Herbert blessed her humane tolerance in his alarmed heart, when
Mabel awoke from her troubled slumbers at midnight, in extreme pain,
that culminated before dawn, in convulsions.
Two physicians were hastily summoned, and when Mrs. Sutton arrived
about noon, she met Phillis outside the door of the sick-chamber,
carrying a lifeless infant in her arms, and weeping bitterly.
This was the end of the months of hopeful longing and glad
anticipation which were Heaven's messengers of healing and comfort
to the sick and lonely heart. The cunningly-fashioned robes were
never to have a wearer, the clasping arms to remain still empty. Oh
wondrous mystery--past finding out--of the human soul! Had the lungs
once heaved with breath, the heart given one throb; the eyes caught
one beam of Heaven's light ere they were sealed fast in eternal
darkness, she, who travailed with the infant through the
inexpressible agony of birth, would have been written a mother among
women; have had the right accorded her, without the cavil of
formalist or the disputations of science, to claim the precious
thing as her own still--a living baby-spirit that had fluttered back
to the bosom of the Almighty Father, after alighting, for one
painful moment, upon the confines of the lower world. As it was,
custom ordained that there should be no mourning for what had never
really been. Anguish, hope, and the patient love at which we do not
scoff when the mother-bird broods over the eggs that may never
hatch--these were to be no more named or remembered. In silence and
without sympathy she must endure her disappointment. The tenderest
woman about whose knees cluster living children, and who has sowed
in tears the blessed seed, that in the resurrection-morn shall be
gathered in beauteous sheaves of richest recompense--would smile in
pitying contempt over the tiny headstone which should be
lettered--"Born Dead."
All this and much more Mabel was to learn with the return of health
and reason, but she lay now, like one who had passed for herself the
narrow sea that separates the Now from the Hereafter; her features
chiselled into the unmoving outlines of a waxen image, only a feeble
flutter of breath and pulse telling that this was lethargy, not
death. They watched her all night, Mrs. Sutton on one side and
Phillis on the other, the family physician stealing in with
slippered tread from hour to hour, to note with his sensitive touch
if the few poor drops of vital blood yet trickled from veins to
heart, always with the same directions, "Give her the stimulant
while she can swallow it. It is the only hope of saving her."