I.

I had been ill for several weeks with what they called brain fever. The

events which I am about to relate happened on the fifteenth day of my

illness.

Before beginning to tell my story, it may not be out of place to say a

few words about myself, in order to clarify to the imagination of the

reader points which would otherwise involve numerous explanatory

digressions, more than commonly misplaced in a tale dealing with the

materials of this.

I am a woman forty years of age. My father was a clergyman; he had been

many years dead. I was living, at the time I refer to, in my mother’s

house in a factory town in Massachusetts. The town need not be more

particularly mentioned, nor genuine family names given, for obvious

reasons. I was the oldest of four children; one of my sisters was

married, one was at home with us, and there was a boy at college.

I was an unmarried, but not an unhappy woman. I had reached a very busy,

and sometimes I hoped a not altogether valueless, middle age. I had used

life and loved it. Beyond the idle impulse of a weary moment, which

signifies no more than the reflex action of a mental muscle, and which I

had been in the habit of rating accordingly, I had never wished to die.

I was well, vigorous, and active. I was not of a dependent or a

despondent temperament.

I am not writing an autobiography, and these things, not of importance

in themselves, require only the briefest allusion. They will serve to

explain the general cast of my life, which in turn may define the

features of my story.

There are two kinds of solitary: he who is drawn by the inward, and he

who chooses the outward life. To this latter class I had belonged.

Circumstances, which it is not necessary to detail here, had thrust me

into the one as a means of self-preservation from the other, while I was

yet quite young.

I had been occupied more largely with the experiences of other people

than with my own. I had been in the habit of being depended upon. It had

been my great good fortune to be able to spend a part of my time among

the sick, the miserable, and the poor. It had been, perhaps, my better

chance to be obliged to balance the emotional perils of such occupations

by those of a different character. My business was that of a

school-teacher, but I had traveled somewhat; I had served as a nurse

during the latter years of the war; in the Sanitary Commission; upon the

Freedmen’s Bureau; as an officer in a Woman’s Prison, and had done a

little work for the State Bureau of Labor among the factory operatives

of our own town. I had therefore, it will be seen, been spared the

deterioration of a monotonous existence. At the time I was taken ill I

was managing a private school, rather large for the corps of assistants

which I could command, and had overworked. I had been at home, thus

employed, with my mother who needed me, for two years.

It may not be unsuitable, before proceeding with my narrative, to say

that I had been a believer in the truths of the Christian religion; not,

however, a devotee. I had not the ecstatic temperament, and was not

known among my friends for any higher order of piety than that which is

implied in trying to do one’s duty for Christ’s sake, and saying little

about it or Him,--less than I wish I had sometimes. It was natural to me

to speak in other ways than by words; that does not prove that it was

best. I had read a little, like all thinking people with any

intellectual margin to their lives, of the religious controversies of

the day, and had not been without my share of pressure from the

fashionable reluctance to believe. Possibly this had affected a

temperament not too much inclined towards the supernatural, but it had

never conquered my faith, which I think had grown to be dearer to me

because I had not kept it without a fight for it. It certainly had

become, for this reason, of greater practical value. It certainly had

become, for this and every reason, the most valuable thing I had, or

hoped to have. I believed in God and immortality, and in the history of

Jesus Christ. I respected and practiced prayer, but chiefly decided what

I ought to do next minute. I loved life and lived it. I neither feared

death nor thought much about it.

* * * * *

When I had been ill a fortnight, it occurred to me that I was very sick,

but not that I could possibly die. I suffered a good deal at first;

after that much less. There was great misery for lack of sleep, and

intolerable restlessness. The worst, however, was the continuity of

care. Those who have borne heavy responsibilities for any length of time

will understand me. The incessant burden pressed on: now a pupil had

fallen into some disgraceful escapade; now the investments of my

mother’s, of which I had the charge, had failed on the dividends; then

I had no remittance for the boy at college; then my sister, in a

heart-breaking emergency, confided to me a peril against which I could

not lift a finger; the Governor held me responsible for the typhoid

among the prisoners; I added eternal columns of statistics for the

Charity Boards, and found forever a mistake in each report; a dying

soldier called to me in piercing tones for a cup of water; the black

girl to whom I read the Gospel of John, drowned her baby; I ran six

looms in the mill for the mother of six children till her seventh should

be born; I staked the salvation of my soul upon answering the argument

of Strauss to the satisfaction of an unbelieving friend, and lost my

wager; I heard my classes in Logic, and was unable to repeat anything

but the “Walrus and the Carpenter,” for the “Barbara Celarent.”

Suddenly, one day, in the thick of this brain-battle, I slipped upon a

pause, in which I distinctly heard a low voice say,

“But Thine eternal thoughts move on,

Thine undisturbed affairs.”

It was my mother’s voice. I perceived then that she sat at my bedside in

the red easy-chair, repeating hymns, poor soul! in the hope of calming

me.

I put out my hand and patted her arm, but it did not occur to me to

speak till I saw that there were masses of pansies and some mignonette

upon the table, and I asked who sent them, and she told me the

school-girls had kept them fresh there every day since I was taken ill.

I felt some pleasure that they should take the trouble to select the

flowers I preferred. Then I asked her where the jelly came from, and the

grapes, and about other trifles that I saw, such as accumulate in any

sick-room. Then she gave me the names of different friends and neighbors

who had been so good as to remember me. Chiefly I was touched by the

sight of a straggly magenta geranium which I noticed growing in a pot by

the window, and which a poor woman from the mills had brought the day

before. I asked my mother if there were any letters, and she said, many,

but that I must not hear them read; she spoke of some from the prison.

The door-bell often rang softly, and I asked why it was muffled, and who

called. Alice had come in, and said something in an undertone to mother

about the Grand Army and resolutions and sympathy; and she used the

names of different people I had almost forgotten, and this confused me.

They stopped talking, and I became at once very ill again.

The next point which I recall is turning to see that the doctor was in

the room. I was in great suffering, and he gave me a few spoonfuls of

something which he said would secure sleep. I desired to ask him what it

was, as I objected to narcotics, and preferred to bear whatever was

before me with the eyes of my mind open, but as soon as I tried to speak

I forgot what I wished to say.

I do not know how long it was before the truth approached me, but it was

towards evening of that day, the fifteenth, as I say, of my illness,

that I said aloud:

“Mother, Tom is in the room. Why has Tom come home?”

Tom was my little brother at college. He came towards the bed as I

spoke. He had his hat in his hand, and he put it up before his eyes.

“Mother!” I repeated louder than before. “_Why have you sent for Tom?_”

But Mother did not answer me. She leaned over me. I saw her looking

down. She had the look that she had when my father died; though I was so

young when that happened, I had never forgotten my mother’s look; and I

had never seen it since, from that day until this hour.

“Mother! am I so sick as _that_? MOTHER!”

“Oh, my dear!” cried Mother. “Oh my dear, my dear!” ...

So after that I understood. I was greatly startled that they should feel

me to be dangerously ill; but I was not alarmed.

“It is nonsense,” I said, after I had thought about it a little while.

“Dr. Shadow was always a croaker. I have no idea of dying! I have nursed

too many sicker people than I am. I don’t _intend_ to die! I am able to

sit up now, if I want to. Let me try.”

“I’ll hold you,” said Tom, softly enough. This pleased me. He lifted all

the pillows, and held me straight out upon his mighty arms. Tom was a

great athlete--took the prizes at the gymnasium. No weaker man could

have supported me for fifteen minutes in the strained position by which

he found that he could give me comfort and so gratify my whim. Tom held

me a long time; I think it must have been an hour; but I began to suffer

again, and could not judge of time. I wondered how that big boy got such

infinite tenderness into those iron muscles. I felt a great respect for

human flesh and bone and blood, and for the power and preciousness of

the living human body. It seemed much more real to me, then, than the

spirit. It seemed an absurdity that any one should suppose that I was in

danger of being done with life. I said:--

“I’m going to live, Tom! Tell Mother I have no idea of dying. I prefer

to live.”

Tom nodded; he did not speak; I felt a hot dash of tears on my face,

which surprised me; I had not seen Tom cry since he lost the football

match when he was eleven years old.

They gave me something more out of the spoon, again, I think, at that

moment, and I felt better. I said to Tom:--

“You see!” and bade them send Mother to lie down, and asked Alice to

make her beef-tea, and to be sure and make it as we did in the army. I

do not remember saying anything more after this. I certainly did not

suffer any more. I felt quiet and assured. Nothing farther troubled me.

The room became so still that I thought they must all have gone away,

and left me with the nurse, and that she, finding me so well, had

herself fallen asleep. This rested me--to feel that I was no longer

causing them pain--more than anything could have done; and I began to

think the best thing I could do would be to take a nap myself.

With this conviction quietly in mind I turned over, with my face towards

the wall, to go to sleep. I grew calmer, and yet more calm, as I lay

there. There was a cross of Swiss carving on the wall, hanging over a

picture of my father. Leonardo’s Christ--the one from the drawing for

the Last Supper, that we all know--hung above both these. Owing to my

position, I could not see the other pictures in the room, which was

large, and filled with little things, the gifts of those who had been

kind to me in a life of many busy years. Only these three objects--the

cross, the Christ, and my father--came within range of my eyes as the

power of sleep advanced. The room was darkened, as it had been since I

became so ill, so that I was not sure whether it were night or day. The

clock was striking. I think it struck two; and I perceived the odor of

the mignonette. I think it was the last thing I noticed before going to

sleep, and I remembered, as I did so, the theories which gave to the

sense of smell greater significance than any of the rest; and remembered

to have read that it was either the last or the first to give way in the

dying. (I could not recall, in my confused condition, which.) I thought

of this with pleased and idle interest; but did not associate the

thought with the alarm felt by my friends about my condition.

I could have slept but a short time when I woke, feeling much easier.

The cross, the Christ, and the picture of my father looked at me calmly

from the wall on which the sick-lamp cast a steady, soft light. Then I

remembered that it was night, of course, and felt chagrined that I could

have been confused on this point.

The room seemed close to me, and I turned over to ask for more air.

As I did so, I saw some one sitting in the cushioned window-seat by the

open window--the eastern window. No one had occupied this seat, on

account of the draught and chill, since my illness. As I looked

steadily, I saw that the person who sat there was my father.

His face was turned away, but his figure and the contour of his noble

head were not to be mistaken. Although I was a mere girl when he died, I

felt no hesitation about this. I knew at once, and beyond all doubt,

that it was he. I experienced pleasure, but little, if any, surprise.

As I lay there looking at him, he turned and regarded me. His deep eyes

glowed with a soft, calm light; but yet, I know not why, they expressed

more love than I had ever seen in them before. He used to love us

nervously and passionately. He had now the look of one whose whole

nature is saturated with rest, and to whom the fitfulness, distrust, or

distress of intense feeling acting upon a super-sensitive organization,

were impossible. As he looked towards me, he smiled. He had one of the

sweetest smiles that ever illuminated a mortal face.

“Why, Father!” I said aloud. He nodded encouragingly, but did not speak.

“Father?” I repeated, “Father, is this _you_?” He laughed a little,

softly, putting up one hand and tossing his hair off from his

forehead--an old way of his.

“What are you here for?” I asked again. “Did Mother send for _you_,

too?”

When I had said this, I felt confused and troubled; for though I did not

remember that he was dead--I mean I did not put the thought in any such

form to myself, or use that word or any of its synonyms--yet I

remembered that he had been absent from our family circle for a good

while, and that if Mother had sent for him because I had a brain fever,

it would have been for some reason not according to her habit.

“It is strange,” I said. “It isn’t like her. I don’t understand the

thing at all.”

Now, as I continued to look at the corner of the room where my father

was sitting, I saw that he had risen from the cushioned window-seat, and

taken a step or two towards me. He stopped, however, and stood quite

still, and looked at me most lovingly and longingly; and _then_ it was

that he held out his arms to me.

“Oh,” cried I, “I wish I could come! But you don’t know how sick I am. I

have not walked a step for over two weeks.”

He did not speak even yet, but still held out his arms with that look of

unutterably restful love. I felt the elemental tie between parent and

child draw me. It seemed to me as if I had reached the foundation of all

human feeling; as if I had gone down--how shall I say it?--below the

depths of all other love. I had always known I loved him, but not like

that. I was greatly moved.

“But you don’t understand me,” I repeated with some agitation. “I

_can’t_ walk.” I thought it very strange that he did not, in

consideration of my feebleness, come to me.

Then for the first time he spoke.

“Come,” he said gently. His voice sounded quite natural; I only noticed

that he spoke under his breath, as if not to awake the nurse, or any

person who was in the room.

At this, I moved, and sat up on the edge of my bed; although I did so

easily enough, I lost courage at that point. It seemed impossible to go

farther. I felt a little chilly, and remembered, too, that I was not

dressed. A warm white woolen wrapper of my own, and my slippers, were

within reach, by the head of the bed; Alice wore them when she watched

with me. I put these things on, and then paused, expecting to be

overcome with exhaustion after the effort. To my surprise, I did not

feel tired at all. I believe, rather, I felt a little stronger. As I put

the clothes on, I noticed the magenta geranium across the room. These,

I think, were the only things which attracted my attention.

“Come here to me,” repeated Father; he spoke more decidedly, this time

with a touch of authority. I remembered hearing him speak just so when

Tom was learning to walk; he began by saying, “Come, sonny boy!” but

when the baby played the coward, he said, “My son, come here!”

As if I had been a baby, I obeyed. I put my feet to the floor, and found

that I stood strongly. I experienced a slight giddiness for a moment,

but when this passed, my head felt clearer than before. I walked

steadily out into the middle of the room. Each step was firmer than the

other. As I advanced, he came to meet me. My heart throbbed. I thought I

should have fallen, not from weakness, but from joy.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said encouragingly; “that is right. You are doing

finely. Only a few steps more. There!”

It was done. I had crossed the distance which separated us, and my dear

Father, after all those years, took me, as he used to do, into his

arms....