This, and this alone, was the burden of our song. Alas! the fiat had gone forth, and in our very souls we knew and felt it. Once more she kissed us, then auntie led us out, saying we must leave mamma a little while for her good. We would do anything for ma’s good, even to going away into the schoolroom—which never before had looked so grim and cheerless—and squatting on our goatskin to cry. Every now and then poor Jill would say—
“Don’t you cry so, Jack.”
And every now and then I would make the same request to him.
They say there is no love equal to that a mother bears for a child; but tell me this, ye who have known it, what love exceeds that which a fond and sensitive child bears for a mother? and oh, what else on earth can fill the aching void that is left when she is gone?
For a time weeping gave us relief, then even that consolation was taken away. I just felt that my life’s lamp had clean gone out, that there was no more hope—could be no more hope for me.
It was difficult to realise or grasp all the terrible truth at once. Mother going away! Our own dear darling mother, and we, perhaps never, never to see her more! Never listen to her voice again at eventide, singing low to us by the firelight, or telling us tales by our bedside! Never kneel again by her knees to pray! Never feel again her soft good-night kisses, nor the touch of her loving hands! Never—but here the tears returned, and once more Jill and I wept in each other’s arms.
In times of grief like this I think the mind is more highly sensitised, as a photographic artist would say, and takes and retains impressions more quickly. For the minutiae even of that sad eventful morning are still retained in my memory in a remarkable way. I remember the slightest sounds and most trivial sights heard or seen by Jill and me as we sat in our listless grief by the window. I remember the yelp of a little cur we used to pity, because it was always tied up; the laugh of a street carter as he talked to a neighbour; the dreary, intermittent tapping of the twig of a rose-bush against the glass; the low boom of the breaking waves. I remember it was raining; that the wind blew high across the sea; that the sea itself was grey and chafing, and apparently all in motion in one direction, like some mighty river of the new world; I remember the dripping bushes in the front garden, and the extra-green look of the rain-varnished paling around it; and even the little pools of water on the street, and the buffeted appearance of the few passengers striving to hold umbrellas up against the toilsome wind.
Mother came quietly in, and—she was smiling now.
How much that smile cost her, mothers alone may tell, but even we knew it was a smile without, to hide the grief within.