The Woman Thou Gavest Me; Being the Story of Mary O'Neill

My new quarters were in the poorer district which stands at the back of Bayswater.

The street was a cul-de-sac (of some ten small houses on either side) which was blocked up at the further end by the high wall of a factory for the "humanization" of milk, and opened out of a busy thoroughfare of interior shops like a gully-way off a noisy coast.

My home in this street was in number one, and I had been attracted to it by a printed card in the semi-circular fan-light over the front door, saying: "A ROOM TO LET FURNISHED."

My room, which was of fair size, was on the first floor and had two windows to the street, with yellow holland blinds and white muslin curtains.

The furniture consisted of a large bed, a horse-hair sofa, three cane-bottomed chairs, a chest of drawers (which stood between the windows), and a mirror over the mantelpiece, which had pink paper, cut into fanciful patterns, over the gilt frame, to keep off the flies.

The floor was covered with linoleum, but there were two strips of carpet, one before the fire and the other by the bed: the walls were papered with a bright red paper representing peonies in bloom; and there were three pictures—a portrait of a great Welsh preacher with a bardic name ("Dyfed"), an engraving entitled "Feed my Sheep" (showing Jesus carrying a lamb), and a memorial card of some member of the family of the house, in the form of a tomb with a weeping angel on either side.

I paid five shilling a week for my room, and, as this included the use of kettle, cooking utensils, and crockery, I found to my great delight at the end of the first week that providing for myself (tea, bread and butter, and eggs being my principal food) I had only spent ten shillings altogether, which, according to my present needs, left me enough for my time of waiting and several weeks beyond.

Every morning I went out with a little hand-bag to buy my provisions in the front street; and every afternoon I took a walk in the better part of Bayswater and even into the Park (Hyde Park), which was not far off, but never near Piccadilly, or so far east as Bloomsbury, lest I should meet Sister Mildred or be recognized by the old boarders.

I had no key to my lodgings, but when I returned home I knocked at the front door (which was at the top of a short flight of steps from the pavement) and then a string was pulled in the cellar-kitchen in which the family of my landlady lived, whereupon the bolt was shot back and the door opened of itself.

Finding it necessary to account for myself here as at the boarding-house, I had adhered to my former name, but said I was the widow of a commander lately lost, at sea, which was as near to the truth as I dared venture.

I had also made no disguise of the fact that I was expecting a child, a circumstance which secured me much sympathy from the kind-hearted souls who were now my neighbours.

They were all womanly women, generally the wives of men working in the milk factory, and therefore the life of our street was very regular.

At five in the morning you heard the halting step of the old "knocker up," who went up and down the street tapping at the bedroom windows with a long pole like a fishing-rod. A little before six you heard the clashing of many front doors and the echoing footsteps of the men going to their work. At half-past seven you heard the whoop of the milkman and the rattling of his cans. At half-past eight you heard the little feet of the children, like the pattering of rain, going off to the Board School round the corner. And a little after four in the afternoon you heard the wild cries of the juvenile community let loose from lessons, the boys trundling iron hoops and the girls skipping to a measured tune over a rope stretched from parapet to parapet.

After that, our street hummed like a bee-hive, with the women, washed and combed, standing knitting at their open doors or exchanging confidences across the areas until darkness fell and each of the mothers called her children into bed, as an old hen in the farmyard clucks up her chickens.

These good creatures were very kind to me. Having satisfied themselves from observation of my habits that I was "respectable," they called me "our lady"; and I could not help hearing that I was "a nice young thing," though it was a little against me that I did not go to church or chapel, and had confessed to being a Catholic—for several of our families (including that of my landlady) were members of the Welsh Zion Chapel not far away.

Such was the life of the little human cage to which I had confined myself, but I had an inner life that was all my own and very sweet to me.

During the long hours of every day in which I was alone I occupied myself in the making of clothes for my baby—buying linen and flannel and worsted, and borrowing patterns from my Welsh landlady.

This stimulated my tenderness towards the child that was to come, for the heart of a young mother is almost infantile, and I hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I think of the childish things I did and thought and said to myself in those first days when I was alone in my room in that back street in Bayswater.

Thus long before baby was born I had christened her. At first I wished to call her Mary, not because I cared for that name myself, but because Martin had said it was the most beautiful in the world. In the end, however, I called her Isabel Mary (because Isabel was my mother's name and she had been a far better woman than I was), and as I finished my baby's garments one by one I used to put them away in their drawer, saying to myself, "That's Isabel Mary's binder," or "Isabel Mary's christening-robe" as the case might be.

I dare say it was all very foolish. There are tears in my eyes when I think of it now, but there were none then, for though there were moments when, remembering Martin, I felt as if life were for ever blank, I was almost happy in my poor surroundings, and if it was a cage I had fixed myself in there was always a bird singing inside of it—the bird that sang in my own bosom.

"When Isabel Mary comes everything will he all right," I used to think.

This went on for many weeks and perhaps it might have gone on until my time was full but for something which, occurring under my eyes, made me tremble with the fear that the life I was living and the hope I was cherishing were really very wrong and selfish.

Of my landlady, Mrs. Williams, I saw little. She was a rather hard but no doubt heavily-laden woman, who had to "do" for a swarm of children, besides two young men lodgers who lived in the kitchen and slept in the room behind mine. Her husband was a quiet man (a carter at the dairy) whom I never saw at all except on the staircase at ten o'clock at night, when, after winding the tall clock on the landing, he went upstairs to bed in his stocking feet.

But the outstanding member of the family for me was a shock-headed girl of fourteen called Emmerjane, which was a running version of Emma Jane.

I understood that Emmerjane was the illegitimate daughter of Mrs. Williams's dead sister, and that she had been born in Carnarvon, which still shimmered in her memory in purple and gold.

Emmerjane was the drudge of the family, and I first saw her in the street at dusk, mothering a brood of her little cousins, taking Hughie by one hand and Katie by the other and telling Gwennie to lay hold of Davie lest he should be run over by the milk vans.

Afterwards she became my drudge also—washing my floor, bringing up my coals, and cleaning my grate, for sixpence a week, and giving me a great deal of information about my neighbours for nothing.

Thus she told me, speaking broad cockney with a Welsh accent, that the people opposite were named Wagstaffe and that the creaking noise I heard was that of a mangle, which Mrs. Wagstaffe had to keep because her husband was a drunkard, who stole her money and came home "a-Saturday nights, when the public-houses turned out, and beat her somethink shockin'," though she always forgave him the next day and then the creaking went on as before.

But the greatest interest of this weird little woman, who had a premature knowledge of things a child ought not to know, was in a house half-way down the street on the other side, where steam was always coming from the open door to the front kitchen.

The people who lived there were named Jones. Mrs. Jones "washed" and had a bed-ridden old mother (with two shillings from the Guardians) and a daughter named Maggie.

Maggie Jones, who was eighteen, and very pretty, used to work in the dairy, but the foreman had "tiken advantage of her" and she had just had a baby.

This foreman was named Owen Owens and he lived at the last number on our side, where two unmarried sisters "kept house" for him and sat in the "singing seat" at Zion.

Maggie thought it was the sisters' fault that Owen Owens did not marry her, so she conceived a great scheme for "besting" them, and this was the tragedy which, through Emmerjane's quick little eyes and her cockney-Welsh tongue, came to me in instalments day by day.

When her baby was a month old Maggie dressed it up "fine" and took it to the photographers for its "card di visit." The photographs were a long time coming, but when they came they were "heavenly lovely" and Maggie "cried to look at them."

Then she put one in an envelope and addressed it to Owen Owens, and though it had only to cross the street, she went out after dark to a pillar-box a long way off lest anybody should see her posting it.

Next day she said, "He'll have it now, for he always comes home to dinner. He'll take it up to his bedroom, look you, and stand it on the washstand, and if either of those sisters touch it he'll give them what's what."

After that she waited anxiously for an acknowledgment, and every time the postman passed down our street her pretty pale face would be at the door, saying, "Anything for me to-day?" or "Are you sure there's nothing for me, postman?"

At length a letter came, and Maggie Jones trembled so much that she dared not open it, but at last she tripped up to her room to be "all of herself," and then . . . then there was a "wild screech," and when Emmerjane ran upstairs Maggie was stretched out on the floor in a dead faint, clutching in her tight hand the photograph which Owen Owens had returned with the words, written in his heavy scrawl across the face—Maggie Jones's bastard.

It would be impossible to say how this incident affected me. I felt as if a moral earthquake had opened under my feet.

What had I been doing? In looking forward to the child that was to come to me I had been thinking only of my own comfort—my own consolation.

But what about the child itself?

If my identity ever became known—and it might at any moment, by the casual recognition of a person in the street—how should the position of my child differ from that of this poor girl?

A being born out of the pale of the law, as my husband would say it must be, an outcast, a thing of shame, without a father to recognise it, and with its mother's sin to lash its back for ever!

When I thought of that, much as I had longed for the child that was to be a living link between Martin and me, I asked myself if I had any right to wish for it.

I felt I had no right, and that considering my helpless position the only true motherly love was to pray that my baby might be still-born.

But that was too hard. It was too terrible. It was like a second bereavement. I could not and would not do it.

"Never, never, never!" I told myself.

Thinking matters out in the light of Maggie Jones's story, I concluded that poverty was at the root of nearly everything. If I could stave off poverty no real harm could come to my child.

I determined to do so. But there was only one way open to me at present—and that was to retrench my expenses.

I did retrench them. Persuading myself that I had no real need of this and that, I reduced my weekly outlay.

This gave me immense pleasure, and even when I saw, after a while, that I was growing thin and pale, I felt no self-pity of any sort, remembering that I had nobody to look well for now, and only the sweet and glorious duty before me of providing for my child.

I convinced myself, too, that my altered appearance was natural to my condition, and that all I needed was fresh air and exercise, therefore I determined to walk every day in the Park.

I did so once only.

It was one of those lovely mornings in early spring, when the air and the sky of London, after the long fog and grime of winter, seem to be washed by showers of sunshine.

I had entered by a gate to a broad avenue and was resting (for I was rather tired) on a seat under a chestnut tree whose glistening sheaths were swelling and breaking into leaf, when I saw a number of ladies and gentlemen on horseback coming in my direction.

I recognised one of them instantly. It was Mr. Vivian, and a beautiful girl was riding beside him. My heart stood still, for I thought he would see me. But he was too much occupied with his companion to do so.

"Yes, by Jove, it's killing, isn't it?" he said, in his shrill voice, and with his monocle in his mole-like eye, he rode past me, laughing.

After that I took my walks in the poorer streets behind Bayswater, but there I was forced back on my old problem, for I seemed to be always seeing the sufferings of children.

Thank God, children as a whole are happy. They seem to live in their hearts alone, and I really and truly believe that if all the doors of the rich houses of the West End of London were thrown open to the poor children of the East End they would stay in their slums and alleys.

But some of them suffer there for all that, especially the unfortunate ones who enter the world without any legal right to be here, and I seemed to be coming upon that kind everywhere.

One evening I saw a tiny boy of five sheltering from the rain under a dripping and draughty railway arch, and crying as if his little heart would break. I tried to comfort him and could not, but when a rather shame-faced young woman came along, as if returning from her work, he burst out on her and cried:

"Oh, muvver, she's been a-beating of me awrful."

"Never mind, Johnny," said the young woman, kneeling on the wet pavement to dry the child's eyes. "Don't cry, that's a good boy."

It needed no second sight to look into the heart of that tragedy, and the effect of it upon me was to make me curtail my expenditure still further.

Looking back on those days I cannot but wonder that I never tried to find employment. But there was one delicate impediment then—my condition, which was becoming visible, I thought, to people in the street, and causing some of them, especially women, to look round at me. When this became painful I discontinued my walks altogether, and sent Emmerjane on my few errands.

Then my room became my world.

I do not think I ever saw a newspaper. And knowing nothing of what was going on, beyond the surge and swell of the life of London as it came to me when I opened my window. I had now, more than ever, the sense of living in a dungeon on a rock in the middle of the sea.

Having no exercise I ate less and less. But I found a certain joy in that, for I was becoming a miser for my child's sake, and the only pain I suffered was when I went to my drawer, as I did every day, and looked at my rapidly diminishing store.

I knew that my Welsh landlady was beginning to call me close, meaning mean; but that did not trouble me in the least, because I told myself that every penny I saved out of my own expenses was for my child, to keep her from poverty and all the evils and injustices that followed in its train.

As my appointed time drew near my sleep was much broken; and sometimes in the middle of the night, when I heard a solitary footstep going down the street I would get up, draw aside one of my blinds, and see a light burning in some bedroom window opposite, and afterwards hear the muffled cry of the small new being who had come as another immigrant into our chill little world.

But I made no arrangements for myself until my Welsh landlady came up to my room one day and asked if I had settled with a doctor. When I answered no, she held up her hands and cried:

"Good gracious! Just as I thought. Thee'st got to lose no time, though."

Happily there was a doctor in our street nearly every day, and if I wished it she would call him up to me. I agreed and the doctor came next morning.

He was a tall, elderly man with cold eyes, compressed lips, and a sour expression, and neither his manner nor his speech gave any hint of a consciousness (which I am sure every true doctor must have) that in coming to a woman in my condition he was entering one of the sacred chambers of human life.

He asked me a few abrupt questions, told me when he would come again, and then spoke about his fee.

"My fee is a guinea and I usually get it in advance," he said, whereupon I went to my drawer, and took out a sovereign and a shilling, not without a certain pang at seeing so much go in a moment after I had been saving so long.

The doctor had dropped the money into his waistcoat pocket with oh! such a casual air, and was turning to go, when my Welsh landlady said:

"Her's not doing herself justice in the matter, of food, doctor."

"Why, what do you eat?" asked the doctor, and as well as I could, out of my dry and parched throat, I told him.

"Tut! tut! This will never do," he said. "It's your duty to your child to have better food than that. Something light and nourishing every day, such as poultry, fish, chicken broth, beef-tea, and farinaceous foods generally."

I gasped. 'What was the doctor thinking about?

"Remember," he said, with his finger up, "the health of the child is intimately dependent on the health of the mother. When the mother is in a morbid state it affects the composition of the blood, and does great harm to the health of the offspring, both immediately and in after life. Don't forget now. Good day!"

That was a terrible shock to me. In my great ignorance and great love I had been depriving myself for the sake of my child, and now I learned that I had all the time been doing it a grave and perhaps life-long injury!

Trying to make amends I sent out for some of the expensive foods the doctor had ordered me, but when they were cooked I found to my dismay that I had lost the power of digesting them.

My pain at this discovery was not lessened next day when my Welsh landlady brought up a nurse whom I had asked her to engage for me.

The woman was a human dumpling with a discordant voice, and her first interest, like that of the doctor, seemed to centre in her fee.

She told me that her usual terms were a guinea for the fortnight, but when she saw my face fall (for I could not help thinking how little I had left) she said:

"Some ladies don't need a fortnight, though. Mrs. Wagstaffe, for instance, she never has no more than five days, and on the sixth she's back at her mangle. So if five will do, ma'am, perhaps ten and six won't hurt you."

I agreed, and the nurse was rolling her ample person out of my room when my Welsh landlady said:

"But her's not eating enough to keep a linnet, look you."

And then my nurse, who was what the doctor calls a croaker, began on a long series of stories of ladies who, having "let themselves down" had died, either at childbirth or soon afterwards.

"It's after a lady feels it if she has to nurse her baby," said the nurse, "and I couldn't be responsible neither for you nor the child if you don't do yourself justice."

This was a still more terrible possibility—the possibility that I might die and leave my child behind me. The thought haunted me all that day and the following night, but the climax came next morning, when Emmerjane, while black-leading my grate, gave me the last news of Maggie Jones.

Maggie's mother had been "a-naggin' of her to get work," asking if she had not enough mouths to feed "without her bringin' another."

Maggie had at first been afraid to look for employment, thinking everybody knew of her trouble. But after her mother had put the young minister from Zion on to her to tell her to be "obejent" she had gone out every day, whether the weather was good or bad or "mejum."

This had gone on for three months (during which Maggie used to stay out late because she was afraid to meet her mother's face) until one wet night, less than a week ago, she had come home drenched to the skin, taken to her bed, "sickened for somethink" and died.

Three days after Emmerjane told me this story a great solemnity fell on our street.

It was Saturday, when the children do not go to school, but, playing no games, they gathered in whispering groups round the house with the drawn blinds, while their mothers stood bareheaded at the doors with their arms under their aprons and their hidden hands over their mouths.

I tried not to know what was going on, but looking out at the last moment I saw Maggie Jones's mother, dressed in black, coming down her steps, with her eyes very red and her hard face (which was seamed with labour) all wet and broken up.

The "young minister" followed (a beardless boy who could have known nothing of the tragedy of a woman's life), and stepping into the midst of the group of the congregation from Zion, who had gathered there with their warm Welsh hearts full of pity for the dead girl, he gave out a Welsh hymn, and they sang it in the London street, just as they had been used to do at the cottage doors in the midst of their native mountains:

"Bydd myrdd o ryfeddodau
Ar doriad boreu wawr."

I could look no longer, so I turned back into my room, but at the next moment I heard the rumble of wheels and knew that Maggie Jones was on her way to her last mother of all—the Earth.

During the rest of that day I could think of nothing but Maggie's child, and what was to become of it, and next morning when Emmerjane came up she told me that the "young minister" was "a-gettin' it into the 'ouse."

I think that was the last straw of my burden, for my mind came back with a swift rebound from Maggie Jones's child to my own.

The thought of leaving my baby behind now terrified and appalled me. It brought me no comfort to think that though I was poor my father was rich, for I knew that if he ever came to know of my child's existence he would hate it and cast it off, as the central cause of the downfall of his plans.

Yet Martin's child alone, and at the mercy of the world! It could not and must not be!

Then came a fearful thought. I fought against it. I said many "Hail Marys" to protect myself from it. But I could not put it away.

Perhaps my physical condition was partly to blame. Others must judge of that. It is only for me to say, in all truth and sincerity, what I felt and thought when I stood (as every woman who is to be a mother must) at the door of that dark chamber which is Life's greatest mystery.

I thought of how Martin had been taken from me, as Fate (perhaps for some good purpose still unrevealed) had led me to believe.

I thought of how I had comforted myself with the hope of the child that was coming to be a link between us.

I thought of the sweet hours I had spent in making my baby's clothes; in choosing her name; in whispering it to myself, yes, and to God, too, every night and every morning.

I thought of how day by day I had trimmed the little lamp I kept burning in the sanctuary within my breast where my baby and I lived together.

I thought of how this had taken the sting out of death and victory out of the grave. And after that I told myself that, however sweet and beautiful, all this had been selfishness and I must put it away.

Then I thought of the child itself, who—conceived in sin as my Church would say, disinherited by the law, outlawed by society, inheriting my physical weaknesses, having lost one of its parents and being liable to lose the other—was now in danger of being left to the mercies of the world, banned from its birth, penniless and without a protector, to become a drudge and an outcast or even a thief, a gambler, or a harlot.

This was what I thought and felt.

And when at last I knew that I had come to the end of my appointed time I knelt down in my sad room, and if ever I prayed a fervent prayer, if ever my soul went up to God in passionate supplication, it was that the child I had longed for and looked forward to as a living link with my lost one might be born dead.

"Oh God, whatever happens to me, let my baby be born dead—I pray, I beseech Thee."

Perhaps it was a wicked prayer. God knows. He will be just.

It was Saturday, the seventh of June. The summer had been a cold one thus far; the night was chill and heavy rain was beating against the window-pane.

There was a warm fire in my room for the first time for several months; the single gas jet on the window side of the mantelpiece had been turned low, and the nurse, in list slippers, was taking my little flannel and linen garments out of the chest of drawers and laying them on the flat steel fender.

I think I must have had intervals of insensibility, for the moments of consciousness came and went with me, like the diving and rising of a sea-bird in the midst of swelling waves.

At one such moment I became aware that the doctor and my Welsh landlady, as well as my nurse, were in the room, and that they were waiting for the crisis and fearing for my life.

I heard them talking in low voices which made a drumming noise in my ears, like that which the sea makes when it is rolling into a cave.

"She's let herself down so low, pore thing, that I don't know in the world what's to happen to her."

"As God is my witness, look you, I never saw anybody live on so little."

"I'm not afraid of the mother. I'm more afraid of the child, if you ask me."

Then the drumming noise would die out, and I would only hear something within myself saying:

"Oh God, oh God, that my child may be born dead."

At another moment I heard, above the rattle of the rain, the creaking of the mangle in the cellar-kitchen on the other side of the street.

At still another moment I heard the sound of quarrelling in the house opposite. A woman was screaming, children were shrieking, and a man was swearing in a thick hoarse voice.

I knew what had happened—it was midnight, the "public-houses had turned out," and Mr. Wagstaffe had came home drunk.

The night passed heavily. I heard myself (as I had done before) calling on Martin in a voice of wild entreaty:

"Martin! Martin!"

Then remembering that he was gone I began again to pray. I heard myself praying to the Blessed Virgin:

"Oh, Mother of my God, let my child . . ."

But a voice which seemed to come from far away interrupted me.

"Hush, bâch, hush! It will make it harder for thee."

At length peace came. It seemed to me that I was running out of a tempestuous sea, with its unlimited loneliness and cruel depth, into a quiet harbour.

There was a heavenly calm, in which I could hear the doctor and the nurse and my Welsh landlady talking together in cheerful whispers.

I knew that everything was over, and with the memory of the storm I had passed through still in my heart and brain. I said:

"Is it dead?"

"Dead?" cried the nurse in a voice several octaves higher than usual. "Dear heart no, but alive and well. A beautiful little girl!"

"Yes, your baby is all right, ma'am," said the doctor, and then my Welsh landlady cried:

"Why did'st think it would be dead, bach? As I am a Christian woman thee'st got the beautifullest baby that ever breathed."

I could bear no more. The dark thoughts of the days before were over me still, and with a groan I turned to the wall. Then everything was wiped out as by an angel's wing, and I fell into a deep sleep.

When I awoke my dark thoughts were vanishing away like a bad dream in the morning. The rain had ceased, the gas had been put out, and I could see by the glow on the peonies of the wall-paper that the sun was shining with a soft red light through the holland blinds of my windows.

I heard the sparrows chirping on the sills outside; I heard the milkman rattling his cans; I heard the bells of a neighbouring church ringing for early communion.

I closed my eyes and held my breath and listened to the sounds in my own room. I heard the kettle singing over the fire; I heard somebody humming softly, and beating a foot on the floor in time to the tune and then I heard a low voice (it was Emmerjane's) saying from somewhere near my bed:

"I dunno but what she's awake. Her breathing ain't a-goin' now."

Then I turned and saw the nurse sitting before the fire with something on her lap. I knew what it was. It was my child, and it was asleep. In spite of my dark thoughts my heart yearned for it.

And then came the great miracle.

My child awoke and began to cry. It was a faint cry, oh! so thin and weak, but it went thundering and thundering through me. There was a moment of awful struggle, and then a mighty torrent of love swept over me.

It was Motherhood.

My child! Mine! Flesh of my flesh! Oh God! Oh God!

All my desire for my baby's death to save it from the pains of life was gone, and my heart, starved so long, throbbed with tenderness. I raised myself in bed, in spite of my nurse's protest, and cried to her to give me my baby.

"Give her to me. Give her to me."

"By-and-by, by-and-by," said the nurse.

"Now, now! I can wait no longer."

"But you must take some food first. Emmerjane, give her that glass of milk and water."

I drank the milk just to satisfy them, and then held out my arms for my child.

"Give her to me—quick, quick!"

"Here she is then, the jewel!"

Oh! the joy of that moment when I first took my baby in my arms, and looked into her face, and saw my own features and the sea-blue eyes of Martin! Oh the rapture of my first eager kiss!

I suppose I must have been rough with my little cherub in the fervour of my love, for she began to cry again.

"There! there!" said the nurse. "Be good now, or I must take baby away."

But heaven had taught me another lesson, and instantly, instinctively, I put my baby to my breast. Instantly and instinctively, too, my baby turned to it with its little mouth open and its little fingers feeling for the place.

"Oh God! My God! Oh Mother of my God!"

And then in that happiness that is beyond all earthly bliss—the happiness of a mother when she first clasps her baby to her breast—I began to cry.

I had not cried for months—not since that night in Ellan which I did not wish to remember any more—but now my tears gushed out and ran down my face like rain.

I cried on Martin once more—I could not help it. And looking down at the closed eyes of my child my soul gushed out in gratitude to God, who had sent me this for all I had suffered.

"Hush, hush! You will do yourself a mischief and it will be bad for the milk," said the nurse.

After that I tried to control myself. But I found a fierce and feverish delight in suckling my child. It seemed as if every drop my baby drew gave me a spiritual as well as a physical joy—cooling my blood and my brain and wiping out all my troubles.

Oh mystery of mysteries! Oh miracle of miracles!

My baby was at my breast and my sufferings were at an end.

That was a long, long day of happiness.

It was both very long and very short, for it passed like a dream.

What wonderful happenings were crowded into it!

First the nurse, from the dizzy heights of her greater experience and superior knowledge, indulged my infantile anxieties by allowing me to look on while baby was being bathed, and rewarded me for "being good" by many praises of my baby's beauty.

"I've nursed a-many in my time," she said, "but I don't mind saying as I've never had a bonnier babby on my knee. Look at her legs now, so white and plump and dimpled. Have you ever seen anythink so putty?"

I confessed that I never had, and when nurse showed me how to fix the binder, and put on the barrow-coat without disturbing baby while asleep, I thought her a wonderful woman.

Emmerjane, who had with difficulty been kept out of the room last night and was now rushing breathlessly up and down stairs, wished to hold baby for a moment, and at length out of the magnificence of my generosity I allowed her to do so, only warning her, as she loved her life, to hold tight and not let baby fall.

"How'd you mean?" said the premature little mother. "Me let her fall? Not much!"

Every hour, according to the doctor's orders, I gave baby the breast. I do not know which was my greatest joy—to feast my eyes on her while she sucked and to see her little head fall back with her little mouth open when she had had enough, or to watch her when she stretched herself and hiccoughed, and then grasped my thumb with her little tight fingers.

Oh, the wild, inexpressible delight of it!

Every hour had its surprise. Every few minutes had their cause of wonder.

It rather hurt me when baby cried, and I dare say my own foolish lip would drop at such moments, but when I saw that there were no tears in her eyes, and she was only calling for her food, I pleaded with nurse to let me give her the breast again.

The sun shone all day long, and though the holland window blinds were kept down to subdue the light, for my sake and perhaps for baby's, I thought my room looked perfectly beautiful. It might be poor and shabby, but flights of angels could not have made it more heavenly than it was in my eyes then.

In the afternoon nurse told me I must take some sleep myself, but I would not sleep until baby slept, so she had to give me my cherub again, and I sat up and rocked her and for a while I sang—as softly as I could—a little lullaby.

It was a lullaby I had learned at Nemi from the Italian women in embroidered outside stays, who so love their children; and though I knew quite well that it had been written for the Mother of all Mothers, who, after she had been turned away from every door, had been forced to take refuge in a stable in Bethlehem, I was in such an ecstasy of spiritual happiness that I thought it no irreverence to change it a little and to sing it in my London lodging to my human child.

"Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee,
Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee."

I dare say my voice was sweet that day—a mother's voice is always sweet—for when Emmerjane, who had been out of the room, came back to it with a look of awed solemnity, she said:

"Well, I never did! I thought as 'ow there was a' angel a-come into this room."

"So there is, and here she is," I said, beaming down on my sleeping child.

But the long, short, blissful day came to an end at last, and when night fell and I dropped asleep, there were two names of my dear ones on my lips, and if one of them was the name of him who (as I thought) was in heaven, the other was the name of her who was now lying in my arms.

I may have been poor, but I felt like a queen with all the riches of life in my little room.

I may have sinned against the world and the Church, but I felt as if God had justified me by His own triumphant law.

The whole feminine soul in me seemed to swell and throb, and with my baby at my breast I wanted no more of earth or heaven.

I was still bleeding from the bruises of Fate, but I felt healed of all my wounds, loaded with benefits, crowned with rewards.

Four days passed like this, varied by visits from the doctor and my Welsh landlady. Then my nurse began to talk of leaving me.

I did not care. In my ignorance of my condition, and the greed of my motherly love, I was not sorry she was going so soon. Indeed, I was beginning to be jealous of her, and was looking forward to having my baby all to myself.

But nurse, as I remember, was a little ashamed and tried to excuse herself.

"If I hadn't promised to nurse another lady, I wouldn't leave you, money or no money," she said. "But the girl" (meaning Emmerjane) "is always here, and if she isn't like a nurse she's 'andy."

"Yes, yes, I shall be all right," I answered.

On the fifth day my nurse left me, and shocking as that fact seems to me now, I thought little of it then.

I was entirely happy. I had nothing in the world except my baby, and my baby had nothing in the world except me. I was still in the dungeon that had seemed so dreadful to me before—the great dungeon of London to one who is poor and friendless.

But no matter! I was no longer alone, for there was one more inmate in my prison-house—my child.

I AM LOST