At last illness descended upon her. She had often known torment of mind, now she knew torment of body, and her mind did not suffer at all; but was possessed of a kind of exultation that supported and refreshed her through terrible gaps of time.
Nurse Selton came in often, but the girl preferred to be alone. Most of the day was spent between Hope over the mantelpiece and the casement-window. Often she thought of the native women in her own land, who, when the time comes to bring forth, go quietly away and make a soft green bed in some sheltered place, and there suffer in silence and alone; then, after a few hours, return as quietly to every-day work and go serenely on with life, the new-born child slung behind the shoulders. The thought appealed to Poppy. She said:
"That is the way I should have borne my son if I had stayed in Africa ... out in the air—with the sun shining. But oh! these terrible walls that shut one in!... and without—cold, fog, mud!"
When evening fell, sickly and grey-green, she opened her casement-window and leaned upon its sill. The roar of London heard through the fog was like the dull boom of the breakers on the Durban back beach. Far away, the sky above Trafalgar Square was spasmodically lit by electric advertisements.
In the street below, a woman's raucous voice pathetically shrieked:
"It's 'ard to give the 'and
Where the 'eart can Nev-ver be."
But Poppy did not hear. With hidden eyes and hands clasped tight upon the pains that racked her, she was unravelling the mystery of Life and Love.
Evelyn Carson's son was born in the dawn of a late October day: heralded in by Big Ben striking the hour of five. Poppy gave one long, ravished glance at the little dimpled morsel, with its sleek, black head and features like crumpled rose-leaves, then lay back content and at peace with all the world.