Part 35 (1/2)
If I had been anything else I should not have been in the garden that night at a time when well-brought-up girls were in bed! And I should have flown at the first sound of danger--but I didn't. Not because I did not recognise danger; but because I _did_ recognise something I had been looking for all my life--Love. And I put out both arms and embraced it.
_Now_ it seems revealed to me that I should not have done this ... I should have fenced and fended ... guarded myself ... given nothing ...
until he had asked for me and taken me, before all the world ... and made a nest for me somewhere away from the squalor of the world where no begriming thoughts could touch me and smirch the mother of _his_ son.
_Then_ I suppose the Abbey would have been for me too!----”
She twisted her lips and flung out her fingers.
”And I wouldn't change a thing that is done. Not for all the world could give would I forget or have undone that radiant hour!... And yet ... and yet ... how I should love the nest for my child ... the peace and fine honour of a wife's bed to lay _his_ son upon! Oh! why does life tear the hearts of women in half like this?” She rested her head on her hands and shed pa.s.sionate tears for herself and for all women like her. At last she said:
”Good-night, old Abbey! You are _mine_ all the same--mine because, moral or immoral, I love the things you stand for. You cannot rob even bad people of the love of beauty. And no one can rob me of the peace you have put into my heart night after night.”
At last illness descended upon her. She had often known torment of mind, now she knew torment of body, and her mind did not suffer at all; but was possessed of a kind of exultation that supported and refreshed her through terrible gaps of time.
Nurse Selton came in often, but the girl preferred to be alone. Most of the day was spent between _Hope_ over the mantelpiece and the cas.e.m.e.nt-window. Often she thought of the native women in her own land, who, when the time comes to bring forth, go quietly away and make a soft green bed in some sheltered place, and there suffer in silence and alone; then, after a few hours, return as quietly to every-day work and go serenely on with life, the new-born child slung behind the shoulders.
The thought appealed to Poppy. She said:
”That is the way I should have borne my son if I had stayed in Africa ... out in the air--with the sun s.h.i.+ning. But oh! these terrible walls that shut one in!... and without--cold, fog, mud!”
When evening fell, sickly and grey-green, she opened her cas.e.m.e.nt-window and leaned upon its sill. The roar of London heard through the fog was like the dull boom of the breakers on the Durban back beach. Far away, the sky above Trafalgar Square was spasmodically lit by electric advertis.e.m.e.nts.
In the street below, a woman's raucous voice pathetically shrieked:
”It's 'ard to give the 'and Where the 'eart can _Nev_-ver be.”
But Poppy did not hear. With hidden eyes and hands clasped tight upon the pains that racked her, she was unravelling the mystery of Life and Love.
Evelyn Carson's son was born in the dawn of a late October day: heralded in by Big Ben striking the hour of five. Poppy gave one long, ravished glance at the little dimpled morsel, with its sleek, black head and features like crumpled rose-leaves, then lay back content and at peace with all the world.
”How sweet it is to be a woman!” she thought, forgetting all past pain and despair, all anguish to come. ”My heart can never be a stone again, nor my soul a shrivelled leaf.”
She drowsed happily through the days that followed, letting her mind rest with her body; she thought of nothing but the sweetness of being a mother; she was intoxicated by the cling of the little lips to her breast.
”I am a _real_ woman,” she said. ”This is what I was born for and made beautiful for. Poor, _poor_ old Sara!”
When Nurse Selton came one day and asked if she would like to get her child ”adopted,” she would have struck the woman's face if it had been within reach. As it was not, she said in a voice that was a drawn sword:
”Go away! I hate you!” And Nurse Selton actually understood and went away. She considered Poppy--taking one thing with another--the craziest patient she had ever had.
Poppy talked to her baby afterwards. ”I said I would be at peace with the world for evermore dear one; but here I am, my old self already. And I see that it will always be so. I must be at war for _your_ sake now. I must fight _your_ enemies--until you are old enough to fight them for yourself. To _dare_ suggest such a thing!” A little while after she whispered pa.s.sionately to the sleek, black head:
”She did not know she was speaking of a king's son!”
CHAPTER XVII
When the time came for departure from No. 10, Old Street, Poppy did not go from Westminster. The grip of the place was on her and she did not care to leave it. But she sought and found a part of more cheerful aspect--a quiet square with a triangle of green in its centre, and the spire of an old church showing above the branches of trees in one of its corners. The house where she engaged two rooms had an old-fas.h.i.+oned air, though upon the opening of the front door was disclosed the depressing interior common to most houses of its kind--the worn linoleum in the hall and stairway; the inevitable pretentious hall-chair and umbrella-stand; the eternal smell of fish and boiling linen. But the two rooms were an artistic find. They had been inhabited and furnished by an actress, who was married to an artist, and were original without being uncomfortable.