“I ’ad a cousin as ’ad twenty-three,” she observed in tones of lofty detachment.
“Not all at once?” said Elizabeth faintly.
Mrs. Havergill took no notice of this remark.
“Yes, twenty-three, pore soul. And when she wasn’t ’aving of them, she was burying of them. Ten she buried, and thirteen she reared, and many’s the time I’ve ’eard ’er say, she didn’t know which was the most trouble.”
She went out with the tray, and later, when Sarah had returned, she repeated Mrs. Blake’s information in tones of sarcasm.
“‘There’s to be a baby at the Mottisfonts’,’ she says, as if I didn’t know that. And I says, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and that’s all as passed.”
Mrs. Havergill had a way of forgetting her own not inconsiderable contributions to a conversation.
“‘Yes, ma’am,’ I says, expecting every moment as she’d up and say, ’and one ’ere, too, Mrs. Havergill,’ but no, not a blessed word, and me sure of it for weeks. But there—they’re all the same with the first, every one’s to be blind and deaf. All the same, Sarah, my girl, if she don’t want it talked about, she don’t, so just you mind and don’t talk, not if she don’t say nothing till the christening’s ordered.”
When Elizabeth knew that she was going to have a child, her first thought was, “Now, I must tell David,” and her next, “How can I tell him, how can I possibly tell him?” She lay on her bed in the darkness and faced the situation. If she told David, and he did not believe her—that was possible, but not probable. If she told him, and he believed her as to the facts—but believed also that this strange development was due in some way to some influence of hers—conscious or unconscious hypnotism—the thought broke off half-way. If he believed this—and it was likely that he would believe it—Elizabeth covered her eyes with her hand. Even the darkness was no shield. How should she meet David’s eyes in the light, if he were to believe this? What would he think of her? What must he think of her? She began to weep slow tears of shame and agony. What was she to do? To wait until some accident branded her in David’s eyes, or to go to him with a most unbelievable tale? She tried to find words that she could say, and she could find none. Her flesh shrank, and she knew that she could not do it. There were no words. The tears ran slowly, very slowly, between her fingers. Elizabeth was cold. The room was full of the empty dark. All the world was dark and empty too. She lay quite still for a very long time. Then there came upon her a curious gradual sense of companionship. It grew continually. At the last, she took her hands from before her face and opened her eyes. And there was a light in the room. It shed no glow on anything—it was just a light by itself. A steady, golden light. It was not moonlight, for there was no moon. Elizabeth lay and looked at it. It was very radiant and very soft. She ceased to weep and she ceased to be troubled. She knew with a certainty that never faltered again, that she and David were one. Whether he would become conscious of their oneness during the space of this short mortal dream, she did not know, but it had ceased to matter. The thing that had tormented her was her own doubt. Now that was stilled for ever—Love walked again among the realities, pure and unashamed. The things of Time—the mistakes, the illusions, the shadows of Time—moved in a little misty dream, that could not touch her. Elizabeth turned on her side. She was warm and she was comforted.
She slept.