, he took his hat and
departed.
This man had no children. So he was--or was not, so much to blame.
Which? _I_ say the latter.
Some of Ethelwyn’s friends were no less positive about her duty in the
affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one
of them--Miss Bowdler.
“But, my dear Mrs. Walton,” she was saying, “you’ll be having all the
tramps in England leaving their babies at your door.”
“The better for the babies,” interposed I, laughing.
“But you don’t think of your wife, Mr. Walton.”
“Don’t I? I thought I did,” I returned dryly.
“Depend upon it, you’ll repent it.”
“I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad.”
“Ah! but, really! it’s not a thing to be made game of.”
“Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this
house.”
“What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough.”
“As well as I choose to know--certainly,” I answered.
This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for
which she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating
belief in the superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head
can be counted as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a
half-comic, half-anxious look, and said:
“But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and
we couldn’t go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of
stepping on a baby on the door-step.”
“You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, ‘If God
should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?’ He who sent us
this one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come.
All that we have to think of is to do right--not the consequences of
doing right. But leaving all that aside, you must not suppose that
wandering mothers have not even the attachment of animals to their
offspring. There are not so many that are willing to part with babies as
all that would come to. If you believe that God sent this one, that is
enough for the present. If he should send another, we should know by
that that we had to take it in.”
My wife said the baby was a beauty. I could see that she was a plump,
well-to-do baby; and being by nature no particular lover of babies as
babies--that is, feeling none of the inclination of mothers and nurses
and elder sisters to eat them, or rather, perhaps, loving more for what
I believed than what I saw--that was all I could pretend to discover.
But even the aforementioned elderly parishioner was compelled to allow
before three months were over that little Theodora--for we turned the
name of my youngest daughter upside down for her--“was a proper child.”
To none, however, did she seem to bring so much delight as to our dear
Constance. Oftener than not, when I went into her room, I found the
sleepy, useless little thing lying beside her on the bed, and her
staring at it with such loving eyes! How it began, I do not know, but it
came at last to be called Connie’s Dora, or Miss Connie’s baby, all over
the house, and nothing pleased Connie better. Not till she saw this did
her old nurse take quite kindly to the infant; for she regarded her as
an interloper, who had no right to the tenderness which was lavished
upon her. But she had no sooner given in than the baby began to grow
dear to her as well as to the rest. In fact, the house was ere long
full of nurses. The staff included everyone but myself, who only
occasionally, at the entreaty of some one or other of the younger ones,
took her in my arms.
But before she was three months old, anxious thoughts began to intrude,
all centering round the question in what manner the child was to
be brought up. Certainly there was time enough to think of this, as
Ethelwyn constantly reminded me; but what made me anxious was that I
could not discover the principle that ought to guide me. Now no one can
tell how soon a principle in such a case will begin, even unconsciously,
to operate; and the danger was that the moment when it ought to begin to
operate would be long past before the principle was discovered, except
I did what I could now to find it out. I had again and again to remind
myself that there was no cause for anxiety; for that I might certainly
claim the enlightenment which all who want to do right are sure to
receive; but still I continued uneasy just from feeling a vacancy where
a principle ought to have been.