CHAPTER XIV

HIS MOTHER’S BOY

He was sleeping like a boy. I hated to disturb him, and I ran to the door leading to the hall, and smelt hard under it. Nothing there--I went back to bed, but my uneasiness increased so terribly, that, at last, if I had not aroused my master, I should have burst into terrible howling which would have disturbed the household and waked the baby.

I pulled hard at the sleeve of his pajamas. “Master, master, wake up.”

He turned on me eyes unseeing at first, then intelligent. “What’s the matter, Boy-Dog--burglars?”

I didn’t know what was the matter, so I pulled hard to show he was to come and investigate.

He rolled quickly out of bed, snatched his bath-robe and followed me. He knew that I would not rouse him for a trifle.

We stole out into the hall like two cats. There I was puzzled. Which way did the uneasiness lead me? Master, of course, went right toward the door of the precious baby’s room, but I turned my back on it, and led him to the door leading out of the apartment into the general hall.

Master, with a greatly relieved face, softly unlocked it, and we stood together outside. There were several other apartments on this floor--the trouble was in one of them.

Ah! at last I caught it, the faint sound of sobbing. I rushed to the door of a pretty delicate little English woman whose husband had gone to the war. I laid my ear to the crack underneath--yes, it was there, the sound of a child crying in the night.

I scratched, and whined, and looked up at master. He listened and heard nothing, but he had such confidence in my judgment, that he pressed the electric button.

No reply, and the sobbing stopped suddenly. The trouble was still there, however, and I redoubled my scratching at the door.

Master rang again, then tried the door softly.

Finally he called in a low voice, “Mrs. Waverlee!”

She did not reply, then he said, “Egbert, Egbert, are you awake? It is Mr. Granton.”

There was a dead silence. I thought it was pretty good in master to stand there so patiently. He could hear nothing, see nothing, but he relied on me.

Suddenly there was a noise inside, like a chair falling over. A little voice cried, “Oh!” then a trembling hand began to fuss with the lock of the door, and at last it was thrown silently open.

We stepped inside. Confronting us was young Egbert Waverlee in his little nightie, his face swollen and disfigured from much weeping. He was trembling with the cold, for all the windows were open.

He held out his little hand. “Mr. Granton, I can’t wake muvver,” he said with quivering lip, “and she’s getting cold.”

He was a dear little lad, and often came to call with his mother on my mistress, but lately we had not seen much of them. I knew that her husband had gone to England, and she was feeling very sad about it.

My master strode quickly past the child to his mother’s room. She was not in bed, she lay all in a heap on the floor, beneath a large picture of her husband.

As my master lifted her in his strong arms, and laid her on her bed, a pencil fell from her cold fingers to the floor. He saw it, also a piece of notepaper with a crest on it, and presently he picked them both up and put them in his pocket.

Then he ran his hand rapidly over Mrs. Waverlee’s face, put it on her heart, and turned gravely to small Egbert: “How long has your mother been asleep, my boy?”

The little fellow ran to a table, and picked up a telegram. “I think this made muvver sleepy. She read it, then she walked about and acted like a naughty boy, for she scribbled on the walls with a pencil, then she kissed me, and lay down there and went to sleep. Please wake her up, Mr. Granton.”

Master read the telegram, put it in his pocket, then he said, “Come, boy, let us telephone for the doctor.”

“And leave muvver all alone?” said the child.

“She won’t wake, my boy,” said master hoarsely. “She is sleeping a sound sleep.”

“Come, then, let us telephone quick,” said the child. He seized master’s hand, pulled him from the room, and stood trembling with excitement while master called up his family physician.

“Will you come in my bed, and get warm till he comes?” asked master of the child.

“Oh, no, no,” said the little boy in an agony, “not while muvver is so cold. Come, now, let us do something to make her warm.”

Master didn’t know what to do. He cast an appealing look at his wife’s door. Oh! if he could only ask her to help him. He didn’t quite like to disturb her. Finally he sighed, and allowed the boy to drag him to the bed-room.

The little fellow ran to the bath-room. His face was more cheerful, now that he was doing something. He let the hot water run, and to my master’s astonishment, seized a rubber bag and filled it.

“Often and often I’ve done this for muvver after Sarah went away,” he said with a pitiful smile.

While staring at him, it came to my mind that I had heard some servants’ gossip about Mrs. Waverlee turning economical, so she could send money home for the war. Instead of keeping two maids, she had one only, who came in the morning, and went away at night.

The child was wagging his dark head at my master in a confidential fashion. “Muvver’s not very strong, you know. Father said when he went away, ‘Take good care of her, boysie, till I come back.’”

Master groaned so pitifully, that I knew the telegram had said that the child’s father had been killed in a battle.

“Now, Mr. Granton,” said the little boy, “please heap your hannies with boysie’s bed-clothes, while I slip this in by muvver’s poor cold feet.”

The unhappy man did as he was told, and together they covered the poor lady warmly, and then Mr. Granton said gravely, “Your mother would not like it, if she saw you standing here shivering with the cold.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” said the boy smiling bravely. “She’d say, ‘Boysie, you are going to have another sore throat.’ Mr. Granton, boysie will get in beside muvver. She always puts her arm round me, and makes me so comfy.”

I am only a dog, but my heart ached for that child. His little manner was sweet and coaxing, his cunning eyes were fixed on his grown-up friend. He knew what had happened, but he wouldn’t let his little self believe it. He was putting up the bravest fight I ever saw any one put up, and the man didn’t know what to do with him.

Finally master got desperate. He had closed the windows, and turned on the heat, but the child was shivering horribly, and his face was swollen and disfigured with much weeping, and every little while he gave a great gasping sob. Seizing the boy in his arms, master carried him to his own room, put him in bed, and ordered me to jump in, and lie close beside him.

Egbert did not dare disobey him. He cast one frightened look after him, then he threw his little arms so tight round my neck, that he almost strangled me. “Muvver, muvver,” he muttered over and over, “oh! muvver, muvver.”

He was a nervous, high-strung child, and I knew my master was terrified lest he should go the way of his parents. I heard him telephone to Mrs. Bonstone to come quickly. He knew the child ought to have a woman to take care of him.

It was the middle of the night, but Mrs. Stanna got there almost as quickly as the doctor did. From the time she entered the apartment till five hours later, I knew only the boy’s side of the story. Master disappeared, for he had many things to do.

Stanna was lovely with the little orphan. She put her arms round him, hugged and kissed him, and told him a beautiful story about Walter Scott.

Just as she got to the most thrilling part of her tale, Egbert said gravely, “What was on that piece of paper that upsetted muvver?”

Mrs. Bonstone grew pale. The child was not blinded by her attentions.

“Egbert,” she said trying to smile, and not succeeding very well, “you know your dear father went to the war.”

“Yes,” he said shortly, “to fight the Germans--the devils.”

“Egbert,” she said sharply.

“That’s what Louis calls them,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Of course, Louis is half French,” said Mrs. Bonstone in a slow voice, and trying to gain time.

“Louis says he’d like to unjoint the Kaiser,” pursued Egbert and he cracked his little finger joints as though he would separate them--“All over,” he went on, “limb by limb--Louis would enjoy doing it.”

Mrs. Bonstone gave a nervous laugh, then tears came in her eyes. “Darling,” she said coaxingly, “your father was a splendid man. He would never hate any one. All nations have good and bad people in them.”

“Did the Germans kill him?” asked Egbert quietly.

“Well, suppose they had,” asked Mrs. Bonstone, “wouldn’t he be in that lovely place called heaven, with the angels and the beautiful meadows, and watercourses, and all the happy people who are through with this wicked world?”

“And happy birds that fly about the altar,” added Egbert, his little face lighting up. “Favver would love that, but he’d rather be with me and muvver.”

This was a poser for Mrs. Bonstone. However, she caught her breath, and was launching forth on a brave description of the glories of heaven when the door opened softly, and Mrs. Granton came in.

Naturally she didn’t like to see another woman in her house in the middle of the night, but the terrible circumstances blotted that occurrence almost out of her mind. She narrowed her eyelids, and visualised her boy in the place of Egbert. She was a real mother now.

Of course, Mrs. Bonstone was on the whole a much better woman, and she had been perfectly lovely to her little brown baby. I don’t suppose, indeed, that one could find a better counterfeit mother than she was, but mistress was the real thing.

Something told her what the child was going through, something told her what to do. She didn’t try to tell him stories, she didn’t try to appeal to his intelligence, she just smiled a triumphant mother smile, held out her arms to the stricken child, and he went into them.

She sat down on the bed, rocking herself to and fro, and saying, “There, there,” and patting him gently on the back while listening to his wild weeping.

His father and mother were dead, and his heart was broken. That was the whole thing. All the clever men and women in the world could not blind his eyes to his own intuition. He didn’t reason, he knew.

Presently she turned to Mrs. Bonstone. The child had whispered something in her ear. “Stanna,” she said gently, “he wants to know if you will please go to his play corner and bring all his toys here.”

With a somewhat mystified face, Mrs. Bonstone hurried away and presently returned with the skirt of her dress held up.

As she unloaded animals, toy guns, whistles, Noah’s arks and every sort of game on the floor, I caught a glimpse of her face.

Of course at mistress’ advent, I had jumped off the bed. Mrs. Bonstone now looked strangely--almost frightened, as if she had seen something that startled her. With all my intuition, I was far from guessing the truth, but I ran to the door and heard footsteps in the hall, and smelt mystery. Well! it would wait. I was more interested in the child than in anything else.

“Has--has she got them all?” he gulped in mistress’s ear.

“Yes, yes, my boy.”

“Then let me go,” and he clambered off the bed, and dashing away the tears from his poor red eyes, he went over all his heap of toys, selecting about two-thirds of them, and putting them in a heap, while he threw the others under the bed.

The two women sat looking at each other, and at him, with mystified glances. Finally, the child had the toys all assorted, and with his little face disturbed with rage, he jumped up and down on the heap, smashing and demolishing animals, birds and games, and toy-carts and engines.

When they were all in a disfigured, ugly mass, he sprang back into the bed, and nestled against mistress’s breast.

Mrs. Bonstone wonderingly picked up a section of a box. Something was stamped on it, and she read it aloud, “Made in Germany.”

Her face grew scarlet. “The whole war isn’t worth the flame of rage in this one childish breast,” she said furiously. Then almost in the same breath, she calmed down, “But oh! my child--forgive, forgive. They are your enemies, but only more war can come from vengeful feelings. Don’t let us have the hate-song in this country.”

I don’t know whether the child was listening. His head was buried in mistress’s shoulder. Mrs. Bonstone went on, “Your darling mother forgave, for the words she wrote in her anguish all about the room, and on that piece of paper, were: ‘I do not want my boy to be a soldier.’”

Egbert still made no reply, and Mrs. Bonstone, getting up, went to the hearth-rug, rolled it back, and busied herself in making a fire. When it was blazing nicely, she spread an eider-down puff over a big chair, and said to mistress, “Your back must be aching, Clossie. You would better sit here.”

Mistress smiled in a grateful way, and sitting down in the big chair, took Egbert on her lap.

Presently the door opened, and in came master. He looked tremendously excited in a quiet way, but still he took time to flash a glance of appreciation at his wife.

Behind him stood a nurse--a strange nurse, not the baby’s.

“Will you let me have the boy, please,” she said to mistress, “and quickly. The doctor is waiting.”

Mistress let him go, then she turned inquiringly to her husband.

He dropped down beside her, and laid his hand on her lap. “A miracle, Claudia. The child’s mother has come back to him. It was a case of suspended animation. He probably saved her life by the application of heat. I never heard of a similar occurrence. I shall question the doctor later.”

“Oh! thank God, thank God,” cried Mrs. Bonstone, and she sank on her knees at the other side of the fireplace.

Mistress didn’t say anything, but she stared at me, at her husband, and at Mrs. Bonstone. Finally she murmured, “’Twas the dog that did it.” Then she got up, and went quickly to her baby’s room. Taking his little soft hand between her own, and very gently lest she should wake him, she dropped loving mother kisses on it.

I had followed her, and stood touching her gown softly with my muzzle. She stooped down and patted me, and from that day to this mistress and I have been good friends.

When I told Walter Scott about this the next day, he said: “It isn’t safe to judge any human being, or any animal till they have lived their lives out. You used to be too hard on your mistress.”