Julia opened her eyes, looked up into the nurse"s face, and with returning consciousness came self-pity.
"I couldn"t do it, Miss Wheaton," she whispered pitifully, with trembling lips.
"h.e.l.lo, little girlie, you"re beginning to feel better, aren"t you?"
Miss Wheaton said. "Here she is, Doctor, as fine as silk."
Julia"s languid eyes found the doctor"s kindly face.
"But the baby?" she faltered, with a rush of tears.
"The baby is a very noisy young woman," said Doctor Lippincott cheerfully. "I wrapped her in her pink thingamagig, and she"s right here in Jim"s room, getting her first bath from her granny."
"Really?" Julia whispered. "You wouldn"t--fool me?"
"Listen to her!" Miss Wheaton said. "Now, my dear, don"t you be nervous.
You"ve got a perfectly lovely little girl, and you"ve come through _splendidly_, and everything"s fine. If you want to go look at that baby, Doctor," she added, "ask Doctor Studdiford to send Ellie in here to me and we"ll straighten this all out. Then we can let him in here to see this young lady!"
Presently Jim came in, to kneel beside Julia"s bed, and gather her little limp hands to his lips, and murmur incoherent praise of his brave girl, his darling little mother, his little old sweetheart, dearer than a thousand babies. Julia heard him dreamily, raised languid eyes, and after a little while stroked his hair. She was spent, exhausted, hammered by the agony of a few short hours into this pale ghost of herself, and he was strong and well, the red blood running confident and audacious in his veins. Their spirits could not meet to-night. But she loved his praise, loved to feel his cheek wet against her hand, and she began to be glad it was all over, that peace at last had found the big pleasant room, where firelight and the last soft brightness of the June day mingled so pleasantly on rosy wall paper and rosy curtains.
"She"s a little darling," said Jim. "Mother says she"s the prettiest tiny baby she ever saw. Poor Aunt Sanna and Mother had a great old cry together!"
"Ah!" said Julia hungrily. For Miss Toland had come stepping carefully in, the precious pink blanket in her arms.
"I"m to bring her to say "Good-night" to her mother!" said Miss Toland.
"How are you, dear? All forgotten now?"
The pink miracle was laid beside Julia; she shifted her sore body just a trifle to make room, and spread weak fingers to raise the blanket from the baby"s face. A little crumpled rose leaf of a face, a shock of soft black hair, and two tiny hands that curved warmly against Julia"s investigating finger. All the rest was delicate lawn and soft wool.
The baby wrinkled her little countenance, her tiny mouth opened, and Julia heard for the first time her daughter"s rasping, despairing, bitter little cry. A pa.s.sion of ecstasy flooded her heart; she dropped her soft pale cheek close to the little creased one.
"Oh, my darling, my _darling_!" she breathed. "Oh, you little perfect, helpless, innocent thing! Oh, Jim, she"s crying, the angel! Oh, I do thank G.o.d for her!" she ended softly.
"I thank G.o.d you"re so well," said Miss Toland. "Here, you can"t keep her!"
"Anna, go with Aunt Sanna," Julia said weakly.
"Anna, eh?" Miss Toland said, wrapping up the pink blanket.
"Anna Toland Studdiford," Jim answered. "Julia had that all fixed up weeks ago!"
"Well--now--you children!" Miss Toland said, looking from one to the other, with her half-vexed and half-approving laugh. "What do you want to name her that for?"
"_I_ know what for," Julia smiled, as she watched the pink blanket out of sight.
A little later Mrs. Toland crept in, just for a kiss, and a whimpered, "And now you must forget all the pain, dear, and just be happy!"
Then Julia was left to her own thoughts.
She watched Miss Wheaton come and go in the soft twilight. A shaded light bloomed suddenly, where it would not distress her eyes. The curtains were drawn, and Ellie came softly in with a pitcher of hot milk on a tray. Now and then the baby"s piercing little "Oo-wah-wah!" came in from the next room, and when she heard it, Julia smiled and said faintly, "The darling!"
And as a ship that has been blown seaward, to meet the gales and to be battered upon rocks, might be caught at last by friendlier tides and carried safely home, so Julia felt herself carried, a helpless little wreck, too tired to care if the waves flung her far up on sh.o.r.e or drew her out to their mad embraces again.
"All forgotten?" Miss Toland had asked, from her fifty years of ignorance, and "Now you must forget all the pain," Mrs. Toland had said, with her motherly smile.
Queer, drifting thoughts came and went in her active brain during these quiet days of convalescence. She thought of girls she had known at The Alexander, girls who had cried, and who had been blamed and ostracised, girls who had gone to the City and County Hospital for their bitter hour, and had afterward put the babies in the Asylum! Julia"s thoughts went by the baby in the next room, and at the picture of that tender helplessness, wronged and abandoned, her heart seemed to close like a closing hand.
Anna Toland Studdiford would never be abandoned, no fear of that. Never was baby more closely surrounded with love and the means of protection.
But the other babies, just as dear to other women, what of them? What of mother hearts that must go through life knowing that there are little cries they will never hear, tears they may never dry, tired little bodies that will never know the restfulness of gentle arms? The terrible sum of unnecessary human suffering rose up like a black cloud all about her; she seemed to see long hospital wards, with silent forms filling them day and night, night and day, the long years through; she had glimpses of the crowded homes of the poor, the sick and helpless mothers, the crying babies. She suddenly knew sickness and helplessness to be two of the greatest factors in human life.
"What if Heaven is only this earth, clean and right at last," mused Julia, "and h.e.l.l only the realization of what we might have done, and didn"t do--for each other!" And to Jim she said, smiling, "This experience has not only given me a baby, and given me my own motherhood, but it seems to have given me all the mothers and the babies in the world as well! I wish you were a baby doctor, Jim--the preservation of babies is the most important thing in the world!"
Slowly the kindly tides brought her back to life, and against her own belief that it would ever be so, she found herself walking again, essaying the stairs, taking her place at the table. Miss Wheaton went away, the capable Caroline took her place, and Julia was well.
Caroline was a silent, nice-looking, efficient woman of forty. She knew everything there was to know about babies, and had more than one book to consult when she forgot anything. She had been married, and had two handsome st.u.r.dy little girls of her own, so that little Anna"s rashes and colics, her crying days and the days in which she seemed to Julia alarmingly good, presented no problems to Caroline. There was nothing Julia could tell her about sterilizing, or talc.u.m powder, or keeping light out of the baby"s eyes, or turning her over in her crib from time to time so that she shouldn"t develop one-sidedly.
More than this, Anna was a good baby; she seemed to have something of her mother"s silent sweetness. She ran through her limited repertory of eating, sleeping, bathing, and blinking at her friends with absolute regularity.
"I"d just like you to leave the door open so that if she _should_ cry at night--" Julia said.
"But she never _does_ cry at night!" Caroline smiled.
Julia persisted for some time that she wanted to bathe the baby every day, but before Anna was two months old she had to give up the idea. It became too difficult to do what n.o.body in the house wanted her to do, and what Caroline was only too anxious to perform in her stead. Jim liked to loiter over his breakfast, and showed a certain impatience when Julia became restive.
"What is it, dear? What"s Lizzie say? Caroline wants you?"
"It"s just that--it"s ten o"clock, Jim, and Caroline sent down to know if I am going to give Anna her bath this morning!"
"Oh, bath--nothing! Let Caroline wait--what"s the rush?"
"It"s only that baby gets so cross, Jim!" Julia would plead.
"Well, let her. You know you mustn"t spoil her, Julie. If there"s one thing that"s awful it"s a house run by a spoiled kid! Do let"s have our breakfast in peace!"
Julia might here gracefully concede the point, and send a message to Caroline to go on without her. Or she might make the message a promise to perform the disputed duty herself, "in just a few minutes."
She would run into the nursery breathlessly, and take the baby in her arms. Everything would be in readiness, the water twinkling in the little bathtub, soap and powder, fresh little clothes, and woolly bath ap.r.o.n all in order.
"But _hush_, Sweetest! How cross she is this morning, Caroline!"
"Yes, Mrs. Studdiford. You see she ought to be having her bottle now, it"s nearly eleven! Dear little thing, she was _so_ good and patient."
"Well, darling, Mudder"ll be as quick as she can," Julia might console the baby, and under Caroline"s cool eye, and with Anna screaming until she was scarlet from her little black crown to the soles of her feet, the bath would somehow proceed. Ellie might put her head in the door.
"Well--oh, the poor baby, were they "busing Ellie"s baby?" she would croon, coming in. "Don"t you care, because Ellie"s going to beat "em all with sticks!"
Caroline antic.i.p.ated Julia"s every need on these occasions: the little heap of discarded apparel was whisked away, band and powder were promptly presented, the bath vanished, the clothes-rack with its tiny hangers was gone, and Julia had a moment in which to hug the weary, sleepy, hungry, fragrant little lump of girlhood in her arms.
"Bottle ready, Caroline?"