A Complete Story

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 18, 10 May 1923, Page 9

A Complete Story

Motherhood

(By Dora Martin Fowler,, in the London Month.) It was such an ordinary story.

Every day she met women at the Works who had been left desolate through war—the only difference was that most of them'had consummated love in marriage. She had

not., ~; v Love had not come to Helen young. For that reason other faculties had taken deep root —patience, forethought, consideration, and such sorrow-reared growths that, happily, the very young do not own.

So they had waited to marry. He had been of a more impetuous make. The whole

fabric of his life had been shattered by the European upheaval, and he was ready now just to accept the good of the moment. But he had not cared to urge her in view of the.possibilities of his new profession. Besides he held that love was a mutual affair in. which both sides balanced. So if now his fervor were the greater, so some day it might slacken when her steady love still burned true. So he waited for the level of affection to adjust itself. They were both true products of modern thought, and heir facility for introspection precluded the happiness that might have been. Yet they got much pleasure out of that very introspection which was the blight of their spontaneous joy; and where boys and girls would plan together a beatific cottage, with love as its inmate, they discussed their mental processes with equal fervor.

He had gone to France. Then she had lived for her letters—more for the letters she wrote, though she did not recognise this, than for the letters she received. Men live for accomplishment, and women for self-expression. Rowland’s letters were generally hurried scrawls written under difficulties, both matter of fact and fervid. She treasured them every one, and in return she let herself go on paper as she had never done in his presence. And the mere fact of self-expression taught her what her life had in it to express. She was more complex than she had imagined. She had doubts, and hopes, and desires that had always been hidden deep in her being, and had only now come to light. She lear now why the sight'of a tottering baby had always brought that smile of mingled pity and amusement to a woman’s face, and she began to regret the shy barrier of reserve which, all unwillingly, cut her off from helpless things

Her love for Rowland, the first real love in a lonely life, had awakened in her an insatiable desire for love. She was surrounded by solitary units, and as a plant in a cold Spring wind puts out feelers for "the sun, and draws back repulsed, so did she make tenative efforts to win or give affection, and'then draw shyly back. Life in a big hostel is almost too sensible for the

emotions to thrive. The hygienic life, conservation of

energy, order, thrift, and the communal spirit are all such excellent and praiseworthy things in themselves, and yet — yet love and friendship and the softer graces seem to have a sneaking desire for things unwise and illogical. Helen’s intellect admired the whole system of her present life the buildings with their last note in common sense and sanitation, the scientific dietary and the lightning service; the recreation planned on the latest psychologic theory; and the very religion, with its last ideas of modern efficiency—and her soul cried out for a foolish little house none too artistically furnished; where unnecessary but much loved little possessions took up the cubic feet which should more wisely have been free for air circulation; where little children played in a warm busy kitchen, who should have really been in an ultra scientific State nursery; and learnt their letters — 0 and crooked S — their mother pointed them out with a floury forefinger, instead of ignoring the alphabet, and facing juvenile life from the standpoint of the Montessori system. She laughed at herself, she really was so much wiser

than her dreams. And yet when she heard it stated that, once women’s influence was really felt in Parliament, their common sense would see to it that all children were Statetrained from the start, she shuddered. She was part of the Sate machine herself. She tried to look at herself dispassionately. Yes, she was physically and mentally

sound —a useful, well-trained, well-disciplined, well-con-ducted woman —an excellent example of what a machinemade article might be. They had just missed out the soul, to be sure, but souls are not machine-made, and since she had known Rowland she * had begun to devise one for herself. And some day, when she and Rowland got away together from all this, and were for . a few months irrational and emotional, perhaps, who knows, it might grow a bit faster, for souls ’ don’t flourish on common sense. But now Rowland was dead. There was no cessation of every-day —just a telegram, and then that was over. In a numbed, dazed sort of way she longed for the darkened house, and the quiet lapse of life which normally follows on death. She had often pronounced that interval and awe as conventional and foolish. She began to wonder if after all it were not a blessed breathing-time in which a numbed brain regains its balance. But there was- none of that for her. One moment life was full of hope, the next, hope was over. Then, after a few stunned hours, she went out and took the tram to the Works as usual. Other women did it, she had met them. She had heard the awed whisper go round, “She heard last night that her husband was killed, poor thing! Well, there is not much time for sorrow these days!” Other women would glance at her to-day, and whisper. By to-morrow they would have forgotten. After all she was not even a wife! She would never be a mother. Younger women might recover from a blow like this, form new ties, marry, have children. She knew she never would. That was all-over. And as the first poignancy of her grief passed, she found this fact obsessed her. The big hammer in the forge beat it out. “You will never have a child. —You will never have a child!” She had not known it, but always, so she learnt now, had she counted, some day, on motherhood. It is the unformulated impressions that are strongest. Life had often seemed bleak and dull, but always there had been dream children to enrich the future. And nownow she was bereaved of her children, the children she had never had. When the warm sun had shone through the dust of the workshop, she had been wont to see little hands grasp at the sparkling atoms in the air, and children’s happy voices laugh — children’s hands, her children’s voices. Now she shuddered when the -sun shone. Often she walked to the hilltop when her work was done. There lay a great hayfield down the slope, and there she had seen little children roll and play her little children. Now she kept in the valley. The days dragged by, and the long, long nights, for sleep had almost deserted her. She would wake, startled, from the deepest sleep to hear a child’s cry, then she would fall back with a sigh—it was but the voice of the child who might have been. If only some one had needed her, things would have been better, but it was such a very efficiently conducted hostel! There was a nurse and hospital at hand, and a well-trained matron ready to advise anybody on any practical matter. There was no room for the amateur in sympathy. At .last Helen went for advice herself. Her troubles had passed the mental stage and become recognisably physical. She felt faint and ill. And the woman doctor gave the verdict she had - dreaded, exile from work. She would be well and strong in a bracing air, with, say, household duties or any easy congenial work —but never again in a workshop. It was not that she so Ibvedxthe hostel or her work, but she hated the mental exertion of making plans. She was too sensible to refuse to go, the practical common sense atmosphere she lived in was too contagious. She accepted the verdict without challenge. And she knew ■’ that her going would not affect life in the little community one iota. Her box would be carried out, clean covers put in her cubicle, and in another twenty-four hours it would be “home” to some other woman, who, in a few days would fill her blank and efface her. And she—she would go, to be just a ripple on some other stream. If only there .were somewhere where she might strike root! : And then she though of Rowland’s father. t

He was old and alone, she knew. She had never met him, he lived far away in a northern city. But he had written kindly to her twice, once on her engagement, and again when Rowland died. It was as she strapped her packed trunk that she first thought, of - the old man. Before, she had determined to go to the Hostel Convalescent Home for a few weeks till she could make other plans. But for once she would risk acting on impulse, so she took a ticket north.

It was the cold grey afternoon of an autumn day when she reached her destination. She left her possessions at the station, and with but a bag in her hand, she walked into the city street to catch the tram that would carry her to the extreme suburb of the manufacturing town, where the old man lived. *

The car shot through the narrow crowded streets lined with towering warehouses, and then began to climb the hill, past hill, mills and streets of little houses. As they got higher above the smoke level the air grew' keen and bracing; green spaces showed here and there, and now' a garden, and then, cheek by jowl with a great mill, an old orchard. The car swirled down, and on and up again, and then stopped with a clatter and a jangle.

So this was the old grey stone village which Rowland had so often talked aboutonce remote and inaccesihle and now united to a great city! It still preserved the quiet dignity of its village days, though here and there a red brick horror of villadom had marred it.

Dusk was falling as she climbed the hill. She knew the way quite well though she had never been there, for Rowland’s most casual words seemed to have taken root in her brain. Half way up the steep street as a white cobbled yard, and set back in it with a certain virile grace was a stone house, small, stern, and dignified. Before it lay two vivid strips of smooth green grass, with a straight poplar at either end. It was so sober, so austere, with the charm which generations alone can give to a dwelling place. She sighed. The generations had ended with Rowland. A gaunt serving-woman let her in, and ushered her without ceremony into the presence of the master of the house. He sat aloneLy the fire in a big, heavily-furnished sitting-room. Her quick woman’s eye saw at a glance the dull, well-worn neatness of it all. It struck her as the loneliest room she had ever entered, for no rooms look so lonely as those that display, with careful reverence, the symbols of lives that will not enter them again. There was a woman’s workbox by the window, and a schoolboy’s desk piled with a boy’s belongings by the wall. The woman had withdrawn, and for a moment as Helen stood and gazed around, the man did not realise her presence. Then he saw a stranger was there, and rose to meet her. And as she looked at his worn, patient face, for the first time she forgot her own sorrow and only remembered his. “I am Helen,” she said, “and alone, and ill, and unhappy She spoke on impulse, for sorrow had simplified her. And at that moment she realised, though she did not recognise, the truththat sometimes to demand love and car© is a higher thing than to give it. The old man stared at her eagerly, and then he smiled —he had almost forgotten her. . ~ “That lad of mine could be trusted to choose aright!” was all he said. It took but a few days to make the old grey house “home” to Helen. She had found her niche, for some one needed her. It was strange to wake in the morning and plan for another’s happiness, strange to fight against another’s sorrow. And often it was hard. Yet as the days passed by Rowland’s father forgot to look patient and learnt to laugh again. And the hollow echoes in the quiet rooms ceased, and life and hope came into the dwellingplace, though it was a sober hope. One dull winter’s afternoon she left the old man happily at home with his books and papers, and went out alone to climb the high fell behind the house. It was a typical northern day, dull and sombre, but she guessed that at sunset light would break through. A little child ran out before her from a cottage door, and stumbled and fell. . Helen picked up. the tiny thing and

carried it, crying, to its mother. And she smiled as she passed on to think how its little arms had clung to her. But she could smile now without bitterness, for no longer was she haunted by her children who might have been. Not with ease had she struggled to the truth—that motherhood is the divine and common heritage of every woman. Some attain it simply, with a baby in their arms; and others—others have to* fight their way through to the fact that tenderness, half-amused and wholly pitying, for stumblers, is motherhood itself. And what is so hardly won is never lost. Some day the old man would leave her, but she would not be aloneother claims would come. A real mother’s arms are never empty. She reached the hilltop, and the sun shone through. She knew it would.