CHAPTER IV
THE MANNER OF HIS BIRTH
I
Stoke-Underhill lies in the flat of the valley that separates theHampden from the Quainton Hills. The main road from London to Ailesworthdoes not pass through Stoke, but from the highway you can see the ascentof the bridge over the railway, down the vista of a straight mile ofside road; and, beyond, a glimpse of scattered cottages. That is all,and as a matter of fact, no one who is not keeping a sharp look-outwould ever notice the village, for the eye is drawn to admire the bluffof Deane Hill, the highest point of the Hampdens, which lowers over thelittle hamlet of Stoke and gives it a second name; and to the churchtower of Chilborough Beacon, away to the right, another landmark.
The attraction which Stoke-Underhill held for Stott, lay not in itsseclusion or its picturesqueness but in its nearness to the CountyGround. Stott could ride the two flat miles which separated him from thescene of his work in ten minutes, and Ailesworth station is only a milebeyond. So when he found that there was a suitable cottage to let inStoke, he looked no farther for a home; he was completely satisfied.
Stott's absorption in any matter that was occupying his mind made himexceedingly careless about the detail of his affairs. He took the firstcottage that offered when he looked for a home, he took the first womanwho offered when he looked for a wife.
Stott was not an attractive man to women. He was short and plain, and hehad an appearance of being slightly deformed, a "monkeyish" look, due tohis build and his long arms. Still, he was famous, and might, doubtless,have been accepted by a dozen comely young women for that reason, evenafter his accident. But if Stott was unattractive to women, women wereeven more unattractive to Stott. "No opinion of women?" he used to say."Ever seen a gel try to throw a cricket ball? You 'ave? Well, ain't thatenough to put you off women?" That was Stott's intellectual standard;physically, he had never felt drawn to women.
Ellen Mary Jakes exhibited no superiority over her sisters in the matterof throwing a cricket ball. She was a friend of Ginger's mother, andshe was a woman of forty-two, who had long since been relegated to someremote shelf of the matrimonial exchange. But her physical disadvantageswere outbalanced by her mental qualities. Ellen Mary was not abook-worm, she read nothing but the evening and Sunday papers, but shehad a reasoning and intelligent mind.
She had often contemplated the state of matrimony, and had made morethan one tentative essay in that direction. She had walked out withthree or four sprigs of the Ailesworth bourgeoisie in her time, and theshadow of middle-age had crept upon her before she realised that howeverpliant her disposition, her lack of physical charm put her at the mercyof the first bright-eyed rival. At thirty-five Ellen had decided, withadmirable philosophy, that marriage was not for her, and had assumed,with apparent complacency, the outward evidences of a dignifiedspinsterhood. She had discarded gay hats and ribbons, imitationjewellery, unreliable cheap shoes, and chill diaphanous stockings, andhad found some solace for her singleness in more comfortable andsuitable apparel.
When Ellen, a declared spinster of seven years' standing, was firsttaken into the confidence of Ginger Stott's mother, the scheme which sheafterwards elaborated immediately presented itself to her mind. Thisfact is a curious instance of Ellen Mary's mobility of intellect, andthe student of heredity may here find matter for careful thought.[3]
The confidence in question was Ginger's declared intention of becomingthe father of the world's greatest bowler. Mrs. Stott was a dark,garrulous, rather deaf little woman, with a keen eye for the mainchance; she might have become a successful woman of business if she hadnot been by nature both stingy and a cheat. When her son presented hisdetermination, her first thought was to find some woman who would notdissipate her son's substance, and in her opinion--not expressed toGinger--the advertised purpose of the contemplated marriage evidenced awasteful disposition.
Mrs. Stott did not think of Ellen Mary as a possible daughter-in-law,but she did hold forth for an hour and three-quarters on thecontemptible qualities of the young maidens, first of Ailesworth, andthen with a wider swoop that was not justified by her limitedexperience, of the girls of England, Scotland, and Ireland at large.
It required the flexible reasoning powers of Ellen Mary to find asolution of the problem. Any ordinary, average woman of forty-two, adeclared spinster of seven years' standing, who had lived all her lifein a provincial town, would have been mentally unable to realise thepossibilities of the situation. Such a representative of the decayingsexual instinct would have needed the stimulus of courtship, at theleast of some hint of preference displayed by the suitor. Ruled by theconventions which hold her sex in bondage, she would have deemed itunwomanly to make advances by any means other than innuendo, the subtlesuggestions which are the instruments of her sex, but which are oftentoo delicate to pierce the understanding of the obtuse and slow-wittedmale.
Ellen Mary stood outside the ruck that determines the destinies of allsuch typical representatives. She considered the idea presented to herby Mrs. Stott with an open and mobile intelligence. She weighed thecharacter of Ginger, the possibilities of rejection, and the influenceof Mrs. Stott; and she gave no thought to the conventions, nor to thecriticisms of Ailesworth society. When she had decided that such chancesas she could calculate were in her favour, Ellen made up her mind,walked out to the County Ground one windy October forenoon, anddiscovered Ginger experimenting with grass seed in a shed off thepavilion.
In this shed she offered herself, while Ginger worked on, attentive butunresponsive. Perhaps she did not make an offer so much as state a case.A masterly case, without question; for who can doubt that Stott, howeverprocrastinating and unwilling to make a definite overture, must alreadyhave had some type of womanhood in his mind; some conception, the seedof an ideal.
I find a quality of romance in this courageous and unusual wooing ofEllen Mary's; but more, I find evidences of the remarkable quality ofher intelligence. In other circumstances the name of Ellen Mary Jakesmight have stood for individual achievement; instead of that, she isremembered as a common woman who _happened_ to be the mother of VictorStott. But when the facts are examined, can we say that chance entered?If ever the birth of a child was deliberately designed by both parents,it was in the case under consideration. And in what a strange settingwas the inception first displayed.
Ellen Mary, a gaunt, tall, somewhat untidy woman, stood at the narrowdoor of the little shed off the Ailesworth pavilion; with one hand,shoulder-high, she steadied herself against the door frame, with theother she continually pushed forward the rusty bonnet which had beenloosened during her walk by the equinoctial gale that now tore at thedoor of the shed, and necessitated the employment of a wary foot to keepthe door from slamming. With all these distractions she still made goodher case, though she had to raise her voice above the multitudinoussounds of the wind, and though she had to address the unresponsiveshoulders of a man who bent over shallow trays of earth set on a trestletable under the small and dirty window. It is heroic, but she had herreward in full measure. Presently her voice ceased, and she waited insilence for the answer that should decide her destiny. There was aninterval broken only by the tireless passion of the wind, and thenGinger Stott, the best-known man in England, looked up and staredthrough the incrusted pane of glass before him at the dim vision ofstooping grass and swaying hedge. Unconsciously his hand strayed to hispockets, and then he said in a low, thoughtful voice: "Well! I dunno whynot."
II
Dr. O'Connell's face was white and drawn, and the redness of his eyelidsmore pronounced than ever as he faced Stott in the pale October dawn. Heclutched at his beard with a nervous, combing movement, as he shook hishead decidedly in answer to the question put to him.
"If it's not dead, now, 'twill be in very few hours," he said.
Stott was shaken by the feeble passion of a man who has spent many wearyhours of suspense. His anger thrilled out in a feeble stream ofhackneyed profanities.
O'Connell looked down on him with contempt
. At sunrise, after asleepless night, a man is a creature of unrealised emotions.
"Damn it, control yourself, man!" growled O'Connell, himselfuncontrolled, "your wife'll pull through with care, though she'll neverhave another child." O'Connell did not understand; he was an Irishman,and no cricketer; he had been called in because he had a reputation forhis skill in obstetrics.
Stott stared at him fiercely. The two men seemed as if about to grappledesperately for life in the windy, grey twilight.
O'Connell recovered his self-control first, and began again to clawnervously at his beard. "Don't be a fool," he said, "it's only what youcould expect. Her first child, and her a woman of near fifty." Hereturned to the upstairs room; Stott seized his cap and went out intothe chill world of sunrise.
"She'll do, if there are no complications," said O'Connell to thenurse, as he bent over the still, exhausted figure of Mrs. Stott. "She'sa wonderful woman to have delivered such a child alive."
The nurse shivered, and avoiding any glance at the huddle that lay on animprovised sofa-bed, she said: "It can't live, can it?"
O'Connell, still intent on his first patient, shook his head. "Nevercried after delivery," he muttered--"the worst sign." He was silent fora moment and then he added: "But, to be sure, it's a freak of somekind." His scientific curiosity led him to make a further investigation.He left the bed and began to examine the huddle on the sofa-couch.Victor Stott owed his life, in the first instance, to this scientificcuriosity of O'Connell's.
The nurse, a capable, but sentimental woman, turned to the window andlooked out at the watery trickle of feeble sunlight that now illuminedthe wilderness of Stott's garden.
"Nurse!" The imperative call startled her; she turned nervously.
"Yes, doctor?" she said, making no movement towards him.
"Come here!" O'Connell was kneeling by the sofa. "There seems to becomplete paralysis of all the motor centres," he went on; "but thechild's not dead. We'll try artificial respiration."
The nurse overcame her repugnance by a visible effort. "Is it ... is itworth while?" she asked, regarding the flaccid, tumbled, wax-like thing,with its bloated, white globe of a skull. Every muscle of it was relaxedand limp, its eyes shut, its tiny jaw hanging. "Wouldn't it be better tolet it die...?"
O'Connell did not seem to hear her. He waved an impatient hand for herassistance. "Outside my experience," he muttered, "no heart-beatdiscernible, no breath ... yet it is indubitably alive." He depressedthe soft, plastic ribs and gave the feeble heart a gentle squeeze.
"It's beating," he ejaculated, after a pause, with an ear close to thelittle chest, "but still no breath! Come!"
The diminutive lungs were as readily open to suggestion as the weeheart: a few movements of the twigs they called arms, and the breathcame. O'Connell closed the mouth and it remained closed, adjusted thelimbs, and they stayed in the positions in which they were placed. Atlast he gently lifted the lids of the eyes.
The nurse shivered and drew back. Even O'Connell was startled, for theeyes that stared into his own seemed to be heavy with a broodingintelligence....
Stott came back at ten o'clock, after a morose trudge through the mistyrain. He found the nurse in the sitting-room.
"Doctor gone?" he asked.
The nurse nodded.
"Dead, I suppose?" Stott gave an upward twist of his head towards theroom above.
The nurse shook her head.
"Can't live though?" There was a note of faint hope in his voice.
The nurse drew herself together and sighed deeply. "Yes! we believeit'll live, Mr. Stott," she said. "But ... it's a very remarkable baby."
How that phrase always recurred!
III
There were no complications, but Mrs. Stott's recovery was not rapid. Itwas considered advisable that she should not see the child. She thoughtthat they were lying to her, that the child was dead and, so, resignedherself. But her husband saw it.
He had never seen so young an infant before, and, just for one moment,he believed that it was a normal child.
"What an 'ead!" was his first ejaculation, and then he realised thesignificance of that sign. Fear came into his eyes, and his mouth fellopen. "'Ere, I say, nurse, it's ... it's a wrong 'un, ain't it?" hegasped.
"I'm _sure_ I can't tell you, Mr. Stott," broke out the nursehysterically. She had been tending that curious baby for three hours,and she was on the verge of a break-down. There was no wet-nurse to behad, but a woman from the village had been sent for. She was expectedevery moment.
"More like a tadpole than anything," mused the unhappy father.
"Oh! Mr. Stott, for goodness' sake, _don't_," cried the nurse. "If youonly knew...."
"Knew what?" questioned Stott, still staring at the motionless figure ofhis son, who lay with closed eyes, apparently unconscious.
"There's something--I don't know," began the nurse, and then after apause, during which she seemed to struggle for some means of expression,she continued with a sigh of utter weariness, "You'll know when it opensits eyes. Oh! Why doesn't that woman come, the woman you sent for?"
"She'll be 'ere directly," replied Stott. "What d'you mean about therebein' something ... something what?"
"Uncanny," said the nurse without conviction. "I do wish that womanwould come. I've been up the best part of the night, and now ..."
"Uncanny? As how?" persisted Stott.
"Not normal," explained the nurse. "I can't tell you more than that."
"But 'ow? What way?"
He did not receive an answer then, for the long expected relief came atlast, a great hulk of a woman, who became voluble when she saw the childshe had come to nurse.
"Oh! dear, oh! dear," the stream began. "How unforchnit, and 'er first,too. It'll be a idjit, I'm afraid. Mrs. 'Arrison's third was the veryspit of it...."
The stream ran on, but Stott heard no more. An idiot! He had fathered anidiot! That was the end of his dreams and ambitions! He had had anhour's sleep on the sitting-room sofa. He went out to his work at theCounty Ground with a heart full of blasphemy.
When he returned at four o'clock he met the stout woman on the doorstep.She put up a hand to her rolling breast, closed her eyes tightly, andgasped as though completely overcome by this trifling rencounter.
"'Ow is it?" questioned the obsessed Stott.
"Oh dear! Oh dear!" panted the stout woman, "the leas' thing upsets methis afternoon...." She wandered away into irrelevant fluency, but Stottwas autocratic; his insistent questions overcame the inertia of evenMrs. Reade at last. The substance of her information, freed fromextraneous matter, was as follows:
"Oh! 'ealthy? It'll live, I've no doubt, if that's what you mean; but'elpless...! There, 'elpless is no word.... Learn 'im to open his mouth,learn 'im to close 'is 'ands, learn 'im to go to sleep, learn 'imeverythink. I've never seen nothink like it, never in all my days, andI've 'elped to bring a few into the world.... I can't begin to tell youabout it, Mr. Stott, and that's the solemn truth. When 'e first lookedat me, I near 'ad a faint. A old-fashioned, wise sort of look as 'emight 'a been a 'undred. 'Lord 'elp us, nurse,' I says, 'Lord 'elp us.'I was that opset, I didn't rightly know what I was a-saying...."
Stott pushed past the agitated Mrs. Reade, and went into thesitting-room. He had had neither breakfast nor lunch; there was no signof any preparation for his tea, and the fireplace was grey with thecinders of last night's fire. For some minutes he sat in deepdespondency, a hero faced with the uncompromising detail of domesticneglect. Then he rose and called to the nurse.
She appeared at the head of the steep, narrow staircase. "Sh!" shewarned, with a finger to her lips.
"I'm goin' out again," said Stott in a slightly modulated voice.
"Mrs. Reade's coming back presently," replied the nurse, and looked overher shoulder.
"Want me to wait?" asked Stott.
The nurse came down a few steps. "It's only in case any one was wanted,"she began, "I've got two of 'em on my hands, you see. They're both doingwell as far
as that goes. Only ..." She broke off and drifted into smalltalk. Ever and again she stopped and listened intently, and looked backtowards the half-open door of the upstairs room.
Stott fidgeted, and then, as the flow of conversation gave no sign ofrunning dry, he dammed it abruptly. "Look 'ere, miss," he said, "I've'ad nothing to eat since last night."
"Oh! dear!" ejaculated the nurse. "If--perhaps, if you'd just stay hereand listen, I could get you something." She seemed relieved to have someexcuse for coming down.
While she bustled about the kitchen, Stott, half-way upstairs, stayedand listened. The house was very silent, the only sound was the hushedclatter made by the nurse in the kitchen. There was an atmosphere ofwariness about the place that affected even so callous a person asStott. He listened with strained attention, his eyes fixed on thehalf-open door. He was not an imaginative man, but he was beset withapprehension as to what lay behind that door. He looked for somethinginhuman that might come crawling through the aperture, somethinggrotesque, preternaturally wise and threatening--something horriblyunnatural.
The window of the upstairs room was evidently open, and now and againthe door creaked faintly. When that happened Stott gripped the handrail,and grew damp and hot. He looked always at the shadows under the door.If it crawled ...
The nurse stood at the door of the sitting-room while Stott ate, andpresently Mrs. Reade came grunting and panting up the brick path.
"I'm going out, now," said Stott resolutely, and he rose to his feet,though his meal was barely finished.
"You'll be back before Mrs. Reade goes?" asked the nurse, and passed ahand over her tired eyes. "She'll be here till ten o'clock. I'm going tolie down."
"I'll be back by ten," Stott assured her as he went out.
He did come back at ten o'clock, but he was stupidly drunk.
IV
The Stotts' cottage was no place to live in during the next few days,but the nurse made one stipulation: Mr. Stott must come home to sleep.He slept on an improvised bed in the sitting-room, and during the nightthe nurse came down many times and listened to the sound of his snores.She would put her ear against the door, and rest her nerves with thethought of human companionship. Sometimes she opened the door quietlyand watched him as he slept. Except at night, when he was rarely quitesober, Stott only visited his cottage once a day, at lunch time; fromseven in the morning till ten at night he remained in Ailesworth savefor this one call of inquiry.
It was such a still house. Ellen Mary only spoke when speech wasabsolutely required, and then her words were the fewest possible, andwere spoken in a whisper. The child made no sound of any kind. Even Mrs.Reade tried to subdue her stertorous breathing, to move with lessponderous quakings. The neighbours told her she looked thinner.
Little wonder that during the long night vigil the nurse, movingsilently between the two upstairs rooms, should pause on the landing andlean over the handrail; little wonder that she should give a long sighof relief when she heard the music of Stott's snore ascend from thesitting-room.
O'Connell called twice every day during the first week, not because itwas necessary for him to visit his two patients, but because the infantfascinated him. He would wait for it to open its eyes, and then hewould get up and leave the room hurriedly. Always he intended to returnthe infant's stare, but when the opportunity was given to him, he alwaysrose and left the room--no matter how long and deliberately he hadbraced himself to another course of action.
It was on a Thursday that the baby was born, and it was on the followingThursday that the circumstance of the household was reshaped.
O'Connell came in the morning, full of resolution. After he hadpronounced Mrs. Stott well on the way to recovery, he paid the usualvisit to his younger patient. The child lay, relaxed, at full length, inthe little cot which had been provided for him. His eyes were, as usual,closed, and he had all the appearance of the ordinary hydrocephalicidiot.
O'Connell sat down by the cot, listened to the child's breathing andheart-beat, lifted and let fall again the lax wrist, turned back theeyelid, revealing only the white of the upturned eyeball, and thencomposed himself to await the natural waking of the child, if it wereasleep--always a matter of uncertainty.
The nurse stood near him, silent, but she looked away from the cot.
"Hydrocephalus!" murmured O'Connell, staring at his tiny patient,"hydrocephalus, without a doubt. Eh? nurse!"
"Yes, perhaps! I don't know, doctor."
"Oh, not a doubt of it, not a doubt," repeated O'Connell, and then camea flicker of the child's eyelids and a weak crumpling of the tiny hand.
O'Connell caught his breath and clawed at his beard. "Hydrocephalus," hemuttered with set jaw and drawn eyebrows.
The tiny hand straightened with a movement that suggested the recoveryof crushed grass, the mouth opened in a microscopic yawn, and then theeyelids were slowly raised and a steady unwavering stare of profoundestintelligence met O'Connell's gaze.
He clenched his hands, shifted in his chair, and then rose abruptly andturned to the window.
"I--it won't be necessary for me to come again, nurse," he said curtly;"they are both doing perfectly well."
"Not come again?" There was dismay in the nurse's question.
"No! No! It's unnecessary ..." He broke off, and made for the doorwithout another glance in the direction of the cot.
Nurse followed him downstairs.
"If I'm wanted--you can easily send for me," said O'Connell, as he wentout. As he moved away he dragged at his beard and murmured:"Hydrocephalus, not a doubt of it."
Following his departure, Mrs. Reade heard curious and most unwontedlaughter, and cautiously blundered downstairs to investigate. She foundthe nurse in an advanced condition of hysteria, laughing, gurgling,weeping, and intermittently crying in a shrill voice: "Oh! Lord havemercy; Lord ha' mercy!"
"Now, see you 'ere, my dear," said Mrs. Reade, when nurse had beenrecovered to a red-eyed sanity, "it's time she was told. I've never 'eldwith keepin' it from 'er, myself, and I've 'ad more experience thanmany...." Mrs. Reade argued with abundant recourse to parenthesis.
"Is she strog edough?" asked the nurse, still with tears in her voice;"cad she bear the sight of hib?" She blew her nose vigorously, and thencontinued with greater clearness: "I'm afraid it may turn her head."
Out of her deep store of wisdom, Mrs. Reade produced a fact which sheelaborated and confirmed by apt illustration, adducing more particularlythe instance of Mrs. Harrison's third. "She's 'is mother," was theessence of her argument, a fact of deep and strange significance.
The nurse yielded, and so the circumstance of Stott's household waschanged, and Stott himself was once more able to come home to meals.
The nurse, wisely, left all diplomacy to the capable Mrs. Reade, a womanspecially fitted by nature for the breaking of news. She delivered along, a record-breaking circumlocution, and it seemed that Ellen Mary,who lay with closed eyes, gathered no hint of its import. But when theimpressive harangue was slowly rustling to collapse like an exhaustedballoon, she opened her eyes and said quite clearly,
"What's wrong with 'im, then?"
The question had the effect of reinflation, but at last the child itselfwas brought, and it was open-eyed.
The supreme ambition of all great women--and have not all women thepotentialities of greatness?--is to give birth to a god. That ambitionit is which is marred by the disappointing birth of a female child--whenthe man-child is born, there is always hope, and slow is the realisationof failure. That realisation never came to Ellen Mary. She accepted herchild with the fear that is adoration. When she dropped her eyes beforeher god's searching glance, she did it in reverence. She hid her faithfrom the world, but in her heart she believed that she was blessed aboveall women. In secret, she worshipped the inscrutable wonder that hadused her as the instrument of his incarnation. Perhaps she wasright....
FOOTNOTES:
[3] A study of genius shows that in a percentage of cases so large as toexclude the pos
sibility of coincidence, the exceptional man, whether inthe world of action, of art, or of letters, seems to inherit hismagnificent powers through the female line. Sir Francis Galton, it istrue, did not make a great point of this curious observation, but thetendency of more recent analyses is all in the direction of confirmingthe hypothesis; and it would seem to hold good in the converseproposition, namely, that the exceptional woman inherits her qualitiesfrom her father.