“WAITING AND WATCHING FOR ME.”
It was the first of January when Rossie left Rothsay for St. Louis, and
three weeks from that day a wild storm was sweeping over the hills of
Vermont, and great clouds of sleet and snow went drifting down into the
open grave in Bronson church-yard, toward which a little group of
mourners was slowly wending its way. Neither Florida skies nor Florida
air had availed to restore life and health to poor wasted, worn-out
Mollie Morton, although at first she seemed much better, and Trix and
Bunchie, in their childish way, thanked God, who was making their mamma
well, while the Rev. Theodore, in Boston, felt something like new hope
within him at the cheerful letters Mollie wrote of what Florida was
doing for her. But the improvement was only temporary, and neither
orange blossoms or southern sunshine could hold the spirit which longed
so to be free, and which welcomed death without a shadow of fear.
“I have had much to make me happy,” Mollie said to Beatrice, one day,
when that faithful friend sat by her holding the tired head upon her
bosom, and gently smoothing the once black hair, which now was more than
three-fourths gray, though Mollie was only thirty-one. “Two lovely
children, and the kindest, best husband in the world,—the man I loved
and wanted so much, and who I think, likes me, and will miss me some
when I am gone forever.”
This she said, looking straight at Beatrice, whose face was very pale as
she stooped to kiss the white forehead and answered:
“I am sure he will miss you, and so shall I, for I have learned to love
you so much, and shall be so sorry when you are gone.”
“Truly, truly, will you be sorry when I am dead? I hardly thought
anybody would be that but father and mother, and the children,” Mollie
said, while the lips quivered and the great tears rolled down her cheeks
as she continued: “We are alone now, for the last time it may be, and I
want to say to you what has been in my heart to say, and what I must say
before I die. When I was up in that dreary back room in New York, so
sick, and forlorn, and poor, and you came to me, bright, and gay, and
beautiful, I did not like it at all, and for a time I felt hard toward
you and angry at Theodore, who, I knew, must see the difference between
me,—faded, and plain, and sickly, and old before my time, and you, the
woman he loved first,—fresh, and young, and full of life, and health,
and beauty. How you did seem to fill the dingy room with brightness and
beauty, and what a contrast you were to me; and Theodore saw it, too,
when he came in and found you there. But if there was a regret in his
heart,—a sigh for what ought to have been, he never let it appear, but
after you were gone, and only the delicate perfume of your garments
lingered in the room, he came and sat by me and held my thin, hard
hands, so unlike your soft white ones, and tried by his manner to make
me believe he was _not_ sorry, and when I could stand it no longer, and
said to him: ‘I am not much like her, Theo, am I?’ he guessed what was
in my mind, and answered me so cheerily, ‘No, Mollie, not a bit like
her. And how can you be, when your lives have been so different; hers
all sunshine, and yours full of care, and toil, and pain. But you have
borne it bravely, Mollie; better, I think, than Bee would have done.’ He
called you Bee to me for the first time, and there was something in his
voice, as he spoke the name, which told me how dear you had been to him
once, if, indeed, you were not then. But he was so good, and kind, and
tender toward me that I felt the jealousy giving way, though there was a
little hardness left toward you, and that night after Theo was sleeping
beside me I prayed and prayed that God would take it away, and He did,
and I came at last to know you as you are, the dearest, noblest, most
unselfish woman the world ever saw.”
“No, no, you must not say that. I am not good or unselfish; you don’t
know me,” Bee cried, thinking remorsefully of the times when she had
ridiculed the brown alpaca dress and the woman who wore it, and how
often she had tired of her society, in which she really found no
pleasure, such as she might have found elsewhere.
But she could not wound her by telling her this. She could only protest
that she was not all Mrs. Morton believed her to be. But Mollie would
not listen.
“You must be good,” she said, “or you would never have left your
beautiful home and your friends and attached yourself to me, who am only
a drag upon you. But sometime in the future you will be rewarded; and,
forgive me, Miss Belknap, if I speak out plain, now, like one who stands
close down to the river of death, and, looking back, can see what
probably will be. I do not know how you feel toward Theo, but of this I
am sure, he has never taken another into the place you once filled, and
at a suitable time after I am gone he will repeat the words he said to
you years ago, and if he does, don’t send him away a second time. He is
nearer to your standard now than he was then. He is growing all the time
in the estimation of his fellow-men. They are going to make him a D. D.,
and the parish of which he is pastor is one of the best and most highly
cultivated in Boston. And you will go there, I hope, and be a mother to
my children, and bring them up like you, for that will please Theo
better than my homely ways. Trix is like you now, and Bunchie will
learn, though she is slower to imitate. You will be happy with Theo,—and
I am glad for him and the children; but you will not let them forget me
quite, but will tell them sometimes of their mother, who loved them so
much. I hoped to see Theo once more before I died, but something tells
me he will not be here in time; that when he comes I shall be dead. So
you will ask him to forget the many times I worried and fretted him with
my petty cares and troubles. Tell him that Mollie puts her arms around
his neck and lays her poor head, which will never ache again, against
his good, kind heart, and so bids him good-by, and goes away alone into
the brightness beyond, for it is all bright and peaceful; and just over
the river I am crossing I seem to see the distant towers of ‘Jerusalem
the Golden’ gleaming in the heavenly sunshine, which lies so warm upon
the everlasting hills. And my babies are there waiting and watching for
me. Sing, can’t you, ‘Will some one be at the beautiful gate, waiting
and watching for me?’”
There was too heavy a sorrow in Beatrice’s heart, and her voice was too
full of tears for her to sing to the dying woman, who clung so closely
to her. But what _she_ could not do, little Trixey did for her. She had
entered the room unobserved, followed by Bunchie, whose hands were full
of the sweet wild-flowers they had gathered and brought to their mother,
who was past caring for such things now. The yellow jessamine and wild
honeysuckle lay unheeded upon her pillow, but at the sound of her
children’s voices a spasm of intense pain passed for a moment over her
face, and was succeeded by a smile of peace as she whispered again:
“Somebody sing of the beautiful gate,” and instantly Trixey’s clear
voice rang through the room, mingled with little Bunchie’s lisping,
broken notes, as she, too, struck in and sang:
“Will any one be at the beautiful gate,
Waiting and watching for me?”
Dear little ones, they did not know their mother was dying; but Beatrice
did, and her tears fell like rain upon the pinched, white face pillowed
on her arm, as she kissed the quivering lips, which whispered softly:
“Darling Trix and Bunchie,—God bless them!—and tell Theo Mollie will be
at the beautiful gate, waiting and watching for him, and for you
all,—waiting and watching as they now wait and watch for me over there,
the shining ones, crowding on the shore, and some are there to whom I
first told the story of Jesus in the far-off heathen land. Tell Theo
they are there, and many whom he led to the Saviour. It is no delusion,
as some have thought. I see them, I see into Heaven, and it is so near;
it lies right side by side with this world, only a step between.”
Her mind was wandering a little, for her words became indistinct, until
her voice ceased altogether, and Beatrice watched her as the last great
struggle went on and the soul parted from the body, which was
occasionally convulsed with pain, as if it were hard to sever the tie
which bound together the mortal and immortal.
At last, just as the beautiful southern sunset flooded the river and the
fields beyond with golden and rosy hues, and the fresh evening breeze
came stealing into the room, laden with the perfume of the orange and
lemon blossoms it had kissed on its way, Mollie Morton passed from the
world where she had known so much care to the life immortal, where the
shining ones were waiting and watching for her.
And far down the coast, threading in and out among the little islands
and streams, came the boat which bore the Rev. Theodore Morton to the
wife he hoped to find alive. Bee’s summons had found him busy with his
people, with whom he was deservedly popular, and who bade him God-speed,
and followed him with prayers for his own safety, and, if possible, the
recovery of his wife, whom they had never seen. But this last was not to
be, and when about noon the boat came up to its accustomed
landing-place, and Bee stood on the wharf to meet him, he knew by one
glance at her face that he had come too late. Everything which love
could devise was done for the dead, on whose white face the husband’s
tears fell fast when he first looked upon it, feeling, it may be, an
inner consciousness of remorse as he remembered that all his heart had
not been given to her. But he had been kind, and tender, and
considerate, and he folded her children in his arms, and felt that in
all the world there was nothing so dear to him as his motherless little
ones.
The next day they left Florida for the bleak hills of Vermont, where the
wintry winds and drifting snow seemed to howl a wild requiem for the
dead woman, whose body rested one night in the old home where the
white-haired father and mother wept so piteously over it, and even Aunt
Nancy forgot to care for the tracks upon her clean kitchen floor, as the
villagers came in with words of condolence and sympathy. Beatrice was
with the mourners who stood by the grave that wild January day when
Mollie Morton was buried, and she gave the message from the dead to the
husband, who wept like a child when he saw his wife laid away under the
blinding snow, which, ere the close of the day, covered the grave in one
great mountain drift.
Both Everard and Rossie had written to Beatrice telling her of
Josephine’s arrival at the Forrest House, and, with a feeling that she
was needed in Rothsay, she started for home the day after Mollie’s
funeral.