Misunderstood

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."