VI
WhatEllen Sydney had expected to be her trial by fire proved quite the opposite. It was the beginning of a new and kinder life. For if she had been unhappy at the Meadowburns’ it was because of a deep-seated difference between her own native impulses and those of her keepers. Long habit in a narrow rut, listening daily to a cautious and inglorious philosophy, had fostered in her the belief that the great world outside was monstrous and cruel; but she did not find it so. On the contrary, there were many to appreciate her cheerful courage and ready laugh, and return it with affection. Life at the hospital was novel and filled with congenial activity. Behind its unmoral walls was an anonymous and practical community in which her shame quickly melted from her daily thoughts. After the first few days of strangeness and mutual curiosity she saw that none cared how she had come by her situation. Nor were her duties burdensome; without the normal occupation they gave her she would have been ill at ease.
The picture of a drab and bitter Ellen, clattering about a sordid environment with pail and mop—which gave Potter so many secret twinges in his New York room—never came true.
She interested herself in the patients, most of whom she discovered to her surprise were even less able to cope with misfortune than she; the small purse which Dr. Schottman allowed her from the funds Potter had given her was always half open. The many varieties of mothers, and the innumerable enchanting babies fascinated her; but no more so than the coming of her own. As the weeks went by her condition, the manifestations of life within her, gave her increasing importance. It made her for the first time interesting to herself. She thought that she grew more attractive. Her body, long attenuated, took on softer contours under the wholesome diet and freedom from responsibility; her breasts were her particular pride. They changed magically; from stubby protrusions without any character at all, they grew round and firm as they had not been since girlhood.
Then there were the visits of Dr. Schottman. His humorous sallies dispelled in a moment the few worries that came with the long days of waiting. He brought scant news of the Meadowburns, not seeming to care to talk of them. They had been very eager to find her at first, had made a great stir and called upon the police. Then, as suddenly as they took up the search, they had dropped it.
“Ah, they didn’t care much, you may be sure,” laughed Ellen. It was far from displeasing to her to know that she need not depend upon them. Butimmediately she remembered that it was the doctor to whom she owed her present good fortune, not herself; and she felt remorseful.
To Schottman, the hospital seemed to be something of a continuous comedy, and all these mothers, many of them abandoned, caught unwillingly in the grip of natural force, were the victims of a mild practical joke. How much of this was a pose which he found useful in dealing with them, and how much of it a mask to hide a disillusioning experience nobody knew, but it never gave offence. His homely grin and bracing philosophy made him a favourite everywhere.
When she held her child in her arms for the first time a momentary grief oppressed her that it should be fatherless. But the child grew far more pleasing to look at than she had hoped it would be. Its dark hair and unexpected blue eyes made it look unlike either herself or Potter at first. Then a vague resemblance asserted itself, and more strongly on the mother’s side. This seemed right to Ellen. The less her daughter resembled the father she was never to see, the better.
Before long she was allowed to take it out in the perambulator Schottman had bought for her. The hospital was located in a bleak, northern section of town, a region long associated in Ellen’s mind with the foreign population, principally German, and much sniffed at by people of the West Endwhere she had lived. She remembered how depressing that day had been when they first drove to the hospital, through wintry streets between endless rows of low-roofed, packed-in brick houses and frame cottages. They had a humbler and more domestic air than she was used to, and gave forth odors of strong cookery, stale lager and of musty parlours seldom opened to the air. But the four months of hospital life in their midst had accustomed her to these exotic touches, and when the people began to overflow into the streets at the first hint of warm weather and to take a kindly interest in her child, she felt drawn to them. It amused her to have them think, as they sometimes did, that she was the nurse or governess.
It was a mistake, perhaps natural, that Dr. Schottman at least viewed with satisfaction. The little girl’s charm would serve his purpose with the Blaydons to whom he was taking them. He had never entertained any doubt that Ellen would win them in her own way. Her willingness and modesty, a form of rough good breeding, would recommend her well. But if the child should be really attractive, so much the better for everybody.
“Come now,” he teased Ellen, “this little chick has a high tone about her. What you think? Better let me hunt up the young scapegrace and show him what a handsome little rascal he’s responsible for.”
“How do you know he’s young?” laughed Ellen. He had never pressed the question of fatherhood, and she was not afraid that he would ever try to.
“And what will you name it? For it’s mother, eh?”
Ellen had settled that matter. She had decided long before on the name of Moira, for Moira McCoy, the pretty, laughing, assistant head nurse, who had been the first to befriend her. But concerning this she also chose to keep her counsel for the present. Another thing troubled her mightily.
“Are these—these people I’m going to live with Episcopalians?”
He laughed.
“I believe there’s a division in the family. Ach, these Christian distinctions! They split God up into small pieces like a pie, and each one takes a different slice. They are afraid to get indigestion from too much goodness, eh? But ‘Aunt Mathilda’—that is the sister-in-law—is Episcopalian. High church they call it. Oh, very high! It will suit you that way, I guess. And she is the boss. You’ll find that out.”
High church. That would do very well. It was the serious question of her daughter’s christening that disturbed her.
The day came at last to take their fearsome step into a new home. Ellen wept a little over her farewells, but on such a lovely morning she could not be sad very long. She felt so good, so well,and in the new clothes she had bought for this event she radiated unaccustomed health.
“Look at you,” said the doctor. “I told you it would be good medicine. If your old friends could see you they wouldn’t know it was the same Ellen.”
She blushed. She had never expected to leave the hospital so merry. In a few moments they were driving along in a new-fangled thing called a taxicab, and she had to hold the baby carefully to keep it from bumping. It was the first time she had ever ridden in an automobile, but her thoughts were too far ahead to concern themselves with the novelty. A year ago it would have been a great adventure.
First of all she reflected:
“When Moira is grown up she will love me, and we will do so many nice things together.” Then she thought, “Who knows, Moira may have a father some day, and never be the wiser.”
The doctor had decided that she was to be known as Mrs. Williams at the Blaydons’. “Aunt Mathilda” herself had suggested this, and Ellen was willing enough to consent. But she accepted with greater reluctance his proposal of a gold band for her finger. The idea smacked of a deception that was too bold by far, a deception that involved higher powers than those of earthly authority, in her mind. She felt almost a criminal whenever she looked at it.
The rattling vehicle swung through an impressive high gate and they were looking down between a row of trees. To their left, running straight through the middle of the thoroughfare lay a grass grown parkway so dotted with shrubs that she got only fleeting glimpses of the houses on the other side. Those on her own side she gazed at with wonder. They were set far apart, with generous lawns, and the suggestion of gardens farther back behind walls and iron grill work. The big houses revealed their age, not only by their old-fashioned and heterogeneous architecture, but by the smoke-grimed look of their brick and stone.
“How lovely and peaceful,” thought Ellen, fascinated at the fresh sight of green everywhere spotted and patched with sunlight. She seemed to have been wearing dark glasses for months and months.... She noticed that the driver was slowing down his vehicle and was craning his neck for the house numbers.
“My land,” she murmured, “we’re going to live here.... Look, Moira, look!” she could not help but cry aloud—and then flushed pink when she saw the doctor had heard the name.
This was Trezevant Place, its fame already beginning to dwindle, so that Ellen, acquainted only with the new city, had heard of it but once or twice. For two generations the patrician families had housed there, and a few of the original ownershad remained, standing on their dignity, defying the relentless town, which had long sprawled up to it, and around it and far beyond, unsightly, clamorous and vulgar. The snob that is in everybody claimed Ellen at that moment and she longed for an audience of Meadowburns and Potters to watch them disembark.
The cab came to an abrupt stop before the bronze figure of a barefooted negro boy holding out an iron ring in one chubby paw. Ellen faced a front door of many bevelled panes of glass which reflected the bright sky into her eyes. Her knees failed her, but with a free hand she grasped the doctor’s sleeve, finding in the act reassurance enough to mount the steps between the red stone pillars. A maid appeared in the doorway.
“Oh, it’s you, doctor,” she said, beaming at them from under her neat white cap. “Mrs. Seymour is waiting in the library. Go right in, please.”
Ellen found herself in a room filled with book-shelves, and mahogany, and leather-covered chairs, facing a small lady who did not leave her straight, uncomfortable seat. The greying hair was done up in a knot on the top of her head and behind it was a dark spreading comb. She wore a light blue silk frock with a white collar of lace that folded back over her shoulders and left her neck bare. It was old-fashioned looking, Ellen thought, yet “nice” as she would have put it,meaning smart, and she noticed that the woman’s throat was smooth and plump. Her graceful ankles showed, crossed, above a pair of little grey slippers with very high heels. What a little doll of a person! she thought.
“Good morning, doctor,” said the lady, shaking hands with Schottman, while Ellen stood in the door. Then she turned to her.
“Sit down, Mrs. Williams. You mustn’t feel strange here, because I am sure we are going to like each other. The doctor has told me nice things about you.”
Ellen thought no more of dolls. The assured voice, and what she could only describe as the foreign way “Aunt Mathilda” pronounced her words, awed her. She did not know that this was what people called cultivated. She obeyed the injunction to sit down, her eyes glued trustfully but timidly upon her new mistress.
“I’m not going to keep you long this morning, because for the next day or two you will have little to do and will be getting accustomed to the place. You can take care of the child yourself?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” said Ellen, and smiled. “I’ve taken care of many more than this one, and done the work besides.”
“I see. That’s splendid. Well, you will have plenty of time for her. It can be managed very well. Gina is fond of children and will look after the baby when you are busy, and then there is mynephews’ nurse, Mrs. Stone. Gina is my personal maid. The other servants are Marie, who is the parlour maid and waitress, John, the gardener and stable man, and the laundress Annie, who lives out. So the work is pretty well divided. And then there is Miss Wells, the trained nurse for Mrs. Blaydon. The doctor may have told you that Mrs. Blaydon never leaves her room.”
Ellen lost track of this catalogue of servants, yet she felt a happy sense of importance in listening to these matter-of-fact and self-respecting details. It was as though she were being taken into the confidence of the household. She tried to attend Mrs. Seymour’s every word with seriousness, and felt her embarrassment dropping away from her.
“Dr. Schottman tells me that you have been the only help in the family. I suppose you have done only plain cooking?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, you will have no trouble learning our likes and dislikes, and the way things must be served. Miss Wells will prepare most of Mrs. Blaydon’s meals, which are separate. The present cook is to stay until the end of the month, and that will give you plenty of time to catch on. And you mustn’t be afraid. We expect to make allowances. Of course, your wages will begin at once, but I can’t tell just what they should be until we try you, so we won’t discuss that to-day.”
“Oh, not at all, ma’am—” began Ellen, and stopped suddenly. “Aunt Mathilda” covered her embarrassment by rising, and Ellen stood also, with her child in her arms. The act brought them close enough together for Mrs. Seymour to see the baby’s face.
“What a sweet little thing,” she said, and smiled cordially at Ellen. “I hope you are going to be happy here, Mrs. Williams. Marie will show you your room and give you everything you need. Don’t bother about your bags. John can take them up at once.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Ellen. She stood hesitating, after saying a halting, awkward good-bye to the doctor. It was not easy to leave his friendly presence and impossible to thank him as she wanted to. But she turned and in the wake of Marie climbed the broad front steps.
Their carved, heavy banisters and the thick rugs rebuked her. It was as though she realized that in this well-ordered house it would be rarely indeed that she would tread them. Here she was more definitely placed than she would ever have been at the Meadowburns’.
As they passed the second story landing two very small, cleanly dressed boys came out of a big bedroom, with a matronly hospital nurse between them.