"You've done your best, doctor, and I thank you for it. I can't get used to the idea just at once; perhaps—if you left me to think it out a bit—I might get the hang of things better."
"God forgive me!" muttered the doctor, as he went out; "it is only staving off utter hopelessness for the lad. The child is as good as dead; it may live a day or two—a week, perhaps—it would have been better if it had never lived at all. Lord, Lord, what a mess life makes of itself!"
Without, Gorsthwaite showed itself in touch with the black weather. A sullen frost had hold of the land, and the stained old walls answered the sky with frown for frown. The plover wheeled ceaselessly about the chimney-stacks, and the voice of the damned rang dryly through their sable throats.
Within, the rooms were darkened, and the oaken panels creaked at the burden of their own sad thoughts. The mistress had been taken to her rest, and the master was battling for his reason, with a face that aped the stones which shut him in. All that he had in him of dogged resistance was pushing its way to the front: one blow had followed another, and the end, perhaps, was not yet—but he would fight till his own end came.
He got up from the bed where she had died, and moved stiffly up and down the room. He thought of the child, and forced himself to recall, one by one, the goodly plans he had framed for him. Yes, he should grow up strong—a Lomax to the backbone—he should take his fill of life, and help his father to live again in watching him. Steady! The boy would have need of his father, as his father had of him: there must be no knuckling under to circumstance now.
On a sudden the child began to cry most piteously, disturbing his father's gaining resolution. Griff's thoughts wandered out again to that ice-bound moorland graveyard, where Kate was lying in the cold. It was surely a monstrous unfairness that she had died to give the boy his taste of life—that she must evermore lie naked and friendless, while he would some day eat and drink in the lusty fulness of his manhood.
But where did such thoughts carry him? Into the tangled places of shade, where neither hope nor light could show themselves. He fought them back, time after time, and slowly won his way to calm. By sheer strength of will he set his baby on the heights where its mother had had her dwelling, and fell down and worshipped the rising dawn now that the older day had set.
And all the while, the child within sent up its piteous cries. And all the while, the plovers, wheeling round the chimney-stacks, ceased not to wail, and screech, and whimper. And night settled dumbly over the silent heather places.