"Remember," he said, with his finger up, "the health of the child is
intimately dependent on the health of the mother. When the mother is in
a morbid state it affects the composition of the blood, and does great
harm to the health of the offspring, both immediately and in after life.
Don't forget now. Good day!"
That was a terrible shock to me. In my great ignorance and great love I
had been depriving myself for the sake of my child, and now I learned
that I had all the time been doing it a grave and perhaps life-long
injury!
Trying to make amends I sent out for some of the expensive foods the
doctor had ordered me, but when they were cooked I found to my dismay
that I had lost the power of digesting them.
My pain at this discovery was not lessened next day when my Welsh
landlady brought up a nurse whom I had asked her to engage for me.
The woman was a human dumpling with a discordant voice, and her first
interest, like that of the doctor, seemed to centre in her fee.
She told me that her usual terms were a guinea for the fortnight, but
when she saw my face fall (for I could not help thinking how little I
had left) she said:
"Some ladies don't need a fortnight, though. Mrs. Wagstaffe, for
instance, she never has no more than five days, and on the sixth she's
back at her mangle. So if five will do, ma'am, perhaps ten and six won't
hurt you."
I agreed, and the nurse was rolling her ample person out of my room when
my Welsh landlady said:
"But her's not eating enough to keep a linnet, look you."
And then my nurse, who was what the doctor calls a croaker, began on a
long series of stories of ladies who, having "let themselves down" had
died, either at childbirth or soon afterwards.
"It's _after_ a lady feels it if she has to nurse her baby," said the
nurse, "and I couldn't be responsible neither for you nor the child if
you don't do yourself justice."
This was a still more terrible possibility--the possibility that I might
die and leave my child behind me. The thought haunted me all that day
and the following night, but the climax came next morning, when
Emmerjane, while black-leading my grate, gave me the last news of Maggie
Jones.
Maggie's mother had been "a-naggin' of her to get work," asking if she
had not enough mouths to feed "without her bringin' another."
Maggie had at first been afraid to look for employment, thinking
everybody knew of her trouble. But after her mother had put the young
minister from Zion on to her to tell her to be "obejent" she had gone
out every day, whether the weather was good or bad or "mejum."
This had gone on for three months (during which Maggie used to stay out
late because she was afraid to meet her mother's face) until one wet
night, less than a week ago, she had come home drenched to the skin,
taken to her bed, "sickened for somethink" and died.
Three days after Emmerjane told me this story a great solemnity fell on
our street.
It was Saturday, when the children do not go to school, but, playing no
games, they gathered in whispering groups round the house with the drawn
blinds, while their mothers stood bareheaded at the doors with their
arms under their aprons and their hidden hands over their mouths.
I tried not to know what was going on, but looking out at the last
moment I saw Maggie Jones's mother, dressed in black, coming down her
steps, with her eyes very red and her hard face (which was seamed with
labour) all wet and broken up.
The "young minister" followed (a beardless boy who could have known
nothing of the tragedy of a woman's life), and stepping into the midst
of the group of the congregation from Zion, who had gathered there with
their warm Welsh hearts full of pity for the dead girl, he gave out a
Welsh hymn, and they sang it in the London street, just as they had been
used to do at the cottage doors in the midst of their native mountains:
"_Bydd myrdd o ryfeddodau
Ar doriad boreu wawr_."
I could look no longer, so I turned back into my room, but at the next
moment I heard the rumble of wheels and knew that Maggie Jones was on
her way to her last mother of all--the Earth.
During the rest of that day I could think of nothing but Maggie's child,
and what was to become of it, and next morning when Emmerjane came up
she told me that the "young minister" was "a-gettin' it into the 'ouse."
I think that was the last straw of my burden, for my mind came back with
a swift rebound from Maggie Jones's child to my own.
The thought of leaving my baby behind now terrified and appalled me. It
brought me no comfort to think that though I was poor my father was
rich, for I knew that if he ever came to know of my child's existence he
would hate it and cast it off, as the central cause of the downfall of
his plans.
Yet Martin's child alone, and at the mercy of the world! It could not
and must not be!
Then came a fearful thought. I fought against it. I said many "Hail
Marys" to protect myself from it. But I could not put it away.
Perhaps my physical condition was partly to blame. Others must judge of
that. It is only for me to say, in all truth and sincerity, what I felt
and thought when I stood (as every woman who is to be a mother must) at
the door of that dark chamber which is Life's greatest mystery.
I thought of how Martin had been taken from me, as Fate (perhaps for
some good purpose still unrevealed) had led me to believe.
I thought of how I had comforted myself with the hope of the child that
was coming to be a link between us.
I thought of the sweet hours I had spent in making my baby's clothes; in
choosing her name; in whispering it to myself, yes, and to God, too,
every night and every morning.
I thought of how day by day I had trimmed the little lamp I kept burning
in the sanctuary within my breast where my baby and I lived together.
I thought of how this had taken the sting out of death and victory out
of the grave. And after that I told myself that, however sweet and
beautiful, _all this had been selfishness and I must put it away_.
Then I thought of the child itself, who--conceived in sin as my Church
would say, disinherited by the law, outlawed by society, inheriting my
physical weaknesses, having lost one of its parents and being liable to
lose the other--was now in danger of being left to the mercies of the
world, banned from its birth, penniless and without a protector, to
become a drudge and an outcast or even a thief, a gambler, or a harlot.
This was what I thought and felt.
And when at last I knew that I had come to the end of my appointed time
I knelt down in my sad room, and if ever I prayed a fervent prayer, if
ever my soul went up to God in passionate supplication, it was that the
child I had longed for and looked forward to as a living link with my
lost one _might be born dead_.
"Oh God, whatever happens to me, let my baby be born dead--I pray, I
beseech Thee."
Perhaps it was a wicked prayer. God knows. He will be just.