THE LITTLE BLACK LAMB.
" But the Most High Cod made mothera."—Teomes ClAnLYI.E.
N one of Mrs. Oliphant's novels, a book full of insight and pathos, there occurs a scene where a charming old clergyman, who is advising the heroine not to marry, is suddenly arrested in the midst of his wisdoms by the sight of his two fine eons playing tennis near by. Pausing, he reflects that, had he followed his own counsel, these stalwart athletes would have " owed their non-existence" to the fact. Having early studied logic, he is plunged into deep puzzle- ment and (incidentally) ceases to advise.
It probably occurs at least once in her career to every young and educated mother to wonder why, in life's mysterious rule, it is needful that a particular woman bo the parent of a particular child. She naturally cannot resolve the fact ; but as life goes on, she becomes yearly more and more aware of it She clasps more tightly the precious and growing being, a part of whose very entity she thus knows herself to be. There grows up around the two a quickest hedge of reserves, which, whether prickly or merely rose-hung, according to circumstance, silently blocks out an inquisitive and eurrounding world. Within it they dwell, smiling, apart, calm in possession and peace. Their intimately mysterious relation, natural but quite incomprehensible, develops inevitably and calmly along its own lines. It knoweth its own bitterness and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy.
Thus the happy and honoured mother, secure in matron dignity and the serene rights of the family throne. But—there is another kind. How do these natural facts boar upon her history, her child and herself ? The betrayed and unwedded mother, across whose little one'e cradle the bar sinister lies dark, are they less true in her case, these curious and fundamental wisdoms of good Grandam Nature—who, calmly reeking nothing of man's lust or man's law, has caused this new life to be Virtuous minds sometimes think of that girl-mother as a thing separate, abnormal, unusual, not to be reckoned with simply and confidently on fundamental human lines. A detailed experience rather shows us an exceptionally natural person (if such an " Irishism " be allowable), rich in exactly those primitive elements which, almost in a proverb, make the mother. The helpless thing, in a cold world's 'Yin, her worst handicap, whose unseeing eyes may mirror for its mother the blackest of tragedies or some episode of passion and betrayal, "deep as first love and wild with all regret "—who shall fathom their relation, lying deep beside the springs of life itself 1—the long human meaning of this mystery of shadowed motherhood ?—this deep minor note in the diapason ? But one thing is sure. It is life's most central and salient fact hence. forward for both : for the mother, life's best hope of a saving recon- struction. "A poor thing, LW mine own." From the days of Touchstone even until now, what keener words have uttered the fact and meaning of possession ?
" But these girls—they are nearly always ready and willing to pert with the baby." Tho phrase, almost a catchword, calls before the writer's eye (who meekly confesses herself merely that limited thin, an old mother) the picture of a hospital bed, and in it a young, frail being ; half wrecked, it may be, by unnatural living and fresh from the sternest of physical and mental trials. Beside her sits the beet and kindest of good women. (But then it takes one woman to run one family, and thus the " rescue worker," most often, is not a mother herself.) Her one desire is to give help, whose easiest and quickest farm seems to be to " relieve her of the baby," to " find a place where she can pay for it " or "some one to adopt it Tho hollow eyes look back. Is it wonderful if they seem to acquiesce ? It takes the natural woman a lifetime to understand her own motherhood : and this one's relation to the mysteriously thrilling flannel-wrapped bundle beside her is but a few days old. She knows this at least : that, if they must part, it had best be soon; if only because that thrill and that dumb passion in her grow with every hour.
In these dark days it has not needed a National Baby Week to convince us that a child is the most valuable thing in the world ; and that of the infants born to her, robust or frail, man-child or maid, "silver spoon or wooden ladle," ay, and lawful or sinister-barred, England, Mother of us all, in this hour of her glory and her anguish, can spare not one. All at once every little problem of motherhood and childhood, among them this detail, not the least weighty or thorny, has leapt into light fiercer than over beat upon a throne. Statesmen discuss topics once relegated to the conversation of elderly ladies ; while the picture palace " preaches through the eye " the delights and dancers, the tremendous claims and paramount rights, of being a baby. Of such rights, the possession of its own and no other mother serene to go without saying. Ay, oven though it he but one of these sad little black lambs of our national fold ; this " waif or thing blown in by the wind " of passion or sin or hideoes misadventure ; this poor scrap of humanity, that in our very• law's brutal phrase is a pies sallies, yet inalienably- still child of England, the Greater Mother.
Yet as society and the world are constituted this thing is Mill among vexed questions. But there is a "new time" corning. Will it leave this problem alone ? Not en. Even already there are solutions at work. If any desire to look on at a young and modest specimen, which is but a few months old, yet seems to hold within it that inherent promise and vitality which belong to all healthful youth, let such an observer walk down a certain quiet street in London and pause at the last house save one. Comfortable and double-fronted, its open windows and tiny front garden, with the glimpses of an interior beyond them, wear an inherently cheerful aspect. In this July noontide the airy nureery above-stairs will be empty. Enter, then, by the front door and go straight through to the back. You will find yourself in a typical London " garden " ; but one with features characteristic and all its own. To begin with, it proudly owns a tree, which means shade as well as the sunshine. But far prouder are house, garden, and kindly women tenants of some other young and growing plants. At present these aro repre- sented by certain small and bare and boldly waving legs and arms, erecting themselves in all the joy of outward and inward sunshine from a collection, some half-dozen or more, of roomy " prams " there gathered, whence also arise certain. joyful gurglings interspersed now and then with a non-articulate but insistent demand for Nume, who is immediately on the spot. Later in the day her post will become suddenly lighter, when the mothers will " come home " hero from their work, claiming each her own. (They are all employed at a certain not unknown or uninteresting hand-weaving industry. But that, as Mr. Kipling says, is another story.) Not in Arcady itself dwells there a happier garden ; and for the bar sinister (though it hides in every "pram") you will look in vain. Honour be theirs, that little group of brave and quiet and patient gentlewomen who, in a day most anxious and difficult for any scheme asking money, leisure, and energy, have yet caused this happy and sacred little home to be. To care for and to run it is a fine and fruitful piece of national service ; to help it is a privilege ; and to sit down amidst its cooing and growing population fills the heart of an old mother
Previous page
