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The Woman Thou Gavest Me: Being the Story of Mary O'Neill, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 6. I Am Lost - Chapter 92 |
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_ SIXTH PART. I AM LOST NINETY-SECOND CHAPTER At half past seven next morning I was ready to start on my journey. I took a hasty glance at myself in the glass before going out, and I thought my eyes were too much like the sky at daybreak--all joyful beams with a veil of mist in front of them. But I made myself believe that never since baby was born had I been so happy. I was sure I was doing the best for her. I was also sure I was doing the best for myself, for what could be so sweet to a mother as providing for her child? My Welsh landlady had told me it was nine miles to Ilford, and I had gathered that I could ride all the way in successive omnibuses for less than a shilling. But shillings were scarce with me then, so I determined to walk all the way. Emmerjane, by her own urgent entreaty, carried baby as far as the corner of the Bayswater Road, and there the premature little woman left me, after nearly smothering baby with kisses. "Keep straight as a' arrow and you can't lose your wye," she said. It was one of those beautiful mornings in late July when the air is fresh and the sun is soft, and the summer, even in London, has not yet had time to grow tired and dusty. I felt as light as the air itself. I had put baby's feeding-bottle in my pocket and hung her surplus linen in a parcel about my wrist, so I had nothing to carry in my arms except baby herself, and at first I did not feel her weight. There were not many people in the West-End streets at that early hour, yet a few were riding in the Park, and when I came to the large houses in Lancaster Gate I saw that though the sun was shining on the windows most of the blinds were down. I must have been walking slowly, for it was half past eight when I reached the Marble Arch. There I encountered the first cross-tide of traffic, but somebody, seeing baby, took me by the arm and led me safely over. The great "Mediterranean of Oxford Street" was by this time running at full tide. People were pouring out of the Tube and Underground stations and clambering on to the motor-buses. But in the rush nobody hustled or jostled me. A woman with a child in her arms was like a queen--everybody made way for her. Once or twice I stopped to look at the shops. Some of the dressmakers' windows were full of beautiful costumes. I did not covet any of them. I remembered the costly ones I had bought in Cairo and how little happiness they had brought me. And then I felt as if the wealth of the world were in my arms. Nevertheless the whole feminine soul in me awoke when I came upon a shop for the sale of babies' clothes. Already I foresaw a time when baby, dressed in pretty things like these, would be running about Lennard's Green and plucking up the flowers in Mrs. Oliver's garden. The great street was very long and I thought it would never end. But I think I must have been still fresh and happy while we passed through the foreign quarter of Soho, for I remember that, when two young Italian waiters, standing at the door of their cafe, asked each other in their own language which of us (baby or I) was "the bambino," I turned to them and smiled. Before I came to Chancery Lane, however, baby began to cry for her food, and I was glad to slip down a narrow alley into Lincoln's Inn Fields and sit on a seat in the garden while I gave her the bottle. It was then ten o'clock, the sun was high and the day was becoming hot. The languid stillness of the garden after the noise and stir of the streets tempted me to stay longer than I had intended, and when I resumed my journey I thought the rest must have done me good, but before I reached the Holborn Viaduct fatigue was beginning to gain on me. I saw that I must be approaching some great hospital, for hospital nurses were now passing me constantly, and one of them, who was going my way, stepped up and asked me to allow her to carry baby. She looked so sweet and motherly that I let her do so, and as we walked along we talked. She asked me if I was going far, and I said no, only to the other end of London, the edge of the country, to Ilford. "Ilford!" she cried. "Why, that's miles and miles away. You'll have to 'bus it to Aldgate, then change for Bow, and then tram it through Stratford Market." I told her I preferred to walk, being such a good walker, and she gave me a searching look, but said no more on that subject. Then she asked me how old baby was and whether I was nursing her myself, and I answered that baby was six weeks and I had been forced to wean her, being supposed to be delicate, and besides . . . "Ah, perhaps you are putting her out to nurse," she said, and I answered yes, and that was the reason I was going to Ilford. "I see," she said, with another searching look, and then it flashed upon me that she had formed her own conclusions about what had befallen me. When we came to a great building in a side street on the left, with ambulance vans passing in and out of a wide gateway, she said she was sorry she could not carry baby any further, because she was due in the hospital, where the house-doctor would be waiting for her. "But I hope baby's nurse will be a good one. They're not always that, you know." I was not quite so happy when the hospital nurse left me. The parcel on my wrist was feeling heavier than before, and my feet were beginning to drag. But I tried to keep a good heart as I faced the crowded thoroughfares--Newgate with its cruel old prison, the edge of St. Paul's, and the corner of St. Martin's-le-Grand, and so on into Cheapside. Cheapside itself was almost impassable. Merchants, brokers, clerks, and city men generally in tall silk hats were hurrying and sometimes running along the pavement, making me think of the river by my father's house, whose myriad little waves seemed to my fancy as a child to be always struggling to find out which could get to Murphy's Mouth the first and so drown itself in the sea. People were still very kind to me, though, and if anybody brushed me in passing he raised his hat; and if any one pushed me accidentally he stopped to say he was sorry. Of course baby was the talisman that protected me from harm; and what I should have done without her when I got to the Mansion house I do not know, for that seemed to be the central heart of all the London traffic, with its motor-buses and taxi-cabs going in different directions and its tremendous tides of human life flowing every way. But just as I was standing, dazed and deafened on the edge of a triangle of streets, looking up at a great building that was like a rock on the edge of a noisy sea, and bore on its face the startling inscription, "The Earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," a big policeman, seeing me with baby in my arms, held up his hand to the drivers and shouted to the pedestrians ("Stand a-one side, please"), and then led me safely across, as if the Red Sea had parted to let us pass. It was then twelve o'clock and baby was once more crying for her food, so I looked for a place in which I might rest while I gave her the bottle again. Suddenly I came upon what I wanted. It seemed to be a garden, but it was a graveyard--one of the graveyards of the old London churches, enclosed by high buildings now, and overlooked by office windows. Such a restful place, so green, so calm, so beautiful! Lying there in the midst of the tumultuous London traffic, it reminded me of one of the little islands in the middle of our Ellan glens, on which the fuchsia and wild rose grow while the river rolls and boils about it. I had just sat down on a seat that had been built about a gnarled and blackened old tree, and was giving baby her food, when I saw that a young girl was sitting beside me. She was about nineteen years of age, and was eating scones out of a confectioner's bag, while she read a paper-covered novel. Presently she looked at baby with her little eyes, which were like a pair of shiny boot buttons, and said: "That your child?" I answered her, and then she asked: "Do you like children?" I answered her again, and asked her if she did not like them also. "Can't say I'm particularly gone on them," she said, whereupon I replied that that was probably because she had not yet had much experience. "Oh, haven't I? Perhaps I haven't," she said, and then with a hard little laugh, she added "Mother's had nine though." I asked if she was a shop assistant, and with a toss of her head she told me she was a typist. "Better screw and your evenings off," she said, and then she returned to the subject of children. One of her chums in the office who used to go out with her every night to the music-halls got into trouble a year or two ago. As a consequence she had to marry. And what was the result? Never had her nose out of the wash-tub now! The story was crude enough, yet it touched me closely. "But couldn't she have put her baby out to nurse and get another situation somewhere?" I asked. "Matter o' luck," said the girl. "Some can. Some can't. That's their look out. Firms don't like it. If they find you've got a child they gen'r'lly chuck you." In spite of myself I was a little down when I started on my journey again. I thought the parcel was cutting my wrist and I felt my feet growing heavier at every step. Was Maggie Jones's story the universal one? If a child were born beyond the legal limits, was it a thing to hide away and be ashamed of? And could it be possible that man's law was stronger than God's law after all? _ |
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