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.
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.
Time stood still—or rather time crept forward like a snail, and seemed unmoving. The hours of each day stole on like the tide, slow, achingly slow; or like a hill of sand which patiently sifts its way across a pasture; or like a drowsy serpent in the sun. A week was like a little lifetime. A month was like a cycle of Brahma.
Time, time, time! And overhead a sky of burning blue, and all about a vacant sea, sleeping, dreaming, with just a whisper of surf always on the yellow beach, marking the hours into tiny rhythmic periods—innumerable and lethargic; chiming like little shish-faint discs, like dainty cascades of echoing silver; yet with ever a haunting prescience of furious power behind, which sometimes broke out in screaming tempest or long fierce hurricane.