The storm that threatened at sunset fulfils its prediction as night
draws on. Lauraine, lying awake in her bed, hears the howling of the
wind, the fierce rush and sweep of the rain, the far-off roar of
angry waves that dash against the dreary iron-bound cliffs.
Once, suddenly, amid the noise of the elements, she fancies she hears
a strange sound from the adjoining room, the room that she has turned
into a night nursery, that her child may be as near her as possible.
She sits up and listens; but all is still.
Again she lies down, but a restless, troubled feeling is on her.
Sleep seems impossible. She rises and puts on a loose white
dressing-robe, and, softly opening the door of communication, steps
into the nursery.
A night-light is burning dimly, the fire in the grate throws a fitful
blaze around. She moves swiftly to the little lace-curtained cot,
and bends over the child.
What is it she hears that blanches her face with terror, that strikes
cold and chill to her heart? Her arms are round the little figure; a
cry arouses the sleeping woman in her bed beside the little cot. She
springs up and sees her mistress, and in an instant is by her side.
Too well she knows the meaning of that hoarse, strange sound. The
cold and cruel wind has done its work. In another moment the
household is aroused. The stillness of the night is all one tumult
of voices and feet. Lady Etwynde, startled by the noise, goes
straight to Lauraine's room, and finds it untenanted; but there in
the nursery, with a face white with despair, a vague, pitiful terror
in the eyes that turn from the little figure in her arms to the
pitying faces around, sits the poor young mother. The struggles for
breath, the hoarse, horrible cry that once heard is never forgotten,
tell Lady Etwynde their own tale.
Some one has taken a horse and gone for a doctor. The usual remedies
of hot bath and steam have been applied. They can only wait, wait in
that agony of suspense which is the cruellest suffering of life.
Weeping, frightened, the little crowd fill the room. The mother
alone is dry-eyed and calm. Her voice from time to time wakes the
silence with all the fond and tender words the baby ears have grown
familiar with. Sometimes a quiver of agony passes over her face as
she sees the terrible suffering, as the lovely star-like eyes gaze up
at her in a wondering, imploring way, seeming to beseech help and
ease from one who loves him so.
The night wears on. The leaden-footed hours drag their way wearily
towards the dawn. Slowly the wind dies away in sobbing sighs; slowly
the silver streak of coming day paints all the black and lowering
clouds that roll stormily aside. And then at last the doctor comes,
and the little figure is taken from its mother's arms. Another hour
goes on to join the rank of those so weighted with agony and fear.
And with it goes on suspense; with it flickers the little life in
those cruel spasms of pain; flickers more and more faintly, watched
with hope that only fades into despair.
The dawn breaks, the brightness of the new day bursts upon a waking
world that welcomes it with life. But the brightness of the golden
sun shines upon a baby face, that leans white and still and painless
now upon its mother's breast, and something that is not the dullness
of the morning strikes to her heart, stilling its throbs, stifling
its agony of dread.
Her child is hers no longer!
With gentle touch, with pitying words, her friend strives to draw her
from that room. In vain.
She kneels beside the little cot where the tiny figure lies so still,
so calm now; her tearless eyes riveted on the lovely little face;
eyes so wild, so passionate, so entreating, that none dare meet their
gaze.
"He is only asleep; he has not--left me," she cries: and weeping,
they stand aside and know not what to do.
Then Lady Etwynde bade them all go out, and knelt down by Lauraine's
side. The tears dimmed her eyes, her gentle heart was wrung at the
sight of this mute, blank suffering. "Dear, do try and realize it,"
she whispered tenderly. "It is hard, terribly hard, I know. But for
him, doubtless it is best."
"Best!" Lauraine rose to her feet, and looked blankly around. The
bath, the blankets, the paraphernalia of that brief illness; the
sunlight streaming in through the window; the little figure so still,
so strangely still, all struck on her with a dull, hopeless pain, as
of something missing ... gone out of her life....
Then a low moan broke from her lips.
"Oh, God! let me die too!"
That awful day of pain and grief rolls on. To Lady Etwynde it seems
the most terrible she has ever known. Lauraine has passed from one
fit of unconsciousness into another. They watch and tend her in
ever-increasing fear. Lady Etwynde has telegraphed to London for a
physician, and also to Mrs. Douglas and Sir Francis, though she fears
the latter will not receive her message without considerable delay,
owing to the uncertainty of his movements.
In the darkened house they all move with hushed steps; and in one
room, where noise and merriment has been so rife but yesterday, there
is _something_ lying white and still, with flowers piled high upon
its snowy covering. Something from whose angelic beauty all trace of
earth has passed, something in whose presence all grief is stilled,
and tears forget to flow. Again and again does Lady Etwynde steal
into that room and gaze on the exquisite face on which death has left
no shadow of dread, no trace of plain. It seems as if only the
mystery of sleep had sealed the marble lids, and left that strange,
soft, trance-like calm upon the once restless body.
The little sinless soul must be happy now, she thinks; but, oh! the
agony that is left, the awful sense of loss, loneliness, despair,
through which that robbed and paralysed motherhood must wade ... the
deep waters ere comfort is reached ... when every sight and sound
will bring back the memory of loss, when every child's voice will
strike sharp as a knife to the aching heart that holds the echo of
but one. Alas, alas! for the desolation of this sad young life,
that, clinging but to one joy amidst all the storms and sorrows and
weariness around, sees it snatched suddenly from its hold, and looks
out on a future blank and desolate as a starless night, where all is
shrouded from sight and touch, and every landmark obliterated.
Another day comes to replace the wretchedness of this. Lauraine
rises white and calm from her bed, and still dry-eyed and tearless,
takes up life with its new burden of sorrow. Arrangements, orders,
all devolve upon her. No word has come from Sir Francis, but a
telegram announces that her mother will be there that night. Lady
Etwynde watches her in the deepest distress. This cold, strange,
tearless grief is worse than the most frantic sorrow. It seems to
chill all sympathy, to harden her, as it were, against all offers of
consolation. When Mrs. Douglas arrives it is just the same. Her
reception of her mother is almost cold, and, pleading fatigue as an
excuse, she retires to her own rooms, leaving Lady Etwynde to do the
entertaining.
Mrs. Douglas, who dislikes Lady Etwynde, grumbles openly at her
daughter's strange behaviour.
"So odd, so cold, so unfeeling, as if I could not sympathize with her
loss--I, who have lost two children of my own. And to shut herself
apart from every one like that, it is positively unnatural."
"It has been an awful shock to her," says Lady Etwynde gravely.
"Of course, of course; but then, such a baby; and she is young, she
will have plenty more. But I never knew any one so changed as
Lauraine is since she married. She is not a bit like the same girl."
"Marriage does change people, you know," answers Lady Etwynde,
looking calmly back at Mrs. Douglas. "And I never thought Lauraine
was happy."
"Happy! What in heaven's name does she want? She has everything
that could satisfy a woman, I am sure, and it was quite a--a
love-match."
"Indeed!" says Lady Etwynde, arching her delicate eyebrows. "On
whose side?"
Mrs. Douglas passes by this question loftily. "She is of a cold
nature, and utterly different to me. I am sure if she had had to
bear all the troubles and worries I have put up with during my life
she might talk of unhappiness. Lauraine's unhappiness must be
something like a crumpled rose-leaf, I imagine."
Lady Etwynde only looks quietly at her for a moment. "I don't think
you quite understand her," she says. "There may be natures that
cannot find happiness in position, society, and--diamonds. Of course
it is very odd that they should not do so, some sense or faculty must
be wanting; but all the same, they do exist."
"I hope she is not going to begin one of her lectures on culture,"
thinks Mrs. Douglas in inward perturbation. Aloud she says: "It is
very awkward, Sir Francis not being here. And yachting about, like
he is doing, perhaps he won't get the news for ever so long. Who has
made all the arrangements?"
"Lauraine," answers Lady Etwynde.
"But how odd, how cold. Why does she not have some one--the
clergyman, or the doctor?"
"I don't think it is out of a mother's province to act as Lauraine is
doing," answers Lady Etwynde, composedly. "My only regret is that
she is so calm, so self-controlled. If she could only cry!"
"Ah!" murmurs Mrs. Douglas, plaintively. "I told you she was so cold
and hard. Even as a child she seldom cried."
"Tears are no sign of deep feeling," says Lady Etwynde, sternly; "far
otherwise. Some of the shallowest and most selfish people I have
known, can cry for the least thing. Lauraine's grief is very
terrible to me, because she will not give it natural outlet. I know
what the child was to her."
Mrs. Douglas looks at the fire, and is silent.
She feels irritated, annoyed with Lauraine. Annoyed because she lets
people see her unhappiness in the life chosen for her; annoyed
because of her coldness and indifference towards herself. They have
never had much in common; but since her marriage, since the
suppression of that letter from Keith Athelstone, Lauraine has never
been the same to her mother.
"So ridiculous not to make the best of her position," she thinks,
impatiently. "What on earth is the use of pretending to be a martyr?
Perhaps now that she has lost the child she will think more of the
father."
The father! He is at that moment stretched on a pile of cushions on
the deck of his yacht, the blue, rippling waters turned to silver in
the moonrays, and his eyes gazing up at the liquid, brimming orbs of
the Lady Jean.
"Tired--with you?" he murmurs. "That could never be!"
And his wife stands broken-hearted by the side of their little dead
child!