John Halifax, Gentleman Part 73

"It--do you mean the small-pox? Has the lad got small-pox? Oh, G.o.d help us! My children--my children!"

She grew white as death; long shivers came over her from head to foot.

The little boys, frightened, crept up to her; she clasped them all together in her arms, turning her head with a wild savage look, as if some one were stealing behind to take them from her.

Muriel, perceiving the silence, felt her way across the room, and touching her mother's face, said, anxiously, "Has anybody been naughty?"

"No, my darling; no!"

"Then never mind. Father says, nothing will harm us, except being naughty. Did you not, father?"

John s.n.a.t.c.hed his little daughter up to his bosom, and called her for the hundredth time the name my poor old father had named her--the "blessed" child.

We all grew calmer; the mother wept a little, and it did her good: we comforted the boys and Muriel, telling them that in truth nothing was the matter, only we were afraid of their catching the little lad's sickness, and they must not go near him.

"Yes; she shall quit the house this minute--this very minute," said the mother, sternly, but with a sort of wildness too.

Her husband made no immediate answer; but as she rose to leave the room, he detained her. "Ursula, do you know the child is all but dying?"

"Let him die! The wicked woman! She knew it, and she let me bring him among my children--my own poor children!"

"I would she had never come. But what is done, is done. Love, think--if YOU were turned out of doors this bleak, rainy night--with a dying child."

"Hush! hush!"--She sank down with a sob.

"My darling!" whispered John, as he made her lean against him--her support and comfort in all things: "do you think my heart is not ready to break, like yours? But I trust in G.o.d. This trouble came upon us while we were doing right; let us do right still, and we need not fear.

Humanly speaking, our children are safe; it is only our own terror which exaggerates the danger. They may not take the disease at all.

Then, how could we answer it to our conscience if we turned out this poor soul, and HER child died?"

"No! no!"

"We will use all precautions. The boys shall be moved to the other end of the house."

I proposed that they should occupy my room, as I had had smallpox, and was safe.

"Thank you, Phineas; and even should they take it, Dr. Jenner has a.s.sured me that in every case after vaccination it has been the very slightest form of the complaint. Be patient, love; trust in G.o.d, and have no fear."

Her husband's voice gradually calmed her. At last, she turned and clung round his neck, silently and long. Then she rose up and went about her usual duties, just as if this horrible dread were not upon us.

Mary Baines and her children stayed in the house. Next day, about noon, the little lad died.

It was the first death that had ever happened under our roof. It shocked us all very much, especially the children. We kept them far away on the other side of the house--out of the house, when possible--but still they would be coming back and looking up at the window, at which, as Muriel declared, the little sick boy "had turned into an angel and flown away." The mother allowed the fancy to remain; she thought it wrong and horrible that a child's first idea should be "putting into the pit-hole." Truer and more beautiful was Muriel's instinctive notion of "turning into an angel and flying away." So we arranged that the poor little body should be coffined and removed before the children rose next morning.

It was a very quiet tea-time. A sense of awe was upon the little ones, they knew not why. Many questions they asked about poor Tommy Baines, and where he had gone to, which the mother only answered after the simple manner of Scripture--he "was not, for G.o.d took him." But when they saw Mary Baines go crying down the field-path, Muriel asked "why she cried? how could she cry, when it was G.o.d who had taken little Tommy?"

Afterwards she tried to learn of me privately, what sort of place it was he had gone to, and how he went; whether he had carried with him all his clothes, and especially the great bunch of woodbine she sent to him yesterday; and above all, whether he had gone by himself, or if some of the "angels," which held so large a place in Muriel's thoughts, and of which she was ever talking, had come to fetch him and take care of him. She hoped--indeed, she felt sure--they had. She wished she had met them, or heard them about in the house.

And seeing how the child's mind was running on the subject, I thought it best to explain to her as simply as I could, the solemn putting off of life and putting on of immortality. I wished that my darling, who could never visibly behold death, should understand it as no image of terror, but only as a calm sleep and a joyful waking in another country, the glories of which eye had not seen nor ear heard.

"Eye has not seen!" repeated Muriel, thoughtfully; "can people SEE there, Uncle Phineas?"

"Yes, my child. There is no darkness at all."

She paused a minute, and said earnestly, "I want to go--I very much want to go. How long do you think it will be before the angels come for me?"

"Many, many years, my precious one," said I, shuddering; for truly she looked so like them, that I began to fear they were close at hand.

But a few minutes afterwards she was playing with her brothers and talking to her pet doves, so sweet and humanlike, that the fear pa.s.sed away.

We sent the children early to bed that night, and sat long by the fire, consulting how best to remove infection, and almost satisfied that in these two days it could not have taken any great hold on the house.

John was firm in his belief in Dr. Jenner and vaccination. We went to bed greatly comforted, and the household sank into quiet slumbers, even though under its roof slept, in deeper sleep, the little dead child.

That small closet, which was next to the nursery I occupied, safely shut out by it from the rest of the house, seemed very still now. I went to sleep thinking of it, and dreamed of it afterwards.

In the middle of the night a slight noise woke me, and I almost fancied I was dreaming still; for there I saw a little white figure gliding past my bed's foot; so softly and soundlessly--it might have been the ghost of a child--and it went into the dead child's room.

For a moment, that superst.i.tious instinct which I believe we all have, paralyzed me. Then I tried to listen. There was most certainly a sound in the next room--a faint cry, quickly smothered--a very human cry. All the stories I had ever heard of supposed death and premature burial rushed horribly into my mind. Conquering alike my superst.i.tious dread or fear of entering the infected room, I leaped out of bed, threw on some clothes, got a light, and went in.

There laid the little corpse, all safe and still--for ever. And like its own spirit watching in the night at the head of the forsaken clay, sat Muriel.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed her up and ran with her out of the room, in an agony of fear.

She hid her face on my shoulder, trembling, "I have not done wrong, have I? I wanted to know what it was like--that which you said was left of little Tommy. I touched it--it was so cold. Oh! Uncle Phineas! THAT isn't poor little Tommy?"

"No, my blessed one--no, my dearest child! Don't think of it any more."

And, hardly knowing what was best to be done, I called John, and told him where I had found his little daughter. He never spoke, but s.n.a.t.c.hed her out of my arms into his own, took her in his room, and shut the door.

From that time our fears never slumbered. For one whole week we waited, watching the children hour by hour, noting each change in each little face; then Muriel sickened.

It was I who had to tell her father, when as he came home in the evening I met him by the stream. It seemed to him almost like the stroke of death.

"Oh, my G.o.d! not her! Any but her!" And by that I knew, what I had long guessed, that she was the dearest of all his children.

Edwin and Walter took the disease likewise, though lightly. No one was in absolute danger except Muriel. But for weeks we had what people call "sickness in the house;" that terrible overhanging shadow which mothers and fathers well know; under which one must live and move, never resting night nor day. This mother and father bore their portion, and bore it well. When she broke down, which was not often, he sustained her. If I were to tell of all he did--how, after being out all day, night after night he would sit up watching by and nursing each little fretful sufferer, patient as a woman, and pleasant as a child play-mate--perhaps those who talk loftily of "the dignity of man"

would smile. I pardon them.

The hardest minute of the twenty-four hours was, I think, that when, coming home, he caught sight of me afar off waiting for him, as I always did, at the white gate; and many a time, as we walked down to the stream, I saw--what no one else saw but G.o.d. After such times I used often to ponder over what great love His must be, who, as the clearest revelation of it, and of its nature, calls Himself "the Father."

And He brought us safe through our time of anguish: He left us every one of our little ones.

One November Sunday, when all the fields were in a mist, and the rain came pouring softly and incessantly upon the patient earth which had been so torn and dried up by east winds, that she seemed glad enough to put aside the mockery of sunshine and melt in quiet tears, we once more gathered our flock together in thankfulness and joy.

Muriel came down-stairs triumphantly in her father's arms, and lay on the sofa smiling; the firelight dancing on her small white face--white and unscarred. The disease had been kind to the blind child; she was, I think, more sweet-looking than ever. Older, perhaps; the round prettiness of childhood gone--but her whole appearance wore that inexpressible expression, in which, for want of a suitable word, we all embody our vague notions of the unknown world, and call "angelic."

"Does Muriel feel quite well--quite strong and well?" the father and mother both kept saying every now and then, as they looked at her. She always answered, "Quite well."

In the afternoon, when the boys were playing in the kitchen, and John and I were standing at the open door, listening to the dropping of the rain in the garden, we heard, after its long silence, Muriel's "voice."

"Father, listen!" whispered the mother, linking her arm through his as he stood at the door. Soft and slow came the notes of the old harpsichord--she was playing one of the abbey anthems. Then it melted away into melodies we knew not--sweet and strange. Her parents looked at one another--their hearts were full of thankfulness and joy.