Chapter 4

The General withdrew his lingering gaze from the clothespin, and turned his blue eyes wonderingly up to her. The corners of his mouth trembled, widened, his eyelids crinkled, and then he smiled delightfully, straight into the eyes of the nurse, stretched up a wavering pink hand, and patted her cheek. A soft, gurgling monosyllable, difficult of classification but easy to interpret, escaped him.

The Princess smiled appreciatively, and moved with a stately, long step toward them.

"That was very pretty," she said, but Delia did not hear her.

"My baby, my own baby!" she murmured with a shiver, and hiding her face in the General's neck she sobbed aloud.

Miss Honey, shocked and embarrassed, twisted her feet nervously and looked at the inlaid floor. Caroline shared these feelings, but though she turned red, she spoke sturdily.

"I guess Delia feels bad," she suggested shyly, "when she thinks about--about what happened, you know. She don't cry usu'lly."

The Princess smiled again, this time directly at Caroline, who fairly blinked in the radiance. With her long brown eyes still holding Caroline's round ones, she patted Delia's shoulder kindly, and both children saw her chin tremble.

The General, smothered in that sudden hug, whimpered a little and kicked out wildly with his fat, white-stockinged legs. Seen from the rear he had the appearance of a neat, if excited, package, unaccountably frilled about with embroidered flannel. Delia straightened herself, dabbed apologetically at her eyes, and coughed.

"It's bottle time," she announced in horror-stricken tones, consulting a large nickel watch hanging from her belt, under the apron. "It's down in the carriage. Could I have a little boiling water to heat it, if you please?"

"Assuredly," said the Princess. "Ellis, will you get the--the bottle from the baby's carriage and some boiling water, please. Do you mix it here?"

"Mix--the food is all prepared, madam." Delia spoke with repressed scorn. "I only want to heat it for him."

"Oh, in that case, Ellis, take it down and have it heated, or," as the nurse half rose, "perhaps you would feel better about it if you attended to it yourself?"

"Yes, I think I will go down if you don't mind--when persons aren't used to 'em they're apt to be a little careless, and I wouldn't have it break and him losing his three o'clock bottle, for the world. You know how it is."

The Princess shook her head whimsically. "But surely you will leave the baby," and she moved toward them again. "I will hold it," with a half grimace at her own condescension. "It seems so very good and cheerful--I thought they cried. Will it come to me?"

Delia loosened her arms, but tightened them again as the little creature leaned forward to catch at the swinging lace on the lady's gown.

"I--I think I'll take baby with me. Thank you just the same, and he'll go to any one--yes, indeed--but I feel sort of nervous, I think I'd better take him. If anything should happen.... Wave your hand good-bye, now, General!"

The General flapped his arms violently, and bestowed a toothless but affectionate grin upon the wearer of the fascinating, swaying lace, before he disappeared with the delighted Ellis in the van.

"And can you buy all that devotion for twenty, thirty, or is it forty dollars a month, I wonder?" mused the Princess. "Dear me," she added, petulantly. "It really makes one actually _want_ to hold it! It seems a jolly little rat--they're not all like that, are they? They howl, I'm sure."

Again Miss Honey took the floor.

"When babies are sick or you don't treat them right," she announced didactically, "they cry, but not a well baby, Delia says. I"--with conscious pride--"screamed night and day for two weeks!"

"Really!" observed the Princess. "That must have been--er--trying for your family!"

"Worried to death!" Miss Honey rejoined airily, with such an adult intonation that the Princess started.

"The General, he just laughs all the time," Caroline volunteered, "unless you tease him," she added guiltily, "and then he squawks."

"Yes, indeed," Miss Honey bore witness, jealous of the lady's flashing smile to Caroline, "my mother says I'm twice the trouble he is!"

The Princess laughed aloud. "You're all trouble enough, I can well believe," she said carelessly, "though you particular three are certainly amusing little duds--for an afternoon. But for a steady diet--I'm afraid I'd get a bit tired of you, eh?"

She tapped their cheeks lightly with a cool, sweet-smelling finger. Miss Honey smiled uncertainly, but Caroline edged away. There was something about this beautiful tall lady she could not understand, something that alternately attracted and repelled. She was grown up, certainly; her skirts, her size, and her coiled hair proved that conclusively, and the servants obeyed her without question. But what was it? She was not like other grown-up people one knew. One moment she sparkled at you and the next moment she forgot you. It was perfectly obvious that she wanted the General only because Delia had not wanted to relinquish him, which was not like grown people; it was like--yes, that was it: she was like a little girl, herself, even though she was so tall and had such large red and blue rings on her fingers.

Vaguely this rushed through Caroline's mind, and it was with an unconscious air of patronage that she said, as one making allowances for inexperience, "When you get married, then you'll _have_ to get tired of them, you know."

"But you'll be glad you've got 'em, when they're once in bed," Miss Honey added encouragingly. "My mother says I'm a real treasure to her, after half-past seven!"

The Princess flushed; her straight dark eyebrows quivered and met for an instant.

"But I _am_ married," she said.

There was an utter silence.

"I was married five years ago yesterday, as it happens," she went on, "but it's not necessary to set up a day nursery, you know, under those circumstances."

Still silence. Miss Honey studied the floor, and Caroline, after an astonished stare at the Princess, directed her eyes from one tapestry to another.

"I suppose you understand that, don't you?" demanded the Princess sharply. She appeared unnecessarily irritated, and as a matter of fact embarrassed her guests to such an extent that they were utterly unable to relieve the stillness that oppressed them quite as much as herself.

The Princess uttered an angry exclamation and paced rapidly up and down the room, looking more regal and more unlike other people than ever.

"For heaven's sake, say something, you little sillies!" she cried. "I suppose you want me to lose my temper?"

Caroline gulped and Miss Honey examined her shoe-ties mutely.

Suddenly a well-known voice floated toward them.

"Was his nice bottle all ready? Wait a minute, only a minute now, General, and Delia'll give it to you!"

The procession filed into the room, Delia and the General, Ellis deferentially holding a tiny white coat, the man in livery bearing a small copper saucepan in which he balanced a white bottle with some difficulty. His face was full of anxious interest.

Delia thanked them both gravely, seated herself on the foot of the basket-chair, arranged the General flat across her knees, and, amid the excited silence of her audience, shook the bottle once or twice with the air of an alchemist on the brink of an epoch-making discovery.

"Want it? Does Delia's baby want it?" she asked enticingly. The General waved his arms and legs wildly; wreathed in smiles, he opened and shut his mouth in quick alternation, chirping and clucking, as she held it up before him; an ecstatic wriggling pervaded him, and he chuckled unctuously. A moment later only his deep-drawn, nozzling breaths could be heard in the room.

"He takes it beautiful," said Delia, in low tones, looking confidentially at the Princess. "I didn't know but being in a strange place might make a difference with him, but he's the best-baby!----"

She wiped his mouth when he had finished, and lifting him, still horizontal, approached her hostess.

"You can hold him now," she said superbly, "but keep him flat for twenty minutes, please. I'll go and take the bottle down, and get his carriage ready. He'll be good. He'll take a little nap, most likely."

She laid him across the rose-colored lap of the Princess, who looked curiously down on him, and offered him her finger tentatively. "I never held one before," she explained. "I--I don't know." ... The General smiled lazily and patted the finger, picking at the great sapphire.

"How soft its hands are," said the Princess. "They slip off, they are so smooth! And how good--does it never cry?" This she said half to herself, and Caroline and Miss Honey, knowing there was no need to answer her, came and leaned against her knee unconsciously, and twinkled their fingers at the baby.

"Hello, General! Hello!" they cried softly, and the General smiled impartially at them and caressed the lady's finger.

The Princess stroked his cheek. "What a perfectly exquisite skin!" she said, and bending over him, kissed him delicately.

"How good it smells--how--how different!" she murmured. "I thought they--I thought they didn't."

Miss Honey had taken the lady's other hand, and was examining the square ruby with a diamond on either side.

"My mother says that's the principal reason to have a baby," she remarked, absorbed in the glittering thing. "You sprinkle 'em all over with violet powder--just like doughnuts with sugar--and kiss 'em. Some people think they get germs that way, but my mother says if she couldn't kiss 'em she wouldn't have 'em!"

The Princess bent over the baby again.

"It's going to sleep here!" she said, half fearfully, with an inquiring glance at the two. "Oughtn't one to rock it?"

Miss Honey shook her head severely. "Not General," she answered, "he won't stand it. My mother tried again and again--could I take that blue ring a minute? I'd be awful careful--but he wouldn't. He sits up and he lies down, but he won't rock."

"I might sing to him," suggested the Princess, brushing a damp lock from the General's warm forehead and slipping her ringless finger into his curved fist carefully. "Would he like it?"

"No, he wouldn't," said Miss Honey bluntly, twisting the ring around her finger. "He only likes two people to sing--Delia and my mother. Was that ruby ring a 'ngagement ring?"

Caroline interfered diplomatically, "General would be very much obliged," she explained politely, "except that my Aunt Deedee is a very good singer indeed, and Uncle Joe says General's taste is ruined for just common singing."

The Princess stared at her blankly.

"Oh, indeed!" she remarked. Then she smiled, again in that whimsical, expressive way. "You don't think I could sing well enough for him--as well as your mother?"

Miss Honey laughed carelessly. "My mother is a singer," she said, "a real one. She used to sing in concerts--real ones. In theaters. Real theaters, I mean," as the lady appeared to be still amused.

"If you know where the Waldorf Hotel is," Caroline interrupted, "she has sung in that, and it was five dollars to get in. It was to send the poor children to a Fresh Air Fund. It--it's not the same as you would sing--or me," she added politely.

The lady arose suddenly and deposited the General, like a doll, with one swift motion, in the basket-chair. Striding across the room she turned, flushed and tall, and confronted the wondering children.

"I will sing for you," she said haughtily, "and you can judge better!"

With a great sweep of her half bare arm, she brushed aside a portiere and disappeared. A crashing chord rolled out from a piano behind the curtains and ceased abruptly.

"What does your mother sing?" she demanded, not raising her voice, it seemed, and yet they heard her as plainly as when they had leaned against her knee.

"She sings, 'My Heart's Own Heart,'" Miss Honey called back defiantly.

"And it's printed on the song, 'To Madame Edith Holt'!" shrilled Caroline.

The familiar prelude was played with a firm, elastic touch, the opening chords struck, and a great, shining voice, masterful, like a golden trumpet, filled the room. Caroline sat dumb; Miss Honey, instinctively humming the prelude, got up from her foot-stool and followed the music, unconscious that she walked. She had been privileged to hear more good singing in her eight years than most people in twenty-four, had Miss Honey, and she knew that this was no ordinary occasion. She did not know she was listening to one of the greatest voices her country had ever produced--perhaps in time to be known for the head of them all--but her sensitive little soul swelled in her, and her childish jealousy was drowned deep in that river of wonderful sound.

Higher and sweeter and higher yet climbed the melody; one last triumphant leap, and it was over.

"_My heart--my heart--my heart's own heart!_"

The Princess stood before them in the echoes of her glory, her breath quick, her eyes brilliant.

"Well?" she said, looking straight at Miss Honey, "do I sing as well as your mother?"

Miss Honey clenched her fists and caught her breath. Her heart was breaking, but she could not lie.

"You--you"--she motioned blindly to Caroline, and turned away.

"You sing better," Caroline began sullenly, but the lady pointed to Miss Honey.

"No, you tell me," she insisted remorselessly.

Miss Honey faced her.

"You--you sing better than my m--mother," she gulped, "but I _love_ her better, and she's nicer than you, and I don't love you at _all_!"

She buried her face in the red velvet throne, and sobbed aloud with excitement and fatigue. Caroline ran to her: how could she have loved that cruel woman? She cast an ugly look at the Princess as she went to comfort Miss Honey, but the Princess was at the throne before her.

"Oh, I am abominable!" she cried. "I am too horrid to live! It wasn't kind of me, _cherie_, and I love you for standing up for your mother. There's no one to do as much for me, when _I'm_ down and out--no one!" Sorrow swept over her flexible face like a veil, and seizing Miss Honey in her strong, nervous arms, she wept on her shoulder.

Caroline, worn with the strain of the day, wept too, and even the General, abandoned in the great chair, burst into a tiny warning wail.

Quick as thought the Princess was upon him, and had raised him against her cheek.

"Hush, hush, don't cry--don't cry, little thing," she whispered, and sank into one of the high carved chairs with him.

"No, no, I'll hold him," she protested, as Delia entered, her arms out. "I'm going to sing to him. May I? He's sleepy."

Delia nodded indulgently. "For half an hour," she said, as one allowing a great privilege, "and then we must go."

"What do you sing to him?" the Princess questioned humbly.

"I generally sing 'Flow Gently Sweet Afton,'" the nurse answered. "Do you know it?"

"I think so," and the Princess began a sort of glorified humming, like a great drowsy bee, all resonant and tremulous.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise.

Soft the great voice was, soft and widely flowing: to Caroline, who had retreated to the further end of the music-room, so that Delia should not see her tears, it seemed as if Delia herself, a wonderful new Delia, were singing her, a baby again, to sleep. She felt soothed, cradled, protected by that lapping sea of melody that drifted her off her moorings, out of the room....

Vaguely she saw Miss Honey, relaxed on the red throne, smile in her sleep, one arm falling over the broad seat. Was it in her dream that some one in a blue and white apron--not Delia, for Delia was singing--leaned back slowly in the long basket-chair and closed her tired eyes? Who was it that held the General close in her arms, and smiled as he patted her cheek at the familiar song, and mumbled her fingers with happy, cooing noises?

My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream!

The General's head was growing heavy, but he smiled confidingly into the dark eyes above him and stretched himself out in full-fed, drowsy content. One hand slipped through the lace under his cheek and rested on the singer's soft breast. She started like a frightened woman, and her voice broke.

Down in the hall the butler and the maid sat on the lower stair.

"Ain't it grand?" she whispered, and Haddock nodded dreamily.

"Mother used to sing us that in the old country," he said. "There was Tom and 'Enry an' me--Lord, Lord!"

The General was asleep. Sometimes a tiny frown drew his eyebrows together. Sometimes he clenched and uncurled his warm hands. Sometimes he sucked softly at nothing with moist, reminiscent lips. But on and on, over and over, rose and fell the quaint old song.

My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream!

It flooded the hushed house, it spread a net of dreams about the listening people there and coaxed them back to childhood and a child's protected sleep. It seemed a song that could not stop, that must return on its simple refrain so long as there were arms to encircle and breasts to lean upon.

Two men came softly up a smaller stair than the grand entrance flight, and paused in amazement at sight of Caroline stretched full length across the threshold. The older and smaller of the men had in fact stepped on her, and confused and half awake, she listened to his apologies.

"Sh! sh!" he whispered excitedly, "not a vordt! not a vordt! Mein Gott! but it is marvelous! My friend, vot is this?"

He peeped behind the drawn curtains and withdrew a face of wonder.

"It is nodding but children--and they sleep!" he hissed. "Oh, but listen, listen! And I offered her fifteen hundert dollars for two hours only of that!"

The other man peeped behind the curtains in his turn, and seizing Caroline by the arm tiptoed with her to a farther room.

"What--who--what is the meaning of this?" he whispered hoarsely. "That child--where----"

Caroline rubbed her eyes. The golden voice rose and fell around her.

"General--Delia," she muttered, and stumbled against him. He lifted her limp little body and laid it gently on a leather sofa.

"Another time," he said softly to the other man, "I--we cannot talk with you now. Will you excuse us?"

The man looked longingly at the curtains.

"She will never do more well than that. Never!" he hissed. "Oh, my friend, hear it grow soft! Yes, yes, I am going."

It seemed to Caroline that in a dream some one with a red face and glasses askew shook her by the shoulder and said to her sternly, "Sh! sh! Listen to me. To-day you hear a great artist--hey? Vill you forget it? I must go because they do not vant me, but you vill stay and listen. There is here no such voice. Velvet! Honey! Sh! sh!" and he went the way of dreams.

The man who stayed looked long through the curtains.

As a swing droops slow and slower, as the ripples fade from a stone thrown in the stream, the song of the Princess softened and crooned and hushed. Now it was a rich breath, a resonant thread.

Flow gently, sweet Afton----

The man stepped across the room and sank below the General at her feet. With her finger on her lips she turned her eyes to his and looked deep into them. He caught his breath with a sob, and wrapping his arm about her as he knelt, hid his face on her lap, against the General. She laid her hand on his head, across the warm little body, and patted it tenderly. Around them lay the sleepers; the General's soft breath was in their ears. The man lifted his head and looked adoringly at the Princess; her hand caressed his cheek, but her eyes looked beyond him into the future.

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND WITH A DRAWING BY ERIC PAPE

_Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)_

It is only human to make comparisons between American and English institutions, although they are likely to turn out as odious as the proverb says! The first institution in America that distressed me was the steam heat. It is far more manageable now than it was, both in hotels and theatres, because there are more individual heaters. But how I suffered from it at first I cannot describe. I used to feel dreadfully ill, and when we could not turn the heat off at the theatre, the play always went badly. My voice was affected, too. At Toledo, once, it nearly went altogether. Then the next night, after a good fight, we got the theatre cool, and the difference to the play was extraordinary. I was in my best form, feeling well and jolly!

If I did not like steam heat, I loved the ice which is such a feature at American meals. Everything is served on ice. I took kindly to their dishes--their cookery, at its best, is better than the French--and I sadly missed planked shad, terrapin, and the oyster--at its best and at its cheapest in America--when I returned to England.

_Travelling in America_

The American hotels seemed luxurious even in 1883; but it only takes ten years there for an hotel to be quite done, to become old-fashioned and useless as a rusty nail. Hotel life in America is now the perfection of comfort. Hotels as good as the Savoy, the Ritz, the Carlton, and Claridge's can be counted by the dozen in New York, and are to be found in all the principal cities.

I liked the travelling, but then we travelled in a very princely fashion. The Lyceum Company and baggage occupied eight cars, and Henry's private parlour-car was lovely. The only thing that we found was better understood in England, so far as railway travelling is concerned, was _privacy_. You may have a _private_ car, but all the conductors on the train, and there is one to each car, can walk through it. So can any official, baggage-man, or newsboy who has the mind!

There were, of course, people ready to say that the Americans did not like Henry Irving as an actor, and that they only accepted him as a manager--that he triumphed in New York, as he had done in London, through his lavish spectacular effects. This is all moonshine. Henry made his first appearance in "The Bells," his second in "Charles I," his third in "Louis XI." By that time he had conquered, and without the aid of anything at all notable in the mounting of the plays. It was not until we did "The Merchant of Venice" that he gave the Americans anything of a "production."

My first appearance in America in Shakespeare was as Portia, and I could not help feeling pleased by my success. A few weeks later I played Ophelia at Philadelphia. It is in Shakespeare that I have been best liked in America, and I consider that Beatrice was the part about which they were most enthusiastic.

During our first tour we visited in succession New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit, and Toronto. To most of these places we paid return visits. I think it was in Chicago that a reporter approached Henry Irving with the question: "To what do you attribute your success, Mr. Irving?"

"To my acting," was the simple reply.

We never had poor houses except in Baltimore and St. Louis. Our journey to Baltimore was made in a blizzard. They were clearing the snow before us all the way from New Jersey, and we took forty-two hours to reach Baltimore. The bells of trains before us and behind us sounded very alarming. We opened in Baltimore on Christmas Day. The audience was wretchedly small, but the poor things who were there had left their warm firesides to drive or tramp through the slush of melting snow, and each one was worth a hundred on an ordinary night.

At the hotel I put up holly and mistletoe, and produced from my trunks a real Christmas pudding that my mother had made. We had it for supper, and it was very good.

_Burned Hare Soup and Camphor Pudding in Pittsburg_