On that particular day I was just thinking that I had allowed nearly enough time for people to be busy again when a two-wheeled trap drove up. As it passed the window I had a glimpse of my Aunt Harriet holding the reins.
I had only seen her some eight or nine times, for she lived fifteen miles away in the Kentak direction, but what I knew of her I liked. She was some three years younger than my mother. Superficially they were not dissimilar, and yet, in Aunt Harriet each feature had been a little softened, so that the effect of them all together was different. I used to feel when I looked at her that I was seeing my mother as she might have been – as, I thought, I would have liked her to be. She was easier to talk to, too; she did not have a somewhat damping manner of listening only to correct.
I edged over carefully on stockinged feet to the window, watched her tether the horse, pick a white bundle out of the trap, and carry it into the house. She cannot have met anyone, for a few seconds later her steps passed the door, and the latch of the next room clicked.
‘Why, Harriet!’ my mother’s voice exclaimed in surprise, and not altogether in approval. ‘ So soon! You don’t mean to say you’ve brought a tiny baby all that way!’
‘I know,’ said Aunt Harriet’s voice, accepting the reproof in my mother’s tone, ‘but I had to, Emily. I had to. I heard your baby had come early, so I – oh, there she is! Oh, she’s lovely, Emily. She’s a lovely baby.’ There was a pause. Presently she added: ‘ Mine’s lovely, too, isn’t she? Isn’t she a lovely darling?’
There was a certain amount of mutual congratulation which did not interest me a lot. I didn’t suppose the babies looked much different from other babies, really. My mother said:
‘ I am glad, my dear. Henry must be delighted.’
‘Of course he is,’ said Aunt Harriet, but there was something wrong about the way she said it. Even I knew that. She hurried on: ‘She was born a week ago. I didn’t know what to do. Then when I heard your baby had come early and was a girl, too, it was like God answering a prayer.’ She paused, and then added with a casualness which somehow failed to be casual: ‘You’ve got the certificate for her?’
‘ Of course.’ My mother’s tone was sharp, ready for offence. I knew the expression which went with the tone. When she spoke again there was a disturbing quality in her voice.
‘Harriet!’ she demanded sharply. ‘Are you going to tell me that you have not got a certificate?’
My aunt made no reply, but I thought I caught the sound of a suppressed sob. My mother said coldly, forcibly:
‘ Harriet, let me see that child – properly.’
For some seconds I could hear nothing but another sob or two from my aunt. Then she said, unsteadily:
‘ It’s such a little thing, you see. It’s nothing much.’
‘Nothing much!’ snapped my mother. ‘You have the effrontery to bring your monster into my house, and tell me it’s nothing much!’
‘Monster!’ Aunt Harriet’s voice sounded as though she had been slapped. ‘Oh! Oh! Oh! …’ She broke into little moanings.
After a time my mother said:
‘ No wonder you didn’t dare to call the inspector.’
Aunt Harriet went on crying. My mother let the sobs almost die away before she said:
‘ I’d like to know why you have come here, Harriet? Why did you bring it here?’
Aunt Harriet blew her nose. When she spoke it was in a dull, flat voice:
‘ When she came – when I saw her, I wanted to kill myself. I knew they would never approve her, although it’s such a little thing. But I didn’t, because I thought perhaps I could save her somehow. I love her. She’s a lovely baby – except for that. She is, isn’t she?’
My mother said nothing. Aunt Harriet went on:
‘ I didn’t know how, but I hoped. I knew I could keep her for a little while before they’d take her away – just the month they give you before you have to notify. I decided I must have her for that long at least.’
‘And Henry? What does he say?’
‘He – he said we ought to notify at once. But I wouldn’t let him – I couldn’t, Emily. I couldn’t. Dear God, not a third time! I kept her, and prayed, and prayed, and hoped. And then when I heard your baby had come early I thought perhaps God had answered my prayers.’
‘Indeed, Harriet,’ said my mother coldly, ‘I doubt whether that had anything to do with it. Nor,’ she added pointedly, ‘ do I see what you mean.’
‘I thought,’ Aunt Harriet went on, spiritlessly now, but forcing herself to the words,’ I thought that if I could leave my baby with you, and borrow yours -‘
My mother gave an incredulous gasp. Apparently words eluded her.
‘ It would only be for a day or two; just while I could get the certificate,’ Aunt Harriet went doggedly on. ‘You are my sister, Emily – my sister, and the only person in the world who can help me to keep my baby.’
She began to cry again. There was another longish pause, then my mother’s voice:
‘In all my life I have never heard anything so outrageous. To come here suggesting that I should enter into an immoral, a criminal conspiracy to … I think you must be mad, Harriet. To think that I should lend -‘ She broke off at the sound of my father’s heavy step in the passage.
‘Joseph,’ she told him as he entered. ‘ Send her away. Tell her to leave the house – and take that with her.’
‘But,’ said my father in a bewildered tone, ‘but it’s Harriet, my dear.’
My mother explained the situation, fully. There wasn’t a sound from Aunt Harriet. At the end he demanded incredulously :
‘Is this true? Is this why you’ve come here?’
Slowly, wearily, Aunt Harriet said:
‘This is the third time. They’ll take my baby away again like they took the others. I can’t stand that – not again. Henry will turn me out, I think. He’ll find another wife, who can give him proper children. There’ll be nothing – nothing in the world for me – nothing. I came here hoping against hope for sympathy and help. Emily is the only person who can help me. I – I can see now how foolish I was to hope at all . . .’
Nobody said anything to that.
‘Very well – I understand. I’ll go now,’ she told them in a dead voice.
My father was not a man to leave his attitude in doubt.
‘ I do not understand how you dared to come here, to a Godfearing house, with such a suggestion,’ he said. ‘Worse still, you don’t show an atom of shame or remorse.’
Aunt Harriet’s voice was steadier as she answered:
‘Why should I? I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. I am not ashamed – I am only beaten.’
‘ Not ashamed!’ repeated my father. ‘ Not ashamed of producing a mockery of your Maker – not ashamed of trying to tempt your own sister into criminal conspiracy!’ He drew a breath and launched off in pulpit style. ‘ The enemies of God besiege us. They seek to strike at Him through us. Unendingly they work to distort the true image; through our weaker vessels they attempt to defile the race. You have sinned, woman, search your heart, and you will know that you have sinned. Your sin has weakened our defences, and the enemy has struck through you. You wear the cross on your dress to protect you. but you have not worn it always in your heart. You have not kept constant vigilance for impurity. So there has been a Deviation; and deviation, any deviation from the true image is blasphemy – no less. You have produced a defilement.’
‘ One poor little baby!’
‘A baby which, if you were to have your way, would grow up to breed, and, breeding, spread pollution until all around us there would be mutants and abominations. That is what has happened in places where the will and faith were weak: here it shall never happen. Our ancestors were of the true stock: they have handed on a trust. Are you to be permitted to betray us all? To cause our ancestors to have lived in vain? Shame on you, woman! Now go! Go home in humility, not defiance. Notify your child, according to law. Then do your penances that you may be cleansed. And pray. You have much to pray for. Not only have you blasphemed by producing a false image, but in your arrogance you have set yourself against the law, and sinned in intent. I am a merciful man; I shall make no charge of that. It will be for you to clean it from your conscience; to go down on your knees and pray – pray that your sin of intention, as well as your other sins, may be forgiven you.’