But in the middle of this mystery and solicitude, it happened that Annie was to get some light; for at breakfast one morning—not yet that of the expected crisis—when her father and mother were talking earnestly in an undertone to each other, all unaware that the child, as she was moving about, was watching their words and looks, much as an older victim of credulity may be supposed to hang on the cabalistic movements and incantations of a sibyl, the attentive little listener eagerly drank in every word of the following conversation:—
“The doctor is so doubtful,” said the anxious mother, with a tear in her eye, “that I have scarcely any hope; and if she is taken away, the very look of Annie, left alone ‘bleating for her sister lamb,’ will break my heart altogether.”
“Yes,” rejoined Mr Maconie, “it would be hard to bear; but,”—and it was the first time since Mary’s illness he had ever remembered the insurance,—“it was wise that I insured poor Mary’s life in the Pelican.”
“Insured her life in the Pelican!” echoed the wife, in a higher tone. “That was at least lucky; but, oh! I hope we will not need to have our grief solaced by that comfort in affliction for many a day.”
And this colloquy had scarcely been finished when the doctor entered, having gone previously into the invalid’s room, with a very mournful expression upon his face; nor did his words make that expression any more bearable, as he said—
“I am sorry to say I do not like Mary’s appearance so well to-day. I fear it is to be one of those cases where we cannot discover anything like a crisis at all; indeed, I have doubts about this old theory being applicable to this kind of fever, where the virus goes on gradually working to the end.”
“The end!” echoed Mrs Maconie; “then, doctor, I fear you see what that will be.”
“I would not like to say,” added he; “but I fear you must make up your mind for the worst.”
Now, all this was overheard by Annie, who, we may here seize the opportunity of saying, was, in addition to being a sensitive creature, one of those precocious little philosophers thinly spread in the female world, and made what they are often by delicate health, which reduces them to a habit of thinking much before their time. Not that she wanted the vivacity of her age, but that it was tempered by periods of serious musing, when all kinds of what the Scotch call “auld farrent” (far yont) thoughts come to be where they should not be, the consequence being a weird-like kind of wisdom, very like that of the aged; so the effect on a creature so constituted was just equal to the cause. Annie ran out of the room with her face concealed in her hands, and got into a small bed-room darkened by the window-blind, and there, in an obscurity and solitude suited to her mind and feelings, she resigned herself to the grief of the young heart. It was now clear to her that her dear Mary was to be taken from her; had not the doctor said as much? And then she had never seen death, of which she had read and heard and thought so much, that she looked upon it as a thing altogether mysterious and terrible. But had she not overheard her father say that he had insured poor dear Mary’s life with the Pelican? and had she not heard of the pelican—yea, the pelican of the wilderness—as a creature of a most mythical kind, though she knew not aught of its nature, whether bird or beast, or man or woman, or angel. But whatever it might be, certain it was that her father would never have got this wonderful creature to insure Mary’s life if it was not possessed of the power to bring about so great a result; so she cogitated, and mused, and philosophised in her small way, till she came to the conclusion that the pelican not only had the destiny of Mary in its hands, but was under an obligation to save her from that death which was so terrible to her. Nor had she done yet with the all-important subject; for all at once it came into her head as a faint memory, that one day, when her father was taking her along with her mother through the city, he pointed to a gilded sign, with a large bird represented thereon tearing its breast with its long beak and letting out the blood to its young, who were holding their mouths open to drink it in. “There,” said he, “is the Pelican;” words she remembered even to that hour, for they were imprinted upon her mind by the formidable appearance of the wonderful-looking creature feeding its young with the very blood of its bosom. But withal she had sense enough to know—being, as we have said, a small philosopher—that a mere bird, however endowed with the power of sustaining the lives of its offspring, could not save that of her sister, and therefore it behoved to be only the symbol of some power within the office over the door of which the said sign was suspended. Nor in all this was Annie Maconie more extravagant than are nineteen-twentieths of the thousand millions in the world who still cling to occult causes.
And with those there came other equally strange thoughts; but beyond all she could not for the very life of her comprehend that most inexcusable apathy of her father, who, though he had heard with his own ears, from good authority, that her beloved Mary was lying in the next bed-room dying, never seemed to think of hurrying away to town—even to that very pelican who had so generously undertaken to insure Mary’s life. It was an apathy unbecoming a father; and the blood of her little heart warmed with indignation at the very time that the said heart was down in sorrow as far as its loose strings would enable it to go. But was there no remedy? To be sure there was, and Annie knew, moreover, what it was; but then it was to be got only by a sacrifice, and that sacrifice she also knew, though it must of necessity be kept in the meantime as secret as the wonderful doings in the death-chamber of the palace of a certain Bluebeard.