“Poor boy! Does this vigil signify——?”
She answered the unfinished question.
“He wanted the door left ajar that he might see you pass with your harp.”
“See me pass?”
“Aye, since he cannot hear you play.”
He looked at her in silence; then, in a quick, unaccountable impulse, placed a firm hand on her arm. “Let me go in;” and, almost to his wonder, she acquiesced, and moved aside to admit him.
It was a fair-sized room, and quite handsomely appointed. What luxuries the house could command seemed mostly accumulated here. There were soft mats on the floor; jewels of stained glass let into the diamond-paned casements; a silver lamp glowing among books and illuminated manuscripts strewed over a table. And, in the midst, in vivid contrast with the dark panelling, on a white bed lay a white boy. His face, which, for its structure, might have been a pretty one, was wasted to the bone; his eyes were prominent and of an unearthly blue; though fifteen, he looked in weight and size less than a child of nine. Sad, sad is it to see young life in any sickness—its pathetic patience, its uncomplaining acceptance of its cruel, uncomprehended heritage; but sadder is the sight of one doomed from his cradle to pain and helplessness. To be born, like this, to death, not life, to the visible processes of dissolution from the very threshold of existence; to be fated never to know but by report the meaning of health, as the blind must shape in their imaginations the world they can never see—truly that is to suffer the worst loss of possession, which is never to have possessed, while reading in the happiness of others the measure of one’s own eternal deprivation. Here was some constitutional atrophy, already, fifteen years ago, disputing with its unborn victim the world to come, and proving, on release, stronger than the life it clung to. The boy had been an invalid from his birth—a lamp guttering before it was well lighted—a nativity most fondly lending itself, one would have thought, to the triumphant vindication of its parent doctrines. But that vindication never came; the father could not cure his child, and there was the anguish. The life he loved most on earth was the life that most baffled his efforts to mend and prolong it. His arts could not even win it surcease from the mortal languor and weariness which accompanied its dissolution. He felt himself a hypocrite, an impostor, in the eyes that, turning to him for relief, found only helplessness and impotence. He who to all others was so glib in professional assurance had nothing here to offer but empty commiseration and an agony of devotion. It was very pitiful.
Bannister, pausing a moment on the threshold, stepped softly in, with wonder and compassion at his heart. The boy, propped up on his pillows, regarded his entrance with shy, fascinated eyes. But the grave face of the new-comer, its simplicity, its kindly melancholy, were nothing but reassuring adjuncts to the midnight quiet of the room. The musician shifted the harp from his shoulder.
“Would you like to hear me play,” he said: “here and now, in the silence of the house?” The instant rapture called to the emaciated features was his sufficient answer. He smiled. “Cannot you sleep?” he said. “It is late to lie awake.”
The boy shook his head.