It seems a simple thing to believe in the divinity of motherhood, when
you have only seen it in the paintings of one or two old masters, or once
in a while perhaps in flesh and blood, transfiguring the face of some
commonplace vulgar woman whom, but for that, nobody would have called
beautiful. But sometimes the divine thing chooses some morsel of humanity
like Mrs. Nevill Tyson, struggles with and overpowers it, rending the
small body, spoiling the delicate beauty; and where you looked for the
illuminating triumphant glory of motherhood, you find, as Tyson found,
a woman with a pitiful plain face and apathetic eyes--apathetic but for
the dull horror of life that wakes in them every morning.
That Tyson had the sentiment of the thing is pretty certain. When he went
up to town (for he went, after all, when the baby was a week old), he
brought back with him a picture (a Madonna of Botticelli's, I think) in a
beautiful frame, as a present for his wife. Poor little soul! I believe
she thought he had gone up on purpose to get it (it was so lovely that
he might well have taken a fortnight to find it); and she had it hung up
over the chimney-piece in her bedroom, so that she could see it whether
she were sitting up or lying down.
Now, whether it was the soothing influence of that belief, or whether
Mrs. Nevill Tyson, the mystic of a moment, found help in the gray eyes
of the mother of God when Nevill had pointed out their beauty, pointed
out, too, the paradox of the divine hands pressing the human breasts for
the milk of life, she revived so far as to take, or seem to take, an
interest in her son. She indulged in no ecstasies of maternal passion;
but as she nursed the little creature, her face began to show a serene
half-ruminant, half-spiritual content.
He was very tiny, tinier than any baby she had ever seen, as well he
might be considering that he had come into the world full seven weeks
before his time; his skin was very red; his eyes were very small, but
even they looked too large for his ridiculous face; his fingers were
fine, like little claws; and his hands--she could hardly feel their
feeble kneading of her breast. He was not at all a pretty baby, but he
was very light to hold.
Tyson had not the least objection to Stanistreet or Sir Peter and the
rest of them, they were welcome to stare at his wife as much as they
pleased; but he was insanely jealous of this minute masculine thing that
claimed so much of her attention. He began to have a positive dislike to
seeing her with the child. There was a strain of morbid sensibility in
his nature, and what was beautiful to him in a Botticelli Madonna,
properly painted and framed, was not beautiful--to him--in Mrs. Nevill
Tyson. He had the sentiment of the thing, as I said, but the thing
itself, the flesh and blood of it, was altogether too much for his
fastidious nerves. And yet once or twice he had seen her turn away from
him, clutching hastily at the open bodice of her gown; once she had
started up and left the room when he came into it; and, curious
contradiction that he was, it had hurt him indescribably. He thought he
recognized in these demonstrations a prouder instinct than feminine
false shame. It was as if she had tried to hide from him some sacred
thing--as if she had risen up in her indignation to guard the portals
of her soul. To be sure he was in no mood just then for entering
sanctuaries; but for all that he did not like to have the door slammed
in his face.