I
Mrs Blackshaw had a baby. It would be an exaggeration to say that the
baby interested the entire town, Bursley being an ancient, blase sort
of borough of some thirty thousand inhabitants. Babies, in fact,
arrived in Bursley at the rate of more than a thousand every year.
Nevertheless, a few weeks after the advent of Mrs Blackshaw's baby,
when the medical officer of health reported to the Town Council that
the births for the month amounted to ninety-five, and that the
birth-rate of Bursley compared favourably with the birth-rates of the
sister towns, Hanbridge, Knype, Longshaw, and Turnhill--when the
medical officer read these memorable words at the monthly meeting of
the Council, and the Staffordshire Signal reported them, and Mrs
Blackshaw perused them, a blush of pride spread over Mrs Blackshaw's
face, and she picked up the baby's left foot and gave it a little peck
of a kiss. She could not help feeling that the real solid foundation of
that formidable and magnificent output of babies was her baby. She
could not help feeling that she had done something for the town--had
caught the public eye.
As for the baby, except that it was decidedly superior to the average
infant in external appearance and pleasantness of disposition, it was,
in all essential characteristics, a typical baby--that is to say, it
was purely sensuous and it lived the life of the senses. It was utterly
selfish. It never thought of anyone but itself. It honestly imagined
itself to be the centre of the created universe. It was convinced that
the rest of the universe had been brought into existence solely for the
convenience and pleasure of it--the baby. When it wanted anything it
made no secret of the fact, and it was always utterly unscrupulous in
trying to get what it wanted. If it could have obtained the moon it
would have upset all the astronomers of Europe and made Whitaker's
Almanack unsalable without a pang. It had no god but its stomach. It
never bothered its head about higher things. It was a bully and a
coward, and it treated women as beings of a lower order than men. In a
word, it was that ideal creature, sung of the poets, from which we
gradually sink and fall away as we grow older.
At the age of six months it had quite a lot of hair, and a charming
rosy expanse at the back of its neck, caused through lying on its back
in contemplation of its own importance. It didn't know the date of the
Battle of Hastings, but it knew with the certainty of absolute
knowledge that it was master of the house, and that the activity of the
house revolved round it.
Now, the baby loved its bath. In any case its bath would have been an
affair of immense and intricate pomp; but the fact that it loved its
bath raised the interest and significance of the bath to the nth power.
The bath took place at five o'clock in the evening, and it is not too
much to say that the idea of the bath was immanent in the very
atmosphere of the house. When you have an appointment with the dentist
at five o'clock in the afternoon the idea of the appointment is
immanent in your mind from the first moment of your awakening. Conceive
that an appointment with the dentist implies heavenly joy instead of
infernal pain, and you will have a notion of the daily state of Mrs
Blackshaw and Emmie (the nurse) with regard to the baby's bath.
Even at ten in the morning Emmie would be keeping an eye on the kitchen
fire, lest the cook might let it out. And shortly after noon Mrs
Blackshaw would be keeping an eye on the thermometer in the bedroom
where the bath occurred. From four o'clock onwards the clocks in the
house were spied on and overlooked like suspected persons; but they
were used to that, because the baby had his sterilized milk every two
hours. I have at length allowed you to penetrate the secret of his sex.
And so at five o'clock precisely the august and exciting ceremony began
in the best bedroom. A bright fire was burning (the month being
December), and the carefully-shaded electric lights were also burning.
A large bath-towel was spread in a convenient place on the floor, and
on the towel were two chairs facing each other, and a table. On one
chair was the bath, and on the other was Mrs Blackshaw with her sleeves
rolled up, and on Mrs Blackshaw was another towel, and on that towel
was Roger (the baby). On the table were zinc ointment, vaseline,
scentless eau de Cologne, Castile soap, and a powder-puff.
Emmie having pretty nearly filled the bath with a combination of hot
and cold waters, dropped the floating thermometer into it, and then
added more waters until the thermometer indicated the precise
temperature proper for a baby's bath. But you are not to imagine that
Mrs Blackshaw trusted a mere thermometer. No. She put her arm in the
water up to the elbow. She reckoned the sensitive skin near the elbow
was worth forty thermometers.
Emmie was chiefly an audience. Mrs Blackshaw had engaged her as a
nurse, but she could have taught a nigger-boy to do all that she
allowed the nurse to do. During the bath Mrs Blackshaw and Emmie hated
and scorned each other, despite their joy. Emmie was twice Mrs
Blackshaw's age, besides being twice her weight, and she knew twice as
much about babies as Mrs Blackshaw did. However, Mrs Blackshaw had the
terrific advantage of being the mother of that particular infant, and
she could always end an argument when she chose, and in her own favour.
It was unjust, and Emmie felt it to be unjust; but this is not a world
of justice.
Roger, though not at all precocious, was perfectly aware of the
carefully-concealed hostility between his mother and his nurse, and
often, with his usual unscrupulousness, he used it for his own ends. He
was sitting upon his mother's knees toying with the edge of the bath,
already tasting its delights in advance. Mrs Blackshaw undressed the
upper half of him, and then she laid him on the flat of his back and
undressed the lower half of him, but keeping some wisp of a garment
round his equatorial regions. And then she washed his face with a
sponge and the Castile soap, very gently, but not half gently enough
for Emmie, nor half gently enough for Roger, for Roger looked upon this
part of the business as insulting and superfluous. He breathed hard and
kicked his feet nearly off.
'Yes, it's dreadful having our face washed, isn't it?' said Mrs
Blackshaw, with her sleeves up, and her hair by this time down. 'We
don't like it, do we? Yes, yes.'
Emmie grunted, without a sound, and yet Mrs Blackshaw heard her, and
finished that face quickly and turned to the hands.
'Potato-gardens every day,' she said. 'Evzy day-day. Enough of that,
Colonel!' (For, after all, she had plenty of spirit.) 'Fat little
creases! Fat little creases! There! He likes that! There! Feet! Feet!
Feet and legs! Then our back. And then WHUP we shall go into the bath!
That's it. Kick! Kick your mother!'
And she turned him over.
'Incredible bungler!' said the eyes of the nurse. 'Can't she turn him
over neater than that?'
'Harridan!' said the eyes of Mrs Blackshaw. 'I wouldn't let you bath
him for twenty thousand pounds!'
Roger continued to breathe hard, as if his mother were a horse and he
were rubbing her down.
'Now! Zoop! Whup!' cried his mother, and having deprived him of his
final rag, she picked him up and sat him in the bath, and he was
divinely happy, and so were the women. He appeared a gross little
animal in the bath, all the tints of his flesh shimmering under the
electric light. His chest was superb, but the rolled and creased
bigness of his inordinate stomach was simply appalling, not to mention
his great thighs and calves. The truth was, he had grown so that if he
had been only a little bit bigger, he would have burst the bath. He
resembled an old man who had been steadily eating too much for about
forty years.
His two womenfolk now candidly and openly worshipped him, forgetting
sectarian differences.
And he splashed. Oh! he splashed. You see, he had learnt how to splash,
and he had certainly got an inkling that to splash was wicked and
messy. So he splashed--in his mother's face, in Emmie's face, in the
fire. He pretty well splashed the fire out. Ten minutes before, the
bedroom had been tidy, a thing of beauty. It was now naught but a wild
welter of towels, socks, binders--peninsulas of clothes nearly
surrounded by water.
Finally his mother seized him again, and, rearing his little legs up
out of the water, immersed the whole of his inflated torso beneath the
surface.
'Hallo!' she exclaimed. 'Did the water run over his mouf? Did it?'
'Angels and ministers of grace defend us! How clumsy she is!' commented
the eyes of Emmie.
'There! I fink that's about long enough for this kind of wevver,' said
the mother.
'I should think it was! There's almost a crust of ice on the water
now!' the nurse refrained from saying.
And Roger, full of regrets, was wrenched out of the bath. He had ceased
breathing hard while in the water, but he began again immediately he
emerged.
'We don't like our face wiped, do we?' said his mother on his behalf.
'We want to go back into that bath. We like it. It's more fun than
anything that happens all day long! Eh? That old dandruff's coming up
in fine style. It's a-peeling off like anything.'
And all the while she wiped him, patted eau de Cologne into him with
the flat of her hand, and rubbed zinc ointment into him, and massaged
him, and powdered him, and turned him over and over and over, till he
was thoroughly well basted and cooked. And he kept on breathing hard.
Then he sneezed, amid general horror!
'I told you so!' the nurse didn't say, and she rushed to the bed where
all the idol's beautiful, clean, aired things were lying safe from
splashings, and handed a flannel shirt, about two inches in length, to
Mrs Blackshaw. And Mrs Blackshaw rolled the left sleeve of it into a
wad and stuck it over his arm, and his poor little vaccination marks
were hidden from view till next morning. Roger protested.
'We don't like clothes, do we?' said his mother. 'We want to tumble
back into our tub. We aren't much for clothes anyway. We'se a little
Hottentot, aren't we?'
And she gradually covered him with one garment or another until there
was nothing left of him but his head and his hands and feet. And she
sat him up on her knees, so as to fasten his things behind. And then it
might have been observed that he was no longer breathing hard, but
giving vent to a sound between a laugh and a cry, while sucking his
thumb and gazing round the room.
'That's our little affected cry that we start for our milk, isn't it?'
his mother explained to him.
And he agreed that it was.
And before Emmie could fly across the room for the bottle, all ready
and waiting, his mouth, in the shape of a perfect rectangle, had
monopolized five-sixths of his face, and he was scarlet and bellowing
with impatience.
He took the bottle like a tiger his prey, and seized his mother's hand
that held the bottle, and he furiously pumped the milk into that
insatiable gulf of a stomach. But he found time to gaze about the room
too. A tear stood in each roving eye, caused by the effort of feeding.
'Yes, that's it,' said his mother. 'Now look round and see what's
happening. Curiosity! Well, if you WILL bob your head, I can't help it.'
'Of course you can!' the nurse didn't say.
Then he put his finger into his mouth side by side with the bottle, and
gagged himself, and choked, and gave a terrible--excuse the
word--hiccough. After which he seemed to lose interest in the milk, and
the pumping operations slackened and then ceased.
'Goosey!' whispered his mother, 'getting seepy? Is the sandman throwing
sand in your eyes? Old Sandman at it? Sh--' ... He had gone.
Emmie took him. The women spoke in whispers. And Mrs Blackshaw, after a
day spent in being a mother, reconstituted herself a wife, and began to
beautify herself for her husband.