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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 103 |
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_ SIXTH PART. I AM LOST ONE HUNDRED AND THIRD CHAPTER I must have been sitting a full hour or more on the end of my bed--stunned, stupefied, unable to think--when Miriam, back from the synagogue, came stealthily upstairs to say that a messenger had come for me about six o'clock the night before. "He said his name was Oliver, and father saw him, and that's how he came to know. 'Tell her that her child is ill, and she is to come immediately,' he said." I was hardly conscious of what happened next--hardly aware of passing through the streets to Ilford. I had a sense of houses flying by as they seem to do from an express train; of my knees trembling; of my throat tightening; and of my whole soul crying out to God to save the life of my child until I could get to her. When I reached the house of the Olivers the worst of my fears were relieved. Mrs. Oliver was sitting before the fire with baby on her lap. At sight of me the woman began to mumble out something about my delay, and how she could not be held responsible if anything happened; but caring nothing about responsibility, hers or mine, I took baby from her without more words. My child was in a state of deep drowsiness, and when I tried to rouse her I could not do so. I gathered that this condition had lasted twenty-four hours, during which she had taken no nourishment, with the result that she was now very thin. I knew nothing of children's ailments but a motherly instinct must have come to my aid, for I called for a bath, and bathed baby, and she awoke, and then took a little food. But again she dropped back into the drowsy condition, and Mrs. Oliver, who was alarmed, called in some of the neighbours to look at her. Apparently the mission of the good women was to comfort Mrs. Oliver, not me, but they said, "Sleep never did no harm to nobody," and I found a certain consolation in that. Hours passed. I was barely sensible of anything that happened beyond the narrow circle of my own lap, but at one moment I heard the squirling of a brass band that was going up the street, with the shuffling of an irregular procession. "It's the strike," said Mrs. Oliver, running to the window. "There's Ted, carrying a banner." A little later I heard the confused noises of a strike meeting, which was being held on the Green. It was like the croaking of a frog-pond, with now and then a strident voice (the bricklayer's) crying "Buckle your belts tighter, and starve rather than give in, boys." Still later I heard the procession going away, singing with a slashing sound that was like driving wind and pelting rain:
The doctor was on his rounds, so I left a written message indicating baby's symptoms and begging him to come to her immediately. On the way back I passed a number of children's funerals--easily recognisable by the combined coach and hearse, the white linen "weepers" worn by the coachman and his assistant, and the little coffin, sprinkled with cheap flowers, in the glass case behind the driver's seat. These sights, which brought back a memory of the woman who carried my baby down the Mile End Road, almost deprived me of my senses. I had hardly got back and taken off my coat and warmed my hands and dress by the fire before taking baby in my lap, when the doctor, in his gig, pulled up at the door. He was a young man, but he seemed to take in the situation in a moment. I was the mother, wasn't I? Yes. And this woman was baby's nurse? Yes. Then he drew up a chair and looked steadfastly down at baby, and I went through that breathless moment, which most of us know, when we are waiting for the doctor's first word. "Some acute digestive trouble here apparently," he said, and then something about finding out the cause of it. But hardly had he put his hands on my child as she lay in my lap than there came a faintly discoloured vomit. "What have you been giving her?" he said, looking round at Mrs. Oliver. Mrs. Oliver protested that she had given baby nothing except her milk, but the doctor said sharply: "Don't talk nonsense, woman. Show me what you've given her." Then Mrs. Oliver, looking frightened, went upstairs and brought down a bottle of medicine, saying it was a soothing syrup which I had myself bought for baby's cough. "As I thought!" said the doctor, and going to the door and opening it, he flung the bottle on to the waste ground opposite, saying as he did so: "If I hear of you giving your babies any more of your soothing syrup I'll see what the Inspector has to say." After that, ignoring nurse, he asked me some searching and intimate questions--if I had had a great grief or shock or worry while baby was coming, and whether and how long I had nursed her. I answered as truthfully as I could, though I saw the drift of his inquiries, and was trembling with fear of what he would tell me next. He said nothing then, however, except to make his recommendations. And remembering my loss of work, my heart sank as he enumerated baby's needs--fresh cow's milk diluted with lime water, small quantities of meat juice, and twenty to thirty drops of the best brandy three or four times a day. When he rose to go I paid his fee. It was only half-a-crown, but he cannot have known how much that meant to me, for as he was leaving the kitchen he told me to send for him again in the morning if there were a change in the symptoms. Feeling that I did not yet know the whole truth (though I was trembling in terror of it), I handed baby to Mrs. Oliver and followed the doctor to the door. "Doctor," I said, "is my baby very ill?" He hesitated for a moment and then answered, "Yes." "Dangerously ill?" Again he hesitated, and then looking closely at me (I felt my lower lip trembling) he said: "I won't say that. She's suffering from marasmus, provoked by overdoses of the pernicious stuff that is given by ignorant and unscrupulous people to a restless child to keep it quiet. But her real trouble comes of maternal weakness, and the only cure for that is good nourishment and above all fresh air and sunshine." "Will she get better?" "If you can take her away, into the country she will, certainly." "And if . . . if I can't," I asked, the words fluttering up to my lips, "will she . . . _die_?" The doctor looked steadfastly at me again (I was biting my lip to keep it firm), and said: "She _may_." When I returned to the kitchen I knew that I was face to face with another of the great mysteries of a woman's life--Death--the death of my child, which my very love and tenderness had exposed her to. Meantime Mrs. Oliver, who was as white as a whitewashed wall, was excusing herself in a whining voice that had the sound of a spent wave. She wouldn't have hurt the pore dear precious for worlds, and if it hadn't been for Ted, who was so tired at night and wanted sleep after walking in percession. . . . Partly to get rid of the woman I sent her out (with almost the last of my money) for some of the things ordered by the doctor. While she was away, and I was looking down at the little silent face on my lap, praying for one more glimpse of my Martin's sea-blue eyes, the bricklayer came lunging into the house. "Where's Lizer?" he said. I told him and he cried: "The baiby again! Allus the baiby!" With that he took out of his pocket a cake of moist tobacco, cut and rolled some of it in his palm, and then charged his pipe and lit it--filling the air with clouds of rank smoke, which made baby bark and cough without rousing her. I pointed this out to him and asked him not to smoke. "Eh?" he said, and then I told him that the doctor had been called and what he had said about fresh air. "So that's it, is it?" he said. "Good! Just reminds me of something I want to say, so I'll introdooce the matter now, in a manner o' speaking. Last night I 'ad to go to Mile End for you, and here's Lizer out on a sim'lar arrand. If people 'ave got to be 'ospital nurses to a sick baiby they ought to be paid, mind ye. We're only pore, and it may be a sacred dooty walkin' in percession, but it ain't fillin'." Choking with anger, I said: "Put out your pipe, please." "Ma'am to _you_!" "Put it out this moment, sir, or I'll see if I can't find somebody to make you." The bricklayer laughed, then pointed with the shank of his pipe to the two photographs over the mantelpiece, and said: "See them? Them's me, with my dooks up. If any friend o' yourn as is interested in the baiby comes to lay a 'and on me I'll see if I've forgot 'ow to use 'em." I felt the colour shuddering out of my cheeks, and putting baby into the cot I turned on the man and cried: "You scoundrel! The doctor has told me what is the immediate cause of my baby's illness and your wife has confessed to giving overdoses of a drug at your direction. If you don't leave this house in one minute I'll go straight to the police-station and charge you with poisoning my child." The bully in the coward was cowed in a moment. "Don't get 'uffy, ma'am," he said. "I'm the peaceablest man in the East End, and if I mentioned anything about a friend o' yourn it slipped out in the 'eat of the moment--see?" "Out you go! Go! Go!" I cried, and, incredible as it may seem, the man went flying before my face as if I had been a fury. It would be a long tale to tell of what happened the day following, the next and the next and the next--how baby became less drowsy, but more restless; how being unable to retain her food she grew thinner and thinner; how I wished to send for the doctor, but dared not do so from fear of his fee; how the little money I had left was barely sufficient to buy the food and stimulants which were necessary to baby's cure: how I sat for long hours with my little lamb on my lap straining my dry eyes into her face; and how I cried to God for the life of my child, which was everything I had or wanted. All this time I was still lodging at the Jew's, returning to it late every night, and leaving it early in the morning, but nothing happened there that seemed to me of the smallest consequence. One day Miriam, looking at me with her big black eyes, said: "You must take more rest, dear, or you will make yourself ill." "No, no, I am not ill," I answered, and then remembering how necessary my life was to the life of my child, I said, "I must not be ill." At last on the Saturday morning--I know now it must have been Saturday, but time did not count with me then--I overheard Mrs. Abramovitch pleading for me with her husband, saying they knew I was in trouble and therefore I ought to have more time to find lodging, another week--three days at all events. But the stern-natured man with his rigid religion was inexorable. It was God's will that I should be punished, and who was he to step in between the All-high and his just retribution? "The woman is displeasing to God," he said, and then he declared that, the day being Sabbath (the two tall candlesticks and the Sabbath loaves must have been under his eyes at the moment), he would give me until nine o'clock that night, and if I had not moved out by that time he would put my belongings into the street. I remember that the Jew's threat made no impression upon my mind. It mattered very little to me where I was to lodge next week or what roof was to cover me. When I reached the Olivers' that morning I found baby distinctly worse. Even the brandy would not stay on her stomach and hence her strength was plainly diminishing. I sat for some time looking steadfastly into my child's face, and then I asked myself, as millions of mothers must have done before me, why my baby should suffer so. Why? Why? Why? There seemed to be no answer to that question except one. Baby was suffering because I was poor. If I had not been poor I could have taken her into the country for fresh air and sunshine, where she would have recovered as the doctor had so confidently assured me. And why was I poor? I was poor because I had refused to be enslaved by my father's authority when it was vain and wrong, or my husband's when it, was gross and cruel, and because I had obeyed the highest that was in me--the call of love. And now God looked down on the sufferings of my baby, who was being killed for my conduct--killed by my poverty! I tremble to say what wild impulses came at that thought. I felt that if my baby died and I ever stood before God to be judged I should judge Him in return. I should ask Him why, if He were Almighty, He permitted the evil in the world to triumph over the good, and if He were our heavenly Father why He allowed innocent children to suffer? Was there any _human_ father who could be so callous, so neglectful, so cruel, as that? I dare say it was a terrible thing to bring God to the bar of judgment, to be judged by His poor weak ignorant creature; but it was also terrible to sit with a dying baby on my lap (I thought mine was dying), and to feel that there was nothing--not one thing--I could do to relieve its sufferings. My faith went down like a flood during the heavy hours of that day--all that I had been taught to believe about God's goodness and the marvellous efficacy of the Sacraments of His Church. I thought of the Sacrament of my marriage, which the Pope told me had been sanctioned by my Redeemer under a natural law that those who entered into it might live together in peace and love--and then of my husband and his brutal infidelities. I thought of the Sacrament of my baby's baptism, which was to exorcise all the devils out of my child--and then of the worst devil in the world, poverty, which was taking her very life. After that a dark shadow crossed my soul, and I told myself that since God was doing nothing, since He was allowing my only treasure to be torn away from me, I would fight for my child's life as any animal fights for her young. By this time a new kind of despair had taken hold of me. It was no longer the paralysing despair but the despair that has a driving force in it. "My child shall not die," I thought. "At least poverty shall not kill her!" Many times during the day I had heard Mrs. Oliver trying to comfort me with various forms of sloppy sentiment. Children were a great trial, they were allus makin' and keepin' people pore, and it was sometimes better for the dears themselves to be in their 'eavenly Father's boosim. I hardly listened. It was the same as if somebody were talking to me in my sleep. But towards nightfall my deaf ear caught something about myself--that "it" (I knew what that meant) might be better for me, also, for then I should be free of encumbrances and could marry again. "Of course you could--you so young and good-lookin'. Only the other day the person at number five could tell me as you were the prettiest woman as comes up the Row, and the Vicar's wife couldn't hold a candle to you. 'Fine feathers makes fine birds,' says she: 'Give your young lady a nice frock and a bit o' colour in her checks, and there ain't many as could best her in the West End neither.'" As the woman talked dark thoughts took possession of me. I began to think of Angela. I tried not to, but I could not help it. And then came the moment of _my_ fiercest trial. With a sense of Death hanging over my child I told myself that the only way to drive it off was to make _some great sacrifice_. Hitherto I had thought of everything I possessed as belonging to baby, but now I felt that _I myself_ belonged to her. I had brought her into the world, and it was my duty to see that she did not suffer. All this time the inherited instinct of my religion was fighting hard with me, and I was saying many Hail Marys to prevent myself from doing what I meant to do. "_Hail, Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with thee_ . . ." I felt as if I were losing my reason. But it was of no use struggling against the awful impulse of self-sacrifice (for such I thought it) which had taken hold of my mind, and at last it conquered me. "I must get money," I thought. "Unless I get money my child will die. I--must--get--money." Towards seven o'clock I got up, gave baby to Mrs. Oliver, put on my coat and fixed with nervous fingers my hat and hatpins. "Where are you going to, pore thing?" asked Mrs. Oliver. "I am going out. I'll be back in the morning," I answered. And then, after kneeling and kissing my baby again--my sweet child, my Isabel--I tore the street door open, and pulled it noisily behind me. _ |
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