"_I_ never saw her," said the child.
"No, David, we cannot see her, but if we keep our hearts open and our lives all sweet and clean, we can be sure she is not far away."
The little boy had listened attentively, but he could not understand, and after careful examination of the picture, he presently asked:
"When is she coming back again?"
Dr. Redfield had nothing further to tell. He crossed the room, and hastily replaced the miniature upon the top of the high desk.
CHAPTER IX
THE CRIME OF DAVID
It is not pleasant to be a criminal; it hurts. David knew he was one, and although he did not know what crime he had committed, he imagined that he was now being punished for it. The idea came to him on account of the way the Doctor was acting. The man had gently replaced the miniature upon the top of the desk, and afterward he stood motionless, sunk deep in revery. The little boy was trying to guess what he had done. It must be very, very wrong, or else Fav-ver Doctor wouldn"t be standing there like that. He would talk and take notice. David knew this was so, but, try as he might, he could not think what sin he was guilty of. It was a great puzzle, and, in truth, David was frequently puzzled in the same way. For the laws which grown-ups have for little boys are so much like any other kind of laws that it is hard to get any justice out of them.
Without knowing what it was, David keenly felt his disgrace. The glory of being in the Doctor"s house; the glory of sitting at table in an ordinary chair; the glory of a hair-cut, and even the glory of trouvers--each of these mighty events was now shorn of its charm. Everything had grown sadly commonplace; for there can be no satisfaction in achieving greatness, if one is so soon to be forgotten. So now, with the pa.s.sing of every instant, things were growing more and more solemn.
Doubtless the chair on which David was sitting was partly to blame. It was such a slippery seat that if one didn"t hold on tight he would be sure to slide right off. There were stickery things in it, too, for the hair-cloth was getting all worn out.
The little boy sat politely on the stickery things and waited. If he waited long enough, maybe Fav-ver Doctor would smile at him as Mother always did. At the present time, though, one could hardly believe that there were ever any smiles in Fav-ver Doctor"s face--he was looking so hard and so long at nothing at all.
Everything in the room was feeling lonesome and guilty and bad; and worst of all was the clock. It was a big, upright, colonial clock, and its counting of time was done with deep and stately deliberation. If he would only strike the hour, that would help.
David remembered with what dignity the clock could strike. The brazen reverberations of each stroke always lingered awhile before the next one came, and then, when all of them had been struck, and the last ringing beat had throbbed and swooned into a whisper, and died, one always felt that other strokes would follow. One looked for them, and waited for them, but they did not come. To-day nothing seemed to come but the regular, echoing, church-like tick-tock, and to-day there was no diversion of any kind; there was only a large, dark, depressing awesomeness.
It is very scareful for a little boy when he feels himself grown to be such a criminal. Immense periods of time seem to be slipping away, but he doesn"t know at all whether he is getting to be really and truly a man, or whether he is getting littler and littler. There is always the fear of diminishing, because one would so like to be grown up, and when one is such a bad little boy, how can he expect ever to be grown up? David felt himself slipping and slipping. He was slipping back into three-years-old.
From that he would go into two-years-old, and before very long he would be only one. He knew it was coming on. There was a tingling flush going down his back, a cold current, like ants with frozen feet. Maybe it was only perspiration, but how was a little boy to know that? He was gasping with excitement when he suddenly called out: "Here I am!"
The idea was that the Doctor should instantly seize him and save him from being dissolved into empty air. But no sooner had David called than he was overcome with shame. At first he was astonished that his voice should really be _his_ voice. There was no change in it--not the slightest--and he now saw that he had only fooled himself. That is why he was ashamed. He was so ashamed that he began to cry.
That would not do at all. Fav-ver Doctor said it wouldn"t, and he was so distressed about it that he offered David the rare privilege of wearing his watch. At any other time the little boy would have been mightily set up over the honor, but at such a time as this no distinction of any sort was for him. He did not deserve it. He had disgraced himself too much for that, and he pushed the watch from him. He kicked his feet against the chair and rudely exclaimed:
"Don"t want your watch!"
In some ways Dr. Redfield was not different from most of us. So many years had pa.s.sed since he was a little boy that he had forgotten that what appears to be only sullenness may in reality be something quite different. Perhaps if he had been more like his normal self instead of being a very tired and a very irritable doctor he would not have considered it necessary to regard David with the eye of stern discipline. But however that may be, the man pivoted suddenly upon his heel and marched out of the room, leaving the little boy alone to brood at his leisure upon the sad impropriety of being rude.
David wanted to go with the Doctor, but the man would have nothing to do with any little boy who cries without any reason for crying and is saucy besides. David could not go. David must sit still on that chair and must not get up.
"I don"t like you," the child called out.
Then, as soon as the door was shut upon him, he became a very angry little boy. He pounced from his seat and began to walk heavily up and down the room. He stamped his feet; he shut his teeth together and he kicked the chair where he had been sitting.
He had not been fairly dealt with, and now, as Mitch Horrigan would say, he was going to be just as rotten bad as ever he could.
But it was useless to stamp so loud and clench his fists. There was no one to hear him and there was no one to see him. Neither was there any satisfaction in knocking over a chair. The outlook was utterly hopeless. There didn"t seem to be any good way of being bad.
Presently, though, David had an inspiration. He would get hold of the picture the Doctor had talked about so foolishly. David would get it and have a look at it. Surely that would be very naughty indeed. David was confident of that, for the Doctor had been so extremely nice in handling the little miniature.
Only there was one great difficulty which stood in the way of this famous campaign of badness. David encountered this difficulty when he had dragged a chair in front of the high desk.
Even by standing on the chair he was not tall enough to reach the picture; even by standing tippy-toe he could not reach it. There was left but the one alternative--he must jump for it, but when he did that he knocked it off. It fell with a loud clack to the floor and broke in two.
Then terror seized the heart of David. He did not mean to break the lady; honestly he did not, and now--oh, oh!--what was to be done? The little boy did not have much time to think about it.
He heard a heavy tread on the stairs and knew the Doctor was coming.
Perhaps it would do to say that the picture had fallen off itself and got broken, or maybe it would be better to say that the fairies had done it, or maybe--
Now, at last, David knew the thing to do, and did it. When the Doctor came into the room the little boy was sweetly but not serenely in his place. He was sitting upright in his chair, as though he had not stirred a hair"s breadth during the man"s absence, but in the eyes of David was a feverish l.u.s.tre, and the little body of him was all of a tremble.
"I didn"t understand about the crying," Dr. Redfield announced, and he was very humble. It did not seem odd to him that he should come to confessional before this little boy. He believed that he had judged too hastily, and he was come to make it right. "Maybe you were lonesome," he said. "Maybe you wanted Mother."
David said nothing, and the Doctor went on with that wistful tenderness which comes to us when we feel we have not been just with those we love.
"You _do_ like me, don"t you, David?"
But the little boy could not answer; he was crying so.
CHAPTER X
THE NIP OF GUILT
Little David was not well; little David was hot and red.
After he had been gently laid in the crib he turned restlessly, and from time to time a gasping sob shook his whole body, for he had cried himself to sleep. He had fallen into a fitful slumber while in the Doctor"s buggy, and had not awakened when carried into the house.
"A little feverish," said Mother, as she pressed her cool hand upon his forehead.
The Doctor said nothing, but in his eyes, as he bent over the little boy, there was something sinister. It was his fighting face, and it was saying to David:
"You shall not be sick, little boy. I won"t have it."
All the weariness of the man was gone; all his dreary discouragement was gone. He stood erect, a soldier ready to do battle against disease which for these past weeks had been choking out the life of little children.
As the Doctor hurried away he was upbraiding himself for having been absent from his patients not less than three whole hours.
Gross negligence, this! He had no right to play so long with David, and now he would not take the time to tell Miss Eastman of all the great things they had been doing.
But indeed no words of explanation were required to tell her of one thing that had been done. Without any a.s.sistance she soon discovered a substantial reason why her little boy was so restless, and this reason proved to be a miniature. She found the two pieces of it hid away in his blouse at the very place where they would be most uncomfortable to lie upon. But even after she had relieved David of this source of trouble, he still turned and tossed and talked in his sleep.
She could not understand what he was saying, but the face painted on porcelain seemed easily understood. How, Miss Eastman asked herself, had he come by that picture? Who had given it to her little boy, and what had he been told about the beautiful face?
An impulse had suddenly come upon the woman to hide it away, or better yet, to destroy it utterly. But there was no time for that. As if from an electric shock, David had flounced over on his side, and now he sprung bolt upright. Confused emotions struggled in his face; his hands searched his blouse, and as they failed to find what they were searching for, there came such a look of terror into his eyes that Mother instantly produced the miniature.
"Who is it, dear?" she asked.