Doctor Sewell’s report, the next morning, was not entirely satisfactory.
It was true that Wally was quite conscious, and had eaten a good
breakfast, but he cried when he was moved, and did not seem to wish to
get up, which was so far fortunate, because the medical man strictly
forbade his doing so. But it made Hannah very uneasy, since it plainly
denoted that he had sustained more injury than was outwardly apparent.
She did not see her husband all the day, during which he kept strictly
to his own room, and she was glad of it, for she felt that she could
not have spoken to him as she ought. She was already ashamed of her
outburst of the day before, but did not feel as if she could speak
much differently even now. For, as she sat by Wally’s side, trying to
soothe his fretfulness under pain, her thoughts would revert to sweet,
beautiful Jenny, struck down through the same hand. Was this really a
judgment on her husband for his unconfessed crime? Was _his_ child to
be taken from him, in the same way and by the same hand that had made
other parents, as loving as himself, childless? But it was hard on
her--very, very hard, that she should suffer, through her little son,
for his father’s sins. Hannah sat by the baby’s side, thinking these
sad thoughts throughout the day, and when night fell, and Wally was
asleep, she wrestled with Heaven in prayer that the cup might pass away
from her. Yet she knew, even while she prayed, that it is part of the
world’s plan that the innocent shall suffer for the guilty, and often
more than they suffer themselves.
When the household was once more sunk in sleep, Hannah bethought her of
her husband, of whom she had heard nothing since the previous night.
What was he doing? Whom had he spoken to? What had he had to eat? She
felt she must ascertain these points before she went to rest herself,
for the doctor had told her, since the boy was out of immediate danger,
it must be days, perhaps weeks, before he could finally pronounce on
the ultimate effects of the accident, and therefore it behoved her not
to try her strength more than was absolutely needful. With the purpose
of seeing her husband, she tried the door between them, but found it
was still locked on his side, therefore she went round to that which
opened into the passage, which he had left unfastened, and went softly
in. The sight which met her eyes was a pitiable one. Henry Hindes was
on his knees beside the bed, moaning in the agony of his spirit. Yet,
such is the force of a mother’s love, that the expression of his pain
did not move her as it had done that evening in the library. For since
then had he not injured _her_ child, which had awakened a twofold
repulsion in her breast against him; one for herself and the other for
Mrs Crampton. Hannah had never realised till now what _her_ agony of
loss had been. As she approached him, Hindes lifted his bloodshot eyes
and muttered,--
‘Say it at once, for God’s sake! Is he gone?’
‘Wally? No!’
‘Thank Heaven!’
‘Don’t be too quick to do that, Henry. He is in pain. There is no
knowing what injuries he may not have sustained. Dr Sewell will give no
opinion. He says time only can show; pray that God may have mercy upon
us, and not visit your sins on the head of your unoffending child.’
Hindes groaned.
‘What would the worst be--the worst that could happen to him?’
‘Spinal disease. A cripple for life, or a lingering death,’ replied
Hannah, sternly.
She could not find it in her heart to lighten the blow to the author of
it.
‘A cripple for life--a lingering death--my Wally, my darling Wally!’
sobbed the father. ‘Oh, Hannah, my punishment is heavier than I can
bear.’
‘You will _have to_ bear it, if God wills; so shall I--as the Cramptons
had to bear--’
‘No, no, Hannah, for Heaven’s sake, no!’ screamed Henry Hindes, as he
cowered beside the bedclothes. ‘I have seen his face--Mr Crampton’s
face--before me ever since, saying, “_Now_ you will know! _Now_ you
will know!” I drugged myself with morphia last night, but it was no
good. He was there all the time--all the time.’
‘This is your fancy, Henry. I have told you so before. It is your own
thoughts that take bodily shape to haunt you. But this sad accident
calls loudly for reparation and repentance. Confess your sins to God,
Henry. Ask Him to forgive them--tell Him everything--your unhallowed
wishes and desires, your hasty temper and revenge, your disregard
of advice and entreaty. He knows all your weakness, and will have
compassion on it, and, perhaps, for the sake of your penitence and
desire of amendment, He may mercifully spare our little one, and avert
the possible consequences of your muddled senses.’
‘I _will_ pray, I _will_ repent,’ moaned the unhappy man, with his face
still hidden, ‘and I will confess, Hannah, everything--everything--if
God will only hear and forgive me.’
‘He is sure to do that,’ said Hannah, more kindly; ‘though it is
impossible to say in what way He may answer your prayers. But we will
both pray, Henry, will we not, that this miserable affair may leave no
bad effects behind it? And, should our prayers be granted, you will
promise me to give up taking morphia, for the future, and keep your
brain clear for the duties of everyday life. This would never have
happened, remember, except that you were too stupefied, to see the
child’s danger, or that you were in his way.’
‘I know, I know,’ he answered, ‘but he is better to-night, is he not?’
‘There is no knowing--Doctor Sewell says it is impossible to say,’ she
said, as she turned and left him to his own reflections.
Many more days passed in this miserable uncertainty. Doctor Sewell
brought two more doctors with him, to make a thorough examination of
the little child, but, though they all agreed that the spine had been
injured, they could not decide to what extent. All they could say
was, that Wally must be kept on his back till the real extent of the
mischief was ascertained. It might be months, even years, before the
matter was finally decided; meanwhile, he must be kept perfectly still
while indoors, and only taken out in the air, lying flat on his back,
in a wheeled chair. It was a pleasant prospect to have to keep a sturdy
child of Wally’s age amused from morn to night, whilst in a recumbent
position; but it was the only chance for him, so it must be done. The
poor mother sat down patiently to await the verdict, but Henry Hindes
raved like a madman at the doctors’ orders, and declared he should
shoot himself before the best or worst was made known to him. Hannah
insisted that he should return to his duties, and leave her to the
melancholy charge of looking after the child.
‘You are worse than useless here, Henry. In fact, your presence and
loud lamentations over him disturb Wally, and make him fretful and
restless. Besides, you have your own duties to attend to, and must
neglect them no longer. If you are sincere in your sorrow over this
accident, prove it by doing your duty like a man, and attending the
office as usual.’
For Henry Hindes had shut himself up since the night he had thrown his
child down the stairs, and refused to meet anybody, on business or
otherwise. Mr Abercorn, the chief clerk, and Mr Bloxam, the cashier,
had been up to Hampstead together to inquire the reason of their
employer’s non-appearance in the city, and Mrs Hindes had been obliged
to tell them that her husband was confined to his room and quite unfit
to see them, or attend to business for the present. She was obliged
to invent this fiction, for the reason that, for some days, Hindes was
imbibing opium to such an extent, and raving of what distressed his
conscience so freely, that she felt, at all hazards, she must keep
everybody from him but herself.
Captain Hindes and his wife came over, as soon as they heard of
poor Hannah’s fresh trouble, and would have done anything in their
power to help her, but it was a case where the assistance of one’s
fellow-creatures could avail nothing, and the only thing was to wait
and hope. Arthur did not see his brother on the occasion, for Henry
had shut himself up in his own room, as usual, and refused to open the
door. He had come chiefly to tell Hannah that they had found a little
cottage to suit them in the Isle of Wight, and intended moving into it
at once. She was not sorry to hear their news. She longed to get them,
and everybody connected with her husband, out of the way, so that she
might have him to herself, and shield him from all prying eyes and
ears. During his short period of seclusion, she had carried all his
meals to his room with her own hands, and coaxed him to eat them by
every means in her power. And, now that the first shock was over, she
ordered him to return to his official duties as she would have ordered
a boy to return to school. He had reduced himself to such a state that
he was no longer capable of regulating his actions. His reappearance in
the office was so far beneficial that a business never proceeds so well
and regularly as when the head of it is absent; but Hindes had almost
rendered himself incapable, by this time, of taking any active part in
the management of affairs, which he left entirely to his two chief men,
Abercorn and Bloxam, whilst he sat brooding in his private room, or
wandered restlessly about the streets, waiting for the doctors’ verdict
respecting Wally, and wondering how much longer they would keep him in
suspense. He consulted the best known physicians about the child, and
brought the cleverest surgeons to see him, but the answer of each one
was the same, ‘Wait, wait! This is a case for time. No one can foretell
the upshot of such a fall until the child has, in a measure, done
growing.’
_Done growing!_ And Wally was not yet three years old. Henry Hindes
would groan within himself, and say that it was impossible. He could
not be kept so long in suspense. He must know at once. He almost felt
sometimes as if he would rather his boy had been killed outright, than
condemned to such a lingering illness as this promised to be. He could
not bear it! He could not! He could not!
During those days of mortification and miserable impatience, how more
than vividly Jenny Crampton’s fair image returned to his memory to
torture him. His wife had advised him to confess all his unhallowed
desires and wishes regarding her, but even Hannah knew little of what
he had hoped, in his maddest moments, regarding Jenny. She had been
a flirt--no doubt of that, though her errant heart had been caught
fast at last by Frederick Walcheren. But before those days, when Henry
Hindes had had no reason to affront her by the expression of his
jealousy, she had not disdained to flirt a little with him on her own
account.
She had meant her expressions of regard for him as nothing but a flash
of coquetry; but he, with his secret passion for the beautiful girl,
and the mad dreams he sometimes indulged in concerning her, had chosen
to translate her kindness in a far warmer manner than she intended he
should. And these tender moments, which were seared upon his memory,
came back with irritating persistency to him now that they were over
for ever--that even the remembrance of them had been dispelled by the
terrible knowledge that his hand had quenched them for ever!
One day that he had brought her a little souvenir for her
birthday--merely an _étui_ of velvet, filled with scissors and thimble,
and the rest of the rubbish provided for the work of ladies who
_don’t_ work, mounted in gold, and encrusted with turquoises--Jenny
had kissed him--had advanced her ripe, pouting lips of her own accord,
and pressed them upon his. He could recall to this day how the piece
of coquetry affected him. She had guessed, well enough, her power over
this apparently staid, sensible man of business, and liked to show it.
She had smiled on him the while in her saucy way and made his head
swim. It was this circumstance, and one or two others like it, that had
caused Jenny to turn against him and say hard things about him directly
she had gained a lover whose heart she wished to keep. It was the
remembrance of such things that had made her fear the expression of his
jealousy, and declare he took an unwarrantable interest in her affairs.
Yet, the feeling her kiss had raised in his breast haunted the wretched
man long after he had caused her death. Sometimes the one memory pained
him more than the other. He would wonder, if he had been bold enough
to speak openly to Jenny of his feelings regarding her, whether she
would have listened to his story and requited his affection, just a
little, in return. She would dance before him, like an airy phantom,
all through the dull, old streets of the city, beckoning him, with her
dimpled little hand, to come nearer and nearer, and taste her lips
once more! And then, when he had worked his imagination up to a pitch
of frenzy, the scene would change, and he would see, instead, Jenny
lying still and white in her shroud, with the purple marks of foul
decomposition upon her cheeks and brow. Yet, dead as she appeared, her
wraith would still have the power to unclose its lustreless eyes and
livid lips to say, ‘_These_ are the lips with which I kissed you, and
_you_ it was who rendered them like this, unfit for anyone but the
worms to touch again.’
He would see her in the sunshine, and in the gloaming--in the crowded
streets and by the deserted river-side--in the Mart and in his private
office--till he nearly went mad with the longing to stamp her out from
his brain, or to plunge himself into the silent river and follow her
wherever she might be.
Much as she had haunted and pursued him since that fatal moment when he
pushed her over the Dover cliff, never had he seen her as he had done
since Wally’s accident! She seemed to come now with a mocking smile
upon her lips--a smile which said, ‘_I_ did it! _I_ made him fall! _I_
did for you what you did for me! Who was it made you drink morphia
until you had paralysed your brain? _I!_ Who was it drove you wild as
you stumbled up these stairs? The remembrance of _me_! You killed me,
and I have subjected your boy to a living death--a death far worse than
mine--a death which will numb his nerves and his brain, and keep him a
prisoner for life, tied to a sofa, inert in mind and muscle. Wally’s
accident was due to me! _You_ made my parents childless. I have robbed
you of your son and heir.’
He suffered extra torture from the daily inquiries which met him as he
entered the office. Of course, every clerk there had heard the story of
his child’s fall, and was anxious to learn what the effects might be.
The constant question of, ‘How is the little boy to-day, sir? I trust
he is better;’ or, ‘Have the doctors given any decided opinion about
Master Wally, sir? Is he any worse this morning?’ drove the unfortunate
father nearly out of his senses, and often caused him to swear, in a
most unfatherly manner, in return for the kindly inquiries made on the
child’s behalf.
He could not banish the thought, even for a moment. His brother had
migrated to the Isle of Wight, and he never saw his wife, except by
Wally’s bedside. The boy, too, who had been so strong and sturdy was
fast being reduced, under the effect of inertion and confinement, to a
thin and sickly-looking child. His hands, that used to be so chubby,
had grown white and limp; his abundant hair had been cropped to make
him more comfortable, and his temper was fractious and irritable. In
fact, he was no longer the little Wally of whom he had been so proud.
He was almost as much changed, for the worse, as Henry Hindes himself.
Sometimes, as his father sighed the long days away, Hannah’s admonition
would recur to his mind: ‘Confess your sins to God, Henry! Tell Him
everything! He knows your weakness and will have compassion on it!’
But where should he confess? To whom could he pour out the tale of
his sins and his follies? He could not trust a private person, and
the parsons of the Protestant church, though they professed to hear
the confessions of the dying, who were passing into the very Presence
of the great Father-Confessor of us all, and had no need of any more
ministrations of man, would not hear a word from the living and the
strong, who were still battling with the difficulties of life. He
recalled what Mr Bloxam had told him one day, not so long before, of
the consolation Catholics found in confession, and how it relieved
their souls and consciences to receive absolution from their priests.
Hindes wondered how they set about it, whether it was a difficult task,
or easily accomplished. In the course of the long walks he frequently
took round the City, when his conscience would not let him sit still in
the office any longer, he had often come across a little Roman Catholic
church, in the East-end of London, where the congregation seemed of a
poorer class than the generality. One afternoon he had peeped inside
it, and looked, with wonder, at the brass ornaments and artificial
flowers on the altar, at the dimly-lighted swinging lamp before the
Virgin’s shrine, at the confessional on either side the building,
covered in dingy red cloth, with the name of the priest, who occupied
it, in white letters over the portal.
Henry Hindes had tried to confess his sins to God. He had poured out
his soul in prayer, as well as he knew how, but the words had sounded
hollow and meaningless in his own ears. He did not know God. He had
never been used to talk to Him, and now that he had so great necessity
of His reply, he did not know how to address Him. True, he had been a
constant attendant at church, but the service had been a mockery to
him. He had never really prayed from his heart. And now his prayers
seemed to come back upon himself, unanswered, as if he had uttered them
to the empty air. Wally grew no better for them. He still lay in his
mother’s bed, weary, languid and fretful. God had certainly not yet
seen fit to answer any prayers on his behalf. Hindes wondered within
himself if confession would really do any good--whether he would feel
easier after it--and whether he should please Heaven by the effort, and
gain some good from it for Wally? It was against all his preconceived
ideas of comfort or right, and he shrunk from the notion with aversion.
What person, not brought up to the practice from childhood, does not? A
priest will tell you that therein lies the merit of the sacrifice, but
the sins that are usually confided to the keeping of the confessional
are very innocent ones. Few criminals take the burden of their crimes
there. They are either too hardened, or too fearful. The confessionals
are, generally speaking, occupied by women, who bring the same list of
follies, week after week, to be absolved from. But that does not prove
that there are not plenty of heavier burdens lying at the bottom of the
lust of the eye and the pride of life.
But Henry Hindes had had no experience of the confessional, either as
a vanity or a relief. He knew what he had heard concerning it, and he
knew that, if he entered it, it would be strictly incognito, for he
knew no Catholics, nor any priests. One afternoon, when his sins were
lying on his mind, if possible, heavier than usual, he saw the door of
the little East-end church standing invitingly open, and walked in, and
took a seat to rest himself. The place was nearly empty. Two or three
women, clad in sober black, and a sprinkling of half-grown children,
were the only occupants, and they were all engaged in prayer. There
was a sense of drowsiness and a subtle smell of incense about the
little temple of God that was consonant with the man’s perturbed
feelings, and seemed to pacify them. Besides, he became interested in
what was going on around him, and it diverted his mind, for a few brief
moments, to watch it. Presently, the heavy baize curtain, that screened
one of the confessionals, parted, and a woman issued thence. She had
evidently been weeping, for she was wiping her eyes as she came out,
but her face was illumined with joy. She entered the body of the church
and took a seat just in front of Hindes. As she knelt down to return
thanks for her absolution, he ever heard her murmur, ‘Oh! the comfort!
the comfort! Thank God for it!’ He watched her earnestly after that,
saw her take out her rosary, and begin to tell her beads, with her
eyes raised and the same look of happiness irradiating her features.
He found himself wondering what she had had to confess, and if it was
anything like--like--what he might have to say. She looked a good,
kindly sort of woman, and when, after a few minutes spent in prayer,
she rose and left the church, Henry Hindes rose also and followed her
into the open street. She looked astonished when she saw him hurrying
after her--still more so when he began to speak. She thought at first
she must have dropped something in her seat, but her little hand-bag
and umbrella were safe. What could this stranger want with her? Her
surprise was still greater when he opened his lips.
‘Forgive me for addressing you,’ he commenced, ‘but do tell me, is
confession such a marvellous consolation to you?’
The woman looked as if she thought he wished to insult her.
‘Sir,’ she replied, ‘I saw you in church just now. Surely you can
answer that question from your own experience?’
‘I cannot. I was in the church, it is true, but I am not of your faith.
But you looked so happy, so grateful, as you left the confessional,
that you almost made me wish I were. Do tell me. Does confession
_really_ relieve your mind? Does it make your sins fall off you like an
old garment? My friends have told me so, but I cannot believe it.’
‘Oh, sir, your friends were right, indeed. It is the greatest comfort
anyone can have. Why, when the priest absolves you, they are all gone.
You not only need not trouble yourself about them again, but you are
strictly forbidden to do so. It would be doubting God’s goodness, and
the power He has imparted to His priests. Oh, sir, do try it, only just
once,’ continued the woman, who saw in Hindes a possible convert. ‘Just
go to dear Father Henniker on the right hand side of the church, and he
will explain it all to you so much better than I can.’
‘But will this father, as you call him, see my face?’
‘Oh, no; he sits behind a grating and you seem to be quite alone with
God. You must put your mouth close to the grating and whisper low, but
he will hear every word you say. And then the happiness of absolution!
You won’t know yourself afterwards. I feel to-day as if I could dance
and sing.’
‘Thank you, thank you, but I only asked for curiosity. You are very
good to have told me so much. Good-afternoon!’
And, raising his hat to her, Hindes went on his way. He had not meant
to take advantage of what he had heard, but somehow, whenever he went
out, his feet seemed drawn to the same little church, until it became
quite a habit of his to go and sit there and watch the penitents. And
one day, almost before he knew what he was doing, he had lifted the
baize curtain of one of the confessionals and walked inside.