He was so ghastly white I thought him dying and called Letitia.
"'S all right, Bertram," he reassured me, patting my hand. I suppose he had seen the terror in my face. He smiled faintly. "'M all right, Bertram."
Outside the apple-trees were blooming, I remember, and he lived, somehow, to see them bloom again.
My conscience winces, as I say, to think how I twirled my cap by my old friend's bedside, longing to be gone; yet I comfort myself with the hope that he did not note my eagerness, or that if he did he remembered his own boyhood and the witchery of bat and ball. Not only was the poet's life-lamp waning, not only was Letitia burdened with increasing cares, fast aging her, the mater said, but I was a child no longer; a youth, now, mindful of all about me, and seeing that neighbor household with new and comprehending eyes.
The very house grew dismal to me. The boughs outside were creeping closer—not to shelter it, not to cool it and make a breathing nook for a lad flushed with his games in the summer sun. It was damp there; the air seemed mouldy under the lindens; there was no invitation in the unkempt grass; toads hopped from beneath your feet, bird-songs came to you, but always, or so it seemed to me, they came from distance, from the yards beyond.
There within, across that foot-worn threshold which had been a goal for me in former years, there was now a—not a poet any longer, or Rugby boy, but only a sick old man. Upon a table at his side his goblets stood, covered with saucers, and a spoon in each. His drugs were watery; there was no warmth in them, no sparkle even when the sun came straggling in, no wine of life to be quaffed thirstily—only a tepid, hourly spoonful to be feebly sipped, a sop to death.
Even with windows open to the breeze the air seemed stifling to the lad I was. The sunlight falling on the faded carpet seemed always ebbing to a kind of shadow of a glow. The clock, that ugly box upon the shelf, ticked dreadfully as if it never would strike a smiling hour again. The china ornaments at its side stood ghastly mute, and hideous flowers—ffff! those waxen faces under glass! If not quite dead, why were they kept so long a-dying there? Would no kind, sunny soul in mercy free them from their pallid misery? I was a Prince of Youth! What had I to do with tombs? I fled.
Even Letitia, kind as ever to me, seemed always busy and preoccupied—sweeping, dusting, baking, cleansing those everlasting pots and pans, or reading to her father, who listened dreamily, dozing often, but always waking if she stopped. Content to have her at his side because discontent to have her absent, even for the little while her duties or the doctor's orders led her, though quite unwillingly, away. Impatience for her return would make him querulous, which caused her tears, not for its failing consciousness of her devotion, but for its warning to her of his gentle spirit's slow decline despite her care.
"Where have you been so long, Letitia?"
"So long, father? Only an hour gone."