“And it should hurt,” Mr. Zinn repeated, in a hollow dull voice, “at least a little.”
FIFTY-THREE
Amongst Octavia’s female relatives there was more than one, I believe, who solemnly wondered at that steadfast young woman’s courage, and bethought herself frequently, as to whether she possessed the like strength, and the unwavering Christian faith. The tragic untimely loss of the infant Sarah!—so close upon the heels of a miscarriage, and a prolonged convalescence!—and, tho’ such matters were necessarily kept from the ears of womenfolk, it was dimly known too that Mr. Rumford had suffered substantial losses in grain speculation, and had had to borrow heavily from the Kiddemasters: which did not, the reader may well imagine, knowing a little of that stern-conscienc’d gentleman’s heart, inspire a household cheeriness, or a free commingling betwixt husband and wife.
Yet, all uncomplaining, the grieving young mother took comfort in all that she had: a belovèd husband; a precious and angelic son; devoted parents and family; and, above all, the guidance of Heaven, which became ever clearer to her, in her darkest hours of need. Forgive me a mother’s impertinent sorrow, was Octavia’s daily—nay, hourly—prayer, for if You have called Baby Sarah to Your side, it was out of a desire to have the prettiest angel of all in Heaven with You!
Thus her innermost heart; as, a never-resting and resolutely genial mistress of Rumford Hall, she busied herself with one hundred and one household tasks daily, and supervised the servants, and discussed all the menus with her housekeeper, and paid her necessary visits to neighbors of a like social station, and to the elderly rector and his wife; and, even more resolutely genial, and certainly uncomplaining, she accommodated Mr. Rumford’s conjugal demands, which, with the passage of time, grew gradually more exacting, and more challenging of definition. Yet it was her bliss in her duty, and no mere grim stamina, that gave her the required strength, and sealed her lips, against any outcry of repugnance or simple pain: and more than once, enduring her spouse’s protracted labors in the unitary act, the amiable wife consoled herself thusly, with an inward recitation of J. Monckton Milnes’s powerful verse—
Thou must endure, yet loving all the while,
Above, yet never separate from thy kind;
Meet every frailty with the gentlest smile,
Though to no possible depth of evil blind.
This is the riddle thou hast life to solve;
But in the task thou shalt not work alone,
For while the worlds about the sun revolve,
God’s heart and mind are ever with His own.
Even so, I am led to wonder if Octavia’s strength, and, above all, the placidity of her heart, might have been sustained throughout her trials, had she not been blessed with her golden-curled cherub, Godfrey II: Little Godfrey, as the household warmly called him, with much amazement at the boy’s precocity, and the robust high spirits that gave to his every shout or footfall a joyful ring.
Ah, the delightful little gentleman!—his mother’s constant worry, for all his tireless mischief; and his mother’s constant blessing, upon whom the good woman shamelessly doted, in the warmth of that maternal love which beggars all description, and certainly all analysis!
Master Godfrey was, at the age of three, a large-boned, husky, wondrously energetic little man, with curly locks in which gold and fair brown contended; and pale blue eyes, lit with a gay impudent twinkle, set rather close together, but inordinately beautiful, and thickly lashed; and a squarish, firm face, the cheekbones broad, the chin well-defined, the pretty little ears somewhat elongated, and tapering sharply at the lobes. So well-defined was the child’s widow’s peak, which grew, it may have been, a full inch down into his smooth broad brow, that it gave an impish, yet utterly captivating, cast to his entire countenance, and might well have been the envy of many a young lady, with pretensions toward beauty. (For tho’ the old superstition would have it, that this distinctive mark signified early widowhood, or disaster of some less defined nature, it was generally considered, by the enlightened, as an unusual sign of beauty: and so indeed, in Malvinia, and even in Deirdre, the widow’s peak was striking rather than disfiguring, and surely did not detract from their comeliness.)
Dear Master Godfrey! How dare I attempt to describe that indefatigable imp, who, from the scant age of nine months, was gaily “into everything, high and low,” as his mother exclaimed? How dare I attempt to fix, in cold unyielding print, the sprightly glow of his eyes, and the inquisitiveness of his every glance, and query, and poke? The unabash’d animal spirits that enlivened his husky little form, and the shrill sunny chuckle that erupted from him one hundred times a day, were so irresistible as to wring a smile from Mr. Rumford’s thin lips, and inspire a moist tinge of paternal pride, in that gentleman’s preoccupied gaze: and to cause him, of a sudden, to summon his lawyer to Rumford Hall, that he might significantly alter his will, in order that Little Godfrey be named as his main heir, and his other children—scatter’d, and doubtless grievously disappointing to him—allotted smaller portions. (Octavia, being of the female sex, naturally stood to inherit nothing at all: yet we can imagine her great joy, on being informed, however obliquely, by Mr. Rumford, as to his intentions. “And, named as he is,” Mr. Rumford observed, “I cannot doubt but that my son will do handsomely, in your grandfather’s will too: for the old fool must leave his fortune to someone.”)
True it was, that the elderly Godfrey Kiddemaster—now in his mid-nineties—would become inordinately fond of his great-grandson, despite the boy’s mischievous high spirits, and his numerous pranks: but the relationship began rather oddly, quite bewildering poor Octavia, and offending Mr. Rumford. For some reason Judge Kiddemaster insisted upon seeing Little Godfrey immediately following the baby’s birth—as soon as common decency, and Dr. Moffet, would allow; not only did he wish to see, and to hold, the newborn infant (all red-faced and squalling, and kicking with a fury wondrous to behold!), but to examine it, in full daylight. So he carried it to a window, and, peering close, took note of the tiny widow’s peak, and the shapely little ears, and murmured, “Ah! I like not that, nor that,” and continued for some minutes to examine the raging infant, despite the protestations of its father and mother, and the kindly Dr. Moffet: until such time as, puzzled, brooding, and, as it were, undecided, he handed the infant back to its nursemaid, his palsied hands shaking, and betook himself back to Kiddemaster Hall without another word.
The which, shyly, Octavia described to Mrs. Zinn, when the two women were alone together, save for the exuberantly suckling baby (who tugged and tore at the breast, and flailed his little fists, as greedy a little darling as one could imagine—and a fine ruddy color all over): whereupon Mrs. Zinn spoke for once in some alarm, without composing her thoughts beforehand, and, in fact, fixing her daughter with a gaze of unalloy’d surprise: “Why—Octavia!—it is very strange—it is very strange—but so my dear father did with each of my babies—with each of you—and never once did he explain his mysterious action, and never, of course, did I dare inquire—nor did Mr. Zinn—and—and—why, I can only repeat, tho’ I mean no criticism of him—tho’ I am sure there is a comfortable logic behind it: I can only repeat, it is very strange.”
And so indeed it was; but, I am happy to say, the entire incident was soon forgotten, in the general rejoicing amongst the three households, and Judge Kiddemaster’s fluctuations of temperament, by no means excessive in a gentleman of his advanced years. (Nor can we doubt that the baptism of the infant, as Godfrey Lucius Rumford, and, informally, as “Godfrey II,” did indeed please the kindly old Judge.)
So great-grandfather and great-grandson became friends, and there were innumerable visits back and forth, between Rumford Hall and Kiddemaster Hall, to the delight of all concerned. Octavia made every effort, and was frequently successful, to subdue the healthy animal spirits of her firstborn, who, despite his wide cherubic grin, and his bouncing golden curls, did oft deserve the fond epithet bestowed upon him by the sever
al households—Little Demon.
In truth, as soon as he gained the use of his legs, and could walk unassisted, he was indeed “into everything,” and ran his laughing mother most ragged: tho’, stopping him from one little mischief or another, or soothing an alarmed or weeping housemaid, Octavia never failed to hug her boy close, against her warm palpitating heart, and kiss his o’erheated brow, and declare that “little angels ought not to be so naughty—for fear of being mistaken as little demons”!—the which teasing gave pleasure to mother and baby alike. As Godfrey grew able to run, and to escape from his cradle at will, oft very early in the morning, before the sun had risen, it happened that he wore out and discarded “as if they were but cheap cotton gloves” (in Samantha’s censorious words), one valiant nursemaid after another. On his most jolly days, when he entered his eighteenth month, he eluded all his pursuers, laughing and shouting and jumping, as if life were naught but play, and sheer delight; and it must be a hard-hearted person indeed, to scold him, or to register displeasure at his antics.
The little imp danced, and sang, and whirled about, and “sounded the alarm” by running Mr. Rumford’s hickory cane up and down the rungs of the staircase banister; he rocked so energetically in a zebrawood rocker, with a rush seat, that the seat broke through, and he would have injured himself, had not his vigilant mother run tearfully to his aid. Many a time was the solemn quiet of the old house punctuated by Little Godfrey’s shouted laughter, and Octavia’s alarmed cries. “My baby! Godfrey! What on earth are you doing? Have you hurt yourself? Oh, my dear, my dear—let Momma look—” Octavia fairly wept, wringing her hands. And, suddenly docile, the high-spirited child would allow himself to be snatched to his mother’s heaving bosom, and might even share a tear or two with her, until, smiling with an angelic radiance, he assured his affrighted mother that he was not at all injured: “I am quite all right, Momma—please leave off crying, or you will break my heart!”
Most of the time the little darling did no genuine mischief, and certainly no deliberate harm, but, as he grew older, and ever more husky and exuberant, it sometimes happened that, quite accidentally, he broke things; or made poor Pip scream in terror, by hugging him too hard about the middle; or, intrigued by the “pretty tiny sounds” that came out of Great-Aunt Edwina’s jeweled French music box, could not rest until he had pried the delicate little mechanism open, and quite destroyed it. Tho’ forbidden to do so, he could not resist “playing general” with the beautiful old sword in Judge Kiddemaster’s library, and not only nicked and tore the antique furnishings in the room, but managed to stab a hole in the portrait of his bewigged Kiddemaster ancestor!—to the genuine distress of both his great-grandfather, and Great-Aunt Edwina, who declared, taking Octavia aside, that “something must be done about him: he will drive us all to our graves otherwise!”
Whereupon Little Godfrey was contrite; and sincere in his contrition. And, with no need to be instructed by Octavia, he knelt before the elder Kiddemasters to tender his apologies, couched in near-formal terms, and lisped in a voice made soft by regret. He acknowledged that “he had been naughty,” but he had not meant to be so: and hoped he might be forgiven.
And his shy, hopeful, abash’d smile was such, who among mortals could deny him?
BETIMES, IT IS true, particularly after the birth (so unexpected to him) of his baby sister Sarah, he did fly into a temper, and bang at anything within reach of his hard little fists, and smash his teacup against the wall, and throw himself hard upon the floor, where, flailing his arms wildly, and kicking like a veritable dervish, he pounded with his heels so powerfully against the carpet that, to the consternation of the servants, a fine cloud of pale dust arose! In play become overly rough, the precocious three-year-old came near to injuring the five-year-old son of one of the servants, himself a husky lad with a freckled Irish face. Little Godfrey in all innocence struck the child with a flat rock from out the kitchen garden, having mistaken it, as he tearfully explained, for a cushion. And there were pranks, or mishaps, most of them too inconsequential to record, involving puppies, and cats, and baby chicks, and other small creatures, which, it may be, Little Godfrey loved too energetically, or was o’ercurious, as to the workings of their delicate inner mechanisms.
One day, after the servants had accused their little master of torturing, stabbing to death, and partly dissecting, a young mongrel dog belonging to one of the groundsmen, Octavia took her son aside, and bade him be still: for she had something solemn to tell him.
And he gazed at her with his thick-lashed baby-blue eyes, somewhat moistened with tears of contrition and defiance, and whispered: “Yes, Momma?”
Octavia began her lecture sternly, telling her son that it was a sin to hurt the little creatures—any creatures, no matter how ugly, or inconsequential—whether belonging to a servant, or otherwise—because these creatures were part of God’s creation, just as he was: all had their place in God’s love.
“Yes, Momma,” Little Godfrey said meekly.
And so it was very wrong of him, and very naughty, to injure that mongrel dog, even in innocent play. Did he understand?
“Yes, Momma,” Little Godfrey whispered.
And the cherubic little gentleman did look so contrite, and so chastened, that his mother could not resist kneeling before him, and hugging him; and in this wise continued her solemn little lecture, which had such an immediate effect upon the boy, that he remained altogether still in her embrace, and did not struggle to escape. “You should not have injured that nasty old dog, my dear, or any creature of God’s, because they are all God’s creation, just as we are; and, by injuring a one of them, you are injuring God as well. And should you, my sweet, wish to injure Our Heavenly Father?”—so the fond mother queried, all the while holding her firstborn close against her beating heart. Little Godfrey fought to hold back his tears, but could not withstand the waves of contrition in his heart, and at last began to sob; and so mother and son were locked in an embrace of such love, and such sombre understanding, that my eyes fill with tears merely to record the scene.
“I am very, very sorry, Momma,” the weeping cherub said, “but, you know, Our Heavenly Father was watching, and did not seem to care: and did not, in any case, stop me: and so I was much confus’d.”
Little Godfrey adored his baby sister, however, and, in her presence (no matter that she was but an infant, and could hardly know him), oft danced, and sang his little songs, and scampered about the room in imitation of Pip, seeking merely to delight her. He was, it is true, somewhat distressed by the baby’s evident inability to recognize him, and to respond with appropriate laughter, and admiration; but Octavia explained to him that “Baby Sarah was too little to understand, but would, in time, grow to love him”—and that he must love her, and be patient with her, for he was a strapping big boy, and she but a tiny thing.
All of which Little Godfrey appeared to understand: but he continued his energetic frolics nonetheless, and begged a dozen times a day to be allowed to hold Baby Sarah, or to push her in her perambulator; and was never more lively and mischievous than when “showing off” for her—racing about the lawn, somersaulting, and tumbling, and rolling, with his high-pitched chuckle; and, upon one summery occasion, on the terrace of Kiddemaster Hall, the little imp “played mousie” and crawled across the flagstone to poke his head beneath Great-Aunt Edwina’s voluminous skirts, and to lunge beneath them, and disappear from view!
What consternation followed, what amaz’d exclamations—the reader can imagine, with no assistance from me. And how Great-Aunt Edwina gasped, and shouted, and struck at her frothy skirts with her rolled sunshade: and how Mrs. Zinn, ever-vigilant in the presence of her adored grandson, acted with surprising alacrity, to grasp the young rascal by the ankles, and haul him out. That Master Godfrey was roundly scolded on all sides, and severely disciplined by Mr. Rumford (who grew fearsomely red-faced during the interim), and, at last, was allowed to retreat in tears from the scene, attended by his blushing m
other, and the new nursemaid—I scarcely need to remark: for it was indeed a scene that repeated itself, with great variation, of course, as to its particulars, over a period of years . . . until that tragic culmination of his young life, at the scant age of seven, of which, alas, I must one day speak, for not even the truly execrable events of our history will be excluded from this narrative.
“WAS I NAUGHTY again, Momma?” the little dear would inquire, lifting his angelic, tho’ tear-stained, face to Octavia, in order to receive her fond scolding, and her exasperated kiss: and to feel her sometimes tremulous, but at all times reassuring, fingers on his warm forehead, as she brushed away his golden locks. “I do not mean to be naughty, Momma; or to make you cry,” the diminutive gentleman said stoutly, “and I shall be good from now on: to please you.”
“Ah, I know, I know, my dear,” Octavia exclaimed, her fond mother’s heart near-swollen to bursting, “I know, my dear—and in fact you can do only good, and God, Who sees into your heart, can understand, as I do: for the pure of heart are pure in their every action, and cannot sin, but only, it may be, disturb, as a consequence of spirits tuned rather too high, for the staid elders of Kiddemaster Hall.”
FIFTY-FOUR
The morn of that day of unprognosticated sorrow, when nine-month-old Baby Sarah was discovered no longer breathing, in her pretty white wicker crib, carried with it no omens that might be feared by those in whom Christian piety and intellectual enlightenment have agreeably mated: for, in our advanced epoch, we cannot take serious note of the fact that, throughout the midsummer night, one of those cacophonous members of the owl family, the screech-owl, disturbed the tranquil darkness with his heinous calls; and poor Octavia woke from a distressing dream, most puzzlingly familiar to her, in which her belovèd son Godfrey appeared monstrously transform’d, into I scarcely know what—a creature of some six feet or more in height, with burning lewd eyes; and greatly protruding, and glistening, incisors; and tufts of thick dark hair, or fur, on the backs of his hands; and the inverted V of his widow’s peak grown down savagely into his forehead, so that it nearly met his eyebrows, which had, in turn, grown bushy and shaggy. (How the alarmed mother recognized her son, in so grossly alter’d a state, I cannot guess: save that, even in her sleep, Octavia had wit enough to comprehend the Devil’s agentry here, in his slanderous masquerade of the innocent child. Get thee gone! was the dreaming mother’s hissed prayer, even as her bloodstream raced with ice, and each hair on her head rigidly defined itself.)