You’re a Doll, Daisy! Chapter Four — In which Daisy Contemplates the Length of Eternity.
It is not an uncommon thing for a serving woman, advanced in her years, to take up the role of a universal fortune teller with every young woman in her familiar acquaintance.
The foibles of the female fate become rather easy to predict when one has seen the same bleak patterns embroidered to their last stitch a dozen times before. There is a secret aspect of the world concerning women, viewable only to women. Mrs Prudence knew and had long known Daisy’s little secret and there was, to her mind, nothing of greater importance to a pregnant woman than to avoid low spirits and wicked thoughts.
The impressions made upon a weak mind could well prove fatal to a mother and her child. It cannot be said that a great many people heard Mrs Prudence’s puritanical exclamations without thinking her a strange relic of the century past. Daisy was, and had long been, the primary object of Mrs Prudence’s matriarchal affections; she loved Daisy and thus she scorned her relentlessly.
One of the foremost constitutional particulars of many a young lady belongs to a clandestine dimension. A husband, perhaps, may notice this occurrence. A lady’s maid certainly will; or, in Daisy’s case, her stepson. Tom did not, though, perceive its partial and confusing absence.
Nature had put our heroine upon her guard, but nature, contrary creature she is, had also put on appearances that left dear Daisy, for many months, in doubt of her maternal position; that is to say, the bloody occurrence intermittently persisted.
Mrs Prudence had long observed these flutterings of female confusion and had watched for growing signifiers that the great law of the animal economy was at work; the good woman was now as satisfied as our heroine that Daisy was pregnant with what could only be Tom Finsbury’s child.
It had been an odd sort of day. Daisy had not risen from her bed. She would not admit even Tom and only saw Sir Charles because he would not be refused. The girl who was always perfectly at ease with the world was now all irritability, fidgeting and wittering; Daisy was suffering from what could only be described as a fit of hysterics.
‘My lady must think upon it, that the soul of any young woman will fill a vacancy in Hell. Sure, the Devil is not particular. But those of the young mother, these are the souls that need most saving; a mother shall drag more than just her own soul down to that inferno,’ said Mrs Prudence, mopping Daisy’s affrighted brow with a damp cloth.
Daisy, consumed as she was with the unagreeable nature of her present predicament, did not hear a word of Prudence’s preaching, certainly not the mention of young mothers. How she wished she might have diverted her thoughts by listening to the old woman’s repetitious, maternal witterings! Beneath the brimstone of Mrs Prudence’s impassioned ramblings, there was a persistent hope that — one day — Daisy might yet be redeemed.
What hope could there be now? It was, indeed it was, much too late for that. The winds of Providence, which had hitherto allowed our heroine such happiness in the arms of Tom, had swiftly and unexpectedly turned against her. You see, in almost six-and-thirty hours, Daisy had hovered above her chamber pot, all to no avail. At first, she had thought little of it, but time was not a friend to her in this ailment, and every hour that passed brought no passing of water but only increased agitation and, at length, pains and paroxysms that left our young lady certain she would die before the day’s end.
‘Prudence, I think you must fetch me a physician.’
‘Sure, my lady, I would do so gladly. But Sir Charles has ordered me to do no such thing, for he said these men will take a feeble female mind and fill it with all notions of ailments so that she will never again think herself well a day of her life. My master has strictly forbidden any interference from medical men — he will not have a hypochondriac for a wife.’
‘You may tell your master that without any such interference, he may soon have no wife at all!’ Speaking the agitations of her mind aloud could not relieve Daisy’s fears; it served only to increase her anxieties. The fear, the ever-swelling, unrelenting fear, was far more unpleasant than the pain itself. ‘Good God, Pru! Do not you understand me? If I see not a physician soon, I am sure I will die!’
‘Sure, my lady, these nervous symptoms may like to be very severe, but the more you pay them mind, the worse they shall become. A good woman must learn to hold her nerve. Do not I always say that sin decays the mind; my lady would be better to call for a priest than a doctor, if you won’t mind my saying so.’
Daisy wept.
‘Sure, I never intended to make her ladyship cry!’
‘Please, Prudence,’ replied Daisy with a weak voice and strong earnestness, ‘I fear my time has come, and I do not want to die. Will not you believe me when I say I am in desperate want of a doctor? If you will not provide me with a doctor, at least bring Tom to me so that I may implore him to save my life.’
‘Save your life? Well, my lady, you pregnant women will go and get all sorts of ideas into your–’
‘Pregnant!’ exclaimed Daisy, quite forgetting her imminent death. ‘Who said anything about pregnancy? What do you know of pregnancy, Mrs Prudence?’
‘Sure, my mother was a midwife. I wager I know far more of it than you do, my lady. And I tell you, it is not uncommon for the weak-minded women to fall into hysterics at the change and pains they are to undergo. And do I not always say that a sinful mind will be a–’
‘Yes, yes!’ said Daisy with impatience. ‘But do you mean to say that you have found out my secret and said nothing of it to me till now?’
‘I have hinted long enough. I supposed her ladyship did not like me to mention it, which I did not wonder at, assuming it is the fruit of your vile sluttishness.’
For a brief moment, Daisy smiled. ‘And have you told anybody else? Sir Charles? Tom? Any servants of our house or another?’
‘I am sure I have not told a soul!’ replied Mrs Prudence appearing rather offended.
‘Oh, good lady!’ cried out Daisy, pulling the serving woman into her arms. ‘You are a kind friend to me. You must help me, Prudence. I am struck down with no fit of hysteria. Would to Heaven I was! My calamity is entirely of the physical realm. For near two days, try as I might, my water will not part with me at all.’
‘Sure, my lady has drank very little water to part with. You have refused every cup brought to your lips.’
‘That, Prudence, is the effect and not the cause. I am tormented by the most excruciating discomfort. I really think this mischief shall not resolve itself. Will not you, good lady, call for me a doctor?’
If she would refuse to help, then Daisy would be left with no option but to confess herself to Sir Charles. Wretch he was, I wonder he would not have subjected his wife to this violent death as justice for her crime — Daisy wondered this too. At length, Mrs Prudence answered, ‘Aye, I shall fetch a doctor for my lady. Heaven knows how I shall do so without my master catching wind of it.’
‘Good Mrs Prudence! Are not you, my dear, the best of women?’
When she knew a doctor had been called for, our heroine had the patience to listen to her woman’s moralising once again. She wanted the diversion. Imagine, then, her horror when these heavy words did not amuse her, or fill her heart with sentiments of familial affection, but brought her to those useless tears once again! Her security from death was not promised; her child’s security was not promised — Tom’s child — good Heavens! There was no cheerful outlook to be found and in no part of this awful event could our ever-good-humoured heroine find any cause for laughter. She loved Tom; she had always and only loved Tom.
‘…He visits the sins of the mothers upon the children. Does not my lady consider this? If she will not unblemish her soul before the day of reckoning, this child shall be base-born and damned to a life of misery here and hereafter. Your rotting soul will poison that of an innocent. There is no crime worse. A mother who cares not for the soul of her child deserves to be drowned for the witch she is. Sure, carry on your criminal ways, and that child shall be born to hang — just like your elder brother. That is if it survives so long and the base-born rarely do. Did not your own whore mother have a dozen children, and now only remains you and Mr Freddy — whose vices ought to break your heart. What a thing to do, my lady, to cast your poor child down to a cradle of thorns; the only embrace it shall ever know is that of the demons who shall tear apart its tiny limbs.’
‘Good Heavens, Prudence! I cannot bear for you to go on in this manner.’ Daisy wept into her pillow. The scent of Tom lingered on it still; this caused Daisy to cry all the more. ‘And my mother never had twelve children. You know very well she did not!’
‘Half-a-dozen or a dozen; it’s all the same to wrinkle-bellied whores! Heed my word or do not, my lady, but if you do not repent shortly, that child shall live to wish it had never been born at all.’
Daisy clutched her stomach and wept again. Fortunately arresting the tongue of Mrs Prudence from inducing any further weeping fits came news that the doctor had, at last, arrived.
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