During all this time Mr. Wharton had not seen his son. Everett had gone abroad just as his father returned to London from Brighton, and was still on the continent. He received his allowance punctually, and that was the only intercourse which took place between them. But Emily had written to him, not telling him much of her troubles,—only saying that she believed that her husband would take her to Central America early in the spring, and begging him to come home before she went.
Just before Christmas her baby was born, but the poor child did not live a couple of days. She herself at the time was so worn with care, so thin and wan and wretched, that looking in the glass she hardly knew her own face. "Ferdinand," she said to him, "I know he will not live. The Doctor says so."
"Nothing thrives that I have to do with," he answered gloomily.
"Will you not look at him?"
"Well; yes. I have looked at him, have I not? I wish to God that where he is going I could go with him."
"I wish I was;—I wish I was going," said the poor mother. Then the father went out, and before he had returned to the house the child was dead. "Oh, Ferdinand, speak one kind word to me now," she said.
"What kind word can I speak when you have told me that you do not love me? Do you think that I can forget that because—because he has gone?"
"A woman's love may always be won back again by kindness."
"Psha! How am I to kiss and make pretty speeches with my mind harassed as it is now?" But he did touch her brow with his lips before he went away.
The infant was buried, and then there was not much show of mourning in the house. The poor mother would sit gloomily alone day after day, telling herself that it was perhaps better that she should have been robbed of her treasure than have gone forth with him into the wide, unknown, harsh world with such a father as she had given him. Then she would look at all the preparations she had made,—the happy work of her fingers when her thoughts of their future use were her sweetest consolation,—and weep till she would herself feel that there never could be an end to her tears.