“They who unite the natural love of healing to the highest spiritual
development.”
“By no means, then, necessarily they who were skilled in the treatment
of diseases on earth?” I asked, laughing.
“Such are oftener among the patients,” said Marie Sauvée sadly. To me,
so lately from the earth, and our low earthly way of finding amusement
in facts of this nature, this girl’s gravity was a rebuke. I thanked her
for it, and we passed by the hospital--which I secretly made up my mind
to investigate at another time--and so out into the wider country, more
sparsely settled, but it seemed to me more beautiful than that we had
left behind.
“There,” I said, at length, “is to my taste the loveliest spot we have
seen yet. That is the most homelike of all these homes.”
We stopped before a small and quiet house built of curiously inlaid
woods, that reminded me of Sorrento work as a great achievement may
remind one of a first and faint suggestion. So exquisite was the carving
and coloring, that on a larger scale the effect might have interfered
with the solidity of the building, but so modest were the proportions
of this charming house, that its dignity was only enhanced by its
delicacy. It was shielded by trees, some familiar to me, others strange.
There were flowers--not too many; birds; and I noticed a fine dog
sunning himself upon the steps. The sweep of landscape from all the
windows of this house must have been grand. The wind drove up from the
sea. The light, which had a peculiar depth and color, reminding me of
that which on earth flows from under the edge of a breaking storm-cloud
at the hour preceding sunset, formed an aureola about the house. When my
companion suggested my examining this place, since it so attracted me, I
hesitated, but yielding to her wiser judgment, strolled across the
little lawn, and stood, uncertain, at the threshold. The dog arose as I
came up, and met me cordially, but no person seemed to be in sight.
“Enter,” said Marie Sauvée in a tone of decision. “You are expected. Go
where you will.”
I turned to remonstrate with her, but the girl had disappeared. Finding
myself thus thrown on my own resources, and having learned already the
value of obedience to mysterious influences in this new life, I gathered
courage, and went into the house. The dog followed me affectionately,
rather than suspiciously.
For a few moments I stood in the hall or ante-room, alone and perplexed.
Doors opened at right and left, and vistas of exquisitely-ordered rooms
stretched out. I saw much of the familiar furniture of a modest home,
and much that was unfamiliar mingled therewith. I desired to ask the
names or purposes of certain useful articles, and the characters and
creators of certain works of art. I was bewildered and delighted. I had
something of the feeling of a rustic visitor taken for the first time to
a palace or imposing town-house.
Was Heaven an aggregate of homes like this? Did everlasting life move on
in the same dear ordered channel--the dearest that human experiment had
ever found--the channel of family love? Had one, after death, the old
blessedness without the old burden? The old sweetness without the old
mistake? The familiar rest, and never the familiar fret? Was there
always in the eternal world “somebody to come home to”? And was there
always the knowledge that it could not be the wrong person? Was all
_that_ eliminated from celestial domestic life? Did Heaven solve the
problem on which earth had done no more than speculate?
While I stood, gone well astray on thoughts like these, feeling still
too great a delicacy about my uninvited presence in this house, I heard
the steps of the host, or so I took them to be; they had the indefinable
ring of the master’s foot. I remained where I was, not without
embarrassment, ready to apologize for my intrusion as soon as he should
come within sight. He crossed the long room at the left, leisurely; I
counted his quiet footsteps; he advanced, turned, saw me--I too,
turned--and so, in this way, it came about that I stood face to face
with my own father.
... I had found the eternal life full of the unexpected, but this was
almost the sweetest thing that had happened to me yet.
Presently my father took me over the house and the grounds; with a
boyish delight, explaining to me how many years he had been building and
constructing and waiting with patience in his heavenly home for the
first one of his own to join him. Now, he too, should have “somebody to
come home to.” As we dwelt upon the past and glanced at the future, our
full hearts overflowed. He explained to me that my new life had but now,
in the practical sense of the word, begun; since a human home was the
centre of all growth and blessedness. When he had shown me to my own
portion of the house, and bidden me welcome to it, he pointed out to me
a certain room whose door stood always open, but whose threshold was
never crossed. I hardly feel that I have the right, in this public way,
to describe, in detail, the construction or adornment of this room. I
need only say that Heaven itself seemed to have been ransacked to bring
together the daintiest, the most delicate, the purest, thoughts and
fancies that celestial skill or art could create. Years had gone to the
creation of this spot; it was a growth of time, the occupation of that
loneliness which must be even in the happy life, when death has
temporarily separated two who had been one. I was quite prepared for his
whispered words, when he said,--
“Your mother’s room, my dear. It will be all ready for her at any time.”
This union had been a _marriage_--not one of the imperfect ties that
pass under the name, on earth. Afterwards, when I learned more of the
social economy of the new life, I perceived more clearly the rarity and
peculiar value of an experience which had in it the elements of what
might be called (if I should be allowed the phrase) eternal permanency,
and which involved, therefore, none of the disintegration and
redistribution of relations consequent upon passing from temporary or
mistaken choices to a fixed and perfect state of society.
Later, on that same evening, I was called eagerly from below. I was
resting, and alone;--I had, so to speak, drawn my first breath in
Heaven; once again, like a girl in my own room under my father’s roof;
my heart at anchor, and my peace at full tide. I ran as I used to run,
years ago, when he called me, crying down,--
“I’m coming, Father,” while I delayed a moment to freshen my dress, and
to fasten it with some strange white flowers that climbed over my
window, and peered, nodding like children, into the room.
When I reached the hall, or whatever might be the celestial name for the
entrance room below, I did not immediately see my father, but I heard
the sound of voices beyond, and perceived the presence of many people in
the house. As I hesitated, wondering what might be the etiquette of
these new conditions, and whether I should be expected to play the
hostess at a reception of angels or saints, some one came up from behind
me, I think, and held out his hand in silence.
“St. Johns!” I cried, “Jamie St. Johns! The last time I saw _you_”--
“The last time you saw me was in a field-hospital after the battle of
Malvern Hills,” said St. Johns. “I died in your arms, Miss Mary. Shot
flew about you while you got me that last cup of water. I died hard. You
sang the hymn I asked for--‘Ye who tossed on beds of pain’--and the
shell struck the tent-pole twenty feet off, but you sang right on. I was
afraid you would stop. I was almost gone. But you never faltered. You
sang my soul out--do you remember? I’ve been watching all this while for
you. I’ve been a pretty busy man since I got to this place, but I’ve
always found time to run in and ask your father when he expected you.
“I meant to be the first all along; but I hear there’s a girl got ahead
of me. She’s here, too, and some more women. But most of us are the
boys, to-night, Miss Mary,--come to give you a sort of
house-warming--just to say we’ve never forgotten!... and you see we want
to say ‘Welcome home at last’ to _our_ army woman--God bless her--as she
blessed us!
“Come in, Miss Mary! Don’t feel bashful. It’s nobody but your own boys.
Here we are. There’s a thing I remember--you used to read it. ‘_For when
ye fail_’--you know I never could quote straight--‘_they shall receive
you into everlasting habitations_’--Wasn’t that it? Now here. See! Count
us! _Not one missing_, do you see? You said you’d have us all here
yet--all that died before you did. You used to tell us so. You prayed
it, and you lived it, and you did it, and, by His everlasting mercy,
here we are. Look us over. Count again. I couldn’t make a speech on
earth and I can’t make one in Heaven--but the fellows put me up to it.
_Come_ in, Miss Mary! _Dear_ Miss Mary--why, we want to shake hands with
you, all around! We want to sit and tell army-stories half the night. We
want to have some of the old songs, and--What! Crying, Miss
Mary?--_You?_ We never saw you cry in all our lives. Your lip used to
tremble. You got pretty white; but you weren’t that kind of woman. Oh,
see here! _Crying_ in HEAVEN?”--