A serious defect in the practical arrangements of this hospice de la misere! There ought to be some system, a telephone in the delivery-room, a bulletin board, a set of signals! It is a problem which calls for collective solution; the opening of a paternity hospital, a place for expectant fathers, where they may receive proper care! Nurses will have some time for them. Attendants will consider their feelings, and give them information—perhaps lectures on the subject of obstetrics, especially prepared for sensitive minds, with the abnormalities omitted or played down. There will be soft music, perhaps motion pictures; above all there will be news, plenty of it, prompt and dependable. Perhaps a place like a broker’s office, where a "Translux" gives the market figures on a screen.
Every time Lanny came near the wall with the bell-button he wanted to press it and demand exact information as to the condition of his beloved wife. Every time the French music-teacher asked him a question it was harder to conceal the fact that he wasn’t listening. A damnable thing! Put the blame wherever you chose, on nature or on human incompetence, the fact remained that this wife whom he loved so tenderly, with so much pity, must be in agony, she must be completely exhausted. Something ought to be done! Here it was getting on toward midnight—Lanny looked at his wristwatch and saw that three minutes had passed since he had looked the last time; it was only twenty-two minutes to eleven— but that was bad enough—some thirteen hours since the labor pains had begun, and they had told him it was time to leave her to her fate. Damn it—
XI
A door of the room opened, and there was a nurse. Lanny took one glance, and saw that she was different from any nurse he had seen thus far. She was smiling, yes, actually beaming with smiles. "Oh, monsieur!" she exclaimed. "C’est une fille! Une tres belle fille! Si charmante!" She made a gesture, indicating the size of a female prodigy. Lanny found himself going suddenly dizzy, and reached for a chair.
"Et madame?" he cried.
"Madame est si brave! Elle est magnifique! Tout va bien." The formula again. Lanny poured out questions, and satisfied himself that Irma was going to survive. She was exhausted, but that was to be expected. There were details to be attended to; in half an hour or so it should be possible for monsieur to see both mother and daughter. "Tout de suite! Soyez tranquille!"
The teacher of piano had Lanny Budd by the hand and was shaking it vigorously. For some time after the American had resumed his seat the other was still pouring out congratulations. "Merci, merci," Lanny said mechanically, meanwhile thinking: "A girl! Beauty will be disappointed." But he himself had no complaint. He had been a ladies' man from childhood, seeing his father only at long intervals, cared for by his mother and by women servants. There had been his mother’s women friends, then his half-sister and his stepmother in New England, then a new half-sister at Bienvenu, then a succession of his sweethearts, and last of all his wife. He had got something from them all, and would find a daughter no end of fun. It was all right.
Lanny got up, excused himself from the French gentleman, and went to the telephone. He called his mother and told her the news. Yes, he said, he was delighted, or would be when he got over being woozy. No, he wouldn’t forget the various cablegrams: one to his father in Connecticut, one to Irma’s mother on Long Island, one to his half-sister Bess in Berlin. Beauty would do the telephoning to various friends in the neighborhood—trust her not to miss those thrills! Lanny would include his friend Rick in England and his friend Kurt in Germany; he had the messages written, save for filling in the word "girl."
He carried out his promise to Pietro Corsatti. It was still early in New York; the story would make the night edition of the morning papers, that which was read by cafe society, whose darling Irma Barnes had been. After receiving Pete’s congratulations, Lanny went back for others which the French gentleman had thought up. Astonishing how suddenly the black clouds had lifted from the sky of a young husband’s life, how less murderous the ways of mother nature appeared! It became possible to chat with a piano-teacher about the technique he employed; to tell one’s own experiences with the Leschetizsky method, and later with the Breithaupt; to explain the forearm rotary motion, and illustrate it on the arm of one’s chair. Lanny found himself tapping out the opening theme of Liszt’s symphonic poem, From the Cradle to the Grave. But he stopped with the first part.
XII
The cheerful nurse came again, and escorted the successful father down a passage to a large expanse of plate-glass looking into a room with tiny white metal cribs. Visitors were not permitted inside, but a nurse with a white mask over her mouth and nose brought to the other side of the glass a bundle in a blanket and laid back the folds, exposing to Lanny’s gaze a brick-red object which might have been a great bloated crinkled caterpillar, only it had appendages, and a large round ball at the top with a face which would have been human if it hadn’t been elfish. There was a mouth with lips busily sucking on nothing, and a pair of large eyes which didn’t move; however, the nurse at Lanny’s side assured him that they had been tested with a light, and they worked. He was assured that this was his baby; to prove it there was a tiny necklace with a metal tag; monsieur and madame might rest assured that they would not carry home the baby of an avocat, nor yet that of a teacher of piano technique.
The bloated red caterpillar was folded up in the blanket again, and Lanny was escorted to Irma’s room. She lay in a white hospital bed, her head sunk back in a pillow, her eyes closed. How pale she looked, how different from the rich brunette beauty he had left that morning! Now her dark hair was disordered—apparently they hadn’t wished to disturb her even that much. Lanny tiptoed into the room, and she opened her eyes slowly, as if with an effort; when she recognized him she gave him a feeble smile.
"How are you, Irma?"
"I’ll be all right," she whispered. "Tired, awfully tired."
The nurse had told him not to talk to her. He said: "It’s a lovely baby."
"I’m glad. Don’t worry. I’ll rest, and get better."
Lanny felt a choking in his throat; it was pitiful, the price that women had to pay! But he knew he musn’t trouble her with his superfluous emotions. A nurse came with a little wine, which she took through a tube. There was a sedative in it, and she would sleep. He took her hand, which lay limp upon the coverlet, and kissed it gently. "Thank you, dear. I love you." That was enough.
Outside in the passage was the surgeon, all cleaned up and ready for the outside world. His professional manner was second nature. Everything was as it should be; never a better patient, a more perfect delivery. A few hours' sleep, a little nourishment, and Mr. Budd would be surprised by the change in his wife. A lovely sturdy infant, well over nine pounds—that had caused the delay. "Sorry you had such a long wait; no help for that. Do you read the Bible, Mr. Budd? A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she re-membereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. In this case it’s a woman, but we’re no longer in ancient Judea, and the women are bossing the show. In my country and yours they have the vote, and they own more than half the property, I’m told; it’s their world, and what they are going to do with it we men have to wait and find out. Good night, Mr. Budd."