The Heritage (Cutting)

by Mary Stewart Cutting

The Heritage

 

BY MARY STEWART CUTTING

Author of "Little Stories of Married Life," "Little Stories of Courtship," etc.

 

AMY, Aunt Westlake is at Emma Dean's; I thought you might take the baby around to see her—as a surprise, Emma says. To please me, dear!”

“Robert!”

“Yes, I know, Amy.” Robert put his arm around his young wife to draw her to him. There was always that little involuntary resistance before she yielded to sentiment, though she deeply desired it, and noticed the least little lapse of it on his part. Amy was a rose, with her crimson cheeks and dark, vivacious eyes; but she was prickly with innumerable little thorns of protest and self-will. Robert turned a mutinous face up toward him with his big hand, an unusual earnestness in his eyes.

“Amy, I always said you needn't apologize, and I'm not asking you to now, but I do think the quarrel oughtn't to go on any longer. While she was away it didn't seem to make so much difference, but now she's here in the place.”

“'Quarrel!' When I only made fun of her old General Washington pitcher, hideous old thing, all red and blue and cracks; and then she never came to our wedding nor sent us any present!”

“Well, call it anything you please, Amy; what's the use of haggling about words? Of course, it was absurd of her to take offense at such a trifle, that any one else would have laughed at. But let's sink all that. All I ask is for you to take the baby to see her this afternoon—that's Emma's advice—and let things settle themselves. Aunt Westlake loves babies. Of course, you saw her only a few times, you can't be expected to feel as I do; but when I think of all she did for me, Amy—sent me to college and everything after father and mother died—it does hurt me to have it go on like this. She acts as if she didn't care, but she does; and she's getting pretty old, Amy.”

“I don't think it's any better to be disagreeable when you're old than when you're young; I think it's worse,” said Amy. She had a twinge of recollection that, besides her remark about the pitcher, she had made a silly, schoolgirl face behind Aunt Westlake's back in the train, which the mirror had promptly reported. She continued in her least pleasant tone: “You could have been restored to favor at any time, you know. … Oh, Robert, I didn't mean that!” She possessed herself of the hand that had dropped its hold of her, and tried by swift concession to soften the lines of his stern young mouth. “I'm horrid! But I'll take the baby to see her, I will, indeed, Robert. I meant to all the time!”

She did not say that her concession did not come from any repentance for her misdemeanors, nor from consideration for Aunt Westlake, nor even from the desire to please her husband; it was called forth secretly by the thought that Aunt Westlake loved babies. Amy was very happy with her child, yet she had been conscious since its birth—barely two months ago—of a great and hungry lack of a sympathy that was not to be found in her little world. She had always heard that the coming of the first baby was such an event; everyone was pictured as being enraptured with it; but little Susan's advent had been marked by no particular rejoicings, save those of the parents. The family were pleasantly congratulatory about the baby, but all the cousins and sisters-in-law had children of their own in whom they were naturally much more interested. Robert was exceedingly fond of the little princess, as he called her, but there was something that even he couldn't supply.

Amy, the little mother, felt the loss of her own mother now far more than Amy the girl had done, five years before. Sometimes she had returned from a house where a fond grandmamma made a background of comfort and protection to both mother and child, and had run up to her room to shed passionate tears of love and longing for a blessing that her child could never have. Once Robert had surprised her so, and he had been very tender to her when she tried to tell him, but he did not quite understand; he had brought her candy the next day.

She wished there were some one there to admire the baby with her as she dressed her for the visit that afternoon, her one little precious girl, dainty in violet-scented flannel and lawn, with the tiny pink ribbons due her coquettish sex run through the laces. The baby had an entrancing habit of sleeping even when being robed, which made it delightfully possible to roll her over and over, a soft, warm little bundle, on one's lap, and, tie little bows, and cuddle the feet in their pink socks as if she were a dolly, while she was really so deliciously alive, lying with her small nose sticking up in the air, and breathing with a secure air of having learned the art.

The features of Amy's child were singularly perfect; she was like a little miniature, with fair eyelashes and fair, downy hair—it was a mystery whom she looked like. She bore no resemblance to either her father or her mother, who were dark, as were most of the Wilder family, to which Amy as well as Robert belonged; they were distantly related, though Amy came from another place; his aunts were in some way her cousins.

There was in her head now, as she pressed the baby close to her, an unacknowledged story-book idea that Aunt Westlake would perforce fall captive to the charms of little Susan, and become a sort of fairy godmother to her, if not in the bestowal of good qualities, yet in detecting them. She couldn't, of course, be aware how contrary to such an idea the mind of Aunt Westlake was at the moment of her approach; good Emma Dean, who had suggested the surprise, having of course done everything since to render it ineffectual. Emma was one of those persons who cannot help trying to make people acquiesce consciously and rationally in any plan for their own good—an irritating habit, which breeds perversity. Aunt Westlake was showing the effect of it now.

“I don't see why you are talking about Robert's baby so much, Emma. Robert is nothing to me any more, nothing; I don't wish to hear about him. He has outraged every sense of decency; not one word has he sent me since his marriage to that impertinent girl. I cannot be expected to be pleased just because they have a child. What is a baby anyway? The commonest thing there is.”

From where Aunt Westlake sat the view of the street might well bear out her statement, for from far down the block in the bright spring sunshine came a procession of go-carts and perambulators, containing infants of various kinds and degrees, with groups of little toddlers alongside, rich and poor, bound for the park at the end of the street. Emma Dean, dark and trim, bending to get the light on her embroidery, felt her cheek flush guiltily as she caught sight of a familiar little form pushing one of the carriages, and wondered if Aunt Westlake saw it, too. Mrs. Westlake had no children of her own, but in spite of her utterances she had always been very good to other people's. She was a tall, erect woman, with a deeply lined face, snow-white hair, and bright, dark eyes; when she smiled her set mouth softened. In spite of her straightness and her brightness she gave somehow an effect of advanced age; there was something a little tremulous even in her inflexibility. She had been a widow for many years, and came at certain seasons from the town where she made her solitary home to pay visits to her nephews and nieces, reigning in the family not only by virtue of her age, but because of a certain fine, resonant quality that made itself felt through her eccentricities. One of these was to carry with her a collection of old-fashioned bric-a-brac, specimens of which she presented to her entertainers, and obviously took off again when she departed. Amy had said that the General Washington pitcher had been presented thus forty-two times. What are the things that hurt? Not what we say; it is the spirit behind our cheap words that charges them for good or ill. Perhaps there had been a little jealousy on Amy's part of the older woman who had liked Robert and did not like her.

“Oh, but Aunt Westlake!”—Emma was shocked at the turn the conversation had taken—“you know you don't mean what you say. You would never make a little, innocent child suffer for the sins of its parents! You have always been so fond of babies!”

“That makes no difference in my statement, Emma—they are not rare,” said Aunt Westlake stubbornly. She went on with some emotion: “If Robert and his wife had wished for my forgiveness, they knew how they could have obtained it. I loved Robert; I would have left him my General Washington pitcher, but all that is at an end; I have done with him.”

“But if Amy takes the first step—if she brings the baby to see you?” pleaded Emma unwisely.

“I do not wish to see the child of ungrateful parents,” said Aunt Westlake.

“But dear Aunt Westlake,” murmured Emma. She had heard a door shut below while she was talking, the sound of footsteps advancing up the stairs, and voices evidently speaking to an infant.

“Emma Dean, who is this coming?” asked Aunt Westlake in a tone at which the futile Emma stood appalled. The door flew open.

“So it's a trap!” said the older woman. Something seemed to tremble all over her. Then she had passed by the intruders and was gone.

•••••••

“Well, I hope you're satisfied now,” said Amy to her husband. “I didn't mind her not speaking to me, but to turn her head so that she wouldn't see the baby—that was too much! Hateful old thing. I'll never go near her again.” Her secret disappointment lent her new bitterness.

“It doesn't seem to me that you managed quite right in some way,” urged Robert uncomfortably.

“Manage! What was there to manage?” asked Amy with scorn. “She wouldn't give me a chance.”

“Well, she was a mighty good sort to me once,” said Robert. He had an unreasonable feeling that as a wife Amy ought to have smoothed out things when he wanted them smooth, though he knew that this wasn't her fault. He was ashamed to be a party any longer to the estrangement, which had seemed such a trifling thing at first. He was one of a large and combative family, mostly of young married people, who, like a clan, held together firmly in spite of dissensions; it was felt to be rather comfortable and relationy to be able to say right out how much you disapproved of each other. There was always some one who was “not speaking” to some one else. But this grievance had grown to be something deeper—it was felt throughout all the connection. For one thing, provision had to be made that the Robert Wilders and Aunt Westlake shouldn't be invited anywhere at the same time. People who hadn't been speaking now exchanged their views on the subject; conversation took tally of all Amy's patent and indicated traits; conversation minutely probed the deeper meaning of Aunt Westlake's injured affection; conversation fairly hummed around what Robert Ought To Say, femininely constructing him into the eternally impossible man who will mediate between two women.

The situation lasted until Elinor Ray dropped in one morning to see Amy.

“I came to tell you that Aunt Westlake has decided to go home this week, before the Easter party; it's to be at my house this time,” began Elinor. “I thought you'd like to know.” The Easter party, an egg-hunting, bonbon-throwing festivity, held every year on the Monday afternoon, was ostensibly for the children of the family, but it was really the High Feast of Parents, who came in force, with their following, to gloat over their own darlings, dressed in elaborate array of embroidered frocks and sashes and ribboned hair, the little boys low-stockinged and chubby of knee, in wide-collared sailor-suits. Babies of any age were eligible; even the little Susan was invited; it would be her first appearance in society. Amy's face glowed at the prospect. Elinor continued:

“Aunt Westlake seems quite old. I doubt if she'll ever take the journey again. She has been very good to us, Amy; she has a kind heart.”

“She has never shown it to me,” said Amy tersely. She put Aunt Westlake out of her mind as she drew aside the curtains of the crib and displayed the baby. “Don't you think she looks sweet, Elinor?” she asked a little wistfully.

“Yes, she's dear,” said Elinor kindly. “She's a pretty little thing—just like a doll. She's very small for her age though, isn't she? You ought to see my Kenneth now—he's twice her size. I think he is the most robust of all my children, although Malcolm has always had a magnificent physique. He weighed thirty-three pounds when he was five months old. It took two of us to lift him. Goodness, Amy, don't take her up! when you have as many as I have you'll know better. They're less trouble at this age than at any, if you know how to manage them. Of course, you do feel differently about the first one—but you'll soon get over it!”

Get over it! Amy didn't want to get over it, she said to herself indignantly. No one seemed to understand! But there was the Easter party. To her, as to every other mother who was to attend it, the whole entertainment was to be just a setting for her child. There she would really get the fulfilment of her desire in the admiration little Susan would excite. Last year she had gone as an outsider; but this year——

And, after all, little Susan attracted no attention beyond the kind interest of a few, who admired her beautiful robe or her tiny, perfect features. She was too little to clap her hands, or pull at the hair of the passers-by—she had no little tricks to compel notice. Two or three people mistakenly told Amy how attractive she would find the child when it was older. After a little while the noise and the strange faces forced themselves upon little Susan's infant consciousness, and she wailed and had to be taken up-stairs and deposited on a big white bed in a spare room, and Amy wandered around down-stairs, feeling young and weary and very much alone in the big family full of their own interests. She was as disappointed as a child because she wasn't having a good time at the party. Her face attracted the attention of her hostess.

“You're looking tired, Amy. Where's the baby—up-stairs? They're really no satisfaction to bring out at this age. I could have told you that, but I didn't like to. Why don't you go up and rest, too, for a few moments? Don't go into the blue room by mistake—Aunt Westlake's there.”

"Aunt Westlake!"

“Yes, she wasn't very well and we wouldn't let her go home; but it's all right, she isn't coming down. I thought I'd better tell you.”

“Thank you,” said Amy, and went up musingly, to start back as she opened the door of the room where she had left the child.

The baby lay there rolled up in a flowered coverlet, in the midst of the big, high-pillowed, double bed. The light-lashed eyelids were closed, the lips slightly parted to draw in the breaths of what seemed a rapt and absorbed bliss of slumber. There was something indescribably, dependingly feminine about Amy's baby; not even the most unused could have taken this soft little darling for a boy. There are strange revelations of heredity shown in the unconscious features of a sleeping child, as hitherto unseen resemblances come out in a photograph,

Over the bed hung the tall, spare figure of Aunt Westlake, with a look in her bright dark eyes as she raised them to the startled Amy's that this generation had never seen.

“Hush, my dear!” She put up her hand in warning, and then drew the girl down beside her, her own gaze dwelling with deeper absorption again upon the child. “Don't wake her. She looks just like my little girl—my baby—who died forty-five years ago. When I came in here and saw her I thought my little Alice had come back to me, her little face was so natural—it made me feel very strange.”

“O dear Aunt Westlake!” said Amy, with a sudden sob.

“Yes, my dear, I had her only three months. I suppose you think it's a long time ago, but it often seems like yesterday to me; I can feel her little head on my shoulder many times. She was such a beautiful baby, like a miniature, each feature perfect; every one who saw her exclaimed about it, and so fair, too—that came from the Bowley side of the house; Lady Mary Beauleroy was always said to be a great beauty. There was something in your mother, Amy, when she was a child, that used to remind me of my little Alice, but I have never seen any baby since who really looked like her until now—the same little straight nose—I think a baby's nose is so cunning, don't you? The same curve to the mouth—Cupid's bow, we used to call it—and the lovely little brows. See how long her tiny fingers are! That means that she's going to be very talented. Well, I never! Look there, dear; did you see her throw her little arm—the left one—above her head? That was such a trick of Susie's—your mother's, Amy; throwing her arm—the left one always—above her head when she slept; perhaps you didn't know that she used to stay with me a good deal when she was a child. So many times I've said to her: 'Put your arm down, Susie; that's a very bad habit, it makes you dream.' Susie had such a sweet nature; how she would have loved this dear baby. And your father, too—you don't remember him, Amy; he always was so tender over little girls.”

“O Aunt Westlake!” said Amy again, with a full heart. That had come to her at last which she had missed—the love which spoke from out the past, intimate, living! bringing with it the divine right of connection with those who had gone before, casting a halo over the path the little feet were to tread. So newly precious had the child become as the partaker of that daily resurrection that makes our unseen life——

The reparation that had halted on Amy's lips for two years rushed to them now. “Oh, I'm so sorry I ever said anything about the pitcher, Aunt Westlake! It's a beautiful pitcher. And I'm so sorry I made a face at you in the train! I don't know what possessed me.” Amy was weeping. “I was just hateful, because— And Robert has felt so badly.” A hand restrained her.

“Hush, my dear, I think she's going to wake up—did you see her little eyelids quiver? Would you mind—would you mind very much, my dear, if I held her for a moment in my arms?”

•••••••

“I never in my life saw anything like Aunt Westlake,” said Emma Dean disparagingly. “She's a perfect slave to Amy's baby. I told Amy that she would ruin Susan's training. Aunt Westlake is so hopelessly unmodern in her methods; she was actually trotting Susan the other day! And Amy only laughed.”

“I thought you and Amy weren't speaking,” said Elinor Ray.

“Well, we weren't,” returned Emma apologetically, “but Amy seemed to have forgotten about it. She began by telling me about the General Washington pitcher; Aunt Westlake has had a silver plate with the baby's initials put on the thing. This time it's been given to keep!”