Al considered this a moment. Things were bad enough now, without Claribel murdering the child and making things worse.
"I wouldn"t do that," he said soothingly. "You can put it somewhere, can"t you? Maybe Rosie"ll know."
"I don"t want it to live."
For the first time he realised her despair. She turned on him her tormented eyes, and he quailed.
"I"ll find a place for it, kid," he said. "It"s mine, too. I guess I"m it, all right."
"Yours!" She half rose on her elbow, weak as she was. "Yours! Didn"t you throw me over when you found I was going to have it? Yours! Did you go through h.e.l.l for twenty-four hours to bring it into the world? I tell you, it"s mine--mine! And I"ll do what I want with it.
I"ll kill it, and myself too!"
"You don"t know what you"re saying!"
She had dropped back, white and exhausted.
"Don"t I?" she said, and fell silent.
Al felt defrauded, ill-treated. He had done the right thing; he had come to see the girl, which wasn"t customary in those circles where Al lived and worked and had his being; he had acknowledged his responsibility, and even--why, hang it all----
"Say the word and I"ll marry you," he said magnanimously.
"I don"t want to marry you."
He drew a breath of relief. Nothing could have been fairer than his offer, and she had refused it. He wished Rosie had been there to hear.
And just then Rosie came. She carried the baby, still faintly odorous of violets, held tight in unaccustomed arms. She looked awkward and conscious, but her amused smile at herself was half tender.
"h.e.l.lo, Claribel," she said. "How are you? Just look here, Al! What do you think of this?"
Al got up sheepishly and looked at the child.
"Boy or girl?" he asked politely.
"Girl; but it"s the living image of you," said Rose--for Rose and the Nurse were alike in the wiles of the serpent.
"Looks like me!" Al observed caustically. "Looks like an over-ripe tomato!"
But he drew himself up a trifle. Somewhere in his young and hardened soul the germs of parental pride, astutely sowed, had taken quick root.
"Feel how heavy she is," Rose commanded. And Al held out two arms unaccustomed to such tender offices.
"Heavy! She"s about as big as a peanut."
"Mind her back," said Rose, remembering instructions.
After her first glance Claribel had not looked at the child. But now, in its father"s arms, it began to whimper. The mother stirred uneasily, and frowned.
"Take it away!" she ordered. "I told them not to bring it here."
The child cried louder. Its tiny red face, under the powder, turned purple. It beat the air with its fists. Al, still holding it in his outstretched arms, began vague motions to comfort it, swinging it up and down and across. But it cried on, drawing up its tiny knees in spasms of distress. Claribel put her fingers in her ears.
"You"ll have to feed it!" Rose shouted over the din.
The girl comprehended without hearing, and shook her head in sullen obstinacy.
"What do you think of that for noise?" said Al, not without pride.
"She"s like me, all right. When I"m hungry, there"s h.e.l.l to pay if I"m not fed quick. Here,"--he bent down over Claribel,--"you might as well have dinner now, and stop the row."
Not ungently, he placed the squirming ma.s.s in the baptismal dress beside the girl on the bed. With the instinct of ages, the baby stopped wailing and opened her mouth.
"The little cuss!" cried Al, delighted. "Ain"t that me all over?
Little angel-face the minute I get to the table!"
Unresisting now, Claribel let Rose uncover her firm white breast.
The mother"s arm, pa.s.sively extended by Rose to receive the small body, contracted around it unconsciously.
She turned and looked long at the nuzzling, eager mouth, at the red hand lying trustfully open on her breast, at the wrinkled face, the indeterminate nose, the throbbing fontanelle where the little life was already beating so hard.
"A girl, Rose!" she said. "My G.o.d, what am I going to do with her?"
Rose was not listening. The Junior Medical"s turn had come at last.
Downstairs in the chapel, he was standing by the organ, his head thrown back, his heavy brown hair (which would never stay parted without the persuasion of brilliantine) bristling with earnestness.
"_O"er all the way, green palms and blossoms gay_,"
he sang, and his clear tenor came welling up the staircase to Liz, and past her to the ward, and to the group behind the screen.
"_Are strewn this day in festal preparation, Where Jesus comes to wipe our tears away-- E"en now the throng to welcome Him prepare._"
On the throne-chair by the record-table, the Nurse sat and listened.
And because it was Easter and she was very happy and because of the thrill in the tenor voice that came up the stairs to her, and because of the page in the order-book about bran baths and the rest of it, she cried a little, surrept.i.tiously, and let the tears drop down on a yellow hospital record.
The song was almost done. Liz, on the stairs, had fed her baby twenty minutes too soon, and now it lay, sleeping and sated, in her lap. Liz sat there, brooding over it, and the last line of the song came up the staircase.
"_Blessed is He who comes bringing sal-va-a-a-ation!_"
the Junior Medical sang.
The services were over. Downstairs the small crowd dispersed slowly.
The minister shook hands with the nurses at the door, and the Junior Medical rolled up his song and wondered how soon he could make rounds upstairs again.
Liz got up, with her baby in her arms, and padded in to the throne-chair by the record-table.
"He can sing some, can"t he!" she said.
"He has a beautiful voice." The Nurse"s eyes were shining.