THE DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN.
"Dead! Deed!
His soul hath sped,
The turf lies over his golden head.
"Cold! Cold!
In churchyard mould,
And just one stroke hath the death-bell tolled.
"Child! Child!
The angels smiled,
Then carried thee heavenward undefiled."
After the departure of Eustace, life went on in the same old fashion
at the Hall. Alizon passed her days and nights with Sammy, received
the few visitors that called, and was as happy as she could be under
the circumstances. She deeply regretted the kind friend who had been
such a comfort to her in her loneliness, but looking back on what she
had done, could not wish things otherwise. True, he had spoken most
delicately, and in such a way as could offend no woman, still she was
glad that he had gone, as his presence would have been a perpetual
reminder to her of his unhappy passion.
"If I had married him," she thought sometimes, "perhaps he would have
made me a better husband than Guy. But no! his love was a mere passion
of envy, wishing for what he could not obtain. Had I been single, very
probably he would not have spoken to me as he did. The fact that I am
the wife of another man is the true reason of his desire that I should
love him. Ah! these men, they are all the same. Eustace is a poet, and
his pleading was more delicate than another man's would have been, but
his instincts resemble those of the rest of his sex."
Thus she talked to herself, trying to harden her heart against the
misery of the man who loved her so devotedly and hopelessly. He was
going away from England, to exile, perhaps to death, and all for her
sake; even the least vain of woman could not but feel a thrill of
responsive feeling to such unutterable worship. But whenever she found
herself thinking in this dangerous fashion, she tried to change the
current of her thoughts. She was the wife of Guy Errington, and,
little as he deserved it, he had a right to expect entire purity of
thought and deed in his wife, yet, in spite of her Puritanical nature,
she dreamed at times of the unhappy exile whose love she had rejected.
Guy never wrote to his wife, nor gave any sign of existence, and she,
on her part, acted in the same way, so it seemed as if their lives
were parted for ever. Yet she frequently thought about him and began
to believe that she had been too harsh in her judgment. If such was
the case, let him come back and ask her forgiveness. If he did
so--well she might pardon him, and then--but no, there could never be
any trust or affection between them. The phantom of the past would
always come between them; so far as she could see, nothing remained to
make her life happy but the child.
Sammy was the idol of her heart. She forgot everything when she had
him in her arms, and she felt that the whole world might go to ruin as
long as this blue-eyed darling was left untouched, safe on the tender
bosom of his mother. In her daily life she adapted all things to suit
the living of her child, and never knew a happy moment when she was
away from his side.
The first thing in the morning the child was brought down to her
bedroom, and sprawled on the coverlet, while she lay looking at him
with happy eyes, babbling fond nonsense suited to his baby
understanding. When he slept in the morning she sat beside his crib
watching the flushed little face, the tangled golden curls, and the
tiny dimpled hands. She went out with him for his daily drive,
accompanied by Mrs. Tasker, and would hardly let that worthy woman
touch him, so jealous she was of his liking for anyone save herself.
He played at her feet for hours, and she sat beside him in a low chair
singing tender little songs, playing baby games, amusing him with his
toys, and when he grew fretful with wakefulness, lulled him to sleep
on her breast. Every hour of the day she found some new perfection in
him, she was never tired of talking about his clever ways, his
infantile wisdom, his loving disposition, and when he was laid to rest
at night, she hung over him like an enamoured lover breathing
blessings on his unconscious head.
The world will doubtless laugh at such tender devotion, at such
intense absorption in an unformed infant, but no one but a woman, no
one but a mother, can understand the wondrous power of maternal love
that dominates every other feeling in the feminine heart. All the
passion of lovers, the ecstacies of poets, the blind adoration of men
for those they love, pale before this strongest of all feelings
implanted in the human breast. Perhaps some will say that
self-preservation is stronger, but this is not so, as a mother in an
extreme case will sacrifice her life for that of her child, thereby
proving the superiority of the maternal feeling.
In this worship of the child she forgot earth, she forgot heaven, she
forgot God.
And God punished her.
Sammy was cutting his teeth, and was feverish and fretful for some
days, but although every care was lavished upon him neither Alizon nor
Mrs. Tasker deemed the illness to be anything worse than a slight
infantile malady. But one evening, Alizon bending over his sleeping
form, saw his face grow black, his little limbs begin to twitch, and
in a moment the poor child was in strong convulsions. Pale with
terror, she shrieked for Mrs. Tasker and sent off a groom at once for
the village doctor who had attended to Sammy since his birth. Mrs.
Tasker, terribly anxious, yet restraining herself so as not to
affright the agonised mother, did what she could under the
circumstances and placed the child in a hot bath. The doctor arrived
as quickly as possible, but he was too late--the child was dead.
Dead!
When the doctor told her, she could not believe it, and throwing
herself on her knees beside the tiny corpse, tried in vain to see some
sign of life. Alas it was all in vain, and after an hour of agonising
dread she was obliged to accept the inevitable.
She did not lament, she did not weep, but only sat in dumb tearless
silence by the side of her dead child. One thing only she muttered,
with ashen lips, and restless hands plucking at her dress.
"It is the judgment of God, because I loved His creature better than
Himself."
There is no grief so terrible as that silent, self-concentrated agony
which gives no sign. All through the lonely hours of the night she sat
beside the crib, where all that she held dearest and best was lying
stiff and cold, the tiny hands crossed on the breast, a smile on the
placid little face. They tried in vain to persuade her to go to bed,
to take some refreshment, to leave the room where the dead child lay,
but all in vain, for rejecting all offers of consolation and kindness,
she sat frozen with grief in the darkened room.
The morning came, the time that she had been accustomed to hear the
merry little voice and see the happy face, but the voice was silent
now for evermore, and the face--could that still, white mask be the
face she had seen smiling in her own, the face that she had covered so
often with kisses? She could not cry, although tears would have been a
relief, she could not talk, although it would have eased her pain, she
could only sit in a trance of speechless, thoughtless horror beside
her dead.
Mrs. Tasker, wise old woman that she was, knew that unless something
was done, and that speedily, to rouse her mistress from this apathetic
state, there would be danger of the mind becoming unhinged, so finding
out Mr. Gartney's address in London, which she obtained by sending
over to Castle Grim, sent a telegram and afterwards a letter to him
urging him to bring the husband, the father, to the stricken mother.
Eustace was leading an aimless life in Town, when he received the
news, and was terribly grieved about it. Without delay, he wired to
Errington at San Remo, and then wrote to Victoria at Dunkeld Castle,
asking her to come at once to the unhappy woman. Mrs. Macjean, much
moved by the intelligence, came south without delay, in company with
her husband, and went down to the Hall. The sight of the young bride's
kind face did more good to Lady Errington than anything else, and
after all the apathy and horror of those dark days succeeding the
death, the blessed tears came to relieve her overburdened heart. The
two women wept in one another's arms, and hand in hand stood by the
little coffin wherein lay the tiny body of the child. Otterburn kept
out of their way as much as he could, feeling that his rough masculine
nature was but ill-suited to this house of mourning, but attended to
all the details of the funeral pending the arrival of Errington.
And Guy?
Surely he would come over now that his child was dead, come over to
bury his first-born and console the afflicted mother! Eustace waited
hopefully for a telegram saying that he was on his way, but at length
received a wire asking him to come over to San Remo and see his cousin
there. He crushed the telegram up in his hand with an oath.
"Good God!" he said to himself in dismay, "surely that woman cannot
have besotted him so far that he cannot come to the funeral of his own
child."
He did not hesitate a moment, but wrote a letter to Otterburn at the
Hall, telling him he was going over to San Remo to bring back
Errington, and then, hastily packing a few things, started from
Victoria Station for the Continent.
During the last few weeks since his departure from Castle Grim, he had
arranged all his affairs prior to his departure for Africa. Laxton was
still in Town as, Otterburn being married, he had not been able to
find anyone to go with him as a companion, so when Eustace offered
himself, he was greatly delighted. It had been Laxton's intention to
go down to Cape Town, but Gartney persuaded him to alter his
destination to the Nile, and, go far up into Nubia, in order to follow
in the footsteps of Speke and Bruce. This arrangement was
satisfactory, and Eustace and his friend began to arrange everything
for their trip, which now began to assume more the appearance of an
exploring expedition than a mere shooting excursion.
When he had to go to San Remo in order to bring back Guy, all the
preparations were left in Laxton's hands, which did not, by any means,
prove irksome to that young man, as he was going in heart and soul for
the business.
Eustace, as he stood on the deck of a Channel steamer in the dark
night, drinking in the sea breezes, thought all the time of the woman
he loved kneeling beside the open coffin.
"She has nothing to care for now," he said to himself. "God has taken
away her idol, so if I bring back Guy with me, she will forgive and
love him for coming to her in her sorrow."
The fact was, that for the first time in his life Gartney was
sacrificing self for the benefit of other people. Hitherto he had
gratified without scruple all his egotistical desires, but the
hopeless love he cherished for Alizon Ellington had brought to light
the nobler traits of his nature, and probably he was never a better
man than now, when he was striving to bring wife and husband together
for their mutual happiness before leaving his native country for an
everlasting exile, and perchance death in a savage land.