These unlooked-for children — the following year twin girls were born, thus rounding off a trio — came too late to form the bond between their parents they might once have done. For that, the attitudes adopted towards them by father and mother, themselves now branched so far apart, were too dissimilar. In Mahony’s case, once his children were there in the flesh before him, all his puny fears of personal upset and mental pother fell away. He had only to feel tiny soft fingers straying over his face, to become the tenderest of fathers, loving his babies wholeheartedly. Now he feared only for them, in their frailty and helplessness. Did he wake in the night and think he heard a cry, he was out of bed in an instant; and the nurse, entering from the next room to make sure of her charges, would find her master there before her — a tall, dressing-gowned figure, shading a candle with his hand. Often, too, when wakeful, he would rise and steal into the night-nursery to take a peep at his little ones, lying relaxed in sleep. Yes, he was passionately solicitous for them — and not for their bodily health alone. He would have wished to shield their little plastic minds from all impressions that might pain or harm; have had them look only at beautiful and pleasant things, hear soft voices and kind words; on no child of his might hand be laid in anger. The result was that the children, dimly conscious of his perpetual uneasiness, were rendered uneasy by it in their turn, and, for all the deep affection from which it sprang, never really warmed towards their father.
Instead, they sunned themselves in their mother’s love, which knew nothing of fears or apprehensions. Mary laughed at Richard’s exaggerated anxiety; though she rejoiced to see him so fond. A self-centred person like him might well have found children a nuisance and in the way.
To her they were all in all; and on them she lavished that great hoard of mother-love which, till now, she had spent on the world at large. Had they been born shortly after her marriage, she, who was then little more than a child herself, would have been a child along with them; and the four would have grown up together in a delightful intimacy. Of this there was now no question. Coming when they did, the children stood to her only for possessions — her most precious possessions — but still, something absolutely her own, to do with just as she thought good. Through them, too, she believed she would some day gratify those ambitions which, where Richard was concerned, had proved so stark a failure. He had had no desire to walk the high paths she had mapped out for him. Her children would — and should. In the meantime, however, ambition lay fallow in love; and it was to their mother the babies ran with their pains and pleasures, their discoveries and attainments. She alone gave them that sense of warmth and security in which very young things thrive.
Their devotion to her was the one feature the three had in common. The twins — they soon earned the nickname of “the Dumplings”— were mere rolypoly bundles of good nature and jollity, who rarely cried, and were as seldom ill as naughty. Mary boasted: the most docile children in the world. Passionately attached to each other said Mahony, it was as though a single soul had been divided between two bodies — they toddled through babyhood hand in hand; faithfully sharing all good things that came their way; sleeping in the same crib, face to face, each with an arm flung protectively about the other’s neck. To look at they were as like as two peas, blue-eyed, fair-haired, dimpled, lovely to handle in their baby plumpness, and the most satisfying of armfuls. Their development, too, kept equal pace they walked late, owing to the burden of their little rotundities and long remained content with inarticulate sounds for speech.
The boy was of quite another fibre: as hard to manage as they were easy; as quick as they were slow. Tilly early said of him: “Lor’, Mary! the doctor ‘imself in frocks and petticoats.” But this referred chiefly to little physical tricks and similarities: a certain faddiness about his food, his clothes, his belongings. A naughty child he was not — at first. He, too, began life as a placid infant, who slept well, did not cry, and accepted philosophically the bottle — substitute that was put to his lips. This meant that, in spite of his midget-size at birth, he was sound and healthy — in a fragile, wiry way. He continued small, but was neatly formed. To his mother’s colouring he added his father’s straight features; and even in babyhood had the latter’s trick of carrying his head well back, and a little to one side. He walked before he was a year old, talked soon after; and, to his parents’ pride, was able to pick out a given letter from a play-alphabet before he either walked or talked.
His precocity showed itself in other ways as well. For a year and a quarter he was King of the House, the pivot of his little world, sole occupant of his mother’s knee. Then came the sudden apparition of his sisters. In the beginning, Cuffy — thus he named himself — did not pay much heed to this pair of animated dolls, who moved their legs and arms when bathed, and rode out in a carriage beside his, but for the most part lay asleep and negligible. Only gradually did it dawn on him that his privileges were being invaded; that not only, indeed, was his reign as sole ruler at an end, but that the greater favours were falling to the newcomers’ share. And one day the full knowledge of what had happened burst through, with disastrous results, Cuffy being then something over two years old. Dressed for driving Mary entered the nursery; and Cuffy clamoured to be set upon her knee.
“Not now, darling, I’ve no time. You must wait till Mamma comes back.”
But the nurses appearing at this moment with the babies, all warm and fragrant from their afternoon nap, Mary was not able to resist holding out her arms for them. She even lingered, fondling them, after the carriage was announced.
Cuffy had docilely retreated to a corner, where he played with a stuff elephant. But on seeing this — seeing his mother, who had been too busy for him, petting the twins who had not even ASKED to be nursed — at this he planted himself before her and regarded her with his solemn black eyes. (“I do declare, Master Cuffy seems to look right through you and out behind, when he stares so,” was a saying of Nannan’s.)
Relinquishing her babies Mary stooped to him. “Say good-bye to Mamma.”
To her amazement, instead of putting up his face for a kiss, Cuffy darted at her what she described to Richard as “a dreadfully naughty look,” and going over to his rocking-horse, which, though he was not yet allowed to mount it, was his dearest treasure, started to beat it with both hands, and with such force that the patient effigy swung violently to and fro.
Shocked at this fit of temper, Nannan and Mary exclaimed in chorus: “Master Cuffy! Well, I never did! Such tantrums!”
“Cuffy! What ARE you doing? If you are so naughty, Mamma will never take you on her knee again.”
The child’s back being towards her, she did not see how at these words the little face flushed crimson, the eyes grew round with alarm. Cuffy at once left off hitting the horse; just stood stock-still, as if letting what his mother had said sink in. But he did not turn and come to her. Mary told Richard of the incident as she buttoned her gloves. And Richard had Cuffy brought to him. Laying aside his book he lifted the child to his knee.
“Papa is sorry to hear Cuffy has been naughty. Will Cuffy tell Papa why?”
Unwinkingly the great eyes regarded him. But there was no response.
“Fy, fy! To hit poor horsey . . . when it had done nothing to deserve it.”
“Cuffy’s ‘orsey — own norsey.”
“But, just because it is Cuffy’s — Cuffy’s very own — he must be kind . . . all the kinder . . . to it. Never wreak your temper or your vengeance, my little son, on a person or thing that is in your power. It’s ungenerous. And I want my Cuffy to grow up into a good, kind man. As careful of the feelings of others as he is of his own.”
Something in his father’s voice — grave, measured, tender — got at the baby, though the words went over his head. And then Mahony saw what he long remembered: a fight for self-control extraordinary in one so young. The black eyes filled; the little mouth twitched and trembled. But the child swallowed hard in an attempt to keep back his tears. And when at last they broke through, he turned and hid his face against his father’s coat. Not, Mahony felt sure, seeking there either comfort or sympathy. Merely that his distress might be unobserved. Taking in his own the two little hands, which were locked in each other, Mahony drew them apart. Both palms were red and sore-looking, and no doubt still tingled hotly. The child had hurt himself most of all.
But Cuffy’s tears soon dried. After a very few seconds he raised his face, and, this having been patted with his father’s handkerchief, slid to the floor and trotted back to the nursery. And then, said Nannan, what a to-do there was! Master Cuffy dragged his little chair up beside the horse, climbed on the chair and put his arms round the animal’s neck, talking to it for all the world as if it was a live creature and could talk back.
“Wos ‘oo ‘urt, dea’ ‘orsey? — poor ‘ickle ‘orsey! Cuffy didn’t mean to. Wot ‘oo say, ‘orsey? ‘Orsey ‘oves Cuffy double-much? Dea’ ‘orsey! Cuffy ‘oves ‘orsey, too — much more better zan Effalunt.”
And having deposited horsey’s rival upside-down in a dark cupboard, he begged a lump of sugar from Eliza the under-nurse, and rammed it in between the steed’s blood-red jaws; where it remained, until a trail of white ants was discovered making a straight line for it from the window.
To Mary, Mahony said: “If I were you, my dear, I should be careful to distribute my favours equally. Don’t let the little fellow feel that his nose has been put out of joint. He’s jealous — that’s all.............