Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/30

 As he spoke the light of a huge fire flashed out upon the darkness, paling the torches that had seemed so bright before, and we saw distinctly, though we were some hundred yards distant, that it was a funeral pyre. With cries that reached us even through the throbbing beat of the tom-toms which never stopped, the living cast the dead upon the fire, the fury of which they sought to increase by every means in their power.

A door opened in the verandah, and Laura stood beside me, her child in her arms, and face white as death in the terrible corpse-light. "Charlie," she said, "look at little Norah; she is ill."

Her husband, occupied in giving directions to the overseers, had gone with them to some little distance, and Laura and I were alone. The wan face which lay on her bosom was not that of the blithe little creature who had bidden me good-night with a kiss from her rosy lips some hours before. It was pallid, pinched and sunken, and the golden curls were matted and damp upon the waxen brow. I saw at a glance that there was death in the baby's face and despair in the mother's.

"She is as cold as clay," Laura whispered, "and even her breath is icy chill."

I took the corpse-like figure from her arms and carried it into her room. The planter was away among the coolies and could not be found, and Laura and I kneeling one on each side of the couch on which I had first seen this baby sleeping, watched it die.

Cholera in its most appalling form had seized the nursling about midnight, and before its danger was realised it was past all hope or help. The tiny rose-bud hands were clenched, and the forget-me-not eyes dim and glazed when I laid it down. The light of dawn struggling with the lamp-light made the scene very ghostly, and not a word was spoken till the planter hurried into the room.

"You sent for me, Laura," he began, and stopped as his eye fell upon the kneeling figure of his wife, whose head was bent down upon the pillow where the dead child lay. I rose and left the room.

I threw myself upon my bed feeling sick and ill, and, for some time lay there almost stupefied by the suddenness of the shock. When I left the room I heard terrible news. The pestilence was spreading and the panic had reached the house; not a servant was to be found.