THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.
All around the house was still; while within, the children and the
neighbors trod softly as they went from room to room, and their faces
wore an anxious, troubled look, as if they already felt the presence of
the _shadow_ hovering near. The heavy brass knocker was muffled, and the
deep-toned churchbell across the way no longer told the hours of 12 and
9, for at each stroke the sick man had turned upon his pillow, and
moaned as if in pain. So when the Sabbath came the people went up
unsummoned to the house of God, where they reverently prayed for him,
who was passing from their midst, and who, ere another week rolled
round, would be “where congregations ne’er break up, and Sabbaths never
end.”
For many days he had lain in a kind of stupor from which nothing roused
him save the rush of the engine as it swept across the meadow at the
foot of the hill. Then he would start up, asking eagerly if “they had
come, Anna, Rose, and Jamie.” Much he talked of the absent ones, and as
day by day went by and still they came not, he wept like a little child,
as he said to his wife, “I shall never see them more.”
“And if you do not,” she asked, “what shall I tell them?”
For a time he lay as if her question was unheard—then opening his eyes
he answered, “Tell Anna, my stricken one, that there is for her a balm
in Gilead; that whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and though the
waters through which she is passing be deep and troubled, they shall not
overflow, for the everlasting arms are beneath her.”
“And Rosa, have you no message for her?” asked my mother as he ceased
speaking.
“Oh, Rosa, Rosa,” he answered quickly, “Tell her—tell her everything—but
not here—not in this room. She thinks I do not love her, and when she
comes and finds me gone, go with her to my grave. She will believe you
if you tell her there how dear she was to me, and how, through the long
weary nights before I died, I wept and prayed for her that she might one
day meet me in the better land. I never meant to love one child more
than another, but if I did—tell her she was my pride, the one on whom I
doted. She thought me cold and unfeeling, because I stayed not to bid
her adieu that morning. Ah, she did not know that with the first dawn of
day I stole up to her chamber to look on her once more for the last,
last time. There were tears on her cheek, I kissed them away; tell her
that, and perchance her heart will soften towards her poor old father.”
From that time he sank rapidly, and one bright September day, near the
hour of sunset, it was told in Meadow Brook that he was dying. On such
occasions, in a small country village, the liveliest sympathy is felt;
and now those who knew and loved him spoke to each other softly and low,
while even the little children ceased their noisy play upon the common,
and with a timid, curious glance towards the open windows of the sick
room, hastened home, where they kept closely at their mother’s side,
wondering—asking of her what death was, and if she were sure that he,
the dying one, would go to Heaven.
Meantime, the sun was almost set, and as its last golden rays fell upon
the face of the sufferer, a radiant smile lit up his features, and he
exclaimed aloud, “’Tis the glorious light of the Eternal shining down
upon me. Do not weep, mother. We shall not be parted long,” he
continued, as he felt upon his forehead a tear from the grey-haired,
wrinkled woman, on whose bosom his head was pillowed, just as it had
been, long, long ago, when first a tender babe he lay in that mother’s
arms. To her it seemed not long, and yet it was fifty years since he was
lent to her, and now, when God would have his own again, she said
submissively, “Thy will be done.” Once before had a great sorrow fallen
upon her, leaving her henceforth to walk alone, and then her soul had
well-nigh fainted beneath the blow, for she was younger far by many
years. But now she was old, and already she heard the roar of the deep
dark river on whose very banks she stood, and down whose swift current
her first born was floating; so she stifled her own grief, for, as he
had said, she knew it would not be long ere they met again.
“Where is Fanny?” he asked, and his arms closed fondly around his wife.
It mattered not that time and care had dimmed the lustre of her eye, and
robbed her cheek of its girlish bloom; to him she was beautiful still,
for through weal and woe she had been faithful to her marriage vow, and
now the bitterest pang of all was the leaving _her_ alone.
“The God of the widow and the fatherless watch over and keep you all so
that at the last, when I ask for my children, there shall not one be
missing,” he said, as his arms unclosed, and then, with a low, wailing
moan, the _mother_ bent over the white face of her son, so that the
_wife_ might not see the fearful change which had come upon it, for _my
father was dead_!
You who have kept with me while I described the death scene of the
unfortunate Herbert, and of my sainted father, can you not—do you not
say, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like
his?”
Lonely and desolate was the home at which I arrived one day too late,
for they had buried him, and there was naught left to me of my father
save the lock of hair which they severed from his head as he lay in the
coffin. Yes, he was gone; but so long as life and being endure, so long
shall fond remembrances of him linger in my memory, and if at the last I
meet him in the better world, will it not be in a measure the blessed
influence of his dying message, which has led the wanderer there?