Chapter VII A Biologist and a Baby
We know these things are so, we ask not why,
But act and follow as the dream goes on.
—Lord Houghton.
“Isn’t he a lovely baby!”
“Don’t send him away, Mrs. Minturn.”
“Get his high chair for him, James.”
“See him smile! I don’t wonder at his relief. Just imagine being in the care of a crazy nurse!”
“What wild eyes she had! You say she was always eccentric, Mr. Minturn?”
“The baby’s only eight months old? Really, Mrs. Minturn, he looks older.”
“He has such pretty eyes! And look at the dimples in his little hands. Doesn’t he ever cry? How good he is, dear little fellow!”
“Horatio! What a fine, dignified name! Horatio held a bridge, didn’t he? or was it a full house?”
“What a question for a famous scientist to ask!”
The baby, erect and smiling in his high chair, had wonderfully enlivened our dinner-party. Even Tom, startled as he had been by the advent of the distraught nurse, was now wholly at his ease and beamed genially from the foot of the table upon the youngster, who seemed to be delighted at the attention that he was receiving from beautiful women and famous men. As he sat there, merrily waving a spoon in the air and crowing lustily, I watched him with mingled pride and consternation. Although a most distressing episode had been brought to a picturesque conclusion, there seemed to me to be startling possibilities in the present situation. I did not like the flush upon the baby’s cheeks, the unnatural gleam in his laughing eyes. Impulsively I bent down and kissed him upon his pretty mouth. My worst fears were instantly realized, and I felt my spinal marrow turn to ice. I had detected the odor of a cocktail upon Horatio’s—or, rather, Jack’s—breath.
“I am forced to acknowledge, madame,” I heard Herr Plätner saying, in answer to one of Mrs. Farringdon’s leading questions, “I am forced to acknowledge that my theories destroy much of the poetry of life. It is a most prosaic attitude that I am forced to hold toward yonder most beautiful baby, for example. Romance would point to him as an immortal soul in embryo. Realism asserts that he is a machine, like the rest of us, with a longer lease of activity before him than you or I have, who have been ticking, so to speak, for several years.”
“Be good, Horatio!” I whispered. “Don’t cry. You can have an ice pretty soon.”
The baby brought his spoon down upon the table with a thump, and actually glared at the German professor, while my guests laughed gaily at the child’s precocious demonstration.
“Isn’t he cunning!” exclaimed Elinor Scarsdale, delightedly.
“He seems to have a prejudice against me, nicht wahr?” remarked the Herr Doctor, laughing aloud.
“You aren’t to blame for that, little boy,” murmured Dr. Hopkins, so that I alone could hear him. “He says that you are sprung from oil and lather and are rushing toward annihilation.”
“Bah!” yelled the baby. “Bah! bah! bah!”
“‘Ba-ba, ba-ba, black sheep, have ’oo any wool?’ quoted Professor Rogers, the noted comparative philologist, who has identified the germ of epic poetry in the earliest known cradle songs.
“Isn’t he fascinating!” cried Elinor Scarsdale, referring to the baby, not to the philologist.
“If you’ll excuse me for a time,” I said to my guests, seeing that Tom was growing weary of Horatio’s prominence at the table, “I’ll take the baby to the nursery.”
“You’ll do it at your peril,” I heard a deep voice grumble, and Dr. Hopkins jumped nervously and glanced at me in amazement.
“Don’t run off with him, Mrs. Minturn,” cried Mrs. Farringdon; and her protest was sustained by a chorus of “don’t” and “do let him stay.”
“It may be only temporary,” I heard Dr. Plätner saying, as he gazed at Professor Shanks, who had asked him, evidently, a question about the baby’s nurse. “It’s not an uncommon form of insanity, and may be only temporary. I recall an instance of a very learned and perfectly harmless professor at Göttingen who believed for years that his pet cat talked Sanskrit to him. There was at my own university a young man wholly sane, apparently, who made a record of conversations that he had held with the skeleton of a gorilla. Both of these men were eventually restored to mental health, and have never had a return of their delusions. It is fortunate, however, that the poor woman, whose insanity we have so recently witnessed, exhibited her mania at this time. What might have happened otherwise to that charming little baby I shudder to think.”
Horatio was pounding the table with a spoon, as if applauding the Herr Doctor’s remarks. Suddenly he dropped the spoon and made a grab for Dr. Hopkins’s wine-glass.
“What vivacity he has!” remarked Professor Shanks, as if addressing a roomful of students interested in a zoölogical specimen.
“He seems to know a rare vintage when he sees it,” suggested Dr. Hopkins, intending, of course, to compliment his hostess.
“I think my dear—” began Tom, nervously.
“Don’t go any further, Mr. Minturn,” cried Elinor Scarsdale, playfully. “The baby is so much more interesting than——”
“Protoplasm,” added Dr. Hopkins, under his breath.
Dr. Plätner was gazing at the baby searchingly. He had been impressed evidently by certain eccentricities in Horatio’s bearing.
“How old did you say the boy was, madame?” asked the German savant, presently.
“Eight months,” I answered, a catch in my voice that I could not control.
“He’s—ah—very intelligent for a child of that age,” commented Plätner, laboring under the mistake that he was saying something complimentary. “He has a most expressive face.”
As the baby was scowling savagely at the German at that moment, and frantically shaking his little fists at him, there were both pith and point to the latter’s remark.
“Rot!” muttered Jack, wickedly. I sprang to my feet and lifted him from his chair. He kicked protestingly for a moment, and gave vent to a yell that bore witness to his possession of a marvelous pair of lungs.
“Be quiet, Horatio,” I whispered, imploringly, hurrying toward the door, without further apology to my guests. “If you’ll be silent now, I’ll have a bottle of champagne brought to the nursery.”
At these words the baby nestled affectionately in my arms, and I felt that the fight was won. Just as we reached the doorway, however, Jack clambered to my shoulder and waved his little fist defiantly at my guests.
“Damn that frowsy old German donkey!” he muttered, close to my ear. “I’d give half a bottle of cocktails to prove to him what an amazing ignoramus he is! Just wait a minute, will you, Clarissa?”
I rushed out of the dining-room without more ado. In another instant Jack would have said the word that trembled on his tiny mouth, the word that would have brought the whole temple of modern materialism toppling down upon Herr Plätner’s devoted head.