CHAPTER XIV

HANNAH

At noon, in the shallows of the reef, under the burning sun, the water

would be quite warm. They would carry the baby down here, and Emmeline

would wash it with a bit of flannel. After a few days it scarcely ever

screamed, even when she washed it. It would lie on her knees during the

process, striking valiantly out with its arms and legs, staring

straight up at the sky. Then, when she turned it on its face, it would

lay its head down and chuckle and blow bubbles at the coral of the

reef, examining, apparently, the pattern of the coral with deep and

philosophic attention.

Dick would sit by with his knees up to his chin, watching it all. He

felt himself to be part proprietor in the thing—as indeed he was.

The mystery of the affair still hung over them both. A week ago they

two had been alone, and suddenly from nowhere this new individual had

appeared.

It was so complete. It had hair on its head, tiny finger-nails, and

hands that would grasp you. It had a whole host of little ways of its

own, and every day added to them.

In a week the extreme ugliness of the newborn child had vanished. Its

face, which had seemed carved in the imitation of a monkey’s face from

half a brick, became the face of a happy and healthy baby. It seemed to

see things, and sometimes it would laugh and chuckle as though it had

been told a good joke. Its black hair all came off and was supplanted

by a sort of down. It had no teeth. It would lie on its back and kick

and crow, and double its fists up and try to swallow them alternately,

and cross its feet and play with its toes. In fact, it was exactly like

any of the thousand-and-one babies that are born into the world at

every tick of the clock.

“What will we call it?” said Dick one day, as he sat watching his son

and heir crawling about on the grass under the shade of the breadfruit

leaves.

“Hannah,” said Emmeline promptly.

The recollection of another baby once heard about was in her mind; and

it was as good a name as any other, perhaps, in that lonely place,

notwithstanding the fact that Hannah was a boy.

Koko took a vast interest in the new arrival. He would hop round it and

peer at it with his head on one side; and Hannah would crawl after the

bird and try to grab it by the tail. In a few months so valiant and

strong did he become that he would pursue his own father, crawling

before him on the grass, and you might have seen the mother and father

and child playing all together like three children, the bird sometimes

hovering overhead like a good spirit, sometimes joining in the fun.

Sometimes Emmeline would sit and brood over the child, a troubled

expression on her face and a far-away look in her eyes. The old vague

fear of mischance had returned—the dread of that viewless form her

imagination half pictured behind the smile on the face of Nature. Her

happiness was so great that she dreaded to lose it.

There is nothing more wonderful than the birth of a man, and all that

goes to bring it about. Here, on this island, in the very heart of the

sea, amidst the sunshine and the wind-blown trees, under the great blue

arch of the sky, in perfect purity of thought, they would discuss the

question from beginning to end without a blush, the object of their

discussion crawling before them on the grass, and attempting to grab

feathers from Koko’s tail.

It was the loneliness of the place as well as their ignorance of life

that made the old, old miracle appear so strange and fresh—as

beautiful as the miracle of death had appeared awful. In thoughts vague

and beyond expression in words, they linked this new occurrence with

that old occurrence on the reef six years before. The vanishing and the

coming of a man.

* * * * * *

Hannah, despite his unfortunate name, was certainly a most virile and

engaging baby. The black hair which had appeared and vanished like some

practical joke played by Nature, gave place to a down at first as

yellow as sun-bleached wheat, but in a few months’ time tinged with

auburn.

One day—he had been uneasy and biting at his thumbs for some time

past—Emmeline, looking into his mouth, saw something white and like a

grain of rice protruding from his gum. It was a tooth just born. He

could eat bananas now, and breadfruit, and they often fed him on

fish—a fact which again might have caused a medical man to shudder;

yet he throve on it all, and waxed stouter every day.

Emmeline, with a profound and natural wisdom, let him crawl about stark

naked, dressed in ozone and sunlight. Taking him out on the reef, she

would let him paddle in the shallow pools, holding him under the

armpits whilst he splashed the diamond-bright water into spray with his

feet, and laughed and shouted.

They were beginning now to experience a phenomenon, as wonderful as the

birth of the child’s body—the birth of his intelligence: the peeping

out of a little personality with predilections of its own, likes and

dislikes.

He knew Dick from Emmeline; and when Emmeline had satisfied his

material wants, he would hold out his arms to go to Dick if he were by.

He looked upon Koko as a friend, but when a friend of Koko’s—a bird

with an inquisitive mind and three red feathers in his tail—dropped in

one day to inspect the newcomer, he resented the intrusion, and

screamed.

He had a passion for flowers, or anything bright. He would laugh and

shout when taken on the lagoon in the dinghy, and make as if to jump

into the water to get at the bright-coloured corals below.

Ah me! we laugh at young mothers, and all the miraculous things they

tell us about their babies. They see what we cannot see: the first

unfolding of that mysterious flower, the mind.

One day they were out on the lagoon. Dick had been rowing; he had

ceased, and was letting the boat drift for a bit. Emmeline was dancing

the child on her knee, when it suddenly held out its arms to the

oarsman and said:

“Dick!”

The little word, so often heard and easily repeated, was its first word

on earth.

A voice that had never spoken in the world before, had spoken; and to

hear his name thus mysteriously uttered by a being he has created, is

the sweetest and perhaps the saddest thing a man can ever know.

Dick took the child on his knee, and from that moment his love for it

was more than his love for Emmeline or anything else on earth.