When I awoke next morning the last word of the broker's man seemed to be
ringing in my ears.
I knew it was true; I knew I ought to remove baby from the house of the
Olivers without another day's delay, but I was at a loss to know what to
do with her.
To bring her to my own room at the Jew's was obviously impossible, and
to advertise for a nurse for my child was to run the risk of falling
into the toils of somebody who might do worse than neglect her.
In my great perplexity I recalled the waitress at the restaurant whose
child had been moved to a Home in the country, and for some moments I
thought how much better it would be that baby should be "bonny and well"
instead of pale and thin as she was now. But when I reflected that if I
took her to a public institution I should see her only once a month, I
told myself that I could not and would not do so.
"I'll work my fingers to the bone first," I thought.
Yet life makes a fearful tug at a woman when it has once got hold of
her, and, strangely enough, it was in the Jew's house that I first came
to see that for the child's own sake I must part with her.
Somewhere about the time of my moving into the back room my employer
made a kind of bower of branches and evergreens over the lead-flat roof
of an outhouse in his back-yard--a Succah, as Miriam called it, built in
honour of the Feast of Tabernacles, as a symbol of the time when the
Israelites in the Wilderness dwelt in booths.
In this Succah the Jew's family ate all their meals during the seven or
eight days of the Jewish feast, and one morning, as I sat at work by my
open window, I heard Miriam after breakfast reading something from the
Books of Moses.
It was the beautiful story of Jacob parting with Benjamin in the days of
the famine, when there was corn in Egypt only--how the poor old father
in his great love could not bring himself to give up his beloved son,
although death threatened him; how Judah pleaded with Jacob to send the
boy with him into the far country lest they should all die, "both we and
thou and also our little ones;" and how at last Jacob said, "If it must
be so, do this," but "if I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved."
It would be hard to say how deeply this story moved me while I listened
from my room above. And now that I thought of it again, I saw that I was
only sacrificing my child to my selfish love of her, and therefore the
duty of a true mother was to put her into a Home.
It would not be for long. The work I was doing was not the only kind I
was capable of. After I had liberated myself from the daily extortions
of the Olivers I should be free to look about for more congenial and
profitable employment; and then by and by baby and I might live together
in that sweet cottage in the country (I always pictured it as a kind of
Sunny Lodge, with roses looking in at the window of "Mary O'Neill's
little room") which still shone through my dreams.
I spent some sleepless nights in reconciling myself to all this, and
perhaps wept a little, too, at the thought that after years of
separation I might be a stranger to my own darling. But at length I put
my faith in "the call of the blood" to tell her she was mine, and then
nothing remained except to select the institution to which my only love
and treasure was to be assigned.
Accident helped me in this as in other things. One day on my westward
journey a woman who sat beside me in the tram, and was constantly wiping
her eyes (though I could see a sort of sunshine through her tears),
could not help telling me, out of the overflowing of her poor heart,
what had just been happening to her.
She was a widow, and had been leaving her little girl, three years old,
at an orphanage, and though it had been hard to part with her, and the
little darling had looked so pitiful when she came away, it would be the
best for both of them in the long run.
I asked which orphanage it was, and she mentioned the name of it,
telling me something about the founder--a good doctor who had been a
father to the fatherless of thousands of poor women like herself.
That brought me to a quick decision, and the very next morning, putting
on my hat and coat, I set off for the Home, which I knew where to find,
having walked round it on my way back from the West End and heard the
merry voices of happy children who were playing behind a high wall.
I hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I think of the mood in which
I entered the orphanage. In spite of all that life had done to me, I
really and truly felt as if I were about to confer an immense favour
upon the doctor by allowing him to take care of my little woman.
Oh, how well I remember that little point of time!
My first disappointment was to learn that the good doctor was dead, and
when I was shown into the office of his successor (everything bore such
a businesslike air) I found an elderly man with a long "three-decker"
neck and a glacial smile, who, pushing his spectacles up on to his
forehead, said in a freezing voice:
"Well, ma'am, what is _your_ pleasure?"
After a moment of giddiness I began to tell him my story--how I had a
child and her nurse was not taking proper care of her; how I was in
uncongenial employment myself, but hoped soon to get better; how I loved
my little one and expected to be able to provide for her presently; and
how, therefore, if he would receive her for a while, only a little
while, on the understanding, the clear and definite understanding, that
I could take her away as soon as I wished to. . . .
Oh dear! Oh dear:
I do not know what there was in my appearance or speech which betrayed
me, but I had got no further than this when the old gentleman said
sharply:
"Can you provide a copy of the register of your child's birth to show
that it is legitimate?"
What answer I made I cannot recollect, except that I told the truth in a
voice with a tremor in it, for a memory of the registry office was
rolling back on me and I could feel my blushes flushing into my face.
The result was instantaneous. The old gentleman touched a bell, drew his
spectacles down on to his nose, and said in his icy tones:
"Don't take illegitimate children if we can help it."
It was several days before I recovered from the deep humiliation of this
experience. Then (the exactions of the Olivers quickening my memory and
at the same time deadening my pride) I remembered something which I had
heard the old actress say during my time at the boarding-house about a
hospital in Bloomsbury for unfortunate children--how the good man who
founded it had been so firm in his determination that no poor mother in
her sorrow should be put to further shame about her innocent child that
he had hung out a basket at the gate at night in which she could lay her
little one, if she liked, and then ring a bell and hide herself away.
It wasn't easy to reconcile oneself to such philanthropy, but after a
sleepless night, and with rather a sickening pang of mingled hope and
fear, I set off for this hospital.
It was a fine Sunday morning. The working-men in the East End were
sitting at their doors smoking their pipes and reading their Sunday
papers; but when I reached the West all the church bells were ringing,
and people wearing black clothes and shiny black gloves were walking
with measured steps through the wide courtyard that led to the chapel.
I will not say that I did not feel some qualms at entering a Protestant
church, yet as soon as I had taken my seat and looked up at the gallery
of the organ, where the children sat tier on tier, so quaint and
sweet--the boys like robins in their bright red waistcoats, and the
girls like rabbits in their mob-caps with fluted frills--and the service
began, and the fresh young voices rose in hymns of praise to the good
Father of us all, I thought Of nothing except the joy of seeing Isabel
there some day and hearing her singing in the choir.
When the service was over I asked for the secretary and was shown into
his room.
I dare say he was a good man, but oh! why will so many good people wear
such wintry weather in their faces that merely to look at them pierces a
poor woman to the soul?
Apologising for the day, I told my story again (my head a little down),
saying I understood that it was no barrier to a child in that orphanage
that she had been born outside the pale of the law.
"On the contrary," said the secretary, "that is precisely the kind of
child this house is intended for."
But when I went on to say that I assumed they still observed the wish of
the founder that no questions of any kind should be asked about a
child's birth or parentage, he said no, they had altered all that. Then
he proceeded to explain that before a child could be received the mother
must now go before a committee of gentlemen to satisfy them of her
previous good character, and that the father of her baby had deserted
both of them.
More than that, he told me that on being received the child was
immediately re-registered and given a new name, in order that it might
be cut off from the sin of its parents and the contamination of their
shame.
It would be impossible for me to describe the feelings with which I
listened to the secretary while he said all this, with the cast-metal
face of a man who was utterly unconscious of the enormity of the crime
he was describing.
"Before a committee of gentlemen?" I asked.
"That is so."
"Who are to ask her all those questions?"
"Yes."
"And then they are to change her baby's name?"
"Yes."
"Is she told what the new name is to be?"
"No, but she is given a piece of parchment containing a number which
corresponds with the name in our books."
I rose to my feet, flushing up to the eyes I think, trembling from head
to foot I know, and, forgetting who and what I was and why I was
there--a poor, helpless, penniless being seeking shelter for her
child--I burst out on the man in all the mad wrath of outraged
motherhood.
"And you call this a Christian institution!" I said. "You take a poor
woman in her hour of trouble and torture her with an inquisition into
the most secret facts of her life, in public, and before a committee of
men. And then you take her child, and so far as she is concerned you
bury it, and give her a ticket to its grave. A hospital? This is no
hospital. It is a cemetery. And yet you dare to write over your gates
the words of our Lord--our holy and loving and blessed Lord--who said,
'Suffer little children. . . .'"
But what is the use of repeating what I said then (perhaps unjustly) or
afterwards in the silence of my own room and the helpless intoxication
of my rage?
It was soon stamped out of me.
By the end of another week I was driven to such despair by the continued
extortions of the Olivers that, seeing an advertisement in the
Underground Railway of a Home for children in the country (asking for
subscriptions and showing a group of happy little people playing under a
chestnut-tree in bloom), I decided to make one more effort.
"They can't all be machines," I thought, "with the founders' hearts
crushed out of them."
The day was Friday, when work was apt to heap up at the Jew's, and Mrs.
Abramovitch had brought vests enough to my room to cover my bed, but
nevertheless I put on my hat and coat and set out for the orphanage.
It was fifteen miles on the north side of London, so it cost me
something to get there. But I was encouraged by the homelike appearance
of the place when I reached it, and still more by finding that it was
conducted by women, for at last, I thought, the woman-soul would speak
to me.
But hardly had I told my story to the matron, repeating my request (very
timidly this time and with such a humble, humble heart) that I might be
allowed to recover my child as soon as I found myself able to provide
for her, than she stopped me and said:
"My dear young person, we could have half the orphan children in London
on your terms. Before we accept such a child as yours we expect the
parent to give us a legal undertaking that she relinquishes all rights
in it until it is sixteen years of age."
"Sixteen? Isn't that rather severe on a mother?" I said.
"Justly severe," said the matron. "Such women should be made to maintain
their children, and thus realise that the way of transgressors is hard."
How I got back to London, whether by rail or tram or on foot, or what
happened on the way (except that darkness was settling down on me,
within and without), I do not know. I only know that very late that
night, as late as eleven o'clock, I was turning out of Park Lane into
Piccadilly, where the poor "public women" with their painted faces,
dangling their little hand-bags from their wrists, were promenading in
front of the gentlemen's clubs and smiling up at the windows.
These were the scenes which had formerly appalled me; but now I was
suddenly surprised by a different feeling, and found myself thinking
that among the women who sinned against their womanhood there might be
some who sold themselves for bread to keep those they loved and who
loved them.
This thought was passing through my mind when I heard a hollow ringing
laugh from a woman who was standing at the foot of a flight of steps
talking to a group of three gentlemen whose white shirt fronts beneath
their overcoats showed that they were in evening dress.
Her laughter was not natural. It had no joy in it, yet she laughed and
laughed, and feeling as if I _knew_ (because life had that day trampled
on me also), I said to myself:
"That woman's heart is dead."
This caused me to glance at her as I passed, when, catching a side
glimpse of her face, I was startled by a memory I could not fix.
"Where and when have I seen that woman's face before?" I thought.
It seemed impossible that I could have seen it anywhere. But the woman's
resemblance to somebody I had known, coupled with her joyless laughter,
compelled me to stop at the next corner and look back.
By this time the gentlemen, who had been treating her lightly (O God,
how men treat such women!), had left her and, coming arm-in-arm in my
direction, with their silk hats tilted a little back, were saying:
"Poor old Aggie! She's off!" "Completely off!" "Is it drink, I wonder?"
And then, seeing me, they said:
"Gad, here's a nice little gal, though!" "No rouge, neither!" "By Jove,
no! Her face is as white as a waterlily!"
Seeing that they were wheeling round, and fearing they were going to
speak to me, I moved back and so came face to face with the woman, who
was standing where they had left her, silent now, and looking after the
men with fierce eyes under the fair hair that curled over her forehead.
Then in a moment a memory from the far past swept over me, and I cried,
almost as if the name had been forced out of me:
"Sister Angela!"
The woman started, and it seemed for a moment as if she were going to
run away. Then she laid hold of me by the arm and, looking searchingly
into my face, said:
"Who are you? . . . I know. You are Mary O'Neill, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"I knew you were. I read about your marriage to that . . . that man. And
now you are wondering why I am here. Well, come home with me and see."
It was not until afterwards that I knew by what mistake about my
presence in that place Angela thought she must justify herself in my
eyes (mine!); but taking me by the hand, just as she used to do when I
was a child, she led, almost pulled, me down Piccadilly, and my will was
so broken that I did not attempt to resist her.
We crossed Piccadilly Circus, with its white sheet of electric light,
and, turning into the darker thoroughfares on the northern side of it,
walked on until, in a narrow street of the Italian quarter of Soho, we
stopped at a private door by the side of a café that had an Italian name
on the window.
"This is where we live. Come in," said Angela, and I followed her
through a long empty lobby and up three flights of bare stairs.
While we ascended, there was the deadened sound, as from the café, of
men singing (in throbbing voices to mandolines and guitars) one of the
Italian songs which I remembered to have heard from the piazza outside
the convent on that night when Sister Angela left me in bed while she
went off to visit the chaplain:
"_Oh bella Napoli, Oh suol beato
Onde sorridere volle il creato._"
"The Italian Club," said Angela. "Only one flight more. Come!"