Love
Copyright© 2024 by Elizabeth Von Arnim
Chapter 18
When Virginia recovered consciousness she lay for some time with her eyes shut, frowning. She seemed to have come back from somewhere very far away, and it had been difficult, so difficult to come back at all, and she was tired out with the effort. Where had she been? She lay trying to remember, her arms straight down by her side, the palms of her hands upturned as if some one had flung them there like that and she had been too indifferent to move them. Her hair, in two thick plaits, was neatly arranged, a plait drawn down over each shoulder, and her bed was spotless and tidy.
She opened her heavy eyes presently, and saw her mother sitting by the pillow.
Her mother. She shut her eyes again and thought this over; but it tired her to think, and she didn’t bother much with it. Her mother was sitting quite still, holding a plait of some one’s dark hair against her lips and kissing it. There was another person in the room, moving about without any noise, dressed in white. Who?
A glimmer of recollection stole into Virginia’s mind. Without bothering to open her eyes—the exertion of doing that was so enormous—she managed to murmur, ‘Have I—had my baby?’ And her mother took her hand and kissed it and told her she had, and that it was a boy. A beautiful boy, her mother said.
She thought this over too, frowning with the effort. A beautiful boy. That was the opposite of a beautiful girl. And the nurse—of course, that white thing was the nurse—came and held a cup to her mouth and made her drink something.
Then she lay quiet again, with her eyes shut. She had had her baby. A beautiful boy. The news in no way stirred her; it tired her.
Presently there came another flicker of recollection. Stephen. That was her husband. Where was he?
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