Love Child

by Edith Olivier

  “Please let us stay with you. We like it much better than running about.”

  The guest didn’t agree, but had to acquiesce.

  After this, Kitty was sometimes asked to tea. At first Clarissa found her as difficult to play with as a spade and bucket, and Agatha had to amuse them both. This was difficult, as she was not naturally amusing, and moreover the two children did not care for the same things. But as time went on, they became used to each other; and spent long, long afternoons gardening together in Clarissa’s garden, and making tea for themselves and for Agatha in the little garden house.

  Agatha watched with mixed feelings the growth of this friendship, if friendship it could be called. Perhaps Clarissa showed herself to be more really human in developing a power of getting into touch with other people, and yet—Agatha was tortured by jealousy. Till now, Clarissa had breathed, moved, and lived, only and entirely in sympathy with herself. She hated to lose a moment of her time, a word that she spoke. She wanted to keep everything.

  And it was not only jealousy, but fear, lest Clarissa should somehow slip away.

  She migh‘ t’ go out, like a shooting star.

  Chapter Six

  Agatha was doing her accounts when the policeman came to see her. He had been a familiar figure to her all her life, but she had hardly ever spoken to him, though she looked on him as an old friend. Her closest acquaintances were generally people whom she knew by sight, and had known by sight for years. She felt at ease with them. They belonged to her landscape. She liked the postmistress, and the parish clerk, and the butcher and the other village people, because among them she knew her bearings. With strangers she felt at sea. But neither with strangers nor her village intimates did she consider much conversation necessary.

  Agatha turned to receive the policeman’s visit, feeling faintly surprised.

  They greeted with friendly courtesy.

  “I understand you have a little girl living here with you, Miss, an adopted child,” said the policeman.

  Agatha stiffened a little, and slightly bent her head.

  “I have called in to ask you to be so kind as to fill up this paper,” the policeman continued. “ By law these details have to be notified to the authorities.”

  Agatha took the paper he offered. It was divided into columns with spaces to contain certain information. She read:

  “Name of infant. Place and date of Birth. Name and Address of Person from whom the Infant has been Received.”

  “No, I cannot do this,” she said, handing the paper back. “I can’t fill in those details. It is too complicated.”

  The policeman laughed kindly.

  “That’s just what we feel about all these Government papers, don’t we, Miss?” he said. “There’s a lot of red tape, as the saying is. But there, we have to do it, and I dare say I can help you, if you’ll kindly allow me, and show you what has to be done.”

  Agatha felt she was losing her head.

  “No,” she said, with uncertain resolution. “ I shall decline to make the statement altogether. No one can force me to, can they?”

  “No, Miss, I don’t suppose they could. But if you don’t fill in the paper, you won’t be allowed to keep the child.”

  “Not allowed? Who can stop me?”

  “The law of the land, Miss.”

  “But what can they do with her? They can’t take her from me and turn her into the road.”

  Her voice was wild.

  “She would have to go to the Workhouse, if she had no relations to take her.”

  “The Workhouse?”

  Agatha felt the colour leave her cheeks. It was as if a hand from within had clutched at the blood-vessels. She had been standing. She now sat down suddenly.

  “Who can do this?” she said in a voice which sounded quite outside her control. “ Nobody can. It is no one’s concern but my own.”

  “I know it seems unnecessary, Miss,” the policeman said, “and, of course, in the case of a lady like you it is only a formality; but the law has to be the same for all, and no one is allowed to receive an adopted child without the same being registered according to the Act. It is done in the interest of the little ones themselves.”

  “I have the interests of this child entirely at heart,” said Agatha, with a tinge of haughtiness. “I do not expect the Board of Guardians to point them out to me.”

  “Certainly, Miss. No doubt of that, I’m sure. This paper is quite formal, but I’m bound to ask you to fill it up. Shall I just jot down the particulars, if you will kindly give them to me? and then you will only have to sign your name in the place indicated.”

  He produced a fountain-pen, and spreading out the paper on the table, he turned to Agatha.

  “We want the child’s name, with date and place of birth, and the name and address of the parties from whom you received her—her previous domicile, in fact.”

  Agatha was perfectly silent. She was completely unprepared for this. What she dreaded when Clarissa first appeared had been the kindly curiosity of her household. She thought embarrassing questions might be put to her, either by her old servants, or perhaps by the Rector, or Mrs. Burns, or some other of her rare visitors. But she had comforted herself by the knowledge that no one could really compel her to speak of Clarissa’s antecedents, and that no one was intimate enough with her to be entitled to her confidence. If she did not choose to talk, there was the end of it. And now, without any warning, while her head went round and round, she heard the policeman’s voice, expressing no impertinent curiosity, but with the dead certainty of a Government official who knows that he cannot be denied, calmly saying that there was a legal authority which could take Clarissa away from her. Clarissa might be in the Workhouse. This was the penalty of living: you came within reach of the relentless arm of the law.

  The policeman was as much taken aback by Agatha’s silence as she was by his words. Ladies like Miss Bodenham generally accepted very naturally the regulations of the authorities. They did not try to evade paying their dog licences: they called at the office in person to pay the duties on their male servants. He waited, staring awkwardly, with the pen in his hand. She sat still, looking down at her hands which were clenched together in her lap. Her mind was blank. She did not know what to do.

  Suddenly she spoke.

  “She is a love-child. She is my own.”

  And when she had said this, she began to cry.

  “A love-child.” The phrase had surged up from her inner consciousness, and she spoke it without realizing what it implied. It just did express what Clarissa truly was to her—the creation of the love of all her being. It was the truth, and in face of the truth she knew that no one could take the child away. She had saved her.

  But at what a cost! Her position, her name, her character—she had given them all, but Clarissa was hers, hers with a right which no law could override.

  Yet, when she heard the words actually spoken, she realized for the first time their import and her own shame. She, Agatha Bodenham, had by her own words disgraced herself in the eyes of a common policeman. So she heard her sobs—and they sounded like the sobs of someone else. She knew she had no pride left to restrain them.

  Strangely enough, the policeman felt that the humiliation was his, not hers. To himself, he seemed the one who had blundered. Greatly embarrassed and most apologetic, he gathered up the paper and put it into his pocket, murmuring:

  “Excuse me, Miss. I beg your pardon, I’m sure.”

  Agatha pulled herself together. The policeman’s attitude had brought the situation back towards the normal.

  She rose and led the way into the hall.

  An enchanting picture met her eyes. Clarissa had dragged out the library steps, and had climbed them to reach some attractive-looking old books on a very high shelf. Perched cross-legged on the highest step, she balanced on her knee an enormous book bound in old red leather, and as Agatha and the policeman came through the doorway behind her, she swung herself round, with an a
ir of impish triumph, and held the book high over her shoulder to show her prize. It was a gesture from fairyland. She was higher than the level of the window, in the shadow above the light, and her face glimmered like a moth in the twilight.

  But she had not fixed the steps securely. The sudden movement was too much for them, and with a great crash they fell to the ground. Clarissa and the big book went down with them.

  It was Agatha who screamed, not Clarissa; and then, for the first time in her life, Miss Bodenham fainted.

  The policeman caught her as she fell.

  There were still tears on her face as she lay motionless, with her hair ruffled and untidy, and her head supported on the policeman’s knee. And when the servants ran to the hall at the sound of the crash, what they saw was Miss Bodenham lying in a dead faint with the policeman beside her, and no sign of Clarissa at all. She had completely disappeared.

  “More frightened than hurt,” thought the policeman, when he looked round and saw she was gone, though when she fell he had had no doubt that she had broken her neck.

  They revived Agatha with sal volatile, which she always kept in the medicine chest, although she had never used it before. As she miserably gasped her way back to consciousness, she began to cry again, her dignity all gone. At the moment that she opened her eyes, there was a little sound in the doorway behind her. Policeman and servants looked round.

  The tiny face of Clarissa, seeming smaller and more transparent than usual, flitted in the shadow thrown by the half-open door. She looked frightened, trembling, and somehow unreal.

  For a second she stood, with a lost expression, as if she did not recognize the place in which she found herself. Then she suddenly ran across the hall to Agatha, and with a passion of feeling which she had never shown before, she threw her arms round her, clinging to her, and covering her face with kisses.

  “Where did you go? Where did you go?” Her voice fluttered and failed for a moment—it became almost a sob. “I couldn’t see you. It was all dark.”

  “I didn’t go, my darling. I fainted.”

  “Then you must never, never faint again,” and again Clarissa clung to Agatha, squeezing her hands, and pressing them against her own face, as if to make sure they were both alive.

  The memory of Clarissa’s falling figure slowly returned to Agatha’s consciousness.

  “But, my darling,” she said, “ tell me, where are you hurt? It was that terrible fall of yours that made me faint. I was so frightened.”

  “Hurt?” Clarissa was puzzled. “I wasn’t hurt. That noise wasn’t me falling. It was the ladder.”

  “But you fell with it, my treasure.”

  Clarissa almost laughed.

  “The noise didn’t touch me,” she said. “But it must have hurt the ladder I should think. It was such a crash.”

  “My little girl looks very white now, though,” said Agatha.

  “Because you do, and I was frightened in the dark when you were gone. It was so dark that I was lost too. Don’t talk about it. Let’s forget it.”

  Chapter Seven

  The policeman made up his mind to tell nobody what happened in his interview with Miss Bodenham, and, as he always said, to the best of his belief he never spoke of it. Yet somehow it was soon known all over the village. News is like that: it flies on its own wings.

  He did mention it to the servants in the kitchen. They spoke of Miss Bodenham’s emotion as being entirely caused by Clarissa’s tumble, and before he knew what he had said, the policeman betrayed that she had been crying before she went into the hall. Having gone so far, he was obliged to say why she was crying—in self-defence, for he did not want to appear a bully. And then, Miss Bodenham’s own servants ought to know the truth; they probably knew it already.

  He regretted his words, for the business-like Helen at once possessed herself of his paper, and discovered from it that he had no right to worry Miss Bodenham at all, these particulars being only asked for in the case of foster-parents who received children for pay, “ which of course a lady like Miss Bodenham would never think of doing.”

  And then Helen’s eloquence broke forth.

  She told the humbled policeman that all this trouble had come about because, like many another man, he hadn’t got enough to do, and must needs make a job just to make himself important. She would like to know what the Guardians would say if they came to know that he had been interfering, with his impudence. And it was no wonder Miss Bodenham had been upset, and had told him what she did just to teach him to mind his own business. And it would be like his foolishness to swallow down what she had said, when she was only giving him the set-down he deserved.

  And much more than this did Helen say, till the policeman fled, beaten and ashamed, with no inclination to open the subject elsewhere.

  And when he was gone, Helen and Sarah and the Cook found themselves faced with a dilemma.

  They knew Miss Bodenham well enough to be certain she would never say what was untrue. But they were equally certain that she had never had a baby. It seemed impossible to escape from one or other of these alternatives. To accept either was disloyalty to Agatha.

  There was nothing to be said. They separated, and went about their work.

  It was really a good thing that Miss Bodenham had fainted, and that Clarissa had had a tumble, so that Helen could treat them both as invalids, and so cover up the embarrassment felt both by Agatha and herself when they next saw each other.

  Agatha didn’t know what the policeman might have said, and Helen didn’t know what Miss Bodenham thought he might have said. It would have been an awkward moment, but Agatha really felt ill. She wanted Helen’s ministrations, and was grateful for smelling salts, eau-de-Cologne on her forehead, and a cup of clear soup to drink. It comforted her too, to smell the embrocation with which Helen insisted on rubbing Clarissa on the places where she ought to have been bruised.

  As a matter of fact, she wasn’t bruised anywhere, but she, too, liked the smell of embrocation, and the pleasant feeling of being fussed over.

  By nightfall, Agatha almost felt as if nothing had happened before Clarissa’s accident, but that this had given her such a shock that they were both ill.

  In the morning, she awoke to the memory of the terrible thing she had said to the policeman. How could such a phrase have fallen from her lips in the presence of a man? How could it have been in her mind at all? She remembered she had heard of gently nurtured ladies, who, when delirious, broke into coarse and blasphemous language such as they could never have heard in their lives. She could not analyse the state of mind from which those words had come. Certainly she had hardly known what she was saying. It had been an inspiration from without. Nothing else could so completely have silenced the policeman and paralysed the arm of the law. She had spoken as one possessed—but possessed by God or by devil?

  From whatever source, she accepted with unutterable relief the sense of safety which had succeeded that supreme menace; and she was too remote from her neighbours even to be aware of the gossip which raged about her for the next few weeks. There was a special flavour about this scandal, because nobody believed it, however often it was repeated. The thing was unthinkable. To look at Agatha was to know that the policeman’s story was an impossible one, and yet its very impossibility made it the more amusing.

  The Rector and Mrs. Burns were much distressed by all this talk. Like Miss Bodenham’s servants, they did not know what to think, and together they discussed the characters of Agatha and Clarissa. It was true that, although she had lived always in the Parish, they knew nothing at all about Miss Bodenham. Nobody did. She was certainly secretive, and yet it was inconceivable that she could ever have had a secret to hide.

  On the other hand, Clarissa’s appearance had been mysterious. Agatha had never said who she was, or whence she came. It looked as if there might be some disgrace about her birth, and possibly she was the illegitimate child of some relation of the Bodenhams; but if so, it was still very strange t
hat Agatha, who saw practically nothing of her relations, should have discovered this little waif and given her a home.

  Mrs. Burns was uneasy. She said one never knew what unpleasant characteristics might develop in a child of unknown antecedents, and she wondered if Clarissa could be a safe companion for her little Kitty.

  The Rector would not listen to this. He did not believe in heredity, and pinned his faith to the power of education and environment. He thought no harm could come to a child brought up in Miss Bodenham’s house, in spite of the character she seemed to have given herself to the policeman, who, after all, was a stupid old fellow, and had probably misunderstood the whole thing. As a clergyman, he declared that he looked upon Clarissa as a child of God, and he asked no more questions as to her parentage.

  Meanwhile, on this very point, Agatha was enduring a new ordeal. Going into the garden one morning, she found old Hunt in tears. His only daughter was married to a shepherd, living in a remote cottage on the downs, about fifteen miles away. She had just had her first baby, and now after two struggling days of life the little child was dead, and dead unbaptized. The village clergyman had said that the Burial Service could not be read by the grave of the non-Christian child—the Prayer Book forbade it. And poor old Hunt leant on his spade and wept, the tears running down his cheeks at the thought of the baby in the unblessed grave.

  Agatha was filled with pity and concern. She was sure that Mr. Burns would not have been so severe, and she wanted to hasten to the Rectory and ask him to intercede with the clergyman.

  But, to her surprise, Hunt would not think of this. Hard as he thought the sentence to be, he accepted it. He acquiesced without rebelling.