"AND, BEHOLD, THE BABE WEPT"
And, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion upon him.
The night-porter sat in his lodge at 1 a.m., trying hard to keep off the sleep that weighed his eyelids down—that heavy sleep that all night-watchers know when nothing in the world seems worth a longer vigil.
But the man before him had been dismissed for sleeping on duty, and our night-porter had had six months out of work, so, with resolute determination, he dragged up his leaden limbs and began to pace the corridors towards the Mental Ward, where he knew the screams of the insane were generally to be relied upon to keep sleep away from any one in the neighbourhood. To-night all was quiet, and it was with a brief prayer of thanksgiving that he heard the insistent note of the electric bell, and rushed to answer it, the lethargy leaving him under the necessity of action.
A policeman entered in a blast of wind and rain, drops off his cape, making black runlets on the white stone floor. From under his arm he drew a red bundle and laid it carefully down on a mat in front of the fire. "Evening, porter, I've brought you a present from the cabbage-bed. What do you think of that for a saucy girl? Hush, my dear! don't cry," as the babe, unsettled from his warm arms, gave forth a shrill cry of displeasure. "Pretty little thing, ain't she? and left out under a laurel-bush this bitter night. Some women are worse than brutes."
The porter, who was himself a married man, picked up the babe and soothed it in practised arms. "And 'ow about the father? Something as calls itself a man 'as 'ad an 'and in this business, and druv the gal to it, may be. My old dad allus says, 'God cuss the scoundrel who leaves a poor lass to bear her trouble alone!'"
"And now," said the policeman, when the nurse, summoned by telephone, had borne off the indignant babe to the Children's Ward, "I suppose you must enter the case. I found the kid under a laurel-bush at 7, Daventry Terrace. A lady blew a whistle out of the window and said she could not sleep for a whining outside. I tried to put her off as it was cats, but she stuck to it; so, just to quiet her, I cast round with my lantern, and, sure enough, she was right. Mighty upset about it, poor woman, she was, being a single lady. However, as I told her, such things may happen in any garden, married or single."
A name was chosen for her by an imaginative member of the House Committee, remembering his classical education—Daphne Daventry—the Christian name as an everlasting reminder of her foster parent the laurel-bush.
In due season the familiar notices were posted at the police-stations offering "a reward for the discovery of person or persons unknown who had abandoned a female infant in the garden of 7, Daventry Terrace, whereby the aforesaid female infant had become chargeable to the parish"; and, the Press giving publicity to the affair, offers of adoption poured in to the Guardians—pathetic letters from young mothers whose children had died, and business-like communications from middle-aged couples, who had "weighed the matter" and were "prepared to adopt the foundling."
The Board discussed the question at their next meeting, and the Clerk was directed to inquire into the character and circumstances of the most likely applicants.
"One thing to which I should like to draw the attention of the Board," said a conscientious Guardian, "is the importance of bringing up a child in the religion of its parents."
"Seems to me, in this case," retorted a working-man member, who was also a humorist, "that it might be a good thing to try a change."
And then the Clerk, in his clear legal way, pointed out that the religious question had better not be pressed, as there was small evidence before him as to the theological tenets of the person or persons unknown who had exposed the female infant.
Meantime, the latest workhouse character slumbered in the nursery in passive enjoyment of the excellent rate-supported fires, and was fed with a scientific fluid, so Pasteurized and sterilized and generally Bowdlerized that it seemed quite vulgar to call it milk. The nurses adorned the cot with all the finery they could collect, and all the women in the place managed to evade the rules of classification, and got into the nursery, where they dandled the infant and said it was "a shame."
One of the most devoted worshippers at the shrine of Daphne Daventry was a lady Guardian, a frail and tiny little woman, with a pair of wide-open eyes, from which a look of horror was never wholly absent. She was always very shabbily dressed—so shabbily, indeed, that a new official had once taken her for a "case" and conducted her to the waiting-room of applicants for relief. After such an object-lesson, any other woman would have gone to do some shopping; but not so the little lady Guardian—she did not even brighten her dowdiness with a new pair of bonnet-strings. Though she wrote herself down in the nomination-papers as a "married woman," no one had ever seen or heard of her husband, and report said that he was either a lunatic or a convict.
This mystery of her married life, combined with her "dreadful appearance" and a certain reckless generosity towards the poor, made her many enemies amongst scientific philanthropists. Her large-hearted charity had been given to the just and the unjust, to the drunk as well as the sober, and the Charity Organization Society complained that her investigations were not thorough, and that the quality of her mercy was neither strained nor trained. But the little lady Guardian opened her old silk purse again and quoted the Scriptures: "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow turn not thou away."
The C.O.S. replied, such precepts had proved to be out of date economically, and nominated a more modern lady, who had missed a great career as a private detective.
But the little lady Guardian had a faithful majority, and her name was always head of the poll.
One afternoon, as the little lady Guardian sat by the fire with Daphne Daventry on her shabby serge lap, a prospective parent, Mrs. Annie Smith, was brought up to see if she "took to the child."
"Oh, what a lovely baby!" she cried, falling on her knees to adore. "What nice blue eyes, and what dear little hands! And her hair is beginning to grow already! Both my children died five years ago; I have never had another, and I just feel as if I could not live without a baby. It is terrible to lose one's children."
"It is worse to have none."
"Oh, no, no!"
"Yes, it is," said the little lady Guardian in a low voice, as if she were talking to herself. "When I was a little girl I had six sailor-boy dolls, and I always meant to have six sons; but directly after my marriage I realized it could never be."
Mrs. Smith had known sorrow, and, feeling by intuition that she was in the presence of no ordinary tragedy, she held her peace.
"Perhaps," she asked presently, "you are going to adopt this baby? You seem very fond of her."
"I love all babies, but I don't think I could adopt one; these workhouse children don't start fair, and I should be too frightened. If the child went wrong later, I don't think I could bear it."
Mrs. Smith had been a pupil-teacher, and in the last five years of leisure she had read widely, if confusedly, at the free library. "But people now no longer believe in heredity. Weissman's theory is that environment is stronger then heredity."
"Oh!" said the little lady Guardian.
"Do read him," said Mrs. Smith excitedly, "and then you won't feel so low-spirited, and perhaps the Guardians will let you adopt the next foundling. But please let me have this one. I have taken to her more than I thought. Oh! please, please——"
"I will vote for you at the next Board meeting," said the little lady Guardian, "and may she make up to you for the children you have lost."
A few days later Mrs. Annie Smith, her honest face beaming with joy, arrived again at the workhouse, followed by a small servant with a big bundle. The attiring of the infant was long and careful, and many came to help, and then Daphne Daventry was whirled away in a flutter of purple and fine linen, and the burden of the rates was lightened.