CHAPTER I
A Baby’s Grace
ONE evening, Mrs. Drummond, the tired, careworn woman who presided over our boarding house, glanced down the well-spread table, and informed us that the next day we were to have a new boarder—a Mr. Robertson, a young bank clerk who had lately come from England to our prosperous Canadian town.
I knew the lad by reputation, and the next morning when he sauntered into the dining room, I looked at him carefully. Poor boy, his eye was heavy, and his step languid. In his foolish endeavors to “see life,” he was fast losing the purity of heart and mind with which he had quitted his far-away home, and it was making its mark upon him in a way not to be mistaken.
He sat opposite me, and I could see that he was making a mere pretence of taking his breakfast.
Presently, there was a remark from Mrs. Drummond’s end of the table. The child was speaking—the child par excellence, for there was not another one in the house. She was a curious little creature—willful, disdainful, neglected by her mother, and suspicious of all other mortals. Petting she despised, and invariably showed symptoms of displeasure if disturbed in her favorite occupation of playing with an ugly, yellow cat in dark corners of the house. But the strangest thing of all was her quietness. She never romped like other children, never prattled; indeed, she rarely spoke at all, so we were all attention as she pointed to young Robertson with her spoon, and said in a clear, babyish voice, “Dat’s a berry fine-lookin’ boy, mamma.”
Everybody smiled, for the boy in question, though manly and stalwart in appearance, had a decidedly plain face. He blushed a little, and bent over his plate. Mrs. Drummond took her hand from the coffee-urn long enough to lay it on Daisy’s head: “Hush, child, you must not talk at the table.”
“Wemove dat hand,” said the child, in a displeased tone. Then rapping on the table with her spoon, to call Robertson’s attention, she asked, “Boy, what’s your name?”
“Roland Robertson,” he replied, with an embarrassed laugh.
Daisy, intensely interested, and altogether regardless of the boarders’ amused glances, said in a stage whisper, while she solemnly wagged her curly head, “Woland Wobertson, I love you.” Then scrambling out of her high-chair, she ran down the long room, and peremptorily demanded a seat on his knee.
He started, looked annoyed, then sheepish, and finally took her up. It did not suit his English reserve to be made the cynosure of all eyes. Daisy sedately arranged her flounces, then watched him playing with his food. “Don’t you like fwicasseed chicken?” she asked, gently.
“Yes,” he said; “but I am not hungry.”
“Some mornin’s I eat nuffin too,” she said, in a relieved way; “more partickler when I have a glass of milk in de night. Woland,” tenderly patting the hand around her waist, “did you have a dwink in de night?”
Robertson’s face became scarlet. She viewed him with the utmost solicitude. Then turning to a lady next her, who had finished her breakfast, and was indolently fanning herself, “Dive me dat fan, de poor darlin’ is hot.”
Both on that occasion and many subsequent ones, Daisy amused us by the epithets she bestowed upon her favorite. We found that she had not been an inattentive observer of the many newly married couples that had sojourned at Mrs. Drummond’s.
Robertson was fanned for several minutes—Daisy striking his face, with an extra now and then for his nose, in her awkward zeal, until I wondered at his patience. Suddenly, he pushed back his chair, said he had finished his breakfast and that she had better get down. This gave rise to a stroke of childish policy. She ordered the table-maid to bring her hitherto neglected plate of porridge, and putting the spoon in Robertson’s hand insisted upon his feeding her. He complied with a pretty good grace. Daisy kept up an unbroken scrutiny of his face, and presently dodging a spoonful of milk, laid a pink forefinger on his upper lip. There was just the faintest suspicion of a moustache there. “I fordet what you call dis,” she said, “moss—moss——”
“Moustache,” he replied, abruptly bringing the porridge feeding performance to a close, and putting her on her tiny feet. She ran out of the room after him, pulling the napkin from her neck as she went. When I reached the hall, Robertson was taking down his hat from the rack, Daisy in close attendance. She was just prefacing a remark with, “Woland, love,” when Mrs. Drummond came out of the dining room.—“Daisy,” she said, peevishly, “you must say Mr. Robertson.”
“How berry cross you are dis mornin’,” said the child, throwing a glance at her over her shoulder; then turning to Robertson, she went on to ask him whether he would soon come back, to see her.
“No,” he replied, his hand on the door, “I lunch in town; you won’t see me till evening.” The child’s face fell, and she turned silently away.
I went out quickly, and overtook him before he reached the corner of the street. “That child seems to have taken quite a fancy to you,” I said quietly; “I never before knew her to show so much interest in any one.”
“I don’t know why she does,” he answered awkwardly, and with some impatience, “unless it is owing to my having spoken to her the other day. When I went to engage my room, she was sitting in a corner alone, and I gave her a picture I happened to have in my pocket.” He stopped suddenly. He did not tell me then, nor did I find out until long afterward, that the little, lonely child had reminded him of a dead sister of his, and that when he gave her the picture, he gave her a kiss with it.
I made some trite remark about the softening and good influences a child can throw around one—I did not intend to hint at all that he was in need of such influences; but so suspicious was he in his dawning manhood, that he resented my remark, and relapsed into profound silence. A minute later, he left me, under the pretence of taking a short cut to the bank.
I did not see him again until evening. I entered the dining room on the first stroke of the dinner bell. Mrs. Drummond had just preceded me. I could not help smiling at her dismayed face. Daisy, with excited, nervous movements, was dragging her high-chair from the head of the table, to a place near Robertson’s.
“That young man has bewitched the child,” she said fretfully. “She slapped me just now, because I would not let her put on her best dress for him.”
While she was speaking Robertson entered the room. He was in better spirits than in the morning. When his eye fell on Daisy, sitting flushed with victory beside his plate, he smiled and pinched her cheek as he sat down. During the progress of the meal he showed a certain amount of attention to the scrap of humanity at his side; and she, with no eyes for the other people at the table, hung on his looks, and with a more practical interest in his welfare, watched every morsel of food that went into his mouth. Once she said impatiently to me, “You wed-haired man, you—don’t you see dat Woland wants some vegetables? Pass some quick.”
Dinner over, all scattered about the house. Daisy never retired earlier than any other person, so I watched her curiously to see what she would do. Robertson had gone to his room. With a disappointed air she seated herself on the lowest step of the staircase. Some young men standing about the hall tried to tease her. “Baby dear,” said one of them mischievously, “I’m afraid you’re going to be a flirt.”
“What’s dat?” she said, holding out inviting arms to the yellow cat that was sneaking about my boots.
“A flirt is an animal with eyes all over its head, and an enormous mouth, and it goes about the world eating men,” explained another.
Poor Daisy—she was yet at the stage of believing everything she heard. She shrugged her white shoulders, as she said, “Drefful!” and hugged her dingy cat a little closer. Presently they all laughed. She had thrown the cat to the floor, and sprung to her feet. Robertson was coming downstairs, very carefully dressed, a light overcoat thrown over his arm. Evidently, it was his intention to spend the evening with some of his friends.
Daisy inquired wistfully whether he was going out, and on his replying in the affirmative, she asked whether it was “work” that was taking him—that term signifying to her something that could not be neglected.
“No, Daisy,” he said, trying to escape her detaining hands, “I am going to see a play.”
“Woland,” she said beseechingly, “won’t you stay an’ play wid me an’ Pompey?” pointing toward the yellow cat, that was glaring at him from under a hall chair.
It was not a very inviting prospect. He laughed, put her aside, saying, “Some other time, little girl,” and went toward the hall door. The child watched him, her little breast heaving, her hands clenched tightly in the folds of her dress. He was going to leave her, the only person in the house whom she cared for. The disappointment was too great, “Oh, Woland—I fought you would stay,” she said, in a choking voice. Then dropping on the white fur rug at her feet, she burst into a perfect passion of tears.
This was such an unprecedented proceeding on the part of the self-contained child, that a crowd of anxious faces soon surrounded her. “Whatever is the matter with the child?” said her mother querulously, as she bent over the pink, sobbing bundle. “She hasn’t cried since the day she fell downstairs, and nearly killed herself.”
Robertson hurried back at the sound of the wailing voice. “Has she hurt herself?” he asked anxiously. He looked astonished when we explained the cause of her emotion. “Don’t cry, Daisy,” he said, “I will stay with you to-morrow evening.”
The child’s sobs redoubled. He hesitated, looked at his watch, then muttered “I suppose I would be a brute to leave her like this.”
“Daisy,” I whispered in her curly locks, “he is going to stay with you.” A shriek of joy, and the child was on her feet, clinging to his hand with an enthusiasm that made him turn away with a half-foolish air. The next two hours were uninterrupted bliss for Daisy. She spent them in one of the parlors, leaning against Robertson’s knee, looking at photographs of the Athenian Marbles. They were evidently Greek to her, but one glance at Robertson would smooth out her little, puzzled forehead. At ten o’clock her little head drooped and she soon fell fast asleep, so that he carried her upstairs, her face bordered by its curls resting confidingly on his shoulder. When he came down, I saw him glance irresolutely at the clock, as if uncertain whether to go out or not. I asked him whether he would like to come to my room. I had some curios which I had picked up in my rambles about the world which I thought would be of interest to him. Some of them I told him were from Athens, and bore some relation to the Marbles he had been examining. He thanked me very politely, but very stiffly, and said that at some future time he would like to see them. In some way, he hardly knew why, he felt very sleepy this evening, and would go to bed at once. He went, and thoughts of his little companion went with him as he sunk to a rest purer and sweeter than that which had been his during the weeks preceding.