comradeship of Alice Greggory that he wanted or needed, but the love.
He knew it now. No longer was there any use in beating about the bush. He did love Alice Greggory; but so curiously and unbelievably stupid had he been that he had not found it out until now. And now it was too late. Had not even Billy called his attention to the fact of Calderwell’s devotion? Besides, had not he himself, at the very first, told Calderwell that he might have a clear field?
Fool that he had been to let another thus lightly step in and win from under his very nose what might have been his if he had but known his own mind before it was too late!
But was it, after all, quite too late? He and Alice were old friends. Away back in their young days in their native town they had been, indeed, almost sweethearts, in a boy-and-girl fashion. It would not have taken much in those days, he believed, to have made the relationship more interesting. But changes had come. Alice had left town, and for years they had drifted apart. Then had come Billy, and Billy had found Alice, thus bringing about the odd circumstance of their renewing of acquaintanceship. Perhaps, at that time, if he had not already thought he cared for Billy, there would have been something more than acquaintanceship.
But he _had_ thought he cared for Billy all these years; and now, at this late day, to wake up and find that he cared for Alice! A pretty mess he had made of things! Was he so inconstant then, so fickle? Did he not know his own mind five minutes at a time? What would Alice Greggory think, even if he found the courage to tell her? What could she think? What could anybody think?
Arkwright fairly ground his teeth in impotent wrath–and he did not know whether he were the most angry that he did not love Billy, or that he had loved Billy, or that he loved somebody else now.
It was while he was in this unenviable frame of mind that he went to see Alice. Not that he had planned definitely to speak to her of his discovery, nor yet that he had planned not to. He had, indeed, planned nothing. For a man usually so decided as to purpose and energetic as to action, he was in a most unhappy state of uncertainty and changeableness. One thing only was unmistakably clear to him, and that was that he must
see Alice.
For months, now, he had taken to Alice all his hopes and griefs, perplexities and problems; and never had he failed to find comfort in the shape of sympathetic understanding and wise counsel. To Alice, therefore, now he turned as a matter of course, telling himself vaguely that, perhaps, after he had seen Alice, he would feel better.
Just how intimately this particular problem of his concerned Alice herself, he did not stop to realize. He did not, indeed, think of it at all from Alice’s standpoint–until he came face to face with the girl in the living-room at the Annex. Then, suddenly, he did. His manner became at once, consequently, full of embarrassment and quite devoid of its usual frank friendliness.
As it happened, this was perhaps the most unfortunate thing that could have occurred, so far as it concerned the attitude of Alice Greggory, for thereby innumerable tiny sparks of suspicion that had been tormenting the girl for days were instantly fanned into consuming flames of conviction.
Alice had not been slow to note Arkwright’s prolonged absence from the Annex. Coming as it did so soon after her most disconcerting talk with Billy in regard to her own relations with him, it had filled her with frightened questionings.
If Billy had seen things to make her think of linking their names together, perhaps Arkwright himself had heard some such idea put forth somewhere, and that was why he was staying away–to show the world that there was no foundation for such rumors. Perhaps he was even doing it to show _her_ that–
Even in her thoughts Alice could scarcely bring herself to finish the sentence. That Arkwright should ever suspect for a moment that
she cared for him was intolerable. Painfully conscious as she was that she did care for him, it was easy to fear that others must be conscious of it, too. Had she not already proof that Billy suspected it? Why, then, might not it be quite possible, even probable, that Arkwright suspected it, also; and, because he did suspect it, had decided that it would be just as well, perhaps, if he did not call so often.
In spite of Alice’s angry insistence to herself that, after all, this could not be the case– that the man _knew_ she understood he still loved Billy–she could not help fearing, in the face of Arkwright’s unusual absence, that it might yet be true. When, therefore, he finally did appear, only to become at once obviously embarrassed in her presence, her fears instantly became convictions. It was true, then. The man
did believe she cared for him, and he had been trying to teach her–to save her.
To teach her! To save her, indeed! Very well, he should see! And forthwith, from that moment, Alice Greggory’s chief reason for living became to prove to Mr. M. J. Arkwright that he needed not to teach her, to save her, nor yet to sympathize with her.
“How do you do?” she greeted him, with a particularly bright smile. “I’m sure I _hope_ you are well, such a beautiful day as this.”
“Oh, yes, I’m well, I suppose. Still, I have felt better in my life,” smiled Arkwright, with some constraint.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” murmured the girl, striving so hard to speak with impersonal unconcern that she did not notice the inaptness of her reply.
“Eh? Sorry I’ve felt better, are you?” retorted Arkwright, with nervous humor. Then, because he was embarrassed, he said the one thing he had meant not to say: “Don’t you think I’m quite a stranger? It’s been some time since I’ve been here.”
Alice, smarting under the sting of what she judged to be the only possible cause for his embarrassment, leaped to this new opportunity to show her lack of interest.
“Oh, has it?” she murmured carelessly. “Well, I don’t know but it has, now that I come to think of it.”
Arkwright frowned gloomily. A week ago he would have tossed back a laughingly aggrieved remark as to her unflattering indifference to his presence. Now he was in no mood for such joking. It was too serious a matter with him.
“You’ve been busy, no doubt, with–other matters,” he presumed forlornly, thinking of Calderwell.
“Yes, I have been busy,” assented the girl. “One is always happier, I think, to be busy. Not that I meant that I needed the work to _be_ happy,” she added hastily, in a panic lest he think she had a consuming sorrow to kill.
“No, of course not,” he murmured abstractedly, rising to his feet and crossing the room to the piano. Then, with an elaborate air of trying to appear very natural, he asked jovially: “Anything new to play to me?”
Alice arose at once.
“Yes. I have a little nocturne that I was playing to Mr. Calderwell last night.”
“Oh, to Calderwell!” Arkwright had stiffened perceptibly.
“Yes. _He_ didn’t like it. I’ll play it to you and see what you say,” she smiled, seating herself at the piano.
“Well, if he had liked it, it’s safe to say I shouldn’t,” shrugged Arkwright.
“Nonsense!” laughed the girl, beginning to appear more like her natural self. “I should think you were Mr. Cyril Henshaw! Mr. Calderwell _is_ partial to ragtime, I’ll admit. But there are some good things he likes.”
“There are, indeed, _some_ good things he likes,” returned Arkwright, with grim emphasis, his somber eyes fixed on what he believed to be the one especial object of Calderwell’s affections at the moment.
Alice, unaware both of the melancholy gaze bent upon herself and of the cause thereof, laughed again merrily.
“Poor Mr. Calderwell,” she cried, as she let her fingers slide into soft, introductory chords. “He isn’t to blame for not liking what he calls our lost spirits that wail. It’s just the way he’s made.”
Arkwright vouchsafed no reply. With an abrupt gesture he turned and began to pace the room moodily. At the piano Alice slipped from the chords into the nocturne. She played it straight through, then, with a charm and skill that brought Arkwright’s feet to a pause before it was half finished.
“By George, that’s great!” he breathed, when the last tone had quivered into silence.
“Yes, isn’t it–beautiful?” she murmured.
The room was very quiet, and in semi-darkness. The last rays of a late June sunset had been filling the room with golden light, but it was gone now. Even at the piano by the window, Alice had barely been able to see clearly enough to read the notes of her nocturne.
To Arkwright the air still trembled with the exquisite melody that had but just left her fingers. A quick fire came to his eyes. He forgot everything but that it was Alice there in the half-light by the window–Alice, whom he loved. With a low cry he took a swift step toward her.
“Alice!”
Instantly the girl was on her feet. But it was not toward him that she turned. It was away– resolutely, and with a haste that was strangely like terror.
Alice, too, had forgotten, for just a moment. She had let herself drift into a dream world where there was nothing but the music she was playing and the man she loved. Then the music had stopped, and the man had spoken her name.
Alice remembered then. She remembered Billy, whom this man loved. She remembered the long days just passed when this man had stayed away, presumably to teach _her_–to save _her_. And now, at the sound of his voice speaking her name, she had almost bared her heart to him.
No wonder that Alice, with a haste that looked like terror, crossed the floor and flooded the room with light.
“Dear me!” she shivered, carefully avoiding Arkwright’s eyes. “If Mr. Calderwell were here now he’d have some excuse to talk about our lost spirits that wail. That _is_ a creepy piece of music when you play it in the dark!” And, for fear that he should suspect how her heart was aching, she gave a particularly brilliant and joyous smile.
Once again at the mention of Calderwell’s name Arkwright stiffened perceptibly. The fire left his eyes. For a moment he did not speak; then, gravely, he said:
“Calderwell? Yes, perhaps he would; and– you ought to be a judge, I should think. You see him quite frequently, don’t you?”
“Why, yes, of course. He often comes out here, you know.”
“Yes; I had heard that he did–since _you_ came.”
His meaning was unmistakable. Alice looked up quickly. A prompt denial of his implication was on her lips when the thought came to her that perhaps just here lay a sure way to prove to this man before her that there was, indeed, no need for him to teach her, to save her, or yet to sympathize with her. She could not affirm, of course; but she need not deny–yet.
“Nonsense!” she laughed lightly, pleased that she could feel what she hoped would pass for a telltale color burning her cheeks. “Come, let us try some duets,” she proposed, leading the way to the piano. And Arkwright, interpreting the apparently embarrassed change of subject exactly as she had hoped that he would interpret it, followed her, sick at heart.
“ `O wert thou in the cauld blast,’ ” sang Arkwright’s lips a few moments later.
“I can’t tell her now–when I _know_ she cares for Calderwell,” gloomily ran his thoughts, the while. “It would do no possible good, and would only make her unhappy to grieve me.”
“ `O wert thou in the cauld blast,’ ” chimed in Alice’s alto, low and sweet.
“I reckon now he won’t be staying away from here any more just to _save_ me!” ran Alice’s thoughts, palpitatingly triumphant.
CHAPTER XXI
BILLY TAKES HER TURN AT QUESTIONING
Arkwright did not call to see Alice Greggory for some days. He did not want to see Alice now. He told himself wearily that she could not help him fight this tiger skin that lay across his path, The very fact of her presence by his side would, indeed, incapacitate himself for fighting. So he deliberately stayed away from the Annex until the day before he sailed for Germany. Then he went out to say good-by.
Chagrined as he was at what he termed his imbecile stupidity in not knowing his own heart all these past months, and convinced, as he also was, that Alice and Calderwell cared for each other, he could see no way for him but to play the part of a man of kindliness and honor, leaving a clear field for his preferred rival, and bringing no shadow of regret to mar the happiness of the girl he loved.
As for being his old easy, frank self on this last call, however, that was impossible; so Alice found plenty of fuel for her still burning fires of suspicion–fires which had, indeed, blazed up anew at this second long period of absence on the part of Arkwright. Naturally, therefore, the call was anything but a joy and comfort to either one. Arkwright was nervous, gloomy, and abnormally gay by turns. Alice was nervous and abnormally gay all the time. Then they said good-by and Arkwright went away. He sailed the next day, and Alice settled down to the summer of study and hard work she had laid out for herself.
On the tenth of September Billy came home. She was brown, plump-cheeked, and smiling. She declared that she had had a perfectly beautiful time, and that there couldn’t be anything in the world nicer than the trip she and Bertram had taken–just they two together. In answer to Aunt Hannah’s solicitous inquiries, she asserted that she was all well and rested now. But there was a vaguely troubled questioning in her eyes that Aunt Hannah did not quite like. Aunt Hannah, however, said nothing even to Billy herself about this.
One of the first friends Billy saw after her return was Hugh Calderwell. As it happened Bertram was out when he came, so Billy had the first half- hour of the call to herself. She was not sorry for this, as it gave her a chance to question Calderwell a little concerning Alice Greggory–something she had long ago determined to do at the first opportunity.
“Now tell me everything–everything about everybody,” she began diplomatically, settling herself comfortably for a good visit.
“Thank you, I’m well, and have had a passably agreeable summer, barring the heat, sundry persistent mosquitoes, several grievous disappointments, and a felon on my thumb,” he began, with shameless imperturbability. “I have been to Revere once, to the circus once, to Nantasket three times, and to Keith’s and the `movies’ ten times, perhaps–to be accurate. I have also– But perhaps there was some one else you desired to inquire for,” he broke off, turning upon his hostess a bland but unsmiling countenance.
“Oh, no, how could there be?” twinkled Billy. “Really, Hugh, I always knew you had a pretty good opinion of yourself, but I didn’t credit you with thinking you were _everybody_. Go on. I’m so interested!”
Hugh chuckled softly; but there was a plaintive tone in his voice as he answered.
“Thanks, no. I’ve rather lost my interest now. Lack of appreciation always did discourage me. We’ll talk of something else, please. You enjoyed your trip?”
“Very much. It just couldn’t have been nicer!”
“You were lucky. The heat here has been something fierce!”
“What made you stay?”
“Reasons too numerous, and one too heart- breaking, to mention. Besides, you forget,” with dignity. “There is my profession. I have joined the workers of the world now, you know.”
“Oh, fudge, Hugh!” laughed Billy. “You know very well you’re as likely as not to start for the ends of the earth to-morrow morning!”
Hugh drew himself up.
“I don’t seem to succeed in making people understand that I’m serious,” he began aggrievedly. “I–” With an expressive flourish
of his hands he relaxed suddenly, and fell back in his chair. A slow smile came to his lips. “Well, Billy, I’ll give up. You’ve hit it,” he confessed. “I _have_ thought seriously of starting to- morrow morning for _half-way_ to the ends of the earth–Panama.”
“Hugh!”
“Well, I have. Even this call was to be a good-by–if I went.”
“Oh, Hugh! But I really thought–in spite of my teasing–that you had settled down, this time.”
“Yes, so did I,” sighed the man, a little soberly. “But I guess it’s no use, Billy. Oh, I’m coming back, of course, and link arms again with their worthy Highnesses, John Doe and Richard Roe; but just now I’ve got a restless fit on me. I want to see the wheels go ’round. Of course, if I had my bread and butter and cigars to earn, ‘twould be different. But I haven’t, and I know I haven’t; and I suspect that’s where the trouble lies. If it wasn’t for those natal silver spoons of mine that Bertram is always talking about, things might be different. But the spoons are there, and always have been; and I know they’re all ready to dish out mountains to climb and lakes to paddle in, any time I’ve a mind to say the word. So–I just say the word. That’s all.”
“And you’ve said it now?”
“Yes, I think so; for a while.”
“And–those reasons that _have_ kept you here all summer,” ventured Billy, “they aren’t in– er–commission any longer?”
“No.”
Billy hesitated, regarding her companion meditatively. Then, with the feeling that she had followed a blind alley to its termination, she retreated and made a fresh start.
“Well, you haven’t yet told me everything about everybody, you know,” she hinted
smilingly. “You might begin that–I mean the less important everybodies, of course, now that I’ve heard about you.”
“Meaning–”
“Oh, Aunt Hannah, and the Greggorys, and Cyril and Marie, and the twins, and Mr. Arkwright, and all the rest.”
“But you’ve had letters, surely.”
“Yes, I’ve had letters from some of them, and I’ve seen most of them since I came back. It’s just that I wanted to know _your_ viewpoint of what’s happened through the summer.”
“Very well. Aunt Hannah is as dear as ever, wears just as many shawls, and still keeps her clock striking twelve when it’s half-past eleven. Mrs. Greggory is just as sweet as ever–and a little more frail, I fear,–bless her heart! Mr. Arkwright is still abroad, as I presume you know. I hear he is doing great stunts over there, and will sing in Berlin and Paris this winter. I’m thinking of going across from Panama later. If I do I shall look him up. Mr. and Mrs. Cyril are as well as could be expected when you realize that they haven’t yet settled on a pair of names for the twins.”
“I know it–and the poor little things three months old, too! I think it’s a shame. You’ve heard the reason, I suppose. Cyril declares that naming babies is one of the most serious and delicate operations in the world, and that, for his part, he thinks people ought to select their own names when they’ve arrived at years of discretion. He wants to wait till the twins are eighteen, and then make each of them a birthday present of the name of their own choosing.”
“Well, if that isn’t the limit!” laughed Calderwell. “I’d heard some such thing before, but I hadn’t supposed it was really so.”
“Well, it is. He says he knows more tomboys and enormous fat women named `Grace’ and `Lily,’ and sweet little mouse-like ladies staggering along under a sonorous `Jerusha Theodosia’ or `Zenobia Jane’; and that if he should name the boys `Franz’ and `Felix’ after Schubert and Mendelssohn as Marie wants to, they’d as likely as not turn out to be men who hated the sound of music and doted on stocks and dry goods.”
“Humph!” grunted Calderwell. “I saw Cyril last week, and he said he hadn’t named the twins yet, but he didn’t tell me why. I offered him two perfectly good names myself, but he didn’t seem interested.”
“What were they?”
“Eldad and Bildad.”
“Hugh!” protested Billy.
“Well, why not?” bridled the man. “I’m sure those are new and unique, and really musical, too–‘way ahead of your Franz and Felix.”
“But those aren’t really names!”
“Indeed they are.”
“Where did you get them?”
“Off our family tree, though they’re Bible names, Belle says. Perhaps you didn’t know, but Sister Belle has been making the dirt fly quite lively of late around that family tree of ours, and she wrote me some of her discoveries. It seems two of the roots, or branches–say, are ancestors roots, or branches?–were called Eldad and Bildad. Now I thought those names were good enough to pass along, but, as I said before, Cyril wasn’t interested.”
“I should say not,” laughed Billy. “But, honestly, Hugh, it’s really serious. Marie wants them named _something_, but she doesn’t say much to Cyril. Marie wouldn’t really breathe, you know, if she thought Cyril disapproved of breathing. And in this case Cyril does not hesitate to declare that the boys shall name themselves.”
“What a situation!” laughed Calderwell.
“Isn’t it? But, do you know, I can
sympathize with it, in a way, for I’ve always mourned so over _my_ name. `Billy’ was always such a trial to me! Poor Uncle William wasn’t the only one that prepared guns and fishing rods to entertain the expected boy. I don’t know, though,
I’m afraid if I’d been allowed to select my name I should have been a `Helen Clarabella’ all my days, for that was the name I gave all my dolls, with `first,’ `second,’ `third,’ and so on, added to them for distinction. Evidently I thought that `Helen Clarabella’ was the most feminine appellation possible, and the most foreign to the despised `Billy.’ So you see I can sympathize with Cyril to a certain extent.”
“But they must call the little chaps _something_, now,” argued Hugh.
Billy gave a sudden merry laugh.
“They do,” she gurgled, “and that’s the funniest part of it. Oh, Cyril doesn’t. He always calls them impersonally `they’ or `it.’ He doesn’t see much of them anyway, now, I understand. Marie was horrified when she realized how the nurses had been using his den as a nursery annex and she changed all that instanter, when she took charge of things again. The twins stay in the nursery now, I’m told. But about the names– the nurses, it seems, have got into the way of calling them `Dot’ and `Dimple.’ One has a dimple in his cheek, and the other is a little smaller of the two. Marie is no end distressed, particularly as she finds that she herself calls them that; and she says the idea of boys being `Dot’ and `Dimple’!”
“I should say so,” laughed Calderwell. “Not I regard that as worse than my `Eldad’ and `Bildad.’ ”
“I know it, and Alice says– By the way, you haven’t mentioned Alice, but I suppose you see her occasionally.”
Billy paused in evident expectation of a reply. Billy was, in fact, quite pluming herself on the adroit casualness with which she had introduced the subject nearest her heart.
Calderwell raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, yes, I see her.”
“But you hadn’t mentioned her.”
There was the briefest of pauses; then with a half-quizzical dejection, there came the remark:
“You seem to forget. I told you that I stayed here this summer for reasons too numerous, and one too heart-breaking, to mention. She was the _one_.”
“You mean–”
“Yes. The usual thing. She turned me down. Oh, I haven’t asked her yet as many times as I did you, but–”
“_Hugh!_”
Hugh tossed her a grim smile and went on imperturbably.
“I’m older now, of course, and know more, perhaps. Besides, the finality of her remarks was not to be mistaken.”
Billy, in spite of her sympathy for Calderwell, was conscious of a throb of relief that at least one stumbling-block was removed from Arkwright’s possible pathway to Alice’s heart.
“Did she give any special reason?” hazarded Billy, a shade too anxiously.
“Oh, yes. She said she wasn’t going to marry anybody–only her music.”
“Nonsense!” ejaculated Billy, falling back in her chair a little.
“Yes, I said that, too,” gloomed the man; “but it didn’t do any good. You see, I had known another girl who’d said the same thing once.” (He did not look up, but a vivid red flamed suddenly into Billy’s cheeks.) “And she –when the right one came–forgot all about the music, and married the man. So I naturally suspected that Alice would do the same thing. In fact, I said so to her. I was bold enough to even call the man by name–I hadn’t been jealous of Arkwright for nothing, you see–but she denied it, and flew into such an indignant allegation that there wasn’t a word of truth in it, that I had to sue for pardon before I got anything like peace.”
“Oh-h!” said Billy, in a disappointed voice, falling quite back in her chair this time.
“And so that’s why I’m wanting especially just now to see the wheels go ’round,” smiled Calderwell, a little wistfully. “Oh, I shall get over it, I suppose. It isn’t the first time, I’ll own–but some day I take it there will be a last time. Enough of this, however! You haven’t told me a thing about yourself. How about it? When I come back, are you going to give me a dinner cooked by your own fair hands? Going to still play Bridget?”
Billy laughed and shook her head.
“No; far from it. Eliza has come back, and her cousin from Vermont is coming as second girl to help her. But I _could_ cook a dinner for you if I had to now, sir, and it wouldn’t be potato-mush and cold lamb,” she bragged shamelessly, as there sounded Bertram’s peculiar ring, and the click of his key in the lock.
It was the next afternoon that Billy called on Marie. From Marie’s, Billy went to the Annex, which was very near Cyril’s new house; and there, in Aunt Hannah’s room, she had what she told Bertram afterwards was a perfectly lovely visit.
Aunt Hannah, too, enjoyed the visit very much, though yet there was one thing that disturbed her–the vaguely troubled look in Billy’s eyes, which to-day was more apparent than ever. Not until just before Billy went home did something occur to give Aunt Hannah a possible clue as to what was the meaning of it. That something was a question from Billy.
“Aunt Hannah, why don’t I feel like Marie did? why don’t I feel like everybody does in books and stories? Marie went around with such a detached, heavenly, absorbed look in her eyes, before the twins came to her home. But I don’t. I don’t find anything like that in my face, when I look in the glass. And I don’t feel detached and absorbed and heavenly. I’m happy, of course; but I can’t help thinking of the dear, dear times Bertram and I have together, just we two, and I can’t seem to imagine it at all with a third person around.”
“Billy! _Third person_, indeed!”
“There! I knew ‘twould shock you,” mourned Billy. It shocks me. I _want_ to feel detached and heavenly and absorbed.”
“But Billy, dear, think of it–calling your own baby a third person!”
Billy sighed despairingly.
“Yes, I know. And I suppose I might as well own up to the rest of it too. I–I’m actually afraid of babies, Aunt Hannah! Well, I am,” she reiterated, in answer to Aunt Hannah’s gasp of disapproval. “I’m not used to them at all. I never had any little brothers and sisters, and I don’t know how to treat babies. I–I’m always afraid they’ll break, or something. I’m just as afraid of the twins as I can be. How Marie can handle them, and toss them about as she does, I don’t see.”
“Toss them about, indeed!”
“Well, it looks that way to me,” sighed Billy. “Anyhow, I know I can never get to handle them like that–and that’s no way to feel! And I’m ashamed of myself because I _can’t_ be detached and heavenly and absorbed,” she added, rising to go. “Everybody always is, it seems, but just me.”
“Fiddlededee, my dear!” scoffed Aunt Hannah, patting Billy’s downcast face. “Wait till a year from now, and we’ll see about that third- person bugaboo you’re worrying about. _I’m_ not worrying now; so you’d better not!”
CHAPTER XXII
A DOT AND A DIMPLE
On the day Cyril Henshaw’s twins were six months old, a momentous occurrence marked the date with a flaming red letter of remembrance; and it all began with a baby’s smile.
Cyril, in quest of his wife at about ten o’clock that morning, and not finding her, pursued his search even to the nursery–a room he very seldom entered. Cyril did not like to go into the nursery. He felt ill at ease, and as if he were away from home–and Cyril was known to abhor being away from home since he was married. Now that Marie had taken over the reins of government again, he had been obliged to see very little of those strange women and babies. Not but that he liked the babies, of course. They were his sons, and he was proud of them. They should have every advantage that college, special training, and travel could give them. He quite
anticipated what they would be to him–when they really knew anything. But, of course, _now_, when they could do nothing but cry and wave their absurd little fists, and wobble their heads in so fearsome a manner, as if they simply did not know the meaning of the word backbone– and, for that matter, of course they didn’t– why, he could not be expected to be anything but relieved when he had his den to himself again, with a reasonable chance of finding his manuscript as he had left it, and not cut up into a ridiculous string of paper dolls holding hands, as he had once found it, after a visit from a woman with a small girl.
Since Marie had been at the helm, however, he had not been troubled in such a way. He had, indeed, known almost his old customary peace and freedom from interruption, with only an occasional flitting across his path of the strange women and babies–though he had realized, of course, that they were in the house, especially in the nursery. For that reason, therefore, he always avoided the nursery when possible. But to-day he wanted his wife, and his wife was not to be found anywhere else in the house. So, reluctantly, he turned his steps toward the nursery, and, with a frown, knocked and pushed open the door.
“Is Mrs. Henshaw here?” he demanded, not over gently.
Absolute silence greeted his question. The man saw then that there was no one in the room save a baby sitting on a mat in the middle of the floor, barricaded on all sides with pillows.
With a deeper frown the man turned to go, when a gleeful “Ah–goo!” halted his steps midway. He wheeled sharply.
“Er–eh?” he queried, uncertainly eyeing his small son on the floor.
“Ah–goo!” observed the infant (who had been very lonesome), with greater emphasis; and this time he sent into his father’s eyes the most bewitching of smiles.
“Well, by George!” murmured the man, weakly, a dawning amazement driving the frown from his face.
“Spgggh–oo–wah!” gurgled the boy, holding out two tiny fists.
A slow smile came to the man’s face.
“Well, I’ll–be–darned,” he muttered half- shamefacedly, wholly delightedly. “If the rascal doesn’t act as if he–knew me!”
“Ah–goo–spggghh!” grinned the infant, toothlessly, but entrancingly.
With almost a stealthy touch Cyril closed the door back of him, and advanced a little dubiously toward his son. His countenance carried a mixture of guilt, curiosity, and dogged determination so ludicrous that it was a pity none but baby eyes could see it. As if to meet more nearly on a level this baffling new acquaintance, Cyril got to his knees–somewhat stiffly, it must be confessed –and faced his son.
“Goo–eee–ooo–yah!” crowed the baby now, thrashing legs and arms about in a transport of joy at the acquisition of this new playmate.
“Well, well, young man, you–you don’t say so!” stammered the growingly-proud father, thrusting a plainly timid and unaccustomed finger toward his offspring. “So you do know me, eh? Well, who am I?”
“Da–da!” gurgled the boy, triumphantly clutching the outstretched finger, and holding on with a tenacity that brought a gleeful chuckle to the lips of the man.
“Jove! but aren’t you the strong little beggar, though! Needn’t tell me you don’t know a good thing when you see it! So I’m `da-da,’ am I?” he went on, unhesitatingly accepting as the pure gold of knowledge the shameless imitation vocabulary his son was foisting upon him. “Well, I expect I am, and–”
“Oh, Cyril!” The door had opened, and Marie was in the room. If she gave a start of surprise at her husband’s unaccustomed attitude, she quickly controlled herself. “Julia said you wanted me. I must have been going down the back stairs when you came up the front, and–”
“Please, Mrs. Henshaw, is it Dot you have in here, or Dimple?” asked a new voice, as the second nurse entered by another door.
Before Mrs. Henshaw could answer, Cyril, who had got to his feet, turned sharply.
“Is it–_who_?” he demanded.
“Oh! Oh, Mr. Henshaw,” stammered the girl. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t know you were here. It was only that I wanted to know which baby it was. We thought we had Dot with us, until–”
“Dot! Dimple!” exploded the man. “Do you mean to say you have given my _sons_ the ridiculous names of `_Dot_’ and `_Dimple_’?”
“Why, no–yes–well, that is–we had to call them something,” faltered the nurse, as with a despairing glance at her mistress, she plunged through the doorway.
Cyril turned to his wife.
“Marie, what is the meaning of this?” he demanded.
“Why, Cyril, dear, don’t–don’t get so wrought up,” she begged. It’s only as Mary said, we _had_ to call them something, and–”
“Wrought up, indeed!” interrupted Cyril, savagely. “Who wouldn’t be? `Dot’ and `Dimple’! Great Scott! One would think those boys
were a couple of kittens or puppies; that they didn’t know anything–didn’t have any brains! But they have–if the other is anything like this one, at least,” he declared, pointing to his son on the floor, who, at this opportune moment joined in the conversation to the extent of an appropriate “Ah–goo–da–da!”
“There, hear that, will you?” triumphed the father. “What did I tell you? That’s the way he’s been going on ever since I came into the room; The little rascal knows me–so soon!”
Marie clapped her fingers to her lips and turned her back suddenly, with a spasmodic little cough; but her husband, if he noticed the interruption, paid no heed.
“Dot and Dimple, indeed!” he went on wrathfully. “That settles it. We’ll name those boys to-day, Marie, _to-day!_ Not once again will I let the sun go down on a Dot and a Dimple under my roof.”
Marie turned with a quick little cry of happiness.
“Oh, Cyril, I’m so glad! I’ve so wanted to have them named, you know! And shall we call them Franz and Felix, as we’d talked?”
“Franz, Felix, John, James, Paul, Charles– anything, so it’s sane and sensible! I’d even adopt Calderwell’s absurd Bildad and–er– Tomdad, or whatever it was, rather than have those poor little chaps insulted a day longer with a `Dot’ and a `Dimple.’ Great Scott!” And, entirely forgetting what he had come to the nursery for, Cyril strode from the room.
“Ah–goo–spggggh!” commented baby
from the middle of the floor.
It was on a very windy March day that Bertram Henshaw’s son, Bertram, Jr., arrived at
the Strata. Billy went so far into the Valley of the Shadow of Death for her baby that it was some days before she realized in all its importance the presence of the new member of her
family. Even when the days had become weeks, and Bertram, Jr., was a month and a half old, the extreme lassitude and weariness of his young mother was a source of ever-growing anxiety to her family and friends. Billy was so unlike herself, they all said.
“If something could only rouse her,” suggested the Henshaw’s old family physician one day. “A certain sort of mental shock–if not too severe–would do the deed, I think, and with no injury–only benefit. Her physical condition is in just the state that needs a stimulus to stir it into new life and vigor.”
As it happened, this was said on a certain Monday. Two days later Bertram’s sister Kate, on her way with her husband to Mr. Hartwell’s old home in Vermont, stopped over in Boston for a two days’ visit. She made her headquarters at Cyril’s home, but very naturally she went, without much delay, to pay her respects to Bertram, Jr.
“Mr. Hartwell’s brother isn’t well,” she explained to Billy, after the greetings were over. “You know he’s the only one left there, since Mother and Father Hartwell came West. We shall go right on up to Vermont in a couple of days, but we just had to stay over long enough to see the baby; and we hadn’t ever seen the twins, either, you know. By the way, how perfectly ridiculous Cyril is over those boys!”
“Is he?” smiled Billy, faintly.
“Yes. One would think there were never any babies born before, to hear him talk. He thinks they’re the most wonderful things in the world– and they are cunning little fellows, I’ll admit. But Cyril thinks they _know_ so much,” went on Kate, laughingly. “He’s always bragging of something one or the other of them has done. Think of it–_Cyril!_ Marie says it all started from the time last January when he discovered the nurses had been calling them Dot and Dimple.”
“Yes, I know,” smiled Billy again, faintly, lifting a thin, white, very un-Billy-like hand to her head.
Kate frowned, and regarded her sister-in-law thoughtfully.
“Mercy! how you look, Billy!” she exclaimed, with cheerful tactlessness. “They said you did, but, I declare, you look worse than I thought.”
Billy’s pale face reddened perceptibly.
“Nonsense! It’s just that I’m so–so tired,” she insisted. “I shall be all right soon. How did you leave the children?”
“Well, and happy–‘specially little Kate, because mother was going away. Kate is mistress, you know, when I’m gone, and she takes
herself very seriously.”
“Mistress! A little thing like her! Why, she can’t be more than ten or eleven,” murmured Billy.
“She isn’t. She was ten last month. But you’d think she was forty, the airs she gives herself, sometimes. Oh, of course there’s Nora, and the cook, and Miss Winton, the governess, there to really manage things, and Mother Hartwell is just around the corner; but little Kate _thinks_ she’s managing, so she’s happy.”
Billy suppressed a smile. Billy was thinking that little Kate came naturally by at least one of her traits.
“Really, that child is impossible, sometimes,” resumed Mrs. Hartwell, with a sigh. “You know the absurd things she was always saying two or three years ago, when we came on to Cyril’s wedding.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, I thought she would get over it. But she doesn’t. She’s worse, if anything; and sometimes her insight, or intuition, or whatever you may call it, is positively uncanny. I never know what she’s going to remark next, when I take her anywhere; but it’s safe to say, whatever it is, it’ll be unexpected and _usually_ embarrassing to somebody. And–is that the baby?” broke off Mrs.
Hartwell, as a cooing laugh and a woman’s voice came from the next room.
“Yes. The nurse has just brought him in, I think,” said Billy.
“Then I’ll go right now and see him,” rejoined Kate, rising to her feet and hurrying into the next room.
Left alone, Billy lay back wearily in her reclining-chair. She wondered why Kate always tired her so. She wished she had had on her blue kimono, then perhaps Kate would not have thought she looked so badly. Blue was always more becoming to her than–
Billy turned her head suddenly. From the next room had come Kate’s clear-cut, decisive voice.
“Oh, no, I don’t think he looks a bit like his father. That little snubby nose was never the Henshaw nose.”
Billy drew in her breath sharply, and pulled herself half erect in her chair. From the next room came Kate’s voice again, after a low murmur from the nurse.
“Oh, but he isn’t, I tell you. He isn’t one bit of a Henshaw baby! The Henshaw babies are always _pretty_ ones. They have more hair, and they look–well, different.”
Billy gave a low cry, and struggled to her feet.
“Oh, no,” spoke up Kate, in answer to another indistinct something from the nurse. “I don’t think he’s near as pretty as the twins. Of course the twins are a good deal older, but they have such a _bright_ look,–and they did have, from the very first. I saw it in their tiniest baby pictures. But this baby–”
“_This_ baby is _mine_, please,” cut in a tremulous, but resolute voice; and Mrs. Hartwell turned to confront Bertram, Jr.’s mother, manifestly weak and trembling, but no less manifestly blazing-eyed and determined.
“Why, Billy!” expostulated Mrs. Hartwell, as Billy stumbled forward and snatched the child into her arms.
“Perhaps he doesn’t look like the Henshaw babies. Perhaps he isn’t as pretty as the twins. Perhaps he hasn’t much hair, and does have a snub nose. He’s my baby just the same, and I shall not stay calmly by and see him abused! Besides, _I_ think he’s prettier than the twins ever thought of being; and he’s got all the hair I want him to have, and his nose is just exactly what a baby’s nose ought to be!” And, with a superb gesture, Billy turned and bore the baby away.
CHAPTER XXIII
BILLY AND THE ENORMOUS RESPONSIBILITY
When the doctor heard from the nurse of Mrs. Hartwell’s visit and what had come of it, he only gave a discreet smile, as befitted himself and the occasion; but to his wife privately, that night, the doctor said, when he had finished telling the story:
“And I couldn’t have prescribed a better pill if I’d tried!”
“_Pill_–Mrs. Hartwell! Oh, Harold,” reproved the doctor’s wife, mildly.
But the doctor only chuckled the more, and said:
“You wait and see.”
If Billy’s friends were worried before because of her lassitude and lack of ambition, they were almost as worried now over her amazing alertness and insistent activity. Day by day, almost hour by hour, she seemed to gain in strength; and every bit she acquired she promptly tested almost to the breaking point, so plainly eager was she to be well and strong. And always, from morning until night, and again from night until morning, the pivot of her existence, around which swung all thoughts, words, actions, and plans, was the sturdy little plump-cheeked, firm-fleshed atom of humanity known as Bertram, Jr. Even Aunt Hannah remonstrated with her at last.
“But, Billy, dear,” she exclaimed, “one would almost get the idea that you thought there wasn’t a thing in the world but that baby!”
Billy laughed.
“Well, do you know, sometimes I ‘most think there isn’t,” she retorted unblushingly.
“Billy!” protested Aunt Hannah; then, a little severely, she demanded: “And who was it that just last September was calling this same only-object-in-the-world a third person in your home?”
“Third person, indeed! Aunt Hannah, did I? Did I really say such a dreadful thing as that? But I didn’t know, then, of course. I couldn’t know how perfectly wonderful a baby is, especially such a baby as Bertram, Jr., is. Why, Aunt Hannah, that little thing knows a whole lot already. He’s known me for weeks; I know he has. And ages and ages ago he began to give me little smiles when he saw me. They were smiles–real smiles! Oh, yes, I know nurse said they weren’t smiles at the first,” admitted Billy, in answer to Aunt Hannah’s doubting expression. “I know nurse said it was only wind on his stomach. Think of it– wind on his stomach! Just as if I didn’t know the difference between my own baby’s smile and wind on his stomach! And you don’t know how soon he began to follow my moving finger with his eyes!”
“Yes, I tried that one day, I remember,” observed Aunt Hannah demurely. “I moved my finger. He looked at the ceiling–_fixedly_.”
“Well, probably he _wanted_ to look at the ceiling, then,” defended the young mother, promptly. “I’m sure I wouldn’t give a snap for a baby if he didn’t sometimes have a mind of his own, and exercise it!”
“Oh, Billy, Billy,” laughed Aunt Hannah, with a shake of her head as Billy turned away, chin uptilted.
By the time Bertram, Jr., was three months old, Billy was unmistakably her old happy, merry self, strong and well. Affairs at the Strata once more were moving as by clockwork–only this time it was a baby’s hand that set the clock, and that wound it, too.
Billy told her husband very earnestly that now they had entered upon a period of Enormous Responsibility. The Life, Character, and Destiny of a Human Soul was intrusted to their care, and they must be Wise, Faithful, and Efficient. They must be at once Proud and Humble at this their Great Opportunity. They must Observe, Learn, and Practice. First and foremost in their eyes must always be this wonderful Important Trust.
Bertram laughed at first very heartily at Billy’s instructions, which, he declared, were so bristling with capitals that he could fairly see them drop from her lips. Then, when he found how really very much in earnest she was, and how hurt she was at his levity, he managed to pull his face into something like sobriety while she talked to him, though he did persist in dropping kisses on her cheeks, her chin, her finger-tips, her hair, and the little pink lobes of her ears–“just by way of punctuation” to her sentences, he said. And he told her that he wasn’t really slighting her lips, only that they moved so fast he could not catch them. Whereat Billy pouted, and told him severely that he was a bad, naughty boy, and that he did not deserve to be the father of the dearest, most wonderful baby in the world.
“No, I know I don’t,” beamed Bertram, with cheerful unrepentance; “but I am, just the same,” he finished triumphantly. And this time he contrived to find his wife’s lips.
“Oh, Bertram,” sighed Billy, despairingly.
“You’re an old dear, of course, and one just can’t be cross with you; but you don’t, you just _don’t_ realize your Immense Responsibility.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” maintained Bertram so seriously that even Billy herself almost believed him.
In spite of his assertions, however, it must be confessed that Bertram was much more inclined to regard the new member of his family as just his son rather than as an Important Trust; and there is little doubt that he liked to toss him in the air and hear his gleeful crows of delight, without any bother of Observing him at all. As to the Life and Character and Destiny intrusted to his care, it is to be feared that Bertram just plain gloried in his son, poked him in the ribs, and chuckled him under the chin whenever he pleased, and gave never so much as a thought to Character and Destiny. It is to be feared, too, that he was Proud without being Humble, and that the only Opportunity he really appreciated was the chance to show off his wife and baby to some less fortunate fellow-man.
But not so Billy. Billy joined a Mothers’ Club and entered a class in Child Training with an elaborate system of Charts, Rules, and Tests. She subscribed to each new “Mothers’ Helper,” and the like, that she came across, devouring each and every one with an eagerness that was tempered only by a vague uneasiness at finding so many differences of opinion among Those Who Knew.
Undeniably Billy, if not Bertram, was indeed realizing the Enormous Responsibility, and was keeping ever before her the Important Trust.
In June Bertram took a cottage at the South Shore, and by the time the really hot weather arrived the family were well settled. It was only an hour away from Boston, and easy of access, but William said he guessed he would not go; he would stay in Boston, sleeping at the house, and getting his meals at the club, until the middle of July, when he was going down in Maine for his usual fishing trip, which he had planned to take a little earlier than usual this year.
“But you’ll be so lonesome, Uncle William,” Billy demurred, “in this great house all alone!”
“Oh, no, I sha’n’t,” rejoined Uncle William. “I shall only be sleeping here, you know,” he finished. with a slightly peculiar smile.
It was well, perhaps, that Billy did not exactly realize the significance of that smile, nor the unconscious emphasis on the word “sleeping,” for it would have troubled her not a little.
William, to tell the truth, was quite anticipating that sleeping. William’s nights had not been exactly restful since the baby came. His evenings, too, had not been the peaceful things they were wont to be.
Some of Billy’s Rules and Tests were strenuously objected to on the part of her small son, and the young man did not hesitate to show it. Billy said that it was good for the baby to cry, that it developed his lungs; but William was very sure that it was not good for _him_. Certainly, when the baby did cry, William never could help hovering near the center of disturbance, and he always _had_ to remind Billy that it might be a pin, you know, or some cruel thing that was hurting. As if he, William, a great strong man, could sit calmly by and smoke a pipe, or lie in his comfortable bed and sleep, while that blessed little baby was crying his heart out like that! Of course, if one did not _know_ he was crying– Hence William’s anticipation of those quiet, restful nights when he could not know it.
Very soon after Billy’s arrival at the cottage, Aunt Hannah and Alice Greggory came down for a day’s visit. Aunt Hannah had been away from Boston for several weeks, so it was some time since she had seen the baby.
“My, but hasn’t he grown!” she exclaimed, picking the baby up and stooping to give him a snuggling kiss. The next instant she almost dropped the little fellow, so startling had been Billy’s cry.
“No, no, wait, Aunt Hannah, please,” Billy was entreating, hurrying to the little corner cupboard. In a moment she was back with a small bottle and a bit of antiseptic cotton. “We always sterilize our lips now before we kiss him– it’s so much safer, you know.”
Aunt Hannah sat down limply, the baby still in her arms.
“Fiddlededee, Billy! What an absurd idea! What have you got in that bottle?”
“Why, Aunt Hannah, it’s just a little simple listerine,” bridled Billy, “and it isn’t absurd at all. It’s very sensible. My `Hygienic Guide for Mothers’ says–”
“Well, I suppose I may kiss his hand,” interposed Aunt Hannah, just a little curtly, “without subjecting myself to a City Hospital treatment!”
Billy laughed shamefacedly, but she still held her ground.
“No, you can’t–nor even his foot. He might get them in his mouth. Aunt Hannah, why does a baby think that everything, from his own toes to his father’s watch fob and the plush balls on a caller’s wrist-bag, is made to eat? As if I could sterilize everything, and keep him from getting hold of germs somewhere!”
“You’ll have to have a germ-proof room for him,” laughed Alice Greggory, playfully snapping her fingers at the baby in Aunt Hannah’s lap.
Billy turned eagerly.
“Oh, did you read about that, too?” she cried. “I thought it was _so_ interesting, and I wondered if I could do it.”
Alice stared frankly.
“You don’t mean to say they actually _have_ such things,” she challenged.
“Well, I read about them in a magazine,” asserted Billy, “–how you could have a germ- proof room. They said it was very simple, too. Just pasteurize the air, you know, by heating it to one hundred and ten and one-half degrees Fahrenheit for seventeen and one-half minutes. I remember just the figures.”
“Simple, indeed! It sounds so,” scoffed Aunt Hannah, with uplifted eyebrows.
“Oh, well, I couldn’t do it, of course,” admitted Billy, regretfully. “Bertram never’d stand for that in the world. He’s always rushing in to show the baby off to every Tom, Dick and Harry and his wife that comes; and of course if you opened the nursery door, that would let in those germ things, and you _couldn’t_ very well pasteurize your callers by heating them to one hundred and ten and one-half degrees for seventeen and one-half minutes! I don’t see how you could manage such a room, anyway, unless you had a system of– of rooms like locks, same as they do for water in canals.”
“Oh, my grief and conscience–locks, indeed!” almost groaned Aunt Hannah. “Here, Alice, will you please take this child–that is, if you have a germ-proof certificate about you to show to his mother. I want to take off my bonnet and gloves.”
“Take him? Of course I’ll take him,” laughed Alice; “and right under his mother’s nose, too,” she added, with a playful grimace at Billy. “And we’ll make pat-a-cakes, and send the little pigs to market, and have such a beautiful time that we’ll forget there ever was such a thing in the world as an old germ. Eh, babykins?”
“Babykins” cooed his unqualified approval of this plan; but his mother looked troubled.
“That’s all right, Alice. You may play with him,” she frowned doubtfully; “but you mustn’t do it long, you know–not over five minutes.”
“Five minutes! Well, I like that, when I’ve come all the way from Boston purposely to see him,” pouted Alice. “What’s the matter now? Time for his nap?”
“Oh, no, not for–thirteen minutes,” replied Billy, consulting the watch at her belt. “But we never play with Baby more than five minutes at a time. My `Scientific Care of Infants’ says it isn’t wise; that with some babies it’s positively dangerous, until after they’re six months old. It makes them nervous, and forces their mind, you know,” she explained anxiously. “So of course we’d want to be careful. Bertram, Jr., isn’t quite four, yet.”
“Why, yes, of course,” murmured Alice, politely, stopping a pat-a-cake before it was half baked.
The infant, as if suspecting that he was being deprived of his lawful baby rights, began to fret and whimper.
“Poor itty sing,” crooned Aunt Hannah, who, having divested herself of bonnet and gloves, came hurriedly forward with outstretched hands. “Do they just ‘buse ’em? Come here to your old auntie, sweetems, and we’ll go walkee. I saw a bow-wow–such a tunnin’ ickey wickey bow- wow on the steps when I came in. Come, we go see ickey wickey bow-wow?”
“Aunt Hannah, _please!_” protested Billy, both hands upraised in horror. “_Won’t_ you say `dog,’ and leave out that dreadful `ickey wickey’? Of course he can’t understand things now, really, but we never know when he’ll begin to, and we aren’t ever going to let him hear baby-talk at all, if we can help it. And truly, when you come to think of it, it is absurd to expect a child to talk sensibly and rationally on the mental diet of `moo-moos’ and `choo-choos’ served out to them. Our Professor of Metaphysics and Ideology in our Child Study Course says that nothing is so receptive and plastic as the Mind of a Little Child, and that it is perfectly appalling how we fill it with trivial absurdities that haven’t even the virtue of being accurate. So that’s why we’re trying to be so careful with Baby. You didn’t mind my speaking, I know, Aunt Hannah.”
“Oh, no, of course not, Billy,” retorted Aunt Hannah, a little tartly, and with a touch of sarcasm most unlike her gentle self. “I’m sure I shouldn’t wish to fill this infant’s plastic mind with anything so appalling as trivial inaccuracies. May I be pardoned for suggesting, however,” she went on as the baby’s whimper threatened to become a lusty wail, “that this young gentleman cries as if he were sleepy and hungry?”
“Yes, he is,” admitted Billy.
“Well, doesn’t your system of scientific training allow him to be given such trivial absurdities as food and naps?” inquired the lady, mildly.
“Of course it does, Aunt Hannah,” retorted Billy, laughing in spite of herself. “And it’s almost time now. There are only a few more minutes to wait.”
“Few more minutes to wait, indeed!” scorned Aunt Hannah. “I suppose the poor little fellow might cry and cry, and you wouldn’t set that clock ahead by a teeny weeny minute!”
“Certainly not,” said the young mother, decisively. “My `Daily Guide for Mothers’ says that a time for everything and everything in its time, is the very A B C and whole alphabet of Right Training. He does everything by the clock, and to the minute,” declared Billy, proudly.
Aunt Hannah sniffed, obviously skeptical and rebellious. Alice Greggory laughed.
“Aunt Hannah looks as if she’d like to bring down her clock that strikes half an hour ahead,” she said mischievously; but Aunt Hannah did not deign to answer this.
“How long do you rock him?” she demanded of Billy. “I suppose I may do that, mayn’t I?”
“Mercy, I don’t rock him at all, Aunt Hannah,” exclaimed Billy.
“Nor sing to him?”
“Certainly not.”
“But you did–before I went away. I
remember that you did.”
“Yes, I know I did,” admitted Billy, “and I had an awful time, too. Some evenings, every single one of us, even to Uncle William, had to try before we could get him off to sleep. But that was before I got my `Efficiency of Mother and Child,’ or my `Scientific Training,’ and, oh, lots of others. You see, I didn’t know a thing then, and I loved to rock him, so I did it–though the nurse said it wasn’t good for him; but I didn’t believe _her_. I’ve had an awful time changing; but I’ve done it. I just put him in his little crib, or his carriage, and after a while he goes to sleep. Sometimes, now, he doesn’t cry hardly any. I’m afraid, to-day, though, he will,” she worried.
“Yes, I’m afraid he will,” almost screamed Aunt Hannah, in order to make herself heard above Bertram, Jr., who, by this time, was voicing his opinion of matters and things in no uncertain manner.
It was not, after all, so very long before peace and order reigned; and, in due course, Bertram, Jr., in his carriage, lay fast asleep. Then, while Aunt Hannah went to Billy’s room for a short rest, Billy and Alice went out on to the wide veranda which faced the wonderful expanse of sky and sea.
“Now tell me of yourself,” commanded Billy, almost at once. “It’s been ages since I’ve heard or seen a thing of you.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Nonsense! But there must be,” insisted Billy. “You know it’s months since I’ve seen anything of you, hardly.”
“I know. We feel quite neglected at the Annex,” said Alice.
“But I don’t go anywhere,” defended Billy. “I can’t. There isn’t time.”
“Even to bring us the extra happiness?” smiled Alice.
A quick change came to Billy’s face. Her eyes glowed deeply.
“No; though I’ve had so much that ought to have gone–such loads and loads of extra happiness, which I couldn’t possibly use myself!
Sometimes I’m so happy, Alice, that–that I’m just frightened. It doesn’t seem as if anybody ought to be so happy.”
“Oh, Billy, dear,” demurred Alice, her eyes filling suddenly with tears.
“Well, I’ve got the Annex. I’m glad I’ve got that for the overflow, anyway,” resumed Billy, trying to steady her voice. “I’ve sent a whole lot of happiness up there mentally, if I haven’t actually carried it; so I’m sure you must have got it. Now tell me of yourself.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” insisted Alice, as before.
“You’re working as hard as ever?”
“Yes–harder.”
“New pupils?”
“Yes, and some concert engagements–good ones, for next season. Accompaniments, you know.”
Billy nodded.
“Yes; I’ve heard of you already twice, lately, in that line, and very flatteringly, too.”
“Have you? Well, that’s good.”
“Hm-m.” There was a moment’s silence, then, abruptly, Billy changed the subject. “I had a letter from Belle Calderwell, yesterday.” She paused expectantly, but there was no comment.
“You don’t seem interested,” she frowned, after a minute.
Alice laughed.
“Pardon me, but–I don’t know the Lady, you see. Was it a good letter?”
“You know her brother.”
“Very true.” Alice’s cheeks showed a deeper color. “Did she say anything of him?”
“Yes. She said he was coming back to Boston next winter.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. She says that this time he declares he really _is_ going to settle down to work,” murmured Billy, demurely, with a sidelong glance at her companion. “She says he’s engaged to be married –one of her friends over there.”
There was no reply. Alice appeared to be absorbed in watching a tiny white sail far out at sea.
Again Billy was silent. Then, with studied carelessness, she said:
“Yes, and you know Mr. Arkwright, too. She told of him.”
“Yes? Well, what of him?” Alice’s voice was studiedly indifferent.
“Oh, there was quite a lot of him. Belle had just been to hear him sing, and then her brother had introduced him to her. She thinks he’s perfectly wonderful, in every way, I should judge. In fact, she simply raved over him. It seems that while we’ve been hearing nothing from him all winter, he’s been winning no end of laurels for himself in Paris and Berlin. He’s been studying, too, of course, as well as singing; and now he’s got a chance to sing somewhere–create a r
something–Belle said she wasn’t quite clear on the matter herself, but it was a perfectly splendid chance, and one that was a fine feather in his cap.”
“Then he won’t be coming home–that is, to Boston–at all this winter, probably,” said Alice, with a cheerfulness that sounded just a little forced.
“Not until February. But he is coming then. He’s been engaged for six performances with the Boston Opera Company–as a star tenor, mind you! Isn’t that splendid?”
“Indeed it is,” murmured Alice.
“Belle writes that Hugh says he’s improved wonderfully, and that even he can see that his singing is marvelous. He says Paris is wild over him; but–for my part, I wish he’d come home and stay here where he belongs,” finished Billy, a bit petulantly.
“Why, why, Billy!” murmured her friend, a curiously startled look coming into her eyes.
“Well, I do,” maintained Billy; then, recklessly, she added: “I had such beautiful plans for him, once, Alice. Oh, if you only could have cared for him, you’d have made such a splendid couple!”
A vivid scarlet flew to Alice’s face.
“Nonsense!” she cried, getting quickly to her feet and bending over one of the flower boxes along the veranda railing. “Mr. Arkwright never thought of marrying me–and I’m not going to marry anybody but my music.”
Billy sighed despairingly.
“I know that’s what you say now; but if–” She stopped abruptly. Around the turn of the veranda had appeared Aunt Hannah, wheeling Bertram, Jr., still asleep in his carriage.
“I came out the other door,” she explained softly. “And it was so lovely I just had to go in and get the baby. I thought it would be so nice for him to finish his nap out here.”
Billy arose with a troubled frown.
“But, Aunt Hannah, he mustn’t–he can’t stay out here. I’m sorry, but we’ll have to take him back.”
Aunt Hannah’s eyes grew mutinous.
“But I thought the outdoor air was just the thing for him. I’m sure your scientific hygienic nonsense says _that!_”
“They do–they did–that is, some of them do,” acknowledged Billy, worriedly; “but they differ, so! And the one I’m going by now says that Baby should always sleep in an _even_ temperature–seventy degrees, if possible; and that’s exactly what the room in there was, when I left him. It’s not the same out here, I’m sure. In fact I looked at the thermometer to see, just before I came out myself. So, Aunt Hannah, I’m afraid I’ll have to take him back.”
“But you used to have him sleep out of doors all the time, on that little balcony out of your room,” argued Aunt Hannah, still plainly unconvinced.
“Yes, I know I did. I was following the other man’s rules, then. As I said, if only they wouldn’t differ so! Of course I want the best; but it’s so hard to always know the best, and–”
At this very inopportune moment Master Bertram took occasion to wake up, which brought
even a deeper wrinkle of worry to his fond mother’s forehead; for she said that, according to the clock, he should have been sleeping exactly ten and one-half more minutes, and that of course he couldn’t commence the next thing until those ten and one-half minutes were up, or else his entire schedule for the day would be shattered. So what she should do with him for those should-have- been-sleeping ten minutes and a half, she did not know. All of which drew from Aunt Hannah the astounding exclamation of:
“Oh, my grief and conscience, Billy, if you aren’t the–the limit!” Which, indeed, she must have been, to have brought circumspect Aunt Hannah to the point of actually using slang.
CHAPTER XXIV
A NIGHT OFF
The Henshaw family did not return to the Strata until late in September. Billy said that the sea air seemed to agree so well with the baby it would be a pity to change until the weather became really too cool at the shore to be comfortable.
William came back from his fishing trip in August, and resumed his old habit of sleeping at the house and taking his meals at the club. To be sure, for a week he went back and forth between the city and the beach house; but it happened to be a time when Bertram, Jr., was cutting a tooth, and this so wore upon William’s sympathy– William still could not help insisting
it _might_ be a pin–that he concluded peace lay only in flight. So he went back to the Strata.
Bertram had stayed at the cottage all summer, painting industriously. Heretofore he had taken more of a vacation through the summer months, but this year there seemed to be nothing for him to do but to paint. He did not like to go away on a trip and leave Billy, and she declared she could not take the baby nor leave him, and that she did not need any trip, anyway.
“All right, then, we’ll just stay at the beach, and have a fine vacation together,” he had answered her.
As Bertram saw it, however, he could detect very little “vacation” to it. Billy had no time for anything but the baby. When she was not actually engaged in caring for it, she was studying how to care for it. Never had she been
sweeter or dearer, and never had Bertram loved her half so well. He was proud, too, of her devotion, and of her triumphant success as a mother; but he did wish that sometimes, just once in a while, she would remember she was a wife, and pay a little attention to him, her husband.
Bertram was ashamed to own it, even to himself, but he was feeling just a little abused that summer; and he knew that, in his heart, he was actually getting jealous of his own son, in spite of his adoration of the little fellow. He told himself defensively that it was not to be expected that he should not want the love of his wife, the attentions of his wife, and the companionship of his wife–a part of the time. It was nothing more than natural that occasionally he should like to see her show some interest in subjects not mentioned in Mothers’ Guides and Scientific Trainings of Infants; and he did not believe he could be blamed for wanting his residence to be a home for himself as well as a nursery for his offspring.
Even while he thus discontentedly argued with himself, however, Bertram called himself a selfish brute just to think such things when he had so dear and loving a wife as Billy, and so fine and splendid a baby as Bertram, Jr. He told himself, too, that very likely when they were back in their own house again, and when motherhood was not so new to her, Billy would not be so absorbed in the baby. She would return to her old interest in her husband, her music, her friends, and her own personal appearance. Meanwhile there was always, of course, for him, his painting. So he would paint, accepting gladly what crumbs of attention fell from the baby’s table, and trust to the future to make Billy none the less a mother, perhaps, but a little more the wife.
Just how confidently he was counting on this coming change, Bertram hardly realized himself; but certainly the family was scarcely settled at the Strata before the husband gayly proposed one evening that he and Billy should go to the theater to see “Romeo and Juliet.”
Billy was clearly both surprised and shocked.
“Why, Bertram, I can’t–you know I can’t!” she exclaimed reprovingly.
Bertram’s heart sank; but he kept a brave front.
“Why not?”
“What a question! As if I’d leave Baby!”
“But, Billy, dear, you’d be gone less than three hours, and you say Delia’s the most careful of nurses.”
Billy’s forehead puckered into an anxious frown.
“I can’t help it. Something might happen to him, Bertram. I couldn’t be happy a minute.”
“But, dearest, aren’t you _ever_ going to leave him?” demanded the young husband, forlornly.
“Why, yes, of course, when it’s reasonable and necessary. I went out to the Annex yesterday afternoon. I was gone almost two whole
hours.”
“Well, did anything happen?”
“N-no; but then I telephoned, you see, several times, so I _knew_ everything was all right.”
“Oh, well, if that’s all you want, I could telephone, you know, between every act,” suggested Bertram, with a sarcasm that was quite lost on the earnest young mother.
“Y-yes, you could do that, couldn’t you?” conceded Billy; “and, of course, I _haven’t_ been anywhere much, lately.”
“Indeed I could,” agreed Bertram, with a promptness that carefully hid his surprise at her literal acceptance of what he had proposed as a huge joke. “Come, is it a go? Shall I telephone to see if I can get seats?”
“You think Baby’ll surely be all right?”
“I certainly do.”
“And you’ll telephone home between every act?”
“I will.” Bertram’s voice sounded almost as if he were repeating the marriage service.
“And we’ll come straight home afterwards as fast as John and Peggy can bring us?”
“Certainly.”