Esther Waters Part 19

"Is that the way to leave your patient, sister?" said the student who sat by Esther's bed, a good-looking boy with a fair, plump face. Esther looked into his clear blue, girl-like eyes, wondered, and turned away for shame.

The sister stopped her imitation of a popular comedian, and said, "Oh, she's all right; if they were all like her there'd be very little use our coming here."

"Unfortunately that's just what they are," said another student, a stout fellow with a pointed red beard, the ends of which caught the light.

Esther's eyes often went to those stubble ends, and she hated him for his loud voice and jocularity. One of the midwives, a woman with a long nose and small grey eyes, seemed to mock her, and Esther hoped that this woman would not come near her. She felt that she could not bear her touch. There was something sinister in her face, and Esther was glad when her favourite, a little blond woman with wavy flaxen hair, came and asked her if she felt better. She looked a little like the young student who still sat by her bedside, and Esther wondered if they were brother and sister, and then she thought that they were sweethearts.

Soon after a bell rang, and the students went down to supper, the nurse in charge promising to warn them if any change should take place. The last pains had so thoroughly exhausted her that she had fallen into a doze. But she could hear the chatter of the nurses so clearly that she did not believe herself asleep. And in this film of sleep reality was distorted, and the unsuccessful operation which the nurses were discussing Esther understood to be a conspiracy against her life. She awoke, listened, and gradually sense of the truth returned to her. She was in the hospital....

The nurses were talking of some one who had died last week.... That poor woman in the other bed seemed to suffer dreadfully. Would she live through it? Would she herself live to see the morning? How long the time, how fearful the place! If the nurses would only stop talking.... The pains would soon begin again.... It was awful to lie listening, waiting. The windows were open, and the mocking gaiety of the street was borne in on the night wind. Then there came a trampling of feet and sound of voices in the pa.s.sage--the students and nurses were coming up from supper; and at the same moment the pains began to creep up from her knees. One of the young men said that her time had not come. The woman with the sinister look that Esther dreaded, held a contrary opinion. The point was argued, and, interested in the question, the crowd came from the window and collected round the disputants. The young man expounded much medical and anatomical knowledge; the nurses listened with the usual deference of women.

Suddenly the discussion was interrupted by a scream from Esther; it seemed to her that she was being torn asunder, that life was going from her. The nurse ran to her side, a look of triumph came upon her face, and she said, "Now we shall see who's right," and forthwith ran for the doctor. He came running up the stairs; immediately silence and scientific collectedness gathered round Esther, and after a brief examination he said, in a low whisper--

"I'm afraid this will not be as easy a case as one might have imagined. I shall administer chloroform."

He placed a small wire case over her mouth and nose, and the sickly odour which she breathed from the cotton wool filled her brain with nausea; it seemed to choke her, and then life faded, and at every inhalation she expected to lose sight of the circle of faces.

When she opened her eyes the doctors and nurses were still standing round her, but there was no longer any expression of eager interest on their faces. She wondered at this change, and then out of the silence there came a tiny cry.

"What's that?" Esther asked.

"That's your baby."

"My baby! Let me see it; is it a boy or a girl?"

"It is a boy; it will be given to you when we get you out of the labour ward."

"I knew it would be a boy." Then a scream of pain rent the stillness of the room. "Is that the same woman who was here when I first came in?

Hasn't she been confined yet?"

"No, and I don't think she will be till midday; she's very bad."

The door was thrown open, and Esther was wheeled into the pa.s.sage. She was like a convalescent plant trying to lift its leaves to the strengthening light, but within this twilight of nature the thought of another life, now in the world, grew momentarily more distinct. "Where is my boy?" she said; "give him to me."

The nurse entered, and answered, "Here." A pulp of red flesh rolled up in flannel was laid alongside of her. Its eyes were open; it looked at her, and her flesh filled with a sense of happiness so deep and so intense that she was like one enchanted. When she took the child in her arms she thought she must die of happiness. She did not hear the nurse speak, nor did she understand her when she took the babe from her arms and laid it alongside on the pillow, saying, "You must let the little thing sleep, you must try to sleep yourself."

Her personal self seemed entirely withdrawn; she existed like an atmosphere about the babe, an impersonal emanation of love. She lay absorbed in this life of her life, this flesh of her flesh, unconscious of herself as a sponge in warm sea-water. She touched this pulp of life, and was thrilled, and once more her senses swooned with love; it was still there. She remembered that the nurse had said it was a boy. She must see her boy, and her hands, working as in a dream, unwound him, and, delirious with love, she gazed until he awoke and cried. She tried to hush him and to enfold him, but her strength failed, she could not help him, and fear came lest he should die. She strove to reach her hands to him, but all strength had gone from her, and his cries sounded hollow in her weak brain. Then the nurse came and said--

"See what you have done, the poor child is all uncovered; no wonder he is crying. I will wrap him up, and you must not interfere with him again."

But as soon as the nurse turned away Esther had her child back in her arms. She did not sleep. She could not sleep for thinking of him, and the long night pa.s.sed in adoration.

XVII

She was happy, her babe lay beside her. All her joints were loosened, and the long hospital days pa.s.sed in gentle weariness. Lady visitors came and asked questions. Esther said that her father and mother lived in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, and she admitted that she had saved four pounds.

There were two beds in this ward, and the woman who occupied the second bed declared herself to be dest.i.tute, without home, or money, or friends.

She secured all sympathy and promises of help, and Esther was looked upon as a person who did not need a.s.sistance and ought to have known better.

They received visits from a clergyman. He spoke to Esther of G.o.d's goodness and wisdom, but his exhortations seemed a little remote, and Esther was sad and ashamed that she was not more deeply stirred. Had it been her own people who came and knelt about her bed, lifting their voices in the plain prayers she was accustomed to, it might have been different; but this well-to-do clergyman, with his sophisticated speech, seemed foreign to her, and failed to draw her thoughts from the sleeping child.

The ninth day pa.s.sed, but Esther recovered slowly, and it was decided that she should not leave the hospital before the end of the third week. She knew that when she crossed the threshold of the hospital there would be no more peace for her; and she was frightened as she listened to the never-ending rumble of the street. She spent whole hours thinking of her dear mother, and longing for some news from home, and her face brightened when she was told that her sister had come to see her.

"Jenny, what has happened; is mother very bad?"

"Mother is dead, that's what I've come to tell you; I'd have come before, but----"

"Mother dead! Oh, no, Jenny! Oh, Jenny, not my poor mother!"

"Yes Esther. I knew it would cut you up dreadful; we was all very sorry, but she's dead. She's dead a long time now, I was just a-going to tell you----"

"Jenny, what do you mean? Dead a long time?"

"Well, she was buried more than a week ago. We were so sorry you couldn't be at the funeral. We was all there, and had c.r.a.pe on our dresses and father had c.r.a.pe on his 'at. We all cried, especially in church and about the grave, and when the s.e.xton threw in the soil it sounded that hollow it made me sob. Julia, she lost her 'ead and asked to be buried with mother, and I had to lead her away; and then we went 'ome to dinner."

"Oh, Jenny, our poor mother gone from us for ever! How did she die? Tell me, was it a peaceful death? Did she suffer?"

"There ain't much to tell. Mother was taken bad almost immediately after you was with us the last time. Mother was that bad all the day long and all night too we could 'ardly stop in the 'ouse; it gave one just the creeps to listen to her crying and moaning."

"And then?"

"Why, then the baby was born. It was dead, and mother died of weakness; prostration the doctor called it."

Esther hid her face in the pillow. Jenny waited, and an anxious look of self began to appear on the vulgar London street face.

"Look 'ere, Esther, you can cry when I've gone; I've a deal to say to yer and time is short."

"Oh, Jenny, don't speak like that! Father, was he kind to mother?"

"I dunno that he thought much about it; he spent 'alf 'is time in the public, 'e did. He said he couldn't abide the 'ouse with a woman a-screaming like that. One of the neighbours came in to look after mother, and at last she had the doctor." Esther looked at her sister through streaming tears, and the woman in the other bed alluded to the folly of poor women being confined "in their own 'omes--in a 'ome where there is a drunken 'usband, and most 'omes is like that nowadays."

At that moment Esther's baby awoke crying for the breast. The little lips caught at the nipple, the wee hand pressed the white curve, and in a moment Esther's face took that expression of holy solicitude which Raphael sublimated in the Virgin's downward-gazing eyes. Jenny watched the gluttonous lips, interested in the spectacle, and yet absorbed in what she had come to say to her sister.

"Your baby do look 'ealthy."

"Yes, and he is too, not an ache or a pain. He's as beautiful a boy as ever lived. But think of poor mother, Jenny, think of poor mother."

"I do think of her, Esther. But I can't help seeing your baby. He's like you, Esther. I can see a look of you in 'is eyes. But I don't know that I should care to 'ave a baby meself--the expense comes very 'eavy on a poor girl."

"Please G.o.d, my baby shall never want for anything as long as I can work for him. But, Jenny, my trouble will be a lesson to you. I hope you will always be a good girl, and never allow yourself to be led away; you promise me?"

"Yes, I promise."

"A 'ome like ours, a drunken father, and now that poor mother is gone it will be worse than ever. Jenny, you are the eldest and must do your best to look after the younger ones, and as much as possible to keep father from the public-house. I shall be away; the moment I'm well enough I must look out for a place."

"That's just what I came to speak to you about. Father is going to Australia. He is that tired of England, and as he lost his situation on the railway he has made up his mind to emigrate. It is pretty well all arranged; he has been to an agency and they say he'll 'ave to pay two pounds a 'ead, and that runs to a lot of money in a big family like ours.

So I'm likely to get left, for father says that I'm old enough to look after myself. He's willing to take me if I gets the money, not without.

That's what I came to tell yer about."