August 19, 1889.

I saw Alec no more; I would remember him as he was in life, not the stiffened waxen mask of my beloved.  The days passed in a dull stupor of grief, mechanically, grimly, in a sort of ghastly greyness.  And I who thought that I had sounded the depths of pain!  I could not realise it, could not believe that all would not somehow be as before.  Maud and Maggie speak of him to each other and to me . . . it is inconceivable.  With a dull heartache I have collected and put away all the child’s things—­his books, his toys, his little possessions.  I followed the little coffin to the grave.  The uncontrollable throb of emotion came over me at the words, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  It was a grey, gusty day; a silent crowd waited to see us pass.  The great churchyard elms roared and swayed, and I found myself watching idly how the clergyman’s hood was blown sideways by the wind.  I looked into the deep, dark pit, and saw the little coffin lying there, all in a dumb dream.  The holy words fell vacuously on my ears.  “Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain”—­that was all I felt.  I seem to believe nothing, to hope nothing.  I do not believe I shall ever see or draw near to the child again, and yet the thought of him alone, apart, uncomforted, lies cold on my heart.  Maud is wonderful to me; her love does not seem to suffer eclipse; she does everything, she smiles, she speaks; she feels, she says, the presence of the child near her and about her; that means nothing to me; the soul appears to me to have gone out utterly like a blown flame, mingling with the unseen life, as the little body we loved will be mingled with the dust.

I cannot say that I endure agony; it is rather as if I had received a blow so fierce that it drove sensation away; I seem to see the bruise, watch the blood flow, and wonder why I do not suffer.  The suffering will come, I doubt not; but meanwhile I am only mutely grateful that I do not feel more, suffer more.  It does not even seem to me to have drawn me nearer to Maud, to Maggie; my power of loving seems extinguished, like my power of suffering.  I do not know why I write in this book, why I record my blank apathy.  It is a habit, it passes the time; the only thing that gives me any comfort is the thought that I shall die, too, and close my eyes at last upon this terrible world, made so sweet and beautiful, and then slashed and scored across with such cruel stripes, where we pay so grievous a penalty for feeling and loving.  Tennyson found consolation “when he sorrowed most.”  But I say deliberately that I would rather not have loved my child, than lose him thus.

August 28, 1889.