Aleck came for news every day for a week before he got any different
report, but at last the hard anxious look had lifted a little from
Joan’s face, and she almost smiled as she saw who was there.
“The bairnie’s waked once mair,” she said, “and lifts his een at us as
if he kenned wha were his friends again, and the doctor’ll no object to
his having a pillow on the lounge for a bit change, the day. But the
pain is unco dree, and shows no sign o’ wearin’ out for many a day,
though the Lord suld een show pity and tak it frae him at the last.
But ye’ll come again, and I mak nae doubt we’ll soon find the day when
ye can speak wi’ him yoursel’, and get his ain thanks for all your
kindness.”
But the doctor was not quite ready for any more experiments just yet.
If he had been sure that Creepy had only seen Aleck at the window,
he would gladly have tried, but he would have liked to keep every
remembrance of the school out of his sight for ever.
But in a few days more, it showed plainly that something must be done,
or he would have only the same little patient as a year ago on his
hands, and with nothing like the hope there was of better things.
“They’ve done their work well, those boys,” he said. “I should say
that was the same grieved hopeless face, the same old pain, and the
same silent matter-of-course bearing of it, that I found under that
dismal old butternut-tree a year ago. The only difference is, it’s got
a ten-times stronger hold than it ever had before, the pain as well
as the rest of it, and I’m afraid it’s a life business this time. I
can’t get a word from the child unless I fight for it, and I don’t dare
try even that, for fear of that miserable ‘all but me,’ that’s taken
possession of him again. I wish those fellows at the school could just
once see the smile he tries to give me, as if he wanted things to be
comfortable with _me_, though there was no hope for _him_ in the world.
And there isn’t, if time and doing just the right thing don’t bring him
up out of this better than I see any promise of just now; and what that
right thing is, isn’t so easy to decide from one day to another.”
The doctor paced the room two or three times, and then stopped and
shot one of the old quick looks and warming smiles into Creepy’s face.
“See here, little man, do you know what friend has been bringing you
these flowers ever since you were sick?”
Creepy shook his head.
“I haven’t any friends except you--you two,” he said.
“Haven’t you? Perhaps you have more than you think. Do you remember who
jumped through a window to give you a bunch of roses one day? It is he,
and he wants to see you. Do you think you feel well enough to-day?”
“Oh no!” exclaimed Creepy, shrinking back among his pillows with almost
a look of terror, and a hot flush coming up to his face, “don’t let
_any_ one come here! Don’t let any one come to see me ever again, as
long as I live!” and the doctor saw the slender fingers tremble as he
shut them tightly together.
“Well, well,” said the doctor quickly, “no one shall come until you
wish it, but perhaps you will think differently before long. You will
be tired of Joan and me some day;” and he turned off to talking of
something else.
But he would not leave it so long.
“This will never do,” he said, when he had waited a few days more and
Creepy was regularly established on the lounge; “the child must have
his medicines, however bitter the first taste may be, and he needs just
what he did need when I sent him to school. If he had found companions
then, instead of a set of wild animals--” The doctor stopped, for he
didn’t like to finish the sentence, even in his thoughts. The contrast
of what might have been, with what was likely to be, was too sharp.
So he turned suddenly and lifted Creepy in his arms. “Look here, little
man,” he said, “whose word would you take first, mine or the first
person’s you might happen to come across?”
Creepy hesitated.
The recollection of the whispering he had heard as he lay under the old
rock, shot through him. “The doctor had been mocking him with all the
rest;” but he could not think so; he knew it was a lie--and yet!
“Eh, little man?” asked the doctor again, waiting for his answer.
“I know--I know you always tell me what you think is true,” he said at
last.
The doctor wouldn’t notice how he shaped what he said, and went on.
“Good. Do you remember I told you once there was a place in the world
and a share in it for you, the same as for anyone else? Well, I told
you the truth, and it is just as true to-day as it was then, but
there’s a battle to share in, as well as a kingdom. We’ve each got to
take our place in the ranks, little man, and you with the rest, and
you’ve got some fighting to do that doesn’t come to all of us for each
one has his own. As a general thing you’ve got to fight this old pain
of yours I’m afraid. I hoped it was sent where it would never find its
way back, but I’m afraid now we shall have more or less of it in the
way, for a good many years. And you’ll have to fight with feeling tired
and ill a good deal, while you see others well and strong; and you’ll
have to remember that you are small and crooked while you see them tall
and straight. And you will have to know that every one who looks at you
for the first time will notice this, though those who know you will
never think of it, unless to be sorry.
“Do you think you can step right into the ranks and meet all this
like a brave soldier, remembering that you are serving the King and
the Elder Brother? Never mind about answering just now; you can think
about it awhile, and remember he has not set you to do this without
providing you with weapons. He has given you a nature that can make
every one love you, and a brain that can make every one respect you,
and can enable you to leave half the rest of the world behind in
anything you undertake; and I promise you you’ll get stronger, and find
yourself richer, every day you carry on the fight, like a brave little
man as you are.”
The fight began then and there! _Must_ he, _could_ he go out into the
world again? Must he let any one but the doctor and Joan look at him?
must he hear what any one might choose to say? He _had_ thought he
could _never_ open the doctor’s door again, never see a boy of his own
age, never see any one. But if it was serving the King and the Elder
Brother! If _they_ wished it! And if they would think he were a coward
or a shirk if he didn’t come up!
There isn’t sharper fighting on many a battle-field, than went on in
the corner of Creepy’s lounge that day; but it was too sharp to last
long, and he was too brave a little soldier to lose the battle; and
when Joan opened the door for Aleck the next morning, a voice, not very
strong to be sure, but clear and true, called from the little room at
the head of the stairs, “Ask him to come in, please.”
“Come, then,” said Joan, only too gladly, and Aleck sprang up the
stairs and pushed open the door which stood a little ajar.
Creepy’s courage had almost left him again, by that time. What if he
should say anything about that day?
Aleck himself had taken one second on the way to wonder how he was
going to manage it, but he stepped in as briskly and as gayly as if
they were the oldest friends in the world, and everything had always
been going on merrily between them.
“Why, how are you?” he said, giving his hand to Creepy; “we’ve missed
you so long from the window, Nelly and I, that we were afraid you
weren’t coming any more, and how to find you we didn’t know. And here
you are, not five minutes walk from us after all! You see we couldn’t
let it go so, after we had once got to expecting you, and so when you
stopped coming I returned some of your visits. That’s fair, isn’t it?
But you’ve been horridly sick, haven’t you? Shut up here all these
pleasant days, and no end of pain, they tell me.”
“Yes,” said Creepy, “but that doesn’t matter much. I was used to pain
a long time, and if it comes back now, why it’s only the same thing,
you know.”
[Illustration]
“Well, if it went off once, it will again, I hope; and the first thing
when it’s better, we shall be looking for you. There isn’t much in the
conservatory just now of course, but the garden almost goes ahead of
it. Did you ever take care of flowers?”
“I never saw one till I saw yours,” said Creepy; and then seeing a look
of astonishment, he added, “I never saw anything, until the doctor
came.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Aleck, laughing, that Creepy need not
see how he really felt, “those eyes of yours look as if they had seen
a great deal, and looked through it all pretty well too. But books are
the main things, I guess, from what I see about here. Does the doctor
let you read yet?”
“Not much; he brought me a book yesterday, but I’m not to read it yet.”
“That looks jolly,” said Aleck, taking up the book and running over the
illustrations. “There’s a sail-boat that looks for all the world like
mine. Do you like sailing? I’m going out in the harbor this afternoon,
and I wish you were well enough to go along. Perhaps you’d like a
row-boat better; everybody likes rowing, I believe.”
“All but me,” said Creepy, and then he was glad the doctor was not
there to hear; he did not mean to say it, but it slipped out.
“It does want a pretty strong arm,” said Aleck, “and I don’t know that
it’s quite equal to sailing, after all;” and then he went off into a
long discourse about boats and yachts and rigging, that was rather
bewildering to Creepy; but it was so pleasant to hear it for all that,
that he almost forgot everything else, and the battle of the day before
went clear out of sight. But it all rose up again when Aleck said he
was afraid he was staying too long, and then returned to the subject of
Creepy’s visits.
“You’ll come and let Nelly see you again the first day you’re well
enough, wont you?”
The hot flush came up once more, and Creepy shrank back among the
pillows, as he had when the doctor had asked him to see Aleck, and for
a moment the enemy had the upper-hand again.
“Oh, I can’t! I can’t let her see me, and I don’t want ever to look at
her again; she is too beautiful!”
“And don’t you like beautiful things?” asked Aleck, though fearing
that he understood only too well.
“Yes; but if _she_ should look at _me_! If she should say ‘Humpy!’ She
would think it, if she didn’t say the words, and I couldn’t bear it.”
There! he had done the very thing he had thought would kill him if
Aleck did it!
In a moment Aleck was on his knee before Creepy’s corner, and had one
arm placed gently and tenderly about his neck.
“Are you thinking of that still?” he said. “Haven’t you got those
miserable words out of your head yet? If you only knew how the boys
are always saying such things to each other, and how nobody ever minds
it or thinks of it again. It’s a horrid way they have, and they ought
to have seen that you weren’t used to roughing it; they’ve been sorry
enough since, but if you only knew how they never gave a thought to
what they were saying, you might forget it.”
“But they told the truth,” said Creepy, looking drearily at Aleck;
“they called me Humpy, and said, ‘What is a fellow like him going to
do?’ and it was true! No, I can’t forget it, but I can bear it; the
doctor says I must, to be a good soldier, but I shall always know it is
true.”
“And what if it is true? What if you are not as straight as they, and
haven’t the strength for all the rough things they have going on? Don’t
you know you’ve got a face that would make up for all the backs in
the world, and that you can leave all the boys where they can’t find
themselves in their studies?”
Creepy shook his head.
“It isn’t only they; every one will say it as long as I live.”
“Nobody will say it that has any sense, and you can soon show the rest
of them that they don’t know what they are talking about. You’ll make a
place for yourself in the world to be proud of yet.”
Creepy looked up with the same smile that worried the doctor so when he
saw it.
“No,” he said, “I don’t think there’ll be anything for me but to fight.
The doctor used to think I should have my share, but he doesn’t think
so now; he thinks I shall always be sick. Not that he says so, but I
know.”
“Oh, don’t say so, don’t even think so, until you know it is true. And
even if it should be true, don’t you know how close the Lord Jesus used
to come to the weak and the sick, and that he’s just the same now in
his heart? It always seemed to me it would almost pay to suffer a good
deal, just to know how tender his heart was towards you, and how he
must be thinking of it all, and only waiting for the day to come when
he can take it all away. He must have a great many thoughts about you,
that he never has about great, strong, rough fellows like the rest of
us.”
Creepy did not answer for a moment; he could not have told Aleck for
his life what a help it was to hear him say all these things. He only
looked in his face, and said, “I shall never be one of His princes, but
I’ll try to make as good a soldier as I can. And I hope you’ll come
again--that is--you’ve been so kind that I forgot--but, of course,
you’ll have other things to do.”
“Of course I’ll come,” said Aleck; “I should not know how to be
refused, after this. I’ve got to keep a sharp look out ahead, it’s
true, till after examination; but a fellow must have his pleasures
somewhere, you know. Good-by; I’ll be sure to find you better when I
come again.”
The doctor thought so too. Creepy was off the lounge the next day,
and in a day or two more insisted upon beginning to open the door
for patients again. The pain was there still, and bad enough, it is
true, and there was too much of the old expression in his smile; but
there he was, going quietly about again, very much as if nothing had
happened, except indeed that there was no strength yet.
“Look at that!” said the doctor. “If one visit from a boy four years
older than himself has been such a medicine, what would it have been if
he could have gone to school with twenty of his own age, as I wanted
him to, instead of being hunted down by a set of--well, no matter what
they were--the very first day I trusted him among them!”
The doctor was right, but he hadn’t got hold of quite the whole of it.
Aleck’s visit had done a great work, true enough, but the best part
of it was helping Creepy to clinch the victory the doctor’s words had
set him to fighting for just before. And if he had lost the feeling,
perhaps for ever, that had made Mrs. Ganderby notice how light his step
was, and how he “held up his head to look other folks in the face,”
there was something else keeping his heart warm, and giving him courage
for what might be before him. He couldn’t help seeing what he had to
meet; no one could convince him that it was not there; but he would be
one of the King’s soldiers; he would fight as bravely as he could!