"John,what do you mean?I thought the little fellow looked better when I went up to see him last.And there--I hear the poor mother up-stairs crying.""She may cry;she has need,"said John,bitterly."She knew it all the while.She never thought of our children;but they are safe.Be content,love--please God,they are quite safe.Very few take it after vaccination.""It--do you mean the small-pox?Has the lad got small-pox?Oh,God help us!My children--my children!"She grew white as death;long shivers came over her from head to foot.The little boys,frightened,crept up to her;she clasped them all together in her arms,turning her head with a wild savage look,as if some one were stealing behind to take them from her.
Muriel,perceiving the silence,felt her way across the room,and touching her mother's face,said,anxiously,"Has anybody been naughty?""No,my darling;no!"
"Then never mind.Father says,nothing will harm us,except being naughty.Did you not,father?"John snatched his little daughter up to his bosom,and called her for the hundredth time the name my poor old father had named her--the "blessed"child.
We all grew calmer;the mother wept a little,and it did her good:we comforted the boys and Muriel,telling them that in truth nothing was the matter,only we were afraid of their catching the little lad's sickness,and they must not go near him.
"Yes;she shall quit the house this minute--this very minute,"said the mother,sternly,but with a sort of wildness too.
Her husband made no immediate answer;but as she rose to leave the room,he detained her."Ursula,do you know the child is all but dying?""Let him die!The wicked woman!She knew it,and she let me bring him among my children--my own poor children!""I would she had never come.But what is done,is done.Love,think--if YOU were turned out of doors this bleak,rainy night--with a dying child.""Hush!hush!"--She sank down with a sob.
"My darling!"whispered John,as he made her lean against him--her support and comfort in all things:"do you think my heart is not ready to break,like yours?But I trust in God.This trouble came upon us while we were doing right;let us do right still,and we need not fear.Humanly speaking,our children are safe;it is only our own terror which exaggerates the danger.They may not take the disease at all.Then,how could we answer it to our conscience if we turned out this poor soul,and HER child died?""No!no!"
"We will use all precautions.The boys shall be moved to the other end of the house."I proposed that they should occupy my room,as I had had smallpox,and was safe.
"Thank you,Phineas;and even should they take it,Dr.Jenner has assured me that in every case after vaccination it has been the very slightest form of the complaint.Be patient,love;trust in God,and have no fear."Her husband's voice gradually calmed her.At last,she turned and clung round his neck,silently and long.Then she rose up and went about her usual duties,just as if this horrible dread were not upon us.
Mary Baines and her children stayed in the house.Next day,about noon,the little lad died.
It was the first death that had ever happened under our roof.It shocked us all very much,especially the children.We kept them far away on the other side of the house--out of the house,when possible--but still they would be coming back and looking up at the window,at which,as Muriel declared,the little sick boy "had turned into an angel and flown away."The mother allowed the fancy to remain;she thought it wrong and horrible that a child's first idea should be "putting into the pit-hole."Truer and more beautiful was Muriel's instinctive notion of "turning into an angel and flying away."So we arranged that the poor little body should be coffined and removed before the children rose next morning.
It was a very quiet tea-time.A sense of awe was upon the little ones,they knew not why.Many questions they asked about poor Tommy Baines,and where he had gone to,which the mother only answered after the simple manner of Scripture--he "was not,for God took him."But when they saw Mary Baines go crying down the field-path,Muriel asked "why she cried?how could she cry,when it was God who had taken little Tommy?"Afterwards she tried to learn of me privately,what sort of place it was he had gone to,and how he went;whether he had carried with him all his clothes,and especially the great bunch of woodbine she sent to him yesterday;and above all,whether he had gone by himself,or if some of the "angels,"which held so large a place in Muriel's thoughts,and of which she was ever talking,had come to fetch him and take care of him.She hoped--indeed,she felt sure--they had.
She wished she had met them,or heard them about in the house.
And seeing how the child's mind was running on the subject,I thought it best to explain to her as simply as I could,the solemn putting off of life and putting on of immortality.I wished that my darling,who could never visibly behold death,should understand it as no image of terror,but only as a calm sleep and a joyful waking in another country,the glories of which eye had not seen nor ear heard.
"Eye has not seen!"repeated Muriel,thoughtfully;"can people SEEthere,Uncle Phineas?"