Kitabı oku: «Misunderstood», sayfa 9

CHAPTER XV

Humphrey passed the night partly in heavy sleep and partly in feverish restlessness.

His first inquiry in the morning was for Miles, and the next for the gentlemen who were to help him to get well so quick.

The latter he was told could not arrive till eleven o'clock, but Sir Everard went to fetch little Miles, and whispering to him not to talk much or to stay long, he put the child down and stayed by the door to watch the meeting between the two little brothers.

Miles advanced rather timidly, the room was so dark and everything looked so strange. But as soon as he distinguished his brother he ran forward.

"Humphie! get up, get up. Why do you 'ie there, and look so white?"

"I'm ill, Miles!"—in a tone half plaintive, half triumphant.

"Musn't be ill, Humphie—oh, don't be ill!"

"You're often ill, Miles; why shouldn't I be ill sometimes?"

"Don't like it," said the child, his eyes filling with tears. "Oh, Humphie, I wish we hadn't tummelled into the pond!"

At this moment Sir Everard was called away, and informed that the physicians had arrived from London.

He found them in the dining-room, talking over the case with the village doctor and, after ordering them some breakfast, he returned to prepare the little invalid for their arrival.

As he approached the room he was alarmed to hear Humphrey's voice raised, and still more, when little Miles, with a face of terror came running out.

"Oh, Fardie, Fardie! will you come to Humphie? He's crying so, and he wants you to come directly!"

"Crying so! What is the matter with him?"

"Oh, I don't know? He began to cry and scream so when I said it!"

"Said what—said what?"

"Oh, Fardie, I was telling him that I heard Virginie tell some one he would be 'boiteux' all his life, and I only asked him what it meant!"

*         *         *         *         *

Vainly all night long had Sir Everard tried to frame a sentence in which to convey the fatal news.

Phrase after phrase had he rejected, because nothing seemed to him to express half the love and tenderness in which so terrible an announcement should be clothed. Words were so hard, so cold! They were so weak to express what he wanted—so utterly inadequate to contain all the pity, all the yearning sympathy with which his heart was overflowing!

And now without any preparation, without any softening, the cruel blow had fallen!

For one moment the father's heart failed him, and he felt he could not face the boy, could not meet his questioning gaze, could not with his own lips confirm the fatal truth. But there was no time for reflection. Humphrey's feeble voice calling him to come quickly, caught his ear, and as in a dream he advanced, and stood by the bedside.

"Father!" exclaimed the child (and how shall we express the tones of his voice, or convey an idea of the pitiful entreaty and nameless horror with which they rang?) "it isn't true—is it? Oh, say it isn't true!"

All the words of consolation and soothing died upon the father's lips, and his tongue seemed tied.

"She's always saying unkind things," sobbed the child, clinging to him; "she oughtn't to—ought she? You don't answer me, father! Father, why don't you tell me? Why don't you say quick, it's not true?" And as his fear grew, his voice faltered, and his grasp on his father tightened. "Answer me—father—why—don't you—speak?"

"My poor child, my poor little fellow!" One more struggle for the truth, in spite of the failing voice, and the sense of deadly sickness.

"Lift up your face, father. Let—me—see—your—face!"

What was there in the face that struck terror to his heart, and brought conviction thumping up in great throbs, even before the faltering words came.

"Supposing it should be true—what then!"

Ah! what then? His dizzy brain refused to attach any meaning to the words, or to help him to understand how much was contained in them.

The loud beating of his heart echoed them, his parched lips strove to repeat them, and wildly he fought with his failing senses, straining every nerve to find an answer to the question. In vain! Every pulse in his throbbing head seemed to take up the words and beat them into his brain; the air was live with voices around him, and voices and pulses alike cried, "What then?—what then?" But the question went unanswered, for Humphrey fainted away.

*         *         *         *         *

Sir Everard hastily summoned the doctors, and they did all they could to restore him.

In a little while he showed signs of coming to himself, and to prevent his thoughts returning to the subject which had agitated him, they requested Sir Everard to remain out of sight, and stationed themselves close to the bedside, so that theirs should be the first figures that should attract his attention.

As Humphrey slowly recovered consciousness, he did not indeed clearly remember on what his thoughts had been dwelling, but that there was something in his mind from which he shrank, he was quite aware.

Waking in the morning to a sense of some sorrow which possessed us ere we slept, we intuitively feel there is something amiss, though we are too confused to remember what it is; and even while we wish to recall it, we dread to turn our thoughts that way, lest we should lose the temporary peace into which forgetfulness has plunged us.

In such a passive state would Humphrey have remained, had not the doctors, to distract his thoughts, touched his brow, and caused him to open his eyes.

Alas! they little knew the all-powerful association of the place where he lay.

He closed his eyes again directly, and took no notice of the doctors' attempts to lead him into conversation; but in that one moment, his glance had rested on his mother's picture, and at once his mind wandered back—not indeed to the memory they dreaded, but to one which was scarcely less painful.

We will follow his thoughts for a moment.

He is alone; all alone in the desolate apartment, in the closed uninhabited room! The twilight is creeping slowly on, and the silence and emptiness within and without him, can almost be felt. Up-stairs in the nursery, Miles is dying—perhaps already dead. No one will help him, or be sorry for him. And as the sense of neglect and isolation steals over him once more, his breast heaves, and his lips move:

"Mother, I want you back so much, every one is angry with me and I am so very miserable!"

No answer, no sound.

"Mother! put your arms round me! put my head on your shoulder!"

Not a word.

It is only a picture after all.

*         *         *         *         *

Never to play with Miles any more! No more games on the stairs, or in the passages! No, never more! For Miles is dying, perhaps already dead. How happy the baby in the picture looks! Can it really be him? Oh, happy baby, always close to mother! always with her arms round him, and her shoulder against his head. Oh, if he could climb up into the baby's place, and stay there for ever and ever! How could he get up to her? She is in Heaven. She got there by being ill and dying. Why should he not get ill, and die too. Miles is dying, mother is dead—he would so like to die too. But it's no use. He never is ill—not even a cold. Miles caught cold going to the pond—the pond where the water-lilies are. How quiet it was! how cool! How gently they dance upon the water, those lovely water-lilies. How the bird sang, and the rat splashed.... Come up, Miles—it's as safe as safe can be!… Stop!… Miles is dying—how could he come up? Miles came into the room, and talked about the—jackdaw … wasn't it?—the poor lame jackdaw.... Miles is dying.... How did he come in?… Hop! hop! comes the jackdaw, poor old fellow! But what did Miles say about the jackdaw? Boiteux! But that's not his name; we always call him Jack. Boiteux means.... The jackdaw again! Hop, hop, he comes.... He will never fly again—never! Poor old jackdaw!… Is it ready true that he will never fly again? It is not true. But supposing it should be true, what then?… Boiteux!… Who is it keeps on asking me what 'boiteux' means?… Boiteux! "What then?" Boiteux means jackdaw—no, it means lame—no it means crip–

The temporary oblivion is over, the unknown dread is taking a tangible shape, and recollection rushes over him, bringing conviction with it.

But Hope, ever the last gift in the casket, faintly holds out against certainty.

"No! no!—not that! it can't be that!"

But something beating in his heart, beats Hope down. Mighty throbs, like the strokes of a hammer, beat it down, down, crush it to nothing; and a terrible sinking comes in its place. It is true—and in an instant he realizes what It being true will entail.

As lightning, flashing upon the path of the benighted traveller, reveals to him for a moment the country lying before him, illumining all its minutest details; so thought, flashing upon the future of the child, showed him for a moment all too vividly the life of crippled helplessness stretching out before him—the daily, hourly cross, which must be his for ever!

Let each one try to conceive for himself the intensity of such a moment, to such a nature!

Let each one try to realise the thoughts which followed each other in hot haste through his brain, the confused phantasmagoria which swam before him, fading away at last, and leaving only two distinct pictures—the jackdaw hopping about in his cage, and little lame Tom in the village, sitting in his cripple's chair.

He shrinks back in horror, his soul rises in loathing: he pants, and wildly throws himself about, with a half-smothered cry.

"Oh, gently, my darling! you will hurt yourself."

It is his father's voice, and he turns to him and clings tightly.

"I don't care—I don't care. I want to hurt myself. I want to die. I don't want to live like that!" At the sight of the physicians, his excitement redoubled, and he clung more tightly to his father. "No! No! Send them away! They shan't look at me, they shan't touch me. They are going to try and make me well, and I don't want to get well. I won't get well!"

The doctors retired, as their presence excited him so much, and Sir Everard tried to loosen the boy's convulsive grasp round his neck.

Humphrey was too exhausted to retain the position long: his hands relaxed their hold, and Sir Everard laid him back on the pillow.

Once more the soft face in the picture exercises its old influence over him, and charms away, as of old, the fit of passionate rebellion.

"Father," he entreated, in a whisper, "let me die! Promise not to let them try and make me well again."

Between surprise and emotion Sir Everard could not answer. He thought the idea of death would be both strange and repugnant to so thoughtless a creature; and he marvelled to hear him speak of it.

"You'll promise, won't you, father? You know I couldn't live like that! Let me go and live with mother in Heaven. See," pointing to the picture, "how happy I was in her arms when I was a baby, and I want to lie there again so much! Just now, when I thought it was still the night Miles was ill, before I knew I should never walk or run any more, even then I wanted so to get ill and die, that I might go to her, and I want it more than ever now. I thought then I never could get ill, because I am so strong; but now I am ill, and so you'll let me die! Promise not to try and make me well?"

Three times Sir Everard strove to answer, and three times his voice failed him. He managed, however, to murmur something which sounded like an affirmative, which satisfied and quieted the child.

But much of the boy's speech had been wholly unintelligible to him, and his allusions to his mother's picture especially puzzled him. Looking upon the drawing-room as a closed room, he had no idea that the children ever penetrated into it, or that they knew of the existence of the picture. And laying his hand on the child's head, he said: "How did you know that was your mother, Humphrey?"

The boy shot at him a glance of such astonishment that Sir Everard felt rebuked, and did not like to continue the conversation; and the doctors, returning at that moment, it was not resumed.

This time, Humphrey made no resistance, and the physicians were able to make their examination.

Leaving the village doctor by the bedside, Sir Everard led the way to the library, to hear their opinion.

He hardly knew what he wished. Humphrey's horror at his impending fate had made such an impression on Sir Everard that he almost shrank from hearing the child would recover to such a life as that. And yet when the doctors told him his boy must die, a revulsion of feeling swept over him, and his rebellious heart cried, "Anything but that!"

"Would it be soon?" he tried to ask.

"It could not be far off," they said.

"Would the child suffer?"

"They hoped not—they believed not;" and they wrung his hand and departed.

He followed them to the hall door, and waited with them till their carriage came up.

It was a still summer's morning when they came out upon the steps, as if all nature were silently and breathlessly awaiting the verdict. But as the doctors got into their carriage, a light breeze sprang up, causing the trees to sway and rustle with a mournful sound, as if they knew the sentence, and were conveying it to the fields around. Sir Everard stood watching them as they drove away—those great court physicians, who, with all their fame and all their learning could do nothing for his boy—nothing!

He listened to the sighing of the wind, and watched the trees bowing mournfully before it; and he wondered vaguely what was the language of the winds and breezes, and in what words nature was learning his boy's fate. It seemed to him that the breezes pursued the retreating doctors, and flung clouds of dust around them, as if taunting them with their inability to help; and then, returning once more to the oaks and beeches, resumed their melancholy wail. Dreamily there recurred to his mind that ancient fable the children loved to hear: that story of the olden time which tells how the wind wafted through the trees to the passers-by, the secret which had been whispered into the bosom of the earth:

 
"List! Mother Earth; while no man hears,
King Midas has got asses' ears."
 

And, as he cast one more look at the carriage in the distance, before re-entering the house, the messages of the breezes seemed to come into his head in the form of the baby rhymes he had so often heard the children sing.

CHAPTER XVI

Before returning to the sick-room, Sir Everard sat down to write some letters.

He tried to think of some one he could send for, to help him in his trouble. His mother was too infirm to leave home, his sister perfectly useless, and they were the only relations he had.

His brother-in-law was the person who would have been the greatest comfort to him, but he had just been appointed to a ship, and Sir Everard knew him to be up to his neck in preparations, perpetually veering between London and Portsmouth. As, however, he must pass Wareham Station on his journeys to and fro, Sir Everard wrote to beg him if possible, to stop for one night on his way.

Then he went up to the nursery. Miles was having his mid-day sleep; and Jane, the housemaid, was sitting by his crib. Sir Everard bent down to kiss the little fellow, who was lying with his face hidden, hugging to his breast some ears of dead corn; but as his father's lips touched his forehead, he stirred in his sleep, and said, "Humphie."

"What has he got there?" asked Sir Everard of Jane.

"Some ears of corn, I think, Sir Everard," answered Jane; "it's some that belonged to Master Humphrey, and he says no one shan't touch it but himself. I heard him say he had found it in a corner of the nursery, and that Master Humphrey must have put it there, and forgotten it, for that he had meant to plant it in his garden."

Sir Everard did not answer: he stooped over the little sleeper, and kissed him again tenderly. "Whatever you do, don't wake him," he whispered; "let him sleep as long as ever he can."

He left the room; and as he went down-stairs the children's conversation in the cornfield that Sunday afternoon recurred to him, and he could not help making a mental comparison between the young corn and the young life, both so suddenly uprooted from the earth.

Meeting the doctor in the hall, he briefly communicated the physicians' opinion, and begged him to make it known to the household. To announce it himself, he felt to be impossible.

He found the worn-out child in a heavy sleep when he reached the drawing-room; there was nothing to draw his thoughts from the subject upon which they had been dwelling, and he found himself going over and over the scene in the corn-field. He seemed to see and hear it all with startling distinctness. Wherever he looked, he saw Humphrey sitting on the top of the gate with the ears of corn in his destroying hand and Miles looking sorrowfully up at him.

He could not bear it at last, and walked up and down the room, to get it out of his head. But even then their voices rang in his ears, and filled him with pain.

"Never mind, Miles," sounded in clear bell-like tones the voice which would never rise above a whisper again. "I will plant them in the sunny bit of our own garden, where the soil is much better than here, and where they will grow much finer than if they had been left to ripen with the rest. Perhaps they will thank me some day for having pulled them out of the rough field, and planted them in such a much more beautiful place."

But he might have found comfort instead of pain in the words, had he followed out the metaphor which had been floating in his head. For would not the child one day thank Death, the destroyer; who in uprooting him fresh and green from the earth, would transplant him to the rich soil of God's own garden; where, in the sunshine of His Maker's presence, he should ripen into that perfection, which is unknown among the children of men?

For natures like Humphrey's are not fit for this rough world. Such a capacity for sorrow has no rest here, and such a capability for enjoyment is fittest to find its happiness in those all-perfect pleasures which are at God's right hand for evermore.

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Humphrey was seldom conscious during the days that followed. He was either in heavy sleep, or incoherent rambling.

He would lie talking to his mother's picture in a whisper; going over games and conversations with Miles; or wandering on unintelligibly to himself.

Whenever he was aware of his father's presence, he would complain of a curious noise in his head, and ask what the rushing and singing in his ears meant; but before he got an answer, he would ramble off again, and take no notice of what was passing around him.

Sir Everard, sitting for hours by his bedside, often thought of the boy's allusions to his mother's picture, and of the look with which Humphrey had greeted his inquiry as to how he had known it was she.

Many words that at times dropped from the child, puzzled him, and he often longed to question him on the subject.

Seeing one night a gleam of consciousness in the dark eyes, he went closer to the sofa, and tried to attract the boy's attention.

"What are you thinking about, Humphrey?"

"Mother," he answered, in a faint voice; "when is she coming to fetch me?"

But before there was time for an answer, he was overcome by his usual drowsiness, and Sir Everard's opportunity was gone. But perhaps what bewildered him most was the way in which the child had prayed to be allowed to die.

To Sir Everard, with his one-sided view of the boy, it was all such an enigma.

Here was a child who had always seemed so entirely taken up with the pleasures of the passing moment, that his past and future were alike merged in the enjoyment of the present—a creature on whom sorrow and loss had produced no permanent impression passing over him, as it were, only to leave him more gay, more heedless than ever. Permanent impression! why, as far as Sir Everard knew, they had produced no impression at all!

Five days after his mother's death, he had seen him romping and playing as usual, and from that day to this, her name had never passed his lips! And now he talked of her as if her memory were very fresh and familiar; and looked upon death as calmly as if he had been contemplating it all his life.

What did it mean? When had he thought upon such things? How was it that he, who had enjoyed to the full the pleasures of his young life, should be so ready to renounce them all?

Sir Everard was fairly baffled, as he asked himself the question over and over again.

Is it, then, so difficult to understand? Sir Everard should have gone to Wordsworth, and learnt his lesson there.

"Children," he says, "are blest and powerful:—

 
"Their world lies more justly balanced,
Partly at their feet, and part far from them."
 

This is the answer to the question. A child lives, no doubt, in his surroundings throws himself heart and soul into the pleasures or the sorrows of the moment; and is immersed in the interests of the path which lies straight before him.

But this is not all. Talk to any child for a few minutes, and see, if, in the description of his hopes and joys some such phrases as these do not occur: "When I get big;" "When I am a man;" "Some day when I am older."

He is looking for something else; he is reaching on to some state he knows not of, but which is to be more perfect than his present one.

 
"Sweetest melodies are those
That are by distance made more sweet"
 

There is something else waiting for him—worlds not realized—glories as yet unknown. In what will consist their charm, he knows not; but the vague is the possible, and the unknown is the glorious. So, perhaps, the "Land which is very far off" is more present to him than it is to those of riper years; not so much more shadowy than any other part of the transcendent future lying before him.

A child's world is so full of mystery too. Everything is so wonderful and unexplained, that the "Things unseen and eternal" are scarcely more incomprehensible than the things unseen and temporal. Where everything is so strange, one thing is not much more strange than another.

Look how many inexplicable things are occurring every day around him. Take the mysteries of birth and death, for instance. How soon he grows familiar with them. In a few days, the new little brother or sister seems as though it had always been there; and when the loss does not occur in the house, or affect him very nearly, he seldom asks questions after the rush that follows the first announcement, but contents himself with a general résumé of the occurrence in some such a train of thought as this: "Poor mamma was crying yesterday; and we are all going to have black frocks."

He takes everything upon trust, believing implicitly everything which is told him: he never cavils or argues, or reasons. He believes his elders infallible—in fact, he must: have they not proved right over and over again? Not being able to understand, he must trust; and to a boundless faith and a vivid imagination all things are possible!

*         *         *         *         *

It may be that some such ideas as these did at last float across the mind of Sir Everard, as he sat by the boy, who from first to last had been misunderstood.

One day Humphrey woke with a start, as if from a dream, and said eagerly: "Didn't you promise they shouldn't make me well?"

"Yes, my darling."

"I thought for a moment—or I dreamt—that I was getting well—and—it was–"

"It was what?" asked Sir Everard, trembling lest a wish for life should be springing up in the boy's breast, and that the regrets, whose non-existence he had marvelled at, should be going to overpower him at last.

"It was so horrible!" said the boy.

Strange that we should be subject to such sudden revulsions of feeling! The very words which set the father's mind at rest, jarred upon his feelings, and before he was aware, he had said, almost reproachfully, "Horrible, Humphrey! to stay with me?"

"You forget, father—you forget what I should be."

"But I would have made it so happy for you, my little Humphrey," burst from Sir Everard. "You should never–"

He stopped, for there was a far-away look in the boy's eyes, and he was gazing intently at the picture.

Sir Everard thought he was not listening. But in a few minutes he spoke.

"I am thinking I should not have minded it so much, if mother were here. I could lie in her arms all day, like I used then (pointing to the picture); but now–"

"You could lie in my arms, my darling."

"In yours, father? you've always got Miles. You never take me in your arms."

"I didn't ever think you would care to come, my little Humphrey."

"Oh! but I often should though; only I knew you would rather have him."

"Oh! hush! hush! When have you wanted to come?"

"Well, not so very often, father—only sometimes—a good while ago."

"But, my child, I would just as soon have had you as Miles. I only take him because he is so small. Why do you say I would rather have him?"

"I thought so, father, because you smiled quite differently when you looked at him, and called him your darling much more than you did me, and kissed him—oh! so much oftener."

Sir Everard could have implored the child to stop. He took the thin hand in his and caressed it.

"Miles is such a baby you know. I did not think you would be jealous of him."

"Jealous?" said Humphrey, rather puzzled; "jealous means angry—doesn't it?"

"Well—yes; I suppose it does."

"Oh, then, I wasn't jealous," said the boy, earnestly, "because I never was angry. Poor little Miles couldn't remember mother, you see, and I could—so it was quite fair. Only now and then—sometimes it–"

"What, dear boy?"

"It made me want mother so dreadfully," said Humphrey, his eyes filling with tears. "But now," he added, dreamily, for the drowsiness was beginning to overpower him, again, "I'm going to her, or at least God's going to send her to fetch me." And he closed his heavy eyes.

Sir Everard sat on, meditating. He mused on the by-gone time when his wife had told him Humphrey was as loving as Miles and he had inwardly denied it; he mused on the responsibility of bringing up children, and the necessity of living constantly with them to hope to understand the complications of their characters; and sadly he reflected on the irreparable loss his children had sustained in the mother, who would have done it all so well.

He was not a morbid man, and he did not reproach himself for what had been unavoidable; for a man belongs more to the world than to his home; and his home ought not to throw any hindrance in his path of usefulness. But he told himself plainly that he had failed; that, satisfied if his children were well and happy, he had been content to go no further, and to remain in ignorance of all that Humphrey's simple words had disclosed.

He was filled with admiration for the generous nature which had borne so patiently to see another preferred, and had charmed away the feeling which had arisen sometimes, by the reflection, "It is quite fair."

He thought how the same circumstances acting upon a different temperament might have produced jealousy, discontent, and bitter feeling; the little brothers might have grown up to hate each other, and he would never have perceived it. And with an uncontrollable feeling he knelt down by the bedside, and covered the child with kisses.

Humphrey opened his eyes and smiled. "I was dreaming of mother," he said; "she was asking me if you had sent her any message."

"Tell her, my darling, how much I love you, and how sorry I am to let you go."

"So sorry to let me go," he repeated, with the old expression of triumph coming into his face; "and that you love me very much; as much as Miles, shall I say."

"As much as Miles," said Sir Everard.

"And that's quite true, father?"

"Quite true, my own precious child."

A smile flitted over his face, and he shut his eyes, saying, "I've often forgotten your messages before, father, but I shan't forget this one!"

*         *         *         *         *

Presently he roused up again, and said, "I should like to do that thing people do before they die."

"What thing?"

"I forget the name of it in English. In French it is the same as the Gospels and Epistles."

"The same as the Gospels and Epistles? What can you mean?"

"Virginie calls them 'Le Noveau Testament.' What's the English for that?"

"New Testament."

"But what's testament in English? I can't remember words now."

"Testament in English? Oh! will."

"Oh, yes!—will—that's it. Well, I want to make my will; will you write it down as I say it?"

Sir Everard fetched some writing materials, and drew a little table to the bedside.

Humphrey dictated. "In large letters first, father, write—

"HUMPHREY'S WILL

"I leave my knife with the two blades to Miles. One of the blades is broken, but the other is quite good, and Virginie needn't be afraid of his hurting himself, because it has been quite blunt and rusty ever since I cut Carlo's nails with it, and left it out all night in the rain. And Dolly must take care of my garden, and not let the flowers die. And father, you're to have my prayer-book and my microscope; and I suppose I must leave Virginie my little gold pin, because she's asked me for it so often, and I shall never grow up now to be a man, and wear it with a blue scarf, like I always meant to. And Dolly may have one of my books. I don't think she would understand 'Peter Parley,' so perhaps it had better be the 'Boy Hunters.' Then there's the ferret, and the guinea-pigs, and the rabbits. I think Dolly shall have them too, because I know she'll take care of them. What else have I got? Oh, yes! there's my fishing-rod, and my skates, and my cricket things, all those are for Miles. I've got twopence somewhere; I don't exactly know where, but give them to lame Tom in the village; and tell him I'm more sorry for him than ever now. And will somebody be kind to my poor jackdaw? I know you all think him very ugly, and he is cross, and he does peck, but please, for my sake, take care of him, because I'm the only friend he has in the world, and now I'm going to leave him. Perhaps lame Tom had better have him, because he'll understand better than any of you, how sad it is to be—lame—and obliged to be still in one place all day. My little sweet-pea in the nursery window is for Jane. It takes a great deal of water. I used to pump my whole little pump of water on it four or five times a day. It never was strong, that little sweet-pea. Sometimes I think it had too much water. But Jane will settle that.