‘And the bedside where you had been before?’ asked Alice.
‘My dear Miss Alice, I wish you could have been with me. There was such an atmosphere of terror in that room when I went in, that I felt half stifled: the place was thick with the fear of death. I fought against it, it was given me to overcome it, and ten minutes later that disreputable old sinner who lay dying there had such a smile of peace and rapture on his face that I cannot but believe that he saw the angels standing round him.’
‘And he got better?’ asked Mrs Keeling, with breathless interest, but feeling that this was very daring conversation.
Mr Silverdale laughed as if this was an excellent joke.
‘Better?’ he asked. ‘He got well, and sang his psalms in Heaven this morning. I felt in church as if I could hear his voice.’
Alice remembered the rapt look she had seen there, which her mother almost profanely had taken to be the sign of an insufficient breakfast, and thrilled at knowing the true interpretation of it. The rapt look was there again now, and seemed to her the most adorable expression she had ever seen on a human countenance. Mrs Keeling was more impressed now, and the moisture stood in her kind mild eyes.
‘Well, I call that beautiful,’ she said, ‘and if you’ll let me know when the funeral is, I’ll send a wreath.’
Mr Silverdale laughed again: John considered he was for ever laughing at nothing at all.
‘That would be delightful of you,’ he said, ‘but pray let us get rid of the dreadful word funeral. Birthday should it not be?’
This was too much for John.