He was generally silent. This made me very sad. Do as I would, try as I did, I could not help being very much cast down, very full of forebodings of evil.
One night—it was bitterly cold outside, and the wind was howling through the trees, we were warm and comfortable enough as far as that went—I was looking sorrowfully at the invalid, who I thought was dozing, when he slowly opened his eyes—which seemed to me to have grown very large and prominent—and gazing at me, oh! so mournfully, said, "Bertie, my friend, I suppose you realise that I am not going to get well?"
For a few moments I could not reply, my heart was in my throat, I felt as if it were choking me; at length I managed to ejaculate, "Oh! Meade, my dear friend, have patience—don't break down like this—or I shall——"
His eyes were suffused with tears. "Dear friend, indeed," he began, slowly and in broken accents, "I grieve—God knows how very much I grieve—to tell you this, but I know I am not improving, and I believe I shall never leave this hut alive. I have been thinking about you, wondering what you will do if I am taken. I am awfully sorry that I brought you here."
"Say not one word on that head," I interrupted him; "I do not regret it. Look how well we have done. What has happened is terrible, I know, but oh! pray don't give up, don't get to thinking that you'll not recover. Please God you'll be all right soon, then fancy with what joy we'll be off home in the spring."
Thus I tried to cheer him—thus I tried to look at things.
"Well, well," he replied, with a wan smile, "I'll try to be more hopeful, I'll try to trust; but listen, what will you do if I am taken? Can you make your way out alone, think you?"
I refused to answer,—I merely said that I would not even think about it, much less talk of it, and begged him not to. I asked him if his leg was so painful, and what reason he had to say he was no better, in reply to which he went into a number of particulars which I need not repeat.
Later he talked again about his mother and sisters, and, laying his hand on mine, he begged me to bear with him, not to be angry with him, whilst he explained what he wished to be done, "supposing," and he gazed at me in a most affecting way as he said it,—"supposing I don't get home myself."
I said very little,—I let him talk. I nodded occasionally to let him see I heard what he was saying, understood, and would do as he wished.