The two walked together to the gate, dogs and cats following in their wake. Then, with an exclamation, Mr. Wilkins had a joyful thought. Excusing himself, he rushed into his house, and returned almost immediately with a little square jewel box of old worn white satin. He opened it with elaborate movements of delight. There, on a cushion of blue silk was an ancient round locket of gold, encrusted with tiny seed pearls and inlaid with intricate designs in blue, black and scarlet enamel. The chain was of fine gold, strung with small but perfect rosy pearls. The workmanship was exquisite, and even John could not control an exclamation of admiring astonishment. Mr. Wilkins triumphantly thrust the box into the young man’s hands.
“For the little lass!” he cried. “A present from old Bob! I looked long and ’ard for this, Johnnie.”
“Thank you,” said John, really touched.
“You’ll give the little lass a kiss from me,” urged Mr. Wilkins, beaming. “And my compliments to her lady mother.”
John nodded. Mr. Wilkins locked the gate after him. Then Mr. Wilkins sighed, and let the sunny light fade from his countenance.
“From wot I sees, Mrs. Bollister will be presenting her husband with an heir, soon,” he said.
The great and devastating black pain descended upon John again. The little light and pleasure which had come momentarily to him was gone. But he said nothing. He walked away, his big head bent. Mr. Wilkins watched him go, smiling slyly and evilly to himself.
CHAPTER 24
“I should prefer, of course, a less pretentious name for a child,” said Miss Beardsley, with some severity. “Such as Mary, or Jane, or Rose. But that is entirely your own affair, my dear Lilybelle. Lavinia, however, in my opinion, is a formidable name.”
She opened a sheaf of yellowed white tissue and produced a most exquisite little dress of ivory satin, very long, and covered with webs of miraculously fine lace, so delicate that it seemed as if a breath would break the faery threads. The stitches were so lovingly done, so tiny, that they melted into the luscious fabric, and the little sleeves, puffed and lacy, caught the summer light that streamed in through the bedroom windows.
Lilybelle, lying upon her heaped and ruffled pillows, uttered an exclamation of reverential delight. She allowed the dress to be laid upon the bedclothes, but she held her breath and leaned back from it, terrified that her coarse, strong, young touch would destroy it.
“My christening dress,” said Miss Beardsley, augustly pleased at Lilybelle’s manner. “It was made in France, under my mama’s supervision. It will give me great pleasure if little Lavinia wears it at her own christening.”
“Oh, how can I thank you?” stammered Lilybelle, the tears thick in her big foolish blue eyes. She gazed at Miss Beardsley with swimming adoration.
Smiling austerely, Miss Beardsley smoothed the beautiful lace and satin with a gentle bony hand. For a moment the long gaunt face was quite gentle and sweet under the white cap. Then, all at once she sighed, as if some sad and nostalgic thought, impregnated with old dreams, had come to her.
She cleared her throat delicately after a moment. “Of course, I would advise—extra padding just behind. Or an extra thick folded napkin, to be inserted between the dress, and the—er—petticoat. Just for necessary protection.”
“Oh, yes,” breathed Lilybelle, enchanted. “You have to do that, I know. Babies get so wet, unexpected like. It—it wouldn’t be nice if you were embarrassed, Miss Beardsley, you being the godmother and all.”
Miss Beardsley smiled even more. She lovingly replaced the dress in its paper, which was redolent of camphor. “Lavinia Amanda Turnbull,” she said. “Quite a formidable name for so small a girl.”
She rose with a rustle of her black bombazine hoops, and with stately tread approached the belaced, beribboned and beflounced bassinet which stood behind a screen near the window. She bent over it majestically. There, on satin pillows, and under the whitest of woollen shawls lay the baby. It was a pretty child, for all it was less than two weeks old, rosy, plump, sweet-smelling. Its face was round, with a clear olive skin touched with bright rose, and long black lashes swept its smooth cheeks. An extraordinary thick mass of lustrous black curls covered the round head and cast a shadow on the white satin of the pillows, as if it threw out a dark light of its own. The little mouth was very red, and pursed imperiously, and there was a frown, curiously mature, between the dark brows. It was a discontented and haughty little face, even peevish, but very beautiful.
Miss Beardsley touched the warm cheek with one lean finger, and held her breath. A curious look of sadness and longing passed over her severe gray countenance. She whispered something inaudible, even incoherent, as if strange words rose from her hard and spinsterish heart.
The nursemaid, all starch and militancy, appeared as out of nowhere, a high white cap perched on her gray hair. But Miss Beardsley daunted even this grenadier; and she waited until that lady had withdrawn into the room again before picking up the child and taking it to the young mother. Lilybelle received her daughter with fatuous delight, simply and naturally bared her full and pearly breast, and placed the child at it. Miss Beardsley, who thought the procedure unesthetic, nevertheless found dèep beauty in the sight, and only slightly averted her eyes as she seated herself again, assuming a stronger severity as if she implied that while all this was natural she deplored the ways of nature as being vulgar. But her dried and fallen breasts ached strangely, and she thought to herself: I must really see Dr. Burrows soon. There may be something wrong with my heart, though the Beardsleys were not given to such weaknesses.
It was she who had assisted the doctor and the nurse during the birth of the child, and she was still horrified, if oddly moved, at the memory. Nature was really quite vulgar, indeed, and quite shameless. She remembered Lilybelle’s bare threshing limbs, and how she had repeatedly tried to cover them decorously from the doctor’s callous eyes. She had winced and turned quite crimson at other revelations, also, about which Lilybelle, in her extremity, had shown no delicacy at all, but had kept her mouth open and fixed and screaming, her eyes distended with her agony. But Miss Beardsley had missed nothing. Some nameless urge had kept her riveted by the bed, covering up Lilybelle’s panting breast when it was too exposed in its struggling abandon, drawing the sheet over the threshing round white thighs, to the doctor’s impatience. “My dear madam,” he said at last, bluntly, “I’ve got to see what I’m doing here, if you please. Children don’t emerge coyly from under sheets while we avert our eyes. They come out quite boldly and shamelessly the way they went in.”
This remark so revolted and horrified Miss Beardsley that she did not attempt to cover Lilybelle’s legs again for some three minutes. She thought the doctor quite intolerable and disgusting: If he had no more delicacy or sensitive feelings than to aid and abet an abandoned nature in its raw exposures without apology, then he was no gentleman. He ought to be the one to be blushing, instead of herself, he belonging to that sex which in its vulgarity and shamelessness brought this upon demure young women, and forced them to submit to such a mortifying experience. If I were a man, she thought in outrage, I’d feel humiliated and degraded the rest of my life. She was confirmed in her opinion that men were an odious and disgusting sex, and not to be tolerated by gentlewomen, who were their helpless victims,
Lilybelle, being a lusty young woman, and no lady, screamed with heartiness and abandon. But this was more excitement than pain or fear. She screamed for her husband, who had been firmly told by the doctor to remain outside. She cursed, too, to Miss Beardsley’s grim horror and the doctor’s delighted appreciation. But she gave up the child in less than three hours, upon which the doctor commended her as if she had done this by some fine virtue of her own, and some personal will. Immediately after the child was born in a gush of blood and water quite overpowering to Miss Beardsley, Lilybelle had subsided like a rosy and smiling goddess upon her bed, had demanded to see the struggling and slimy little creature, and had asked for tea.
Miss
Beardsley was very shaken, and overwhelmed. But she had gone out calmly enough to inform the anxious young father of the birth of his daughter. He had looked dully disappointed at the sex of the child, and so did not notice Miss Beardsley’s bitterly condemning eyes and expression of loathing for him. He seemed entirely unaware that he ought to be grovelling and hiding his face in very shame for being a partner to this humiliation. He had burst past Miss Beardsley, without a blush or a murmur, though she stood near him in a grim and censorious attitude.
John had flung himself into the room and had rushed to Lilybelle’s bed. He had forgotten that he hated and despised her. He had fallen on his knees beside her, had snatched up her hands and gazed fearfully upon her smiling and proud face. “You are quite well, Lily?” he had demanded, in a broken voice. “Quite well?”
And, from the new elevation of her womanhood and wisdom, she had smiled upon him gently, and had lifted her bitten lips for his kiss. He did not hesitate in giving that kiss; it was bestowed with simple affection and gratitude, and then he had kissed her hands, so warm and strong, and so suddenly gentle. He had not been very interested in the baby, and felt some repugnance for its noisy and crumpled red state, and some fear that it would remain hideous. Later, he had sat beside the sleeping Lilybelle, and the strangest sensation of numbness and calm and peace had come over him. It was the first time in nearly a year that he had felt the abatement of his misery.
It took him all of a week to remember that she had ruined his life, that he detested her, that he wished he had never laid eyes upon her. It took some remembering on his part to recall that when she had first timidly told him of her condition he had reviled and cursed her. And when he did remember, and revealed it to her roughly, she did not weep as she had done, nor look overly sad. She simply ignored it, with first a small sigh, and then a serene smile.
Each night he came in to see the baby, to ask curtly if his wife was well, to drop a cold dry kiss on her forehead, to answer her childish questions. And then he would leave her, not to see her until the next night. But in spite of himself, the child’s suddenly blooming beauty entranced and fascinated him, and try as he would, he could not help feeling a surge of gratitude towards his wife for giving him this mysterious and lovely young creature, so like himself.
Miss Beardsley’s affection for Lilybelle was compounded of egotism, vanity and gratification at Lilybelle’s worshipful and reverential attitude toward her. In short, her affection was no different in any way from the affections of the rest of mankind. Moreover, the Turnbulls were financially secure, for the present at least, and this entitled them to a certain respect from Miss Beardsley. It is doubtful, however much her affection for Lilybelle and the child, that she would have tolerated any of the family had financial disaster overtaken them. “Friendship,” she would frequently say, with firmness, “ends where money begins.” She found nothing odious in her sentiments, which, again, she shared with many other people. Money was sacrosanct, a thing apart, not to be confused with any human relationship, but to be protected from that relationship at all costs. She would often assert that “money was nothing, nothing at all,” but like all such protestors she did not believe it in the least. Had she been told that such sentiments were onerous, even dangerous, and contained no virtue, she would have been righteously angry. She and all her friends understood firmly that money had nothing to do with the virtues at all, should never be confused by them, and kept aloof from them.
Had, indeed, the Turnbulls become paupers, she would have turned them out without a qualm, and with only the loftiest feelings. They had violated the sacredness of money. Had they, under such circumstances, appealed to her charity, she would have been outraged, truly and sincerely indignant. They would have dared to step within the circle of forbidden ground, and the odium would have been theirs, not hers, upon her refusal to assist them.
But in the last few months her affection for Lilybelle had increased, for John had proved himself “worthy” of some consideration even from Miss Beardsley. The young couple had rented the whole large second floor from the amiable spinster, and there were four servants now to care for their wants. There was a nursemaid for the baby, a housekeeper, a cook and a housemaid, rooms for all of which had also been rented by the Turnbulls on the fourth floor among Miss Beardsley’s two housemaids. There was, on this same floor, also, practically a self-prisoner in a miserable unheated room, a cousin of Miss Beardsley’s, a middle-aged widow who had been robbed by a profligate husband before his death. It did not matter to Miss Beardsley that Mrs. Bowden was practically a pauper by no fault of her own. Her sole concern was that Mrs. Bowden was indeed a pauper, and thus less than a human being, and entitled to shrift from neither God nor man. Miss Beardsley severely collected five dollars a month from her cousin for that room, allowed her to devour the few lean leavings left over from her own meals, for another two dollars a month, and made it very clear to the hapless woman that, as she had violated the most sacred command of society by being a pauper, she must keep out of sight as much as possible. Had any one told Miss Beardsley that she was a monster, cruel, virulent and without gentleness of heart, she would have been dumfounded, and later, overcome with virtuous anger. She would have retired to her room in high insult and fury, and that night would have said her prayers in a quavering voice of rage, imploring the God of the solvent to forgive her denouncer for his crime and his ignorance.
But Lilybelle, not being possessed overmuch of Christian virtue, nor of Christian understanding of the heinousness of being a pauper, had discovered poor Mrs. Bowden in her eyrie and had set herself out to alleviate her wretched lot in furtive ways which Miss Beardsley would have found most stupid and outrageous. (How dare any one interfere with the just punishment of the insolvent? she would have asked. How dare any one insult the dignity of God by “encouraging” the existence of pauperism? Did not the Bible itself say: “These four count as dead: the poor, the blind, the childless and the lepers”?) However, Lilybelle, not being a true Christian, had her housemaid carry up well-loaded trays to the eyrie, and warm woollen garments, and a bottle or two of good wine. She had also, with a reprehensible slyness, had a little iron stove smuggled up to the roof, and bags of coal, and a vast quantity of candles. To demonstrate further her unregenerate and unChristian sinfulness, she often inserted envelopes with banknotes under Mrs. Bowden’s door.
As the Turnbulls were now so prosperous, it is doubtful if Miss Beardsley would have turned them out of doors because of Lilybelle’s heinous and indecent actions. But she would have been much outraged. However, her opinion of the lower classes’ mentality and unChristian sinfulness would have been even the more confirmed. Lilybelle, for all her stupidity, understood this very well. But she was a generous and warmhearted young fool, tolerant as only the expansive of spirit can be. Miss Beardsley had “her ways,” and, according to Lilybelle, she was entitled to them for the sole reason that she was a human being. But Miss Beardsley, however much she was possessed of Lilybelle’s admiration and sincere adulation, would have been astonished had she known that her protégé often had cunning and cynical thoughts about her.
Miss Beardsley had unbent so far (on the coming of the housekeeper, housemaid, cook and nurse) as to be tolerant of John Turnbull, even though he had afflicted a shamefulness upon a fellow woman. Because he, like Lilybelle, had had no extensive experience with humanity, he had come to the conclusion that Miss Beardsley was not at all bad, though peculiar, and so, at times, he could be gracious towards her.
Miss Beardsley, being softened by John’s increasing prosperity, was given to short and reluctant remarks about him to his young wife, remarks touched with tolerance and austere approval. Too, she had frequently demonstrated her growing kindliness towards him and his wife. To the solvent, all things came, she believed. In giving Lilybelle little gifts, and the child, also, she demonstrated her basic philosophy, that to those that have more should be given. The mighty were very generous to each other, and that is as it
should be.
Today, as she reflected on the baby, she remembered that Mr. Wilkins had told her that John was heir presumptive to a large fortune upon his father’s death, and this increased her tenderness for little Lavinia Amanda, her godchild. There was no possibility, then, that this child would ever be a pauper, and so insult Miss Beardsley by her existence.
Therefore, though slightly disgusted by the method by which babies are fed, she found beauty in the sight of Lilybelle nursing her child. Lilybelle wore a nightgown of the finest cambric, floating with delicate lace at the neck and wrists, and over her plump young shoulders spilled the masses of her bright auburn hair. Her round face, so pretty and so stupid, had a kind of light over it as she brooded over the baby. Her big coarse hands were infinitely gentle, tenderly touching the sweating little forehead, or holding the red crumpled hand. She forgot Miss Beardsley. Her whole being was absorbed in the wonder and glory of this new life. The sunlight, pouring in the window, made a ruddy halo of her hair, increased the pearly tints of her shoulder and bosom. There was the strong and earthy holiness about her which sheds radiance on all young mothers. When she lifted her head, her bemused eyes were full of blue light, and her smile was soft and beautiful.
Miss Beardsley cleared her throat, and asked severely about Mr. Turnbull’s health. Lilybelle’s radiant expression changed. The light was more subdued, but her smile became broader.
“He is well, thank you,” she replied, in the new measured tones which Miss Beardsley had painstakingly taught her, and which she conscientiously tried to employ on all occasions. The feeding having been concluded, the nursemaid inexorably removed the baby from Lilybelle’s reluctant arms, and bore her back to her bassinet, where sundry things were done with napkins and cornstarch. Lilybelle’s eyes followed the nursemaid somewhat resentfully. She was determined that as soon as she could leave her bed she would take care of her baby herself.
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