# The Surrenders of Cornwallis

Extracted from "Everybody's" magazine, v.19 1908, pp. 35–46. Illustrations by Ethel Farnsworth may be omitted.
THE SURRENDERS OF CORNWALLIS
By ANNE WARNER
Author of “Susan Clegg,” “The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary,” “Seeing England with Uncle John,” etc,
CORNWALLIS, JR., was six years old. His full name was Cornwallis General—a conjunction of names which any reader will admit to be most trying. It was so trying, in fact, that when the mother of Cornwallis had—at a period antedating my story by about eight years—first met the man named General, she had remarked to her bosom friend that there was one man whom she never in any circumstances should even dream of marrying, because of their two names.
But she had changed her mind and married the man a year after—a way that young ladies have of doing—and young Cornwallis General had appeared later and taken the burden of the inevitable at the baptismal font. Young Cornwallis didn't mind being the bearer of his reversed title, though; his trials in regard to nomenclature were of quite another sort; it was not that his name savored of too much and too unique a dignity that he rebelled—it was because he was almost altogether denied the use of it, such as it was.
Young Cornwallis was a person of great distinction; at two he had become an individual with one paramount object in life—not to be treated longer as a baby. It is difficult at two years of age to overawe one's superiors. and Cornwallis had a hard time, even though he made it an invariable rule to refer to himself only as either “he” or “Tunwattis.” “Tunwattis” merged into “Tornwally” a year later, and when he was four he pronounced every syllable with an emphasis that should have shamed his father, who said “Major Trot,” his nurse, who called him “Toddy Butterball,” his grandmother, who cried out “Oh, my itty Blessin',” whenever she saw him, and his grandfather, who would stop anywhere on the avenue and inquire, with a cheerful smile that added insult to injury, “Well, how's Skiddy-winks to-day?” But although all these were bad—very bad—it was his mother, his dear, sweet mother, who was the very most awfully cruel person of them all, for in all the interminably long existence that they had shared together, she had never yet mentioned him by any other name than the one which he detested worst of all—“Baby.”
Oh, how he did hate to be called “Baby”—his small teeth and hands used to clinch, in spite of himself, whenever he heard it. He had hoped that when his curls went she would stop—but she didn't. Then he hoped that when he graduated into knickerbockers she would stop—but she didn't. And then he thought that when Santa Claus brought another baby she would surely stop—but—but that is the story.
I must digress here to explain that Grandpapa and Grandmamma Cornwallis lived away out on the avenue in a huge, white marble house, and had three motors, a garden, chickens in the latticed yard, and ever so many maids and men, and that Papa and Mamma General lived much nearer town and just had Norah and Nellie and Mrs. Tray (who came and went spasmodically) and Lotty, who cooked, and the runabout, and Star to drive. There was a telephone between the two houses, and a system of inter-domestic dining and lunching far too intricate for me to elucidate, and Grandpapa always came at six o'clock and took Mamma out in the motor, and Cornwallis went regularly on his velocipede to see Grandmamma every day at ten in the morning, and again after his nap at half-past three in the afternoon. It was during one of the latter calls that his grandmother asked him his ideas as to Santa Claus's bringing a baby. Cornwallis's face fairly radiated at the suggestion—not because he wanted a baby, but because he thought that the baby would surely absorb all the nicknames.
“You would love a baby dearly, wouldn't you, you Sugar-plum, you?” said Grandmamma.
Cornwallis's radiance turned dark. “No one would call me 'Baby' then,” he said, coldly, not quite liking to be so pointed as to mention the offensive “Sugar-plum” to a grandmother whose cook made cakes full of them.
Grandmother laughed a great deal over this and went at once and wrote it down on her pad, so as to be sure to remember to tell Grandpapa how clever their only grandson was becoming. Then she ordered out the biggest automobile—the dark-blue one—and took Cornwallis and Nellie and the velocipede home in state.
When they all three went up to Mamma's room they found Mamma rocking idly and Mrs. Tray trimming a clothes-basket. Grandmamma whispered Cornwallis's brilliant remark in Mamma's ear, while that young man walked around Mrs. Tray and her task. It was quite a novelty to him, for he had never seen such a clothes-basket before. It was not only that they had quilted the inside with pink silk, but Mrs. Tray was sewing a great flounce of the same silk around the outside, and draping white lace and big knots of ribbon over that.
“Well, Babykin,” said Mamma, smiling, and holding out her hand to the small boy whose face was so full of curiosity, “what do you think of it?”
Cornwallis ignored the hand, knowing that it would drag him to a long and smothering kissing-siege.
“I suppose that it is for your dresses,” he said.
“Not so,” said Mrs. Tray, threading her needle with wonderful ease, “this is a baby-catcher.”
“A baby-catcher!” repeated Cornwallis.
“Exactly so,” said Mrs. Tray. “All you have to do is to set this basket by the chimney every night when you go to bed, and some fine morning you'll find a baby in it.”
“Do you believe that?” Cornwallis asked, turning to his grandmother.
“Of course I do, Master Snips,” said his grandmother.
Cornwallis winced slightly and went to his mother.
“Do you believe it?” he asked her.
“Of course—of course—” she cried, laughing. And then he found to his anguish that he had gone too near, for she had him pulled tight up against her chair and was kissing him ferociously, and saying, “But no matter how many other babies come, darling, you'll always be my baby, my first, my dearest, my——”
Just there he managed to free himself, and with a red face and much-tumbled hair, resumed his examination of the basket.
“When will it be done?” he asked Mrs.
“To-night,” replied Mrs. Tray, sewing very fast.
“We will set it to-night, then,” promulgated Cornwallis, and Grandmamma ran to Mamma's desk and made a note on an envelope so that she would not forget to repeat that clever speech to Grandpapa, either.
And so that night the baby-catcher was carefully baited with a little pillow and a love of a quilt, and set by the fireplace to snap up any errant baby.
The night was very short, like most of Cornwallis's nights, but when he woke he was wild to see if he had caught a baby. He tore off to his mother's room at once, and found things most painfully as usual. His mother was in bed, his father was shaving in his dressing-room, the basket was as pink and as empty as on the night before.
“Well, Tom Thumb,” said his father, pleasantly.
“Turn into bed wiz me,” said his mother.
“No, thank you,” said Cornwallis, with great stress upon the lofty politeness of his diction. “Nellie must be waiting to bath me.”
And he left his parents and their drivel in disgust.
After breakfast his father wanted to take him down to the office with him.
“You can ride back with Peter,” he said.
“No, thank you,” said Cornwallis. “I think that I will play in my mother's room and watch the basket.”
“Oh, you'd better come on with me. Captain Jinks,” urged his father.
(Captain Jinks!)
“1 don't want the baby alone with Peter; suppose the horse runs away,” said his mother.
(The baby!)
“But I don't want the little one to Father you,” said his father.
(The little one!)
“He isn't going to bother anyone,” said Mrs. Tray. “I'll look out for Buster Brown.”
(Buster Brown!)
So his father went away, leaving Cornwallis with tears of real rage in his eyes at the way they all made a fool of him.
Twenty minutes later Nellie came in and took him off to see Grandmamma. They hadn't gotten a block away from home before they met Grandmamma going down-town in the motor with Grandpapa, and they were taken prisoner, velocipede and all, and carried right along. Grandmamma insisted on Cornwallis's sitting in between them for safety's sake, and kept her arm around him at that, and Grandpapa said:
“Well, Snoddy-boggins, how goes it?”
Cornwallis stood it as best he could, but the arm around him was most humiliating.
“Now, Skeeziks,” said Grandpapa, presently, “have you forgotten what I told you about this car yesterday?”
“No, sir,” said Cornwallis.
“What is the name?”
“It's a—” Cornwallis hesitated, “—it's a Fearless Kerosene,” he announced triumphantly.
“Oh, give me a pencil, quick—I must write that right down,” squealed Grandmamma, and as no one else had a pencil, they had to stop while the chauffeur lent her his.
“You know, he really is too bright,” she whispered audibly to Grandpapa, and Grandpapa gave him a dollar and called him “Tiddledy-winks” in commendation.
They took a long drive in the country later and had lunch at the Race Club, and then when they went home Cornwallis was- so dead with sleep that he did not resist when his grandmother called him “Piggy-wiggy” and Nellie carried him up-stairs. But he did not forget to set the basket out again when he went to bed that night, and the next morning his disappointment was again keen when he found that no baby had been trapped.
“Santa Claus doesn't come in the summer, anyhow,” he said, wrathfully, to Nellie.
“Quite right, Tommy Tucker,” said Mrs. Tray.
Cornwallis could have slapped her.
The next afternoon the baby came—when the basket wasn't set out at all!
Cornwallis was up at Grandmamma's, adjusting a marvelous new railway system all over the billiard-room rug, when Grandpapa marched in, looking uncommonly beaming, even for him, and said:
“Hooray, Snooks, there's another girl in the family!”
If there was one epithet more especially and superlatively detestable to Cornwallis's ears than any other, it was “Snooks”; but he swallowed his wrath and rose, with a locomotive in one hand and its tender in the other, to repeat:
“Another girl, Grandpapa?”
“Yes; you've got a little sister.”
“But I'm not a girl,” said Cornwallis, indignantly.
“Your mother is, though, isn't she, young Winkum-Wankum?” replied Grandfather. “Come on; you and I are invited to go and have a look at the baby.”
Cornwallis's spirit suddenly turned to joy indescribable. “The baby”—here she was, the individual who would get all the names now. Oh, bliss! Oh, ecstasy!
“What shall you call her, Grandpapa?” Cornwallis asked, ravenous to see whether he was to be that instant quit of “Skiddy-winks” forever henceforth.
“For her mother, Skiddy-winks, for her mother, of course,” said Grandpapa, and then he snatched him up in his arms and called him “Snooks” and “Snoddy-boggins” all the way to the motor.
They fairly flew down the avenue, and Norah was in the drawing-room window watching for them. Cornwallis wondered what could be up when Norah was watching for them from the drawing-room window. Papa must have been watching, too, for he opened the door before Norah could get to it, and the first thing he said was:
“Eyes just like Elaine's,” which seemed silly to Cornwallis, but not so silly as the way Grandpapa sat down at once and hid his face in his handkerchief.
“Well, Johnny Jump-up,” said Papa to Cornwallis then, “the fairies have been pretty good to us all to-day—do you know it?”
“They told me there's a baby come,” said Cornwallis, wondering what he should be called next.
Grandpapa revived just then, put up his handkerchief, and said:
“I suppose the Chipmunk and I will be allowed a peep.”
Cornwallis looked at bis grandparent with displeasure unutterable at this, but Papa was saying:
“Come right up,” and leading the way to the staircase, where they found Nellie standing, whispering:
“Sh-h-h!”
They went softly up, and at the turning they found Grandmamma, also saying, '*Sh-h-h!” and with a scratch-block all ready to perpetuate Cornwallis's first remark after seeing the baby—only she had forgotten the pencil again.
“In here,” said Grandmamma, and they all went into the corner room. “Wait here,” added Grandmamma very importantly, and slipped away.
“Of course she will be called Elaine?” said Grandpapa, suddenly getting out his pocket-handkerchief again.
“Well, I should say so,” said Papa, and then he suddenly and irrelevantly exclaimed, “What do you say, Paws-and-Claws?” to Cornwallis.
Cornwallis felt fairly blue over the downfall of his recent hopes, and was preparing to go and look out of the window, when Grandmamma suddenly entered and said, “Sh-h-h!” worse than ever.
Right behind her was Mrs. Tray with the pink clothes-basket in her hands. She put it on the big divan, and Papa took Cornwallis up just as if he were another baby, and Grandpapa and Grandmamma took hold of hands as if they were children, too, and everyone gathered around the basket.
Mrs. Tray lifted a veil, and a quilt, and a shawl, and another thing, and turned back the corner of something else, and Cornwallis, looking close, saw a little round, dark head and a little pink fist, and then—why, then Mrs. Tray began to cover it over again, and the next minute she was gone, baby, basket, and all.
“A very nice little baby!” said Grandpapa, emphatically.
Papa tossed Cornwallis down on the divan and began to tousle him in a fearfully foolish manner.
“Sh-h-h!” said Grandmamma.
“Well, Major Trot, what did you think of her?” Papa asked.
“That's it,” said Grandpapa; “what does Puss-in-Boots think?”
Grandmamma began to feel for the pencil that should be with the scratch-block.
But Cornwallis said not a word. He was disappointed and outraged. The baby had come when he wasn't prepared, had relieved him of none of the awful odium and ignominy to which he was continually subjected, and appeared most unpromising as a social proposition.
Escaping out of the clutches of his fond relatives, Cornwallis fled the room.
That evening, a wonder far greater than the coming of any mere baby took place in Cornwallis's existence—he went to Grandpapa's to sleep! He had never slept outside of his papa's house before—except at the cottage by the sea which Papa bought some summers—and so he was all excitement when Nellie told him. They had asked Nellie to come, too; Grandmamma was going to let them have the room next to the billiard-room. It was most pleasantly important to pack up, and bundle the velocipede into the tonneau of the Fearless Kerosene, and Nellie liked it, too. Grandpapa and Grandmamma went home at the same time, and Grandmamma's Nellie helped Cornwallis's Nellie to unpack, and called Cornwallis “Lambie” whenever she tripped over him in so doing. By nine o'clock he was all in bed, and Grandmamma came in and felt of his feet, and Grandpapa came in and asked him how more track and another switch would suit him in the morning, and if it was worth saying “Peter Piper” for. It was one of Grandpapa's favorite bargains with Cornwallis, this trading new toys for the recitation of “Peter Piper,” but Grandmamma interfered and said it might give her Sweetest Sugar-plum brain-fever if he recited “Peter Piper” at that hour; so they each kissed him twice, and after cautioning Nellie about draughts, matches, extra covering, and other matters of which Nellie, at thirty-five, was presumably ignorant, they went away.
The next day, the next, and the next were one halcyon dream of undiluted bliss to Cornwallis. He almost forgot his trials in the avalanche of his joys. Tracks, switches, elevators, dump-cars; his Nellie and Grandmamma's Nellie both to help operate them all day long; convenient lunches of ginger-bread and milk and apples forever on tap. Grandmamma was away a good deal; Grandpapa, too; his father and mother he never saw; the baby he almost forgot. The realities of life were the railroad and the fascination of sending the little trains careering around the track, the opening and shutting of the wee signals, and the hoisting and lowering of freight before the elevators.
When Sunday came. Papa appeared suddenly in the door of the billiard-room, nodded to Cornwallis without saying anything—and went away again. This was such unprecedented behavior on the part of his father that Cornwallis abandoned a sort of stoppage from over-loaded traffic which he was just then engaged in disentangling, and hurried after him.
But he was gone!
The next day there was a great bustle, and Grandmamma's Nellie and his Nellie conversed mainly in whispers. Strange people came and went, new curtains were put up some where, furniture was moved, and then about four o'clock in the afternoon Mrs. Tray and the baby arrived to visit Grandmamma also. They had the lovely pink and white bedrooms and bath right opposite Grandmamma's own rooms, and Cornwallis went down to have a second look at his sister. There seemed to him a great change of sentiment in regard to the baby, no one manifesting any particular enthusiasm over her now.
“I suppose that my mother will come to-morrow,” he said, half in question, to Mrs. Tray.
But Mrs. Tray only murmured something inaudible in reply.
His mother did not come on the morrow, nor on the next day, nor all the week. When Sunday came again, Cornwallis went to his grandmother, whom he found sitting in her room, looking out of the window.
“I'm about ready to go back to my own house,” he announced, abruptly.
Grandmamma turned her head and looked at him as if he were a fly or any other very little thing.
“Yes, yes, Pettie, run away,” she said—not unkindly, but as if he didn't matter much—and turned to the window again.
Cornwallis had never had anyone treat him like this before; he went up to his grandmother's side and stood at her knee, and looked up in her face.
“What do you mean, Grandmamma?” he asked in a kind but slightly severe tone. His grandmother contorted her features most singularly.
“Are you going to sneeze?” he asked with curiosity.
Then she rose quickly, took him by the hand, led him out into the hall and across into the baby's room, and abandoned him without one word. He would have feared that his one and only grandmother had gone suddenly out of her senses, had it not been for Mrs. Tray and the baby. Mrs. Tray and the baby were sufficiently interesting at that minute to divert anyone's mind from anything under the sun. Mrs. Tray was sitting on a low chair before the open grate, and in front of her was something like the stool Nellie carried down by the water at the sea, only the part which held Nellie up was gone. They put a kind of bath-tub in there, and in that funny bath-tub was the baby, her little ball of a black head held up by Mrs. Tray's hand.
Cornwallis stood and grinned foolishly at the sight.
“Well, Hop-o'-my-Thumb,” said Mrs. Tray, “can you think how I held you just this same way six long years back?”
“She looks so silly,” said Cornwallis.
Mrs. Tray laughed, and just as she laughed she scooped the whole little bit of a dripping, wiggling sister up in her two hands, and rolled her up out of sight,—completely out of sight.
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Cornwallis.
And just then Nellie appeared in the door and told him that there were two white goats and a wagon down on the back lawn, and if he liked them— Cornwallis forgot his sister as easily as he had forgotten his grandmother just previously, and he and Nellie rushed away.
The days went on and on. The baby cried a great deal. Grandpapa became very silent. Grandmamma he rarely saw. Papa almost never. He and Nellie went to matinées and dime-museums galore, the gardener made him a garden, he had rabbits bought for him, white mice, too; also a squirrel. Life was apparently one orgy of bewildering novelties.
Then the baby began to be cunning. If Cornwallis knelt close by Mrs. Tray and put his head closer yet, the baby's little hands would flap against his face and delight his very soul. One day when he was enjoying the feeble little blows, he suddenly made a remark which drove Mrs. Tray to give his sister to Nellie and rush from the room. The remark was a very simple one, but it told a long story—it showed that Cornwallis had not been as completely distracted by his new life as those older and wiser had hoped and believed. This is what he said as he huddled himself up close to his little sister's little, aimless hands:
“I should think that even if Mamma doesn't care ever to see me again, she would like to see Elaine—Elaine is so dear, and little, and funny.”
He had always called the baby “Elaine” from the moment when Grandpapa had made that speech to Papa on the day of her coming, and no one had been able to make him change. Mrs. Tray had tried to tell him that the name was too big for so small a young lady, but Cornwallis was firm.
“I do not believe in nicknames,” he said, looking into Mrs. Tray's face, with powerful and biting innuendo in his tone. And the morning after, being in his grandmother's room, he had thought to give her her dose also and had said:
“I think that Elaine will enjoy her ride on the veranda to-day.”
Whereupon his grandmother had also risen abruptly and left him alone forthwith.
You can see that life was fast becoming a very mysterious affair at Grandpapa's and Grandmamma's house.
The weeks went on and on. The baby was beginning to make little gurgles in her throat, and to have quite a good deal of strength in her bits of fingers. And she was crazy over Cornwallis; when he came in, she quivered all over like a bird that is making the twig shake, too, as it sings. Cornwallis thought it was too wonderful, just to be allowed to be with her.
“She does not make up for my mother,” he said one day to Nellie, “but I am very glad to have her and for her to have me.”
Nellie started to speak and then stopped. It had been decided that any statement to Cornwallis regarding his mother would be worse than futile in existing circumstances.
The next day was another of what Cornwallis had named to himself “the new kind of Sundays,” because they were so widely different from the happy Sundays of other time,—those Sundays when his mamma and papa and he used to frolic together and laugh out loud over how silly they were. The new Sundays were almost exactly like week-days, only still more so. His papa came sometimes in the afternoon and looked at Elaine, and patted her brother's cheek, but he hardly spoke and almost never smiled. Mrs. Tray did the talking, and Elaine was afraid of her own father, and cried.
Elaine was almost three months old now, and all her black hair had rubbed off, and she had funny little yellow duck-tails turning up all over her funny little yellow head. She could shake a rattle, too, and when she was displeased the way that she could scream was awful. She screamed just that way upon this particular Sunday, screamed right in Papa's face, screamed so fearfully that Mrs. Tray had to carry her out of the room.
“You see, she doesn't hardly know you,” Cornwallis said in apology for the little sister whom he was learning to love more valorously every day. “She cried just so hard at the man who brought her bed. You see, I learned to know you when I used to live with Mamma before she came, but she's never had a chance to know you, and I guess she's never going to see Mamma ever.” He sighed heavily as he terminated his brief explanation, for he did sorely long to know what had really become of his mother; but as all his questions brought only the vaguest sort of answers, he had ceased repeating them.
Papa arose and began to walk up and down the room; Cornwallis remained quietly seated on the little stool by the chair that Mrs. Tray had just quitted; he still held in his hands a toy with which he had been amusing the baby before his father came in.
“See here, Captain,” his father said suddenly, “would you like to go and see Mamma again?”
The woolly man fell out of Cornwallis's hands. The woolly man fell because the small hands had become suddenly palsied—suddenly palsied because all the blood in the child's body was pouring into his face.
“Can I—ever—see her again?” he stammered.
“I'll take you to-morrow,” said his father, and left the room in the same sudden way in which everyone seemed given to rushing away, these days.
The next morning, just after Elaine had gone for her nap, Papa came for Cornwallis. Papa was in the runabout with Peter. Nellie brought Cornwallis out to them, and they drove away—a long, long drive.
“Doesn't Mamma live in our house any more?” the boy asked in surprise, when they were far outside of the city.
“No,” said Papa, and said no more.
Then they came to a most beautiful park, and well within it was a great white house, with countless windows and balconies. There were a good many people all about, either sitting down or lying in long chairs, and ever so many gentlemen and ladies all in white, with white caps, walking around. Cornwallis was deeply interested.
They drove to a side door, and he and Papa got down and went inside.
“Now, Major, listen to me,” said Papa, not exactly crossly, but in such a way that Cornwallis felt he must be obeyed, whatever came. “Your mamma is ill. She has been ill a long time. She may not know you; she hasn't known anyone for all the long time; she doesn't know that there is a baby—any baby except you. You mustn't mind what she says, and you mustn't mind if she says nothing.”
Papa paused.
“I sha'n't mind anything,” said Cornwallis stoutly. “I'll be too glad to see her again. She can kiss me all she likes, you can call me Captain Jinks, and Grandpapa can say Snoddy-boggins—I won't mind one bit, because I'll be just so glad to see her again—” He had to stop right there, partly because Papa was staring so, and partly because the biggest lump he had ever had, had come up in his throat all of a sudden.
Papa held out his hand.
“Come, Cornwallis,” he said, calling the boy by his right name for the first time in his life, and then they went through a great many sweet, quiet, white halls and so came to the most wonderfully beautiful room of which Cornwallis had ever dreamed.
It was not the delicate blue and cream of its walls and ceiling, nor the soft green of its floor, nor the pretty brass bed, nor the lovely flowers, nor the yellow canary singing in the window—it was the mother on the bed, the thin, changed mother, the same, unchanged mother, for whom a childish heart had sorrowed so.
Cornwallis approached the bed on tiptoe. A lady in white had risen and stood still by the head of the bed, and Papa stood still at its foot. A door opened softly, and a gentleman whom Cornwallis had never seen slipped in behind a screen, and the gentleman stood still, too. It was all strange, but the strangest of all was the mother on the bed. She did not seem to pay any attention to anything, just lay there, looking straight up at the draperies, and her son saw how very big and hollow her eyes were, and what pitiful, thin, bony things her soft white hands had become.
But still it was his mother, the mother of the old Sundays and the time before Elaine came.
“May I kiss her?” he asked Papa, looking backward.
Papa just nodded.
Then Cornwallis climbed up on the white bed—he was all in white himself, even to the white bows on his new white canvas pumps—and put his arms around her and kissed her. She looked up at him with the same curious, wide-eyed stare, and then she frowned. Cornwallis didn't see the frown, because his face was down close to hers, and he was hugging her with all the strength not needed to keep down the lump in his throat. But Papa saw it and saw her move her poor, bony hands, and saw her lips tremble.
“Speak, Cornwallis,” he said in a low, sharp voice. “Say whatever you please, but say something.”
“Mamma!” he cried loudly, “it's your baby!”
It was his second surrender. He had just dropped his shackles, apparently—at least, so far as one parent was concerned—and now he slipped them on again for the pleasure of the other. Something heroic in that action—for a six-year-old!
There was a hush like death in the room. Even Cornwallis felt it. Everyone was waiting for something.
“Mamma,” he cried again, “please call me 'baby' just as you always do.”
Then his mother's eyelids fell over her eyes, which had stared steadily so long, and a little smile chased the frown from her face.
“Oh, yes,” she said, in a queer sort of whisper, “he'll sleep here to-night—the baby—” and she turned her face in upon Cornwallis's clean white blouse exactly as Elaine always turned hers in upon Mrs. Tray's bosom, and drew a funny little gasp exactly as Elaine always did—and went to sleep.
Papa laid his finger on his lip, and Cornwallis kept perfectly still. They brought ever so many pillows, big and little, and poked them in around him so skilfully that he was quite easy in his queer position. His mother put one of her hands up just as Elaine always put hers up when she slept—her hand made him think of Elaine's as it had been when she first came—like a thin little claw. He looked down at her face on his shoulder and thought how like the baby she looked in ever so many odd ways.
Papa stood at the foot of the bed and smiled. The tears came into his eyes sometimes as he looked at the two on the bed. The gentleman who had gone behind the screen slipped away and presently returned with two huge portfolios full of pictures. He gave them to the lady in white, and she set them up one at a time where Cornwallis could see them. It was as good as a picture-book, and he looked at them with interest until—until he fell asleep himself.
I don't know how they ever managed it, but when he woke up he was on the bed in his own room at Grandmamma's, and Grandmamma was sitting weeping beside him.
“Oh, Sugar-pll—I mean Cornwallis,” she said, “you have saved her—she will come back to us now.”
“Saved who?” asked Cornwallis, wondering if he were still dreaming.
“Your mamma, your precious mamma,” said Grandmamma, and then before she could say more Grandpapa came in, with the biggest smile Cornwallis had ever seen.
“Well, Skiddy—I mean Cornwallis,” said Grandfather, “I don't think much of goats; let's have a pony—two ponies—ten, if you like—twenty—forty!”
Cornwallis stared at him, and before he could speak, there was Papa, too.
“Well, Captain Ji—I mean Cornwallis,” said Papa, jovially, in quite his old way, “what shall it be—chocolate cigarettes or lemon drops?” and he took both of these articles (which were so rare and difficult to procure in the place of which I write, that often they could not be bought between Christmas and Fourth of July) out of his pocket and gave them to the small boy.
“Is Mamma come home?” he asked.
“No, Major—I mean Cornwallis,” said Papa, blithely, “not yet, but you are to go to see her every morning from now on and put her to sleep just as you did to-day—how's that?”
Cornwallis did not even notice the candies; he clasped his hands tightly.
“Oh,” he said, “I will do anything if just I may see her every day again. I will be quite still, and you don't need to put the pillows around me, thank you.”
“Oh, bless the Sug—Cornwallis!” cried Grandmamma, and then she burst into more tears.
“Never mind, Snooks—I mean Cornwallis,” said Grandpapa, lifting him off the bed and carrying him over by the window; “let's have a little carriage for the ponies, one big enough for you to drive Nellie and the baby out in!”
Cornwallis's eyes flashed, but his attention being attracted back to Grandmamma at that second, he could not reply. Grandmamma was weeping still and repeating—much louder than she realized—“To think that she knew him—to think that she knew him!” He struggled down out of his grandfather's arms and went back to his grandmother's side and laid his hand upon her knee.
“Doesn't she know you?” he asked, wide-eyed.
“No, not me—not anyone—since, oh, since about the time the baby came.”
Cornwallis stared fixedly ahead, considering.
“That is why no one ever spoke of her,” he said slowly, working his big problem out as fast as his little brain would permit.
“I thought that I should never see her again,” he said after a little pause, deciding to take them all into his confidence.
“I thought for a long time that she was gone away just as Nellie's mother went away,” he said, looking around at them all, his mouth quivering as he spoke. “Nellie cried, but I did not cry. I shouldn't think that you would have minded her not knowing you,” he went on, very slowly; “you knew she was there and you could go and look at her—I haven't known where she was. I've wondered and wondered and wondered. I've thought about it when I woke up in the dark. I've thought about it when I was running my cars. I've thought about it all the time when I was playing with Elaine, because after Elaine got her eyes open her eyes were just like Mamma's. It wasn't any use my asking about—about Mamma, because no one would tell me. Everyone always thinks I am so little—and—and calls me names—but—but I don't mind names now—and I wouldn't mind if she hadn't known me, either, I would have loved her and talked about her just the same. If she doesn't know me, I will go just the same every day, and put her to sleep—I'll be so glad just to be with her again—I—” He stopped abruptly, and started to walk out of the room, but in the little armchair just at Grandmother's door he fell, head forward, and burst into tears more tumultuous than even Grandmamma's own.
His father went to him and gathered him close in his arms.
“Oh, why didn't you take me to her before?” Cornwallis sobbed. “I was what she wanted—I'm her baby; I always was what she wanted. I used to run away from her because she wanted me so tight always. I've thought how I used to run away every one of these days. That's why I let Elaine pull my hair. She's never had Mamma hug her—she's only just had Mrs. Tray—and I let her pull as hard as she could because I was always thinking how was she going to—to live—without any mamma{bar|2}}””
“Cornwallis, stop,” said his father, very gently but very firmly; “grown-up people make mistakes often, but we are trying to do right just as much as you are. No one could tell you anything about Mamma except what would have made you very unhappy, and you had to stay bright for little sister. We couldn't smile and we could hardly speak—it was better to keep you so that you could. Don't you understand?” and then he carried him away to a quiet, dark room, where Cornwallis was soothed back to calmness, and became fit to go and see his mother again.
A week or so later he was so accustomed to the daily visit and to beginning his own nap there and ending it at Grandmother's that life merged completely out of tragedy and became a sweet, happy routine again. When his mother began to watch for his coming, when she began to speak little phrases, when she knew Papa, and wanted him to sit on the other side of the bed and hold her other hand—all these were the events of that summer.
Grandmamma became as cheerful as she had been in the long ago time; Grandpapa whistled and was always starting to say “Snooks” and then stopping himself short; Elaine was usually down on the floor trying to eat up the embroidery on the hem of her dress, and giving little shrieks of joy whenever she saw Cornwallis, just on the mere chance that he might be bringing his hair to her to be pulled. They were all very happy.
And then, at last, one day the telephone bell rang, and it was Mamma, and she asked for Grandpapa and said to him, “I'm at home!” and nothing else. Grandpapa came up-stairs and told them all, and that afternoon everyone but Elaine and Mrs. Tray went down and had tea at Cornwallis's own house, and the next day Cornwallis and Nellie went back there to live.
The queer part was that little Elaine could not go, and that, while en route in the Fearless Kerosene, both Grandpapa and Grandmamma told Cornwallis all over again for the hundred and fiftieth time how Mamma did not know that there was any Elaine, and must not be told of the fact.
“Won't she ever know?” he said wistfully. “Won't I ever have Elaine and Mamma both at once?”
“Perhaps—after a while,” said Grandmamma, vaguely.
So now, instead of going every day to see his mother, Cornwallis had to go twice a day to see his sister. Elaine was becoming absolutely irresistible. She talked with her forefinger most intelligibly, and laughed with two dimples and eight little white teeth.
“What do you do up at Grandmamma's?” Mamma asked Cornwallis one day when he came in to kiss her good-by.
“I play with my things,” he said.
“Come here, Baby,” said Mamma fondly, and he went straight to her and snuggled close to her side. “You are a real comfort now,” she said, smiling; “you used to be such a horrid, struggling little fellow, never liking to be loved,” and then she loved him with her soft cheek and both her hands, that had ceased to be bony, and were white and pretty again. “You are my own, ownest baby,” she said, over and over again, and he entered no demur, but merely kissed her in return.
“Do you remember,” she said, “how you used to hate to be called a baby?”
Cornwallis laughed.
“But you don't mind now?”
“I like it,” he said, looking merrily into her eyes.
And then she hugged him once more in a peculiarly choking manner that had always seemed to give her a special satisfaction, and he went away to the cunning motherless little sister who was big enough now to clap her hands and bat her little blue kid heels against the rug when she saw him enter her room.
“Elaine is going to have a birthday next week,” Mrs. Tray told him this morning.
“How old will she be?” he asked with interest. Elaine was trying to chew up his thumb as he spoke, but he didn't mind her little ways—she was always wanting to bite something or somebody.
“She will be a year old,” replied Mrs. Tray.
“Won't you give Mamma to her for her present?” said Cornwallis.
“We don't know just what to do,” said Mrs. Tray, wrinkling her forehead thoughtfully. “You see, generally when a new baby comes it is so little that it really doesn't matter much; but Elaine is so big, she matters a good deal.”
“Well, I should say so,” said Cornwallis. Elaine had climbed to her feet and was clinging to his collar for support, and screaming to attract everyone's attention to the fact that she was standing up just like other people.
“And your mamma is almost too weak yet,” began Mrs. Tray, but just then Elaine, in a fervor of womanly independence, let go of her brother, and instantly sat down with such violence that all other subjects dropped with her.
Nevertheless, the grown-up people adopted Cornwallis's suggestion, and decided to celebrate Elaine's first birthday by introducing her to her mother. Mamma was walking about up-stairs now, and talking and laughing quite like her old self. The lady in white who had lived there so long spent most of her time reading in her own room—she didn't seem to have any business in the house any more.
On the morning of Elaine's birthday Cornwallis went into his mother's room. He was in a very fresh white sailor-suit, and he let his mother muss the collar without a murmur. Presently Papa came in, and they all three sat on the sofa together and played Three Bears, just as they used to play long ago.
“But I'm too big to be a Baby Bear now,” Cornwallis said, when the crease was almost entirely out of his trousers and Mamma was still tumbling his blouse.
“If we only had a real little Baby Bear!” said Papa.
Mamma put both arms suddenly around Cornwallis.'
“Oh, don't!” she cried, in a queer voice, “don't remind me. Do you think I don't know and remember? Why, if the little thing had lived it would have been big enough to play here with us now!”
Cornwallis felt his father start; he slipped out from between them instantly, and stood up and spoke:
“I don't think this has been a very well-managed family this year!” he said, indignantly, comprehending perfectly that his mother had thought of Elaine just as he had thought of his mother, and sympathizing with her from the keen standpoint of an equal sorrow.
“Now don't cry,” he said sternly; “nobody has done anything without they cried for ever so long,” and then he wiped his eyes hard with his two hands and ran out of the room, for he and Papa both knew that Elaine was asleep in her little carriage out by the side door, waiting for a good chance to meet her mamma.
A little later she woke, and Mrs. Tray and Nellie and Grandmamma took her into the sunshine-room off of the back hall and tied a bow on her shoulder, and fluffed up some of her hair and smoothed down some, and gave her a drink of milk. And then they carried her up to Mamma, who was quite white with expecting her.
Cornwallis's heart beat very fast; he stepped behind his mother's chair, and bit his lips.
Elaine was dreadfully frightened; she didn't seem to know that she was in her own house at all. She looked at even Mrs. Tray with a most dubious expression, and her chin quivered awfully. Papa had his arm about Mamma, and Mamma said, “Ah, but she's a very pretty little thing,” and then, “I wonder if she could at on my lap for a minute,” and then, “My little daughter!”
It looked as if everyone was surely going to cry now, and then all of a sudden Cornwallis saved the situation. He just peeped around the back of Mamma's chair, and Elaine saw him.
She fairly shrieked for joy! Mrs. Tray put her on Mamma's lap, and Cornwallis went down on his knees before her, and she grabbed the sailor collar just where the bright stripe ran, and began stuffing it into her mouth, while her little feet danced so wildly that Cornwallis had to catch them in his hands to keep her from maybe hurting Mamma.
Everyone began at once to laugh, Papa and Grandmamma first of all. Grandpapa had gotten there also, somehow, and Cornwallis heard him laughing, too, right behind him. When Elaine saw them all laughing, she laughed with them, and burying her fingers in Cornwallis's hair, just screamed in ecstasy.
It was all very silly—and nice.
Cornwallis was the first to become sober.
“Well, it's no wonder we feel happy,” he said; “we all know we're all right here today, and all this year we've been crying because everybody thought somebody wasn't.
I don't think that's right in a family.”
Mamma put out her hand and pulled him closer yet (by that same unfortunate collar).
“Oh, Baby,” she said, “you always knew more than all the rest of us put together.”
“I do when I'm told things I ask,” he replied with dignity.
Just then Norah came in with Elaine's cunning little birthday cake on a silver tray.
“Just like Sug—I mean Cornwallis's, when he was a baby,” said Grandmamma.
“He's my baby yet,” said Mamma, pulling him up to the place from which Mrs. Tray had just lifted Elaine.
“Yes, I am,” said Cornwallis, meekly. His surrender was most complete, and as soul-satisfying as only the yielding of love can be.
Norah had brought up a bottle of champagne, and Papa opened it while Grandmamma cut the cake. No one ate or drank anything, because it wasn't a cake or champagne hour of the day, but they each took a sip to Elaine's health, and to Manmma's happiness. And then Grandpapa began, “And now we'll drink to Sn—” but he was arrested right there by the steadiness of his grandson's eye, and corrected his language to “Cornwallis.”
Cornwallis drew a deep breath. His sweet little sister was never to be tortured with “Butterball” and “Was-a-Wee”—she was Elaine, and forever Elaine, and that through his own efforts and his efforts alone. And he was Cornwallis to everyone but Mamma, but still to be “Baby” to a mamma was better than being “Cornwallis” to a world.
So the young General marched forth, head up, flags flying, his little heart drumming the best music in all the world, and his soul serenely conscious that out of the jaws of victory he had snatched a final and most glorious defeat.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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