Arthur confronted a particularly sinister reflection; his eyebrows were gathered in a fearful frown, his lips were twisted to a sneer of cold command. He was not only gun-running in Manchuria but taking command of a rearguard action against the invaders.
There was a knock at the door.’ Go away!’ cried Arthur.
‘Oh, Mr Gander,’ said Miss Chiblet, invisible but insistent, ‘Mrs Gander wants to speak to you. She won’t believe me when I tell her there’s no hurry, and she’d like you to telephone to the doctor again.’
Arthur stared at his stern parti-clad image. ‘Three hundred yards; half-left, two stunted trees, enemy machine-gun post; three rounds rapid; fire!’ he commanded.
Miss Chiblet knocked again. ‘Mr Gander,’ she repeated.
‘Yes, yes!’ shouted Arthur. ‘I’m coming. Good heavens, do you think I’m deaf?’
He put on his dressing-gown and knotted its girdle with a savage tug. He had telephoned to the doctor at tea-time on the previous day, and again at eleven o’clock. The doctor had said, a little testily, that he was a busy man and they were wasting his time. Miss Chiblet would know when he was needed, and he didn’t propose to return till she sent for him. But Daisy, with a woman’s mistrust of women, again refused to rely on Miss Chiblet’s judgement and thought her symptoms grave enough to warrant the doctor’s personal attention.
Arthur went sulkily to the telephone. The doctor had a loud barking voice that made his ear-drum quiver like a stricken gong. He wouldn’t accept Arthur’s report of the situation and insisted on speaking to Miss Chiblet. Arthur returned to Daisy and tried to reason with her. Escaping at last, he finished dressing and took Ruth to Rumneys, where, it had been arranged, she should stay till the crisis was over.
At five o’clock the doctor threatened to give up the case if Arthur telephoned to him again, and at three o’clock in the morning Arthur was driven out into the darkness to summon him from sleep, and talk to him as man to man, and explain to him that Daisy’s constitution was entirely different from that of other women – she said so herself – and that he must come at once, no matter what Miss Chiblet said, or the consequences might be appalling.
After another day of recurrent alarms and a night still more disturbed, the baby was born at the respectable hour of eleven o’clock in the morning. As Mrs Finger had predicted, it was a boy. The doctor, somewhat resentfully, said it was a healthy child and tha.t Daisy was very comfortable. Arthur collected his gardening tools, and retiring to the rockery drank half a bottle of gin and fell sound asleep.
This notable advance in Daisy’s bid for fortune was enthusiastically acclaimed, and in three days more than a hundred people came to inquire about her health, to offer congratulations, and to leave flowers. Her room, and indeed the whole house, looked like a Chicago gunman’s funeral in the palmy days of Prohibition; and her cook was incapacitated by a serious attack of hay-fever.
Arthur suffered rather badly from the joint effect of sleepless nights and the half-bottle of gin, and succumbing to the general atmosphere of malaise, took to spending most of the day in a dressing-gown. His rebellious mood, his nostalgia for lusty winds and a cracking mast and military operations in Manchuria, vanished entirely, and he luxuriated in a gentle self-pity. Upstairs there was a constant coming and going, the running to and fro of Miss Cbiblet as she sought in vain to keep pace with Daisy’s ever-changing needs – windows to be opened and windows to be shut, barley-water and malted milk, pillows to be added or subtracted, visitors to be admitted and others to be ushered away, the cradle to be moved out of a draught or out of the sun – but downstairs Arthur sat alone among the surplus flowers, and was pleasantly sorry for himself, for his loneliness and neglectedness, and the increase of his responsibilities.
But self-pity could not dominate his temper for long, and presently, observing the restless commotion of which his son was centre – the bustle of preparing bottles and changing diapers and filling baths – it occurred to him that women were unbusinesslike and inefficient creatures, and if the child were to have a proper chance to thrive and grow he had better assume command of the situation himself. So he began assiduously to read several books on the feeding and management of infants, which Daisy had previously bought, and made a great nuisance of himself by testing with a large and dimly-figured thermometer the temperature of the child’s bath water, and by insisting that all bottles should be sterilized in his presence. Nor was he content with the orthodox routine of a nursery, but discovering the functional instability of a baby he began to cast about for some method of reducing the incessant labours of its attendants. After several days of anxious thought he hit upon a brilliant idea, and having carried a packing-case, a sheet of glass, and some carpenter’s tools into the sitting-room, he set to work.
While he was busy with a saw, Stephen and Wilfrid were shown in. Wilfrid had brought a magnificent bundle of pale yellow tulips. They exchanged greetings, and Arthur assured them that Daisy and her child were progressing favourably.
‘How terribly excited you must be!’ said Wilfrid.
‘It’s been a wearing time,’ said Arthur, ‘very wearing indeed. I wouldn’t willingly go through it again. The responsibility’s great, and one suffers a lot of natural anxiety, and – well, my feelings were something like those of a Divisional H.Q. during the War, when the troops were going forward, and of course one didn’t know what was happening to them. I’ve seen Headquarters absolutely white with anxiety at such times.’
‘What are you making?’ asked Stephen. ‘A cage?’
‘Something of the kind,’ said Arthur. ‘As a matter of fact it’s a new nursery appliance that I’ve invented. The ordinary methods of looking after a baby are quite hopelessly antiquated – women are conservative creatures, you know, and absolutely without imagination – and as soon as I began to watch Miss Chiblet at work I saw there was room for new ideas. No one has ever thought of babies in a scientific way. No one has tried to classify them. How, for example, would you define a baby?’
‘A young mammal, I suppose,’ said Stephen; and Wilfrid cried, ‘Oh, that’s far too easy! I’m sure Arthur’s thinking of something terribly difficult and unexpected.’
‘Your answer isn’t scientific, it isn’t accurate,’ said Arthur. ‘The proper definition is this: a baby is a biological system of uncontrolled apertures. Now consider what that means.’
‘Indeed, I shan’t,’ said Stephen.
‘It means’, said Arthur firmly, ‘that the nurse or the mother, as the case may be, is always busy changing its clothes. And that’s a waste of time, of labour, and of money. Now this invention of mine is not only labour-saving, but by doing away with all laundry-work it will save money as well. I shall probably patent it, and make a steady income out of it.’
‘But how does it work?’ asked Wilfrid.
Arthur, with obvious pleasure, turned the open side of the packing-case towards them. ‘It’s simply a cage with a glass front and a sliding floor,’ he said. ‘On each side, behind an interior wall of wire-netting, I’m going to put a small oil-lamp, and cut holes in the roof for ventilation. That will keep it warm, and the child can lie there quite comfortably, naked, on a carpet of cotton-wool. No bother about dressing or undressing, you see; you simply bath it in the morning and put it straight in.’
Stephen and Wilfrid looked with dubious appraisement at the half-made cage.
‘The glass front moves up and down,’ said Arthur, ‘and the sliding floor can be removed when necessary.’
‘It sounds marvellous,’ said Wilfrid.
‘Do you think Daisy will approve of it?’ asked Stephen.
‘Daisy will see its advantages and, naturally, defer to my judgement,’ said Arthur. Frowning a little, he sat down with a roll of wire-netting in his hands, and plucked idly at it as though it were a banjo.
‘You’re looking tired, Arthur,’ said Wilfrid.
Arthur sighed. ‘One can’t have a baby without suffering,’ he said.
&
nbsp; ‘It’s a primitive and disgusting business,’ Stephen observed.
‘We’ve been talking such a lot about you, and wondering how you were getting on,’ said Wilfrid.
‘And even you, who are sympathetic, can’t properly realize the nerve-racking strain of it all,’ said Arthur. ‘I myself have often pooh-pooh’d the sufferings of other men in similar circumstances: but I never shall again. For nearly a week I had no sleep, or hardly any sleep. I was worn to a shadow. But I couldn’t lie down and admit defeat, I had to keep going, of course, and somehow or other I managed it. I really ought to go away somewhere and have a proper rest, and forget about it, but I don’t see how it can be done: I can hardly leave the child alone at ten days old.’
‘Dr Banner’s very good at these cases, isn’t he?’ asked Wilfrid. ‘At least I’ve always heard so.’
‘Yes, in a way,’ said Arthur, ‘but I shouldn’t have him again. I think I’d go to Dr Umble another time. Banner knows his job, of course, but one wants more than mere technical knowledge at such a time. One needs sympathy and understanding, and Banner’s rather brusque and offhanded. On Tuesday night, for instance – or rather early on Wednesday morning – I went to see him and explain the situation. I felt it was no use to telephone, I had to see him personally, because I really thought the baby might arrive at any moment, and though Miss Chiblet is fully trained, and said to be very clever, I didn’t altogether rely on her judgement. So I dressed, and went out, and rang Banner’s night-bell, and really, from the way he spoke to me you might have thought there was nothing more seriously wrong with me than toothache. I was feeling wretchedly ill and worried, and I got no sympathy from him, not even common politeness. Now that isn’t good enough. To be treated in that way, considering the state I was in, might have had very serious consequences.’
‘I should hate to be a doctor,’ said Stephen.
‘Their great fault is lack of imagination,’ said Arthur. ‘To be told to go away, to be driven from his door in the condition I was in that night, was absolute barbarity. Banner didn’t realize it, of course, but that’s what it was: barbarity. How I ever managed to get home I don’t know.’
Wilfrid said, ‘Do you think you could get someone to put these tulips in water, Arthur? They’re rather lovely, and they won’t last if they’re not looked after properly.’
‘I’ll go and find a vase myself,’ said Arthur.
‘Oh no! You’re too tired.’
Arthur rose and picked up the faggot of lovely flowers. ‘It was very kind of you to bring them,’ he said.
‘I thought you’d like to have them,’ said Wilfrid.
‘I don’t think we ought to stay much longer,’ Stephen suggested, when Arthur had gone out.
‘No,’ answered Wilfrid.’ Poor Arthur’s looking dreadfully pulled down. We mustn’t talk too much, or we’ll tire him.’
But Arthur was unwilling for them to go so soon. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘this is doing me good, it really is. I haven’t had a proper chance to talk things over with anyone yet, and it’s a tremendous relief, after having gone through so much, to get it off one’s mind.’
‘Still, I think it’s time for us to go now,’ said Stephen.
Arthur sat down and impressively continued his story: ‘Wednesday was the longest day of my life,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I got through it. But it seems, when we’re put to the test, as though we have reserves of strength that otherwise we never suspect. I was in constant discomfort, and about eleven o’clock at night, when the pains were definitely getting stronger and more regular…’
‘But you didn’t actually feel them, did you?’ asked Wilfrid with a horrified expression.
‘I think I can safely say that I suffered more than Daisy did,’ said Arthur. ‘The mind has a greater capacity for pain than the body. The body is a limited thing, but imagination is infinite. You see, women are biologically intended for motherhood, but man, I feel sure, being more finely constructed, is intended only to play the part of the lover. We should love and go free. We were never meant to stand the strain of fatherhood.’
‘It sounds a dreadful experience, as you tell it,’ said Wilfrid. ‘I’d no idea it was so bad as that. I do think you’ve been brave, Arthur. I couldn’t bear it myself, I know I couldn’t.’
‘But you’ll be well paid for your trouble,’ said Stephen. ‘You have two children now, and none of the rest of us has any. It looks as though you’re going to be Uncle John’s heir.’
‘Oh, money!’ said Arthur. ‘I’m not obsessed by the idea of money, and I never have been. I shan’t be mean when Uncle John’s – how much was it? Sixty or seventy thousand? I forget – when Uncle John’s estate is handed over to me. If either of you ever want a couple of thousand to play with, all you’ll have to do is to let me know.’
‘Oh, won’t that be lovely!’ cried Wilfrid. ‘I do think that’s generous of you, Arthur. But what about Katherine? Mrs Barrow told me she went to the nursing-home yesterday morning.’
‘We all knew she was going sooner or later,’ said Arthur. ‘But that won’t make any difference. She’ll have one child, but I have two.’
‘Mrs Barrow said she wouldn’t be surprised if Katherine had twins.’
‘Katherine started that story herself,’ said Arthur testily, ‘and a lot of old women have been foolish enough to believe it. But it’s simply nonsense: the wish was father to the thought, but a wish can’t produce babies: and I’d willingly wager five hundred pounds to a penny that even though she has a dozen she’ll never have twins. Do either of you want to bet?’
‘Lend me a penny, quick!’ cried Wilfrid; and Stephen gave him one.
‘There!’ said Wilfrid, throwing it on the table. ‘I’ll take the bet, and if Katherine has twins …’
‘She won’t,’ said Arthur. ‘There’s absolutely no reason why she should.’
Muted by an intervening wall, the ringing of the telephone bell interrupted him. Arthur went into the hall and took down the receiver. ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Oh, yes, yes, we’re all well. I meant to have a sleep this afternoon, but Stephen and Wilfrid came in, and I had to talk to them. Yes, we’re all getting on as well as can be expected.’
It was Hilary who had rung up. ‘I’m speaking from the nursing home,’ she said.
‘And how’s Katherine?’
‘Very pleased with herself, I imagine.’
‘Good,’ said Arthur. ‘Is it all over?’
‘Well, I hope so. The second one arrived ten minutes ago.’
‘Wh – what do you mean?’ stammered Arthur.
‘She’s got twins,’ said Hilary.
Arthur put back the receiver with a shaking hand. Instead of a credit balance of seventy thousand pounds, he was faced with five hundred on the debit side.
Chapter 16
Katherine’s dramatic feat aroused intense excitement. The human side of her achievement, however, was somewhat overshadowed by its competitive significance. To have vindicated so successfully her promise of twins – they were fine healthy children, a boy and a girl – was in itself an example of progenitive virtuosity that deserved the warmest commendation; but the popular mind was more taken by the fact of her having so brilliantly demolished Daisy’s lead in the Nursery Stakes. Starting as an outsider, she had, in a remarkably short time, overtaken the favourite and was now running neck and neck with her. She was rewarded by almost as many letters as Daisy had received, and by even more flowers. But many of the callers came out of curiosity, and most of the flowers were sent as an indication of sporting interest rather than a pledge of friendship. For Katherine was hardly beloved, even by her acquaintances, and certainly not by her friends; and though no one could honestly regret her production of twins – for it made the most enthralling topic of conversation that Lammiter had known since the marriage of the Duke of York – there were many who thought it hard lines on Daisy, and hoped she would not yet give up the race. There were still sixteen months to go, and a great deal could ha
ppen in that time. Daisy, they hoped, would not lose heart.
In the Red Lion and the Green Dragon, at the Yeomanry Club, at the tobacconist’s in Green Street, and other places where betting was indulged in – books had also been made in the Lammiter Ladies’ Club and the Golf Club – Daisy was quoted at three to one against, and at eleven to two when it became known that Katherine’s husband was definitely coming home from India on short leave in September: but so much money was available at the latter price that the odds shortened again to fours. In the previous summer Daisy had started odds on, but Katherine’s cocksure prophecy of twins had given rise to a great run in her favour, and not till about Christmas time had the betting settled down to a reasonable basis. Between then and March little new money had been forthcoming, but now there was enormous activity in hedging, implementing, and the placing of psychic or inspirational bets.
All the books, however, were hopelessly upset – from the backers’ point of view – by a sudden telegram from Marseille. It was addressed to Mr Peabody, and the sender was George. It stated: ‘Children and I arrive at Plymouth twenty-sixth will wire time of arrival Lammiter later.’
Like a winter squall, opening dark and fanwise on the sea, the tidings ran through Lammiter, and like December sea-wind it chilled the hearts of all who heard it: or nearly all, for it is true that a little minority, naturally coarse or toughened by a slap-stick fate, laughed long and loudly at the news: but the large majority were truly shocked, truly apprehensive, and in many cases coldly dismayed.
Katherine was the most violently affected. Daisy, indeed, wept almost continuously for forty-eight hours, but as the weather was fine and she lay all day in a long chair in her garden, she was able to take the flowers into her confidence, and though the loquacious beauty of white lilac excited more tears, the brave sympathy of some purple irises mitigated their bitterness. It would be unfair to say that she enjoyed her grief, but she certainly found relief in facile abandonment to it. Arthur minimized the shock by discreet recourse to gin, and Stephen, though profoundly disturbed by the thought of George’s return, could not restrain a small spiteful satisfaction at the prospective defeat of Katherine and Daisy. Hilary concealed her feelings and bade Mrs Arbor make ready several bedrooms for George and his family; and Jane, hearing this, flew into a temper and swore that if Rumneys were turned into an asylum for half-castes she would leave it and live for ever at the Club. But Katherine neither hid her emotion nor found escape from it. Katherine promptly went into hysterics, and the twins, tuning-in to the wave-length of her distemper, amplified her ululation in a way that would have startled pandemonium. They were robust infants, and howling seemed to do them good. Because Katherine was so distraught a wet-nurse was found for them: they drained her dry and bellowed afresh. They were given bottles, scientifically prepared: they sucked them empty and howled like a double Hecuba. Katherine, tearing the sheets, vociferously demanded their return: she nursed them, whickering the while, and they screamed like an American police car. All the other patients, except an aviator whose parchute had failed to open, got up and dressed themselves and left the nursing-home; and Katherine and her twins continued their symphony of wrath to an angry audience of nurses, doctors, and housemaids.
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