I
His small son had really begun to usurp his entire horizon. Jerome was about the proudest father ever seen. But the estrangement of Jerome and Lili came to be a more or less openly recognized fact—which added a sombre note.
Lili went about beaming in just the old, untroubled way. Except when the baby was at her breast, one would never dream of associating her with the supreme experience of motherhood. Whatever might happen to her—and so much, in her short life, had happened already—Lili would never be any different.
With Jerome, however, the case stood otherwise. He seemed slowly pulling ahead; but those great facts of life, which made on him so enormous an impression, appealed to Lili rather as episodes—objects to arrest a moment as one flitted along through the vast lark of living.
As for the baby, it seemed to have fallen down very badly indeed in the role of mediator; instead of feeling himself drawn back to Lili again, Jerome appeared to have transferred bodily all the love he had once known for her over to the little new life that bore his name. How strangely things moved! He tried to understand it, and felt that he really understood so little.
It was delightful to see them together, Jerome and the baby. He was still content, for the most part, just to gaze down at the tiny fellow as he lay in the cheap little cradle they had purchased in Australia. So entirely and even ludicrously undemonstrative was this attitude that the troupers accused the proud father of being secretly afraid of his offspring. Much more convincing, beams and all, was the attitude of Lili, who, in her impetuous way, knew how to make a fuss over a little bundle of flannel and lace as successfully as over a man; so that the more conventional picture of mother and child never failed to evoke an abundance of enthusiastic appreciation.
“Look there—isn’t that sweet?” the touched impresario would exclaim.
And everybody else thought so too. Even the comedian was awed by the picture.
Everybody thought her a delightful mother. However, the subtler picture was Jerome, a now responsible and experienced man, sitting beside his baby’s cradle, looking down into the tiny face as though he could never look enough, and when no one was around, letting the fingers of a tiny hand close about one of his fingers, thrust down so gently. And once he cautiously stooped and kissed the baby, and felt a thrill the like of which he had never known before in all his life.
II
At Manila where the Skipping Goone laid by three weeks, it was learned that Captain Utterbourne had just been there and departed. A few hours sooner, indeed, and they would have encountered him.
As a matter of fact, it was he who had brought Flora down and deposited her—with express understanding, however, that she was to take a regular steamer home. “One could hardly expect me to go into tourist traffic this late in life, could one?” he asked sweetly, his cold lips moving with dry mirth. And he delicately refrained from guessing the romantic complexion of her sudden longing to visit Manila.
Yes, the Star of Troy was roving about somewhere in this part of the world, and the intelligence seemed vaguely to upset the master of the Skipping Goone. A look of the satellite came into his green eyes, and he felt somehow less in control, even while he snarled the more convincingly and had perhaps never looked so much like an admiral.
Manila was kind indeed to Mr. Curry and his songbirds, and the engagement was by no means unprosperous. Then they were under way once more, bound now for Borneo. However, though brief, it was to prove a voyage more packed with incident than any thus far.
The winds were mostly head winds, extremely variable, and much time was lost. During one whole day the wind dropped almost entirely, and rain poured down. The glass ran low. The air was damp and unseasonably chilly, with restless little gusts down the murk of the China sea. In the midst of all this the baby managed to contract a cold.
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.
Jerome had loved the tiny boy with all his being. He had laid long, silent plans; had seen the boy grow up; saw himself even standing by Lili for the sake of the child. He would love him more and more as the years went on. The sense of warm devotion in Jerome’s heart had been almost overpowering at times. But now the baby was gone, and the dreams—they were gone too. It seemed almost like the end of everything.
III
The baby was buried at sea. One of the seamen, who was clever with tools, made a smooth little casket, and the small form was laid out in it, dressed in such finery as it had acquired during the brief earthly sojourn. The contralto who had had babies herself, in her time, offered some very life-like artificial roses which she was accustomed to wear in the Chimes of Normandy. The roses were pinned at the waist of the little dress. Somebody muttered a fragment of prayer, and the cover was fitted on.
Lili was sobbing hysterically, and Jerome stood near her, his hands over his face.
It was a quiet night, with a few stars. The casket was lowered gently in the dark. And the little mascot was gone from them forever.