Chapter 15

Alec is ill to-day. He was restless, flushed, feverish, yesterday evening, and I thought he must have caught cold; we put him to bed, and this morning we sent for the doctor. He says there is no need for anxiety, but he does not know as yet what is the matter; his temperature is high, and we must just keep him quietly in bed, and wait. I tell myself that it is foolish to be anxious, but I cannot keep a certain dread out of my mind; there is a weight upon my heart, which seems unduly heavy. Perhaps it is only that it seems unusual, for he has never had an illness of any kind. He is not to be disturbed, and Maggie is not allowed to see him. Maud sate with him this morning, and he slept most of the time. I looked in once or twice, but people coming and going tend to make him restless. Maud herself is a marvel to me. She must be even more anxious than I am, but she is serene, smiling, strong, with a cheerfulness that has no effort about it. She laughed tenderly at my fears, and sent me out for a walk with Maggie. I fear I was a gloomy companion. In the evening I went to sit with Alec a little. He was wakeful, large-eyed, and restless. He lay with a book of stories from Homer, of which he is very fond, in one hand, the other clasping his black kitten, which slept peacefully on the counterpane. He wanted to talk, but to keep him quiet I told him a long trivial story, full of unexciting incidents. He lay musing, his head on his hand; then he seemed inclined to sleep, so I sate beside him, watching and wondering at the nearness and the dearness of the child to me, almost amazed at the revelation which this shadow of fear gives me of the place which he fills in my heart and life. He tossed about for some time, and when I asked him if he wanted anything, he only put his hand in mine; a gesture not quite like him, as he is a boy who is averse to personal caresses or signs of emotion. So I drew my chair up to the bed, and sate there with the little hot hand in my own. Maud came up presently; but as he now seemed sound asleep, we left him in the care of the old nurse, and went down to dinner. If we only knew what was the matter! I argue with myself how much unnecessary misery I give myself by anticipating evil; but I cannot help it; and the weight on my mind grew heavier; half the night I lay awake, till at last, from sheer weariness, I fell into a sort of stupor of the senses, which fled from me in the dismal dawn, and the unmanning hideous fear leapt on me out of the dark, like a beast leaping upon its prey.

August 11, 1889.

I cannot and dare not write of these days. The child is very ill; it is some obscure inflammation of the brain-tissue. I had an insupportable fear that it might have resulted in some way from being over-pressed in the matter of work, over-stimulated. I asked the doctor. If he lied to me, and I do not think he did, he lied like a man, or an angel. "Not in the least," he said, "it is a constitutional thing; in fact, I may say that the rational and healthy life the child has lived will help more than anything to pull him through."

But I can't write of the days. I sleep, half-conscious of my misery. I suppose I eat, walk, read. But waking is like the waking of a prisoner who awakes up to be put on the rack, who hears doors open and feet approach, and sickens with dread as he lies. God's hand is heavy upon me day and night. Surely nothing, in the world or out of it, can obliterate the memory of this suffering; perhaps, if Alec is given back to us, I shall smile at this time of suffering. But, if not--

August 12, 1889.

He is losing ground, he is hardly ever conscious now; he sleeps a good deal, but often he talks quietly to himself of all that we have done and said; he often supposes himself to be with me, and, thank God, he never says a word to show that he has ever feared or misunderstood me. I could not bear that. Yesterday when I was with him, he opened his eyes on me; I could see that he knew me, and that he was frightened. I could not speak, but Maud, who was with me, just took his hand and with her own tranquil smile, said, "It is all right, Alec; there is nothing to be frightened about; we are here, and you will soon be well again." The child closed his eyes and lay smiling to himself. I could not have done that.

August 13, 1889.

He died this morning, just at the dawn. I knew last night that all hope was over. I was with him half the night, and prayed, knowing my prayers were in vain. That I could save him no suffering, could not keep him, could not draw him back. Maud took my place at midnight; I slept, and in the grey dawn, I woke to find her standing with a candle by my bed; I knew in a moment, by a glance, that the end was near. No word passed between us; I found Maggie by the bed; and we three together waited for the end. I had never seen any one die. He was quite unconscious, breathing slowly, looking just like himself, as though flushed with slumber. At last he stirred, gave a long sigh, and seemed to settle himself for the last sleep. I do not know when he died, but I became aware that life had passed, and that the little spirit that we loved had fled, God knows whither. Maggie sate with her hand in mine; and in my dumb and frozen grief, almost without a thought of anything but a deep and cold resentment, a hatred of death and the maker of love and death alike, I became aware that both she and Maud had me in their thoughts, that my sorrow was even more to them than their own--while I was cut off from them; from life and hope alike, in a place of darkness and in the deep.

August 19, 1889.

I saw Alec no more; I would remember him as he was in life, not the stiffened waxen mask of my beloved. The days passed in a dull stupor of grief, mechanically, grimly, in a sort of ghastly greyness. And I who thought that I had sounded the depths of pain! I could not realise it, could not believe that all would not somehow be as before. Maud and Maggie speak of him to each other and to me . . . it is inconceivable. With a dull heartache I have collected and put away all the child's things--his books, his toys, his little possessions. I followed the little coffin to the grave. The uncontrollable throb of emotion came over me at the words, "I am the resurrection and the life." It was a grey, gusty day; a silent crowd waited to see us pass. The great churchyard elms roared and swayed, and I found myself watching idly how the clergyman's hood was blown sideways by the wind. I looked into the deep, dark pit, and saw the little coffin lying there, all in a dumb dream. The holy words fell vacuously on my ears. "Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain"--that was all I felt. I seem to believe nothing, to hope nothing. I do not believe I shall ever see or draw near to the child again, and yet the thought of him alone, apart, uncomforted, lies cold on my heart. Maud is wonderful to me; her love does not seem to suffer eclipse; she does everything, she smiles, she speaks; she feels, she says, the presence of the child near her and about her; that means nothing to me; the soul appears to me to have gone out utterly like a blown flame, mingling with the unseen life, as the little body we loved will be mingled with the dust.

I cannot say that I endure agony; it is rather as if I had received a blow so fierce that it drove sensation away; I seem to see the bruise, watch the blood flow, and wonder why I do not suffer. The suffering will come, I doubt not; but meanwhile I am only mutely grateful that I do not feel more, suffer more. It does not even seem to me to have drawn me nearer to Maud, to Maggie; my power of loving seems extinguished, like my power of suffering. I do not know why I write in this book, why I record my blank apathy. It is a habit, it passes the time; the only thing that gives me any comfort is the thought that I shall die, too, and close my eyes at last upon this terrible world, made so sweet and beautiful, and then slashed and scored across with such cruel stripes, where we pay so grievous a penalty for feeling and loving. Tennyson found consolation "when he sorrowed most." But I say deliberately that I would rather not have loved my child, than lose him thus.

August 28, 1889.

We are to go away. Maggie droops like a faded flower, and for the first time I realise, in trying to comfort and distract her, that I have not lost everything. We are much together, and seeing her thus pine and fade stirs a dread, in the heart that had been so cold, that I may lose her too. At last we are drawn together. She came to say good-night to me last night, and a gush of love passed through me, like the wind stirring the strings of a harp to music. "My precious darling, my comfort," I said; the words put, it seemed, on my lips, by some deeper power. She clung to me, crying softly. Yet, is it strange to say it, that simple utterance seems almost to have revived her, to have given her pride and courage? But Maud is still almost a mystery to me. Who can tell how she suffers--I cannot--it seems to have quickened and enriched her love and tenderness; she seems to have a secret that I cannot come near to sharing; she does not repine, rebel, resist; she lives in some region of unapproachable patience and love. She goes daily to the grave, but I cannot visit it or think of it. The sight of the church-tower on my walks gives me a throb of dismay. But now we are going away. We have been lent a little house in a quiet seaside place; I suppose I am ill--at least, I am aware of a deep and unutterable fatigue at times, when I can rouse myself to nothing, but sit unoccupied, musing, glad to be alone, and only dreading the slightest interruption, the smallest duty. I know by some subtle sense that I am seldom absent from Maud's thoughts; but, with her incredible courage and patience, she betrays nothing by word or glance. She is absolutely patient, entirely self-forgetful; she quietly relieves me of anything I have to do; she alters arrangements a dozen times a day, with a ready smile; and yet it almost seems to me as if I had lost her too.

August 30, 1889.

Our route lay through Cambridge; we had to change there and wait; so we drove down to the town to look at my old college. There it lay, the charming, pretty, quiet place, blinking lazily out of its deep-set barred windows in the bright sun, just the same, it seemed, as ever, though perhaps a touch more mellow and more settled; every corner and staircase haunted with old ghosts for me. I could put a name to every set of rooms, flash an incident to every door and window. In my heavy, apathetic mood the memory of my life there seemed like a memory of some one else, moving in golden light, talking and laughing in firelit rooms, lingering in moonlit nights by the bridge, wondering what life was going to bring. It seemed like turning the pages of some old illuminated book with bright pictures, where the very sunlight is the purest and stiffest gold. The men I knew, the friends I lived with, admired, loved--where are they? scattered to all parts of the earth, parted utterly from me, some of them dead, alas! and silent. It came over me with a thrill of sharpest pain to think how I had pictured Alec here, living the same free and beautiful life, tasting the same innocent pleasures, with the bright, sweet world opening upon him. In that calm, sunny afternoon, life seemed a strange phantasmal business, and I myself a revenant from some thin, unsubstantial world. A door opened, and an old Don, well known to me in those days, hardly altered, it seemed, came out and trotted across the court, looking suspiciously to left and right as he used to do. Had he been doing the same thing ever since, reading the same books, talking the same innocent gossip? I had not the heart to greet him, and he passed me by unrecognising. We peeped into the hall through the screen. I could see where I used to sit, the same dark pictures looking down. We went to the chapel, with its noble classical woodwork, the great carved panels, the angels' heads, the huge, stately reredos. Some one, thank God, was playing softly on the organ, and we sate to listen. The sweet music flowed over my sad heart in a healing tide. Yes, it was not meaningless, after all, this strange life, with the good years shining in their rainbow halo, even though the path led into darkness and formless shadow. I seemed to look back on it all, as the traveller on the hill looks out from the skirts of the cloud upon the sunny valley beneath him. It all worked together, said the delicate rising strain, outlining itself above the soft thunder of the pedals, into something high and grave and beautiful; it all ended in the peace of God. I sate there, with wife and child, a pilgrim faring onwards, tasting of love and life and sorrow, weary of the way, but still--yes, I could say that--still hopeful. In that moment even my bitter loss had something beautiful about it. It was THERE, the bright episode of my dear Alec's life, the memory of the beloved years together. Maggie, seeing something in my face that she was glad to see, put her hand in mine, and the tears rose to my eyes, while I smiled at Maud; the burden fell off my shoulder for a moment, and something seemed as it were to touch me and point onwards. The music with a dying fall came to a soft close; the rich light fell on desk and canopy; the old tombs glimmered in the dusty air. We went out in silence; and then there came back to me, in the old dark court, with its ivied corners, its trim grass plots, the sense that I was still a part of it all, that the old life was not dead, but stored up like a garnered treasure in the rich and guarded past. Not by detachment or aloofness from happiness and warmth and life are our victories won. That had been the dark temptation, the shadow of my loss, to believe that in so sad and strange an existence the only hope was to stand apart from it all, not to care too much, not to love too closely. That was false, utterly false; a bare and grim philosophy, a timid sauntering. Rather it was better to clasp all things close, to love passionately, to desire infinitely, to yield oneself gladly and joyfully to every deep and true emotion; not greedily and luxuriously, flinging aside the crumpled husk that had given up its sweetness; but tenderly and gently, holding out one's arms to everything pure and noble, trusting that behind all there did indeed beat a great and fatherly heart, that loved one better than one dreamed.

That was a strange experience, that sunlit afternoon, a mingling of deepest pain and softest hope, a touch of fire from the very altar of faith, linking the beautiful past with the dark present, and showing me that the future held a promise of perfect graciousness and radiant strength. Did other lives hold the same rich secrets? I felt that they did; for that day, at least, all mankind, young and old alike, seemed indeed my brothers and sisters. In the young men that went lightly in and out, finding life so full of zest, thinking each other so interesting and wonderful; in the tired face of the old Professor, limping along the street; in the prosperous, comfortable contentment of robust men, full of little affairs and schemes--I saw in all of them the same hope, the same unity of purpose, the same significance; and we three in the midst, united by love and loss alike, we were at the centre, as it were, of a great drama of life and love, in which even death could only shift the scene and enrich the intensity of the secret hope.

September 5, 1889.

The rapt and exalted mood that I carried away from Cambridge could not last; I did not hope that it could. We have had a dark and sad time, yet with gleams of sweetness in it, because we have realised how closely we are drawn together, how much we depend on each other. Maud's brave spirit has seemed for a time broken utterly; and this has done more than anything to bring us nearer, because I have felt the stronger, realising how much she leant upon me. She has been filled with self-reproach, I know not for what shadowy causes. She blames herself for a thousand things, for not having been more to Alec, for having followed her own interests and activities, for not having understood him better. It is all unreal, morbid, overstrained, of course, but none the less terribly there. I have tried to persuade her that it is but weariness and grief trying to attach itself to definite causes, but she cannot be comforted. Meanwhile we walk, stroll, drive, read, and talk together--mostly of him, for I can do that now; we can even smile together over little memories, though it is perilous walking, and a step brings us to the verge of tears. But, thank God, there is not a single painful memory, not a thing we would have had otherwise in the whole of that little beautiful life; and I wonder now wretchedly, whether its very beauty and brightness ought not to have prepared me more to lose him; it was too good to be true, too perfectly pure and brave. Yet I never even dreamed that he would leave us; I should have treasured the bright days better if I had. There are times of sharpest sorrow, days when I wake and have forgotten; when I think of him as with us, and then the horror of my loss comes curdling and weltering back upon me; when I thrill from head to foot with hopeless agony, rebelling, desiring, hating the death that parts us.

Maggie seems to feel it differently. A child accepts a changed condition with perhaps a sharper pang, but with a swift accustoming to what irreparably IS. She weeps at the thought of him sometimes, but without the bitter resistance, the futile despair which makes me agonise. That she can be interested, distracted, amused, is a great help to me; but nothing seems to minister to my dear Maud, except the impassioned revival, for it is so, of our earliest first love. It has come back to bless us, that deep and intimate absorption that had moved into a gentler comradeship. The old mysterious yearning to mingle life and dreams, and almost identities, has returned in fullest force; the years have rolled away, and in the loss of her calm strength and patience, we are as lovers again. The touch of her hand, the glance of her eye, thrill through me as of old. It is a devout service, an eager anticipation of her lightest wish that possesses me. I am no longer tended; I tend and serve. There is something soft, appealing, wistful about her that seems to give her back an almost childlike dependence, till my grief almost goes from me in joy that I can sustain and aid her.

September 7, 1889.

Another trouble has fallen upon us. I have had a very grievous letter from my cousin, who succeeded by arrangement, on my father's death, to the business. He has been unfortunate in his affairs; he has thrown money away in speculation. The greater part of my income came from the business. I suppose the arrangement was a bad one, but the practice was so sound and secure in my father's life that it never occurred to me to doubt its stability. The chief part of my income, some nine hundred a year, came to me from this source. Apart from that, I have some three or four hundreds from invested money of my own, and Maud has upwards of two hundred a year. I am going off to-morrow to L---- to meet my cousin, and go into the matter. I don't at present understand how things are. His letter is full of protestations and self-recrimination. We can live, I suppose, if the worst comes to the worst, but in a very different way. Perhaps we may even have to sell our pleasant house. The strange thing is that I don't feel this all more acutely, but I seem to have lost the power of suffering for any other reason than because Alec is dead.

September 12, 1889.

I have come back to-night from some weary nightmare days with my poor cousin. The thing is as bad as it can be. The business will be acquired by Messrs. F----, the next most leading solicitors. With the price they will give, and with the sacrifice of my cousin's savings, and the assets of the firm, the money can just be paid. We shall have some six hundred a year to live upon; my cousin is to enter the office of the F---- firm as an ordinary clerk. The origin of the disaster is a melancholy one; it was not that he himself might profit, but to increase the income of some clients who had lost money and desired a higher rate of interest for funds left in the hands of the firm. If my cousin had resisted the demand, there would have been some unpleasantness, because the money lost had been invested on his advice; he could not face this, and proceeded to speculate with other money, of which he was trustee, to fill the gap. Good-nature, imprudence, credulousness, a faulty grasp of the conditions, and not any deliberate dishonesty, have been the cause of his ruin. It is a fearful blow to him, but he is fortunate, perhaps, in being unmarried; I have urged him to try and get employment elsewhere, but he insists upon facing the situation in the place where he is known, with a fantastic idea, which is at the same time noble and chivalrous, of doing penance. Of course he has no prospects whatever; but I am sure of this, that he grieves over my lost inheritance far more than he grieves over his own ruin. His great misery is that some years ago he refused an offer from Messrs. F---- to amalgamate the two firms.

I feared at first that I might have to sacrifice the rest of my money as well--money slowly accumulated out of my own labours. And the relief of finding that this will not be necessary is immense. We must sell our house at once, and find a smaller one. At present I am not afraid of the changed circumstances; indeed, if I could only recover my power of writing, we need not leave our home. The temptation is to get a book written somehow, because I could make money by any stuff just now. On the other hand, it will almost be to me a relief to part from the home so haunted with the memory of Alec--though that will be a dreadful pain to Maud and Maggie. As far as living more simply goes, that does not trouble me in the least. I have always been slightly uncomfortable about the ease and luxury in which we lived. I only wish we had lived more simply all along, so that I could have put by a little more. I have told Maud exactly how matters stand, and she acquiesces, though I can see that, just at this time, the thought of handing over to strangers the house where we have lived all our married life, the rooms where Alec and the baby died, is a deep grief to her. To me that is almost a relief. I have dreaded going back there. To-night I told Maggie, and she broke out into long weeping. But even so there is something about the idea of being poor, strange to say, which touches a sense of romance in the child. She does not realise the poky restrictions of the new life.

And still stranger to me is the way in which this solid, tangible trouble seems to have restored my energy and calm. I found myself clear-headed, able to grasp the business questions which arose, gifted with a hard lucidity of mind that I did not know I possessed. It is a relief to get one's teeth into something, to have hard, definite occupation to distract one; indeed, it hardly seems to me in the light of a misfortune at present, so much as a blessed tangible problem to be grappled with and solved. What I should have felt if all had been lost, and if I had had to resign my liberty, and take up some practical occupation, I hardly know. I do not think I should even have dreaded that in my present frame of mind.

September 15, 1889.