Part 99 (1/2)
”Oh, I know. I know by the fuss there is over me. You heard what Hannah said the other night.”
”What? When?”
”When she brought in the tea, and I was lying on the rug. I was not asleep, though you thought I was. You told her she ought to be more cautious, for that I might not have been asleep.”
”I don't remember much about it,” said Lady Isabel, at her wits' ends how to remove the impression Hannah's words must have created, had he indeed heard them. ”Hannah talks great nonsense sometimes.”
”She said I was going on fast to the grave.”
”Did she? n.o.body attends to Hannah. She is only a foolish girl. We shall soon have you well, when the warm weather comes.”
”Madame Vine.”
”Well, my darling?”
”Where's the use of your trying to deceive me? Do you think I don't see that you are doing it? I'm not a baby; you might if it were Archibald.
What is it that's the matter with me?”
”Nothing. Only you are not strong. When you get strong again, you will be as well as ever.”
William shook his head in disbelief. He was precisely that sort of child from whom it is next to impossible to disguise facts; quick, thoughtful, observant, and advanced beyond his years. Had no words been dropped in his hearing, he would have suspected the evil, by the care evinced for him, but plenty of words had been dropped; hints, by which he had gathered suspicion; broad a.s.sertions, like Hannah's, which had too fully supplied it; and the boy in his inmost heart, knew as well that death was coming for him as that death itself did.
”Then, if there's nothing the matter with me, why could not Dr. Martin speak to you before me to-day? Why did he send me into the other room while he told you what he thought? Ah, Madame Vine, I am as wise as you.”
”A wise little boy, but mistaken sometimes,” she said from her aching heart.
”It's nothing to die, when G.o.d loves us. Lord Vane says so. He had a little brother who died.”
”A sickly child, who was never likely to live, he had been pale and ailing from a baby,” spoke Lady Isabel.
”Why! Did you know him?”
”I--I heard so,” she replied, turning off her thoughtless avowal in the best manner she could.
”Don't you know that I am going to die?”
”No.”
”Then why have you been grieving since we left Dr. Martin's? And why do you grieve at all for me? I am not your child.”
The words, the scene altogether, overcame her. She knelt down by the sofa, and her tears burst forth freely. ”There! You see!” cried William.
”Oh, William, I--I had a little boy of my own, and when I look at you, I think of him, and that is why I cry.”
”I know. You have told us of him before. His name was William, too.”
She leaned over him, her breath mingling with his; she took his little hand in hers; ”William, do you know that those whom G.o.d loves best He takes first? Were you to die, you would go to Heaven, leaving all the cares and sorrows of the world behind you. It would have been happier for many of us had we died in infancy.”
”Would it have been happier for you?”