Such indeed was the fact. Mammy Maria had gone. All that any of them knew was that only an hour before another black mammy had come to serve them, and all she would say was that she had come to take Mammy Maria's place—gone, and she knew not where.
Conway winced again and then swore under his breath. At first he had not believed it, none of them had. But as the morning went on and Mammy Maria failed to appear, he accepted it, saying: “Jus' like a niggah—who ever heard of any of them havin' any gratitude!”
Helen was too deeply numbed by the thought of the mill to appreciate fully her new sorrow. All she knew—all she seemed to feel—was, that go to the mill she must—go—go—and Lily might cry and the world might go utterly to ruin—as her own life was going:
“I want my mammy—I want my mammy,” sobbed the little one.
Then the mother instinct of Helen—that latent motherhood which is in every one of her sex, however young—however old—asserted itself for the first time.
She soothed the younger child: “Never mind, Lily, I am going to the mill only to learn my lesson this week—next week you shall go with me. We will not be separated after that.”
“I want my mammy—oh, I want my mammy,” was all Lily could say.
Breakfast was soon over and then the hour came—the hour when Helen Conway would begin her new life. This thought—and this only—burned into her soul: To-day her disgrace began. She was no longer a Conway. The very barriers of her birth, that which had been thrown around her to distinguish her from the common people, had been broken down. The foundation of her faith was shattered with it.
For the last time, as a Conway, she looked at the fields of Millwood—at the grim peak of Sunset Rock above—the shadowed wood below. Until then she did not know it made such a difference in the way she looked at things. But now she saw it and with it the ruin, the abandonment of every hope, every ambition of her life. As she stood upon the old porch before starting for the mill, she felt that she was without a creed and without a principle.
“I would do anything,” she cried bitterly—“I care for nothing. If I am tempted I shall steal, I know I shall—I know I shall”—she repeated.