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Chapter II.

Jack Stanley opened the sitting-room door, and looked over the banisters into the hall below. There was the landlady, Mrs. Bennett, talking very fast and crying at the same time—so it sounded—and gesticulating with her hands. Although Jack could not hear distinctly what she was talking about, he felt sure that something dreadful had taken place, although he could not have told why he thought so; and when he heard a voice which was that of a stranger say, “Let me see him, my good woman: you cannot do any good by all this noise,” he felt sure the stranger wanted to see himself, and running down the stairs, he said,

“What is it? Tell me what has happened. I am John Stanley.”

Then the strange gentleman took Jack by the hand very kindly, and led him into Mrs. Bennett's little sitting-room, and said,

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“I have come to fetch you, my boy: your father wants you. He is not well.”

Jack caught him by the arm. “Is he dead? Is he dead?” he asked.

“No, no, no,” said the stranger. “What puts such an idea into your head? How could he want you if he were, you goose?”

Jack tried to smile, but he felt nervous and anxious, and more inclined to cry.

“There, get your hat and come with me,” said the stranger. “I have kept the cab at the door.”

Jack was with him again in a moment, and they got into what they took for granted was the cab, for the fog was so thick that they could not possibly see it. Then, when they were seated side by side, Jack asked,

“Where are we going, sir? Where is father? How was he taken ill? Why did not he come here, instead of sending for me?”

At any other time I think the stranger would have smiled at the rapidity of the boy's questions, but now it was not the time for smiling; and, being a very kind-hearted man, with boys of his own, he took Jack's hand in his before he answered,

“Your father has met with an accident: he was knocked down by a carriage, being unable to see his way in this fog. I know you are the sort of boy that will never think of being so selfish as to make a fuss at such a time as this. You will try and help all you can, and to bear up like a man, and be a comfort to your father.”

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Jack had felt very much inclined to get excited when first he heard the words, “Your father has met with an accident;” but by the time the stranger had come to the end of his speech, he had determined to behave like a man. He said nothing, for he could not trust his voice; and the gentleman went on:

“I am taking you to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where your father has been carried.”

Has he broken a limb, sir?” asked Jack, after a moment.

“No, my boy, he has not broken an arm or a leg; but he has injured himself very much, very much indeed,” said the stranger, gravely; then added, “Very seriously indeed, my poor boy.”

There was something in the way in which the gentleman said this, which brought to Jack Stanley a feeling of fear he could not control. He clutched the hand of his companion, and said,

“Tell me what has happened to him, sir, I beg of you. I will not make a fool of myself, I promise; but I must know. I must know before I see him.”

“I think you ought to know,” said the stranger, kindly. “My poor boy, your father has injured his spine in a very serious manner.”

“And will he die?” asked Jack.

“I fear so.”

“Are you a doctor, sir?” asked Jack again.

“Yes, I am a doctor; so, you see, I do not speak without page 14 knowing. I was happily close by when the accident happened. Your father is not in any pain, Jack—your name is Jack, I know. That will be a comfort to you, to be told that he is in no pain.”

Jack gave no answer, for he could not speak.

“Don't mind crying before me,” said the doctor. “I don't expect you not to cry; but I want you to try and bear up when you are with your father.”

He put his arm round Jack as he spoke, and the action made the boy break down. As the kind doctor hoped, he cried so violently for a short time that he was able to control himself when they arrived at the hospital.

Jack felt as if he could have flown out of the cab and along the streets. Every vehicle, even a railway train, seems to go so slowly at such a time; and the fog was so dense that every now and then there was a stoppage in the street, which prevented their moving along at all for some minutes, or, as it seemed to the boy, some hours.

After a length of time they arrived at the hospital, and Jack and his companion hurried through the wards, in order to reach Mr. Stanley. When they actually stood by the bed-side Jack had no inclination to cry, he felt so awestruck by the change which had taken place in his father since the few hours ago when they had parted. What the change consisted in he could not have said: there seemed all at once to have come a distance between the two. Jack had never seen a dying man in his life, but there was a look upon his father's face which he knew at once was death. page 15 He knelt down by his father's bed-side and laid his head against him; and after a few seconds Mr. Stanley's eyes, which had been wandering about from one object to another in the room, rested upon his son.

“Ah, Jack,” said he, “I sent for you. You were a good boy to come. You always were a good boy. If it had not been for that fog—but who was to know? it was impossible to foresee such a thing as that. I had something to say to Jack. I must see him as soon as possible.”

Then he stopped speaking, and looked hard at his son with a pained expression of face, as if striving to remember, so as to make the boy's eyes fill with tears: he had not expected to find his father wandering in his mind.

“You will think of it presently, father,” said he; “I shall stay with you.”

“You see,” resumed Mr. Stanley, “I have not liked to talk on the subject, but my son ought to know. I had hoped that I might be able to start him in life at least. Will you send for Jack? Do send for Jack: I ought to speak to him.”

“Oh, father, father! do not you know me?” said Jack.

“Hush!” said a young man, who was standing near, and who was the house surgeon of the hospital; “you must not excite him. Very likely he will know you again in a little while.”

“He will blame me, perhaps,” re-commenced Mr. Stanley, “and I should not like my own boy to think I was to blame. I did all I could, and I wished if possible to page 16 leave him something. I shall, at least, be able to do something for Jack before I die.”

He looked his son full in the face as he spoke, without a gleam of recognition.

“Oh, it is so hard! it is so hard!” and Jack.

“I know it must be, my poor fellow! Though I have not lost a father, it must be a sad thing to bear, when you have loved him and known him as you seem to have done.”

“Of course I have loved him and known him,” said Jack, almost indignantly. “Is he not my father? Who are you? You say you have not lost a father: what do you know about it?”

“I have lost the one I loved as a parent,” answered the stranger, gently. “I can, at least, sympathize with you.”

Jack's eyes, still full of tears, glanced upon the speaker, but there was nothing in his appearance to arouse anger. He was a young, rather fair man, of three or four and twenty, very good-looking, with a rather sad expression of face—certainly not the sort of man to provoke anger; and Jack's flashing eyes became subdued, and he said,

“I shall be quite alone when he is gone. I shall be quite alone in the world. I have no one but him.”

“Then you and I are circumstanced pretty much alike,” answered the other. “I have not a relation that I know.”

“What are you? Who are you?” asked Jack.

The questions would have been rude under ordinary page 17 circumstances, but they did not, under the present ones, appear so.

“I am one of the house surgeons here,” answered the young man. “That is how I come to be in attendance on your father. It is my business to attend to any accidents that are brought in.—I remember,” resumed the young man, after a pause, for speaking of any sort was better than the awful silence which followed on their short conversation—“I remember what my poor aunt, whom I loved as a mother, and who educated and brought me up as if I had been her son, said to me when she was dying —I wish I remembered it oftener.”

“What was that?” asked Jack Stanley.

“I do not wish to preach,” answered the house surgeon, slightly colouring, and, as he spoke, raising Mr. Stanley's head into a more easy position, the action being done with the gentleness of a woman—“but at times like this her words come back to me. You know, she was leaving me, as I supposed, alone in the world, and she reminded me that God is more particularly the Friend of the friendless and the Father of the fatherless. Perhaps it may be because we do not feel the want of a Heavenly Friend and Father whilst we have everything in this world.”

“Anybody can say such things,” answered Jack Stanley, drearily, “but I doubt if anybody feels them.”

“Do not think that—pray do not think in that way!” said Mr. Bernard. “I believe—I know it is true!”

“Yes, it is true,” said Mr. Stanley, fixing his eyes upon page 18 Bernard's face; “my boy will find it so. —Jack,” he continued, looking in turn at his son, “I am dying, my dear. I pray God to take you into His care. I cannot tell you now what I have always meant to tell you. You must hear it from Mr. Denby. You know Mr. Denby? Go to Lincoln's Inn Fields, and talk to him about it. Do not blame me, Jack. I was not willingly unjust to you. —Yes, you are right in believing it to be true,” continued he, returning to Bernard. Suddenly he looked startled, and stared eagerly into the young man's face. “When did he come? when did you come?” he asked. “You can tell my son how it all was. Why did you answer none of my letters? It was very heartless—very wicked altogether.”

Then he wandered off to other things, and Jack could only kneel there by his side and watch him. He watched him through that long dreary night, listening to his random talking with very few and short returns to consciousness; and towards morning Mr. Stanley left off speaking, and lay quite still and composed. Bernard had been backwards and forwards during the night, having other duties to attend to; but as day dawned, he stood with the doctor who had fetched Jack from the lodgings once more by the bed.

“He is better, is he not?” inquired Jack, anxiously glancing from one to the other.

“He will be better very soon,” answered the elder man. “He is in no pain, not even the pain of restlessness: he is unconscious.”

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“But he will wake again! he will wake again!” exclaimed Jack.

“Never in this world, my poor boy,” said the doctor, kindly. “Come with me into another room,” and he tried to draw Jack away.

But Jack resisted. He could not leave his father, although he was no longer aware that his son was near him. Before long there was nothing more that Jack could do but close the eyes which he remembered from his earliest infancy as always looking smilingly at him, and leave his parent's body to those who could best attend to it, and his soul where it had gone—with God.

It is a time which will in all probability come to each one of you who have parents. Think of it sometimes, boys and girls, while your parents are still with you, lest other feelings besides those of sorrow and regret for your own loss should come into your hearts when you look upon your father's or your mother's dead face—feelings of remorse for your own shortcomings and want of duty.

Jack Stanley had no just reproach of this sort to make against himself, but even with him the first feeling in his mind when he knew that his father was beyond his reach was regret that he had not been a more devoted and affectionate son.

He was turning away from the bed-side to make room for those who he was aware were ready to attend to the dead body when his eyes confronted those of Bernard, the house surgeon. The latter held out his hands, and it was page 20 a comfort to Jack, even in the first dull grief of his loss, to feel that he had made a friend.

So Mr. Stanley was gone for ever beyond the reach of his son in this world, and had died without telling him what he had promised to tell for so long. In recalling the words his father had used shortly before his death, he tried to forget those which had appeared to reflect blame upon himself; but there was one thing which Mr. Stanley had given utterance to which greatly puzzled Jack, and the first time he was with the house surgeon he said to him,

“Did you observe that my father seemed to speak to you as if he knew you? Did you ever see him before?”

“Never before the night he was brought in here,” replied the surgeon.

“But did you notice what he said?” returned Jack. “He asked you when you had come, and said that you could tell me something or other; and he called you heartless: what did he mean?”

“People who are light-headed,” answered the other, after a rather long pause, “people who are light-headed and delirious frequently mistake one person for another: they may see a likeness, perhaps. I never saw your father before last night.”

“What is your name?” asked Jack Stanley, abruptly.

The young man gave no answer, and Jack, supposing he had not heard, repeated his question.

“Hope Bernard,” slowly replied the house surgeon, looking Jack full in the face.

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“I do not remember ever hearing my father mention such a name,” said Jack.

“No, I should suppose not,” answered the other.

So Jack could only wonder what his father had meant by his words, without any prospect of their being explained to him now.