"But your money will be done soon, my child, and then what is to become
of you?"
"No matter!" I said, for I had already determined to face the world
myself without help from anybody.
There was a silence again until we reached the door of our
boarding-house, and then Mildred said:
"Mary, your father is a rich man, and however much you may have
displeased him he cannot wish you to be left to the mercy of the
world--especially when your time comes. Let me write to him. . . ."
That terrified me, for I saw only one result--an open quarrel between my
father and my husband about the legitimacy of my child, who would
probably be taken away from me as soon as it was born.
So taking Mildred by the arm, regardless of the observation of
passers-by, I begged and prayed and implored of her not to write to my
father.
She promised not to do so, and we parted on good terms; but I was not
satisfied, and the only result of our day's journeying was that I became
possessed of the idea that the whole world was conspiring to rob me of
my unborn child.
A few days later Mildred called again, and then she said:
"I had another letter from Father Donovan this morning, Mary. Your poor
priest is broken-hearted about you. He is sure you are in London, and
certain you are in distress, and says that with or without his Bishop's
consent he is coming up to London to look for you, and will never go
back until you are found."
I began to suspect Mildred. In the fever of my dread of losing my child
I convinced myself that with the best intentions in the world, merely
out of love for me and pity for my position, she would give me
up--perhaps in the very hour of my peril.
To make this impossible I determined to cut myself off from her and
everybody else, by leaving the boarding-house and taking another and
cheaper lodging far enough away.
I was encouraged in this course by the thought of my diminishing
resources, and though heaven knows I had not too many comforts where I
was. I reproached myself for spending so much on my own needs when I
ought to be economising for the coming of my child.
The end of it all was that one morning early I went down to the corner
of Oxford Street where the motor-omnibuses seem to come and go from all
parts of London.
North, south, east, and west were all one to me, leading to labyrinths
of confused and interminable streets, and I knew as little as a child
which of them was best for my purpose. But chance seems to play the
greatest part in our lives, and at that moment it was so with me.
I was standing on the edge of the pavement when a motor-bus labelled
"Bayswater Road" stopped immediately in front of me and I stepped into
it, not knowing in the least why I did so.
Late that evening, having found what I wanted, I returned in the mingled
mist and darkness to the boarding-house to pack up my belongings. That
was not difficult to do, and after settling my account and sending young
John for a cab I was making for the door when the landlady came up to
me.
"Will you not leave your new address, my dear, lest anybody should
call," she said.
"Nobody will call," I answered.
"But in case there should he letters?"
"There will be no letters," I said, and whispering to the driver to
drive up Oxford Street, I got into the cab.
It was then quite dark. The streets and shops were alight, and I
remembered that as I crossed the top of the Charing Cross Road I looked
down in the direction of the lofty building in which Mildred's window
would be shining like a lighthouse over Piccadilly.
Poor dear ill-requited Mildred! She has long ago forgiven me. She knows
now that when I ran away from the only friend I had in London it was
because I could not help it.
She knows, too, that I was not thinking of myself, and that in diving
still deeper into the dungeon of the great city, in hiding and burying
myself away in it, I was asking nothing of God but that He would let me
live the rest of my life--no matter how poor and lonely--with the child
that He was sending to be a living link between my lost one and me.
In the light of what happened afterwards, that was all so strange, and
oh, so wonderful and miraculous!