The Incubator Baby

She began by rubbing her eyes with the back of her chubby fists and yawning until her mouth was a little pink circle. That was to tell Chiswick she was sleepy. Chiswick put her in the crib.

Marjorie sat up and whimpered, pausing from time to time to look at Chiswick. Chiswick remained calm and indifferent. Marjorie lay back, stiffened her limbs and yelled. Chiswick was not affected. Marjorie rolled over on one side, raised her voice an octave, and shrieked, beating the side of her crib with her fists. She became purple in the face. Chiswick paid no attention.

Marjorie, disgusted, became suddenly quiet. She feigned meekness. She sat up in her crib and smiled. She pretended that sleep and rocking were farthest from her thoughts. She coaxed to be put on the floor. Chiswick yielded so far, as a reward of merit.

Without an instant’s hesitation Marjorie crept to the rocking chair that stood in one corner of the room and tried her latest and most famous trick. It was a trick of which she was justly proud. When she had done it for her mother she had been deliciously hugged, and it never failed to win a kiss from her father. True, she had always performed it with the assistance of a crib leg, but the rocking chair looked serene. Marjorie could stand on her own legs, with something to hold to, and she was going to do it for Chiswick.

She raised herself on her knees by the chair, and grasped it firmly by the seat. Cautiously she drew a foot up under her and tested her knee strength. It was good. She raised herself carefully and slid the other foot beside its companion, stiffened her knees and was standing upright! It was glorious! She turned her head to see how Chiswick was taking it. The chair failed her basely. It swung forward in an unaccountable manner and developed a strange instability. Marjorie grasped it firmly and it reared up in front and then dived down again. She cast an agonized glance at Chiswick, staggered, grasped widely in the air for a firmer support, gasped, and sat down so suddenly that the bottles in the sterilizer on the table rattled.

The chair, released, nodded at her sagely once or twice and settled into a motionless and fraudulent appearance of stability.

Marjorie was not to be fooled twice by the same chair. She tried it cautiously. She put her hand on it and it swayed. She took her hand off and it became still. It was a remarkable mechanism. She crawled around to one side and tried it there. It was much better so. She upended herself again, and the chair, altho it wabbled distractingly, did not cast her off.

Chiswick was not duly impressed. She seemed to consider standing upright quite an everyday matter. Marjorie hesitated, looked at her appealingly, and then, to overwhelm her, released one hand and stood alone, supported by one hand only.

Suddenly the deceitful chair began to rock again. It fell sickeningly beneath her hand, and arose again, only to fall once more. Marjorie trembled. If all the world should develop this instability! If cribs and floors and walls should take to sinking and rising.

She lost faith in the inanimate. Nothing was firm and secure but strong, warm arms, holding one firmly. She cast off her remaining clasp on the chair and in her excitement forgot that she was standing. She had but one thought, Chiswick and safety!

Steadying herself for a moment she reached out her arms and took a step toward Chiswick. She swayed backward, threatening to sit down again, and then in a rush she took three quick steps, bent forward and fell flat on her face.

Chiswick darted toward her, but too late. Her forehead struck the hard floor just before Chiswick reached her, and she screamed with fright. It was true! Even the floor had proved false and had risen to strike her. Her heart broke, and then, before she knew how, she was wrapped in Chiswick’s arms and was being rocked tumultuously. Chiswick had fallen from scientific grace.

After that it was only a question of who could do the most to spoil Marjorie. There was Mrs. Fielding, who was sure no one suspected her; and Mr. Fielding, who carefully avoided publicity in his ministrations; and Chiswick, who was severely correct when observed and weakly indulgent when alone; and Miss Vickers, who was shamelessly indifferent to rules. Between them Marjorie had quite a normal babyhood, and the members of the committee were blissfully unaware of it. They regularly reported her progress, and bragged of her scientific upbringing.

When Marjorie reached the age of two years she had cut all her teeth and was saying words of one and one-half syllables, and stringing them together to form sentences that no one but her loving intimates could by any chance understand. By the direction of her governing committee she wore frocks cut on a scientific plan that had originated in the mind of some person who had a chronic aversion to ruffles and whose firm belief seemed to be that only the ugly was hygienic. Marjorie wore health garments that looked like misfit flour sacks, and health shoes that made people stop and stare at her feet. Her garb was so highly healthful that Marjorie should have bloomed like a rose, but she began to droop visibly. She became pale and peevish and would not eat her bran mash and Infant’s Delight puddings. By day she was listless and by night she slept fitfully and awakened with screams. She had no appetite. Every one was sorry for her and did little things to please her – on the sly.

In any other child the doctor would at once have suspected a wrong diet, but Marjorie’s committee had arranged her diet and it was beyond criticism. The doctor suggested that perhaps incubator babies were subject to such declines. One of the strictest rules of the committee-arranged diet was “no sweets.” Candy was absolutely forbidden. On this point the committee was most positive.

Miss Vickers considered this a shocking cruelty. She lived largely on chocolate creams and considered a candyless world pathetic. She pitied Marjorie, and occasionally, when no one was looking, she smuggled a fat chocolate into Marjorie’s willing mouth. Miss Vickers believed that a little candy was good for a child, but she was careful not to give Marjorie more than she thought was good for her.

Mr. Fielding was of the same opinion. He could not imagine an unsweetened childhood, and whenever he visited the nursery he smuggled in a few soft bonbons – the kind that dissolve in the mouth and leave no clews. Marjorie approved. She had a capacity for candy that was phenomenal. One morning she and her mother were taking a little toddle down the street when they passed one of those seductive candy shops in which the basely knowing proprietor has the show windows cut so low that the tempting display is very near the level of a two-year-old’s mouth.

Marjorie stopped. She pushed her nose into flatness against the window and gloated. She edged back and forth from one side, where there were chocolate creams, to the other, where there were pink bonbons, and her nose in its course made a clean streak on the dusty window glass. She paused hesitatingly before the floury marshmallows, passed the cakes of flat chocolate without qualms, and settled firmly and finally before the pink bonbons.

She refused to leave the beautiful spot. When Mrs. Fielding tried to draw her away, her nose remained against the glass and she screamed. Mrs. Fielding glanced up and down the street guiltily. Not a committee member was in sight. The street was untroubled by the feet of members of the Federation of Women’s Clubs. Mrs. Fielding vanished into the candy shop. It was quite safe to leave Marjorie outside; she would remain with her nose, and her nose seemed permanently affixed to the window.

But when Mrs. Fielding emerged with a small paper bag in her hand Marjorie turned. The sight of one of the delicious pink lumps of sweetness being lifted from the bag drew her away from the window, and when the bonbon was dropped into her open mouth she was conquered. She followed her mother gladly. Wherever that paper bag might go, Marjorie would follow. The last bonbon disappeared before they reached home, but Mrs. Fielding continued to carry the empty bag, and Marjorie followed it.

“Miss Vickers,” said Mrs. Fielding, as she turned Marjorie over to her, “you must never, never allow any one to give Marjorie candy. It would not be good for her.” Thus she tried to secure a monopoly of Marjorie’s love, and forestall any ill effects, but she did not know the depths to which Chiswick had sunk. Concealed in her loose shirt waist was something that rustled suspiciously like paper and that made her once care-free conscience cringe at every rustle.

Naturally, Marjorie got too much candy. Whenever she was alone with one of her family she found candy appearing from unsuspected places about their persons, and she began to like confidential little parties of two.

It was truly joyful to see Marjorie eat candy. She was not greedy. At least, she did not look greedy. She looked surprised and pleased. She never seemed so soulful and sinless as at the moment when her pink lips closed over a bonbon. At such a moment she seemed to forget the world and to live in a more blessed sphere. The committee was particularly strict about candy. It made the most positive rules against candy and had them pasted on the walls of the nursery, and then during its calls, each of its members skirmished to be the last to leave. The last out of the room usually dropped a piece of candy into Marjorie’s mouth.

Her indisposition was a glorious opportunity for the candy givers. Everybody had a good excuse for going to the nursery as often as possible, and she was in a constant glow of cherubic bliss, until the day of reckoning came. She lay on her cot and was crudely, simply sick. Her eyes were sunken and her cheeks varied from pale yellow to feverish red. For the first time in her life she refused candy.

Her family and attendants and her governing committee wandered about the nursery, each with one closed fist hiding a candy, seeking opportunities to bend over the crib, and offer the candy to Marjorie, unseen by the others. They made quite a procession. Someone was bending over the crib every moment. Finally the doctor came and bent over the crib, too, and then all the others joined him.

“That child is sick,” said the doctor, taking her from the crib and concocting a potion.

“We knew that, doctor,” said Miss Vickers. “We knew she was quite ill.”

“Ill!” he said. “Ill! I said sick. Dog sick. She’s overfed. Too much candy.”

“Oh!” they all exclaimed. “Candy! Impossible!”

“The rules of the committee – ” began the chairman.

“Did she eat ‘em?” asked the doctor savagely. “If she did she ought to be sick. It makes me sick to look at ‘em.” He glared at the assembly. “Which of you gave her candy?” he asked. There was no reply. He turned to Marjorie.

“Like candy?” he asked.

“Yeth,” said Marjorie.

“Who gives you candy?” he inquired. Marjorie looked at the faces above her. She selected Chiswick.

“Chithy,” she declared.

Chiswick blushed. The others looked at her in pained surprise.

“Who else gives you candy?” demanded the doctor.

“Papa,” said Marjorie.

Mr. Fielding crimsoned and avoided the eyes that frowned at him.

Miss Vickers alone spared him. She tossed her head defiantly.

“I gave her candy. Lots of it. It’s good for her,” she declared.

“Who else?” demanded the doctor.

“Mamma,” said Marjorie.

Mrs. Fielding put her handkerchief to her eyes. She was afraid of the committee and hid weakly behind her tears, knowing that they would not attack her there, but the committee was not considering an attack. It was preparing a graceful retreat and it oozed away before Marjorie made its baseness known.

“Doctor,” said Mr. Fielding unsteadily, “do you think you can pull her through?”

The doctor rumbled deep in his throat.

“Pull her through!” he growled. “Pull her through! Why don’t you ask me?” he snapped at Mrs. Fielding. Mrs. Fielding wiped her eyes.

“Will she get well?” she asked.

The doctor grew scarlet.

“You ask me?” he exclaimed at Chiswick, but Chiswick only looked mutely miserable, and the doctor turned and faced them.

“Pull her through!” he growled. “Yes, I’ll pull her through. She’s about as ill as I am, but she’s as sick as a dog. Stuffed with candy. I’ll prescribe – ”

He turned, and, walking to the wall, tore down the rules and schedule so carefully prepared by the committee. When he faced Mr. Fielding again he seemed happier.

“How’s your mother?” he asked.

Mr. Fielding gasped.

“My mother!” he stammered. “Why – why, she’s dead.”

“How’s your mother, then?” the doctor asked, turning to Mrs. Fielding.

“Mother is well, thank you.” she said.

“Good!” the doctor cried. “I prescribe one grandmother, one good, old-fashioned grandmother. And see that she isn’t any new-fangled affair, either, or I’ll turn her out and go out on the street and pick one to suit me.”

Marjorie, pale and big-eyed, looked at him wonderingly.

“An incubator is all right when a mother won’t do,” he said, “and a mother is all right when you can’t get a grandmother, but hang your committees and your rules! The only good thing about rules is to find exceptions to them. What this baby needs more than anything else is a course of good, old-style grandmothering.”

He buttoned his coat and paused to pinch Marjorie’s cheek.

“We know what you want don’t we?” he said, and Marjorie smiled a thin, pale smile.

“Want piece candy,” she replied. “Want piece candy,” she replied.