There and Back | Page 7

the
radiant tenderness of protection.
Her visitors left the door open behind them; Jane rose and shut it, sat
down again, and gazed motionless at the infant. Perhaps he vaguely
understood the sorrow and dread of her countenance, for he pulled a
long face of his own, and was about to cry. Jane clasped him to her
bosom in an agony: she felt certain she would not long be permitted to
hold him there. In the silent speech of my lady's mouth, her jealous
love saw the doom of her darling. What precise doom she dared not ask
herself; it was more than enough that she, indubitably his guardian as if
sent from heaven to shield him, must abandon him to his natural enemy,
one who looked upon him as the adversary of her own children. It was
a thought not to be thought, an idea for which there should be no place
in her bosom! Unfathomable as the love between man and woman is
the love of woman to child.
She spent a wakeful night. From the decree of banishment sure to go
forth against her, there was no appeal! Go she must! Yet her heart cried
out that he was her own. In the same lap his mother had lain before him!
She had carried her by day, and at night folded her in the same arms,
herself but six years old--old enough to remember yet the richness
unspeakable of her new possession. Never had come difference betwixt
them until Robina began to give ear to sir Wilton, whom Jane could not
endure. When she responded, as she did at once, to her sister's cry for

her help, she made her promise that no one should understand who she
was, but that she should in the house be taken for and treated as a hired
nurse. Why Jane stipulated thus, it were hard to say, but so careful were
they both, that no one at Mortgrange suspected the nurse as personally
interested in the ugly heir left in her charge! No one dreamed that the
child's aunt had forsaken her husband to nurse him, and was living for
him day and night. She, in her turn, had promised her sister never to
leave him, and this pledge strengthened the bond of her passion. The
only question was how she was to be faithful to her pledge, how to
carry matters when she was turned away. With those thin, close-pressed
lips in her mind's eye, she could not count on remaining where she was
beyond a few days.
She was not only a woman capable of making up her mind, but a
woman of resource, with the advantage of having foreseen and often
pondered the possibility of that which was now imminent. The same
night, silent above the sleep of her darling, she sat at work with needle
and scissors far into the morning, remodelling an old print dress. For
nights after, she was similarly occupied, though not a scrap or sign of
the labour was visible in the morning.
The crisis anticipated came within a fortnight. Lady Ann did not show
herself a second time in the nursery, but sending for Jane, informed her
that an experienced nurse was on her way from London to take charge
of the child, and her services would not be required after the next
morning.
"For, of course," concluded her ladyship, "I could not expect a woman
of your years to take an under-nurse's place!"
"Please your ladyship, I will gladly," said Jane, eager to avoid or at
least postpone the necessity forcing itself upon her.
"I intend you to go--and _at once_," replied her ladyship; "--that is, the
moment Mrs. Thornycroft arrives. The housekeeper will take care that
you have your month's wages in lieu of warning."
"Very well, my lady!--Please, your ladyship, when may I come and see
the child?"
"Not at all. There is no necessity."
"Never, my lady?"
"Decidedly."
"Then at least I may ask why you send me away so suddenly!"

"I told you that I want a properly qualified nurse to take your place. My
wish is to have the child more immediately under my own eye than
would be agreeable if you kept your place. I hope I speak plainly!"
"Quite, my lady."
"And let me, for your own sake, recommend you to behave more
respectfully when you find another place."
What she was doing lady Ann was incapable of knowing. A woman
love-brooding over a child is at the gate of heaven; to take her child
from her is to turn her away from more than paradise.
Jane went in silence, seeming to accept the inevitable, too proud to
wipe away the tear whose rising she could not help--a tear not for
herself, nor yet for