It wasn’t a very bad cold, but since there was only one baby, to say nothing of its being a mascot, instant alarm ran through the schooner. Everybody was ready, quite naturally and humanly, with every sort of suggested remedy. Mr. Curry contributed a bottle of pine balsam; some one else recommended camphor dropped on to a lump of sugar; even smelling salts were advised. The principal topic of conversation became the baby’s cold.
“I guess it’s nothing much,” said Lili. “He just snivels a little.”
But Jerome was in a state of terrible anxiety. He, of them all, had nothing to suggest by way of remedy; and yet it seemed to him as though his very life depended upon the baby’s recovery. They told him it was absurd to get into such a state over a baby’s cold. “Just wait till the child has measles and whooping cough before you begin to look so solemn!” exclaimed the contralto, who knew what she was talking about.
As the baby improved, Jerome was willing to listen to reason. He had scarcely slept at night, though Lili had taken it a great deal more sensibly. The baby’s cold was, indeed, no great matter; but just as it was felt that there was no longer even a remote danger, a mysterious new combination set in. Nobody seemed to be able to make it out. Breathing grew laboured, and the pulse was so feeble that they could barely find it.
Alarm returned. Jerome’s heart was again in a state of panic, while Mr. Curry, in the privacy of his own little cabin, spent a long time on his knees. “We couldn’t bear it!” he murmured brokenly. “We just couldn’t bear it!”
Efforts were redoubled. They kept the baby wrapped up in flannel. Then abruptly the cold disappeared entirely, and the little creature grew so hot it seemed to burn one’s arms. Each breath meant a sharp brief struggle. The day before every one had felt so confident; today every one chilled to a sense of hopelessness charged with foreboding.
The small sufferer struggled through a night and at dawn ceased his convulsions. Jerome and Lili knew their baby was dead even while last frantic efforts toward restoration were being made.
The baby was dead, and the whole ship went into profound mourning.
Lili cried like a little bewildered child. So her heart was eased. But Jerome, at first, could do nothing but stare down, stunned with misery, at the small lifeless form. When Curry came upon him standing by the cradle, he drew an impulsive arm about him; for the impresario seemed to understand about these things better than anybody else.
“Courage, lad,” he said, tears splashing down, and his great chest heaving. And Jerome could only falter, “Yes,” in a groping way.