Not a word.
It is only a picture after all.
* * * * *
Never to play with Miles any more! No more games on the stairs, or in the passages! No, never more! For Miles is dying, perhaps already dead. How happy the baby in the picture looks! Can it really be him? Oh, happy baby, always close to mother! always with her arms round him, and her shoulder against his head. Oh, if he could climb up into the baby's place, and stay there for ever and ever! How could he get up to her? She is in Heaven. She got there by being ill and dying. Why should he not get ill, and die too. Miles is dying, mother is dead—he would so like to die too. But it's no use. He never is ill—not even a cold. Miles caught cold going to the pond—the pond where the water-lilies are. How quiet it was! how cool! How gently they dance upon the water, those lovely water-lilies. How the bird sang, and the rat splashed.... Come up, Miles—it's as safe as safe can be!... Stop!... Miles is dying—how could he come up? Miles came into the room, and talked about the—jackdaw ... wasn't it?—the poor lame jackdaw.... Miles is dying.... How did he come in?... Hop! hop! comes the jackdaw, poor old fellow! But what did Miles say about the jackdaw? Boiteux! But that's not his name; we always call him Jack. Boiteux means.... The jackdaw again! Hop, hop, he comes.... He will never fly again—never! Poor old jackdaw!... Is it ready true that he will never fly again? It is not true. But supposing it should be true, what then?... Boiteux!... Who is it keeps on asking me what 'boiteux' means?... Boiteux! "What then?" Boiteux means jackdaw—no, it means lame—no it means crip——
The temporary oblivion is over, the unknown dread is taking a tangible shape, and recollection rushes over him, bringing conviction with it.
But Hope, ever the last gift in the casket, faintly holds out against certainty.
"No! no!—not that! it can't be that!"
But something beating in his heart, beats Hope down. Mighty throbs, like the strokes of a hammer, beat it down, down, crush it to nothing; and a terrible sinking comes in its place. It is true—and in an instant he realizes what It being true will entail.
As lightning, flashing upon the path of the benighted traveller, reveals to him for a moment the country lying before him, illumining all its minutest details; so thought, flashing upon the future of the child, showed him for a moment all too vividly the life of crippled helplessness stretching out before him—the daily, hourly cross, which must be his for ever!
Let each one try to conceive for himself the intensity of such a moment, to such a nature!