Chapter XXVIII: Albert Talbot Connor

When her grandson was eight days old, Mrs. Talbot took him to be baptized. Georgia, not yet out of bed, protested against the precipitancy, but her mother was armored in shining faith and prevailed.

"You know your baby's sickly," she explained, "and not doing well. We cannot afford to take any chances--in case anything happened."

So she dressed up the mite in his best white lace, and herself in her best black silk and sailed off to church in a closed carriage. He was named Albert Talbot.

Until he was brought back to her, Georgia felt savagely that there was something ridiculously primitive, something almost grotesque in the proceeding. To take her baby from her, she could hear him crying all down stairs, to a church a mile away, to be breathed on by a priest and touched with spittle and anointed with oil and wetted with water--how could such things make her perfect babe more perfect!

Why should this naïve physical rite send her son to Paradise if he died; and more especially why should the lack of it bar him out of Paradise forever? It was not fair to put such mighty conditions upon him. He was only a baby.

When young Albert was returned to her arms and her breast, she forgot her grievance. Anyway, he was on the safe side of baptism now. It couldn't do him any harm and it might do him an eternal and supreme good. It was better to take no chances with the supernatural.

She asked the doctor when she could wean him. "I am behind in my bills, you know," she explained, "especially yours, doctor. I'd better get to work."

"I can't conscientiously advise you to do anything of the sort," he answered.

"But why not? Most babies are put on a bottle nowadays."

"This one is a delicate little fellow--not five pounds at birth. You want him to get strong--mother's milk is the best medicine."

"That settles it," she said slowly. "How long will it be? Six months?"

"Yes, six months anyway, perhaps more--perhaps a year. It depends on how he does. I won't disguise it from you--he's worried me once or twice."

A year! She didn't know a child was ever nursed a year. A year more of humbleness to Jim, of asking money from her brother, now called big Al, of fear that Mr. Kane might get annoyed and leave, of contriving and skimping and bill dodging. Another year of "womanly" womanhood, clinging to males for support.

The doctor saw her disappointment. "It's your sex' share of the world's work, you know," he said, "your duty to society."

"I have a baby and we're poor. If I'd had none, we'd be well off this moment," she said sharply. "If I really have done a duty to society why does society punish me for it?"

"I don't know," said the doctor.

He came rather frequently to the flat at this time, partly on the baby's account, partly on Mrs. Talbot's.

The river of life in the elder woman was becoming sluggish; rheumatism crippled her. The doctor veiled his explanation. "Synovial infusion," he called it, "but," he added reassuringly, "pericarditis is not in the least to be apprehended. I will stake my reputation on that." Which gave her new heart.

The rivulet of life in the child trickled uncertainly, obstinately refusing to increase. "Hmm," he muttered once, "microcephalic."

"What does that mean?" Georgia asked with quick suspicion.

"It means that he has a rather small head," smiled the doctor, "but then he is a rather small boy."

"Yes, he is tiny, isn't he?" said the mother pressing him to her soft, distended breast. "Little one--little one of mine." She looked at the doctor proudly. "He knows me," she said, "don't you think so?"

"Of course he does," he answered, and she knew that nothing else which had ever been or ever would be really mattered.

Whenever the doctor came to the flat he found time to tarry in the midst of his busy life of many patients and small fees for a chat with Georgia. He was a happy, crinkled, red faced, blue-gilled little man, who inevitably suggested outdoors, though he wasn't there much, for he drove a closed electric runabout. He always meant some day to write a novel, a true novel, something on the order of "The Old Wives' Tale," showing people as they really were. He thought he had the necessary information. He had seen all sorts of folks come and go for thirty years. But he never seemed to get around to the actual writing. He was so pressed for time.

Georgia Connor, nicely disguised, would be a good character for his book. Change the color of her hair, for instance, put a couple of inches on her height, make her something else but a stenographer, say a cashier--and neither she nor anybody else would suspect. So he had many little talks with his model, getting material. Besides, he liked her. She was intelligent, she never bored him and she always had her own point of view, and half the time an unexpected one. She had been twice educated--first by the convent and next by the loop. One could never tell which side of her was going to speak next.

Eventually one side would prevail. Which it would be depended on the baby question. If she had enough of them tugging at her skirts she'd revert to type. He knew. He'd seen 'em come and go for thirty years. Persistent mothers don't aviate.

When little Al was a month old, shortly after midnight on the thirteenth of November--she will never forget the day--Georgia awoke suddenly as if a pistol had been shot off by her ear. The baby was wailing in a feeble little singsong. She looked at the clock. It wanted half an hour to his feeding time.

She walked slowly up and down the room, whispering to her son. Sometimes she stopped at the open window to look out into the cool pleasant night, but nothing she knew how to do made any difference. He kept steadily on with his heart-breaking little singsong wail.

At one precisely, before the single stroke of the small clock had stopped ringing through the room, she gave him breast. He took a little, then gasped and choked and "spit it up" again. She waited ten minutes as she had been instructed, then gave him a very little--not more than three or four swallows. He rejected it. After twenty minutes she tried again. The warm, white life-giving fluid ran over his lips and chin, and trickled down his neck, wetting the neckband and sleeve of his thin woolen garment. But he kept a little down she thought. And then after awhile a little more. She did not wish him to be as far from her as his crib, so he dozed off in the crook of her elbow, while she took short naps a few minutes at a time until dawn.

At five she took in Mr. Kane's coffee. This duty now accrued to her, because the doctor had warned Mrs. Talbot not to overdo.

When Georgia returned with her empty tray she dropped into a chair for just a moment's rest. An hour later when she awoke she found little Al lying rigid on the bed, his small fists clenched, his eyes rolled up until only the whites could be seen through his half-closed lids, his under lip sucked in between his gums. She was not sure that he breathed.

Hastily she ran to the bathroom and turned the hot water tap on full. Hastily she ran back, and took the child in her arms. She knocked at the door of big Al's room.

"Al," she cried, "Al, Al, Al--wake up."

"What--eh, oh, what?" came a sleepy voice.

"Telephone the doctor, quick, quick, quick, the baby is--Oh, hurry, Al."

She ran to the bathroom and put her hand in the running stream from the faucet. Tepid, only tepid. Would it never get warm? If God ever wanted anything more from her--in the way of belief or devotion--let Him make this water hot, now, on the instant.

Her wet hand and her dry one moved rapidly together at her baby's clothes, unpinning the safety pins. Even in her haste she put them in her mouth mechanically, one after another. Once more she plunged her hand into the water. Warmer now, yes, almost warm enough. She put the round rubber stopper in the escape.

She lowered the stiff and naked little child into the tub, one hand behind his neck, the other held to shelter his face from the spray of the hot water which was pouring from the open tap.

Al stood at the door in bare feet, his trousers slipped on over his nightshirt.

"D'you want the doctor to come right away?" he asked.

"Do you mean to say you haven't gone yet?" she said piteously without turning her head as she knelt by the bathtub, "of course, right away--now, this instant."

The young fellow departed on the run for the janitor's telephone in the basement.

The water had become quite hot, but still the child did not relax. Georgia tried to undo one tiny fist with her forefinger, but she felt with agony of heart that it would not unclench easily. She sensed a touch on her shoulder, then saw another older hand put in the water behind the child's head.

"No, mother, you shan't," she said, "it is my baby, leave him to me."

"Shall I ask Father Hervey to come?" said Mrs. Talbot.

Georgia was too intent to answer.

Mrs. Talbot walked slowly down stairs, stiff with rheumatism. She met Al coming up, four steps at a time.

"How is he?" he shouted as he passed. She turned to explain, but he vanished out of sight around the turn at the landing, not waiting for an answer.

When she got Father Hervey on the telephone he asked if she was speaking of the young child he had baptized a month or so back.

"Three weeks come Tuesday," she said.

"Ah, then he has been baptized. That, at least, is well."

"But Father, if you could come, and pray, maybe it would save his life here, too."

He hesitated but a moment. Truly there was no priestly obligation to visit sick infants who had already been baptized, whenever their grandparents became excited. To baptize dying babies or to administer the last rites to those who had reached the age of reason was his duty. This was not. But if he did it, it would be an act of human kindness.

"I will come," he said over the wire, "at once."