It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

So when her eyes opened again on the glorious vision of the great wide sea her Daddy had told her of so many a time, as she nestled to his heart by that dear bygone fireside in the London slum, with Uncle Bob ending the day in a drunken drowse, and Aunt Stingy adding a chapter to her long chronicle of her world's depravity and her own merits, she made no effort towards movement—just lay still unexplained, and watched the flood coming nearer, ever nearer, to a grand sand-castle just below; and listened to the music of its ripples, and wondered at the builders' exultation over the coming cataclysm, the wreck of their morning's work. It seemed illogical, that shout of joy when a larger wavelet than its fellows glanced ahead of them, and catching sight of the majestic structure, rushed emulously on to be the first to undermine it. But not illogical neither, to be proud of the gallant stand that castle made against the seas; a miniature Atlantis dying game, protesting to the last! Nor when the final effort of the British Channel made of it mere oblivion—an evanescence in sand and foam and floating weed—to mingle a general concession towards going home to dinner now, with resolutions to come at sunrise, or thereabouts, and build a bigger one still to-morrow.

The Mandarin lady was conversing with a family when Lizarann opened her eyes, and all were looking towards the patient. But if what they said was overheard by her, it was not understood; it was to the child only a part of the general goodwill the World seemed bent on showing towards herself.

"Very quick sometimes," said the lady, who couldn't have been really Chinese, or the family wouldn't have called her Miss Jane. Then the family's mamma, whose beauty seized on Lizarann so, almost, as to take her attention off the sand-castle, said, "Poor, darling little thing! How sad!" And then the castle was overwhelmed, turrets, battlements, and flag; and if Lizarann had heard that much, she certainly heard no more, and attached little meaning to that.

Besides, a very succulent little boy, who could not speak for himself yet, owing to his youth, who had been interpreted as anxious to show his prawn to the little girl, was being urged by his nurse to that course, he having to all seeming suddenly wavered, and resolved to conceal the prawn—who was lukewarm and unhappy from being held too tight—in a commodious crease under his chin. Lizarann's attention was at the moment divided between solicitude for the prawn's welfare and an affection for this little boy she could not conceal, in spite of his callous indifference to the lifelong habits of his prisoner.

And then the beach and its glories had passed away, and Lizarann was aware that she had been carried indoors from a donkey-carriage she had accompanied other patients home in, and was lying down indisposed for food she recognized as nice; but trying to eat it too, to oblige Miss Jane, the Mandarin, who seemed to have taken a great fancy to her. Only she couldn't the least account for why it should be such an effort to eat her dinner; and ended by putting it down to the absence of her Daddy, and wanting sorely to be back with him at Mrs. Fox's; or—strange preference!—bringing him home from Bladen Street an intact Daddy as of old, albeit eyeless by hypothesis, and all the dreadful accident a dream.

There were reservations, though, to the way she let her heart go back to those sweet stethoscopeless days. To make none would have been disloyal to Teacher and to Mr. Yorick—oh yes!—and to Phœbe and Joan, and Mrs. Fox, and even to Aunt Bessy, though the latter was not a really well-informed person, and Dr. Spiderophel, who was more sinned against than sinning, the victim of a fraudulent black pipe! If she were still the little pilot of her eyeless Daddy through the crowded streets, what would she now be to Teacher, who had got to be a sort of mother to her?—what but one of a swarm of little girls in time, or otherwise, for religious instruction at a quarter-to-nine, and breaking loose in possession of two hours' more secular information at twelve, except Saturday? What but an unknown unit of a crowded slum to Mr. Yorick? Just think!—if there were no Mr. Yorick...!

"I think we may put it down to the fatigue of the journey yesterday. You'll back me up in that, doctor?"

But the head physician of the Convalescent Home, who answered Miss Jane, the Mandarin, wasn't a firmly outlined character. "I see no objection to that," he answered. "But there's very strong feebleness—very strong feebleness! Shouldn't say too much about anything."

"I see," said Miss Jane. And that was all she said. But Lizarann, who heard more than she was supposed to hear, this time, formed a very low opinion of her new medical adviser. As if she had anything the matter with her! She had a better opinion of Miss Jane; and when that lady asked her, referring to a letter she wrote that afternoon to Adeline Fossett—who was a friend of hers, it seemed—what message she was to give on Lizarann's behalf, the patient had no misgiving about entrusting a full cargo of loves and kisses for delivery to her.

As she lay and listened in a half-dream in the sunny room, with the air coming in from the sea, to its distant murmur mixing with the drone of those untiring flies on the ceiling, and the scratching of Miss Jane's pen near at hand, the recent arrival at the Home had no suspicion how serious a report of her case that lady was framing. She lay and wondered when that long letter would come to an end, and looked forward to the sweet experience of rejoining her Daddy, and talking more to him about the sea he had known so well in the days when there was no Lizarann. She knew it now too; and was going to know it better still to-morrow.