Chapter 23: Billy and the Enormous Responsibility

When the doctor heard from the nurse of Mrs. Hartwell’s visit and what had come of it, he only gave a discreet smile, as befitted himself and the occasion; but to his wife privately, that night, the doctor said, when he had finished telling the story:

“And I couldn’t have prescribed a better pill if I’d tried!”

“Pill—Mrs. Hartwell! Oh, Harold,” reproved the doctor’s wife, mildly.

But the doctor only chuckled the more, and said:

“You wait and see.”

If Billy’s friends were worried before because of her lassitude and lack of ambition, they were almost as worried now over her amazing alertness and insistent activity. Day by day, almost hour by hour, she seemed to gain in strength; and every bit she acquired she promptly tested almost to the breaking point, so plainly eager was she to be well and strong. And always, from morning until night, and again from night until morning, the pivot of her existence, around which swung all thoughts, words, actions, and plans, was the sturdy little plump-cheeked, firm-fleshed atom of humanity known as Bertram, Jr. Even Aunt Hannah remonstrated with her at last.

“But, Billy, dear,” she exclaimed, “one would almost get the idea that you thought there wasn’t a thing in the world but that baby!”

Billy laughed.

“Well, do you know, sometimes I ‘most think there isn’t,” she retorted unblushingly.

“Billy!” protested Aunt Hannah; then, a little severely, she demanded: “And who was it that just last September was calling this same only-object-in-the-world a third person in your home?”

“Third person, indeed! Aunt Hannah, did I? Did I really say such a dreadful thing as that? But I didn’t know, then, of course. I couldn’t know how perfectly wonderful a baby is, especially such a baby as Bertram, Jr., is. Why, Aunt Hannah, that little thing knows a whole lot already. He’s known me for weeks; I know he has. And ages and ages ago he began to give me little smiles when he saw me. They were smiles—real smiles! Oh, yes, I know nurse said they weren’t smiles at the first,” admitted Billy, in answer to Aunt Hannah’s doubting expression. “I know nurse said it was only wind on his stomach. Think of it—wind on his stomach! Just as if I didn’t know the difference between my own baby’s smile and wind on his stomach! And you don’t know how soon he began to follow my moving finger with his eyes!”

“Yes, I tried that one day, I remember,” observed Aunt Hannah demurely. “I moved my finger. He looked at the ceiling—fixedly.”

“Well, probably he wanted to look at the ceiling, then,” defended the young mother, promptly. “I’m sure I wouldn’t give a snap for a baby if he didn’t sometimes have a mind of his own, and exercise it!”

“Oh, Billy, Billy,” laughed Aunt Hannah, with a shake of her head as Billy turned away, chin uptilted.

By the time Bertram, Jr., was three months old, Billy was unmistakably her old happy, merry self, strong and well. Affairs at the Strata once more were moving as by clockwork—only this time it was a baby’s hand that set the clock, and that wound it, too.

Billy told her husband very earnestly that now they had entered upon a period of Enormous Responsibility. The Life, Character, and Destiny of a Human Soul was intrusted to their care, and they must be Wise, Faithful, and Efficient. They must be at once Proud and Humble at this their Great Opportunity. They must Observe, Learn, and Practice. First and foremost in their eyes must always be this wonderful Important Trust.

Bertram laughed at first very heartily at Billy’s instructions, which, he declared, were so bristling with capitals that he could fairly see them drop from her lips. Then, when he found how really very much in earnest she was, and how hurt she was at his levity, he managed to pull his face into something like sobriety while she talked to him, though he did persist in dropping kisses on her cheeks, her chin, her finger-tips, her hair, and the little pink lobes of her ears—”just by way of punctuation” to her sentences, he said. And he told her that he wasn’t really slighting her lips, only that they moved so fast he could not catch them. Whereat Billy pouted, and told him severely that he was a bad, naughty boy, and that he did not deserve to be the father of the dearest, most wonderful baby in the world.

“No, I know I don’t,” beamed Bertram, with cheerful unrepentance; “but I am, just the same,” he finished triumphantly. And this time he contrived to find his wife’s lips.

“Oh, Bertram,” sighed Billy, despairingly.

“You’re an old dear, of course, and one just can’t be cross with you; but you don’t, you just don’t realize your Immense Responsibility.”

“Oh, yes, I do,” maintained Bertram so seriously that even Billy herself almost believed him.

In spite of his assertions, however, it must be confessed that Bertram was much more inclined to regard the new member of his family as just his son rather than as an Important Trust; and there is little doubt that he liked to toss him in the air and hear his gleeful crows of delight, without any bother of Observing him at all. As to the Life and Character and Destiny intrusted to his care, it is to be feared that Bertram just plain gloried in his son, poked him in the ribs, and chuckled him under the chin whenever he pleased, and gave never so much as a thought to Character and Destiny. It is to be feared, too, that he was Proud without being Humble, and that the only Opportunity he really appreciated was the chance to show off his wife and baby to some less fortunate fellow-man.

But not so Billy. Billy joined a Mothers’ Club and entered a class in Child Training with an elaborate system of Charts, Rules, and Tests. She subscribed to each new “Mothers’ Helper,” and the like, that she came across, devouring each and every one with an eagerness that was tempered only by a vague uneasiness at finding so many differences of opinion among Those Who Knew.