The Incubator Baby

“What did you do to her?” she cried. “Much you know about babies, and all your silly committees!”

Mr. Fielding paused irresolute. Marjorie cooed gently in her protector’s arms, and her father looked at her curiously.

“You – you don’t believe in scientific motherhood?” he said to Miss Vickers. He seemed to be asking for information; seeking light on a question that had already raised itself in his mind.

“‘Scientific’ doesn’t hurt any, but it needs some mother with it,” she replied. “See her smile!” Mr. Fielding leaned forward cautiously.

“She does, doesn’t she?” he said, with curiosity. “I never saw that before. It is quite interesting.”

“It’s great!” exclaimed the private secretary. “You take her a minute and I’ll show you something else.”

Mr. Fielding took her, carefully.

The private secretary clapped her hands and Marjorie looked toward her.

“Two hands, baby,” she said, and the two pink arms reached out to her.

“Well!” exclaimed Mr. Fielding, “How human!”

“See if she will do it for you,” suggested the girl.

Mr. Fielding clapped his hands. “Two hands!” he said.

Marjorie looked at him good naturedly. If he was willing to play she could forgive everything. She reached out her hands, and jumped toward her father. Before he knew how it happened, he had pressed his lips to her soft cheek and her hands were entangled in his hair.

When the doorbell rang, half an hour later, Mr. Fielding was on his hands and knees playing “peek-boo!” with Marjorie. Miss Vickers swept her into her crib and helped him to arise hastily. Then she pushed him toward the door.

“It is Chiswick!” she whispered. “Hurry!”

“Yes!” he whispered in return. “We – we will keep this matter private? It is not necessary to inform any one.”

The private secretary watched him nervously while he gave Marjorie a last, long kiss, and then she pushed him gently from the nursery. She really had to push him out.

When Mrs. Fielding was appointed to read a paper on Scientific Motherhood at the annual convention of the national federation of Women’s clubs, she accepted the task with due modesty but not without a sense of complete fitness. Her mere presence in the distant convention city would in itself be a proof of the correctness of her theories. Under what other system could a mother leave her young baby and devote a week’s absence to club duties? She felt quite at ease, however, for the three remaining members of the committee of four were in charge of Marjorie’s welfare, and back of the committee was the entire federation of her city. She took the train with a grateful sense of freedom.

It was the opportunity Marjorie had been awaiting. No sooner had Mrs. Fielding left the city than Marjorie raised her temperature two degrees, just as an experiment. It was wonderfully successful. It made Chiswick scurry around the nursery with distracted concern. Marjorie raised her temperature a few degrees more and Chiswick telephoned for the committee.

The committee came, consulted and wondered what to do. It decided to await developments, and went away again.

As Mrs. Fielding sped toward the place where she was to exercise the noble functions of her mind, Marjorie, in the nursery, lay in the private secretary’s arms, at times sleeping and at times with wide-open, glassy, bright eyes. The private secretary was staying overtime, but she did not mind it. She was glad to stay because Marjorie was fretful and would not let Chiswick touch her.

Marjorie moved about restlessly in Miss Vickers’s arms, trying fresh positions each moment, and tossing her hot head from side to side. Her cheeks glowed red, and the same red overspread her forehead and gleamed through the tossed gold of her hair. Where her head touched it the private secretary’s arm burned as under a hot iron.

The private secretary – who really had no voice at all – chanted:

“Ma-mie had a lit-tle lamb,
Little lamb,
Little lamb,
Ma-mie had a lit-tle lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow.”

Marjorie fretted. She did not want to be sung to. She did not know what she wanted. She was not used to being abnormal in temperature, it made her peevish, but she was lovable even so, for through the peevishness stray smiles would creep – sick little “please – excuse – Marjorie” – smiles, to show she had no hard feelings, but just one great uncomfortable feeling.

“You dear, dear, dear baby!” the private secretary exclaimed, and bent and kissed the hot cheek.

It was a hard night for the private secretary but it was a treasured night. It was blessed to feel the little hot baby resting in her arms and to be able to give up sleep and comfort and everything for the sleepless child.

When the sun arose Marjorie had fallen asleep, but tossed restlessly, and on her white skin, from which the fever had retreated, thousands of bright red spots glowed and glowed. Marjorie had the measles.

Chiswick suggested sending a hurry call for the committee, but while she was sending it the private secretary routed Mr. Fielding from his bed. He came to the nursery in bath robe and slippers, and dashed out again to set the telephone bell clamoring.

Before the committee had its pompadours well under way the good old bulky doctor was bending over Marjorie’s crib.

“Very severe attack,” he said, “but not necessarily dangerous. Keep her (and so on), give her (and so on). I’ll drop in after noon.”

When the committee arrived an hour later it had nothing to do but approve or disapprove of what had already been done. It decided to send Mrs. Fielding bulletins. Nothing weak or exciting; just cool, calm statements of facts. Things in the manner of reports to a fellow committee woman.

Mrs. Fielding received the first as she was in the hands of the reception committee.

“Marjorie has measles. No cause for alarm,” it said. She frowned. Why should they bother her with trifles.

About noon she received another message. It read: “Patient’s condition unchanged. No cause for alarm.”

She crumpled it in her hand and threw it on the floor. It had interrupted an inspiring conversation on the Higher Life.

When the doctor visited Marjorie about noon he sat fully five minutes with her, which was unusually long for such a busy man, and as he left he gravely remarked that he would drop in during the evening.

He did not like the way those red spots were fading.

When he returned he frowned. Mr. Fielding was sitting on the cribside holding one of Marjorie’s hot hands and gently passing his fingers over her brow. The private secretary was on her knees at the other side of the crib. But the doctor did not frown at either of these.

“I don’t like her condition, at all,” he said. “Not at all. But I’ll try to pull her through. Telephone my wife I’ll not be home to-night, will you?” Marjorie lay in open-eyed listlessness, staring upward at nothing. Her breath was short and rapid, and her heart beat like the quick strokes of a trip hammer.

She wondered vaguely why this strange thing was happening to her, and when the private secretary touched her she tried to smile, and only succeeded in making white lines about her drawn, dry lips.

It was nine o’clock when Mrs. Fielding arose to read her paper before the national convention, and as she arose she was handed a telegram. It was from the committee.

“Patient seriously ill. Best possible medical attendance. Do not worry.”

Mrs. Fielding read it and walked to the rostrum. “President and ladies,” her paper began, “my child is an example of the benefits of scientific motherhood,” but she did not read it so. As she stood facing her audience, her paper trembled in her hand, and as she looked at the lines written upon it they said but one thing – “Patient seriously ill.”

“President and ladies,” she began, “my child is – my child is – ” The lines vanished and she faltered. “My child,” she said, “is – is very ill to-night. I must go, of course. You must excuse me,” and she turned and fled.

It was rather odd that the first articulate word that Marjorie said in her life was uttered about that time. She had grown more irritable and had pushed away her father’s hand and the drink that the private secretary offered her.

“What do you want, little girl?” Miss Vickers asked, and Marjorie, whole weeks ahead of her schedule, said, “Ma-ma.”

III