MOTHERHOOD
"'Lo! At the couch where infant beauty sleeps,
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps;
She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies,
Smiles on her slumbering child with pensive eyes,
And weaves a song of melancholy joy—
'Sleep, image of thy father, sleep, my boy;
No lingering hour of sorrow shall be thine;
No sigh that rends thy father's heart and mine;
Bright as his manly sire the son shall be
In form and soul; but ah! more blest than he!
Thy fame, thy worth, thy filial love at last
Shall soothe this aching heart for all the past—
With many a smile my solitude repay,
And chase the world's ungenerous scorn away.'"
CAMPBELL.
MEANWHILE, downstairs Fay was having tea in the drawing-room with her
aunt. She came in from the garden when she was called, rubbing her wet
little red hands with her handkerchief.
"I'm quite tidy still," she informed Miss Selkirk in her cheerful
little voice; "I muddied my hands over the grave, and then, I washed
them in a lovely tank of water outside the stable. Is mummie better?"
"Your mother is in bed. You must sit still on that chair and not make
any crumbs."
Fay was most anxious to oblige. She handled her bread and butter most
carefully, but her tongue could not keep silent.
"I do like this house very much," she said. "Are we going to sleep here
many nights? I was finking I could show you how to play cat's-cradle
after tea—if you was dull, I mean. Would you like to try? It's very
easy. Daddy and me does it wonderful."
"How long has your father left you?"
"He put us on the ship, you know. He didn't leave us. We lefted him.
Poor daddy! It's a drefful sad fing for him to be left without his
little girl! And mummie too—that's a dreffuller thing. I used to live
alone with him once upon a time, you know, before we knowed mummie. It
was rather uncomfable, 'cause daddy couldn't mend my stockings, and my
curls was so tangly him and me used to give up the comb and take to
the brush, and that mummie says is very bad for a child's head. Poor
mummie! She does miss daddy so much, and so do I. But, you see, I've
got her, and she's got nobody."
A pause, then:
"Do you know, Aunt Marget, I fink if you was to ask me, I could say
'Yes' to that nice currant cake."
It says much for Miss Selkirk's imperturbability of spirits that
never a smile came to her lips as her small niece chatted on. Fay was
perfectly oblivious of the gravity of her aunt. She enjoyed her tea
thoroughly. And then getting off her chair, remarked:
"I fink I had better go to mummie. I know she's rather troubled about
us. And I'll tell her to go to sleep, and I'll say 'God bless you,'
like she does me. You're quite sure we shan't have to go away before
to-morrow?"
"If you are a very good little girl," said Miss Selkirk, "you shall
stay some weeks with me, and your mother too."
"I fink I'm good nearly always," said Fay, balancing on one foot and
looking up into her aunt's face thoughtfully, "but the devil seeks me
pretty often, you know. The Bible says so, and when he roars at me to
run and hide when I'm out of doors, and mummie calls me—well then I do
it! He's so tarsome when he roars!"
She pattered out of the room after this speech.
And Miss Selkirk sat and looked into her fire, for she knew that she
had undertaken no light charge when she had offered Honor and Fay a
home, and she could not yet get accustomed to the ways of such a child
as Fay.
After a long night's rest, Honor was wonderfully refreshed and rested.
Old Christine's kindness had comforted her much.
And when she came downstairs the next morning, and Miss Selkirk
expressed surprise at seeing her down to breakfast, she said:
"I do not give way as a rule. It is not often I feel so done for as I
did yesterday."
After breakfast, as it was a bright morning, Fay was turned loose in
the garden again. She was already the greatest friends with all the
servants. She had invaded the kitchen and shaken hands with the old
cook and the young housemaid, informing them that she meant to have a
kitchen of her own when she grew up and cook all day long. She had been
taken by Isaacs the groom to see the fat grey pony in the stable, and
the Irish terrier, who loved the pony better than anyone else in the
world. And now that she was well out of the way, and Honor employed
with the needlework that was seldom out of her hand, Miss Selkirk began
to talk about her brother.
She pointed to the picture of Knockaburn which hung on the drawing-room
wall over her davenport.
"He sold the old place," she said bitterly, "which had been ours for
eight generations, and he sold it as he might an old coat—glad to get
rid of it at any price."
"He was not happy there," said Honor; "he had had an unhappy boyhood,
and that is a thing that one never forgets. He said it had been a
prison to him."
"He was not a true Selkirk; he had some of the flighty blood of our
father's mother, who was French. My mother tried so hard to train him
up into a sober, stolid Scotsman. But she felt, poor thing! before she
died, what a failure she had made of it. Alick will never do anything
all his life but please himself. Easy, happy-go-lucky, and thriftless
he will always be. He killed his first wife by neglect. I heard that
much from people who knew them. When he wanted to get rid of Fay, he
married you to look after her. Now that you are not able to go round
with him and wait on him hand and foot, he ships you off for someone
else to look after. By and by, if it suits him, he will come back to
you again. If it does not, he will stay away. And if you are not able
to support yourself independently of him, it will be a bad outlook for
you."
"Oh," cried Honor, "you are hard—hard! He has never said one unkind
word to me. He and his child are devoted to each other. I own he is
thoughtless. He seems to have no idea of money, or of what it costs to
live; but he is a good father, and he has been a good husband to me. If
he did choose me to be a mother to his child, rather than to be a wife
to himself, I do not complain. I feel the time will come when he will
want a home, and will come back to me for it. He is absolutely faithful
to me. He never looks or cares for the friendship of women. He is
bitten with the mania for speculating in a variety of investments all
over the world, and he loves travelling and men's society. You may have
seen his worst side as an impatient, restless young man, but I have
seen his better side, and I know that as time goes on, he will want a
woman's sympathy and tenderness to help him through life."
"And his child will grow up like him," said Miss Selkirk bitterly. "She
has his flighty, restless ways."
"No, no," cried Honor hotly. "Fay is a darling. I will not give her
the training her father had. That was his ruin—suppression on every
side. I shall train Fay up in fearless freedom if I can. She is a
warm, tenderhearted child, unselfish, and clever and original. I have
studied her, and I know her, for I love children. She is the joy of
her father's heart, and I am sure she is of mine. Wait a little, Miss
Selkirk, and you will find yourself losing your heart to her before
long."
"I never understand children, and never shall."
Miss Selkirk set her lips grimly as she spoke. If she did not care for
Fay, she certainly began to like Honor.
Honor's extreme quietness and unselfishness could not but be
appreciated by the rugged Scotswoman. Though Miss Selkirk rarely
smiled, her tone became milder and more sympathetic when she addressed
her sister-in-law, and Honor learnt to understand that her severe
demeanour sometimes hid a kind heart.
That day Honor wrote to her father and to Pauline. Pride had prevented
her from doing this before when her purse was empty and she was
homeless.
And on the following day, her baby was born. The quiet household of
Miss Selkirk was much excited over the event.
Fay wondered much over the strange nurse and doctor who came to the
house, and when eventually Miss Selkirk told her the news, the child
stared at her with open mouth and eyes.
"A little baby brother! Who gived him to me?"
"God has given him to your mother. You must be a good girl, and give
no trouble. No, you cannot go up to your mother. She must not be
disturbed."
"Is he a tiny little baby? Do tell me. How did he come? I finked last
night I heard a baby cry outside the windows, only Christine telled me
it was owls. I 'spect it was him, poor little fing, flying round and
tapping at the windows to get in, and then mummie opened hers. He did
come down from heaven, didn't he? Oh, I want to see him dreffully."
"You will see him to-morrow, if you are good."
Poor Fay found it hard to be patient. She missed Honor intensely; and
Miss Selkirk did not know how to talk to children. But she did her
best, even to going to visit Fay after she was in bed, which Honor
invariably did.
"Are you asleep, Fay?" Miss Selkirk asked, seeing only the top of a
curly golden head above the bedclothes.
With a wriggle and a sigh, Fay raised herself in bed.
"Come here, Aunt Marget. Put your finger on my pillow here—just
here—now what do you feel?"
Fay's tone was solemn and mysterious.
"I feel nothing," said Miss Selkirk; "it is a hot little pillow, and a
trifle damp."
"Yes," said Fay, nodding her head with an important, rather pleased
smile on her face; "it's a tear place. I've been dropping kontities of
tears, Aunt Marget, quite quietly, but they comed out of me because I
can't see mummie and I feel so alone."
"You must learn to do without your mother," said Miss Selkirk gravely.
"You are not a baby, and she will not be able to give you so much
attention now as she has done. Your little brother will take up all her
time."
"But she might let me see her just to say good-night and God bless you."
A little sob was rising in Fay's throat.
"I'll send Christine to you," said Miss Selkirk hastily, dreading a
scene, and she left the room.
Christine came and took the child in her arms.
"There, my bonny bairn, go ye to sleep. Your mither will be seein' ye
in the morn. She's verra weak and ill, dearie; that's why she canna see
ye the night. But 'tis a mercy she came through so weel. An' the baby
is healthy tho' sma'."
"Is mummie ill? Nobody telled me that. I'll go to sleep, Christine. I
wouldn't disturb her for all the world."
And Fay turned over and laid her head upon her pillow, relieved to find
that it was not neglect but illness which kept Honor away from her.
She crept into Honor's room on tiptoe the next morning.
"Are you really better, mummie dear? You're sure I didn't make you ill
by eating your sandwiches in the train?"
Honor smiled, and put her hand on Fay's curls.
"No, darling," she whispered. "I shall soon be well, I hope. Be a good
girl, and now look at baby."
She pulled down a bit of the sheet, and Fay looked in awe at the tiny,
red, puckered face of the new arrival.
"He's like a doll. Oh, mummie, I really fink I can take care of him for
you—may I? I should like to carry him."
But the nurse came forward and told her she must go out of the room,
and Fay obediently went. The event was so unexpected and so strange
that it quite bewildered her.
And Honor lay weak and happy and grateful beyond words to Miss Selkirk
for taking her in at such a time.
In a few days, she was able to talk about the future, which began to
press heavily upon her.
"I must write to Alick," she said.
"You need not," was Miss Selkirk's quick reply. "I have done so myself.
I want him clearly to understand that I will not relieve him of his
responsibilities towards wife and children. So I have told him that I
am only keeping you till you get strong again."
"Yes," assented Honor quietly. "I quite understand that. But, Miss
Selkirk—"
"You had better call me Margaret."
"I will. I am wondering if you would mind finding me cheap country
lodgings near here. Of course, if you would rather I was not in your
neighbourhood, I can go elsewhere. But I have always heard that
Devonshire is cheap for living, and I should not then have the expense
of travelling. I will get some work from that woman in town. It seemed
so strange the way I went in. I saw a baby's nightdress in the window,
and I was making mine. I saw that my waist was too low down, and I
just stepped in to ask the woman if she would let me measure mine by
it. That was the beginning. She admired my work, and then told me
that a sister of hers who had always helped her with her orders had
just married and left her. And somehow or other I told her how I was
circumstanced. She gave me some work at once, and I believe she would
always keep me busy, for she has continual orders for layettes. Don't
you think I may be able to support myself and the children till I hear
from Alick?"
Honor looked so white and frail, and yet so eager, that Miss Selkirk
was touched.
"You needn't worry over lodgings or work at present."
"But I cannot let you have the expense of the nurse and the doctor. It
is very good of you to do as much as you are doing. I really mean to
repay you if I can."
"We will let Alick do that."
The news of Honor's return and the birth of her boy came with startling
force to the Rectory. Pauline met the Rector in the afternoon of the
same day in which he had received the account.
"My poor girl!" he said. "We ought to have had her home, but my wife's
nerves are so bad that it would have been difficult. And, as she says,
we really have not room. Dear me! To think of me being a grandfather!
It is nice for Honor being with her husband's sister. She is no doubt
very comfortable there."
Pauline wondered if Honor was so comfortable. Her little note to her
had been blotted and tear-stained.
"Pray for me, Pauline. I may not live through it. I can't come home.
And I am grateful to Miss Selkirk for receiving me. The future looks
dull and hopeless, and my outlook is east, east, east! I can't bear up
against it. But God has not forsaken me. I don't deserve His care, but
He raised up help for me in London, and now again here—so I will trust
Him. If it was not for Fay, I think the best thing would be for me to
die."
Pauline answered this lovingly and tenderly. She was rejoiced when she
heard again a fortnight later.
"I am sitting up and so comfortable and happy. Oh, Pauline! How can I
describe my boy? I feel as if I have never lived till now. I have never
thought that I should ever have a little child of my own. I feel strung
up to do and dare and endure, for I have him to live for. Miss Selkirk
is a good, true friend, but of the rigid Scotch school, and cannot
understand our little Fay. I have a dream of a workman's cottage, and
of having the two children by myself. How happy I should be! But it is
a question of money. Oh, Pauline, do you ever wish for the superfluous
gold of the rich in our land? If only—But I won't complain. I wish
travelling were cheaper—I should like to see you so. But I have quite
come to the conclusion that I could not take a cottage near my home.
"And, Pauline, I know you can keep a secret. I must earn money. If
you know of any way, tell it to me. But I cannot leave the children.
Needlework seems the only thing that I can do. How I should like to
show you my baby! They say he is small, but he is healthy, and has such
deep blue eyes, and a sweet, solemn little smile. As he lies in my lap
and looks up at me, he seems to say, 'I'm sorry for you, but it will be
my turn to help you by and by,' and I know and believe he will."
So Pauline knew that Honor was happy in her baby, and though she felt
anxious at the apparent lack of money, she did not know the exact
circumstances, and had no idea that Honor was absolutely penniless. It
was well she did not know, for it was out of her power to help.