The Untilled Field

by George Moore

The hours that afternoon were very long and she restless and weary of them, and she asked the nurse many times to go to the window to see if Father Brennan were coming. At last he came, and she told him of the letter she had received, not wishing to show him the letter, for it was somewhat extravagant, and she did not like a priest to read Ned's praise of her body. She was anxious, however, to give him a true account of the letter, and she would have talked a long while if the priest had not stopped her, saying the matter was one for the doctor to decide. The Church had never expressed any views on the subject: whether a mother was justified in nursing her child or in passing it over to a foster-mother. It was entirely a question for the doctor, and if the doctor advised such a course she would be wrong not to follow it. Ellen felt that she had been misunderstood, and she tried to tell the priest that Ned's letter had been inspired by his admiration of her, and that this seemed to her selfish. She wondered how a father could consider his wife before the child, but when she said this she did not feel she was speaking quite sincerely, and this troubled her; she was on the verge of tears, and the nurse came in and said she had spoken enough that afternoon, and the priest bade her good-by. The doctor came in soon after; there was some whispering, and Ellen knew that the woman he had brought with him was the foster-mother, and the baby was taken from her, and she saw it fix its gluttonous little lips on the foster-mother's breast.

Now that the priest had ordered her conscience, she got well rapidly, and it was a pleasure to her to prepare herself for her husband's admiration. The nurse thought he would perceive no difference in her, but when they put on her stays it was quite clear that she had grown stouter, and she cried out, "I'm quite a little mother!" But the nurse said her figure would come back all right. Ned's return had been delayed, and this she regarded as fortunate, for there was no doubt that in a month she would be able to meet him, slight and graceful as she had ever been.

As soon as she was able she went for long walks on the hills, and every day she improved in health and in figure; and when she read Ned's letter saying he would be in Cork in a few days she felt certain he would see no change in her. She opened her dress and could discern no difference; perhaps a slight wave in the breast's line; she was not quite sure and she hoped Ned would not notice it. And she chose a white dress. Ned liked her in white, and she tied it with a blue sash; she put on a white hat trimmed with china roses, and the last look convinced her that she had never looked prettier.

"I never wore so becoming a hat," she said. She walked slowly so as not to be out of breath, and, swinging her white parasol over the tops of her tan boots, she stood at the end of the platform waiting for the train to come up.

"I had expected to see you pale," he said, "and perhaps a little stouter, but you are the same, the very same." And saying that he would be able to talk to her better if he were free from his bag, he gave it to a boy to carry. And they strolled down the warm, dusty road.

They lived about a mile and a half from the station, and there were great trees and old crumbling walls, and, beyond the walls, water meadows, and it was pleasant to look over the walls and watch the cattle grazing peacefully. And to-day the fields were so pleasant that Ned and Ellen could hardly speak from the pleasure of looking at them.

"You've seen nothing more beautiful in America, have you, Ned?"

There was so much to say it was difficult to know where to begin, and it was delicious to be stopped by the scent of the honeysuckle. Ned gathered some blossoms to put into his wife's dress, but while admiring her dress and her hat and her pretty red hair he remembered the letter he had written to her in answer to her telegram.

"I've had many qualms about the letter I wrote you in answer to your telegram. After all, a child's right upon the mother is the first right of all. I wrote the letter in a hurry, and hardly knew what I was saying."

"We got an excellent nurse, Ned, and the boy is doing very well."