



Produced by David Widger






HIS MAJESTY BABY AND SOME COMMON PEOPLE

By Ian MacLaren

1902

To Andrew Carnegie,

The Munificent Benefactor Of

Scots Students




I.--HIS MAJESTY BABY

UNTIL the a'bus stopped and the old gentleman entered, we had been a
contented and genial company, travelling from a suburb into the city in
high, good fellowship, and our absolute monarch was Baby. His mother
was evidently the wife of a well-doing artisan, a wise-looking, capable,
bonnie young woman; and Baby was not a marvel of attire, nor could he
be called beautiful. He was dressed after a careful, tidy, comfortable
fashion, and he was a clear-skinned, healthy child; that is all you
would have noticed had you met the two on the street. In a'bus where
there is nothing to do for forty minutes except stare into one another's
faces, a baby has the great chance of his life, and this baby was
made to seize it. He was not hungry, and there were no pins about his
clothes, and nobody had made him afraid, and he was by nature a human
soul. So he took us in hand one by one, till he had reduced us all to a
state of delighted subjection, to the pretended scandal and secret
pride of his mother. His first conquest was easy, and might have been
discounted, for against such an onset there was no power of resistance
in the elderly woman opposite--one of the lower middles, fearfully
stout, and of course a grandmother. He simply looked at her--if he
smiled, that was thrown in--for, without her knowledge, her arms had
begun to shape for his reception--so often had children lain on that
ample resting-place. "Bless 'is little 'eart; it do me good to see him."
No one cared to criticize the words, and we remarked to ourselves how
the expression changes the countenance. Not heavy and red, far less
dull, the proper adjective for the face is motherly. The next passenger,
just above Grannie, is a lady, young and pretty, and a mother? Of
course; did you not see her look Baby over, as an expert at her
sharpest, before she grows old and is too easily satisfied? Will she
approve, or is there something wrong which male persons and grandmothers
cannot detect? The mother is conscious of inspection, and adjusts a
ribbon His Majesty had tossed aside--one of his few decorations which
he wore on parade for the good of the public and his own glory--and then
she meekly awaited approval. For a moment we were anxious, but that was
our foolishness, for in half a minute the lady's face relaxed, and she
passed Baby. She leant forward and asked questions, and we overheard
scraps of technical detail: "My first... fourteen months... six teeth...
always well." Baby was bored, and apologised to the'bus. "Mothers, you
know--this is the way they go on; but what a lot they do for us! so we
must be patient." Although rank outsiders--excluded from the rites of
the nursery--yet we made no complaint, but were rather pleased at this
conference. One was a lady, the other a working woman; they had not
met before, they were not likely to meet again, but they had forgotten
strangeness and differences in the common bond of motherhood. Opposite
me a priest was sitting and saying his office, but at this point his
eye fell on the mothers, and I thought his lips shaped the words "Sancta
Maria" before he went on with the appointed portion, but that may have
been my fancy. The'bus will soon be dropping into poetry. Let us be
serious and stare before us, as becometh well-bred English people.

Baby has wearied of inaction, and has begun another campaign, and
my heart sinks, for this time he courts defeat; On the other side of
Grannie and within Baby's sphere of influence was a man about whose
profession there could be little doubt, even if he had not a bag on his
knee and were not reading from a parchment document. After a long and
serious consideration of the lawyer's clear-cut, clean-shaven, bloodless
face, Baby leant forward and tapped gently on the deed, and then, when
the keen face looked up in quick inquiry, Baby replied with a smile
of roguish intelligence, as if to say, "Full of big words as long as
myself, but quite useless; it could all have been said in a sentence,
as you and I know quite well; by the way, that parchment would make an
excellent drum; do you mind me? A tune has just come into my head."

The lawyer, of course, drew away the deed, and frowned at the insolence
of the thing? No, he did not--there is a soul in lawyers, if you know
how to find it. He smiled. Well, it was not a first-rate smile, but
I swear that it was genuine, and the next time he did it better, and
afterwards it spread all over his face and lighted up his eyes. He had
never been exposed in such a genial, irresistible way before, and so he
held the drum, and Baby played a variation on "Rule Britannia" with much
spirit, while grannie appealed for applause.

"If 'e don't play as well as the band in 'yde Park of a Sunday."

After a well deserved rest of forty seconds, during which we wagged our
heads in wonder, Baby turned his attention to his right-hand neighbour,
and for the balance of the minute examined her with compassion. An old
maid without question, with her disposition written on the thin, tightly
drawn lips, and the hard, grey eyes. None of us would care to trifle
with... Will he dare?... if he has not! That was his chief stroke of
genius, and it deserved success--when, with an expression of unaffected
pity, he put out his soft, dimpled hand and gently stroked her cheek.
"Poor thing, all alone,'lone,'lone," he cooed in her ear, as if to say
with liquid baby speech, "I'm so solly, solly, solly, so velly, velly,
velly solly." Did I say that her eyes were tender and true enough to
win a man's heart and keep it, and that her lips spoke of patience and
gentleness? If I did not, I repair my neglect. She must have been a
beautiful woman in her youth--no, no, to-day, just when she inclines
her head ever so slightly, and Baby strokes her cheek again, and cooes,
"Pretty, pretty, pretty, and so velly, velly, velly good." Was not that
a lovely flush on her cheek?--oh, the