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The Nemesis of Motherhood
by
But yet — it was not impossible — she could be saved from all that. There were people who could take her out and away, who could surround her with the things of a different life — she who was innocent now.
Innocent? Was she innocent, this child born with an injured body, with a diseased soul? No intelligence, no cunning, no benevolence, could evade the inevitable. For what she was, that her child was. You do not gather figs from thistles. What she had made herself, she had made her child; what she had become, that her child became also. In being born, the child became all that. This soft and shapeless lip was ready for the lie; those tiny clutching fingers for the theft; those helpless hands for the secret murder; that body would grow lithe and supple for all sin, and would one day wither in the fire of pain. Born vile, to wallow in slime, the child would take only what was given to it — from the unknown, nameless father corruption; from the mother the blackness of shameless things of midnight. All that the mother had done she would do; all that the mother had suffered she would suffer. Had there been any happiness in her part? Not one jot. The child would live to curse the day she saw the light.
She rose on one arm and looked at it. She laid her thin hand on its thin cheek. Her heart suddenly stood still with a wild, unused sensation — could it be love for the child? She fell back on her pillow a chill sweat of horror covering her. All this evil she had given her child in giving it life.
There was something else she could give it.
In the morning the nurse and the doctor could not say that the mother had not overlain the child in sleep. It did not seem best to make any search into the affair, since for this mother’s child death was so much better than life.
II
Every sound in the large and lovely room was muffled by the rich rugs, the silk-hung walls, the heavy curtains. A fire burnt low on the hearth and sent a ruby shadow here and there, flickering over the alabaster vase, the ivory carving, the water-color on the panel, the blue silk coverlet and the billowy lace about the bed. The room was full of the fragrance of a hundred roses. An attendant, velvet-shod, carried away a small gold tray with a bowl of china as translucent as a flower; another nurse sat by the fire and dreamed over the pillow that lay across her knee. All seemed well with the young mother; all seemed well with the child.
She rested deep among her pillows, in a sleepy content; but quite determined on no more experience of this sort. Why could not the race have been continued in some other way? It really seemed as if there were some malevolence toward women. How much she had missed since they forbade her to dance or to ride. The idea of her foregoing all her pleasures for this — and life so short at the best! She would be on a horse again the moment she was able, before the frosty weather was all gone. She had lost the Hunt Ball, as it was. Well, here was the heir, anyway; and he would have to do.
A gush of music came through an opening door or window, a thrill of violins and flutes; there was a small and early german in the next house — how vexatious to be here! And all the rehearsals for the theatricals were over without her; and every one had declared there could never be such a Cleopatra as she; and she had ropes and ropes of pearls to wear, and miles of rose-colored gauzes half to hide and half to reveal the rose-colored tights. Very likely there would have been a fuss; but what was the use of being beautiful all to yourself? At all events, the gauzes would do for the skirt-dances they were going to give for the Blenheim Spaniel Hospital.