And yet had he lived he might have come back one day with his conquering air and his irresistible laugh, and carried them both away from me. In sparing me this crowning humiliation I thanked the high gods.
But never to this day has she mentioned his name again.
CHAPTER XXIV
How shall I set down that which happened not long afterwards?
The death of a baby is so commonplace, so unimportant. Few reasoning people, viewing the matter in the abstract, can do otherwise than rejoice that a human being is saved from the weariness of the tired years that make up life. For who shall disprove the pessimist’s assertion that it is better not to have been born than to come into the world, and that it is better to die than to live? But those from whom the single hope of their existence is ravished find little consolation in reason. Grief is the most intensely egotistical of emotions. I have lost all that makes life beautiful to me. Is not that enough for the stricken soul?
To Carlotta it meant a passage through the valley of the shadow. To me, at first, it meant the life of Carlotta, and then a blank in my newly ordered scheme of things. The curse of ineffectuality still pursued me. I had allotted to myself my humble task—the development of the new generation in the form of Carlotta’s boy, and even that small usefulness was I denied by Fate.
A chill, a touch of croup, an agonised watching, and the tiny thing lay dead. Antoinette and I had to drag it stone cold from Carlotta’s bosom. I alone carried it to burial. The little white coffin rested on the opposite seat of the hired brougham, and on it was a bunch of white flowers given by Antoinette. In the cemetery chapel another fragment of humanity awaited sepulture, and the funeral service was read over both bodies. I stood alone by the little white coffin. A crowd of mourners were grouped beside the black one. I glanced at the inscription as I passed: “Jane Elliot, in the eighty-sixth year of her age.” The officiant referred in the service to “our dear brother and sister, here departed.” It was either an awful jest or an awful verity.
My “quaintly fathered little son” had small need of my help through the troubles of his life. His mother needed all that I could give. Without me she would have died. That I verily believe. I was her solitary plank in the welter wherein she would have been submerged. She clung to me—literally clung to me. I sat for hours with her grasp upon me. To feel assured of my physical presence alone seemed to bring her calm.
Recent as are those sleepless days and nights, their memory is all confused. The light burning dimly in the familiar chamber which I had once sealed up as a tomb; the shadows on the wall; the fevered face and great hollow eyes of Carlotta against the pillows; her little hand clutching mine in desperation; the soft tread of the nurse, that is all I remember. And when she recovered her wits and grew sane, although for a long time she spoke little, and scarcely noticed me otherwise, she claimed me by her side. She was still dazed by the misery of her darkness. It was only then that I realised the part the child had played in her development. Her nature had been stirred to the quick; the capacity for emotion had been awakened. She had left me without a qualm. She had given herself to Pasquale without a glimmer of passion. She had returned to me like a wounded animal seeking its home. For the child alone the passionate human love had sprung flaming from the seed hidden in her soul. And now the child was dead, and the sun had gone from her sky, and she was benumbed with the icy blackness of the world.