CHAPTER XXII
The child was three weeks old and still Chérie had not seen either friend or acquaintance, nor had she dared to go out of the house. She felt too shy to show herself in the day-time, and after nightfall the inhabitants of Bomal were forbidden to leave their homes. Chérie dreaded meeting any of her acquaintances; true, there were not many left in the village, for some had taken refuge abroad and others had gone to live in the larger cities, Liège and Brussels, where, rightly or wrongly, they hoped to feel less bitterly their state of subservience and slavery.
It was a sunny afternoon towards the end of May that Nurse Elliot at last packed her neat bag and made ready to leave them.
"I cannot possibly stay a day longer," she said, caressing Chérie, who clung to her in tears. "I must go back to my post in Liège. Besides, you do not need me any more."
"Oh, I need you. I need you!" cried Chérie. "I shall be so lonely and forlorn."
"Lonely? With your child? And with your sister-in-law? Nonsense," said the nurse briskly.
"But Louise hardly speaks to me," said Chérie miserably. "She hates the child, and she hates me."
"Nonsense," said the nurse again; but she felt that there was some truth in Chérie's words.
Indeed, it was impossible not to notice the almost morbid aversion Louise felt towards the poor little intruder. Louise herself, strive as she would to hide or conquer her feeling, could not do so. Every line and feature of the tiny face, every tendril of its silky pale-gold hair, its small, pouting mouth, its strange, very light grey eyes—all, all was hateful and horrible to her. When she saw Chérie lift it up and kiss it she felt herself turn pale and sick. When she saw it at Chérie's breast, saw the small head moving, the tiny hands searching and pressing, she shuddered with horror and repugnance. Though she said to herself that this was unreasonable, that it was cruel and wrong, still the feeling was unconquerable; it seemed to spring from the innermost depths of her Belgian soul. Her hatred was as much a primitive ingenerate instinct, as was the passionate maternal love an essence of the soul of Chérie.
"She hates us, Nurse Elliot, she hates us," asseverated Chérie, pressing her clasped hands to her breast in a pitiful gesture of despair. "Sometimes if for a moment I forget how miserable I am, and I lift the little one up in my arms, and laugh at him and caress him, suddenly I feel Louise's eyes fixed upon us, cold, hostile, implacable. Yes. She hates us! And I suppose every one will hate us. Every one will turn from the child and from me in loathing and disgust. Where shall we go? Where shall we hide, I and this poor little baby of mine?" She turned a tearful glance toward the red-curtained door that hid her little one, awake and cooing in his cot. Nurse Elliot had finished packing and locking her bag, had rolled and strapped her cloak, tied on her bonnet and was ready to go to the station.