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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
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"JUST another spoonful, Peterkins, angel! Come, one. Send it 'down the Red Lane!' My Pearl of Babies, stoke up. Oh—you little—aggravation!"
The complaint was justified, for the Pearl of Babies instead of responding to the appeal, turned the contents of his mouth on to his plate—a refined action to show that the previous consignment had not yet reached its destination.
Norah groaned.
"Was there ever such an unfeeling infant? Peter Ferdinand Henbane Fitzbattle, is there anything remotely resembling a heart underneath your Jaegar? Don't you realise the issues at stake? Let me remind you that Mr. Inspector Spy comes to-day with his horrid weighing-machine, and all. Inspector Spy the Fourth. Oh, wouldn't I like to prepare an oubliette for him, just?"
Now, when a beautiful young woman in the hey-day of her youth talks to a conversation-proof infant merely for the sake of hearing her own voice, it is clear evidence of deadly boredom.
This was true in Norah's case. No convict at Portland lived a more restricted, uneventful life—yet, unlike him, she clung to her fetters. For they represented a job, and she had known the heart-sickening lot of being out.
Norah's step-father, Dr. Rice, on his death, left behind him a lot of children and debts—and Norah. The youngsters were planted out in orphanages and the debts cold-shouldered by the relatives. But as no one seemed anxious to receive Norah in any capacity, she set about saving the situation by advertising for another, of a different kind.
Indeed, there had only ever been one soul who was desirous of acquiring her as a personal asset, and that was a certain Dr. Norman, who once came as assistant to her step-father. He was a pale, long-chinned man, a glutton for work, and with ideas on every subject under the sun, including the domestic details of a home. To make matters worse, he was invariably right.
When he proposed to Norah, however, thinking she would jump at the chance to escape the position of drudge in the doctor's poverty-stricken family, he broke his record. This time he was wrong, for she refused him on the spot.
The world is admittedly everyone's oyster, but Norah was not long in discovering that it will not open to a woman's weapon—her hat-pin. She went through the mill at the Registry Office, and it was not until after long lean weeks of ill-success that the unexpected happened, and she found herself under consideration.
Her astonishment was all the greater as she soon gathered that it was no ordinary situation that was on the books. Nor was her perspective charge an ordinary infant. He was not only an infant with a future, but an infant with a past. Litigation had raged fiercely round his puny form, which alone stood between a gigantic fortune and a flock of hungry human vultures.
For a whole week, Norah was interviewed by dry and legal
gentlemen, and pompous laymen, with "Trustee" written large on
their important faces. They all stared at her unblinkingly,
and pelted her with strange and probing questions. At the
end of the time, to her infinite surprise, she found herself
appointed lady-nurse to Peter Ferdinand Henbane Fitzbattle,
then resident at Clodoch Towers, Cumbs.
The lawyer-in-chief, who did the most of the talking, explained his decision.
"We are overlooking your lack of previous experience for the reason that you seem to possess the qualities which are a sine qua non. You have a long line of predecessors, all highly-trained women, who have either failed to please the infant, or have been unable to stand the absolute isolation. Remember, you will have no separate existence. You live only through your charge. There will be a nursery staff to do all menial work, but you are required not to leave the child, night or day. Doubtless you followed the Fitzbattle case through the Press, and understand that it is of tantamount importance that the boy lives to attain his majority. Too many people have a stake in his death."
"It sounds like a novel or play," faltered Norah, a little dashed by her future prospects.
"H'm! It has its dramatic elements. For instance, the stipulation that you first taste all the infant's food."
That was enough for poor hungry Norah.
"I swear," she said fervently, "that I'll devote myself body and soul to keeping the breath in the body of this child of Promise."
The lawyer actually smiled at her eagerness.
"If you can keep the position, it will mean provision for your old age," was his alluring bribe. "And we trust you to do so."
Norah soon found out that the lawyer had shown an
unexpected talent for fiction in his last speech. Once
installed in Clodoch Towers, she was well-housed, well-fed,
and well-paid, but she was certainly not trusted. Every week
brought its representative from Messrs. Lawyer, Trustee &
Co., on a surprise visit of investigation and inspection.
She soon made a grievance of this constant suspicion. She brooded over it daily, although, as a matter-of-fact, it was really the appalling loneliness that had affected her nerves. When the train shook her off at the tiny station of Clodoch, apparently the county of Cumberland had snapped to, like a trap, and shut her out of the map.
She very soon understood why the high-trained legion before her had thrown up the sponge, and only one thing prevented her from following their example. That thing was a person, and that person a Personage—the Infant.
In the beginning, Norah had left him out of her reckoning altogether. She was not particularly fond of children, and had brought up her step-father's pretty, healthy brood on the sound general principle of "a word and a blow, and the blow first."
To her intense surprise, she became the instant slave to this miniature Croesus, with his skinny, ill-nourished form and his cynical old man's face. She grovelled abjectly to obtain his favour. At first, he looked sourly at her peach-like complexion, for, true to type, he already possessed the impaired digestion of the millionaire, and he knew that peaches were taboo. After a time, however, he grew to approve of the incense she offered, and abused her devotion shamefully.
When the maid brought the message that morning to the nursery that the customary inspector had arrived, in addition to her indignation, Norah had experienced a sharp qualm of anxiety. The infant was not only her Heart's Beloved. He also represented her job.
A doctor this time! She worried herself to a pulp because the millionaire would not put on flesh. Would it be her fate, because of his deficit in avoirdupois, to find herself again fired?
She turned and addressed her charge, almost passionately.
"Peter, why can't I make you fat? Listen! I want you to send all the milk and all the pudding and all the bananas in the world down the red lane. Wouldn't you like to be fat like this?"
She puffed out her cheeks and distended her chest—a perfectly fiendish abuse of her beauty, but which pleased the infant sufficiently to command a repeat-performance.
Norah strained him to her.
"Eat, eat, eat!" she commanded. "Eat everything you can see—everything you can reach!"
"Eat you!"
Peter caught her finger in a really hard nip, but Norah did not rebuke his playful attempt at cannibalism.
"That's right, darling. Send me 'down the red lane!' Only grow fat. O-oh!"
The door had opened and Norah looked to find herself
confronted by her stepfather's former assistant—Dr.
Jasper Norman.
Her first glance told her that he had kept on being right ever since their parting, and, what was more, had made it pay very well. One could tell by the smart cut of his very professional attire that if he had not yet attained the honour of hanging out a plate in Harley Street, he no longer lived in the neighbourhood of Queer Street.
For his part, he looked at Norah with genuine pleasure, putting up his glass to focus her to better satisfaction. The pretty red-haired girl of old had attracted in spite of her untidy toilet, but now, in the spotless severity of starched linen, she looked a gorgeous white Goddess.
"This is capital!" he said approvingly. "It's an unexpected pleasure to find you here, expressing yourself in what is essentially woman's work. Er—where did you train? You should have consulted me."
At his professional voice, all Norah's former antagonism to her step-father's superior assistant was revived.
"Train?" she asked. "At home with the youngsters. Don't you remember?"
Dr. Norman's face fell visibly.
"You've had no hospital training? Dear, dear! Very irregular!"
"What's the odds? If I've not buried ten, it was the nearest thing. Did you ever know such children for being in the wars?"
Her mouth relaxed to a smile as she thought of the happy, healthy brood of Hooligans, but the young doctor saw no humour in the reply. He looked with positive horror at the puny infant.
"He does you no credit," he said drily. "He looks like a slum-child. What do you feed him on?"
Norah reddened with indignation at this reflection on her idol's appearance.
"What food?" she asked slowly. Then with mischievous inspiration she thought of the rations she daily sampled for Peter.
"He has what I have myself," she answered, after the orthodox manner of her step-father's surgery "mother."
The further drop of Dr. Norman's jaw rewarded her for much.
"Not really? You are serious? Dear, dear! And what have you had for lunch to-day."
Norah, who had the digestion of an ostrich, told him, and from the green hue that spread over his face, one would have thought that it was he who had tackled the indigestible food.
He looked with pained eyes at Norah, and his shocked expression relaxed.
"This is an appalling state of affairs," he said. "Surely you realise you can't bring up a complicated organism like this wealthy microbe, by rule of thumb. But you must keep this post. I'll prepare feeding-charts and a complete set of rules for your guidance, dealing with every subject from the temperature of the room to action in any emergency. Before I leave, I'll bring it in here and explain it to you. No, not a word. I'm only too glad to help you. You have been much in my thoughts since we parted."
The young doctor was about to say "in my heart," but he pulled himself up in evident doubt whether it was professional to possess the internal organs to which he daily ministered.
Norah collapsed before his authoritative manner. Was history to be repeated? Was there no escape from this autocratic young doctor, whose mission apparently was to put her in the wrong, and then set her right? Was she to brook being ordered about in her own nursery?
Before she could decide which great gun of her wrath to train upon him he caught up his hat.
"Well, that's settled. As I have to leave early, I must ask for something to eat before I go. And in view of what you told me about your lunch, may I plead for something wholesome and digestible?"
As he waited to let the reproof sink home, his eyes suddenly brightened in a very unprofessional manner.
"I'm so glad to see you still wear my brooch!" he said softly as he went out of the room.
Gasping with wrath, Norah put up her hand to her collar and removed her sole trinket. It was a gold safety-pin and had been presented to her by her step-father's neat assistant in the double capacity of a present and a hint.
She reflected, heedless of the fact that she had run the pin into her thumb. Did the wretched man preen himself on the fact that she wore it for sentimental reasons? If so, she would show him his mistake. When the baby was swathed in complicated outer layers of wool, for his airing, Norah carefully stuck the brooch on his fleecy chest to testify her indifference to this link with the past.
It was a trivial action, but to live in complete isolation with a small tyrant is apt to develop the petty side of a woman's nature. Norah, who in the old days possessed the glorious, slap-dash faults of a large nature, from taking on the existence of an oyster, had grown prone to exaggerate trifles. Her tussle with the doctor had now grown to the proportions of a civil war. She positively gloated over the memory of her visit to the housekeeper when she countermanded the tempting menu prepared for Dr. Norman in favour of a large rice pudding.
"In accordance with his wishes," she added. "Be sure to tell him that!"
It was a very tempestuous walk that day. For the first time
in his life, Peter found himself neglected. Norah bumped him
along at record speed, wheeling the perambulator herself, to
work off some of her annoyance. She turned the matter of Dr.
Norman's coming lecture over and over in her mind, until it
glowed red-hot from the force of friction.
It was just as they turned back through the lodge gates, that an idea came into her mind. She looked with sudden interest into the face of her second nursemaid, who had halted to post a letter in the pillar-box.
"Who's that to, Mary?" she asked, halting also.
"My young man. Him what's the postman," added the girl, in what should have been unnecessary explanation. Mary was a bit of a flirt.
"Oh! Would you like to see him tonight?" asked Norah softly. "Well, then, I want you to take the big key of the outer nursery door to the locksmith, to—to have the wards straightened. You needn't come back until nine o'clock. Go for a walk with your postman."
Mary marvelled at the extra extension, for the white goddess of the nursery was a bit of a martinet.
No sooner were they inside the house than Nursemaid the Second was packed off with the key, and Nursemaid the First ordered to lay instantly a lavish tea.
Norah waited with sparkling eyes until every eatable was safely on the nursery-table. Then she crossed to the outer door which was only closed at nights, and gave it a slam. The spring-lock snapped to, and they were prisoners.
She airily explained the incident to Nursemaid the First, who was outside, clamouring for admission.
"No, I can't open the door, for I haven't the key. I've given it to Mary. She won't be back till nine, and it's no good trying to find her. It doesn't matter at all. We've everything we want, and it's only for a few hours. Just explain matters to Dr. Norman and say I'm sorry to miss seeing him again."
Then she waltzed back to Peter and they had tea in style. Contrary to her expectations, Doctor Norman did not attempt to batter in the door. His soul—this is the most polite way of putting it—was too sorely wounded over the matter of the rice-pudding, for he liked good fare, although he insisted on its agreement with digestion. Too stiff-necked to complain or protest, lest he should seem to eat his words, he stuffed his paper of instructions in his pocket, and then prepared to stuff himself with cold rice-pudding. He told himself bitterly that it was the last time he would take the faintest interest in any woman, other than a case.
Meantime, in the nursery, Peter watched Norah with growing
disapproval. She absolutely talked him off his head, and she
kissed him past bearing. He began to entertain fears that she
was growing flighty, in which case, he would have to pack her
off, like the rest. Perhaps he had been too lenient with her,
on the score of her good looks.
Presently he became aware that she was hammering away at him with a question, the repetition of which was growing a nuisance.
"Heart's Desire, where's Nurse's gold brooch?"
To put an end to the nuisance, he at last answered her languidly, "Down er wed lane."
"Down the red lane?" The answer was repeated in a shrill falsetto, quivering with excitement. "Peter, darling, tell me again, where?"
Cross at her density, he played down to her intelligence. Opening his mouth, he popped one finger inside, in pantomimic display.
Norah gave a piercing shriek. There was no mistaking his meaning. This was the consequence of her extravagant exhortation to "eat everything he could see." The logical infant had begun on her brooch.
She sat for a moment in frozen horror. When she rushed to the door, at first her numbed brain could not grasp the reason why the handle would not turn. She battered on the heavy oak panels and started to scream at the top of her voice, but common-sense urged her to desist before she was specially bruised or hoarse. Help would not come that way. Her staff would be far away in the kitchen wing. She had planned for isolation, and she got it with a vengeance. It was on her own head.
She turned to look anxiously at Peter who was picking a toy to bits on the rug. It struck her with a pang that he looked paler than usual. His mouth was surely pinched. As she looked, he gave the fretful whimper she had learned to associate with internal pain.
Her heart gave a sickening thud. What was she to do? How soon would he be seized with a convulsion of pain? Must she stand by, in her ignorance, and see him suffer, while by the irony of fate, she had just rejected, with scorn, a paper of instructions that told her how to meet every emergency.
As she thought of it, she hit her head like a distraught creature.
"You ignorant, petty fool!" she cried. "Why did you despise his help. He knew. He always knows!"
Then, with a sudden inspiration she dashed over to the tea-table, her face alight with relief. Of course, the baby must be induced to sickness—no difficult matter, for he had a positive talent for it.
Salt-and-water. Mustard-and-water. Norah's knowledge was narrowed down to these two mixtures. But although the lavish tea included every luxury from the cook's larder, mustard and salt were not included among the tit-bits.
In an agony at her failure she rushed back and began to work furiously at the wretched millionaire. She rubbed him till he howled, tickled the back of his throat, while he bit her finger, and finished up by nearly standing him on his head, all the time weeping bitterly and invoking some mysterious deity who went under the name of "Tummy."
Under the treatment, Peter turned blue and black, and then stiffened in her arms like a poker.
Unable to diagnose this result of temper, Norah shivered as if in an ague. Was this a rigour to herald death? At the thought, her sorrow and devotion for her charge was overwhelmed by a sharp spasm of fear. She had forgotten. This baby was not only the apple of her eye. He was a sacred Trust. In imagination she saw the accusing faces of that awful body of men—dry and legal, fat and solemn—Messrs. Lawyer, Trustee & Co. What would they say when they knew that by her carelessness she had killed her Charge? The very thought goaded her to temporary insanity.
The next minute, as a result, the indignant millionaire received an additional shock. For, after folding him in an embrace, strong enough to strangle the powers of Death at work in his puny frame, she shamelessly abandoned him, in a compromising and inelegant manner. Instead of using the door, like honest folk, she went out of the window.
Her breath came in uneven puffs, when her knees left the sill and she felt her feet swing into space. The ivy that covered the walls was centuries old, but her weight was noble, and she felt her body creep with goose flesh whenever a tuft gave way in her hand.
In the room below—quite a respectable drop—Dr.
Norman sat and sulked over the triple cause of a wasted chart,
a milk pudding, and Norah. Presently the sound of scuffling
came to his ears, and he looked up to see a pair of Oxford
shoes dangling in space. The shoes were followed by about six
inches of leg, and the Doctor looked shocked—needless
to say not at the limbs, but at the small hole in one of the
stockings.
"That's Norah!" he said tersely.
His diagnosis was correct. For the rest of Norah, in a swirl of white linen and dishevelled tresses swung down on to the ground. Almost in a flash; she had stormed his window, and explained the situation in breathless sentences.
The doctor appeared to grasp the position immediately He seemed to agree that no time was to be lost, for he did not stop to argue about adopting such slow processes as attempting to force the heavy old door, or rousing the household in search of ladders. Without a word, he followed Norah up the ivy.
Without a connected word, the couple wormed their way upwards.
Although fairly safe, the ascent was no filbert-cracking job, and the air was filled with their exclamations and groans, as they pressed upwards to the moribund millionaire.
When their feet were safely planted on the nursery floor, the doctor turned to Norah and handed her something that he had held tightly clasped to him, during their ascent. With a pang of concern, she wondered if the shock had proved too severe for his brain. For he stood and offered her—a rice pudding.
"The one you ordered for me," he said, fortunately, in sane tones. "Quite Providential, really! Now, fill him up with this, every cranny and corner. No emetics here! Your plan is to load him up with stodge."
Norah's eyes were beaming with gratitude as she took his offering towards the common weal.
"Oh, the comfort of having you!" she cried. "I believe, in future, I shall always reverence rice pudding!"
Very soon, however, the tears stood once more in her eyes, for not a morsel of the stuff could she get her charge to swallow. After the affair of the window, he had definitely done with her for ever. He was proof to entreaties, bribes and cajolery. When they tried drastic methods, he bottled up his throat with his tongue, after a patent method of his own, and started to choke.
Dr. Norman looked on with some impatience.
"You seem to have no influence over him," he said at length, in disapproving tones. "I see I must try."
His methods were unusual, but justified by their success. He flopped down on hands and knees and barked. The millionaire condescended to look in his direction. When once he grasped the fact that the doctor was a hungry dog who wanted to eat his pudding, he promptly started to put a spoke in his wheel, by eating the pudding himself.
As spoonful after spoonful disappeared, Norah felt a sudden rush of thanksgiving that thawed the ice round her heart. She saw nothing amusing in the spectacle of an immaculately-clad young medico, whose dignity was his god—putting up his hands to beg and whelping like a poodle. She asked herself how she could ever have despised this pearl of mankind.
When Peter Ferdinand, gorged at last to repletion, fell
asleep in the doctor's arms, he turned to her and spoke in the
old way.
"We must leave the issues to Nature. By the way, do you still forget to darn your stockings?"
"I got that hole in the ivy coming down," answered Norah, meekly.
"I'm delighted. I felt sure of it. You have made so vast an improvement."
It was just like Dr. Norman to construct the whole of her moral character out of a trifling detail. He looked at her so kindly that she poured out her fears.
"There'll be an inquest, I suppose, if anything! And what will become of me? Manslaughter? Prison? Anyway, who would employ a person who had killed a future millionaire?"
"Come, come!" Dr. Norman still spoke professionally. "If the patient pulls through"—he ignored the alternative—"it strikes me as an excellent plan to take joint-charge of him. I think I could work it with the trustees. This is too lonely for you alone. Together though—I could supply the knowledge and you seem to have gained his affection. We'd have to be married, though."
Norah's voice broke, as she answered him.
"But he doesn't seem to care for me now. He turns from me, and—I did love him so!"
As usual, there was a masculine conspiracy to put her in the wrong. For Peter, waking at that instant, and finding his highly salaried attendant idle, instantly made work for her by holding out his arms.
As she caught him to her, the door opened and in walked Mary, the Nursemaid.
"There was nothing wrong with the key, Miss. And, please, the postman wants to know if this is yours. He found it in the pillar-box by the gate."
With a cry, Norah snatched the golden safety-pin. Peter Ferdinand had seized on her metaphor to her confusion. His "red lane" had been the red pillar-box, down whose open mouth he must have dropped the pin, as they halted at the gate.
For half a second, the all-knowing young doctor looked rather foolish. Then he laughed, till he cried. The baby, for his part, cried—I should like to say until he laughed, but laughing was not his line.
And Norah? In the revulsion of her feelings, she kissed them all round. First Peter, then Mary, and then....
But as the object of a story is to tell a tale, but not tales, this is a good place to leave off.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.