He had been warding off the moment of despair, but he could do so no longer now. The empty house and the child, the child and the empty house; these allowed of only one interpretation. “She's gone, bogh, she's left us; she wasn't willing to stay with us, God forgive her!”
Sitting on a stool with the little one on his knees, he sobbed while the child cried—two children crying together. Suddenly he leapt up. “I'm not for believing it,” he thought. “What woman alive could do the like of it? There isn't a mother breathing that hasn't more bowels. And she used to love the lil one, and me too—and does, and does.”
He saw how it was. She was ill, distraught, perhaps even—God help her I—perhaps even mad. Such things happened to women after childbirth—the doctor himself had said as much. In the toils of her bodily trouble, beset by mental terrors, she had fled away from her baby, her husband, and her home, pursued by God knows what phantoms of disease. But she would get better, she would come back.
“Hush, bogh, hush, then,” he whimpered tenderly. “Mammie will come home again. Still and for all she'll come back.”
There was the click of a key in the lock, and he crept back to the stool. Nancy came in, panting and perspiring.
“Dear heart alive! what a race I've had to get home,” she said, puffing the air of the night.
She was throwing off her bonnet and shawl, and talking before looking round.
“Such pushing and scrooging, you never seen the like, Kirry. Aw, my best Sunday bonnet, only wore at me once, look at the crunched it is! But what d'ye think now? Poor Christian Killip's baby is dead for all. Died in the middle of the rejoicings. Aw, dear, yes, and the band going by playing 'The Conquering Hero' the very minute. Poor thing! she was distracted, and no wonder. I ran round to put a sight on the poor soul, and——why, what's going wrong with the lamp, at all? Is that yourself on the stool, Kirry? Pete, is it? Then where's the mistress?”
She plucked up the poker, and dug the fire into a blaze. “What's doing on you, man? You've skinned your knuckles like potato peel. Man, man, what for are you crying, at all?”
Then Pete said in a thick croak, “Hould your bull of a tongue, Nancy, and take the child out of my arms.”