and instantly discharge a shriek, or a yell, or a howl which bursts the
listening ear and surprises the owner of it into saying words which
would not go well with a halo if he had one. The baby Tom would claw
anybody who came within reach of his nails, and pound anybody he could
reach with his rattle. He would scream for water until he got it,
and then throw cup and all on the floor and scream for more.
He was indulged in all his caprices, howsoever troublesome and
exasperating they might be; he was allowed to eat anything he wanted,
particularly things that would give him the stomach-ache.
When he got to be old enough to begin to toddle about and say broken
words and get an idea of what his hands were for, he was a more
consummate pest than ever. Roxy got no rest while he was awake.
He would call for anything and everything he saw, simply saying,
“Awnt it!” (want it), which was a command. When it was brought,
he said in a frenzy, and motioning it away with his hands,
“Don’t awnt it! don’t awnt it!” and the moment it was gone he set up
frantic yells of “Awnt it! awnt it!” and Roxy had to give wings to
her heels to get that thing back to him again before he could get time
to carry out his intention of going into convulsions about it.
What he preferred above all other things was the tongs.
This was because his “father” had forbidden him to have them lest
he break windows and furniture with them. The moment Roxy’s back
was turned he would toddle to the presence of the tongs and say,
“Like it!” and cock his eye to one side or see if Roxy was observed;
then, “Awnt it!” and cock his eye again; then, “Hab it!” with another
furtive glace; and finally, “Take it!”–and the prize was his.
The next moment the heavy implement was raised aloft; the next,
there was a crash and a squall, and the cat was off on three legs to
meet an engagement; Roxy would arrive just as the lamp or a window
went to irremediable smash.
Tom got all the petting, Chambers got none. Tom got all the delicacies,
Chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar. In consequence Tom
was a sickly child and Chambers wasn’t. Tom was “fractious,” as Roxy
called it, and overbearing; Chambers was meek and docile.
With all her splendid common sense and practical everyday ability,
Roxy was a doting fool of a mother. She was this toward her child–
and she was also more than this: by the fiction created by herself,
he was become her master; the necessity of recognizing this relation
outwardly and of perfecting herself in the forms required to express
the recognition, had moved her to such diligence and faithfulness in
practicing these forms that this exercise soon concreted itself into habit;
it became automatic and unconscious; then a natural result followed:
deceptions intended solely for others gradually grew practically
into self-deceptions as well; the mock reverence became real reverence,
the mock homage real homage; the little counterfeit rift of separation
between imitation-slave and imitation-master widened and widened,
and became an abyss, and a very real one– and on one side of it
stood Roxy, the dupe of her own deceptions, and on the other stood
her child, no longer a usurper to her, but her accepted and
recognized master. He was her darling, her master, and her deity
all in one, and in her worship of him she forgot who she was and
what he had been.
In babyhood Tom cuffed and banged and scratched Chambers unrebuked,
and Chambers early learned that between meekly bearing it and
resenting it, the advantage all lay with the former policy.
The few times that his persecutions had moved him beyond control
and made him fight back had cost him very dear at headquarters;
not at the hands of Roxy, for if she ever went beyond scolding
him sharply for “forgett’n’ who his young marster was,” she at
least never extended her punishment beyond a box on the ear.