The Children's Book

“It’s them,” said Elsie. “He makes pots about them. It isn’t right.”

“Of course it isn’t. But they might not know. It isn’t our business. We should lock it up.”

“I think they know. But I don’t know what they think about it. Perhaps he—”

Perhaps he puts himself inside them, she wanted to say, and couldn’t, but Philip heard the meaning of the silence.

“It isn’t our problem. You shouldn’t be thinking about such things.”

“I have something to tell you. I’m going to have to go away. You’ll have to do without me.”

Philip turned to her, still holding the girl-on-her-stomach. He stammered. Had she got a job? Was she thinking of getting married?

No, said Elsie. She was going to have a baby. She would be cast out. If you looked at—all this—it would be unfair to turn her out, but that was what would happen. She would have, she said, in a steely way, to find one of those places for Fallen Women that the do-gooders talked about. She needed Philip to help her to do that.

Philip tried to say that someone must be responsible, and ask who he was. Fludd, Geraint, the fisher-boy?

“I’m not saying any more, and you won’t make me. Just help me to go away, without a lot of scenes and shouting. I can’t abide to be told off and shouted at. I can’t and won’t abide it.”

She was terribly on edge. Philip put the china girl down and put his arm round his sister.

“I’ll think of something,” he said, rather hopelessly. He didn’t know how he could or would, or what he would think of. But, in the event, he did.

He felt he could talk better to a man, and decided on Frank Mallett. He walked over to Puxty and said he needed to talk to the vicar in private.

Frank Mallett was not a judging man. His own temptations, made so much more comfortable by the sturdy openmindedness of Edward Carpenter, made him generous to the differing temptations of others. He listened to Philip, who was both worried and censorious, and remarked mildly that a person was about to come into the world in difficult circumstances, and needed the best possible start. It would be a good thing, he said, if it could all be managed without too much blame or punishment. Gently, said Frank Mallett. Did Philip know who the father was? Was marriage possible or desirable, was there likely to be any support, moral or financial?

“She won’t say,” said Philip. “She’s hard as a rock. She’s not going to say. So I don’t think she’s getting married, and I don’t think she’s expecting help.”

“Don’t take it too hard yourself,” said the vicar. “I don’t know how the family at Purchase House could manage without your sister. I can’t see any help in appealing to them—they’d be baffled, merely. In different ways.”

“They don’t pay her a penny. It isn’t really right, but they’ve made a good sort of—well, not a home—place to be, for the pair of us.”

“I think,” said Frank Mallett, “I shall consult the good ladies of Romney Marsh. But I shall consult them privately. I shall not put the case to the Home for Fallen Women, or the charitable trusts. No, I shall invite the imaginative ones to tea. Miss Dace, I think, who is practical and generous. Mrs. Oakeshott, who knows what it is to bring up a single child. And maybe Mrs. Methley, who has become a friend of Miss Dace, and is anxious for employment. I shall ask for their help.”

“I don’t want them to lay into Elsie or talk down to her. Even if she’s been daft.”

“I think with the best will in the world you won’t avoid a little talking-down. You could even argue it would be deserved. But I think they’ll find practical steps to take.”

Frank’s tea-party—to which he invited neither Philip nor Elsie—went well. It produced some interesting insights into the feelings of the three ladies. They were brisk, and they were practical, and they were kindly disposed. Miss Dace knew of a nursing home which would look after the young woman when the time came. She said that she and the Sister in charge of the Forget-me-not Home had together arranged several successful adoptions, quite quietly. Marian Oakeshott remarked mildly that it was always possible that Elsie would want to keep the child. Though she needed to be able to keep her job, if possible, and her board and lodging.

Phoebe Methley had said little. She said suddenly, with passion, “It is a terrible thing to separate a mother from her children—from her child. We are fighting the injustices of the law on this—we should be careful not simply to grasp at a young woman’s child and take it away.” She paused. “Love,” she said. “Love. Romantic sweeping-away, and loss of self. The trouble with the sex instinct is its power. It deranges you and makes you mad. But true love— true steady love—is what a woman feels for the child in her arms, for the sight of its head, bobbing on the lawn outside the window. You can’t take that from her, without being very sure you’re doing the right thing.”

Miss Dace put her head on one side, and smiled, dryly, but with friendship. Marian Oakeshott said

“Of course I agree. Of course I know—”

She looked at Phoebe Methley. Both women thought they knew who was the father of Elsie’s child.

“We are all friends here,” said Phoebe. “It must be clear that I feel this personally. I have three children in Yorkshire whom I had to leave because—because of my great love for Herbert. There is not a day—not an hour— when I do not feel their absence and distance as a perpetual pain. I may never see them again. I envy you your Robin,” she said to Marian, “whenever I see him. I admire you so greatly for what you have been able to do—to have your son, and to work, and to be independent.”

“It occurs to me,” said Marian, “that I myself may be the solution. Elsie Warren may wish never to see this unborn child again. I do not know her state of mind. But I employ a young woman to mind Robin, who could easily undertake the care of another child, whilst its mother worked—and then the child could return to its mother for weekends and holidays—”

“Someone,” said Frank, “would need to talk to the people at Purchase House. They cannot do without either Philip or Elsie. They should, in my view, be paying both of them good wages for everything they do. They could be talked into seeing their own best interests, as well as their charitable duty—”

“If—if the father of the child is not in that family,” said Miss Dace, blushing.

“He is not,” said Phoebe Methley. “I am certain of that.” She too was blushing. Frank handed round a plate of shortbread. He said

“First, we must put this—this very satisfactory and generous plan—to Elsie. Then, one of us must talk to Mrs. Fludd. I am never quite sure that she really hears what I say, or remembers it. Who shall we send?”