Chapter XXII: 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.