CHAPTER II.
AN ASTONISHMENT.
Now comes the strange part of my story.
One evening the housemaid opened the door to Mr. Dempster on his
return from the city; and perhaps the fact that it was the maid, and
not the page as usual, roused his observation, which, except in
business matters, was not remarkably operative. He glanced at the
young woman, when an eye far less keen than his could not have failed
to remark a strangely excited expression on her countenance.
"Where is the boy?" he asked.
"Just run to the doctor's, sir," she answered.
Then first he remembered that when he left in the morning his wife had
not been feeling altogether well, but he had never thought of her
since.
"How is your mistress?" he said.
"She's rather poorly, sir, but--but--she's as well as could be
expected."
"What does the fool mean?" said Dempster to himself, and very nearly
said it aloud, for he was not over polite to any in his service. But
he did not say it aloud. He advanced into the hall with deliberation,
and made for the stair.
"Oh, please sir," the maid cried in a tone of perturbation, when,
turning from shutting the door, she saw his intention, "you can't go
up to mis'ess's room just at this minute, sir. Please go in the
dining-room, sir."
"What do you mean?" he asked, turning angrily upon the girl, for of
all things he hated mystery.
Like every one else in the house, and office both, she stood in awe of
him, and his look frightened her.
"Please go in the dining-room," she gasped entreatingly.
"What!" he said and did turn towards the dining-room, "is your
mistress so ill she can't see me?"
"Oh, no, sir!--at least I don't know exactly. Cook's with her, sir.
She's over the worst, anyhow."
"What on earth do you mean, girl? Speak out, will you? What is the
matter with your mistress?"
As he spoke he stepped into the room, the maid following him. The same
moment he spied a whitish bundle of something on the rug in front of
the fire.
"What do you mean by leaving things like that in the dining-room?" he
went on more angrily still.
"Please, sir," answered the girl, going and lifting the bundle
carefully, "it's the baby!"
"The baby!" shouted Mr. Dempster, and looked at her from head to foot.
"What baby?" Then bethinking himself that it must belong to some
visitor in the drawing-room with his wife, he moderated his tone.
"Make haste; take it away!" he said. "I don't want babies here!
There's a time and a place for everything!--What _are_ you about?"
For, instead of obeying her master and taking it away, the maid was
carefully looking in the blanket for the baby. Having found it and
turned aside the covering from its face, she came nearer, and holding
up the little vision, about the size and colour of a roll of red wax
taper, said:--
"Look at it, sir! It's your own, and worth looking at."
Never before had she dared speak to him so!
I will not venture to assert that Mr. Dempster turned white, but his
countenance changed, and he dropped into the chair behind him, feeling
less of a business man than had been his consciousness for the last
twenty years. He was hit hard. The absolutely Incredible had hit him.
Babies might be born in a day, but surely not without previous
preparation on the part of nature at least, if not on that of the
mother; and in this case if the mother had prepared herself, certainly
she had not prepared him for the event. It was as if the treasure of
Nature's germens were tumbling all together. His head swam. He could
not speak a word.
"Yes, sir," the maid went on, relieved of her trepidation in
perceiving that her master too was mortal, and that her word had such
power over him--proud also of knowing more of his concerns than he did
himself, "she was took about an hour and a half ago. We've kep'
sendin' an' sendin' after the doctor, but he ain't never been yet;
only cook, she knows a deal an' she says she's been very bad, sir. But
the young gentleman come at last, bless him! and now she's doin' as
well as could be expected, sir--cook says."
"God bless me!" said the astonished father, and relapsed into the
silence of bewilderment.
Eight years married with never a glimmer of offspring--and now, all at
once, and without a whisper of warning, the father of a "young
gentleman!" How could it be other than perplexing--discomposing,
indeed!--yet it was right pleasant too. Only it would have been more
pleasant if experience could have justified the affair! Nature--no,
not Nature--or, if Nature, then Nature sure in some unnatural mood,
had stolen a march upon him, had gone contrary to all that had ever
been revealed of her doings before! and why had she pitched on
him--just him, Duncan Dempster, to exercise one of her more grotesque
and wayward moods upon?--to play at hide-and-seek with after this
fashion? She had not treated him with exactly proper respect, he
thought, or, rather vaguely felt.
"Business is business," he remarked, under his breath, "and this
cannot be called proper business behaviour. What is there about me to
make game of? Really, my wife ought--"
What his wife ought or ought not to have done, however, had not yet
made itself clear to him, and his endeavour to excogitate being in
that direction broken off, gave way to the pleasure of knowing himself
a father, or perhaps more truly of having an heir. In the strength of
it he rose, went to the cellaret, and poured himself out a glass of
his favourite port, which he sat down to drink in silence and
meditation. He was rather a picture just then and there, though not a
very lovely one, seated, with his hat still on his head, in the middle
of the room, upon a chair half-way between the dining-table and the
sideboard, with his glass of wine in his hand. He was pondering partly
the pleasure, but still mainly the peculiarity of his position. A
bishop once told me that, shortly after he had been raised to the
episcopal dignity, a friend's horses, whose driver had tumbled off the
box drunk, ran away with him, and upset the carriage. He crept out of
the window over his head, and the first thought that came to him as he
sat perched on the side of the carriage, while it was jumbled along by
the maddened horses, was, "What do bishops do in such circumstances?"
Equally perplexing was the question Dempster had to ask himself: how
husbands who, after being married eight years, suddenly and
unexpectedly received the gift of a first-born, were in the habit of
comporting themselves! He poured himself out another glass, and with
it came the reflection, both amusing and consoling, that his brother,
who was confidently expecting his tidy five figures to crown the
earthly bliss of one or more of his large family some day, would be
equally but less agreeably surprised. "Serve him right!" he said to
himself. "What business have they to be looking out for my death?" And
for a moment the heavens appeared a little more just than he was
ordinarily in the habit of regarding them. He said to himself he would
work harder than ever now. There would now be some good in making
money! He had never given his mind to it yet, he said: now the world
should see what he could do when he did give his mind to it!
Hitherto gathering had been his main pleasure, but with the thought of
his money would now not seldom be mingled the thought of the little
thing in the blanket! He began to find himself strangely happy. I use
the wrong phrase--for the fact is, he had never yet found himself at
all; he knew nothing of the person except a self-painted and immensely
flattered portrait that hung in the innermost chamber of his heart--I
mean the innermost chamber he knew anything of: there were many
chambers there of which he did not even know the doors. Yet a few
minutes as he sat there, and he was actually cherishing a little pride
in the wife who had done so much better for him than he had at length
come to expect. If not a good accountant, she was at least a good
wife, and a very fair housekeeper: he had no doubt she would prove a
good mother. He would gladly have gone to her at once, to let her know
how much he was pleased with her behaviour. As for that little bit of
red clay--"terra cotta," he called it to himself, as he looked round
with a smile at the blanket, which the housemaid had replaced on the
rug before the fire--who could imagine him a potentate upon
'Change--perhaps in time a director of European affairs! He was not in
the way of joking--of all things about money; the very thought, of
business filled him from top to toe with seriousness; but he did make
that small joke, and accompany it with a grim smile.
He was startled from his musing by the entrance of the doctor, who had
in the meantime arrived and seen the lady, and now came to look at the
baby. He congratulated Mr. Dempster on having at length a son and
heir, but warned him that his wife was far from being beyond danger
yet. The whole thing was entirely out of the common, he said, and she
must be taken the greatest possible care of. The words woke a gentle
pity in the heart of the man, for by nature all men have some
tenderness for women in such circumstances, but they did not trouble
him greatly--for such dangers belonged to their calling, their
_business_ in life, and, doubtless, if she had attended to that
business earlier she would have found it easier.
"Did you ever know such a thing before, doctor?" he asked, with the
importance of one honoured by a personal visit from the Marvellous.
"Never in my own practice," answered the doctor, whom the cook had
instructed in the wonders of the case, "but I have read of such a
thing." And Mr. Dempster swelled like a turkey-cock.
It was several days before he was allowed to see the mother. Perhaps
had she expressed a strong desire to see him, it might have been
risked sooner, but she had neither expressed nor manifested any. He
kissed her, spoke a few stupid words in a kind tone, asking her how
she did, but paying no heed to her answer, and turned aside to look,
at the baby.
Mrs. Dempster recovered but slowly, and not very satisfactorily. She
did not seem to care much about the child. She tried to nurse him, but
was not very successful. She took him when the nurse brought him, and
yielded him again with the same indifference, showing neither pleasure
to receive nor unwillingness to part with him. The nurse did not fail
to observe it and remark upon it: _she_ had never seen a mother care
so little for her child! there was little of the mother in _her_ any
way! it was no wonder she was so long about it. It troubled the father
a little that she should not care for his child: some slight
fermentation had commenced in the seemingly dead mass of human
affection that had lain so long neglected in his being, and it seemed
strange to him that, while he was living for the child in the City,
she should be so indifferent to him at home. For already he had begun
to keep his vow, already his greater keenness in business was remarked
in the City. But it boded little good for either that the gift of God
should stir up in him the worship of Mammon. More sons are damned by
their fathers' money than by anything else whatever outside of
themselves.
There was the excuse to be made for Mrs. Dempster that she continued
far from strong--and her husband made it: he would have made it more
heartily if he had himself ever in his life known what it was to be
ill. By degrees she grew stronger, however, until, to persons who had
not known her before, she would have seemed in tolerable health. For a
week or two after she was again going about the house, she continued
to nurse the baby, but after that she became unable to do so, and
therewith began to neglect him entirely. She never asked to see him,
and when the nurse brought him would turn her head aside, and tell her
to take it away. So far from his being a pleasure to her, the very
sight of the child brought the hot dew upon her forehead. Her husband
frowned and wondered, but, unaccustomed to open his mind either to her
or to any one else, not unwisely sought to understand the thing before
speaking of it, and in the meantime commenced a genuine attempt to
make up to the baby for his mother's neglect. Almost without a notion
how even to take him in his arms, he would now send for him the moment
he had had his tea, and after a fashion, ludicrous in the eyes of the
nurse, would dandle and caress him, and strut about with him before
his wife, glancing up at her every now and then, to point the lesson
that such was the manner in which a parent ought to behave to a child.
In his presence she never made any active show of her dislike, but her
look seemed all the time fixed on something far away, as if she had
nothing to do with the affair.
