A WAR-BABY AND A SOUP TUREEN
"Liege and Namur--and now Brussels!" The doctor shook his head. "I
don't like it--I don't like it."
"Do not you lose heart, Dr. dear; they were just defended by
foreigners," said Susan superbly. "Wait you till the Germans come
against the British; there will be a very different story to tell and
that you may tie to."
The doctor shook his head again, but a little less gravely; perhaps
they all shared subconsciously in Susan's belief that "the thin grey
line" was unbreakable, even by the victorious rush of Germany's ready
millions. At any rate, when the terrible day came--the first of many
terrible days--with the news that the British army was driven back they
stared at each other in blank dismay.
"It--it can't be true," gasped Nan, taking a brief refuge in temporary
incredulity.
"I felt that there was to be bad news today," said Susan, "for that
cat-creature turned into Mr. Hyde this morning without rhyme or reason
for it, and that was no good omen."
"'A broken, a beaten, but not a demoralized, army,'" muttered the
doctor, from a London dispatch. "Can it be England's army of which such
a thing is said?"
"It will be a long time now before the war is ended," said Mrs. Blythe
despairingly.
Susan's faith, which had for a moment been temporarily submerged, now
reappeared triumphantly.
"Remember, Mrs. Dr. dear, that the British army is not the British
navy. Never forget that. And the Russians are on their way, too, though
Russians are people I do not know much about and consequently will not
tie to."
"The Russians will not be in time to save Paris," said Walter gloomily.
"Paris is the heart of France--and the road to it is open. Oh, I
wish"--he stopped abruptly and went out.
After a paralysed day the Ingleside folk found it was possible to
"carry on" even in the face of ever-darkening bad news. Susan worked
fiercely in her kitchen, the doctor went out on his round of visits,
Nan and Di returned to their Red Cross activities; Mrs. Blythe went to
Charlottetown to attend a Red Cross Convention; Rilla after relieving
her feelings by a stormy fit of tears in Rainbow Valley and an outburst
in her diary, remembered that she had elected to be brave and heroic.
And, she thought, it really was heroic to volunteer to drive about the
Glen and Four Winds one day, collecting promised Red Cross supplies
with Abner Crawford's old grey horse. One of the Ingleside horses was
lame and the doctor needed the other, so there was nothing for it but
the Crawford nag, a placid, unhasting, thick-skinned creature with an
amiable habit of stopping every few yards to kick a fly off one leg
with the foot of the other. Rilla felt that this, coupled with the fact
that the Germans were only fifty miles from Paris, was hardly to be
endured. But she started off gallantly on an errand fraught with
amazing results.
Late in the afternoon she found herself, with a buggy full of parcels,
at the entrance to a grassy, deep-rutted lane leading to the harbour
shore, wondering whether it was worth while to call down at the
Anderson house. The Andersons were desperately poor and it was not
likely Mrs. Anderson had anything to give. On the other hand, her
husband, who was an Englishman by birth and who had been working in
Kingsport when the war broke out, had promptly sailed for England to
enlist there, without, it may be said, coming home or sending much hard
cash to represent him. So possibly Mrs. Anderson might feel hurt if she
were overlooked. Rilla decided to call. There were times afterwards
when she wished she hadn't, but in the long run she was very thankful
that she did.
The Anderson house was a small and tumbledown affair, crouching in a
grove of battered spruces near the shore as if rather ashamed of itself
and anxious to hide. Rilla tied her grey nag to the rickety fence and
went to the door. It was open; and the sight she saw bereft her
temporarily of the power of speech or motion.
Through the open door of the small bedroom opposite her, Rilla saw Mrs.
Anderson lying on the untidy bed; and Mrs. Anderson was dead. There was
no doubt of that; neither was there any doubt that the big, frowzy,
red-headed, red-faced, over-fat woman sitting near the door-way,
smoking a pipe quite comfortably, was very much alive. She rocked idly
back and forth amid her surroundings of squalid disorder, and paid no
attention whatever to the piercing wails proceeding from a cradle in
the middle of the room.
Rilla knew the woman by sight and reputation. Her name was Mrs.
Conover; she lived down at the fishing village; she was a great-aunt of
Mrs. Anderson; and she drank as well as smoked.
Rilla's first impulse was to turn and flee. But that would never do.
Perhaps this woman, repulsive as she was, needed help--though she
certainly did not look as if she were worrying over the lack of it.
"Come in," said Mrs. Conover, removing her pipe and staring at Rilla
with her little, rat-like eyes.
"Is--is Mrs. Anderson really dead?" asked Rilla timidly, as she stepped
over the sill.
"Dead as a door nail," responded Mrs. Conover cheerfully. "Kicked the
bucket half an hour ago. I've sent Jen Conover to 'phone for the
undertaker and get some help up from the shore. You're the doctor's
miss, ain't ye? Have a cheer?"
Rilla did not see any chair which was not cluttered with something. She
remained standing.
"Wasn't it--very sudden?"
"Well, she's been a-pining ever since that worthless Jim lit out for
England--which I say it's a pity as he ever left. It's my belief she
was took for death when she heard the news. That young un there was
born a fortnight ago and since then she's just gone down and today she
up and died, without a soul expecting it."
"Is there anything I can do to--to help?" hesitated Rilla.
"Bless yez, no--unless ye've a knack with kids. I haven't. That young
un there never lets up squalling, day or night. I've just got that I
take no notice of it."
Rilla tiptoed gingerly over to the cradle and more gingerly still
pulled down the dirty blanket. She had no intention of touching the
baby--she had no "knack with kids" either. She saw an ugly midget with
a red, distorted little face, rolled up in a piece of dingy old
flannel. She had never seen an uglier baby. Yet a feeling of pity for
the desolate, orphaned mite which had "come out of the everywhere" into
such a dubious "here", took sudden possession of her.
"What is going to become of the baby?" she asked.
"Lord knows," said Mrs. Conover candidly. "Min worried awful over that
before she died. She kept on a-saying 'Oh, what will become of my pore
baby' till it really got on my nerves. I ain't a-going to trouble
myself with it, I can tell yez. I brung up a boy that my sister left
and he skinned out as soon as he got to be some good and won't give me
a mite o' help in my old age, ungrateful whelp as he is. I told Min
it'd have to be sent to an orphan asylum till we'd see if Jim ever came
back to look after it. Would yez believe it, she didn't relish the
idee. But that's the long and short of it."
"But who will look after it until it can be taken to the asylum?"
persisted Rilla. Somehow the baby's fate worried her.
"S'pose I'll have to," grunted Mrs. Conover. She put away her pipe and
took an unblushing swig from a black bottle she produced from a shelf
near her. "It's my opinion the kid won't live long. It's sickly. Min
never had no gimp and I guess it hain't either. Likely it won't trouble
any one long and good riddance, sez I."
Rilla drew the blanket down a little farther.
"Why, the baby isn't dressed!" she exclaimed, in a shocked tone.
"Who was to dress him I'd like to know," demanded Mrs. Conover
truculently. "I hadn't time--took me all the time there was looking
after Min. 'Sides, as I told yez, I don't know nithing about kids. Old
Mrs. Billy Crawford, she was here when it was born and she washed it
and rolled it up in that flannel, and Jen she's tended it a bit since.
The critter is warm enough. This weather would melt a brass monkey."
Rilla was silent, looking down at the crying baby. She had never
encountered any of the tragedies of life before and this one smote her
to the core of her heart. The thought of the poor mother going down
into the valley of the shadow alone, fretting about her baby, with no
one near but this abominable old woman, hurt her terribly. If she had
only come a little sooner! Yet what could she have done--what could she
do now? She didn't know, but she must do something. She hated
babies--but she simply could not go away and leave that poor little
creature with Mrs. Conover--who was applying herself again to her black
bottle and would probably be helplessly drunk before anybody came.
"I can't stay," thought Rilla. "Mr. Crawford said I must be home by
supper-time because he wanted the pony this evening himself. Oh, what
can I do?"
She made a sudden, desperate, impulsive resolution.
"I'll take the baby home with me," she said. "Can I?"
"Sure, if yez wants to," said Mrs. Conover amiably. "I hain't any
objection. Take it and welcome."
"I--I can't carry it," said Rilla. "I have to drive the horse and I'd
be afraid I'd drop it. Is there a--a basket anywhere that I could put
it in?"
"Not as I knows on. There ain't much here of anything, I kin tell yez.
Min was pore and as shiftless as Jim. Ef ye opens that drawer over
there yez'll find a few baby clo'es. Best take them along."
Rilla got the clothes--the cheap, sleazy garments the poor mother had
made ready as best she could. But this did not solve the pressing
problem of the baby's transportation. Rilla looked helplessly round.
Oh, for mother--or Susan! Her eyes fell on an enormous blue soup tureen
at the back of the dresser.
"May I have this to--to lay him in?" she asked.
"Well, 'tain't mine but I guess yez kin take it. Don't smash it if yez
can help--Jim might make a fuss about it if he comes back alive--which
he sure will, seein' he ain't any good. He brung that old tureen out
from England with him--said it'd always been in the family. Him and Min
never used it--never had enough soup to put in it--but Jim thought the
world of it. He was mighty perticuler about some things but didn't
worry him none that there weren't much in the way o' eatables to put in
the dishes."
For the first time in her life Rilla Blythe touched a baby--lifted
it--rolled it in a blanket, trembling with nervousness lest she drop it
or--or--break it. Then she put it in the soup tureen.
"Is there any fear of it smothering?" she asked anxiously.
"Not much odds if it do," said Mrs. Conover.
Horrified Rilla loosened the blanket round the baby's face a little.
The mite had stopped crying and was blinking up at her. It had big dark
eyes in its ugly little face.
"Better not let the wind blow on it," admonished Mrs. Conover. "Take
its breath if it do."
Rilla wrapped the tattered little quilt around the soup tureen.
"Will you hand this to me after I get into the buggy, please?"
"Sure I will," said Mrs. Conover, getting up with a grunt.
And so it was that Rilla Blythe, who had driven to the Anderson house a
self-confessed hater of babies, drove away from it carrying one in a
soup tureen on her lap!
Rilla thought she would never get to Ingleside. In the soup tureen
there was an uncanny silence. In one way she was thankful the baby did
not cry but she wished it would give an occasional squeak to prove that
it was alive. Suppose it were smothered! Rilla dared not unwrap it to
see, lest the wind, which was now blowing a hurricane, should "take its
breath," whatever dreadful thing that might be. She was a thankful girl
when at last she reached harbour at Ingleside.
Rilla carried the soup tureen to the kitchen, and set it on the table
under Susan's eyes. Susan looked into the tureen and for once in her
life was so completely floored that she had not a word to say.
"What in the world is this?" asked the doctor, coming in.
Rilla poured out her story. "I just had to bring it, father," she
concluded. "I couldn't leave it there."
"What are you going to do with it?" asked the doctor coolly.
Rilla hadn't exactly expected this kind of question.
"We--we can keep it here for awhile--can't we--until something can be
arranged?" she stammered confusedly.
Dr. Blythe walked up and down the kitchen for a moment or two while the
baby stared at the white walls of the soup tureen and Susan showed
signs of returning animation.
Presently the doctor confronted Rilla.
"A young baby means a great deal of additional work and trouble in a
household, Rilla. Nan and Di are leaving for Redmond next week and
neither your mother nor Susan is able to assume so much extra care
under present conditions. If you want to keep that baby here you must
attend to it yourself."
"Me!" Rilla was dismayed into being ungrammatical. "Why--father--I--I
couldn't!"
"Younger girls than you have had to look after babies. My advice and
Susan's is at your disposal. If you cannot, then the baby must go back
to Meg Conover. Its lease of life will be short if it does for it is
evident that it is a delicate child and requires particular care. I
doubt if it would survive even if sent to an orphans' home. But I
cannot have your mother and Susan over-taxed."
The doctor walked out of the kitchen, looking very stern and immovable.
In his heart he knew quite well that the small inhabitant of the big
soup tureen would remain at Ingleside, but he meant to see if Rilla
could not be induced to rise to the occasion.
Rilla sat looking blankly at the baby. It was absurd to think she could
take care of it. But--that poor little, frail, dead mother who had
worried about it--that dreadful old Meg Conover.
"Susan, what must be done for a baby?" she asked dolefully.
"You must keep it warm and dry and wash it every day, and be sure the
water is neither too hot nor too cold, and feed it every two hours. If
it has colic, you put hot things on its stomach," said Susan, rather
feebly and flatly for her.
The baby began to cry again.
"It must be hungry--it has to be fed anyhow," said Rilla desperately.
"Tell me what to get for it, Susan, and I'll get it."
Under Susan's directions a ration of milk and water was prepared, and a
bottle obtained from the doctor's office. Then Rilla lifted the baby
out of the soup tureen and fed it. She brought down the old basket of
her own infancy from the attic and laid the now sleeping baby in it.
She put the soup tureen away in the pantry. Then she sat down to think
things over.
The result of her thinking things over was that she went to Susan when
the baby woke.
"I'm going to see what I can do, Susan. I can't let that poor little
thing go back to Mrs. Conover. Tell me how to wash and dress it."
Under Susan's supervision Rilla bathed the baby. Susan dared not help,
other than by suggestion, for the doctor was in the living-room and
might pop in at any moment. Susan had learned by experience that when
Dr. Blythe put his foot down and said a thing must be, that thing was.
Rilla set her teeth and went ahead. In the name of goodness, how many
wrinkles and kinks did a baby have? Why, there wasn't enough of it to
take hold of. Oh, suppose she let it slip into the water--it was so
wobbly! If it would only stop howling like that! How could such a tiny
morsel make such an enormous noise. Its shrieks could be heard over
Ingleside from cellar to attic.
"Am I really hurting it much, Susan, do you suppose?" she asked
piteously.
"No, dearie. Most new babies hate like poison to be washed. You are
real knacky for a beginner. Keep your hand under its back, whatever you
do, and keep cool."
Keep cool! Rilla was oozing perspiration at every pore. When the baby
was dried and dressed and temporarily quieted with another bottle she
was as limp as a rag.
"What must I do with it tonight, Susan?"
A baby by day was dreadful enough; a baby by night was unthinkable.
"Set the basket on a chair by your bed and keep it covered. You will
have to feed it once or twice in the night, so you would better take
the oil heater upstairs. If you cannot manage it call me and I will go,
doctor or no doctor."
"But, Susan, if it cries?"
The baby, however, did not cry. It was surprisingly good--perhaps
because its poor little stomach was filled with proper food. It slept
most of the night but Rilla did not. She was afraid to go to sleep for
fear something would happen to the baby. She prepared its three o'clock
ration with a grim determination that she would not call Susan. Oh, was
she dreaming? Was it really she, Rilla Blythe, who had got into this
absurd predicament? She did not care if the Germans were near
Paris--she did not care if they were in Paris--if only the baby
wouldn't cry or choke or smother or have convulsions. Babies did have
convulsions, didn't they? Oh, why had she forgotten to ask Susan what
she must do if the baby had convulsions? She reflected rather bitterly
that father was very considerate of mother's and Susan's health, but
what about hers? Did he think she could continue to exist if she never
got any sleep? But she was not going to back down now--not she. She
would look after this detestable little animal if it killed her. She
would get a book on baby hygiene and be beholden to nobody. She would
never go to father for advice--she wouldn't bother mother--and she
would only condescend to Susan in dire extremity. They would all see!
Thus it came about that Mrs. Blythe, when she returned home two nights
later and asked Susan where Rilla was, was electrified by Susan's
composed reply.
"She's upstairs, Mrs. Dr. dear, putting her baby to bed."