"Oh, it's nothing—only stupidity," he declared again. "I shall be all right by-and-by,"—and then he could hardly get out the question—"How are they?"
"Louey is better," I said. "Murchison much the same. Not conscious yet. I fear he may not be—perhaps for some days. And Mrs. Murchison—"
I suppose my voice expressed the pity I was feeling; for Bertram turned his face away, and buried it in the pillow. I could see him shaking with the sobs that he would smother down; but I knew I must not make him give way. He would not like afterward to remember that he had done so: and presently he looked at me again, outwardly composed, only much flushed.
"Mother, why do such things happen?" he burst out.
My sunny-tempered boy had never asked this question before. He had always had a happy spirit, and a happy home; and I do not think bodily suffering on his own part would ever have drawn it from him; though he had known, off and on, much ill-health. But so far he had seen little of sorrow; he had not been brought face to face with the great realities of life and death—the great underlying mysteries of our present existence. I knew what it meant, when he broke into that passionate question, "Why do such things happen?" and I answered him slowly—
"I don't know, altogether, Bertie. Some reasons are beyond our reach. But it is partly because men are selfish and thoughtless. If proper warning had been given, nobody need have been hurt."
"If we had known," he said.
"But others did know; and they are responsible."
"I wouldn't be they!" he muttered. "It's bad enough as it is."
I tried to make him see that, while he could not but feel distressed, no real responsibility attached itself to him. As a complete stranger to the place, he could not possibly have known or guessed the danger. Even my husband, after one walk under the cliffs, had not thought of forbidding the children to go there. He had only noticed as curious the remarkable overhanging of the rock. I suppose, if Philip had been a scientific man, he would have read more clearly the state of things; but then he never was scientific. Whatever there is in Bertram of a scientific tendency, he inherits from my family, not from his father's. But I am wandering from the point.