by George Moore
Once Kate did not hear it for hours; she did not know she had forgotten to warm its milk, and that the poor little thing was shivering with cold pain. And when at last she awoke, and went over to the cot trying to collect her drink-laden thoughts, the little legs were drawn up, the face was like ivory, and a long thin wail issued from the colourless lips. Alarmed, Kate called for the landlady, who, after feeling the bottle, advised that the milk should be warmed. When this was done the child took a little and appeared relieved.
Shortly after a bell was heard ringing, and the landlady said:
‘I think it’s your husband, ma’am.’
It was usual for Dick, when he came in at night, to tell what Kate termed ‘the news.’ It amused her to hear what had been done at the theatre, what fresh companies had come to town. On this occasion it surprised him that she took so little interest in the conversation, and after hazarding a few remarks, he said:
‘But what’s the matter, dear? Aren’t you well?’
‘Oh yes, I’m quite well,’ Kate answered stolidly.
‘Well, what’s the matter? You don’t speak.’
‘I’m tired, that’s all.’
‘And how’s the baby?’
‘I think she’s asleep; don’t wake her.’
But Dick went over, and holding a candle in one hand he looked long and anxiously at his child.
‘I’m afraid the little thing is not well; she’s fidgeting, and is as restless as possible.’
‘I wish you’d leave her alone; if she awakes, it’s I who will have the trouble of her, not you. It’s very unkind of you.’
Dick looked at his wife and said nothing; but as she continued to speak, the evidences of drink became so unmistakable that he said, trying not to offend her:
‘I’m afraid you’ve been drinking a little too much of the brandy the doctor ordered you.’
At this accusation, Kate drew herself up and angrily denied having touched a drop of anything that day.
‘How dare you accuse me of being drunk? You ought to respect me more.’
‘Drunk, Kate? I never said you were drunk, but I thought you might have taken an overdose.’
‘I suppose you’ll believe me when I tell you that I’ve not had a teaspoonful of anything.’
‘Of course I believe you, dear,’ said Dick, who did not like to think that Kate was telling him a deliberate lie, and to avoid further discussion he suggested bed. Kate did not answer him, and he heard her trying to get undressed, and wondering at her clumsiness he asked himself if he should propose to unlace her stays for her. But he was afraid of irritating her, and thought it would be better to leave her alone to undo the knot as best she could. She tugged at the laces furiously, and thinking she might break them and accuse him of unwillingness to come to her assistance, he said, ‘Shall I — —’
But she cut him short. ‘Let me alone, let me alone!’ she cried, and Dick kicked off his shoes.
‘How can you be so unkind, or is it that you’ve no thought for that poor sick child?’ she said; and Dick answered:
‘I assure you, my dear, it couldn’t be helped; the shoe slipped off unexpectedly,’ and as if the world had set its face against her, Kate burst into tears. At first Dick tried to console her, but seeing that this was hopeless, he turned his face to the wall and went to sleep.
She had not drawn the curtains of the window, and the outlines of the room showing through the blue dusk frightened her, so ghostlike did they appear. The cradle stood under the window, the child’s face just visible on the pallor of the pillow. ‘Baby is asleep,’ she said; ‘that’s a good sign,’ and watched the cradle, trying to remember how long it was since baby had had her bottle; and while wondering if she could trust herself to wake when baby cried she began to notice that the room was becoming lighter. ‘It cannot be the dawn,’ she thought; ‘the dawn is hours away; we’re in December. Besides, the dawn is grey, and the light is green, a sort of pantomime light,’ she said. It seemed to her very like a fairy tale. The giant snoring, and her baby stirring in her cradle with the limelight upon her, or was she dreaming? It might be a dream out of which she could not rouse herself. But the noise she heard was Dick’s breathing, and she wished that Ralph would breathe more easily. Ralph, Ralph! No, she was with Dick. Dick, not Ralph, was her husband. It was with a great effort that she roused herself. ‘It was only a dream’ she murmured. ‘But baby is crying. Her cry is so faint,’ she said; and, slinging her legs over the side of the bed, she tried to find her dressing-gown, but could not remember where she had laid it ‘Baby wants her bottle,’ she said, and sought for the matches vainly at first, but at last she found them, and lighted a spirit lamp. ‘One must get the water warmed, cold milk would kill her;’ and while the water was heating she walked up and down the room rocking her baby, talking to her, striving to quiet her; and when she thought the water was warm she tried to prepare baby’s milk as the doctor had ordered it. Her hope was that she had succeeded in mixing the milk and water in right proportions, for the last time she had given the baby her bottle she was afraid the water was not warm enough. Perhaps that was why baby was crying, or it might be merely a little wind that was troubling her. She held the baby upright, hoping that the pain would pass away with a change of position, and she walked up and down the room rocking the child in her arms and crooning to her for fully half an hour. At last the child ceased to wail, and she laid her in her cradle and sat watching, thinking that if she were to lose her baby she must go mad…. She had lost Dick’s love, and if the baby were taken away there would be nothing left for her to live for. ‘Nothing left for me to live for,’ she repeated again and again, till the cold winter’s night striking through her nightgown reminded her that she was risking her life, which she had no right to do, for baby needed her. ‘Who would look after poor baby if I were taken away?’ she asked, and shaking with cold, was about to crawl into bed; but on laying her knee on the bedside she remembered that a little spirit often saved a human life; and going to the chest of drawers took out the bottle she had hidden from Dick and filled a glass.
The spirit diffused a grateful warmth through her, and she drank a second glass slowly, thinking of her child and husband, and how good she intended to be to both of them, until ideas became broken, and she tumbled into bed, awaking Dick, who was soon asleep again, with Kate by his side watching a rim of light rising above a dark chimney stack and wondering what new shows must be preparing. Already the rim of light had become a crescent, and before her eyes closed in sleep the full moon looked down through the window into the cradle, waking the sleeping child. But her cries were too weak; her mother lay in sleep beyond reach of her wails, heart-breaking though they were. The little blankets were cast aside, and the struggle between life and death began: soft roundnesses fell into distortions; chubby knees were wrenched to and fro, muscles seemed to be torn, and a few minutes later little Kate, who had known of this world but a ray of moonlight, died — a glimpse of the moon was all that had been granted to her. After watching for an hour or more, the moon moved up the skies; and in Kate’s dream the moon was the great yellow witch in the pantomime, who, before striding her broomstick, cries back: ‘Thou art mine only, for ever and for ever!’
XXIV
THE PASSING OF a funeral in our English streets is so common a sight that hearses and plumes and mutes and carriages filled with relatives garbed in crape have almost ceased to remind us that our dust too is on the way to the graveyard; and it is not until we catch sight of a man walking in the carriage way carrying a brown box under his arm that we start like someone suddenly stung and remember the mystery of life and death. Even Dick remembered it, and wondered as he plodded after little Kate’s coffin why it was that she should have been called out of the void and called back into the void so quickly. ‘Whether our term be but a month or ninety years, life and death beckon us but once,’ he said, and he fell to envying Kate her tears, tears seeming to him more comforting than thoughts, and he would gladly hav
e shed a few to help the journey away: not a long one, however, for the Lennoxes lived in an unfrequented part of the town by the cemetery.
‘We shall soon be there,’ he whispered, and Kate, raising her weeping face, looked round.
All the shops were filled with funeral emblems, wreaths of everlasting flowers, headstones with dates in indelible ink, crosses of consolation, and kneeling angels.
‘If we only had money,’ Kate cried, ‘to buy a monument to put on her grave,’ and she called upon Dick to admire a kneeling angel.
‘It’s very beautiful,’ Dick said, ‘I wish we had the money to buy it. Poor little Kate! it’s a pity she didn’t live; she was very like you, dear.’
He had been offered an engagement for Kate to play the part of the Countess in Olivette, and had accepted it, hoping in the meanwhile to be able to persuade her to take it. It was rather hard to ask her to play the day after the funeral, but there was no help for it. The company would arrive in town to-morrow, and Dick thought it would be a pity to let the chance slip. But her grief was so great that he had not dared to speak to her about it.
‘Did you ever see so many graves?’ she asked. ‘We shall never be able to find her when we come to seek the grave out. An angel — a headstone, at least, would be a help. Oh, Dick, she continued, ‘to think they’ll put her down into the ground, and that we shall perhaps never even see her grave again. We may be a hundred miles from here tomorrow, or after.’
Dick, who had had credit of the undertaker, looked around uneasily; but seeing that Kate had not been overheard, he said:
‘Poor little thing! It’s sad to lose her, isn’t it? I should have liked to have seen her grow up.’
The coffin was first deposited in the middle of the church, and Dick twisted the brim of his big hat nervously, troubled by the service the parson in a white flowing surplice read from the reading-desk. Kate, on the contrary, appeared much consoled, and prayed silently, and the parson mumbled so many prayers that Dick began to consider the time it would take to learn a part of equal length. And all this while the little brown box remained like a piece of lost luggage, lonely in the greyness of this station-house-looking church; and when the mutes came to claim it Kate again burst into tears. Her tears reminded the parson that he was here to console, and in soft and unctuous words he assured the weeping mother that her child had only been removed to a better and brighter world, and that we must all submit to the will of God. But in the porch his attention was drawn from the weeping mother to the weather. ‘A little more of this’ he thought, ‘and others will be doing for me what I’m now doing for others.’
But there being no help for it, he followed the procession through the tombstones, his white surplice blowing, Dick wondering how the little grave had been found amongst so many, but the sexton knew. The parson sprinkled earth upon the coffin, and the sound of the withdrawn ropes cut the mother’s heart even more than the rattle of the earth and stones on the coffin lid. Kate threw some flowers into the grave, and it seemed to Dick certain that if she didn’t pull herself together she would not be able to play the Countess in Olivette on the morrow. She was so fearfully haggard and worn that he doubted if any amount of rouge would make her look the part.
He would have done anything in the world for his little girl while she was alive, but now that she was dead — Besides, after all, she was only a baby. For some time past this idea had occurred to him as an excellent argument to convince Kate that there was really no reason why she should not go to rehearsal on the following morning. If he had not yet spoken in this way it was only because he was afraid that she would round on him, and call him a heartless beast, and he would do anything to evade a sulky look; and now, when the funeral was over and they were walking home wet, sorrowful, and tired, it was curious to watch how he gave his arm to Kate, and the timidity with which he introduced the subject. At first he only spoke of himself, and his hopes of being able to obtain a better part and a higher salary in the new drama. But mention to a mummer who is lying on his death-bed that a new piece is going to be produced, and he will not be able to resist asking a question or two about it; and Kate, weary as she was, at once pricked up her ears, and said:
‘Oh, they’re going to do a new piece! You didn’t tell me that before.’
‘It was only decided last night,’ replied Dick.
The spell was now broken, and when they reached home and had dinner the conversation was resumed in a strain that might be considered as being almost jovial after the mournful tones of the last few days. Dick felt as if a big weight had been lifted from his mind, and the thought again occurred to him that there was no use in making such a fuss over a baby that was only three weeks old. Kate, too, seemed to be awakening to the conviction that there was no use in grieving for ever. The state of torpor she had been living in — for to stifle remorse she had been drinking heavily on the quiet — now began to wear off, and her brain to uncloud itself; and Dick, surprised at the transformation, could not help exclaiming:
‘That’s right, Kate; cheer up, old girl. A baby three weeks old isn’t the same as a grown person.’
‘I know it isn’t, but if you only knew — I’m afraid I neglected the poor little thing.’
‘Nonsense!’ replied Dick, for having an eye constantly on the main chance, he wished to avoid any fresh outburst of grief. ‘You looked after it very well indeed; besides, you’ll have another,’ he added with a smile.
‘I want no other,’ replied Kate, vexed at being misunderstood, and yet afraid to explain herself more thoroughly.
At last Dick said:
‘I wish there was a part for you in the new piece.’
‘Yes, so do I. I haven’t been doing anything for a long while now.’
And thus encouraged he told her that in the so-and-so company the part of the Countess might be had for the asking.
‘Only they play to-morrow night.’
‘Oh, to-morrow night! It would be dreadful to act so soon after my poor baby’s death, wouldn’t it?’
‘I can’t see why. We shall be as sorry for it in a week’s time as now, and yet one must get to work some time or other.’
Dick considered this a very telling argument, and, not wishing to spoil its effect, he remained silent, so as to give Kate time to digest the truth of what he had said. He waited for her to ask him when he would take her to see the manager, but she said nothing, and he was at last obliged to admit that he had made an appointment for to-morrow. She whined a bit but accompanied him to the theatre. The manager was delighted with her appearance. He told her that the photo that Dick had forwarded did not do her justice; and, handing her the script, he said:
‘Now you must make your entrance from this side.’
‘What’s the cue?’
‘Here it is. I think I shall now beat a retreat in the direction of home.’
‘Ah! I see.’
And, striving to decipher the manuscript, Kate walked towards the middle of the stage. ‘I haven’t seen the Duke for twenty-four hours, and that means misery.’
‘You’ll get a laugh for that if you’ll turn up your eyes a bit,’ said Dick. Then, turning to the manager, he murmured, ‘I wish you’d seen her as Clairette. The notices were immense. But I must be off now to my own show.’
This engagement relieved the Lennoxes for the time being of their embarrassments. At four they dined, at six bade each other good-bye, and repaired to their respective theatres. Dick was playing in drama, Kate in opéra bouffe; and something before a quarter to eleven she expected him to meet her at the stage-door of the Prince’s. On this point she was very particular; if he were a few moments late she questioned him minutely as to where he had been, what he had been doing, and little by little the jealousies and suspicions which her marriage had appeased returned, and tortured her night and day. At first the approach of pain was manifested by a nervous anxiety for her husband’s presence. She seemed dissatisfied and restless when he was not with her, and after breakfast
in the mornings, when he took up his hat to go out, she would beg of him to stay, and find fault with him for leaving her. He reasoned with her very softly, assuring her that he had the most important engagements. On one occasion it was a man who had given him an appointment in order to speak with him concerning a new theatre, of which he was to have the entire management; another time it was a man who was writing a drama, and wanted a collaborator to put the stage construction right; and as these séances of collaboration occupied both morning and afternoon, Kate was thrown entirely on her own resources until four o’clock. The first two or three novels she had read during her convalescence had amused her, but now one seemed so much like the other that they ended by boring her; and, too excited to be able to fix her attention, she often read without understanding what she was reading: on one side the memory of her baby’s death preyed upon her — she still could not help thinking that it was owing to her neglect that it had died — on the other, the thought that her husband was playing her false goaded her to madness. Sometimes she attempted to follow him, but this only resulted in failure, and she returned home after a fruitless chase more dejected than ever.
‘Ah! if the baby had not died, there would have been something to live for,’ she murmured to herself a thousand times during the day, until at last her burden of remorse grew quite unbearable, and she thought of the brandy the doctor had ordered her. Since her engagement to play the Countess she had forgotten it, but now a strange desire seized her suddenly as if she had been stung by a snake. There was only a little left in the bottle, but that little cheered and restored her even more than she had expected. Her thoughts came to her more fluently, she ate a better dinner, and acted joyously that night at the theatre. ‘There’s no doubt,’ she said to her self, ‘the doctor was right. What I want is a little stimulant.’ Of the truth of this she was more than ever convinced when next morning she found herself again suffering from the usual melancholy and dulness of spirits. The very sight of breakfast disgusted her, and when Dick left she wandered about the room, unable to interest herself in anything, with a yearning in her throat for the tingling sensation that brandy would bring; and she longed for yesterday’s lightness of conscience. But there was neither brandy nor whisky in the house, not even a glass of sherry. What was to be done? She did not like to ask the landlady to go round to the public-house. Such people were always ready to put a wrong interpretation upon everything. But Mrs. Clarke knew that the doctor had ordered her to take a little brandy when she felt weak. All the same, she determined to wait until dinner-time.
