The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth Part 17

"In a year or so."

"So soon as they really see she is going on growing."

"Unless after their fashion--they hush it up."

"It's a lot to hush up."

"Rather!"

"I wonder what they'll do?"

"They never do anything--Royal tact."

"They're bound to do something."

"Perhaps _she_ will."

"O Lord! Yes."

"They'll suppress her. Such things have been known."

Redwood burst into desperate laughter. "The redundant royalty--the bouncing babe in the Iron Mask!" he said. "They'll have to put her in the tallest tower of the old Weser Dreiburg castle and make holes in the ceilings as she grows from floor to floor! Well, I'm in the very same pickle. And Cossar and his three boys. And--Well, well."

"There'll be a fearful row," Bensington repeated, not joining in the laughter. "A _fearful_ row."

"I suppose," he argued, "you've really thought it out thoroughly, Redwood. You're quite sure it wouldn't be wiser to warn Winkles, wean your little boy gradually, and--and rely upon the Theoretical Triumph?"

"I wish to goodness you'd spend half an hour in my nursery when the Food's a little late," said Redwood, with a note of exasperation in his voice; "then you wouldn't talk like that, Bensington. Besides--Fancy warning Winkles... No! The tide of this thing has caught us unawares, and whether we're frightened or whether we're not--_we've got to swim!_"

"I suppose we have," said Bensington, staring at his toes. "Yes. We've got to swim. And your boy will have to swim, and Cossar's boys--he's given it to all three of them. Nothing partial about Cossar--all or nothing! And Her Serene Highness. And everything. We are going on making the Food. Cossar also. We're only just in the dawn of the beginning, Redwood. It's evident all sorts of things are to follow. Monstrous great things. But I can't imagine them, Redwood. Except--"

He scanned his finger nails. He looked up at Redwood with eyes bland through his gla.s.ses.

"I've half a mind," he adventured, "that Caterham is right. At times.

It's going to destroy the Proportions of Things. It's going to dislocate--What isn't it going to dislocate?"

"Whatever it dislocates," said Redwood, "my little boy must have the Food."

They heard some one falling rapidly upstairs. Then Cossar put his head into the fiat. "Hullo!" he said at their expressions, and entering, "Well?"

They told him about the Princess.

"_Difficult question!_" he remarked. "Not a bit of it. _She'll_ grow.

Your boy'll grow. All the others you give it to 'll grow. Everything.

Like anything. What's difficult about that? That's all right. A child could tell you that. Where's the bother?"

They tried to make it clear to him.

"_Not go on with it!_" he shrieked. "But--! You can't help yourselves now. It's what you're for. It's what Winkles is for. It's all right.

Often wondered what Winkles was for. _Now_ it's obvious. What's the trouble?

"_Disturbance_? Obviously. _Upset things_? Upset everything.

Finally--upset every human concern. Plain as a pikestaff. They're going to try and stop it, but they're too late. It's their way to be too late.

You go on and start as much of it as you can. Thank G.o.d He has a use for you!"

"But the conflict!" said Bensington, "the stress! I don't know if you have imagined--"

"You ought to have been some sort of little vegetable, Bensington," said Cossar--"that's what you ought to have been. Something growing over a rockery. Here you are, fearfully and wonderfully made, and all you think you're made for is just to sit about and take your vittles. D'you think this world was made for old women to mop about in? Well, anyhow, you can't help yourselves now--you've _got_ to go on."

"I suppose we must," said Redwood. "Slowly--"

"No!" said Cossar, in a huge shout. "No! Make as much as you can and as soon as you can. Spread it about!"

He was inspired to a stroke of wit. He parodied one of Redwood's curves with a vast upward sweep of his arm.

"Redwood!" he said, to point the allusion, "make it SO!"

V.

There is, it seems, an upward limit to the pride of maternity, and this in the case of Mrs. Redwood was reached when her offspring completed his sixth month of terrestrial existence, broke down his high-cla.s.s ba.s.sinet-perambulator, and was brought home, bawling, in the milk-truck.

Young Redwood at that time weighed fifty-nine and a half pounds, measured forty-eight inches in height, and gripped about sixty pounds.

He was carried upstairs to the nursery by the cook and housemaid. After that, discovery was only a question of days. One afternoon Redwood came home from his laboratory to find his unfortunate wife deep in the fascinating pages of _The Mighty Atom_, and at the sight of him she put the book aside and ran violently forward and burst into tears on his shoulder.

"Tell me what you have _done_ to him," she wailed. "Tell me what you have done." Redwood took her hand and led her to the sofa, while he tried to think of a satisfactory line of defence.

"It's all right, my dear," he said; "it's all right. You're only a little overwrought. It's that cheap perambulator. I've arranged for a bath-chair man to come round with something stouter to-morrow--"

Mrs. Redwood looked at him tearfully over the top of her handkerchief.

"A baby in a bath-chair?" she sobbed.

"Well, why not?"

"It's like a cripple."

"It's like a young giant, my dear, and you've no cause to be ashamed of him."

"You've done something to him, Dandy," she said. "I can see it in your face."

"Well, it hasn't stopped his growth, anyhow," said Redwood heartlessly.

"I _knew_," said Mrs. Redwood, and clenched her pocket-handkerchief ball fashion in one hand. She looked at him with a sudden change to severity.

"What have you done to our child, Dandy?"

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's so big. He's a monster."