There and Back | Page 3

like to look at the baby, sir!" the woman replied.
Sir Wilton stared at the blanket.

"It might comfort you, I thought!" she went on, with a look he felt to be
strange. Her eyes were hard and dry, red with recent tears, and glowing
with suppressed fire.
Sir Wilton was courteous to most women, especially such as had no
claim upon him, but cherished respect for none. It was odd therefore
that he should now feel embarrassed. From some cause the machinery
of his self-content had possibly got out of gear; anyhow no answer
came ready. He had not the smallest wish to see the child, but was yet,
perhaps, unwilling to appear brutal. In the meantime, the woman, with
gentle, moth-like touch, was parting and turning back the folds of the
blanket, until from behind it dawned a tiny human face, whose angel
was suppliant, it may be, for the baptism of a father's first gaze.
The woman held out the child to sir Wilton, as if expecting him to take
it. He started to his feet, driving the chair a yard behind him, stuck his
hands in his pockets, and, with a face of disgust, cried--
"Great God! take the creature away."
But he could not lift his eyes from the face nested in the blanket. It
seemed to fascinate him. The woman's eyes flared, but she did not
speak.
"Uglier than sin!" he half hissed, half growled. "--I suppose the animal
is mine, but you needn't bring it so close to me! Take it away--and keep
it away. I will send for it when I want it--which won't be in a hurry! My
God! How hideous a thing may be, and yet human!"
"He is as God made him!" remarked the nurse, quietly for very wrath.
"Or the devil!" suggested his father.
Then the woman looked like a tigress. She opened her mouth, but
closed it again with a snap.
"I may say what I like of my own!" said the father. "Tell me the goblin
is none of mine, and I will be as respectful to him as you please. Prove
it, and I will give you fifty pounds. He's hideous! He's damnably ugly!
Deny it if you can."
The woman held her peace. She could not, even to herself, call him a
child pleasant to look at. She gazed on him for a moment with pitiful,
protective eyes, then covered his face as if he were dead, but she did
not move.
"Why don't you go?" said the baronet.
Instead of replying, she began, as by a suddenly confirmed resolve, to

remove the coverings at the other end of the bundle, and presently
disclosed the baby's feet. The baronet gazed wondering. To what might
not assurance be about to subject him? She took one of the little feet in
a hard but gentle hand, and spreading out "the pink, five-beaded
baby-toes," displayed what even the inexperience of the baronet could
not but recognize as remarkable: between every pair of toes was
stretched a thin delicate membrane. She laid the foot down, took up the
other, and showed the same peculiarity. The child was web-footed, as
distinctly as any properly constituted duckling! Then she lifted, one
after the other, the tiny hands, beautiful to any eye that understood, and
showed between the middle and third finger of each, the same sort of
membrane rising half-way to the points of them.
"I see!" said the baronet, with a laugh that was not nice, having in it no
merriment, "the creature is a monster!--Well, if you think I am to blame,
I can only protest you are mistaken. I am not web-footed! The duckness
must come from the other side."
"I hope you will remember, sir Wilton!"
"Remember? What do you mean? Take the monster away."
The woman rearranged the coverings of the little crooked legs.
"Won't you look at your lady before they put her in her coffin?" she
said when she had done.
"What good would that do her? She's past caring!--No, I won't: why
should I? Such sights are not pleasant."
"The coffin's a lonely chamber, sir Wilton; lonely to lie all day and all
night in!"
"No lonelier for one than for another!" he replied, with an involuntary
recoil from his own words. For the one thing a man must believe--yet
hardly believes--is, that he shall one day die. "She'll be better without
me, anyhow!"
"You are heartless, sir Wilton!"
"Mind your own business. If I choose to be heartless, I may have my
reasons. Take the child away."
Still she did not move. The baby, young as he was, had thrown the
blanket from his face, and the father's eyes were fixed on it: while he
gazed the nurse would not stir. He seemed