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Read Ebook: Aus meinem Jugendland by Kurz Isolde
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THE GALAXY.
A PROGRESSIVE BABY.
OBER LAHNSTEIN, Jan. 16, 1875.
And I'd no shillings and sixpences then to fee guards and porters, so had to dodge them, look at them as if I didn't see them, lug about my own parcels, and freeze without a foot-warmer!
Now the way is all padded. I always go first-class if Ronayne's along, haven't to lift so much as a hand satchel, am fairly smothered in comforts, as beseems the true English Philistine I'm become. I've the delightfullest husband and baby the round world can show; a nurse fit to command the channel fleet ; and I've about as much vim as a syllabub; am so nervous that I weep if Ronayne gets out of my sight when we go for a stroll, if too little toast comes up for my breakfast, or the chocolate isn't frothed, or the trunk won't lock, and have aphasia to that degree that I say cancel when I mean endorse, hair-brush when I want a biscuit, and go stumping down to dinner in a boot and a slipper, being incapable of the connected effort of memory and will that would get both feet into fellow shoes.
But I'm blissfully happy all the same, and we've beheld a spectacle lately that reconciles me perfectly with my own absurdity, and my awkwardness with my precious tot.
Coming up the Rhine we had a pair of fellow voyagers, circumstanced somewhat like ourselves: first baby, not over young , but travelling without a nurse. This mighty functionary had struck almost at the moment of their departure from London, and a charitable but inexperienced friend came to their aid and set forth with them in charge of the baby.
But next day, after we had embarked on the Rhine boat, and I had helped nurse turn our tiny state-room into a tolerable nursery , I went upon deck to find Ronayne, and on the way came upon a most piteous, persistent wail, and the wail's father and mother in abject, helpless tendance upon it.
Of course my newly-found mother's heart took me straight to the miserable group; and after a few sympathetic inquiries, I sat down beside the mother, and took the querulous little creature in my arms, where presently it hushed off to sleep. How proud I felt! for that's more than my own baby often condescends to do for my clumsy soothing! The father skulked away with an immensely relieved look, soon after I sat down, and the mother grew quite confidential. She told me of the perfidious nurse's behavior, of the friend's heroic offer, and that they had not had a wink of sleep the night before at the hotel, for nursing the baby had made the friend so ill that they had had to send her back to London that morning. She didn't know but it would have been better if she and baby had turned back with the overdone friend; but it was her husband's holiday--six weeks he had--and he worked so hard the rest of the year--her husband was an author, a journalist --and she thought his vacation oughtn't to be spoiled or deferred by the child; and as he would enjoy it all a great deal more with her than alone, she had "trusted to luck," and was going off up the Rhine with him to make a long excursion, before proceeding to some quiet little town on the Moselle, where another nurse was in waiting for her. It was their first baby--yes; they had not been married much over a year. She was fond of it, poor baby! but it was such a pity it had come! They had not wanted children--children would utterly interfere with their plan of life. Both its father and herself were busy people. Oh, there was so much work to be done! and they had married to help each other in toil for the world, and babies were a sad hindrance.
I suggested that the work of moulding an immortal soul, fashioning the character and destinies of a little human creature, seemed to me labor mighty enough for any one's energies and ambition. But she answered me a little sharply, that there were souls enough in the world already; she wanted to be responsible for no more mistakes and wretchedness. However, she fortunately was well and strong, and if she got a good nurse, she would be able to devote herself to work, and to help her husband as she had done before the child came. Was I interested in the woman question? I answered somewhat tamely, that I was very much interested in whatever made women better; that I believed in women, and that this rather wearisome planet wouldn't even be worth condemning without them.
This was said a little proudly, but with the pretty pride a wife has a right to show when she believes she has a clever husband. And a good woman I am sure she was beside whom I sat--kindly, conscientious, earnest, spirited, full of aspiration and zeal gone astray. Pleasant to look upon, too, when I came to separate her from her disfiguring and thoroughly British travelling costume--a hat like an inverted basin, with a long white ostrich feather, dingy, uncurled, and forlornly drooping; a violet stuff gown all bunchy and tormented with woollen ruffles, ruches, and knobby rosettes, and a dark blue bag of a waterproof garment which I took to be the feminine correspondent of that masculine wrap, the Ulster coat--a covering that would turn Apollo himself into a bagman. Not very tall, solidly rather than gracefully made, with a rather driven-together face, the excessively bulging forehead crowding down upon a nose curved like a bird's beak, and a pair of deep-set eyes of wonderful beauty--clear, gray, intense, brilliant, and shaded by long dark lashes. Add a delicate, rather sarcastic mouth, a complexion of exquisite fairness, dark brown hair without any warmth in its color, hanging in slender short curls down her neck, and that is Mrs. Malise.
We had a great many conversations after this initial one, and I believe I have promised to look them up this winter in London. They're not so very far from us--going by the underground; Notting Hill Gate's their station, and I really feel a call to look after that baby. He's a fine child, but was generally so miserable and cross that almost nobody took other than offensive notice of him. At first I pitied his poor mother when passengers and crew, even, made much of my baby when she came up all placid, white as a snowdrop, daintily fresh, and feathery, and soft, with her lace frills, like a little queen in nurse's arms; but my pity was thrown away, for Mrs. Malise only said, "I cannot spare the time to keep my baby in white, so made that gray flannel dressing gown for him to travel in. It's capital, and not showing the dirt, will last the whole journey." And the little thing was so untidy! For he was treated exactly like a parcel; his parents handled him like one, a rather dangerous one, at arm's length, and like a parcel he was deposited about, sometimes among rolls of carpeting on the deck, or on beer casks, while his father and mother were hanging over the boat's rail staring at castles and ruins, or reading up in the guide-book; sometimes happed up in a shawl on the floor, or on a bed made up on chairs, his head on the lowest one, his mother craning her head out at window to lose no bit of river scenery. One day I nearly sat down upon him, as he was left, quite by himself, lying across a camp-chair; wherever, in unexpected, impossible corners, one stumbled upon a solitary gray object, it was sure to be this poor mite, bemoaning himself for having come into a place so full of cold, wet, sour smells and stomach-ache--a place where he wasn't wanted, and nobody had time to look after him.
I think Mrs. Malise is a good deal drawn toward me for two or three reasons. She has found out that I've been an artist--lived by myself, had my studio, paid my way--and she accordingly respects me as a member of the sisterhood who's at least tried to do something. Then I agree far too closely with St. Paul, and she "don't altogether hold with Paul," and wants to convert me to whatever form of kaleidoscopic non-belief she cherishes. Then I'm too luke-warm about the suffrage. I admit that I see no reason why I shouldn't have it, but I don't and can't see in my having it the panacea for all social ills. I'm asked what I think of Hodge in England, and Terence and Scip in the United States getting rights withheld educated women citizens; and I can only plead pitifully that while Hodge and Terence and Scip are ignorant and boorish, I, having already roughed it a good deal, would rather individually not contest anything very closely with them--a plea which is most justly scouted as a mere get-off--a bit of heartless fine-ladyism. Have I read Mill? No. From the time my school days ended, at seventeen, for ten--no, twelve years, until I married, two years ago, I had neither time nor eyes for reading. Why, I could almost count upon my fingers the books I had read--"after school-books, of course, and then some anatomical reading which don't count; there's--let me see--'The Improvisatore,' Vasari's 'Lives of Painters,' 'Charles Auchester,' Rio's 'Lectures on Christian Art,' 'Christie Johnstone,' 'La Mare au Diable,' two or three of Balzac's novels, and all of poetry and of Ruskin I could ever lay hands on!"
She looked astonished for a moment; then her face brightened. "Here's richness!" I'm sure her thought might have been translated. "Here's a virgin soil with nothing to dispute the growth of good seed." And I feel I'm to be taken in hand. I'm quite ready. It is even something to look forward to in the horrible London winter. She told me "little Malaise" is to be brought up after the most recently approved scientific manner, by weight, measure, and clockwork. His birth, even, was a triumph of principle, for on that occasion Mrs. Malise was attended by a young woman who had been unsuccessful in her medical studies, and failed to obtain her degree--"Because I believed it jealousy, you know, and I wished to encourage her!"
When he is three or four years old (certainly as early as the
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