Misunderstood

"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!

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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–"