Kildares of Storm Part 70

"Steady, there," whispered Philip behind them. "She can't stand any excitement yet."

But the two had a.s.sumed charge of too many sickrooms together to need his admonition.

Kate took off her hat, smoothed her hair, and went in to Jacqueline, as calmly as if they had parted yesterday.

The sight of the wan, thin face among the pillows, with eyes that looked by contrast enormous and black, shook her composure a little, and she gathered Jacqueline up against her breast without speaking. Jacqueline, too, was silent, clinging to her, touching her mother's hair and cheeks with feeble hands, as if to be sure it was really Kate.

"I knew you would come," she said at last, with a great sigh.

"Come! Oh, my darling, why didn't you send for me sooner?"

"Because I wanted to surprise you, Mummy. Because I knew when you saw baby, you'd forgive me, you wouldn't care, nothing would matter, except him.... But now there isn't any baby!" The weak voice suddenly rose to a wail. "There isn't any baby! Nothing has turned out as I had planned.

Oh, Mummy! He was going to be so little, and sweet, and fat--n.o.body who saw him _could_ have stayed angry with me!... And I never heard him cry, I never even felt his tiny hand clutching my finger!... It's because I was wicked," she moaned, tossing about so that Kate caught the waving hands and held them tight. "G.o.d wanted to get even with me. So He took the thing I wanted most in all the world. He took my baby. Oh, but that was cruel of Him, no matter how bad I'd been! Wasn't it? Wasn't it, Mummy?"

"Hush, child!" whispered Kate. "Hush! G.o.d isn't that sort!"

"Yes, He is, too! 'The Lord thy G.o.d is a _jealous_ G.o.d'--ask Phil!--Oh, where _is_ Phil?" She looked wildly around, her voice growing higher and higher. "He promised he wouldn't go away--he promised he wouldn't ever leave me again. I want him! Phil, Phil!--Oh, _there_ you are!" The relief in her tone was pitiful. "Don't get where I can't see you again, Flippy darling. It frightens me so! Come here, I want to hold on to you.... Now, tell mother all about the baby. She didn't see him, you know, and I didn't see him either, very well. Oh, why did you let them make me stupid with chloroform, so I couldn't see him? Tell mother about his little ears, and his feet just exactly like mine--"

"Quiet, now," soothed Philip, striving to hush that painful, excited babble. "See, your mother is tired! Let's not talk about it now."

"But I want to talk! I want to, before I forget anything about him. It's the only baby I'll ever have. Mother wants to hear--don't you, Mummy? It was her grandson, you see."

"What nonsense!" interrupted Kate with tremulous cheerfulness. "The _only_ baby? You're just eighteen--you shall have all the babies you want!"

"That shows how much you know about it!" cried Jacqueline with a sort of agonized triumph. "I can't have any more! The doctor said so. I heard him whispering to Jemmy, when he thought I was asleep, and I made her tell me. She didn't want to, but she thought I'd better know.... It isn't as if it would kill _me_ to have them, Mother--that wouldn't matter! But it would kill them. It takes too long. Something is wrong about me."

Kate glanced at Philip in shocked questioning. He nodded slightly.

"So now you know the sort G.o.d is, Mother! Cruel, cruel! Just because I wasn't good.... Think of it, never any babies! No one to play with, and pet, and take care of.... No one that needs me, or wants me...."

Philip bent over her, "My darling, the world is full of babies!"

"But not mine. Not one that wants _me_.--Oh, how my breast aches, how my breast aches."

"This won't do," murmured Jemima, anxiously. "She's working herself up into a fever again. I'm going to call the doctor."

Philip whispered something in her ear, and she hurried to the door.

There was a sound outside that stopped the frantic words on Jacqueline's lips. "_What's that?_" she breathed. It came again; the fretful whimper of a sleepy child.

Jemima came into the room, carrying small Kitty, newly awakened from a nap on somebody's comfortable knees, and naturally resentful.

"O-oh!" gasped Jacqueline on a long-drawn breath. "_Give_ her to me!"

Presently, held warm against that aching breast, Mag's baby slept again; and Jacqueline looked from one to the other of those about her with the first dawning of her old, wide, radiant smile.

Soon her own eyes drooped. The three tiptoed toward the door; but quiet as they were the faint voice from the bed followed them: "Phil, Phil!

where are you?"

"I can't leave her," he whispered apologetically. "You see how it is!"

(Kate was glad indeed to see how it was.) "Will you go into the next room, and say good-by to--our son?"

CHAPTER LII

Kate stood gazing down at the grandchild she had so longed for, Jacqueline's baby; an old, wrinkled, strangely wise little face, as befitted one who had solved with his first breath both the mysteries of Life and of Death. His tiny fists were clenched, his brow puckered, as if that momentary glimpse of knowledge had not been a happy one.

No woman who has not gazed so into the face of her own dead child can understand the hopelessness, the sense of bafflement, of the futility of all human endeavor, which surged through Kate Kildare at that moment.

The waste of it! The utter, insensate waste of so much pa.s.sion and hope and tenderness, of such desperate agony, of such courage to bear...!

There is no spendthrift so prodigal as Nature. For one perfected product that pleases her, hundreds of preciously guarded lives, such as this, thrown aside like so many pot-shards, useless, done for--and all to what purpose?... For the moment Kate visualised Nature as some incredible, insatiable G.o.ddess, a female Moloch, who must be propitiated always with mother's tears....

Then she had a thought of her husband; of his tenderness with their little suffering Katherine, his remorse-stricken grief over the child's death. Was that the purpose? For the moment, she forgot the other Basil whom she knew better, the one who had put aside his own flesh and blood as ruthlessly as Nature herself had put aside this little son of Jacqueline.

"Basil would be sorry for this," she whispered, half aloud. "Poor Basil!"

She did not know that she was weeping, or that she was not alone, till Jemima touched her hand; the girl's nearest approach to a caress.

"So this," said the latter, in a queer, small voice, "is the last of the Kildares of Storm!... Why do you cry, Mother? Aren't you _glad_?" She spoke fiercely. "Isn't it time we made way in the world for--better people?"

Kate tried haltingly to explain the sorrow that was upon her. "He wasn't all Kildare, this little fellow.... You never knew my father, or his father. They were gallant gentlemen, Jemima. All my life I have wanted sons like them, and like--the Benoix men. I have been proud of my health, my strength. I have lived honorably, I have tried to keep myself a--a--"

"A gallant gentleman," said Jemima, nodding.

"Yes. So that the spark should remain alive, for my grandsons. It seemed to me--"

She broke off, finding it impossible to put into words what she felt; that her own indomitable vitality, her energy, her courage, the thing she had called "the spark," was something which had been put in her hands to guard for the long future, and that, instead, here in her hands it had gone out.

This meant death to Kate Kildare, far more than the separation of body and spirit would mean death.

Each woman was busy with her own thoughts for a while; widely different thoughts. Jemima murmured presently, "Philip said 'our son,' Mother! Oh, do you suppose that was--true? Or was he--"

She did not finish her own question; nor did Kate attempt to answer it.

"That would be like Philip," muttered the girl at last. "Anyway, it's his own affair."

She saw that her mother was sobbing.

"Don't!" she whispered in distress. "Don't! I--I never know what to do when people cry. Please!" Her voice altered suddenly. "Mother, you wait here a minute! You just wait here!"

Kate heard her leave the room, and then stooped to kiss her grandson good-by.

As she knelt there, tears raining fast on the tiny, unresponsive face in the coffin, she heard a step behind her. Thinking it was Jemima again, she did not look around.

It was some moments later that a memory came to her, so clear as to be almost a vision; the memory of her dream in Frankfort--a man standing near, with bent shoulders and gray hair, but eyes as blue as a child's, as tender as a woman's, gazing down at her, smiling down....

Behind her sounded a slight cough.