Baby.
I've got a baby, you know. There! if you laugh, I'll not tell you a single word about it. You won't laugh any more? Very well; then don't. My dear old toad—husband, I mean—Dan, who is the born image of baby—oh! yes, a very pretty ruse, indeed, pretending to blow your nose. Can't I see you laughing behind your handkerchief? I've got sharp eyes! Of course I have. All mothers have. Now, be good, and sit up like a man, and—there—don't be putting your hand up that way over your face, because I can see clean through it. What do you say? Good gracious! That remark is not appropriate. However, I forgive you, for it might be if you knew what I'm going to tell you. My dear old toa—husband—is so fond of baby that I don't think I am fonder of him myself; and that is saying all I can say, and all I could wish to say, because baby's me, and I'm baby, as I love to imagine sometimes when I ask myself how much I want Dan to love his foolish little wife and Our Baby. Really, please don't hold your breath in that style; I'm always dreadfully frightened when baby does it.
Now, husband loving baby and me as he does, there's not the least doubt in the world that I am the happiest little woman, and the most contented little wife, that the world ever saw. Perhaps I may exaggerate, but ask dear Dan. If his opinion differs from mine, I'll modify it; for I think he has the best judgment of any man I ever saw. "Tot," he often says, (the dear old toad always calls me Tot, because I'm small,) "my opinion coincides precisely with yours, and, if I have any amendment to make, I feel sure that you yourself would have made it under the circumstances." Of course, I ask if any amendment occurs to his mind. Then he tells me, and, in fact, I see that it is just such an amendment as I would make under the circumstances. Oh! he has the most perfect judgment, has my husband. He not only knows what is best, but he knows just what I would think best. For instance, about what name baby should be christened. If it was to be a boy, I settled at once in my mind that he should be called Daniel, after his papa, to be sure. To think of any other name would be sheer nonsense. But now see the judgment of my old toad. "I was thinking just the same as you, Tot," said he, "and your choice of my own name for the little stranger is the very one I had hoped you would choose; but, knowing how much you and I loved poor brother Alf—who was drowned at sea—I determined to renounce my name in his favor, and so dear brother Alf with his sunny face would live again in our child. If little Tot thinks of that, she will be sure to agree with me." Did I agree with him? Of course I did. What foolish questions you men will ask. I'd no more think of calling him Daniel after that, than of calling him, well—Nebuchodonosor—or some other such heathen name. So the priest christened him Alfred.
Oh! we had such fun at the party. Old Mr. Pillikins—the old gentleman, you recollect, you met here last winter, with the gold spectacles and shiny bald head—was so droll. He wanted to drink baby's health, but somehow he had not heard his name, so looking over to me he says:
"And his name is—"
"Begins with an A," said I.
"Begins with an A," he says after me. "Good, very good. First letter of the alphabet, where all good children ought to begin,
'A was an apple that hung on a tree:'
and the second letter is—"
"Is L, to be sure," said I.
"L! what else could it be?" Mr. Pillikins accented the word else, and then, after he had explained it to us, we had such a good laugh. Wasn't it an excellent pun? Then he thought he had it. So, taking up his glass in his right hand and putting the thumb of his left hand in the armhole of his waistcoat, he says;
"Alexander!"
"No, no," says I, "not Alexander."
"Not Alexander! True," says he, putting his glass down again. "I was about to add that Alexander had an A and an L, but did not have an—"
"F after it," cried Mrs. Gowsky, from the bottom of the table.
"Madam, you are quite right," replied Mr. Pillikins, bowing. "It has not an F after it, as the baby's name undoubtedly has, and the effect is certainly, more inefable on account of it. Ha, ha! you understand?" Never was there such a punster as the old gentleman. "And then follows a—"
"All the rest," said I, "is just what you did with your Herald this morning, Mr. Pillikins. What was that?"
"Madam, I tore it up."
"No, no. What was the first thing you did with it?"
"Madam, I dried it before the grate. The newspapers nowadays come so damp to one that it is enough to give one the gout in the fingers to hold them."
"Think again," I continued. "What did you do with it after having dried it?"
"Madam, I glanced over its contents, and—"
"O you tease!" said I, "you didn't do anything of the kind. You read it. There!"
"Yes, madam. I read it."
"Well, there's the baby's name, then," I exclaimed, almost losing my patience. "Don't you see?"
"Positively, madam, I did not. It is not the fashion to record births nowadays. Only the marriages and deaths."
"Well," said I, after the laugh this raised had somewhat subsided, "It might have been recorded there, for all I care. It would have been a happy piece of information, and giving a good example—" Now what are you laughing at?—"A happy piece of information," says I, "and that's more than can be said of many other items to be found in its columns."
Having got at the name, at last, Mr. Pillikins made a very pretty speech, at which everybody clapped their hands and smiled, and everything went off pleasantly, except Mr. Gowsky's son, Peter, who broke his wine-glass by hammering it on the table, and then fell backward, sprawling on the floor, from a bad habit he has of tilting his chair up. He scared baby so, that, to tell the truth, I had no pity for him in his confusion, and rather enjoyed his blushes, which never left him all the rest of the evening.
I am malicious? Not I; but a poor, dear baby that cannot protect itself must not be abused with impunity. I was near fainting with fright, too, when I heard the sound; for I thought it must be the baby that had fallen out of its nurse's arms. First thought always about baby? To be sure, bless his little heart, and the last too! You can sit there twiddling your thumbs as if you did not agree with me; but I don't mind you; for what do you know about babies? Dan says, and very truly, that a mother whose first and last thought is not about her baby is not likely to give much thought at all, either first or last, to her husband. I can't understand it; but Dan tells me that nowadays Protestant wives have a horror of babies. I never thought of it before; but there is Mrs. Johnson, she has only one child; and there is Mrs. Thompson, who has but two; and Mrs. Simpson, who is married now six years, and has no children at all. It is so all through the Protestant community, Dan says; and that there are actually more Protestants die than are born. It must be their religion, I suppose, but I cannot imagine how a woman, if she had no religion at all—and the Protestants have got some kind of one or other—could hate babies.
As for me, I can hardly tell you how much I love baby, and how proud I am of him; and well I may be. Dinah Jenkins, his nurse, says that she has nursed a good many babies, but such a baby as Our Baby she never yet saw.
"Hi, missus," said she one day, "dis colored woman t'ought she knowed all kinds o' babies as ever war or ever could be. G'way, Dinah, says I, soon as I luff my eyes on to dis child," (that's Our Baby,) "dis baby ain't no mo' like de babies you's nussed, an' I'se nussed a heap on 'em in my time, dan—dan—stick yer head in de fire!" And as I often say to dear Dan, she is the most truthful woman I ever met.
Have I a black woman for a wet-nurse? No, I have'nt a black woman for a wet-nurse, nor a white woman either. Oh! you are such a stupid!
I am the child's mother, am I not? That's enough. I hope I shall never be reduced to such an extremity as that. I pity poor mothers who are. If you were a mother, you would say the same. People have wet-nurses? Yes, just as they have the cholera or the typhoid fever, I suppose, because they cannot help it. As to any woman, any mother, choosing to have one, I should say that is the sheerest nonsense ever dreamed of. Great people have them, queens and empresses, and I needn't be above them? Thank Heaven, I am neither a queen nor an empress, but the devoted wife of my dear old toad of a husband, Dan Gaylark, and the mother of Our Baby!
What is that you are saying to relieve your mind? Good gracious! You have made that remark once before, and equally to the point, as it seems to me. I was going to tell you all about the baby, but you are such a tease, Ned, and interrupt one so often with your exceedingly strange remarks, that I feel very much as one might suppose the "skirmishun" train feels in being "generally switched off into a sidin'." But, when I'm not switched off, I am good as the "skirmishun" at any rate. I "doos all as lays in my power" to get on. I suppose you call yourself the express train that is too proud even to whistle a salute in passing a poor, heavy-laden freight train, and utterly despises a modest country station as it goes thundering by, as if that was no place fit for its majesty to "stop at and blow at," as Professor Haman says in his Cavalry Tactics. I study military tactics? Yes, infantry tactics, you rogue, under Mrs. Professor Dinah Jenkins; but I read that in a book of Dan's one day. Dan has a great fancy for horses and dogs. Which of course, I'm jealous of? Not the least. It only makes me love horses and dogs more than I otherwise would. Simply because Dan loves them? Simply because Dan loves them; and if that is not good enough reason, I don't know what is. Ah! smile away as you please. What do you know about it, you wretched old bachelor!
Here! Dixie! Dixie! Dixie! Come here, you good-for-nothing old black —— There, then, that's enough now. Say "How d'ye" to Mr. Ned. Oh! you needn't be afraid of him. He barks loud, I know, but he won't bite. And he is so knowing. I sometimes wish he did not know quite so much. And so affectionate. He takes a great fancy for everything he sees that Dan and I are fond of. I do think he would die for baby any day. Yes, you would, wouldn't you, you dear old fellow? There, you see, he says yes; he always grins and wags his tail that way when he wants to say yes.
It was about Dixie and baby I was going to tell you. He was so fond of baby that he wanted to take him out to walk and play with him on the Palisades. Ah! I shudder when I think of it.
You recollect that hot Thursday in July? The very air seemed to be holding its own breath. I felt so oppressed with the heat and the closeness of the atmosphere that I could bear the inside of the house no longer, and after taking a look—and a kiss?—yes, and a kiss of baby, who was sleeping soundly in his cradle, I went out to saunter down the shady lane that leads to the Palisades. I noticed that Dinah was asleep in a chair, too, beside the window, and thought that, if she could sleep in such weather, it was a mercy, and so I left her undisturbed. As I went out of the room, I left the door open, so that, if any little breeze might spring up, it would refresh baby in his sleep. I'm sorry enough now that I did.
You know what curious notions presentiments, or whatever you choose to call them, will come into people's heads without their being able to give any reason for them? So it was with me then. I had no sooner got out of the house than I thought about my leaving the door open, and half-determined to go back and close it. The same thought came to me again as I was turning the lane; and when I was once upon the green sward under the pine-trees, looking down the dizzy height from the top of the Palisades upon the river, I would most assuredly have returned and closed the door, had it not been for the intense heat, and I may say the cool and refreshing appearance the water had at that time. You don't believe in presentiments? Well, I acknowledge that it savors a little of the fanciful and the romantic—reason enough, I suppose, for you to reject any such notion, you matter-of-fact old stick. But we women cannot take life as you men do, or, at least, as some men do. What! you are very glad we cannot? Pray, what do you mean by that? Oh! I see, you incorrigible old bachelor, our different habits, idiosyncrasies, and tastes lead us to avoid (not your company, you know better) but your own pet schemes and fancies. I, for one, don't ask either to meddle with them or to share them. But you are very fond of getting our approbation of them, nevertheless. Dan says that there is not an orator in the country who would not prefer the waving of a lady's handkerchief to all that abominable rat-a-tat-tat you men make with your heels and canes. The more silent the sign of one's appreciation is, the better. Sincerity, Ned, is seldom noisy. True love is dumb as well as blind. But this is hardly à propos of Dixie and the baby. Where was I? Oh! the Palisades, yes. If you were anything of a listener, I might take the trouble to give you a nice little bit of description of the sunny afternoon and the beautiful scene which the river presented to my gaze; but I won't, because I see you are gaping.
I had been seated on the grass about half an hour, watching the boats lolling about in the water as if they were too lazy to move in such hot weather, when not a breath of air was stirring, and I had been thinking how happy my life had been, and what a still happier future might yet be in store for me; and, as I looked up at the bright, cloudless sky, I said to myself, "Thus has God blessed my life, for not a cloud can I see in the firmament of my soul," when my reverie was interrupted by the noise of footsteps behind me. Thinking it was some children, I turned my head, smiling at the same time, that they might see they were welcome. Imagine my surprise. It was Dixie and baby. He had caught baby up in his mouth by the waist, and was bringing him along just as he is accustomed to carry cook's basket to market, wagging his tail and curveting about in the highest state of delight. My first thought was that, the baby was dead—an awful thought that went through my mind, and felt like an electric shock—either that Dixie had bitten him to death, or had struck his poor, dear little head against the trees, or the fences, or the stones, or something else; but a second glance assured me that he was yet unhurt, for he was doubling up his fat little fists, and—will you believe it?—actually pummelling Dixie on his black nose.
Instead of coming up to me as I hoped he would, Dixie no sooner caught sight of me than he dashed off, running round and round on the green grassy bank, stopping suddenly, and looking at me as if he would entice me to chase him.
You know that pretty spot at the end of the lane, how smooth the sward is, and how gently the ground slopes down to the sudden brink of the Palisades? The circles Dixie described in his gambols began to grow larger and larger, and to my horror I saw him run nearer and nearer to the edge of the dreadful precipice each time he came around. You know the edge there is just as sharp as if it had been cut away with a knife, and that, with the exception of a narrow line of jagged rocky ledges, the whole front of the Palisades is a smooth, perpendicular height of a hundred and fifty feet at least. What if the dog should lose his footing and slip off in one of those rapid courses he made! Now, I'm sure you cannot tell me what I did. I sprang up and ran after him? I knew you would think so. You are mistaken. I never moved a muscle. I sat as still as a statue, and as silent too. Dan said that was mother's wisdom, and wished that he had never missed baby out of his cradle when he came home; for, when Dixie had had his play out, I would have obtained quiet possession of baby, and all the fearful consequences of his appearance on the bank would have been spared. As it was, he no sooner saw the empty cradle and the little white coverlet lying on the floor all marked with Dixie's dirty paws, than he suspected the truth instantly. Cook told him, besides, that she had seen me going off to walk down the lane, and that she was sure I had not carried baby with me. Dinah had fallen so fast asleep that she had heard nothing.
I heard his footsteps as he came running down the lane, and knew it was he, but did not turn my head to look. By this time Dixie seemed to take delight in running straight down the bank, as if he were about to jump over the Palisades with baby in his mouth, but would wheel about sharply as he came to the edge. It was horrible. My eyes followed his every movement, and they ached with pain. I did not dare to close them long enough even to wink. You think my heart was beating fast? No. It beat slowly, very slowly. I could feel its dull, heavy strokes like a sexton slapping the earth as he heaps it over a newly filled grave. Dan said I was not only as still and as silent as a statue, but as white too. I do not think I shall suffer more when I come to die.
No sooner had Dixie espied my husband running toward him than he bounded off to the extremity of the sward, just where that narrow line of ragged rocks runs down the front of the Palisades. He saw that his master had anger in his face, and began to slink off to escape punishment. It is a wonder he did not drop the baby on the ground; but, do you know, I fancy that he thought the baby was going to get whipped too, and wanted to get him to a place of safety. Nothing else will explain why, finding himself nearly overtaken, he looked first on one side and then on another for a way to escape, and not seeing any, he went straight to the dizzy edge, and, gathering up his feet, sprang over the precipice. I saw them both disappear, and heard that most heart-rending of sounds, a man's cry of anguish; the very ground seemed whirling around me and the sky coming down upon me, and crushing me; but I did not faint. "You are a brave little woman, Tot," Dan has said to me many a time since, "and worth a whole regiment of soldiers." I rose from the ground, and staggered toward Dan, who ran to me and threw his arms about me and pressed my head to his breast. O moment of agony untold, and of the supremest comfort! He uttered only one word, speaking the two syllables separately, as though he loved to dwell upon every letter, and in a tone of mingled horror, grief, tenderest love, and sublime resignation—
"Ba—by!"
I thought I had loved dear Dan before that with all the love my poor little woman's heart could hold. No. The deepest love is only born of the deepest suffering. There are chords of love whose music joy can never waken. Since then Dan is to me more than he ever was, more than he ever could have been, had not our souls passed together that moment of agony.
I do not know how long we stood thus, neither daring to go to the brink of the precipice and look over. Baby and Dixie must be both lying dead on the rocks below. At last Dan mustered up courage enough to say to me,
"It is all over, darling. God is good."
"God is good," I repeated; "but, O Dan, dear! it is a cruel blow."
"For us to bear, Tot, for us to bear; but not for him to give—no, not for him to give."
He seemed to wring the words from his noble Christian heart, as if he tore away his very life and offered it to God.
"Stay here, Tot," said he, "I am strong enough now." But his whole body trembled from head to foot, and his voice was hoarse and broken. "I will go and look."
I feared to let him go. Yet why should I detain him? But I could not watch him. Throwing myself upon the ground, I buried my face in my hands, and gave way to floods of bitter, bitter tears.
I had not lain thus a moment, when I heard a sharp, piercing cry. Raising my head in alarm, to my unutterable surprise and horror, I saw Dan spring over the edge of the Palisades and disappear. Again I heard him cry as before, "Ba—by!" but there was now a tone of joy mingled with that of fear, which told me that the child was not dead. It was a brief instant that I was on my knees, it is true, it was nothing more than a look of gratitude I gave to God; but he knows that not all the language ever expressed by man could fully tell all that thought of thanksgiving which my soul sent up to him, as I raised my clasped hands to the cloudless sky.
In a moment I was at the edge of the Palisades, just where that ragged, rocky line runs down its front, jutting out here and there in rough ledges. There was a story of a man who, being pursued by the officers of justice, had clambered down there and escaped. Few people who saw the place believed it. The very first rock that jutted out was ten feet from the top, and that did not present more than two or three feet of surface. A little to the right of this, and about three feet lower, was another, on which a man might easily stand, but not for any length of time, as its surface shelved outward, and the rock overhanging it above would not allow him to stand perfectly upright. Any one who had gotten thus far must perforce take his chances of clambering down the rest or be precipitated head foremost below, to certain death.
On this second ledge, I saw Dan holding the baby by his mouth, just as Dixie had held him before. Dixie himself was crouched up beside him. Poor Dan could not hold his place long there. As it was, he was forced to grasp little, sharp edges of rock with both hands to prevent himself falling off. He saw at once that there was no time to send for help from above, and that he must try the perilous descent. As he told me afterward, he had not calculated upon this when he leapt from above. The first glance he caught of the dog told him that, if he released his hold upon the child's dress and opened his mouth, were it but for an instant, baby would roll over the edge and be dashed to pieces. Dan says now that he shall never regret taking one hasty step in his life. He makes that an exception, you see, for he is always saying to me, "Now, darling Tot, let us see the pros and the cons; for it is my principle never to leap before I think, but to let my mind jump before my feet."
Holding on, as I told you, to baby by his teeth, Dan went clambering down the line of rocks. He had managed to wave his hand backward to me as he left the ledge where Dixie was. I knew what that meant—"Don't look." There was little or no hope of his ever reaching the bottom safely, and he wished to spare me the awful sight of his headlong fall, which might take place at any step of the way. But I could not stir; my feet were riveted to the ground. Besides, could I not help him? It seemed to me that, as he went down, almost falling from one sharp rock to another, I held him up with my eyes. When I told Dan my fancy afterward, he laughed and said:
"Not the least doubt of it, Tot. I have felt the power of those eyes before."
It did not last long, but it appeared to my mind, wrought up to such a state of excitement, as if it had been going on and was going on forever. It is stamped on my mind to-day as a memory of years. As for dear Dan, it cost him, he said, the strength of many days. He was no sooner at the bottom than he turned and lifted up the baby in one hand, and, looking up to me, waved the other as a sign of safety. Ah! his hands, his poor hands, you should have seen them, all cut and gashed by the rocks. Those hands seem to have something sacred about them ever since that day. I saw him on his knees, and then off I scampered to the house to get the carriage. It is two miles around by the road to the bottom of the Palisades, and it took us a long while to get to him. When we did, he was still so weak that Mike, the coachman, and I had to lift him up into the carriage. Dinah went down to the place I had left, to make signs to him that he should remain. Poor dear, there was no need of it. So we came home in more joy than I can tell you—Dan, baby, and I. Mike rescued Dixie afterward, by getting himself let down from above with a rope, to where the patient old dog still was, wondering, who knows? how he ever came to be there.
What is that you say? Good gracious? Well, I don't mind your saying it now, after what I have told you. But don't you think, now, Mr. Ned, that I ought to be very proud of Our Baby after that? What? Ought to be very careful of him? The idea! An old bachelor telling a mother to be careful of her baby!