The Wonder Part 8

There were no complications, but Mrs. Stott's recovery was not rapid. It was considered advisable that she should not see the child. She thought that they were lying to her, that the child was dead and, so, resigned herself. 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and then he realised the significance of that sign. Fear came into his eyes, and his mouth fell open. "'Ere, I say, nurse, it's ... it's a wrong 'un, ain't it?" he gasped.

"I'm _sure_ I can't tell you, Mr. Stott," broke out the nurse hysterically. 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 be had, but a woman from the village had been sent for. She was expected every moment.

"More like a tadpole than anything," mused the unhappy father.

"Oh! Mr. Stott, for goodness' sake, _don't_," cried the nurse. "If you only knew...."

"Knew what?" questioned Stott, still staring at the motionless figure of his son, who lay with closed eyes, apparently unconscious.

"There's something--I don't know," began the nurse, and then after a pause, during which she seemed to struggle for some means of expression, she continued with a sigh of utter weariness, "You'll know when it opens its 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 there bein' something ... something what?"

"Uncanny," said the nurse without conviction. "I do wish that woman would 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 at last, a great hulk of a woman, who became voluble when she saw the child she 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 very spit of it...."

The stream ran on, but Stott heard no more. An idiot! He had fathered an idiot! That was the end of his dreams and ambitions! He had had an hour's sleep on the sitting-room sofa. He went out to his work at the County 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, and gasped 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 me this afternoon...." She wandered away into irrelevant fluency, but Stott was autocratic; his insistent questions overcame the inertia of even Mrs. Reade at last. The substance of her information, freed from extraneous 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 'im everythink. I've never seen nothink like it, never in all my days, and I've 'elped to bring a few into the world.... I can't begin to tell you about it, Mr. Stott, and that's the solemn truth. When 'e first looked at me, I near 'ad a faint. A old-fas.h.i.+oned, wise sort of look as 'e might '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 the sitting-room. He had had neither breakfast nor lunch; there was no sign of any preparation for his tea, and the fireplace was grey with the cinders of last night's fire. For some minutes he sat in deep despondency, a hero faced with the uncompromising detail of domestic neglect. Then he rose and called to the nurse.

She appeared at the head of the steep, narrow staircase. "s.h.!.+" she warned, 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 over her 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 doing well as far as that goes. Only ..." She broke off and drifted into small talk. Ever and again she stopped and listened intently, and looked back towards the half-open door of the upstairs room.

Stott fidgeted, and then, as the flow of conversation gave no sign of running dry, he dammed it abruptly. "Look 'ere, miss," he said, "I've 'ad nothing to eat since last night."

"Oh! dear!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the nurse. "If--perhaps, if you'd just stay here and listen, I could get you something." She seemed relieved to have some excuse for coming down.

While she bustled about the kitchen, Stott, half-way upstairs, stayed and listened. The house was very silent, the only sound was the hushed clatter made by the nurse in the kitchen. There was an atmosphere of wariness about the place that affected even so callous a person as Stott. He listened with strained attention, his eyes fixed on the half-open door. He was not an imaginative man, but he was beset with apprehension as to what lay behind that door. He looked for something inhuman that might come crawling through the aperture, something grotesque, preternaturally wise and threatening--something horribly unnatural.

The window of the upstairs room was evidently open, and now and again the 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, and presently 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 pa.s.sed a hand over her tired eyes. "She'll be here till ten o'clock. I'm going to lie down."

"I'll be back by ten," Stott a.s.sured 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 night the 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 the thought of human companions.h.i.+p. Sometimes she opened the door quietly and watched him as he slept. Except at night, when he was rarely quite sober, Stott only visited his cottage once a day, at lunch time; from seven in the morning till ten at night he remained in Ailesworth save for this one call of inquiry.

It was such a still house. Ellen Mary only spoke when speech was absolutely required, and then her words were the fewest possible, and were spoken in a whisper. The child made no sound of any kind. Even Mrs.

Reade tried to subdue her stertorous breathing, to move with less ponderous quakings. The neighbours told her she looked thinner.

Little wonder that during the long night vigil the nurse, moving silently between the two upstairs rooms, should pause on the landing and lean over the handrail; little wonder that she should give a long sigh of relief when she heard the music of Stott's snore ascend from the sitting-room.

O'Connell called twice every day during the first week, not because it was necessary for him to visit his two patients, but because the infant fascinated him. He would wait for it to open its eyes, and then he would get up and leave the room hurriedly. Always he intended to return the infant's stare, but when the opportunity was given to him, he always rose and left the room--no matter how long and deliberately he had braced himself to another course of action.

It was on a Thursday that the baby was born, and it was on the following Thursday that the circ.u.mstance of the household was reshaped.

O'Connell came in the morning, full of resolution. After he had p.r.o.nounced Mrs. Stott well on the way to recovery, he paid the usual visit to his younger patient. The child lay, relaxed, at full length, in the little cot which had been provided for him. His eyes were, as usual, closed, and he had all the appearance of the ordinary hydrocephalic idiot.

O'Connell sat down by the cot, listened to the child's breathing and heart-beat, lifted and let fall again the lax wrist, turned back the eyelid, revealing only the white of the upturned eyeball, and then composed himself to await the natural waking of the child, if it were asleep--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."