"Thanks," said she, holding out her hand, "keep him in your memory, and pray for him sometimes."
"Oh, madam!" I exclaimed, "may we all meet again in a better world, whether our lives have been long or short, happy or full of trial."
"The immortal soul of William looks down upon us!" she replied in a grave voice, whilst her gaze, at once sad and bright, reverted to the star-spangled heavens.
Since that evening, when performing the duties of my profession, I have often witnessed death; but never without speaking, to the sorrowing survivors, a few consoling words on a better life than this one; and those words were words of conviction.
At last, a month after these incidents, Eva Meredith gave birth to a son. When they brought her her child,—"William!" exclaimed the poor widow; and tears, soothing tears too long denied to her grief, escaped in torrents from her eyes. The child bore that much-loved name of William, and a little cradle was placed close to the mother's bed. Then Eva's gaze, long directed to heaven, returned earthwards. She looked to her child now, as she had previously looked to her God. She bent over him to seek his father's features. Providence had permitted an exact resemblance between William and the son he was fated not to see. A great change occurred around us. Eva, who had consented to live until her child's existence was detached from hers, was now, I could plainly see, willing to live on, because she felt that this little being needed the protection of her love. She passed the days and evenings seated beside his cradle; and when I went to see her, oh! then she questioned me as to what she should do for him, she explained what he had suffered, and asked what could be done to save him from pain. For her child she feared the heat of a ray of sun, the chill of the lightest breeze. Bending over him, she shielded him with her body, and warmed him with her kisses. One day, I almost thought I saw her smile at him. But she never would sing, whilst rocking his cradle, to lull him to sleep; she called one of her women, and said, "Sing to my son that he may sleep." Then she listened, letting her tears flow softly upon little William's brow. Poor child! he was handsome, gentle, easy to rear. But, as if his mother's sorrow had affected him even before his birth, the child was melancholy: he seldom cried, but he never smiled: he was quiet; and at that age quiet seems to denote suffering. I fancied that all the tears shed over the cradle froze that poor little soul. I would fain have seen William's arms twined caressingly round his mother's neck. I would have had him return the kisses lavished upon him. "But what am I thinking about?" I then said to myself; "is it reasonable to expect that a little creature, not yet a year upon the earth, should understand that it is sent hither to love and console this woman?"
It was, I assure you, a touching sight to behold this young mother, pale, feeble, and who had once renounced existence, clinging again to life for the sake of a little child which could not even say "Thanks, dear mother!" What a marvel is the human heart! Of how small a thing it makes much! Give it but a grain of sand, and it elevates a mountain; at its latest throb show it but an atom to love, and again its pulses revive; it stops for good only when all is void around it, and when even the shadow of its affections has vanished from the earth!
Time rolled on, and I received a letter from an uncle, my sole surviving relative. My uncle, a member of the faculty of Montpellier, summoned me to his side, to complete in that learned town my initiation into the secrets of my art. This letter, in form an invitation, was in fact an order. I had to set out. One morning, my heart big when I thought of the isolation in which I left the widow and the orphan, I repaired to the white cottage to take leave of Eva Meredith. I know not whether an additional shade of sadness came over her features when I told her I was about to make a long absence. Since the death of William Meredith such profound melancholy dwelt upon her countenance that a smile would have been the sole perceptible variation: sadness was always there.
"You leave us?" she exclaimed; "your care is so useful to my child!"
The poor lonely woman forgot to regret departure of her last friend; the mother lamented the loss of the physician useful to her son. I did not complain. To be useful is the sweet recompense of the devoted.
"Adieu!" she said, holding out her hand. "Wherever you go, may God bless you; and should it be His will to afflict you, may He at least afford you the sympathy of a heart compassionate as your own."