The practice in that institution was to encourage the prospective mothers to keep their babies, face conditions, and live so correctly afterward that people would overlook the wrong-doing; but the girls were offered the alternative of giving up the child; the decision, however, had to be made before the child was born. Molly had decided to give up her baby. When it came, she wanted it back; but it was too late—it had been pledged to these people, who had immediately taken it away. They had taken Molly’s name, left her a name and address that would always reach them, and had agreed to let her hear from the child once a year, on his birthday; but she was not to see him, and he was never to learn that she was his mother.
As I explained all this to Mike, he listened in silence till I said she was to be a wet nurse for a feeble baby; then he fired up, looking black and angry. “I should think she’d be ashamed,” he said, “to nurse a strange baby, and let her own be brought up on a bottle.”
“Whose fault is it that she has to do this?” I retorted. “She wanted to keep her child; she would have borne the disgrace; would have come back openly with it in her arms, had you stood ready to support her and it; but you would have none of it; you wouldn’t even send her enough money to pay for her board and medical care. She couldn’t face the world, weak and sick, in disgrace, in debt, and out of work, with a helpless baby; she had to decide as she did that her child might have a good home, and she be free to support herself. And now, after it is too late, after you have neglected her, you dare to blame her for what she has done! Don’t you suppose she has suffered, and will suffer, more than you can ever know? Hasn’t she everything to bear, and alone; while you, who have gone scot-free, have the face to blame her for what you have forced her to do!”
He was man enough to be ashamed, and lamely said so, and then, of course, I pitied him. He came in the evening with the money, asked for more particulars, and showed the best there was in him.
In time Molly returned to her old work in U——. She had developed remarkably. Association with persons of refinement had helped her; she wanted to better herself; was full of plans for going to night-school, and for seeking worthier associates. She was hungry for news of her baby, and its adopted mother was soon better than her word, writing to her, and continuing to write every few months—letters full of his baby ways, which Molly would bring to me with all a mother’s pride in her boy, but with a cruel hunger that most mothers never know.
In a year’s time Molly came to me saying that a young carpenter wanted to marry her, a good steady fellow that she liked, but that she would not marry him and not tell him about the baby; and if she told him, she feared he would cease to care for her. We agreed that there was but the one right thing to do, and though feeling sure he would turn against her, she heroically promised to do it. A few days later she came to me with a radiant face: she had told him her story; he had “been good” to her; had even said they would take the baby to rear if she could get it; but, alas! she was pledged not to seek to do this. They soon married and had babies of their own.
The queer thing about the little “John Alden,” as Molly’s baby was called, is this: he had the same effect that adopted waifs have often had in childless homes—within a year or two the foster-parents had a child of their own, which naturally called out the mother’s strongest love; still she wrote Molly that the little John was as dear as ever. But after a second child came, and then reverses, Molly and I detected a change in the letters. I fancied the foster-parents would not be sorry to relinquish the care of the little fellow; but whether or not the question was ever really broached I cannot remember, if indeed I ever knew.
These were only two of several similar cases which fell into my hands during my years in U——. Dr. Wyeth told me I had had more of them than she had had in all her years of practice. Nothing that has come into my professional life has yielded me such unalloyed satisfaction as the help I was able to give these girls. Sometimes I have had to go to parents and break the news, in one case, actually had to plead with the girl’s mother for mercy and kind treatment of the misguided girl. Much of my work as a physician has been inefficient and faulty—this I know better than any one else—but this work is the best I have ever done; and it is work that I was perhaps better prepared to do in the right spirit because of that regrettable personal experience during my first few months of practice.
After a year’s time I was cosily established in an office of my own across the hall from Dr. Wyeth. What a good time I had getting my furniture! Not a cent was spent without careful planning. My rooms were modestly but attractively furnished, and I was happy in the change. I had a small waiting room, a large private office, and a little room where I kept my gas-stove and household appliances—an improvised kitchenette. I could choose my own office hours now, so had better ones, and my practice steadily increased. Then I reduced expenses further by getting my own meals and caring for my rooms. What cosy suppers we had when Father came in town, or when friends came to see me! But I lived frugally, and accounted for every quart of milk, or pound of beef, or box of cocoa, every postage stamp, and carfare; I think, on the whole, there was little that I bought which I could have done without. If I purchased a book, or spent more than was absolutely necessary in some such way, I skimped in table supplies to even up matters. Eating alone, as I did most of the time, very little sufficed me; but once in a while I would get downright hungry, then would buy a beefsteak, and was sometimes so ravenous I could hardly wait to get it cooked. It was worth the abstinence to have the appetite I occasionally had.
Dr. Wyeth’s kindness and helpfulness did not abate when I moved to my new office; she always left her keys with me, so I had the use of her books, and telephone, and her operating-chair for a bed for my occasional guests—a similar chair of my own now serving as bed for me.