Chapter V: Where Is Baby's Mother?

THAT is just what baby did not know, and in spite of the kiss, he made up his mind to cry. It was very distressing. Christie walked up and down in the bit of a space, and cuddled the poor fellow and whispered loving words to him, and cooed a lullaby into his ear, but he would have none of them. He wanted just one thing, and that was his mother's face.

The gentlemen began to interest themselves in the matter, though the velvet-dressed young lady was still deep in her "Seaside Library," only taking time to dart a frown at baby for being so noisy, and another asked who had been with the child, and what had become of her. And Wells told his story about seeing her leave the car at the last station.

"A case of desertion," said one man, looking severely at Christie, as though she might be the cause. But she looked back at him out of very cross eyes, and was glad that she did. The idea of any mother deserting her baby!

Presently came the conductor, and two or three people tried to talk to him at once.

"I noticed the lady leave the car," he said. "She asked me how much time there would be; she has got herself left, I presume. Women are always doing it; she stayed to tie her bonnet in another kind of knot, or something equally important, and she is probably fuming away at the station at this moment, calling the cars all sorts of names, as though they were to blame for her silliness."

"And when can she get to baby, sir?"

It was Christie's eager, sorrowful voice that asked the question. She knew now which she pitied the most, and that was baby's mother.

The conductor turned and looked at her.

"More than I know," he said shortly. "Do you belong to her? Are you the child's nurse?"

"Oh, no, sir," said Christie, and this time she had much ado to keep from smiling outright. "I never saw him before." But she cuddled him to her as she spoke, and he put one fat arm around her neck and gazed about him.

"Well," said the conductor, "he seems to take to you, and that is fortunate. There's no telling when we will get out of this; it is a bad mess."

Then up spoke Wells Burton. "But, conductor, the lady can get back to her baby, can't she, on the nine o'clock accommodation?"

"When the nine o'clock accommodation comes along, I dare say she can," replied that gentleman in a very significant tone. "But there's no telling when that will be."

"Why? Can't it come up before we leave here? Will it have to wait at the last station until we go on?"

Two gentlemen asked these two questions. And Christie waited eagerly for their answer, while baby, the most interested party, gave all his attention to the blue ribbon on her hair, and tried to poke it in his mouth and ruin it, ungrateful fellow that he was!

"If it doesn't have to wait any longer than until we go on, it may be thankful," said the conductor. "The rumour is that the bridge went down just after we crossed it; if that is so, we don't know when another train will get over."

Then you should have heard the exclamations of dismay.

"What! The high bridge! Went 'down,' did you say? Why, it isn't twenty minutes since we passed over! I thought you moved over very slowly—as if things were shaky."

"Can't you get a telegram, conductor, and learn the truth of the report?"

"Not very well, sir, while we lie here. If we ever reach another station, we shall have a telegram, I presume. Meantime, there isn't any particular danger of our being run over from either direction, so far as I can see."

"And when can we hope to get on?"

It was the pale-faced young man, with his watch in his hand, who asked this question. Christie thought his face grew paler yet as he listened to the answer.

"Well, sir, that's telling; perhaps in half an hour, perhaps not under two hours; we don't really know the extent of the damage yet, our men have gone forward to discover. And they will send workmen from the city as soon as they can, but everything is out of gear this morning. There has been trouble in all directions, and the railroad hands can't be everywhere at once. There's no telling what the delay will be; of course we hope we can hurry things up."

"Dear! Dear! What a state of things."

Disheartening as it all was, Christie could not help being astonished to see how cross the people were.

"They act exactly as though they thought the roads and the bridges had done it on purpose to vex them," she told Wells as she obeyed the motion of his hand and brought the baby to the turned seat in front of him. "Do you suppose they really know of somebody who is to blame?"

"Why, no," said Wells, thoughtfully, "I presume not; they just fret and say 'it is pretty business!' and all that sort of thing, because that is the natural way to act when folks are disappointed. Isn't that the way you do when things don't go to suit you?"

Christie's head drooped a little, and the pretty pink flush began to come on her cheek. "Once I used to do it to things," she said slowly, with a marked emphasis on the word "things." "I would slam the door when I was cross about something, and I would scold the kitchen fire for not burning, and I would put the wood down on the hearth with a great bang. But once I lost a penny under the carpet and I scolded about that, but that was when I was alone.

"The minute Mrs. Briggs came in to see mother, or even the market man stopped to see if we wanted anything, I would shut the door gently, and lay the wood on the hearth just as softly as I could, and I worked half an hour once, helping Susan Briggs open her desk, and never thought of being cross, because I was ashamed, you know, to have them see me do any other way. Now shouldn't you think these people would feel kind of ashamed to grumble before one another?"

But the only answer that Wells seemed to have ready for this was an absent-minded laugh; he was thinking of one part of Christie's sentence that he wanted to have explained.

"Look here," he said, "you say you used to be cross at things. Do you mean that you've given even that up?"

Christie gravely bowed her head. "I'm most cured of it," she said softly. "I think it is only once in a long while now that I forget. I was so in the habit of it that it was dreadfully hard work. You see this was after I had begun to try to do right; and I thought if I kept pleasant before people, there wouldn't be anything wrong in slamming doors a little—when nobody was there to see—and in scolding the fire because it couldn't have its feelings hurt, you know. But when I found out that it was almost worse to do that than to be cross to people, I tried hard to give it up."

"You are talking Greek to me," Wells said good-naturedly, but the tone said that he was very much interested, and should really like to understand Greek if he could. "What possible harm could there be in slamming a door, or growling at a fire, so long as nobody heard you? I should say it was a safe and comfortable way of working off ill-humour; I'm sure I wish some of the peppery folks I know would try that fashion. What made you think there was anything bad about it?"

"I didn't find it out myself," Christie said, her eyes drooping again. "You see I got into trouble. I wanted some things that I couldn't have, and I wanted to do some things that I couldn't do, and I thought about them until they made me feel cross half the time. I slammed all the doors I could, and the fire needed scolding every time I went near it, and I—" here there was a little hesitation, and the cheeks grew pinker—"I even got to scolding at Nettie when she was most asleep and couldn't hear me: real hateful things I said to her, about being the hardest baby to get to sleep that ever was born, and about taking all my time so that I couldn't study, nor knit, nor anything. I never would have said it to her if she had been awake, and I used to kiss her as soon as I had tucked her in the crib, but for all that, I grumbled at her a great deal. At last it got so bad that I knew I was getting to be cross all the time, and I couldn't seem to stop it; and one day I told the minister about it."

"You did!" Wells Burton's exclamation had a good deal of admiration in it: the truth was, he began to think that Christie must be a very brave girl. He told himself that he would rather stop twenty trains of cars than to go to the minister and have a talk about his faults! But Christie believed he thought she was a simpleton. Nevertheless, she meant to tell just the truth.

"Yes, I did," she said steadily. "One day he came to see us, and mother wasn't at home. The baby at Briggs' had burned himself and they sent for mother, and father had gone to the mill, and there wasn't anybody at home, only just Nettie and me, and I had been real cross to her: I shook her a little speck, not to hurt, you know, but then it was horrid; I felt so ashamed of myself that I cried; and just then the minister came. He asked me right away what was the matter, and that made me cry again, and then, you know, I almost had to tell him. It was something he said that has helped me ever since."

"Do you mind telling me what it was?" Wells Burton's voice was so gentle that she gave up the fancy that he was making fun of her.

"Why, it was something that I knew all the time, and I've often wondered that I did not think of it for myself. I told him that I had no trouble in being pleasant before people, because I would be so ashamed to have them see me looking cross. And that I kept my words pretty near right, but I couldn't manage my thoughts.

"And he asked me how I thought I should act if Jesus should come to our house, as he used to at Mary and Martha's. I told him that I knew then I should act just as well as I could. Then he asked me if I did not remember that Jesus had come to our house, and was staying there all the time, and heard all my thoughts, as well as my words?

"You don't know how it made me feel for a moment; I just felt scared. It seemed to me that I could remember all the times that I had banged the door, and rattled the wood, and Jesus looking at me! What made me most ashamed was, that I had tried to behave myself before Mrs. Briggs, and the other neighbours, and never minded how I behaved before Jesus. Just as though I thought more of them than I did of Him!"

"Humph!" said Wells. "I don't pretend to understand. I don't see how that helped you a bit. Of course, if a fellow could realize that Jesus was listening to what he said, it would make a big difference all the time. There are fifty thousand things a fellow says and does that he wouldn't do for the world! But the trouble is, you 'can't' realize it. A person that you can see and hear is very different from one that you can't see and hear; now that's the truth, and I don't see how anybody can say it isn't. Do you mean to have me understand that you are as sure of Jesus being near you as you are that I sit on this seat talking to you?"

"I'm just as 'sure' of it," Christie said with a quiet positiveness that went a great way toward proving the truth of her words, "but then, it is a different feeling, of course. I can't explain it to you; I don't know how. I suppose if you were to talk with our minister, he would make it all plain. But I know this: the more you pray, the surer you get that Jesus stays right beside you, and listens to all you say. I'm a 'great deal' surer of it than I used to be, and it keeps growing surer all the time."

Meantime, you are wondering what that baby was about, and why he endured so long a conversation that he did not understand. The truth is, that in telling you about the conversation, I have left out the number of times that Christie lifted him from one shoulder to the other, and the sweet cooing words she continually put in, between her answers, and the number of times Wells snapped his fingers for baby's benefit, and how he took his watch from its chain, and gave it to Christie to hold, so that the baby could see it.

But at last baby's patience was entirely gone. He would have nothing more to do with the watch, and he pushed Christie's hand away savagely, when she tried to pat his cheek. He had occasionally given some very loud yells, as specimens of what he could do, and now he went at it in earnest.

In vain Christie tossed, and cooed, and patted. He yelled the louder. The lady with the "Seaside" story was very much annoyed. She shot angry glances over at the perplexed little maid, and at last she said, "I should think if you cannot keep that child quiet, it would be well for you to let him alone."

"Perhaps the lady will take him for awhile. Your arms must be very tired."

This was Well's suggestion, and he enjoyed the look of disgust on her face, as she said:

"I know nothing about babies: but I think it is an imposition on the travelling public to have one screaming in this fashion."

"Then," said Wells, "would you in this case recommend choking, or what would you advise us to do?"

"You are a very impudent boy!" the lady said, and she went back to her book, with red cheeks.

Christie could not help laughing a little, though she was not sure but the lady was correct.

And the baby yelled!

Not another lady among the passengers. The last one had left the car at that unfortunate station where the poor mother stopped. The pale-faced young man came forward next; he did not look cross, only sorry.

"Poor fellow!" he said to the baby. "You think you are having a hard time, I suppose, but there are worse trials in life than yours. What would he say to me, do you think? I might take him for a walk up and down the car and rest your arms."

But the perverse baby yelled like a lunatic the moment the thing was attempted, and utterly refused to leave his small protector's side.

"He shows good taste," said the pale young man with a wan smile; "he probably sees that I know very little about babies."

Then the nice old gentleman decided to show his skill. "What would he say to a sugar-plum, do you suppose?" he asked, bending kindly over Christie, and showing a round, white candy.

"He'll be sure to approve of that," Wells said.

But Christie hesitated, and a lovely colour glowed on her cheeks.

"If you please, sir," she said timidly, "I don't know whether his mother would like it: they don't let some babies have candy at all. Mother thinks it is bad for them."

"Ah! Yes," he said, "I ought to know it by this time: I'm always getting into disgrace with my daughters by bringing the stuff to their babies. They don't allow it at all, and you are a wise little woman to think of it."