Lady Constantine said, 'Hush!' and pointed inquiringly upward.
'He is not overhead, my lady,' replied Swithin's grandmother. 'His
bedroom is at the back of the house.' 'How is he now?' 'He is better, just at this moment; and we are more hopeful. But he
changes so.' 'May I go up? I know he would like to see me.' Her presence having been made known to the sufferer, she was conducted
upstairs to Swithin's room. The way thither was through the large
chamber he had used as a study and for the manufacture of optical
instruments. There lay the large pasteboard telescope, that had been
just such a failure as Crusoe's large boat; there were his diagrams,
maps, globes, and celestial apparatus of various sorts. The absence of
the worker, through illness or death is sufficient to touch the prosiest
workshop and tools with the hues of pathos, and it was with a swelling
bosom that Lady Constantine passed through this arena of his youthful
activities to the little chamber where he lay.
Old Mrs. Martin sat down by the window, and Lady Constantine bent over
Swithin.
'Don't speak to me!' she whispered. 'It will weaken you; it will excite
you. If you do speak, it must be very softly.' She took his hand, and one irrepressible tear fell upon it.
'Nothing will excite me now, Lady Constantine,' he said; 'not even your
goodness in coming. My last excitement was when I lost the battle. . .
Do you know that my discovery has been forestalled? It is that that's
killing me.' 'But you are going to recover; you are better, they say. Is it so?' 'I think I am, to-day. But who can be sure?' 'The poor boy was so upset at finding that his labour had been thrown
away,' said his grandmother, 'that he lay down in the rain, and chilled
his life out.' 'How could you do it?' Lady Constantine whispered. 'O, how could you
think so much of renown, and so little of me? Why, for every discovery
made there are ten behind that await making. To commit suicide like
this, as if there were nobody in the world to care for you!' 'It was done in my haste, and I am very, very sorry for it! I beg both
you and all my few friends never, never to forgive me! It would kill me
with self-reproach if you were to pardon my rashness!' At this moment the doctor was announced, and Mrs. Martin went downstairs
to receive him. Lady Constantine thought she would remain to hear his
report, and for this purpose withdrew, and sat down in a nook of the
adjoining work-room of Swithin, the doctor meeting her as he passed
through it into the sick chamber.