"I'm going to work all the time," Harvey replied resolutely, moving along the hall.
The doctor's hand was on the door. "I'm sorry for you, my lad," he said gently. "But there's always hope—we're all God's patients after all," he added earnestly.
Harvey put his hand against the opening door, his face turning in fullness of candour and trust towards the doctor.
"I've prayed about mother for a long time," he said; "is it any use to keep on, sir? You're a specialist and you ought to know."
The doctor closed the door quite tight. "Don't let any specialist settle that matter for you," he said a little hoarsely. "It often seems as if the good Lord wouldn't begin till they get through. So you pray on, my lad—for there's no healing, after all, but comes from God." Then he opened the door and the broken-hearted went out into the street.
Suffused and dim, blinking bravely through it all, were the mournful eyes as Harvey retraced his steps towards his mother; swift and deep was the train of thought that wound its way through his troubled mind. For there is no ally to deep and earnest thinking like a loving heart that anguish has bestirred—all true quickening of our mental faculties is the handiwork of the soul. Harvey saw the trees, the sky, the birds between—all different now, more precious, more wonderful to behold; for he saw them in the light of his mother's deepening darkness, and the glory of all that was evanishing from her appeared the more beautiful, pitifully beautiful, to his own misty eyes.
Involuntarily he thought of the future; of the twilight years that lay beyond—and his inward eyes turned shuddering away. The years that were past, those at least that had come and gone before the threatening shadow first appeared, seemed to lie behind him like a lane of light. Poverty and obscurity and sorrow and care had been well content to abide together in their humble home—almost their only guests save love. Yet his memory now of those earlier years was only of their gladness, their happiness, their light—all the rest had vanished like a dream when one awakes. He remembered only that they two, the fatherless, had been wont to look deep and lovingly into the eyes that looked back their wealth of fondness into the children's faces—night or day, day or night, that light was never quenched; they could see her and she could see them—and to look was to possess, though his early thoughts could not have defined this mystic truth, cherish it fondly though they did. But for the future—ah me! for the future, with blindness in a mother's eyes.
Yet Harvey's thought, swift and pensive as it was, was troubled by no prospect of burden for himself and by no apprehension of all the load that must be moved, under cover of the fast-falling dark, from his mother's shoulders to his own. His thought was what must be called heart-thought, and that alone. If a fleeting view of new responsibilities, or a melting picture of his sister's face, hung for a moment before the inward eye, it retreated fast before the great vision that flooded his soul with tenderness, the vision of a woman—and she his mother—sitting apart in the silence and the dark, the busy hands denied the luxury of work, the ever-open Bible closed before her, the great world of beauty receding into shadow; and, most of all, there rose before him the image of her face, unresponsive and unsmiling when the tender eyes of her own children should fall upon it, mutely searching, yearning silently for the answering sunshine of days that would come no more.
Without a word Harvey took his seat beside his mother. Her hand slipped quietly out and took his own, but without speech or sound—and in that moment Harvey learned, as he had never known before, how cruel are the lips of silence. Suddenly he noticed a cab, rolling idly along, the driver throwing his eyes hither and thither, poising like a kingfisher for its plunge.
The boy raised his hand in signal and the cabby swooped down upon him like one who has found his prey.