The Burden

Ever since Charles had died she had hoped … Though she had grieved for Charles’s death (she had been very fond of Charles), grief had been eclipsed by a tremulous longing and expectation. Naturally, when Charles had been there, Charles with his good looks and his charm and his merry carefree ways, the love had gone to Charles. That, Laura felt, was quite right, was fair. She had always been the quiet, the dull one, the so often unwanted second child that follows too soon upon the first. Her father and mother had been kind to her, affectionate, but it was Charles they had loved.

Once she had overheard her mother say to a visiting friend:

‘Laura’s a dear child, of course, but rather a dull child.’

And she had accepted the justice of that with the honesty of the hopeless. She was a dull child. She was small and pale and her hair didn’t curl, and the things she said never made people laugh—as they laughed at Charles. She was good and obedient and caused nobody trouble, but she was not and, she thought, never would be, important.

Once she had said to Nannie: ‘Mummy loves Charles more than she loves me …’

Nannie had snapped immediately:

‘That’s a very silly thing to say and not at all true. Your mother loves both of her children equally—fair as fair can be she is, always. Mothers always love all their children just the same.’

‘Cats don’t,’ said Laura, reviewing in her mind a recent arrival of kittens.

‘Cats are just animals,’ said Nannie. ‘And anyway,’ she added, slightly weakening the magnificent simplicity of her former pronouncement, ‘God loves you, remember.’

Laura accepted the dictum. God loved you—He had to. But even God, Laura thought, probably loved Charles best … Because to have made Charles must be far more satisfactory than to have made her, Laura.

‘But of course,’ Laura had consoled herself by reflecting, ‘I can love myself best. I can love myself better than Charles or Mummy or Daddy or anyone.’

It was after this that Laura became paler and quieter and more unobtrusive than ever, and was so good and obedient that it made even Nannie uneasy. She confided to the housemaid an uneasy fear that Laura might be ‘taken’ young.

But it was Charles who died, not Laura.

‘Why don’t you get that child a dog?’ Mr Baldock demanded suddenly of his friend and crony, Laura’s father.

Arthur Franklin looked rather astonished, since he was in the middle of an impassioned argument with his friend on the implications of the Reformation.

‘What child?’ he asked, puzzled.

Mr Baldock nodded his large head towards a sedate Laura who was propelling herself on a fairy-bicycle in and out of the trees on the lawn. It was an unimpassioned performance with no hint of danger or accident about it. Laura was a careful child.

‘Why on earth should I?’ demanded Mr Franklin. ‘Dogs, in my opinion, are a nuisance, always coming in with muddy paws, and ruining the carpets.’

‘A dog,’ said Mr Baldock, in his lecture-room style, which was capable of rousing almost anybody to violent irritation, ‘has an extraordinary power of bolstering up the human ego. To a dog, the human being who owns him is a god to be worshipped, and not only worshipped but, in our present decadent state of civilization, also loved.

‘The possession of a dog goes to most people’s heads. It makes them feel important and powerful.’

‘Humph,’ said Mr Franklin, ‘and would you call that a good thing?’

‘Almost certainly not,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘But I have the inveterate weakness of liking to see human beings happy. I’d like to see Laura happy.’

‘Laura’s perfectly happy,’ said Laura’s father. ‘And anyway she’s got a kitten,’ he added.

‘Pah,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘It’s not at all the same thing. As you’d realize if you troubled to think. But that’s what is wrong with you. You never think. Look at your argument just now about economic conditions at the time of the Reformation. Do you suppose for one moment—’

And they were back at it, hammer and tongs, enjoying themselves a great deal, with Mr Baldock making the most preposterous and provocative statements.

Yet a vague disquiet lingered somewhere in Arthur Franklin’s mind, and that evening, as he came into his wife’s room where she was changing for dinner, he said abruptly:

‘Laura’s quite all right, isn’t she? Well and happy and all that?’

His wife turned astonished blue eyes on him, lovely dark cornflower-blue eyes, like the eyes of her son Charles.

‘Darling!’ she said. ‘Of course! Laura’s always all right. She never even seems to have bilious attacks like most children. I never have to worry about Laura. She’s satisfactory in every way. Such a blessing.’

A moment later, as she fastened the clasp of her pearls round her neck, she asked suddenly: ‘Why? Why did you ask about Laura this evening?’

Arthur Franklin said vaguely:

‘Oh, just Baldy—something he said.’

‘Oh, Baldy!’ Mrs Franklin’s voice held amusement. ‘You know what he’s like. He likes starting things.’

And on an occasion a few days later when Mr Baldock had been to lunch, and they came out of the dining-room, encountering Nannie in the hall, Angela Franklin stopped her deliberately and asked in a clear, slightly raised voice:

‘There’s nothing wrong with Miss Laura, is there? She’s quite well and happy?’

‘Oh yes, madam.’ Nannie was positive and slightly affronted. ‘She’s a very good little girl, never gives any trouble. Not like Master Charles.’

‘So Charles does give you trouble, does he?’ said Mr Baldock.

Nannie turned to him deferentially.

‘He’s a regular boy, sir, always up to pranks! He’s getting on, you know. He’ll soon be going to school. Always high-spirited at this age, they are. And then his digestion is weak, he gets hold of too many sweets without my knowing.’

An indulgent smile on her lips and shaking her head, she passed on.

‘All the same, she adores him,’ said Angela Franklin as they went into the drawing-room.

‘Obviously,’ said Mr Baldock. He added reflectively: ‘I always have thought women were fools.’

‘Nannie isn’t a fool—very far from it.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of Nannie.’

‘Me?’ Angela gave him a sharp, but not too sharp, glance, because after all it was Baldy, who was celebrated and eccentric and was allowed a certain licence in rudeness, which was, actually, one of his stock affectations.

‘I’m thinking of writing a book on the problem of the second child,’ said Mr Baldock.

‘Really, Baldy! You don’t advocate the only child, do you? I thought that was supposed to be unsound from every point of view.’

‘Oh! I can see a lot of point in the family of ten. That is, if it was allowed to develop in the legitimate way. Do the household chores, older ones look after the younger ones, and so on. All cogs in the household machine. Mind you, they’d have to be really of some use—not just made to think they were. But nowadays, like fools, we split ’em up and segregate ’em off, each with their own “age group”! Call it education! Pah! Flat against nature!’

‘You and your theories,’ said Angela indulgently. ‘But what about the second child?’

‘The trouble about the second child,’ said Mr Baldock didactically, ‘is that it’s usually an anti-climax. The first child’s an adventure. It’s frightening and it’s painful; the woman’s sure she’s going to die, and the husband (Arthur here, for example) is equally sure you’re going to die. After it’s all over, there you are with a small morsel of animate flesh yelling its head off, which has caused two people all kinds of hell to produce! Naturally they value it accordingly! It’s new, it’s ours, it’s wonderful! And then, usually rather too soon, Number Two comes along—all the caboodle over again—not so frightening this time, much more boring. And there it is, it’s yours, but it’s not a new experience, and since it hasn’t cost you so much, it isn’t nearly so wonderful.’