It was one of those lovely mornings in early spring, when the air and
the sky of London, after the long fog and grime of winter, seem to be
washed by showers of sunshine.
I had entered by a gate to a broad avenue and was resting (for I was
rather tired) on a seat under a chestnut tree whose glistening sheaths
were swelling and breaking into leaf, when I saw a number of ladies and
gentlemen on horseback coming in my direction.
I recognised one of them instantly. It was Mr. Vivian, and a beautiful
girl was riding beside him. My heart stood still, for I thought he would
see me. But he was too much occupied with his companion to do so.
"Yes, by Jove, it's killing, isn't it?" he said, in his shrill voice,
and with his monocle in his mole-like eye, he rode past me, laughing.
After that I took my walks in the poorer streets behind Bayswater, but
there I was forced back on my old problem, for I seemed to be always
seeing the sufferings of children.
Thank God, children as a whole are happy. They seem to live in their
hearts alone, and I really and truly believe that if all the doors of
the rich houses of the West End of London were thrown open to the poor
children of the East End they would stay in their slums and alleys.
But some of them suffer there for all that, especially the unfortunate
ones who enter the world without any legal right to be here, and I
seemed to be coming upon that kind everywhere.
One evening I saw a tiny boy of five sheltering from the rain under a
dripping and draughty railway arch, and crying as if his little heart
would break. I tried to comfort him and could not, but when a rather
shame-faced young woman came along, as if returning from her work, he
burst out on her and cried:
"Oh, muvver, she's been a-beating of me awrful."
"Never mind, Johnny," said the young woman, kneeling on the wet pavement
to dry the child's eyes. "Don't cry, that's a good boy."
It needed no second sight to look into the heart of that tragedy, and
the effect of it upon me was to make me curtail my expenditure still
further.
Looking back on those days I cannot but wonder that I never tried to
find employment. But there was one delicate impediment then--my
condition, which was becoming visible, I thought, to people in the
street, and causing some of them, especially women, to look round at me.
When this became painful I discontinued my walks altogether, and sent
Emmerjane on my few errands.
Then my room became my world.
I do not think I ever saw a newspaper. And knowing nothing of what was
going on, beyond the surge and swell of the life of London as it came to
me when I opened my window. I had now, more than ever, the sense of
living in a dungeon on a rock in the middle of the sea.
Having no exercise I ate less and less. But I found a certain joy in
that, for I was becoming a miser for my child's sake, and the only pain
I suffered was when I went to my drawer, as I did every day, and looked
at my rapidly diminishing store.
I knew that my Welsh landlady was beginning to call me _close_, meaning
mean; but that did not trouble me in the least, because I told myself
that every penny I saved out of my own expenses was for my child, to
keep her from poverty and all the evils and injustices that followed in
its train.
As my appointed time drew near my sleep was much broken; and sometimes
in the middle of the night, when I heard a solitary footstep going down
the street I would get up, draw aside one of my blinds, and see a light
burning in some bedroom window opposite, and afterwards hear the muffled
cry of the small new being who had come as another immigrant into our
chill little world.
But I made no arrangements for myself until my Welsh landlady came up to
my room one day and asked if I had settled with a doctor. When I
answered no, she held up her hands and cried:
"Good gracious! Just as I thought. Thee'st got to lose no time, though."
Happily there was a doctor in our street nearly every day, and if I
wished it she would call him up to me. I agreed and the doctor came next
morning.
He was a tall, elderly man with cold eyes, compressed lips, and a sour
expression, and neither his manner nor his speech gave any hint of a
consciousness (which I am sure every true doctor must have) that in
coming to a woman in my condition he was entering one of the sacred
chambers of human life.
He asked me a few abrupt questions, told me when he would come again,
and then spoke about his fee.
"My fee is a guinea and I usually get it in advance," he said, whereupon
I went to my drawer, and took out a sovereign and a shilling, not
without a certain pang at seeing so much go in a moment after I had been
saving so long.
The doctor had dropped the money into his waistcoat pocket with oh! such
a casual air, and was turning to go, when my Welsh landlady said:
"Her's not doing herself justice in the matter, of food, doctor."
"Why, what do you eat?" asked the doctor, and as well as I could, out of
my dry and parched throat, I told him.
"Tut! tut! This will never do," he said. "It's your duty to your child
to have better food than that. Something light and nourishing every day,
such as poultry, fish, chicken broth, beef-tea, and farinaceous foods
generally."