I
She was about to be a mother for the second time, and the fear which is
the portion of women was upon her. In a little while she would be in
the toils, and she hated and feared physical pain with a great hatred
and a great fear. But there was something further which distressed her.
She was a soft, babyish creature, downy and clinging, soft-eyed and
gentle, the beggar folk had received gifts at her hand, the dogs knew
of her largesse. Men looked on her with approval, and women liked her.
Her husband belonged to the type known as "fine men," tall,
generously-proportioned, with the free and easy joviality which is so
common in Ireland. He was born a boy and he would never grow out of
that state. The colour of his hair or the wrinkles on his cheek would
not have anything to do with his age, for time was powerless against
the richness of his blood. He would still be a boy when he was dying
of old age; but if protestations, kisses and homage were any criterion
then the fact that he loved his wife was fixed beyond any kind of doubt.
But he did not love her.--He was as changeable as the weather of his
country. Swift to love he was equally swift to forget. His passions
were of primitive intensity, but they were not steadfast. He clutched
with both hands at the present and was surprised and irritated by the
fact that he could in nowise get away from the past: the future he did
not care a rap about. Nobody does: there is, indeed, no such thing as
the future, there is only the possibility of it, but the past and the
present are facts not to be gotten away from. What we have done and
what we are doing are things which stamp us, mould us, live with us and
after us: what we will do cannot be counted on, has no part in us, has
only a problematical existence, and can be interfered with, hindered,
nullified or amplified by the thousand unmanageable accidents of
futurity.
He had married thanking God from a full heart for His goodness, and
believing implicitly that he had plucked the very Flower of Womanhood,
and the Heart of the World, and, maybe, he had.--There are many Flowers
of Womanhood, all equally fragrant, and the Heart of the World can beat
against the breast of any man who loves a woman.
Some time previously their little boy had contracted small-pox, and his
mother, nursing him, took it from him. When they recovered her beauty
was gone. The extraordinary bloom which had made her cheek a shrine to
worship and marvel at was destroyed for ever, while, by a curious
chance, the boy was unmarked.
Now the only love which he had to give was a physical love. He did not
love a woman, he loved the husk. Of the woman herself he knew nothing
and cared less. He had never sought to know his wife, never tried to
pierce beneath her beauty and discover where the woman lived and what
she was like at home. Indeed, he knew less of his wife than his
servants did, and by little and little she had seen how the matter
stood. She had plucked the heart from his mystery and read him to the
bones, while remaining herself intact. But she held him still,
although by the most primitive and fragile of bonds, by the magnetism
of her body, the shining of her eyes, the soft beauty of her cheeks;
and, behold! she was undone. The disease had stamped on her face, and,
in the recoil, had stamped on her husband's love.
How many nights of solitary tears she had known! she alone could count
them, a heavy knowledge. How many slights, shrinkings, coldnesses she
had discerned! the tale of them was hot in her brain, the index heavy
on her heart.
She knew her loss on the day that her husband looked at her after her
recovery when all fear of infection had passed--the stare, the flush,
the angry disgust. Her eyes were cameras. She had only to close them
and she could see again in dismal procession those dismal details.
And now, as she lay helpless on the bed, she watched him. She was
racked with pain, and he was mumbling that it would be all right again
in a little time. "A week from now," said he, "and you will have
forgotten all about it."
But she, looking at him with fearful eyes, traced this sentence at the
back of his brain, "I hope that she will die," and the life within her
which had been sown in happiness and love, and had grown great through
misery and tears was now beating at the gates of entrance. . . . She
might die: so many people die in labour, and she was not strong. With
a new clairvoyant gaze she saw Death standing by the bed, hooded,
cloaked and sombre; his eyes were fixed on her and they were peaceful
and kindly eyes. Had there been nothing else to care for she would
have gone gladly to the Dark One; but there remained her little son.
What heart was he to rest on when she was gone? Whose arms could open
so widely as the mother's when he fled from the terrible things which
haunt Babyland?--it was an arrow in her heart.
She knew well that her husband would marry again. He was of those men
who are inveterate husbands--and that new woman!--Who was she? What
was she like? What would be her attitude towards a motherless child?
towards her little one? She would be kindly at first, little doubt of
that, but afterwards, when her own children came, what would become of
the child of a husband's first wife? . . .
She stared down vistas of sorrow. She was a woman, and she knew women.
She saw the other little ones, strangers to her, cared for and loved,
all their childish troubles the centre of maternal interest and debate,
while her boy slunk through a lonely, pathetic childhood, frightened,
repressed, perhaps beaten, because he was not of the brood. . . .
She saw these things as she lay looking at her husband, and she
believed they would come to pass if she died.
And in the night time, when the stars were hidden behind the window
curtains, by the light of a lamp that fell on toiling, anxious people,
in a hospital-like atmosphere of pain and clamour she did die.