Hide and Seek

''It's not killed her,' says the doctor. 'Her brain's escaped injury.'

'I didn't hear another word.

'I don't know how long it was before I seemed to wake up like, with a dreadful feeling of pain and tearing of everything inside me. I was on the landlady's bed, and Jemmy was standing over me with a bottle of salts. 'They've put her to bed,' he says to me, 'and the doctor's setting her arm.' I didn't recollect at first; but when I did, it was almost as bad as seeing the dreadful accident all over again.

'It was some time before any of us found out what had really happened. The breaking of her arm, the doctor said, had saved her head; which was only cut and bruised a little, not half as bad as was feared. Day after day, and night after night, I sat by her bedside, comforting her through her fever, and the pain of the splints on her arm, and never once suspecting—no more, I believe, than she did—the awful misfortune that had really happened. She was always wonderful quiet and silent for a child, poor lamb, in little illnesses that she'd had before; and somehow, I didn't wonder—at least, at first—why she never said a word, and never answered me when I spoke to her.

'This went on, though, after she got better in her health; and a strange look came over her eyes. They seemed to be always wondering and frightened, in a confused way, about something or other. She took, too, to rolling her head about restlessly from one side of the pillow to the other; making a sort of muttering and humming now and then, but still never seeming to notice or to care for anything I said to her. One day, I was warming her a nice cup of beef-tea over the fire, when I heard, quite sudden and quite plain, these words from where she lay on the bed, 'Why are you always so quiet here? Why doesn't somebody speak to me?'

'I knew there wasn't another soul in the room but the poor child at that time; and yet, the voice as spoke those words was no more like little Mary's voice, than my voice, sir, is like yours. It sounded, somehow, hoarse and low, and deep and faint, all at the same time; the strangest, shockingest voice to come from a child, who always used to speak so clearly and prettily before, that ever I heard. If I was only cleverer with my words, ma'am, and could tell you about it properly—but I can't. I only know it gave me such a turn to hear her, that I upset the beef-tea, and ran back in a fright to the bed. 'Why, Mary! Mary!' says I, quite loud, 'are you so well already that you're trying to imitate Mr. Jubber's gruff voice?'

'There was the same wondering look in her eyes—only wilder than I had ever seen it yet—while I was speaking. When I'd done, she says in the same strange way, 'Speak out, mother; I can't hear you when you whisper like that.' She was as long saying these words, and bungled over them as much, as if she was only just learning to speak. I think I got the first suspicion then, of what had really happened. 'Mary!' I bawled out as loud as I could, 'Mary! can't you hear me?' She shook her head, and stared up at me with the frightened, bewildered look again: then seemed to get pettish and impatient all of a sudden—the first time I ever saw her so—and hid her face from me on the pillow.

'Just then the doctor come in. 'Oh, sir!' says I, whispering to him—just as if I hadn't found out a minute ago that she couldn't hear me at the top of my voice—'I'm afraid there's something gone wrong with her hearing—.' 'Have you only just now suspected that?' says he; 'I've been afraid of it for some days past, but I thought it best to say nothing till I'd tried her; and she's hardly well enough yet, poor child, to be worried with experiments on her ears.' 'She's much better,' says I; 'indeed, she's much better to-day, sir! Oh, do try her now, for it's so dreadful to be in doubt a moment longer than we can help.'

'He went up to the bedside, and I followed him. She was lying with her face hidden away from us on the pillow, just as it was when I left her. The doctor says to me, 'Don't disturb her, don't let her look round, so that she can see us—I'm going to call to her.' And he called 'Mary' out loud, twice; and she never moved. The third time he tried her, it was with such a shout at the top of his voice, that the landlady come up, thinking something had happened. I was looking over his shoulder, and saw that my dear child never started in the least. 'Poor little thing,' says the doctor, quite sorrowful, 'this is worse than I expected.' He stooped down and touched her, as he said this; and she turned round directly, and put out her hand to have her pulse felt as usual. I tried to get out of her sight, for I was crying, and didn't wish her to see it; but she was too sharp for me. She looked hard in my face and the landlady's, then in the doctor's, which was downcast enough; for he had got very fond of her, just as everybody else did who saw much of little Mary.

''What's the matter?' she says, in the same sort of strange unnatural voice again. We tried to pacify her, but only made her worse. 'Why do you keep on whispering?' she asks. 'Why don't you speak out loud, so that I can—,' and then she stopped, seemingly in a sort of helpless fright and bewilderment. She tried to get up in bed, and her face turned red all over. 'Can she read writing?' says the doctor. 'Oh, yes, sir, says I; 'she can read and write beautiful for a child of her age; my husband taught her.' 'Get me paper and pen and ink directly,' says he to the landlady; who went at once and got him what he wanted. 'We must quiet her at all hazards,' says the doctor, 'or she'll excite herself into another attack of fever. She feels what's the matter with her, but don't understand it; and I'm going to tell her by means of this paper. It's a risk,' he says, writing down on the paper in large letters, You Are Deaf; 'but I must try all I can do for her ears immediately; and this will prepare her,' says he, going to the bed, and holding the paper before her eyes.

'She shrank back on the pillow, as still as death, the instant she saw it; but didn't cry, and looked more puzzled and astonished, I should say, than distressed. But she was breathing dreadful quick—I felt that, as I stooped down and kissed her. 'She's too young,' says the doctor, 'to know what the extent of her calamity really is. You stop here and keep her quiet till I come back, for I trust the case is not hopeless yet.' 'But whatever has made her deaf, sir?' says the landlady, opening the door for him. 'The shock of that fall in the circus,' says he, going out in a very great hurry. I thought I should never have held up my head again, as I heard them words, looking at little Mary, with my arm round her neck all the time.

'Well, sir, the doctor come back; and he syringed her ears first—and that did no good. Then he tried blistering, and then he put on leeches; and still it was no use. 'I'm afraid it is a hopeless case,' says he; 'but there's a doctor who's had more practice than I've had with deaf people, who comes from where he lives to our Dispensary once a week. To-morrow's his day, and I'll bring him here with me.'

'And he did bring this gentleman, as he promised he would—an old gentleman, with such a pleasant way of speaking that I understood everything he said to me directly. 'I'm afraid you must make up your mind to the worst,' says he. 'I have been hearing about the poor child from my friend who's attended her; and I'm sorry to say I don't think there's much hope.' Then he goes to the bed and looks at her. 'Ah,' says he, 'there's just the same expression in her face that I remember seeing in a mason's boy—a patient of mine—who fell off a ladder, and lost his hearing altogether by the shock. You don't hear what I'm saying, do you, my dear?' says he in a hearty cheerful way. 'You don't hear me saying that you're the prettiest little girl I ever saw in my life?' She looked up at him confused, and quite silent. He didn't speak to her again, but told me to turn her on the bed, so that he could get at one of her ears.

'He pulled out some instruments, while I did what he asked, and put them into her ear, but so tenderly that he never hurt her. Then he looked in, through a sort of queer spy-glass thing. Then he did it all over again with the other ear; and then he laid down the instruments and pulled out his watch. 'Write on a piece of paper,' says he to the other doctor: 'Do you know that the watch is ticking?' When this was done, he makes signs to little Mary to open her mouth, and puts as much of his watch in as would go between her teeth, while the other doctor holds up the paper before her. When he took the watch out again, she shook her head, and said 'No,' just in the same strange voice as ever. The old gentleman didn't speak a word as he put the watch back in his fob;