CHAPTER XXXVI.

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.