Complete works of hall c.., p.540
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 540
“No, Mary O’Neill simply.”
“Ah!” said the young clerk, and I thought his manner changed instantly.
There was silence for some minutes while the young clerk filled up his form and made the copy I was to carry away.
I heard the scratching of the young clerk’s pen, the crinkling of the old man’s newspaper, the hollow ticking of a round clock on the wall, the dull hum of the traffic in the streets, and the thud-thud-thudding in my own bosom.
Then the entry was read out to me and I was asked to sign it.
“Sign here, please,” said the young clerk in quite a different tone, pointing to a vacant line at the bottom of the hook, and I signed with a trembling hand and a feeling of only partial consciousness.
I hardly know what happened after that until I was standing in the open vestibule, settling baby on my arm afresh for my return journey, and telling myself that I had laid a stigma upon my child which would remain with her as long as she lived.
It was a long, long way back, I remember, and when I reached home (having looked neither to the right nor left, nor at anything or anybody, though I felt as if everybody had been looking at me) I had a sense of dimness of sight and of aching in the eyeballs.
I did not sing very much that day, and I thought baby was rather restless.
Towards nightfall I had a startling experience.
I was preparing Isabel for bed, when I saw a red flush, like a rash, down the left side of her face.
At first I thought it would pass away, but when it did not I called my Welsh landlady upstairs to look at it.
“Do you see something like a stain on baby’s face?” I asked, and then waited breathlessly for her answer.
“No . . . Yes . . . Well,” she said, “now that thee’st saying so . . . perhaps it’s a birthmark.”
“A birthmark?”
“Did’st strike thy face against anything when baby was coming?”
I made some kind of reply, I hardly know what, but the truth, or what I thought to be the truth, flashed on me in a moment.
Remembering my last night at Castle Raa, and the violent scene which had occurred there, I told myself that the flush on baby’s face was the mark of my husband’s hand which, making no impression upon me, had been passed on to my child, and would remain with her to the end of her life, as the brand of her mother’s shame and the sign of what had been called her bastardy.
How I suffered at the sight of it! How time after time that night I leaned over my sleeping child to see if the mark had passed away! How again and again I knelt by her side to pray that if sin of mine had to be punished the punishment might fall on me and not on my innocent babe!
At last I remembered baby’s baptism and told myself that if it meant anything it meant that the sin in which my child had been born, the sin of those who had gone before her (if sin it was), had been cast out of her soul with the evil spirits which had inspired them.
“This sign of the Holy Cross + which we make upon her forehead do thou, accursed devil, never dare to violate.”
God’s law had washed my darling white! What could man’s law — his proud but puny morality — do to injure her? It could do nothing!
That comforted me. When I looked at baby again the flush had gone and I went to bed quite happy.
NINETY-FIRST CHAPTER
I think it must have been the morning of the next day when the nurse who had attended me in my confinement came to see how I was going along.
I told her of the dimness of my sight and the aching of my eyeballs, whereupon she held up her hands and cried:
“There now! What did I tell you? Didn’t I say it is after a lady feels it?”
The moral of her prediction was that, being in a delicate state of health, and having “let myself low” before baby was born, it was my duty to wean her immediately.
I could not do it.
Although the nurse’s advice was supported by my Welsh landlady (with various prognostications of consumption and rickets), I could not at first deny myself the wild joy of nursing my baby.
But a severer monitor soon came to say that I must. I found that my money was now reduced to little more than two pounds, and that I was confronted by the necessity (which I had so long put off) of looking for employment.
I could not look for employment until I had found a nurse for my child, and I could not find a nurse until my baby could do without me, so when Isabel was three weeks old I began to wean her.
At first I contented myself with the hours of night, keeping a feeding-bottle in bed, with the cow’s milk warmed to the heat of my own body. But when baby cried for the breast during the day I could not find it in my heart to deny her.
That made the time of weaning somewhat longer than it should have been, but I compromised with my conscience by reducing still further my meagre expenses.
Must I tell how I did so?
Although it was the month of July there was a snap of cold weather such as sometimes comes in the middle of our English summer, and yet I gave up having a fire in my room, and for the cooking of my food I bought a small spirit stove which cost me a shilling.
This tempted me to conduct which has since had consequences, and I am half ashamed and half afraid to speak of it. My baby linen being little I had to wash it frequently, and having no fire I . . . dried it on my own body.
Oh, I see now it was reckless foolishness, almost wilful madness, but I thought nothing of it then. I was poor and perhaps I was proud, and I could not afford a fire. And then a mother’s love is as deep as the sea, and there was nothing in the wide world I would not have done to keep my darling a little longer beside me.
Baby being weaned at last I had next to think of a nurse, and that was a still more painful ordeal. To give my child to another woman, who was to be the same as a second mother to her, was almost more than I could bear to think about.
I had to think of it. But I could only do so by telling myself that, when I put baby out to nurse, I might arrange to see her every morning and evening and as often as my employment permitted.
This idea partly reconciled me to my sacrifice, and I was in the act of drawing up a newspaper advertisement in these terms when my landlady came to say that the nurse knew of somebody who would suit me exactly.
Nurse called the same evening and told me a long story about her friend.
She was a Mrs. Oliver, and she lived at Ilford, which was at the other end of London and quite on the edge of the country. The poor woman, who was not too happily married, had lost a child of her own lately, and was now very lonely, being devoted to children.
This pleased me extremely, especially (God forgive me!), the fact that Mrs. Oliver was a bereaved mother and lived on the edge of the country.
Already in my mind’s eye I saw her sitting on sunny days under a tree (perhaps in an orchard) with Isabel in her arms, rocking her gently and singing to her softly, and almost forgetting that she was not her own baby whom she had lost . . . though that was a two-edged sword which cut me both ways, being a sort of wild joy with tears lurking behind it.
So I took a note of Mrs. Oliver’s address (10 Lennard’s Row, Lennard’s Green, Ilford) and wrote to her the same night, asking her terms and stating my own conditions.
A reply came the following day. It was a badly-written and misspelt letter, which showed me that Mrs. Oliver must be a working woman (perhaps the wife of a gardener or farm-labourer, I thought), though that did not trouble me in the least, knowing by this time how poor people loved their children.
“The terms is fore shillins a weke,” she wrote, “but i am that lonelie sins my own littel one lef me i wood tike your swete darling for nothin if I cud afford it and you can cum to see her as offen as you pleas.”
In my ignorance and simplicity this captured me completely, so I replied at once saying I would take baby to Ilford the next day.
I did all this in a rush, but when it came to the last moment I could scarcely part with my letter, and I remember that I passed three pillar-boxes in the front street before I could bring myself to post it.
I suppose my eyes must have been red when I returned home, for my Welsh landlady (whom I had taken into my confidence about my means) took me to task for crying, telling me that I ought to thank God for what had happened, which was like a message from heaven, look you, and a dispensation of Providence.
I tried to see things in that light, though it was difficult to do so, for the darker my prospects grew the more radiant shone the light of the little angel by whose life I lived, and the harder it seemed to live without her.
“But it isn’t like losing my child altogether, is it?” I said.
“‘Deed no, and ‘twill he better for both of you,” said my landlady.
“Although Ilford is a long way off I can go there every day, can’t I’!”
“‘Deed thee can, if thee’st not minding a journey of nine miles or more.”
“And if I can get a good situation and earn a little money I may be able to have baby back and hire somebody to nurse her, and so keep her all to myself.”
“And why shouldn’t thee?” said my Welsh landlady. “Thee reading print like the young minister and writing letters like a copybook!”
So in the fierce bravery of motherly love I dried my eyes and forced back my sobs, and began to pack up my baby’s clothes, and to persuade myself that I was still quite happy.
My purse was very low by this time. After paying my rent and some other expenses I had only one pound and a few shillings left.
NINETY-SECOND CHAPTER
At half past seven next morning I was ready to start on my journey.
I took a hasty glance at myself in the glass before going out, and I thought my eyes were too much like the sky at daybreak — all joyful beams with a veil of mist in front of them.
But I made myself believe that never since baby was born had I been so happy. I was sure I was doing the best for her. I was also sure I was doing the best for myself, for what could be so sweet to a mother as providing for her child?
My Welsh landlady had told me it was nine miles to Ilford, and I had gathered that I could ride all the way in successive omnibuses for less than a shilling. But shillings were scarce with me then, so I determined to walk all the way.
Emmerjane, by her own urgent entreaty, carried baby as far as the corner of the Bayswater Road, and there the premature little woman left me, after nearly smothering baby with kisses.
“Keep straight as a’ arrow and you can’t lose your wye,” she said.
It was one of those beautiful mornings in late July when the air is fresh and the sun is soft, and the summer, even in London, has not yet had time to grow tired and dusty.
I felt as light as the air itself. I had put baby’s feeding-bottle in my pocket and hung her surplus linen in a parcel about my wrist, so I had nothing to carry in my arms except baby herself, and at first I did not feel her weight.
There were not many people in the West-End streets at that early hour, yet a few were riding in the Park, and when I came to the large houses in Lancaster Gate I saw that though the sun was shining on the windows most of the blinds were down.
I must have been walking slowly, for it was half past eight when I reached the Marble Arch. There I encountered the first cross-tide of traffic, but somebody, seeing baby, took me by the arm and led me safely over.
The great “Mediterranean of Oxford Street” was by this time running at full tide. People were pouring out of the Tube and Underground stations and clambering on to the motor-buses. But in the rush nobody hustled or jostled me. A woman with a child in her arms was like a queen — everybody made way for her.
Once or twice I stopped to look at the shops. Some of the dressmakers’ windows were full of beautiful costumes. I did not covet any of them. I remembered the costly ones I had bought in Cairo and how little happiness they had brought me. And then I felt as if the wealth of the world were in my arms.
Nevertheless the whole feminine soul in me awoke when I came upon a shop for the sale of babies’ clothes. Already I foresaw a time when baby, dressed in pretty things like these, would be running about Lennard’s Green and plucking up the flowers in Mrs. Oliver’s garden.
The great street was very long and I thought it would never end. But I think I must have been still fresh and happy while we passed through the foreign quarter of Soho, for I remember that, when two young Italian waiters, standing at the door of their café, asked each other in their own language which of us (baby or I) was “the bambino,” I turned to them and smiled.
Before I came to Chancery Lane, however, baby began to cry for her food, and I was glad to slip down a narrow alley into Lincoln’s Inn Fields and sit on a seat in the garden while I gave her the bottle. It was then ten o’clock, the sun was high and the day was becoming hot.
The languid stillness of the garden after the noise and stir of the streets tempted me to stay longer than I had intended, and when I resumed my journey I thought the rest must have done me good, but before I reached the Holborn Viaduct fatigue was beginning to gain on me.
I saw that I must be approaching some great hospital, for hospital nurses were now passing me constantly, and one of them, who was going my way, stepped up and asked me to allow her to carry baby. She looked so sweet and motherly that I let her do so, and as we walked along we talked.
She asked me if I was going far, and I said no, only to the other end of London, the edge of the country, to Ilford.
“Ilford!” she cried. “Why, that’s miles and miles away. You’ll have to ‘bus it to Aldgate, then change for Bow, and then tram it through Stratford Market.”
I told her I preferred to walk, being such a good walker, and she gave me a searching look, but said no more on that subject.
Then she asked me how old baby was and whether I was nursing her myself, and I answered that baby was six weeks and I had been forced to wean her, being supposed to be delicate, and besides . . .
“Ah, perhaps you are putting her out to nurse,” she said, and I answered yes, and that was the reason I was going to Ilford.
“I see,” she said, with another searching look, and then it flashed upon me that she had formed her own conclusions about what had befallen me.
When we came to a great building in a side street on the left, with ambulance vans passing in and out of a wide gateway, she said she was sorry she could not carry baby any further, because she was due in the hospital, where the house-doctor would be waiting for her.
“But I hope baby’s nurse will be a good one. They’re not always that, you know.”
I was not quite so happy when the hospital nurse left me. The parcel on my wrist was feeling heavier than before, and my feet were beginning to drag. But I tried to keep a good heart as I faced the crowded thoroughfares — Newgate with its cruel old prison, the edge of St. Paul’s, and the corner of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and so on into Cheapside.
Cheapside itself was almost impassable. Merchants, brokers, clerks, and city men generally in tall silk hats were hurrying and sometimes running along the pavement, making me think of the river by my father’s house, whose myriad little waves seemed to my fancy as a child to be always struggling to find out which could get to Murphy’s Mouth the first and so drown itself in the sea.
People were still very kind to me, though, and if anybody brushed me in passing he raised his hat; and if any one pushed me accidentally he stopped to say he was sorry.
Of course baby was the talisman that protected me from harm; and what I should have done without her when I got to the Mansion house I do not know, for that seemed to be the central heart of all the London traffic, with its motor-buses and taxi-cabs going in different directions and its tremendous tides of human life flowing every way.
But just as I was standing, dazed and deafened on the edge of a triangle of streets, looking up at a great building that was like a rock on the edge of a noisy sea, and bore on its face the startling inscription, “The Earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof,” a big policeman, seeing me with baby in my arms, held up his hand to the drivers and shouted to the pedestrians (“Stand a-one side, please”), and then led me safely across, as if the Red Sea had parted to let us pass.
It was then twelve o’clock and baby was once more crying for her food, so I looked for a place in which I might rest while I gave her the bottle again.
Suddenly I came upon what I wanted. It seemed to be a garden, but it was a graveyard — one of the graveyards of the old London churches, enclosed by high buildings now, and overlooked by office windows.
Such a restful place, so green, so calm, so beautiful! Lying there in the midst of the tumultuous London traffic, it reminded me of one of the little islands in the middle of our Ellan glens, on which the fuchsia and wild rose grow while the river rolls and boils about it.
I had just sat down on a seat that had been built about a gnarled and blackened old tree, and was giving baby her food, when I saw that a young girl was sitting beside me.
She was about nineteen years of age, and was eating scones out of a confectioner’s bag, while she read a paper-covered novel. Presently she looked at baby with her little eyes, which were like a pair of shiny boot buttons, and said:
“That your child?”
I answered her, and then she asked:
“Do you like children?”
I answered her again, and asked her if she did not like them also.
“Can’t say I’m particularly gone on them,” she said, whereupon I replied that that was probably because she had not yet had much experience.
“Oh, haven’t I? Perhaps I haven’t,” she said, and then with a hard little laugh, she added “Mother’s had nine though.”
I asked if she was a shop assistant, and with a toss of her head she told me she was a typist.
“Better screw and your evenings off,” she said, and then she returned to the subject of children.
