Chapter 5

( Originally Published 1915 )

BLINK MORAN ON DIET AND THE HUMAN MACHINE, ALSO ON THE HONEY BEE. AND A FAINT ANALOGY

IT WAS nearly six o'clock in the afternoon when Hilda responded to a tap at her door with a low-spoken, "Come in !"

At the moment the baby was engaged in sucking the two middle fingers of her right hand and staring up at the snowy curtains of the basket that now constituted her little world. She had been objecting to this little world, only a few moments earlier, with a violence that opened her mouth wide and changed her color through the various shades of red and purple to something near navy blue. In another few moments, if the average experience of this extraordinary afternoon might be accepted as a reasonable basis for prediction, she would object again. At present she was calm.

The door opened softly, and Blink Moran tiptoed in. Hilda smiled. She was glad to see him. If the way these dancing and prize-fighting persons plainly had of visiting one another's rooms at all hours and in various casual degrees of negligee did seem more extremely unconventional than any mode of life that she had hitherto known, at least they were all quite wholesomely unconscious of it. The obvious thing to do, since she had intruded herself into this odd atmosphere, was to accept it. This, with an occasional recurrence of the queer sensation of unreality that had first risen within her on the preceding day, she was now endeavoring to do. Moran, at least, was always fully dressed when she saw him.

"Everything all right ?" he asked.

She nodded, still smiling. "Come and look," she said. Adding, "You needn't be so terribly quiet. She's awake."

He stood by her, looking down at the wholly unreasonable but definitely individualized bit of humanity in the basket.

"Funny little thing," he mused soberly. "I suppose we all looked like that once."

Hilda laughed softly, and nodded toward a chair. She herself dropped to the stool that she had placed beside the basket.

Moran glanced at her, thoughtfully. She was dressed in a simple white shirt-waist and dark skirt. Her chestnut hair was done up about her head in a way that, while simple, emphasized its abundance. She still looked tired; but there was a rather firm set to her mouth, and her eyes were steady. He thought of these eyes now, really for the first time. They were gray-blue in color; and you remembered them. He knew that he would remember them. Yesterday and last evening, at the Parnasse and the boxing match and Lavenue's, she had not looked like this. He could not say what the difference was, but certainly she now appeared surer of herself. She had told him that she was a business womani He now decided that she was a capable one. She had a book in her hand, and was marking a place with a slim finger.

She caught him looking curiously at the volume, and held it up. "The baby book," she explained. "I'm studying it."

"Oh," said he. "But you told me last night that you knew about babies."

"I helped bring up two," she replied. "But that was a good while ago." Her face sobered. "You don't remember all the things you pick up at such a time—medical knowledge, and all that. A baby's a job, you know; a very definite job. And every baby's different. You've got to study your baby. And you can't make mistakes. You can't, you know. So the only thing to do is the right thing, every time."

He thought this over during a long moment; then slowly nodded. "Yes," he said, "I suppose that's so. I never thought of it."

She opened the book and turned the pages reflectively. "No," she repeated, "it's no good making mistakes with babies. And you can't bank on what you only think you know—things you half remember, opinions and such. I worked for a big man once, Harris Doreyn, of Chicago,"— she checked herself, glanced swiftly up, then looked down again at the book—"oh, I told you about him last night. He used to say, 'Your opinions are no better than your information. Let's have your information' I thought of that this morning, and so I'm getting up my information about babies."

He rose and stood looking at the prettily arranged basket while thinking about the woman there on the low seat beside it. He had never known quite such a woman. He didn't see why she should come in here and take hold in this fine way; but he did see that the baby had brought her to life astonishingly. "But then, babies do take hold of women," he thought. "That's natural. It's their game."

"I'm going over by the American Express," he said; "shall I ask for your mail ?"

"Thank you," said she. "If you don't mind."

Then he left; forgetting that he needn't be so terribly quiet; tiptoeing out and closing the door with great care. Hilda watched him as he closed the door. Never in her life had she seen so big a man move with such lightness.

He was back in less than an hour with her letters; chatting for a moment, then going along. These had little interest for her. They were but fluttering bits of paper from a remote life in a remote land. Several times while she glanced hastily through them the baby's whimperings drew her attention. There was a cable from Joe Hemstead that called for a moment's thought. She mentally built out the gaps between the words. Stanley Aitcheson, it appeared, had left the Hartman store a week earlier. "That must have been just after Mr. Hemstead wrote the letter that came yesterday," she mused, with half a frown. But it had only this day become clear that he had sailed for Cherbourg. His father was worried; and J. H. was cabling Armandeville's to look after him and send him back if possible.

This was awkward. She thought it over while smoothing out the bedding under the restless baby, and draping a steamer rug over a chair-back to shield the little eyes from the light. She knelt for a time beside the basket and studied the tiny head as it lay quiet for the moment, on the muslin-covered mattress. The nose was a mere button, as baby noses should be. The eyes, she thought, were going to be brown. She would have preferred blue. The little cheeks were none too plump. Very well—she would see to that. And the knees, she knew, down there under the warm little puff, were hardly what you would call dimpled. But that, she considered, could be managed. A baby, as she had told Moran, is a job. It would be a matter of experimenting with various foods until they could work out the precisely right mixture for the delicate little body to digest and assimilate with the minimum of effort. They had had to work out a similar problem with her brother Harry ; and that was years back, before the modern understanding of baby problems had been arrived at.

It was rather surprising, even to herself, that she should take such a deep enjoyment in the detail of ministering to this helpless little person—after all these years of giving her attention and her strength to a very different sort of thing. One small hand lay outside the puff. She took it gently in her own. It was pitifully thin. There ought to be dimples here, as on the knees—one dimple for each tiny knuckle. She looked again at the round little head. It was a dark baby, with almost black hair. She wished it were lighti She liked blue eyes and bald heads covered with soft fuzz.

The baby whimpered, caught its breath, opened its mouth and set out into an exhibition of an astonishingly strong equipment of lungs. Hilda patted the wriggling body, and spoke soothingly. The little face deepened in color and. wrinkled. The noise grew in volume.

Hilda looked about her, in momentary helplessness. "It isn't feeding time," she thought—"not for half an hour. And the book says not to pick it up."

But soothing words had no effect. Neither did the picking up process, when Hilda weakened. She replaced her little charge in the basket, lighted the alcohol lamp and set a pail of water over it, and placed a bottle in the water. The neck of the bottle was carefully closed with absorbent cotton. She had taken it from a small tin refrigerator, where its fellows nestled among several small cakes of that one rarest commodity in. all Paris—ice.

As she moved back and forth, now trying to soothe the outraged baby, now testing the water with her finger and taking the bottle out to shake it, she thought of Stanley Aitcheson. Yes, it would be awkward should he find her. And very likely he would find her. He would be persistent —exigent, even. He must not know that she had moved over to this queer little hotel. He must not know about the baby; or about Blink Moran.

She sighed and pressed her hand at the back of her head. She must be very careful indeed. The thought irked her. She frowned and compressed her lips, then shrugged her shoulders. She would face the facts as they might develop. The thing to do now was to wash her hands, take a rubber nipple from the cup of boracic acid solution on the windowsill and put it on the bottle. Already, she felt, she was growing less clumsy in these little matters. Within another day or so she would be deft enough at it. She seated herself beside the basket and slipped the nipple into the wide-open mouth. Instantly there was peace.

At half past ten that night Moran tapped and tiptoed in. The baby was sleeping, restlessly, and at times snuffling a little.

"Got a cold," Moran whispered, looking down at it.

"A little," said she. "The doctor was in. He says he wouldn't think much of the cold if she were only a little stronger. The thing now is to work out this feeding problem and build up her strength. Sit down—the armchair. They don't go in very strongly for comfort in this hotel."

"Not very," said he. Then, "Have you been right here all the time ?"

She nodded. "I don't mind."

He thought this over. "You ought to get out. Weren't the girls back at all ?"

"Only at dinner time. Adele was in. But only for a moment."

"Of course, she has to be at the Parnasse early to dress for the review. But couldn't you have left the floor maid here for a little while? Just so you could get in a short walk ?"

Hilda smiled and shook her head. "Not until I get this business in hand. I started weighing her to-day," she indicated a baby scale in white enamel that stood behind the closet door. "She's almost twenty ounces under weight, according to the table of weights in the book. I'll keep track every day now."

He studied the scale during a long moment. "Look here," he observed, "aren't you getting into this thing pretty deep ? It must be a good deal of an expense."

"I know," she replied. "But I'd likely be spending it some other way." She gazed down at the dark little head among the shadows of the diminutive puff. "It's got hold of me, I guess. I'm not the loafing kind. I have to be doing something. I was all at sea yesterday. You see, I had had to make up my mind that I was too tired to go back to my job and didn't know what on earth to do with myself." She interrupted herself with a nervous little laugh. "This baby is just the thing, you see."

He inclined his head. "That explains it," said he. "Explains what ?"

"You looked tired last night. To-night you look reasonably fit."

He seemed quite unaware that his attitude was distinctly personal. She saw that, as usual, he was merely speaking out what was uppermost in his mind. But none the less, she changed the subject. "When do the—the girls get back from the theater ?"

"Two or three o'clock."

"Two or three in the morning?" She was a thought startled.

He nodded. "There's a supper show after the regular performance. They have to work at that, too."

"But isn't that pretty hard ?"

"Oh, of course. But it goes with the job."

She gave some thought to this. It was, to say the least, an irregular life these young folks were leading. Millicent and Blondie fitted into it naturally enough, and young Harper ; but Adele seemed different.

She voiced this thought. He seemed to agree with her; but said merely, "Adele's a good kid."

"She doesn't seem so crazy as the others," Hilda went on, pressing the point a little. For new and confused speculations were stirring in her mind regarding the lives and relationships of these young Americans, so curiously adrift in Europe. "She has some sense of responsibility."

"Oh, yes," said he, "she's got that."

"And she looks honest."

"Oh, Adele's honest."

It was no use. Blink was impenetrable. She pondered a little whether he employed the word "honest" in the same sense as she did.

One fact regarding her prize-fighter she found downright refreshing. He was simple; he was wholesome; he was, she decided, "comfortable." He had dropped his coat, hat and stick on her bed without a self-conscious thought. Aware every moment of the tenseness of her own nerves, she envied the perfect physical ease with which he sat in the shabby chair, resting his solid head against the back and his big hands on the chair-arms. She was hardly conscious now of the Gothic eyelid that had struck her, at first, as so grotesque; for she was beginning to feel comfortably acquainted with the calm blue eye beneath it. It did seem odd that he should be sitting here in her room, at eleven o'clock at night, visiting with her in the low confidential voice that the presence of the baby made advisable. But the conventional resistance to the fact that now and then flared up within her invariably flickered out when she looked at his big relaxed frame and found herself listening to the observations that emanated from his slow but thoughtful mind. The moment came when she deliberately decided—"He isn't even thinking about it. He's just natural. Then why shouldn't I be natural, too? Even if they've never let me before."

"Funny," he was saying. "I never thought about working out a baby's diet this way. But when you do come to think of it—why, it's the thing, of course. I haven't seen many babies; but I know it's true of dogs and horses. And it's the way we boxers have to do all the time. It isn't just exercise, you know—it's what we put into ourselves, the right proportions of foods and the right kinds. And just so much or so little water. I have to agree, you know, to make exactly a certain weight at a certain hour, one month, two months, six months off. And not only that—I have to deliver myself in perfect physical condition at that exact weight. You say this baby is twenty ounces under weight: all right, let's bring it up to weight."

Hilda regarded him with deepening interest. He had the power to take her out of her discordant self; for which fact she was grateful.

He was reflecting. "The greatest things on diet are bees."

"Bees !" Hilda exclaimed softly. She was smiling.

He nodded. "My father's in the business. Out in Michigan. It's queer—you can't work around bees without getting interested in them. You know they seem to do a lot of things better than we do."

"I don't know anything about them," murmured Hilda.

"Why, they can make a queen bee out of an ordinary egg just by the difference in feeding. And they never make any mistakes."

"Who are they ?" asked Hilda.

"The workers. They're the females, you know. But they don't lay eggs. Only the queen does that—for the whole hive. The workers go out and get the honey and manufacture it, and make the wax for the cells, and clean house, and feed the little grubs, and fight now and then, and fan air into the hive with their wings when it's hot. . . . I was going to tell you about the feeding. When they figure out that they need a queen they feed the white grub, as soon as it hatches from the egg, a kind of jelly that they make in their heads."

"In their heads ?"

"Yes. They give this jelly to the worker grubs, too, but only for three days. The grub that's picked for a queen is fed on this jelly until it's grown. They call it royal jelly in the books. But you see, they really make two different kinds of bees from the same kind of egg, just by feeding them differently. That's what I meant."

"So the females are the workers," mused Hilda. Analogies rose in her mind.

"Yes," said he. "Mostly they work all the time, every day, until they die. That's all they do—just work." "Funny thing, though," he went on, after a moment, "they aren't so simple as that sounds. Sometimes they seem to go sort of crazy."

"I should think they would," mused Hilda; but she did not say it aloud.

"It's generally when the flowers run out and they can't get much honey in the fields. They get to robbing other hives—or jam pots in the pantry—most anything, just so long as it's sweet. Sometimes, when mother was putting up preserves, it was fierce. She couldn't tell what to do. They get all demoralized. They get honey drunk. And you have to outwit them, one way or another, and make them take up their work again."

The analogies were at large in Hilda's mind. She was looking down at the sleeping baby now. Her color had risen a very little.

"Tell me," she asked abruptly, "how is her mother ?" At the word "her," she indicated the baby with a movement of her head.

As usual, he was a little slow in following her apparent change of thought. But after a moment he replied, "Pretty sick."

Hilda bit her lip, still gazing at the tiny form under the warm covers. Her eyes were bright.

She got up now, and turned away from him, busying herself over the cups and plates that stood in a row on the window-sill. She heard him as he rose.

"Don't get up," she said. "I just thought of something." "I'm tiring you."

"No," said she; "on the contrary, you have rested me."

He noted her bright eyes and the color in her cheeks, and shook his head. He picked up his coat hat and stick, moved over to the door, then hesitated.

"Tell me," she asked, "what do they do in France with children that aren't—well, when the parents weren't married?"

"Different things," he replied. "There used to be a place where they dropped them into a sort of chute, to be taken care of by the city. Sometimes, I guess, the mothers keep them. There are a good many of them here, you know. The French people aren't so down on them as we are."

Other questions were trembling on Hilda's lips. So she compressed those lips and shut the questions back.

But he still hesitated, there at the door.

"You know—" he began, then paused.

"What ?" said she.

"Well, I think you'd better let us come in on the expense."

"Oh, that's all right—" she broke out; then saw that he definitely intended to "come in." He looked solid and strong in purpose, standing erect there by the door with his hand on the knob. "Of course, if you feel that way. . . ."

"I do," said he. "And I know the others will. We all know Juliette, you see."

"Of course," replied Hilda. "That is so." He had a strong sense of responsibility, this man. And he puzzled her more than a little. For a brief moment, she tried to divine him. Did he question her motives, in some way that she had considered? Or was he merely considerate and friendly ? For a fluttering moment, even standing here in her own room, surrounded by a score of evidences that for the first time in its brief little life the baby was well cared for, Hilda felt herself an intruder. And he made her feel so, this prize-fighter. A little rush of resentment against him flared within her; and following this, something very like resentment against the woman who had brought this little life into the world, and who might at any moment reassert her right in it. For already Hilda saw that she herself might grow too fond of the child. This wouldn't do, of course. It would bring problems greater than any she had yet faced. And, too, she must not feel too harshly toward that poor waif of a girl-mother in the hospital at Auteuil. Even if she was a pretty questionable sort of person ! Even if the ideas of motherhood and marriage were inseparably linked in Hilda's mind !

She walked over to the window-sill and managed a pretense of setting something to rights. She turned back and bent over the basket, tucking the covers close in behind the little back. After all, in what respect was this very little girl different from other children Was it fair to blame a child for the dereliction of its parents ! She looked up at Moran, over the basket.

"I'll keep an account of the expense," she said, simply, with a softness in her voice so unfamiliar, even to herself, that her eyes unexpectedly filled—"and let you know."

"Thanks," said he. "I knew you would. I make it a rule to go to bed early. But if you need me, or if there's anything I can do, my room is number ten, just down the hall. Good night." And he was gone.

She went to bed herself then, but got little sleep. Shortly after midnight the baby woke, and became so restless that Hilda, dimming the electric light with wrappings of colored tissue-paper from her trunk, took it up and, settling herself in the armchair where Moran had sat, cuddled it to sleep in her aims. This sleep proved so deep and restful that she had not the heart to risk an awakening by replacing it in the basket. And she liked to feel the little body, wrapped about as it was in blanket and puff, a helpless weight in her arms. More than once, very gently, she pressed it to her breast. She grew drowsy herself. Her thoughts rambled and took on the color of dreams. Her head drooped, then came up with a start and she looked about her at the unfamiliar room that was already so completely dominated by the baby. Baby's things everywhere —little garments that she herself had washed, drying over chair-backs ! What an extraordinary man her prizefighter was to step into this strange, this exceedingly intimate, atmosphere and take it for granted, just as it was. Yes, he was natural. That was the word. It was why he liked Paris—because he was natural. For Paris, with all its excesses, is at least that.

Her head drooped again. The baby was warm on her breast. Her arms relaxed a little. She brought herself awake with a deliberate effort of will. It would not do to fall asleep. Not with baby in her arms. ' It would be safer to put her back in the basket. So she did this. Then, realizing that she herself was cold, except for that delicious warmness where the baby had lain so close, she got into bed and added a steamer rug to the rather inadequate covering.

Again her sleep was short ; but at least she had had the opportunity to get warm. This time she threw a heavy wrap about herself, and hurriedly set some water boiling over the lamp and got out her small drip coffee-pot. If this thing was to be a job, as it so evidently was, she would make a real job of it. Again she settled herself in the big chair and cuddled the little living thing close to her own warm body.

It was half past two by the traveling clock on the bureau. Before three o'clock she had made and drunk her coffee; and felt refreshed. The baby certainly was sleeping better, this night, in her arms. Very well, in her arms the baby should sleep.

At ten minutes after three she heard "the girls" come in. They said good night. One voice was Adele's. The other, she thought, was Millicent's. There was the sound of light footsteps and the rustle of skirts. Two doors closed softly.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, there were other soft sounds in the hall. A man's voice, this time—a man who was evidently intending to whisper and then forgetting the intention.

"No, I'm not drunk," he was saying. "Only a few drinks —tha's all. Jus' what those St. Louis men bought for me —part of a bottle of wine. An' then jus' a few other drinks. I'm comin' in."

The girl whispered her reply. But her voice, too, rose after a moment. Hilda heard her say—"Now, don't you go starting anything ! Be careful, Will! Adele's in. She'll hear you !"

The voice was Blondie's. And the man, Hilda believed, was young Harper. At his next remark, she was certain.

"What do I care for her ! I can manage her. She does everything I say. She ain't goin' to make trouble. I'm comin' in."

The girl whispered excitedly. Hilda thought she caught the sound of a small scuffle. Then another door opened, and Adele's voice said :

"Can't you see the lady's light's lighted? Do you want her to hear you? What do you suppose she'll think of us !"

It was a point of view that Hilda could not fathom at the moment. There was weariness in Adele's voice, but she could not tell if there was any great amount of emotion in it. While she was thinking about it the little disturbance quieted down, and doors closed.

Hilda sat quite motionless, holding the baby tight. That this atmosphere into which she had so impulsively intruded was distinctly queer, that it savored of an easy demoralization foreign to her own instincts and to the routine of her life, she was now certain. It was the sort of thing that at home, in her own environment, fast to her own moorings, she could not tolerate; the sort of thing that irritated her, as inefficiency, any sort of a bad job, irritated her. But she was distinctly not fast to her own moorings. She wished she were. Even now it might be possible to take the steamer back with May Isbell. May would reach Paris in a few days.

For a time she considered this possibility. Then her reason stirred and told her, as it had told her before, that the one weakness she could not permit herself was irresolution. Deep, deep in her thoughts she knew that she could never go back to the store except as a changed rested woman. On no other terms could she face Joe Hemstead. He would be more than considerate. He would give her any reasonable amount of time at full salary—a year, even. But there was nothing personal or yielding about J. H. Himself a finely organized, efficient working machine, he looked at her in the same light. As a working machine she was now a little out of repair. She herself had admitted it. He knew it anyway, without her admission. She must be put into repair, at once. That was all. The Hartman store was not a junk shop—it was a great smooth-running power-house in which every wire, every casting, every bearing, every switch, every dynamo, was a human being or a finely organized group of human beings.

For the first time in Hilda Wilson's life this thought disturbed her, almost frightened her. And from this fact alone she knew that she couldn't go back. She couldn't go back, indeed, until the old feeling should return of glorying in her own part in the working of the great machine.

This was a matter of getting into sound physical condition, that was all. She told herself that that was all.

Her head ached. She looked about the room. There was her own wardrobe trunk, standing open, her own clothes hanging within it. There were her brush and comb and mirror and her silver box of toilet articles on the chiffonier. But all about were baby's things ! And the room was a chamber in a queer little French hotel, in Paris. She looked up at the thick red curtains that hung suspended from gilded cornices, before the two long casement windows. She looked at the none-too-clean white paint on the door frame, and the heavily-flowered red paper on the wall. Struggling with the almost overpowering sense of unreality that had gripped her during these two abnormal days, she looked down at the baby in her arms. And suddenly her eyes filled. A tear slipped down on her cheek. She let it go. Here was something real, something she could hold to for the moment at least. For the moment . . .

She started, and sat erect—so suddenly that the baby stirred a little in her arms. She had caught a faint noise in the hall. She listened intently—and heard it again. For the moment she was frightened. But everything was still again. Perhaps she had imagined it. She sat, still erect, for a little time; then rose, moved carefully across the room, turned the key softly, and opened the door.

Outside, in her nightgown, Adele was leaning against the wall. She looked white and tired.

"I didn't mean to disturb you," she said, timidly. "I was just worrying a little, and thought I'd listen—"

"I was awake," said Hilda. She did not feel unkindness for the girl, but could not help speaking with a stiffness that was, in part, self-consciousness.

Adele bit her lip, then looked down at the little dark head that was cuddled in the folds of the puff : "She's all right ?"

Hilda nodded. "A little cold, that's all. The snuffles seem to interfere some with her breathing and wake her up. So I'm holding her. The colic seems to be a good deal better."

Adele hesitated, turned half away, then, with a whispered "Good night," slipped down the hall. Hilda closed the door.