The Dream Baby, by Olivia Howard Dunbar (1904)

[lb_lee]

This is not a comic, and it came from a proper magazine, not a zine, but for accessibility's sake I decided to clean up that dreadful machine transcription I found on archive.org.

The Dream Baby
by Olivia Howard Dunbar

Published in August 1904, in Harper's Bazar [sic]
Illustrated by John Hardy


“It will seem a little like dying, won’t it?”
grimly commented Miss Agatha Holt,
pausing to contemplate, as though for
the first time, her immediate future.

Miss Emily, in the opposite corner of the
fragrant little sitting-room, that was unacquainted with other disorder than the present
quite legitimate one of packing, was wrapping with delicately conscientious fingers certain precious bits of china. The windows
were open, and there surged gently in a relaxed June atmosphere. The draperies at
doors and windows stirred sleepily.

“Rather more like heaven, Agatha,”
amended Miss Emily, in a thin, girlish voice
that was not so incongruous, after all, with
the unmistakable gray hands in her brown
hair. It was not unlikely that this lovable
lady would remain an ingénue to the brink of
senility. Then something in Miss Agatha’s
expression made her add: “ Now, if you’re
going to regret it, dear, we won’t 'retire' at
all. It's not too late. Perhaps we might not
get together as large a school next year, but—”

“Nonsense!” brusquely interrupted the
other, accelerating the executive precision of
her packing. “I want nothing of the sort.
There’s no sweeter sorrow than parting with
text-books and kindergarten cubes. Then I
haven’t the anguish of a schoolroom full of
shorn friendships, as you know. dear. Oh
no, I’ve never been ‘dear teacher’! It isn’t
that. But to me, because I am well and
strong, there is, perversely enough, something
like humiliation in confessing, at, fifty-three,
that one has hung up one’s tools for good.
Why, one almost despises oneself!”

“I don’t, Agatha,” protested Miss Emily,
putting on her glasses for a closer study of
Miss Agatha’s mood.


“I know; it’s because you’re fortunate
enough to be consistently feminine. You
appreciate that we are about to enter upon a dignified and harmonious spinsterly existence,
whose pleasures we have amply earned. Well,
so do I, and I naturally want to live up to my
opportunities. Only, I have rough corners,
you know, Emily, and I don’t doubt you’ll feel
them sharper than ever, now.”

“But that’s something to be proud of, my
dear,” Emily gently chirped. “Most people’s
corners are worn smooth in the schoolroom.”

“Poor darling!” Where her idol was concerned.
Miss Agatha’s pity overflowed at a
word. “They did sandpaper you, the little
wretches! You always were absurdly soft,
Emily, and the schoolroom is no place for
softness. I shall never become reconciled to
your having missed your proper background,
which, as I’ve told you often enough, would
have been fireside domesticity. Don’t talk to
me of destiny!”

But indeed Miss Emily appeared to have no
wish to. Her lack of zest in a discussion of
this order was always indicated by some sweet
irrelevance. “Agatha, have we any more
tissue - paper?" served the purpose at this
point.

For a week past, the atmosphere in the
little flat had been singularly vibrant; the
week, that is, since school had closed—with
a definite, final snap, this time—and preparations
for the summer flitting had begun.
These latter were based, it is true, on an
exaggerated estimate of the ravages that may
be wrought in a summer by the moth and rust
that do corrupt domestic treasures; but any
less stalwart battery of defence would have
failed to accommodate the ladies' delicately
balanced consciences to the enjoyment of
their approaching summer in Gloucester, with
its delights, familiar now these many years,
of wandering over wind-swept moors, intelligently
admiring sunsets and storms, reading
up neglected volumes of history and experiencing
contact with the sublimated cultivation
of Massachusetts. The “retiring” from
their profession, the flurry of on unaccustomed
concern with matters of finance, the ritualistic
elaboration of their packing,—these
had, in combination, imparted to the two
ladies an extraordinary state of tension, an
unnatural aliveness to what was going on
about them. Twelfth Street, upon which they
had looked daily for years, had, as Miss
Agatha said, a 11 final ” look, though they were
certainly returning in the autumn. And their
friends bade them farewell for the summer—
though this, again, was but their distorted perception
of it—as though the two ladies were
already remote from the familiar currents.
What more natural, under these stimulating
circumstances, than that Miss Agatha should
have been driven, from mere “ nerves,” to
frequent caustic comments? — or that Miss
Emily should have timidly confessed that only
twice before within her memory had she been
so emotionally torn up by the roots:—once,
when she had secured her first position as
teacher, and again, when she and Agatha had
made their first trip to Europe, bent on a
decorous tour of the English cathedral towns.

For twenty-five years, it should be
understood, this delightful pair had worked side
by side. For fifteen years a certain door had
borne the legend: “Miss Holt and Miss
Vanderkoep: Classes for Young Children.”
As “Miss-Holt-and-Miss-Vanderkoep” they
were, indeed, invariably known. Socially or
professionally, the concept of them wa3 single
rather than dual. When, at half past eight in
the morning, two persons of authority would
approach the schoolroom, one slight, smiling,
tranquil, one taller, breezier, and, to the infant
mind, infinitely more terrible and “sarcastic”
—appalling characteristic in a teacher!—those
members of the “classes for young
children” who were lingering reticently in
the background, would exchange the unnecessary
observation, “Here come Miss-Holt-and-
Miss-Vanderkoep!” When the mothers of
these very young persons wished to confer, as
it were, a social nod upon the accomplished
instructors, phrases of affectionate condescension
would invite "My-dear-Miss-Holt-
and-Miss-Vanderkoep.” To their friends, to
their butcher, to their clergyman, to their
janitor, they were, always, “Miss-Holt-and-
Miss-Vanderkoep.” So, quite naturally, the
devoted pair, though by no menus lacking in
individuality, had long ceased to think of
themselves as divisible, and it seemed probable
they would continue indefinitely, “Miss-
Holt-and-Miss-Vanderkoep.”

Once in serene possession of tho recuperative
joys upon which they had so properly
counted, the monumental fact of their
“retirement” acquired a certain agreeable
dimness. There were moments when Miss Agatha
and Miss Emily almost forgot that they had
attained the parting of the ways,—that chill,
academic routine lay behind, and graceful
and improving leisure lay before. It was
incredible that it should have been be
disconcerting, after years of longing, to be brought
face to face, at last, with the opportunity for
graceful and improving leisure!

Invariably, heretofore, the two ladies had
returned to town on the fifteenth of
September, a date that is widely conceded to be
appropriate and dignified. This year, when the
eighth of September came, Miss Agatha asked,
a little nervously, "Have you begun to pack
yet, dear?”

Miss Emily tried to pretend she did not
understand.

“My dear, we’ve always gone back on the
fifteenth. I—wrote Hotchkiss we were
coming then. He asked, you know, about the
floors.”

“I’ve always fancied it must be wonderful
here in October,” said Miss Emily, sentimentally.
“You know we’ve so often wished—”

“I know.” Miss Agatha appeared to be reflecting.
“To me, I confess, it seems a little
absurd to stay over an extra six weeks simply
for the idle consideration of landscape. Still,
Emily, if you really wish to— And what
in the world did we ‘retire' for if not to do
exactly as we please?”

Miss Emily paused in her turn. “Well,
then,” she said, with the air of one making
an original observation, “let us go on the
fifteenth. Will you see about the stateroom,
Agatha?”

The economical decision of the previous
June to do without a maid was a thousand
times mentally applauded by Miss Agatha,
who was quite ready to confess to herself that
she would otherwise have found tho autumn
days uncomfortably long; and who, as it
was, quite immoderately indulged herself in the riotous
pastime of sweeping the rooms. All the drudgery,
indeed, of the new regimen was firmly appropriated by
Miss Agatha, and for two reasons. It helped, she
thought, to justify an existence that now seemed sadly
purposeless; and it secured her the happiness of seeing
Emily’s slender, ladylike hands engaged in the lighter
and showier of the domestic tasks. Emily in
conjunction with the breakfast china or the linen-closet was a
spectacle peculiarly appropriate and charming; while at
a glimpse of Emily preparing a cake, fond-hearted Miss
Agatha could have indulged, with all the zest in the
world, in just some such affectionate panegyric as
pretty Ruth Pinch evoked, stirring together her
immortal pudding.

In proportion as Miss Agatha felt the dreariness of
exclusion from blackboards and chalk, primers and
basket-weaving, and the sound of sweet, unreasonable
little voices, she characteristically strove to keep a
knowledge of her feeling from Miss Emily. It came
about that certain topics were never mentioned between
them. Agatha, who had always taken the lead, had the
air of protecting the younger woman from—neither of
them could have told what. Certainly not from this
charming, unfettered life they had so long yearned for!
Meanwhile, Agatha so tenderly feared that her friend
suffered from conditions she herself had brought about
that she did not even dare ask the questions that might
have ended her suspense.

One day poor Agatha's clouded conscience lightened.
“Emily darling,” she exclaimed, "shouldn’t you like to
be at home to some of the children on Wednesday
afternoons? It would please them, you know, they’re so fond
of you.”

“Why, Agatha!”

“Should you like it?”

“I think it would he perfectly lovely,” gushed Miss
Emily, in all sincerity.

The success of the first of these cheerful if a trifle
tumultuous occasions was complete. Agatha, who, after
a brief welcome of the guests, had retired to the kitchen,
ostensibly in the interests of domestic affairs, smiled and
frowned alternately. “Poor Emily!” she anxiously
commented. “She’s happier with those children than
she has been in six months. Poor dear!”

At breakfast, a few mornings later. Miss Agatha was
unusually silent. “I’ve something very odd to tell you.
Emily,” she remarked at last. "I dreamed of you last
night.”

“Oh dear!” Miss Emily, hidden away in her bureau
drawers, kept a “dream-book,” and she well knew, from
trustful consultation, just how direfully portentous it
is to dream of—

“Oh, but this was a delightful dream,” Miss Agatha
hastened to assure her. "It was a dream of you and a
baby. You’ve always had a Madonna look, you know,
Emily, but there you were all Madonna. I can see the
little thing now with its sensitive wee face—it wasn’t
more than six months old—and a patrician dot of a nose
and mysterious blue eyes. And what was most curious
was that you seemed to exercise some uncanny maternal
spell over it; for when it fretted you said ”—Miss
Agatha paused and smiled to herself at the tender absurdity
of the recollection—“you said, ‘Hush,
Vanderkoep!'—and he hushed.”

“Vanderkoep!" echoed Miss Emily. “And I always
thought it would be such a good name for a boy. But,
Agatha, what was the rest of it?”

“There was nothing else. Or if there was, I failed
to realize it. Just you and Vanderkoep projected
against space. There may, of course, have been—some
other members of tho family, but I didn’t see them.”

“How curious,” gently commented Miss Emily, who,
held in the thrall of this unusual narrative, had quite
forgotten to drink her coffee. “And he was pretty?”

“Altogether charming. Not the plump Cupid type.
One could fancy him developing into something really
distinguished. Oh, I should know him anywhere, it was
all so startlingly vivid. It seemed almost,” she went on,
with an effort to be quite explicit, “like a supernatural
realization of what might have been, of what should
have been. With such a very slightly different turn of
the wheel, Emily,— Ah, how we all like to ponder on
the ‘ifs’!”

Miss Emily reflected a little. “How soft and sweet
they are, aren’t they?” she said, tenderly. “Babies, I
mean.”

“Very,” agreed Miss Agatha.

Again and again through the day Agatha found her
friend regarding her with a kind of silent eagerness.
And, though affecting not to notice this, she too
discovered, a little to her discomfort, that the impression of
her singular dream was strangely slow to fade.

It was with a greatly disquieted air that she came to
breakfast the next morning.

“Did you sleep well, dear?” inquired Miss Emily,
with u new timidity.

“Not in the least well. A succession of nightmares.
And when I’ve been dieting, too. It’s preposterous!”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“It’s precisely what I did. and frantically, in my
sleep. I have passed my night, Emily, in a mad chase
after that baby of yours, that Vanderkoep. If you will
believe me, he fell down-stairs before my very eyes!”

“Oh, Agatha!”

“But I picked him up, and when I found he wasn’t
killed I put him in a hot bath as a restorative.
However, he almost drowned himself, for he was so smooth
and slippery I couldn’t hold him. Emily, I must ask
you to give me another cup of coffee and to make it
strong. I feel a literal fatigue.”

“And there was no one with him?"

“You reappeared at last, and when you
took him in your arms you both looked so
pretty I couldn’t scold either of you!”

“Was he good when I took him?” asked
Miss Emily, as if she were sure of the
answer.

“Perfectly. Did I tell you, Emily, that the
child has beautiful eyes? And one of his
dimples corresponds with that one of yours
that you ought to have outgrown long ago!”

“What kind of sounds does he make?”

“Why, something like this,”—Miss Agatha
obligingly made a desperate endeavor to
imitate the formless gurgles of the dream-baby.

“Of course,” beamed Miss Emily, in
complete approval. “How dear he will be when
he talks,” she added, unconsciously.

Agatha looked up in wonder. Nor did her
later reflections on this conversation prove
reassuring.

Meanwhile, the dream-baby maintained in
the family interests a prominence altogether
unaccountable. Peculiarly susceptible to his
shadowy fascination. Miss Emily expressed
her affectionate absorption by the most
significant of omissions. For the first time in her
life, she neglected her embroidery, and it
became her inexplicable habit to sit idle, almost
motionless, through several hours. Or, adroitly
succeeding in the introduction of Yanderkoep
as a subject of conversation, she would
devote herself to a strained effort to transfer
from Miss Agatha’s mental vision to her own
every detail of the tantalizing image.

At close intervals Miss Agatha—oh, quite
in spite of herself! for she had vowed that
she would never dream of Vanderkoep again,
and had forsworn her nightly glass of milk,
lest that modest nutriment be responsible—
had further visions of the engaging phantom
who, in his peculiar and insubstantial
fashion, had made himself so integral a part
of the little family. And with each dream
her perception of him became more
consistently rational; there were no lurid escapes
from sudden deaths in these later visions.
And while, actually, Miss Agatha had never
conspicuously succeeded in expressing her
sympathy with children, having been, indeed,
through all her pedagogical experience,
rather hopelessly at odds with them, with
Vanderkoep she got on a singularly
satisfactory footing. He would, she lamented,
never sit in her lap with the same look of
rapturous content that he wore while held in
Emily’s tenderly maternal embrace. But his
amiable, if picturesquely incomplete remarks
showed that there were no reservations in his
affection; and the most harmonious understanding
pervaded those intangible domestic
scenes where Emily and the baby, an
altogether radiant picture, would suffer Agatha
to sit by, their happy and admiring complement.

Secretly, however, the fact that the dreams
became increasingly unlike dreams was a
matter of serious concern to Miss Agatha, that
most sensible and clear-headed of women, that
substantial compound of keen humor and
broad common sense! Dreams with the magnificent
incoherence of ordinary, familiar
dreamland, she could have tolerated; but
visions that dared again and again to shape
themselves into so audacious—and, yes, so
bewitching!—a semblance of reality, beset her
with vague terrors. She had become far too
expert in the uncanny business for her sadly
disturbed peace of mind.

It might have been expected that
Vanderkoep’s progress in life would be by unnatural
fits and starts, something after the manner
of the immortal Alice. Quite on the contrary,
his development kept pace with the calendar;
and his accomplishments, as the months went
by, corresponded precisely with the measure
of his existence. He crept, sat erect, and
otherwise asserted himself at, in each ease,
the normal period. It is true that neither of
the two ladies could have divined this
gratifying fact; but having formed the habit of
jotting down Vanderkoep’s exploits in an
ornate book designed for that purpose, and
blushingly bought by Miss Emily at a
department store, they discovered, on
comparing these notes with the information given
each month in <em>Baby and his Ways</em>, the
magazine for which Miss Emily had promptly
subscribed, that there was absolutely nothing to
criticise in the dream-baby’s development.
"Though what we should do about it, if there
was. Heaven only knows!” Miss Agatha had
remarked in a candid outburst that quite
wounded sensitive Miss Emily.

One day Agatha came in from a meeting of
the “Municipal Government Club” which
she had joined on the assurance of its
president that it would “enrich her life,” and
found Emily sedulously erasing the evidence
of tears. Suspicion flew like an arrow and
hit the mark.

“I suppose it’s that baby again,” groaned
Agatha.

“He hasn’t done anything,” sobbed Emily,
in superfluous defence of the dream-baby. “I
suppose it’s his not really belonging to me
that I mind so much. And then, I might as
well tell you, Agatha, that the worst of it is
—that nobody ever had a baby before without
being able to make clothes for it!” Here the
poor lady’s grief quite overcame her.

“Hush, hush, dear!”

“I want to sew him a little dross more than
I want anything, Agatha! And you know
how beautifully I could make it. I have
thought how I should have it out square, so as
to show the exquisite back of his neck. You
were telling me yesterday how I loved to kiss
him there... Agatha!”—Emily was very
timid—“what should you think if I bought.
—well, perhaps not a dress, but some flannel
and made him a little jacket, just to please
myself?”

"Emily, I beg of you never to talk in this
way again. I blame myself beyond all telling.
Please, dear, let us try to forget it all!”

The sobbing figure seemed not to hear.
“Agatha,” she said, “I want you to promise
me something,—that you will never keep
from me anything in regard to Vanderkoep.
It is my right to know everything and at
once. So you must not only tell me, but it
must be immediately, the next morning—
whatever, whatever, it may be.”

Agatha, whose affection for her friend was
ever her line of least resistance, succumbed.

"Why, yes, dear, I promise,” she agreed,
nervously. “Let me make you some tea.”

Within the few months of Venderkoep’s
spectral existence there had at times
threatened to appear—though the admission could
not hare been wrung from either of tho two
friends—a narrow rift within the exquisitely
close tissue of their intimacy. The lack was
perhaps not so much of understanding as of
sincerity, of outspokenness, between them;
and Miss Agatha, who suffered excruciatingly
from the knowledge of this, was also
painfully aware of the cause. Quite
unconsciously, Emily was jealous of her more intimate
knowledge of Vanderkoep. And why, thought
the unhappy Agatha, should she not be? How
grotesquely cruel it was that Emily should
always be obliged to learn at second hand of
Vanderkoep’s countless physical perfections
and delicious infant waywardnesses! that she
should be denied the mirrored joy of once
holding her own dream-baby in her arms! It
was so simple a thing to dream—why might
not poor dear Emily yield herself to at least
one radiant delusion?

Early in May, according to the arithmetic
of Miss Agatha’s visions, Vanderkoep
attained the dignity of his first anniversary.
Truthful and conscientious to a fault, she
communicated the report of this festival,
though with an evident unwillingness.

“We will let the china wait a little,” said
Miss Emily, with determination. “Sit down
and tell me all about it. What did he
say?"

“He said ‘ mamma,’” replied Miss Agatha,
with the tender patience of one teaching the
blind, “and hugged you with that happy little
scream of his.”

Miss Emily nodded.

“And then he laughed mischievously,
showing all his cunning little teeth.”

“Five of them,” interjected Miss Emily,
accurately.

"And when I tried to find out what pleased
him so much, I saw that he was holding
tightly under his arm a toy elephant—”

“Where had he gotten it?”

“Why, it was one of his birthday presents
from you. I think you must have given
him a dozen. One was a fine bay horse,
harnessed into a cart, with real harness and
all that. It seemed to delight him particularly.”

“Boys always love horses so,” said Miss
Emily, wisely.

“And though I tried to make him come to
me, he wouldn’t. He stayed with you and
cuddled.”

Thus was the narrative continued and
pieced out and refitted and every least detail
adjusted to its place. At the close of which
Miss Emily put on her glasses and sat down
at her desk to enter faithfully into the book
devoted to Vanderkoep the full and
unabridged history of his first birthday.

A few days later the first prolonged heat
ware swept blightingly over the city.

“I think we cannot get away too soon.
Emily,” observed Miss Agatha. “How
fortunate it is we haven’t to wait till June!”

Miss Emily said nothing.

“What do you think, my dear?” pursued
Miss Agatha.

“I suppose I might as well say, now,” said
Miss Emily, “that I think we cannot go out
of town this summer.”

“But why?”

“Because of Vanderkoep,” Miss Emily
come out flatly.

“Well?”

“His very existence is exclusively
associated with our rooms here. Do you feel
confident, Agatha, that if we went away and
interrupted our psychic connection with these
surroundings—I hardly know how to put it—”

“I know I should dream of Vanderkoep
anywhere,” declared Miss Agatha, wearily.

“But how do you know? Have you ever
been able to control—”

“No,” confessed Miss Agatha.

“And yet you would venture—”

“It would make you unhappy, would it not,
Emily, to go away?” interrupted Miss Agatha,
to whom these discussions were painful, she
could not tell why. “Very well, then, we will
stay. I suppose we would better have a maid
in for the summer.”

So, through the listless warmth of May, the
determined heat of June, and the relentless
blaze of July, the two ladies lingered on in
the little flat in Twelfth Street. There was
little enough to interest or stimulate.
Existence itself seemed a perfunctory and in no
way desirable affair. The two ladies availed
themselves to the fullest of their library
subscription, corresponded with friends spending
the summer in Europe—and talked of
Vanderkoep. Miss Agatha proved herself of
heroic stuff by suppressing her almost
intolerable longing for cool air and the smell of
the sea; Miss Emily suffered the heat and
discomfort in significant silence.

During the first week of August came the
crisis of the summer’s feverish violence. The
ominous stillness associated with extreme
heat pervaded places where hitherto one had
been conscious of nothing but noise. The
torrid, throbbing nights were less to be borne
than the burning days; sleep, except in
snatches, was impossible. From the whole
stricken city seemed to rise continuous,
unlovely exhalations of sickness, suffering,
death.

Miss Emily’s never too robust strength
yielded to the cruel heat, and for days Miss
Agatha nursed her faithfully. During one
feverish evening, in particular, when no night
coolness came to bring relief, Miss Agatha
spent all her strength in the effort to gain a
little comfort for her friend. At midnight,
exhausted, she lay down without undressing
in her own room and slept till dawn. When
she awoke, it was with a cry. Miss Emily,
lightly dozing in the next room, heard it.

“What is it, Agatha dear?” she asked.
Receiving no answer, she called again, then
went into Agatha’s room. Her friend was
sitting upright with a curious expression on
her tired face.

An almost supernatural intuition directed
Miss Emily’s challenge, “You have been
dreaming of Vanderkoep!”

“I am not myself, Emily.” Miss Agatha
began to talk very fast. “It’s the heat. It
muddles one’s head so. I’m really not
responsible. I'm not, indeed. Don’t talk of it,
Emily. Let us wait till another time.”

“I know,” said Mies Emily. “You need
not tell me. He’s dead. My baby’s dead.”
She went and stood by the window and looked
vaguely out. “What killed him?” She
turned sharply to Miss Agatha.

“Emily, I feel like a murderer!” she broke
out. “Don’t, don’t!”

“What killed him?” persisted Miss Emily,
in a hard voice.

“Darling—he died from a fever. I think it
must have been the heat. We did everything
for him. He did not seem to suffer, Emily!”

Miss Emily said nothing, but continued to
stand by the window. Her back was rigid.
She wrung her hands incessantly.

“Emily,” begged Miss Agatha, clasping her
about the shoulders, “you must not suffer so.
It is not too late. Listen, dear,—you must
wait until I can get a strong sleeping-powder
from the drug-store. Then I shall take it and
let it put me to sleep, and I shall dream—of
course I shall. I shall dream him back again.
I know, Emily, that this was not a true dream.
You see, dear, the heat and all!”

“And could that comfort me—that you
should dream a lying dream? What are you
doing to me, Agatha? Why should you want
to lie to me, now, when my baby’s dead?”

Outside, in the street, there was the first
stir of day. Miss Emily, ignoring her friend’s
entreaties, hurriedly dressed herself, tied a
veil neatly over her hat and buttoned her
cotton gloves. Then, still in silence, she went
to the outer door and turned the knob.

“Emily!” cried the agonized Miss Agatha,
“where are you going?”

Miss Emily paused a moment. “Why, I
am going,” she said, steadily, “to get some
flowers for my baby.”