XVI
THE NEW MALADY

In every age there is a new disease—there is a new malady—a strange sickness. The whole army of medical science goes out to meet it and there is pitched a battle wherein lives are sacrificed, honour made and lost. But in the end the glorious banner of medical skill is generally carried triumphant from the field. Some old foes truly there are who are not conquered yet, with whom a guerilla warfare is continuously being waged. Never can they be brought into the open field; never can they be come upon at close quarters. Sometimes in a skirmish they are routed and put to flight; yet ever they return, lessened in numbers, no doubt, weakened in strength, but still a marauding enemy to mankind.

Then apart from these, there is that new malady, which, with its stern inevitability, the age always brings amidst its retinue of civilisation.

It would seem, notwithstanding the dictum of the Bab Ballad-maker, that they are not always blessings which follow in Civilisation’s train. One disease after another has come amongst us from out the ranks of civilisation. And now appears the latest of all, seizing upon its victims under the very walls of that fortress of medical science.

It is the disease of bearing children, the disease of making life.

We all know how science with its anÆsthetics, with its deftly made instruments and its consummate skill, is attacking the enemy from every quarter. Yet the fatality of the sickness is steadily growing. More women die in childbirth now than ever fell its victims in the days when the services of a common mid-wife were all that were at their disposal.

It is terrible sometimes to think how rapidly this most natural of all functions—since upon it hangs the existence of all people in the world—it is terrible to think how rapidly it is shaping into the awesome features of a disease. Women are as ashamed of its conditions now as they would be if smallpox had pitted their delicate skins. They speak of it as of some dreadful operation—which indeed it has become—and, instead of glorying over a possession which they alone command, they will talk of it as a curse which, suffering alone, they should be given compensation for. They ask for the vote! Great God! As if the vote could compensate them for the loss of bearing children as the God of nature meant they should be borne! As if any form of compensation could ease such a loss as that!

Success and civilisation—these are the two subtle poisons from the effects of which we are all suffering. Nothing fails like success! Nothing degrades so much as civilisation!

A little while ago a woman who had given birth to a fine child told me quite frankly that she herself was not going to feed it.

“Do you mean suckle it?” said I.

She did not like that word and she shuddered.

“You object to the use of the word?” I suggested.

“Is it quite nice?” she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Words are only ugly,” said I, “when they express ugly deeds. I can understand if you find the deed ugly you don’t like the word.”

She answered that she did not mind the thing itself. “You see,” said she, “it’s quite impossible for me to do it. We’ve been asked up—my husband and I—to Chatsworth to meet the King, and it would be foolish to lose such an opportunity—wouldn’t it? I can’t go up like this, so I must have a sort of operation.”

“So you’ve made up your mind?” said I.

She screwed up her eyes as her conscience faltered in her breast.

“Practically,” she replied.

“Well, if not quite,” I suggested, “write to the King, and ask him whether he would sooner meet you at Chatsworth or have a stalwart son given to the country.”

She told me I made the most absurd remarks she had ever heard from any one and she walked away. “Besides,” said she, over her shoulder, “it’s a daughter.”

I found her name amongst those invited to Chatsworth to meet the King. I saw her picture in a photograph of the Chatsworth group and she looked beautiful. Her figure was that of a child who had never known maternity.

There are traitors even in the camp of medical science, thought I. Nothing degrades science so much as the march of civilisation—no social woman fails so utterly as when she succeeds in meeting the King.

I have a friend, in the tiny chintz parlour of whose cottage in the country a certain collection of prints adorn the walls. For the most part they are steel engravings, valuable enough in their way. But it is the subject common to them all, rather than the intrinsic value of each picture, which has persuaded my friend to their collection. One and all, with the tenderest treatment you can imagine, they portray a baby feeding at the gentle breast of its mother. No other pictures in the room are there but these, and there must at least be a fair dozen of them. You cannot fail but notice them. The similarity of their subject alone would force itself upon your mind.

Yet, would you believe it, the ladies who come there to call upon my friend’s wife, regard them with horror and alarm. As their eyes fall upon them, they turn sharply away, only to be met with yet another of those improper pictures upon an opposite wall. With far greater equanimity and even interest would they look upon a series of Hogarth’s prints. The vicar of the parish, too, was alarmed. He asked my friend whether he did not think that such pictures did harm.

“Of course I know,” said he, “it is a natural function and is all right in its proper place. I don’t mean to say that it would do harm to you or to me, of course—we’re old enough to discriminate. But younger people are apt to look at these things in a different light.”

“Do you know that as a fact?” asked my friend quietly.

Now, the vicar was a truthful man, who had read that the devil is the father of all liars. He held his head thoughtfully for a moment.

“It is what I imagine would be the case,” said he. “On which account I always disapprove of those pictures which, what you might say, expose the body of a woman in the so-called interests of Art. With a man and his wife—if I may say so—such things are different; but to make a show of a woman’s nakedness, that is to me a form of prostitution at which honestly I shudder every time it comes my way.”

“I see—I see your point,” said my friend. “If there is to be prostitution, let it be that of the wife. I see your point. But why call marriage a sacrament? And why solemnise it in a church? I should have thought the meat-market had been a better place.”

Great heavens! No wonder the disease is spreading! No wonder is it that women approach the hour of deliverance in fear and trembling, for neither do they fit themselves for it, nor are they proud of the birthright which is theirs alone. For the sake of appearances, because they are not well enough off, because of inconvenience, they will give up all they possess for the mess of pottage. Civilisation indeed has made a strange place of the world. There are few men and women left in it now.

Now and again you may run across a true mother, but all the rest of women that you meet are only fit to be called by a name that is indeed too ugly to write.

A true woman I heard of only the other day. She was brought to her bed of childbirth. In the room there was that still hush, the hush of awe when out of the “nowhere into here” the something which is life is about to be conjured out of the void of nothingness which is death. For long, trembling moments all was still. The faint whispers and muffled sounds only made the quietness yet more potent. And then, suddenly, out of the silence, came the shrill living, trumpet-cry of a new voice—the voice of a little child.

The woman stretched her arms and smiled, as if in that cry she had heard the voice of God.

“You must lie still,” they whispered in her ear—“there is yet another child.”

“Thank God!” she moaned, and the silence fell round them once more.