“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.”
Angela shrugged her shoulders.
“Bachelors know everything,” she murmured ironically. “And isn’t that equally true of Number Three and Number Four and all the rest of them?”
“Not quite. I’ve noticed that there’s usually a gap before Number Three. Number Three is often produced because the other two are getting independent, and it would be ‘nice to have a baby in the nursery again.’ Curious taste; revolting little creatures, but biologically a sound instinct, I suppose. And so they go on, some nice and some nasty, and some bright and some dull, but they pair off and pal up more or less, and finally comes the afterthought which like the first-born gets an undue share of attention.”
“And it’s all very unfair, is that what you’re saying?”
“Exactly. That’s the whole point about life, it is unfair!”
“And what can one do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Then really, Baldy, I don’t see what you’re talking about.”
“I told Arthur the other day. I’m a soft-hearted chap. I like to see people being happy. I like to make up to people a bit for what they haven’t got and can’t have. It evens things up a bit. Besides, if you don’t-” he paused a moment-“it can be dangerous….”
3
“I do think Baldy talks a lot of nonsense,” said Angela pensively to her husband when their guest had departed.
“John Baldock is one of the foremost scholars in this country,” said Arthur Franklin with a slight twinkle.
“Oh, I know that.” Angela was faintly scornful. “I’d be willing to sit in meek adoration if he was laying down the law on Greeks and Romans, or obscure Elizabethan poets. But what can he know about children?”
“Absolutely nothing, I should imagine,” said her husband. “By the way, he suggested the other day that we should give Laura a dog.”
“A dog! But she’s got a kitten.”
“According to him, that’s not the same thing.”
“How very odd…. I remember him saying once that he disliked dogs.”
“I believe he does.”
Angela said thoughtfully: “Now Charles, perhaps, ought to have a dog…. He looked quite scared the other day when those puppies at the Vicarage rushed at him. I hate to see a boy afraid of dogs. If he had one of his own, it would accustom him to it. He ought to learn to ride, too. I wish he could have a pony of his own. If only we had a paddock!”
“A pony’s out of the question, I’m afraid,” said Franklin.
In the kitchen, the parlourmaid, Ethel, said to the cook:
“That old Baldock, he’s noticed it too.”
“Noticed what?”
“Miss Laura. That she isn’t long for this world. Asking Nurse about it, they were. Ah, she’s got the look, sure enough, no mischief in her, not like Master Charles. You mark my words, she won’t live to grow up.”
But it was Charles who died.
CHAPTER two
1
Charles died of infantile paralysis. He died at school; two other boys had the disease but recovered.
To Angela Franklin, herself now in a delicate state of health, the blow was so great as to crush her completely. Charles, her beloved, her darling, her handsome merry high-spirited boy.
She lay in her darkened bedroom, staring at the ceiling, unable to weep. And her husband and Laura and the servants crept about the muted house. In the end the doctor advised Arthur Franklin to take his wife abroad.