East Lynne eBook

Ellen Wood (author)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 794 pages of information about East Lynne.

East Lynne eBook

Ellen Wood (author)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 794 pages of information about East Lynne.

William shook his head in disbelief.  He was precisely that sort of child from whom it is next to impossible to disguise facts; quick, thoughtful, observant, and advanced beyond his years.  Had no words been dropped in his hearing, he would have suspected the evil, by the care evinced for him, but plenty of words had been dropped; hints, by which he had gathered suspicion; broad assertions, like Hannah’s, which had too fully supplied it; and the boy in his inmost heart, knew as well that death was coming for him as that death itself did.

“Then, if there’s nothing the matter with me, why could not Dr. Martin speak to you before me to-day?  Why did he send me into the other room while he told you what he thought?  Ah, Madame Vine, I am as wise as you.”

“A wise little boy, but mistaken sometimes,” she said from her aching heart.

“It’s nothing to die, when God loves us.  Lord Vane says so.  He had a little brother who died.”

“A sickly child, who was never likely to live, he had been pale and ailing from a baby,” spoke Lady Isabel.

“Why!  Did you know him?”

“I—­I heard so,” she replied, turning off her thoughtless avowal in the best manner she could.

“Don’t you know that I am going to die?”

“No.”

“Then why have you been grieving since we left Dr. Martin’s?  And why do you grieve at all for me?  I am not your child.”

The words, the scene altogether, overcame her.  She knelt down by the sofa, and her tears burst forth freely.  “There!  You see!” cried William.

“Oh, William, I—­I had a little boy of my own, and when I look at you, I think of him, and that is why I cry.”

“I know.  You have told us of him before.  His name was William, too.”

She leaned over him, her breath mingling with his; she took his little hand in hers; “William, do you know that those whom God loves best He takes first?  Were you to die, you would go to Heaven, leaving all the cares and sorrows of the world behind you.  It would have been happier for many of us had we died in infancy.”

“Would it have been happier for you?”

“Yes,” she faintly said.  “I have had more than my share of sorrow.  Sometimes I think that I cannot support it.”

“Is it not past, then?  Do you have sorrow now?”

“I have it always.  I shall have it till I die.  Had I died a child, William, I should have escaped it.  Oh!  The world is full of it! full and full.”

“What sort of sorrow?”

“All sorts.  Pain, sickness, care, trouble, sin, remorse, weariness,” she wailed out.  “I cannot enumerate the half that the world brings upon us.  When you are very, very tired, William, does it not seem a luxury, a sweet happiness, to lie down at night in your little bed, waiting for the bliss of sleep?”

“Yes.  And I am often tired; so tired as that.”

“Then just so do we, who are tired of the world’s cares, long for the grave in which we shall lie down to rest.  We covet it, William; long for it; but you cannot understand that.”

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
East Lynne from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.