Sister Mildred was right. Our Blessed Lady must have interceded for me,
because help came immediately.
I awoke on St. Stephen's morning with that thrilling emotion which every
mother knows to be the first real and certain consciousness of
motherhood.
It is not for me to describe the physical effects of that great change.
But the spiritual effect is another matter. It was like that of a
miracle. God in his great mercy, looking down on me in my sorrow, had
sent one of His ministering angels to comfort me.
It seemed to say:
"Don't be afraid. He who went away is not lost to you. Something of
himself is about to return."
I felt no longer that I was to be left alone in my prison-house of
London, because Martin's child was to bear me company--to be a link
between us, an everlasting bond, so that he and I should be together to
the end.
I tremble to say what interpretation I put upon all this--how it seemed
to be a justification of what I did on the night before Martin left
Ellan, as if God, knowing he would not return, had prompted me, so that
when my dark hour came I might have this great hope for my comforter.
And oh how wonderful it was, how strange, how mysterious, how joyful!
Every day and all day and always I was conscious of my unborn child, as
a fluttering bird held captive in the hand. The mystery and the joy of
the coming life soothed away my sorrow, and if I had shed any tears they
would have dried them.
And then the future!
I seemed to know from the first that it was to be a girl, and already I
could see her face and look into her sea-blue eyes. As she grew up I
would talk to her of her father--the brave explorer, the man of destiny,
who laid down his life in a great work for the world. We should always
be talking of him--we two alone together, because he belonged to us and
nobody else in the world besides. Everything I have written here I
should tell her--at least the beautiful part of it, the part about our
love, which nothing in life, and not even death itself, could quench.
Oh the joy of those days! It may seem strange that I should have been so
happy so soon after my bereavement, but I cannot help it if it was so,
and it _was_ so.
Perhaps it was a sort of hysteria, due to the great change in my
physical condition. I do not know. I do not think I want to know. But
one thing is sure--that hope and prayer and the desire of life awoke in
me again, as by the touch of God's own hand, and I became another and a
happier woman.
Such was the condition in which Mildred found me when she returned a few
days later. Then she brought me down plump to material matters. We had
first to consider the questions of ways and means, in order to find out
how to face the future.
It was the beginning of January, my appointed time was in June, and I
had only some sixteen pounds of my money left, so it was clear that I
could not stay in the boarding-house much longer.
Happily Mildred knew of homes where women could live inexpensively
during their period of waiting. They were partly philanthropic and
therefore subject to certain regulations, which my resolute
determination (not to mention Martin's name, or permit it to be
mentioned) might make it difficult for me to observe, but Mildred hoped
to find one that would take me on her recommendation without asking
further question.
In this expectation we set out in search of a Maternity Home. What a day
of trial we had! I shall never forget it.
The first home we called at was a Catholic one in the neighbourhood of
our boarding-house.
It had the appearance of a convent, and that pleased me exceedingly.
After we had passed the broad street door, with its large brass plate
and small brass grille, we were shown into a little waiting-room with
tiled floor, distempered walls, and coloured pictures of the saints.
The porteress told us the Mother was at prayers with the inmates, but
would come downstairs presently, and while we waited we heard the dull
hum of voices, the playing of an organ, and the singing of the sweet
music I knew so well.
Closing my eyes I felt myself back in Rome, and began to pray that I
might be permitted to remain there. But the desire was damped when the
Mother entered the room.
She was a stout woman, wearing heavy outdoor boots and carrying her arms
interlaced before her, with the hands hidden in the ample sleeves of her
habit, and her face was so white and expressionless, that it might have
been cast in plaster of Paris.
In a rather nervous voice Mildred explained our errand. "Mother," she
said, "I cannot tell you anything about this young lady, and I have come
to ask if you will take her on my recommendation."
"My dear child," said the Mother, "that would be utterly against our
rule. Not to know who the young lady is, where she comes from, why she
is here, and whether she is married or single or a widow--it is quite
impossible."
Mildred, looking confused and ashamed, said:
"She can afford to pay a little."
"That makes no difference."
"But I thought that in exceptional cases . . ."
"There can be no exceptional cases, Sister. If the young lady is married
and can say that her husband consents, or single and can give us
assurance that her father or guardian agrees, or a widow and can offer
satisfactory references . . ."
Mildred looked across at me, but I shook my head.
"In that case there seems to be nothing more to say," said the Mother,
and rising without ceremony she walked with us to the door.
Our next call was at the headquarters of a home which was neither
Catholic nor Protestant, but belonged, Mildred said, to a kind of
Universal Church, admitting inmates of all denominations.
It was in a busy thoroughfare and had the appearance of a business
office. After Mildred had written her name and the object of our visit
on a slip of paper we were taken up in a lift to another office with an
open safe, where a man in a kind of uniform (called a Commissioner) was
signing letters and cheques.
The Commissioner was at first very courteous, especially to me, and I
had an uncomfortable feeling that he was mistaking me for something
quite other than I was until Mildred explained our errand, and then his
manner changed painfully.
"What you ask is against all our regulations," he said. "Secrecy implies
something to hide, and we neither hide anything nor permit anything to
be hidden. In fact our system requires that we should not only help the
woman, but punish the man by making him realise his legal, moral, and
religious liability for his wrong-doing. Naturally we can only do this
by help of the girl, and if she does not tell us at the outset who and
what the partner of her sin has been and where he is to be found. . . ."
I was choking with shame and indignation, and rising to my feet I said
to Mildred:
"Let us go, please."
"Ah, yes, I know," said the Commissioner, with a superior smile, "I have
seen all this before. The girl nearly always tries to shield the guilty
man. But why should she? It may seem generous, but it is really wicked.
It is a direct means of increasing immorality. The girl who protects the
author of her downfall is really promoting the ruin of another woman,
and if. . . ."
Thinking of Martin I wanted to strike the smug Pharisee in the face, and
in order to conquer that unwomanly impulse I hurried out of the office,
and into the street, leaving poor Mildred to follow me.
Our last call was at the home of a private society in a little brick
house that seemed to lean against the wall of a large lying-in hospital
in the West End of London.
At the moment of our arrival the Matron was presiding in the
drawing-room over a meeting of a Missionary League for the Conversion of
the Jews, so we were taken through a narrow lobby into a little
back-parlour which overlooked, through a glass screen, a large
apartment, wherein a number of young women, who had the appearance of
dressmakers, ladies' maids, and governesses, were sewing tiny pieces of
linen and flannel that were obviously baby-clothes.
There were no carpets on the floors and the house had a slight smell of
carbolic. The tick-tick of sewing machines on the other side of the
screen mingled with the deadened sound of the clapping of hands in the
room overhead.
After a while there was rustle of dresses coming down the bare stairs,
followed by the opening and closing of the front door, and then the
Matron came into the parlour.
She was a very tall, flat-bosomed woman in a plain black dress, and she
seemed to take in our situation instantly. Without waiting for Mildred's
explanation she began to ask my name, my age, and where I came from.
Mildred fenced these questions as well as she could, and then, with even
more nervousness than ever, made the same request as before.
The Matron seemed aghast.
"Most certainly not," she said. "My committee would never dream of such
a thing. In the interests of the unfortunate girls who have fallen from
the path of virtue, as well as their still more unfortunate offspring,
we always make the most searching inquiries. In fact, we keep a record
of every detail of every case. Listen to this," she added, and opening a
large leather-bound hook like a ledger, she began to read one of its
entries:
_"H.J., aged eighteen years, born of very respectable parents, was led
astray_ [that was not the word] _in a lonely road very late at night by
a sailor who was never afterwards heard of. . . ."_
But I could bear no more, and rising from my seat I fled from the room
and the house into the noisy street outside.
All day long my whole soul had been in revolt. It seemed to me that,
while God in His gracious mercy was giving me my child to comfort and
console me, to uplift and purify me, and make me a better woman than I
had been before, man, with his false and cruel morality, with his
machine-made philanthropy, was trying to use it as a whip to punish not
only me but Martin.
But that it should never do! Never as long as I lived! I would die in
the streets first!
Perhaps I was wrong, and did not understand myself, and certainly
Mildred did not understand me. When she rejoined me in the street we
turned our faces homeward and were half way back to the boarding-house
before we spoke again.
Then she said:
"I am afraid the other institutions will be the same. They'll all want
references."