There and Back | Page 3

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 fascinated by its ugliness. Without absolute deformity, the child was indeed as unsightly as infant well could be.
"My God!" he said again--for he had a trick of crying out as if he had a God--"the little brute hates me! Take it away, woman. Take it away before I strangle it! I can't answer for myself if it keeps on looking