“I wouldn’t take it too much to heart if I were you. With care you may easily recover, and after all, plenty of people have lived to a ripe old age with tuberculous lungs.”
“My sister was only ill four months, and my father less than a year.”
His pale face expressed no emotion, so that Frank could only divine the fear that made his heart sink; he had seen many take the sentence of death, and knew that in comparison the final agony itself was small indeed. It was the most awful moment in life, and it must have been a cruel god who was not satisfied with that instant of hopeless misery to punish all the sins and follies of mankind: beside it all human suffering, the death of children or the ingratitude of friends, loss of honour or of wealth, sank into insignificance. It was the bitter, bitter cup that each must drink because man had raised himself above the beasts.
Frank rang the bell.
“Ask Miss Langton to be so good as to come here,” he told the servant who answered.
She looked anxiously from Frank to Herbert standing at the window, his back turned; and the two men’s silence, the doctor’s grave constraint, filled her with terrified foreboding.
“Herbert, what’s the matter?” she cried. “What has he told you?”
The boy turned round.
“Only that I shall never do anything in the world now. And I shall die like a dog and leave behind me the sunshine and the blue sky and the trees.”
Bella cried out, and then despair settled in her eyes, and helplessly the tears ran down her cheeks.