The grey dawn was lighting up the street; the blind had been drawn aside and the lamp flickered feebly on the floor. Sheila turned it down and approached the bed. On Norah’s face there was the calmness of resignation and repose. She had suffered much during the night, but now came a quiet moment. Her brow looked very white and her cheeks delicately red. Her face was still as beautiful as ever; even so much the more was it beautiful.
“There’s great noises in the streets, Sheila,” she said to the woman bending over her.
“ ‘Tis the workers goin’ out to their work, child,” was the answer. “How are ye feelin’ now?”
“Better, Sheila, better.”
But even as she spoke the pain again mastered her and she groaned wearily. And Sheila, wise with a woman’s wisdom, knew that the critical moment had come.
II
THE child who came to Norah, the little boy with the pink, plump hands, the fresh cheeks and pretty shoulders, filled nearly all the wants of her heart. The fear that she had had of becoming a mother was past and the supreme joy of motherhood now was hers. She knew that she would be jealous of the father if he was with her at present; as matters stood the child was her own, her very own, and nothing else mattered much. Sometimes she would sit for an hour, her discarded scissors hanging from her fingers, gazing hungrily at the saffron-red downy face of the child, anticipating every movement on its part, following every quiver of its body with greedy eyes. In the child lay Norah’s hopes of salvation; it was the plank to which she clung in the shipwreck of her eternity. All her hopes, all her fortunes lay in the babe’s fragile bed; the sound of the little voice was heavenly music to her ears. In Norah’s heart welled up this incomparable love, in which are blended all human affections and all hopes of heaven, the love of a mother. The great power of motherhood held her proof against all evils; dimly and vaguely it occurred to her that if that restraining power was withdrawn for a moment she would succumb to any temptation and any evil which confronted her.
She found now a great joy in working with Sheila: both talked lovingly of home and those whom they had left behind. Sometimes Norah mingled tears with her recollections. Sheila Carrol never wept.
“Years ago I could cry my fill,” she told Norah, “but for a long while, save on the night yerself came here, the wells of my eyes have been very dry.”
At another time when the mother was giving the breast to the child Sheila said: “Ye look like the Blessed Virgin with the child, Norah.”