Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Born last evening to Mr. and Mrs. Dallam Wybrant, at their palatial
mansion on Chickasaw Drive, in the new Beechmont Park Realty
Development tract, an infant daughter, their first-born. Mother and
child both doing well; the proud papa reported this morning as
being practically out of danger and is expected to be entirely
recovered shortly, as Dock Boyd, the attending medico, says he has
brought three hundred babies into the world and never lost a father
yet. Ye editor extends heartiest congrats. Dal, it looks like the
cigars were on you!
The next chapter in the sequence of chapters leading to our climax is
short but essential. Returning home Sunday evening, Judge Priest is
informed that twice that day a strange young white lady has stopped at
the house urgently requesting that immediately upon his arrival he be so
good as to call on Mrs. Dallam Wybrant on a matter of pressing moment.
Bidden to describe the messenger, Jeff Poindexter can only say that she
'uz a powerful masterful-lookin' Yankee-talkin' lady, all dressed up lak
she mout belong to some kind of a new secret s'ciety lodge, which is
Jeff's way of summing up his impressions of the first professional
trained nurse ever imported, capped, caped and white shod, to our town.
It was this same professional, a cool and starchy vision, who led the
way up the wide stairs of the Chickasaw Drive house, the old judge, much
mystified, following close behind her. She ushered him into a bedroom,
bigger and more gorgeous than any bedroom he had ever seen, and leaving
him standing, hat in hand, at the bedside of her chief charge, she went
out and closed the door behind her.
From the pillows there looked up at him a face that was paler than when
he had last seen it, a face still drawn from pangs of agony recently
endured, but a face transfigured and radiant. The Madonna look was in it
now. Outside, the dusk of an August evening was thickening; and inside,
the curtains were half drawn and the electrics not yet turned on, but
even so, in that half light, the judge could mark the change here
revealed to him. He could sense, too, that the change was more spiritual
than physical, and he could feel his animosity for this woman softening
into something distantly akin to sympathy. At her left side, harbored in
the crook of her elbow, lay a cuddling bundle; a tiny head, all red and
bare, as though offering to Judge Priest's own bald, pinkish pate the
sincere flattery of imitation, was exposed; and the tip of a very small
ear, curled and crinkled like a sea shell. You take the combination of a
young mother cradling her first-born within the hollow of her arm and
you have the combination which has tautened the heartstrings of man
since the first man child came from the womb. The old man made a silent
obeisance of reverence; then waited for her to speak and expose the
purpose behind this totally unexpected summons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account