CHAPTER XLVIII
Which has to do with the Motherhood of the World
A clockstruck five.
The sun rose out of the grey mists of the east and flecked with golden light the upper stories of the white-faced city.
Betty roused at the noises of the awakening street below—footsteps—the clink of bottles in which young women bore the morning’s milk to the court—then low voices that gossiped drowsily.
The disturbing sense of being in a strange bed.
The distant rumble of a cart—and more footsteps and again voices, of a pitch and accent that struck strangely upon her ear. And she knew she was awaking in a strange land.
It came to her that she was in Paris.
Paris!
She sat up in bed.
There was a dear fellow’s head on the pillow beside her—he slept soundly.
And she laughed low.
She put her dainty feet out of her marriage bed, slipped their whiteness into his slippers, wrapped his warm dressing-gown about her, and went to the window.
And as the sun rose high above the city’s edge, and smiled down into the dew-damp streets, there came the blithe sounds of a city awakening. The clatter of wooden shoon that entered the alley was the sound of the great black sabots in which tramped the big powerful woman in bunchy skirts who came sweeping the water down the gutters with long black broom. On the heels of her noisy passing came the rattle of a fish-barrow, pushed by a fish-girl that wailed the melancholy street-cry of mackerel. And now the court was all alive with sound—water-pails were clanking, and wooden shoon tapping along the paven way; vintners were cleaning wine-casks, swinging iron chains in the cleansing waters of the barrels; anvils rang under the swinging stroke of the naked-armed iron-workers; hammers tapped; market women and street-vendors joined their cries, musical and unmusical, to the increasing din; and the clinking bell on the neck of a big leading short-necked Flemish horse told that thegreat lumbering cart was come to carry away the city’s trash. Girls selling fruit and girls selling potatoes cried their wares; and men that mended chairs. And there was the cling-clink-clink of the pavior who roughs with hammer and chisel the newly mended flagstone. And from the blanchisserie the girls thumped and ironed the white linen and sang snatches of song. And then as the clock struck eight, there came a street-seller crying chickweed for the little caged songsters; and all a-down the alley the birds began to sing.
And wondrous music stirred in the girl’s heart.
For the days of her chill maidenhood were departed, fallen from her like a white garment; and just as, passing from childhood, she had been roused by some unseen hand and rid of physical bondage; just as with awakening reason she had been as surely freed from intellectual bondage; so she now stood in presence of the full majesty of her womanhood, morally free. Her senses glowed, and her dainty being pulsed to a music she had not till then known—and the meaning of the book of life was laid open to her, so that with swelling throat and ecstatic bosom she was at one with the motherhood of the world.
She had brought her little hoard of twenty-seven pounds—it was the lucky number—three times three times three! She laughed happily. And that handsome fellow in her bed, Noll, had his wits and some seventy pounds a year. And they were one; and all the world lay before them.... Hardship! What was hardship? She had this handsome fellow to wrap her maternal arms about. Mother of God! it was luxury—riches—God’s reward!
She gave herself to him with all the shy generosity of her great integrity—of her commanding virtue....
Betty went back to the bed and nestled close to her love
“What is it, Bess?” he asked, rousing.
“I pity all mateless things,” she said.