A/N: Last chapter for a while. Sorry; I have no other chapter written (yet!) So, review :)

0o0o0

“It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are.

They live in a world of their own, and there

had never been anything like it, and never can be.

It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to

set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset.”

-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

0o0o0

It is an interesting thing, this vision of Mother and child.

A mother will watch her child, observing each action, and taking little notice of her own impending mortality. Oh, she knows of her insignificance, but she cares little for her own soul. Yet, she’ll not allow her mind to dwell upon her child’s own life, or what may become of the child as time has its wicked way with it. The mother will notice only that the child has hurt itself; she’ll not think that one day, the child’s blood will be mixed with the dirt, trod upon by those far greater than any of them.

No. The love of the mother will prevent such a thought from lingering in her mind for long. The bond that has been forged is far too strong for allow for such things. And oh, this bond, how strong it must be, for how else is it that a mother can feel such love for a child that has costs her so much? The babe, conceived in sin, its whole existence surrounded by misery and hate, is a reminder of all that which can never be, and all that is doomed to be.

It is strange that though the child’s birth is so disastrous to the mother, it is seemingly forgotten, for she will bless her child and embrace it fully. Is this a deeply established biological urge? Perhaps. But, perchance it is something far simpler. The lonely and miserable mother and the lowly child need one another, for both are pathetic creatures, so much alike in their helplessness. They cling to each other, feeding off one another in an all-consuming relationship.

The mother, ruined as she may be, will find her maidenhood renewed as she gazes upon the infant. Feelings for all other things are paused, and time ceases to exist as she gazes upon the purified babe. In this moment, a sort of celestial light falls upon both her and the child, and only these two are alive, are present in the world. In this brief moment, they are everything and nothing.

In the weeks following the birth of her child, Lilly felt herself live in a sort of skewered world, in which only her child was worthy of life. However, a week after she had recovered her strength, Mrs. James came calling on her.

“Good day t’ you, Mrs. Devlin. I wished to see how the child and yourself were faring,” the woman greeted, smiling at the pathetic creature, still pale from her brush with Hell’s fire.

Lilly had not been sufficiently recovered to her senses during her illness, and thus, her recollection of those days was vague at best. She had no thought that Mrs. James had, in a way, helped her survive it, nor was she willing to ask, for she felt herself degraded by the very thought. Therefore, she looked upon Mrs. James with the view of one who lives above all others.

“I have been fine, and so has my child,” she replied curtly, her eyes trained upon the older woman. “We have been managing ourselves well. Of course, I know we ought to have a girl here to help with the baby, but we are trying to save up our money. It is our hope, as I believe I have said, to move to a city. London, perhaps, or we may leave England. Still, that time is nearing, I believe. Mr. Devlin has been working quite hard as of late.”

Mrs. James had it on good authority that Mr. Devlin had been working quite hard to squander away all of his savings lately. She suspected Mrs. Devlin knew this as well, but, as women so often do, turned a blind eye to the truth.

She would have been sympathetic to the situation of this unfortunate woman, but she could not be. The girl carried herself as a goddess, sentenced by unseen forces to walk amongst the mortals.

“I don’t suppose you have much of a memory of your illness, Mrs. Devlin,” commented the older lady, assessing the girl’s motions as she fluttered about. Lilly paused briefly, looking at the woman, her face suddenly overcome with such sorrow that Mrs. James could hardly stand to gaze upon it. The look was transient, however, and the contemptuous gaze was once more set in place.

“I fear that I do not. I was told by my husband that you tended to me for a brief time. I believe I’ve thanked you for this. I do, I thank you, of course. And the dear doctor, who was so kind as to come to my assistance. Oh, how I do thank him, too. “

Idly, Mrs. James wondered if she had purposely spoken this lie, if she had been told by Mr. Devlin what had happened, but had chosen to ignore it.

It was a valid thought, for it like many, Lilly lived in a sort of false world. Mrs. James knew this well. She saw that Lilly had deluded herself into believing that she was pure, that she lived in a world in which she was still highly regarded, she had a husband who might have loved, or at least respected her, and she had a child that would forever bring her joy. She had not always thought such a thing, it is true. Once, she too had looked upon the world as it ought to be looked upon; that is to say, she had looked at it with a certain pessimistic idea strengthening her beliefs. Her marriage had given her little reason to believe otherwise, and her pregnancy had brought her no joy. But now, now she held in her arms a physical being that hardly seemed human.

Yes, she occupied a world of her own, one that excluded all of the past haunts and pains she had suffered. She was not a strong woman on her own; she relied upon her past and her memories to keep her proud. Situated as she was, Lilly had allowed her mind to give way to the false idea that she was of a superior class. Her view of the past and of her life before her marriage had morphed, and she could not help but think that she had been part of some gilded aristocracy, the romantic image of such a past cemented in her mind. In truth, she was never better than middle class. Her actions, her words, even the way in which she carried herself, all told of a diluted past. She did not remember all the dilution that had come about her. After all, is it not true that most, if they look far enough, carry the blood of some grand person? One must look only at what is now, rather than to focus upon that which has been. Lilly could only do the former, thus preventing her from humbling herself, and from viewing her place as what it truly was.

Idly, the thought of telling the girl the knowledge that she carried entered Mrs. James’s head. However, the look of the girl, shrouded, as she was, in blissful ignorance, was enough to keep such utterances from being said aloud.

Mrs. James felt that she could no longer speak of this subject to Mrs. Devlin. That look of truth had reviled her. She could not fathom what could create in such a girl that sort of terror, nor could she understand how she could so dislike this wretched woman.

“You daughter is lovely, Mrs. Devlin. Lovely indeed. Your husband must be quite proud.”

“Oh, he is! He is very happy; we two are happy, as happy as we have ever been.”

Which two she was referring to could not be said.

“I am glad. I am very glad that you have found such a state.”

The women shared a glance of understanding. Their own differences, radical, at best, could not disguise the fact that both were women. Mrs. James, as averse as she might have been towards Lilly, knew that, for all her foolish fancies, they were both of the same breed. As a girl, she too had tried to be strong. She thought now, however, that her methods had been far less silly, and she had been prudent enough to realize that, after marriage, she was, in truth, reliant upon the kindness of others. Lilly had yet to learn that for all her bravado, she was not, could never be, a strong personage. Perhaps, at one time, she had held that potential, but not now. Never now.

They shared the polite goodbyes, and Mrs. James left. Lilly, upon watching her walk down the hill, could not help but think that something large had just occurred, although she could not say just what.

A cry broke her from her reveries, and she hurried to pick up the baby.

A month passed quickly; time meaning, as we have said, little to the mother. The only occurrence that broke her from her precariously Utopian setting was the arrival of a letter, two weeks after the talk with Mrs. James.

“Be ye Mrs. Devlin?” a boy had asked, arriving one day at her door.

“Yes, I am she.”

“Th’ man down below wished me t’ give ye this. He says it come yesterday, and yer t’ give an answer t’ ‘ee.”

The youth regarded her curiously as she read the paper. They said, down below, that she was a wicked woman. Not a witch, but looking upon her, he wondered if perhaps she was. She seemed to him to be too frail, too white, too thin to be real. From the house, he heard a baby cry. The woman didn’t seem up to caring for the babe, as her face had grown paler in the moments following his arrival.

“Mrs., would ye like me t’ mind th’ Chiel? I’ve helped my Mother do it before. Ye can pen yer response.”

At his voice, she looked up. Regaining what little composure she had, she forced a smile. “No, that will not be necessary. She disappeared into the house for a moment, emerging with a piece of parchment. “You can hand this to the man, and tell him to deliver it immediately.”

She did not give him even a farthing for his work, and so, sorely disappointed, he trudged back, thinking as he did so that she was a strange and mean woman, as they had said.

0o0o0

When her husband came home, having been unaffected, it seemed, by the events that had recently occurred, she mentioned the exchange.

“I received a letter today.”

“That is nice.”

“My mother has given birth to a boy.”

“Very well.”

“She plans on coming to see us in a fortnight.”

This caused William to look up for a moment.

“She’ll not be staying here.”

“No, of course not. I would not allow such a thing. Perhaps at some point, however, we may offer her a room in our home.”

He looked at her, trying to understand her meaning. “What are you speaking of woman? Are you implying that ye wish for us to leave here?”

She looked down, and for a brief moment, the silence that had penetrated the house since the birth of the child reigned. “I don’t suppose that you think such a thing possible right now, and you are true in such thought. We haven’t much to live by, I know. But perhaps one day, we might find that we can afford to live elsewhere. When the girl has grown some, and you have worked longer. I was hoping that we might leave the town, and move to the city. Maybe London; there should be work enough in London for you.”

William had not found himself settling into the role that she had so easily adopted. He had noticed the change in her perceptions as of late. The child, he felt little for. He had initially wished to feel such things, but now, now he figured that it was for the best that he could feel nothing. After all, he was only a plaything of the Devil, and it was not his right to feel anything but anguish.

“We will not be leaving this place. We have found a home, and I do not wish to ever leave it.”

“I suppose that is your right.”

No more was said on the subject.

For Lilly, motherhood had brought with it a renewed sense of purity and of contentedness. What she could not comprehend, however, was how she might feel in later years, or, rather, how her own unfortunate mother now felt.

As time goes on, the blinding light of innocence seems to fade, leaving only a faint glow as the child reaches her tenth or eleventh year. Why is this, we are led to wonder. Is it possible that the mother will see the world corrupt her child before her eyes? Certainly, the cruel power on earth leaves little untainted. The blind innocence with which the babe follows its mother turn to wariness; its own feelings turn on it, deceiving the child, painting pictures of feelings that were never felt, of love that was never known.

Katherine Devlin ruminated upon all of this as she sat upon the seat, watching the hillside roll by. She paused from her own ruminations, allowing herself to look upon a young girl, running through the train, laughing as her young mother trailed after her, a smile upon the mothers pretty face. She let herself fondly remember the own instances in which she had acted similarly with her own children, but the peaceful moment was fleeting, as is so often true.

She wondered if the overwhelming disappointment that she felt in her eldest daughter stemmed from her own faulty assumptions. Perhaps, she mused, she had thought to highly of the girl; perhaps she had expected too much. Of course, Lilly had never given her a reason to believe otherwise. She had always been a smart child, a girl who would achieve far more than most of her class. Katherine had thought that her daughter could make a marriage of great rank, a match that could come about due to Lilly’s intellect and beauty. Yes, she decided. She had thought far too well. She had forgotten that they were not of the elite class, that they were of no importance. She had, at some point, ceased to look at her daughter as she was. She had simply refused to see Lilly as another girl, a mistake that, looking back, had caused far more grief than would have otherwise arisen from this situation.

Had she angered those above, she was led to consider as she walked off the train, onto the hardened ground. Had she done something to give her this shame? To give her own child this shame? She couldn’t imagine that it was otherwise. It was possible, of course, that these feelings were manifestations of her guilt. After all, it had been she who had pushed her daughter into this shameful marriage. It had been only through one shame that another could be avoided. She hadn’t a choice, Katherine reasoned. She had another child who still had a chance. A ruined daughter would ruin the chance of Elizabeth to live the life that Lilly could not. Were word of Lilly’s transgressions to get out, Elizabeth too would find herself incapable of making a match worthy of her own class. Still, whatever her intentions had been, it remained true that she had married her daughter to a man that she was convinced her daughter could never love. Of course, Lilly would deny such a thing, for her pride would never allow her to concede to defeat.

Her heart was thus heavy as she walked out from the train. She now wished that she had not insisted upon this trek to see her child. She had an infant at home; she had not wished to leave the babe with the wet nurse initially, but her husband had asked it of her in a way that she could not refuse. Here, she cursed her own weak character. It was a fault that she had carried with her from her birth. She had inherited it from her mother, she supposed. She lacked the strength to do that which was not of her own choosing. Perhaps, had she been stronger, she would not have found it necessary to enter into marriage with Mr. Devlin. Her first husband had left her his lands, which had accumulated into a sizeable fortune from which she could have comfortably lived.

Still, this was all of the past, and the past could not mean much to her now.

She watched the bustle around her, watching the people who met one another, and she felt shame for herself, and for her daughter. Was this what Lilly was to be resigned to? This town of such people, so below herself? Of course, when she thought of this, she couldn’t help but wonder if she had given Lilly to man or monster. She had thought well enough of the boy at one time or another, although now, she really couldn’t remember exactly when. She wished that Robert had accompanied her, but she knew that this was impossible. It was a silent agreement of sorts, between her husband and his son. William had disappointed his father far more than Lilly had disappointed her mother. Katherine knew that Robert had always held the hope that his son would find some vocation that was befitting of his class. William had never shown such an inclination, and when he had been married to her daughter, the small hope that Robert had held flickered out, only to be reborn in Katherine. She who had thought William fit for nothing better than that which he did suddenly found herself imagining his reformation.

She knew that this was not to be, yet still, as women are known to do, she hoped despite that which common sense tells us. After all, what was she but a woman, inclined to believe in the irrational.