"I MUST NOT THINK OF MYSELF."
Bessie's words to Edna had been strangely prophetical--"Trouble may come
to me one day;" it had come already, in its most crushing form. The bond
of sisterhood is very strong; it has peculiar and precious privileges,
apart from other relationships; a sort of twinship of sympathy unites
many sisters who have grown up together. Their thoughts and interests
are seldom apart. All their little pleasures, their minor griefs,
youthful hopes, disappointments, are shared with each other. They move
together through the opening years of their life. Sometimes old age
finds them still together, tottering hand in hand to the grave. Of all
her sisters, Bessie could least spare Hatty, and her death left a void
in the girl's life that was very difficult to fill. From the first,
Bessie had accepted the responsibility of Hatty. Hatty's peculiar
temperament, her bad health and unequal spirits, had set her apart from
the other members of the family, who were all strong and cheerful and
full of life.
Bessie had realized this and had made Hatty her special charge and duty;
but now there was a gap in her daily life, a sense of emptiness and
desolation. There was no need now to hurry through her morning's task
that she might sit with Hatty. When she went out, there was no Hatty to
watch for her return and listen to all her descriptions of what she had
seen. At night, when Bessie went upstairs, she would creep softly into a
certain empty room, which was dearer to her than any other room. Hatty's
little gowns, her few girlish possessions, were all locked away in the
wardrobe; but her Bible and Prayer-book, and her shabby little
writing-case, lay on the table. Bessie would pull up the blinds, and
kneel down by the low bed; she liked to say her prayers in that room.
Sometimes as she prayed the sense of her sister's presence would come
over her strongly; she could almost feel the touch of the thin little
hands that had so often toiled in her service. Hatty's large wistful
eyes seemed to look lovingly out of the darkness. "Oh! my Hatty, are you
near me?" she would sob; but there was no answer out of the silence.
Who has not tasted the bitterness of these moments, when the craving for
the loved presence seems insupportable, hardly to be borne? How our poor
human hearts rebel against the unnatural separation, until the thrilling
words make themselves heard: "He is not the God of the dead, but of the
living." Oh, yes, of the living! Cease, then, to mourn, poor soul, as
one without hope. Somewhere, not here, but in the larger room of a
purified existence, your beloved one lives, breathes, nay, thinks of
thee. Be comforted; one day we shall meet them, and the friendship of
time will become the love of eternity.
Bessie strove hard not to be selfish in her grief. Her mother's
strength, never very great, had broken down utterly for a time. Bessie
knew that this failure of power added to her father's anxiety, and in
the most touching manner she tried to console them both. When she looked
back at these sad days, Bessie owned that she had been marvellously
helped and supported. With the day's burden had come daily strength to
bear it.
"I must not think of myself; I must think of father and mother," she
would say, as she awoke in the morning with that blank sense of loss.
"There is nothing to do for Hatty now, but there are others who need
me." And this thought helped her through the day.
In that busy household there was no time to sit alone and brood. A quiet
walk now and then, and that half hour in Hatty's room, was all Bessie
could conscientiously spare. If she stayed away for an hour, Christine
complained of dullness, and her mother looked sadder on her return.
Ella and Katie, too, made constant demands on her time and patience.
Christine was very unlike Bessie in temperament. She was a pretty,
bright girl, warm-hearted and high-spirited, but she did not possess
Bessie's contented nature. Christine often found her quiet life irksome.
She was inquisitive, restless, eager to see the world. She had
insatiable curiosity; a love of change, her small girlish ambitions. She
wanted to plume her wings a little--to try them in flights hither and
thither. The gay world seemed to her ignorance a land flowing with milk
and honey. She had yet to spell the meaning of the words illusion and
vanity. Bessie was fond of Christine. She loved all her sisters dearly,
but there was less sympathy between them than there had been between
herself and Hatty.
Hatty, in spite of her morbid humors and difficult tendencies, had a
refined and cultured mind; her chief source of fretfulness was that she
loved the best, and failed to reach it. The very loftiness of her
standard produced despondency akin to despair.
Hatty's faith was pure, but feeble. She hated everything false and mean.
She despised the conventionalities of life, while Bessie laughed at
them. She and Bessie had their ideals, their simple secrets, their crude
girlish notions, that were nevertheless very true and sweet.
Bessie could make allowances for Hatty's sharp speeches as she watched
her daily struggles with her faulty temper. She could rejoice in Hatty's
victories all the more that she had borne so patiently with her
failures, and there was no abiding sting in her grief now, no remorseful
feelings for duties undone and opportunities wasted; but with Christine
things were different.
One Sunday afternoon when Bessie was stealing away for a quiet half hour
in Hatty's room, she was surprised to find Christine following her.
"May I come in too, Bessie?" she said very humbly, and her eyes were
full of tears; "I do so want a little comfort, and I can't talk to
mother. I am making myself miserable about Hatty."
"About our dear Hatty! Oh, Chrissy, what can you mean?" asked Bessie
reproachfully. "We can talk here, and perhaps our poor darling may be
listening to us. I do love this room; it seems to breathe of Hatty
somehow. There, I will open the window. How sweet the air is? and look,
how red the leaves are, though it is only the end of September!" And
then she added, softly: "Hatty has been six weeks in her new home."
"Oh, how I envy you, Bessie!" sighed Christine, "you can talk and think
happily about our dear little Hatty, but with me it is all so different.
If I had only been good to her, if she had not made me so impatient But
I cannot help remembering how horrid I used to be." And here one tear
after another rolled down Christine's pretty, troubled face.
Bessie's soft heart grew very pitiful. "Dear Chrissy," she said gently,
"there is no need to fret over that now. Hatty was always fond of you,
and you of her; she told me that night, when I came home, how kind you
had been to her. There was no one but you to do things, and you were
such a comfort to her."
"How could I help being kind to her, when she was so ill, and there was
the fear of losing her? Somehow, I never thought there was much amiss
with Hatty. I could not get it out of my mind that she always made the
most of every little ailment, and that it was wrong of you and mother to
give in to her. I never thought it would come to this." And Christine
sobbed afresh.
"Yes, I know what you mean; but, indeed, Chrissy, dear, you need not
distress yourself so. Hatty forgave everything long ago; she was never
one to bear malice--no, her nature was too sweet for that."
"But I might have made her happier," persisted Christine. "I need not
have minded her worrying so over every little trifle, but I was always
losing patience, and getting vexed with her. I used to wonder at your
bearing with her as you did, and I thought it a mistake to give way to
all her humors. I never imagined that she was cross because she was
suffering, but father says all her gloomy fancies and tiresome little
ways came from her bad health."
"I might have made her happier!" That speech went to Bessie's heart.
"Listen to me, darling," she said eagerly; "think rather of how, by your
waywardness, you have wounded the loving heart of Jesus, and sinned
against Him. Let the sense of Hatty's loss send you to him in penitence
for pardon. Nothing can now undo the past; but you can set yourself in
the grace and strength which Jesus gives to do all in your power to make
the lives of those around you happier. I do not want to make you more
miserable, but what you have just said reminds me so of a passage I
copied only the other day out of one of Tom's books; it was written by a
man who failed in his own life, but was very gentle and very tolerant of
other people. 'Oh, let us not wait,' he says, 'to be just, or pitiful,
or demonstrative toward those we love, until they or we are struck down
by illness, or threatened with death. Life is short, and we have never
too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the
dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!' And
then in another place he says, and that is so true, too, 'Never to tire,
never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the
budding flower and the opening heart, to hope always like God; to love
always--this is duty.'"
Christine made a despairing gesture. "It is a duty in which I have
utterly failed," she said bitterly.
"You think you might have been kinder to Hatty; that is just what Tom
said of himself the other day. I am afraid many people have these sort
of reproachful thoughts when they lose one they love. Everything seems
different," she continued, in a musing tone; "we see with other eyes.
Death seems to throw such a strange, searching light over one's life;
big things are dwarfed, and little things come into pre-eminence; our
looks and words and actions pass in review before us--we see where we
have failed, and our successes do not comfort us."
"But you, at least, are free from these thoughts, Bessie?"
"Not entirely. There were times when I found Hatty trying, when she
depressed me, and made me impatient. Indeed, Chrissy dear, we must
remember that we are human, and not angels. None of us are free from
blame; we have all failed in our turn. You have never been morbid
before; try to forget the little everyday frictions, for which Hatty was
to blame as well as you, and only remember how good you were to her in
her illness--what a comfort to me as well as to her. 'Chrissy has been
such a darling,' Hatty said to me one day."
After all, Christine was quite willing to be comforted, and presently
she dried her eyes.
"You must let me talk to you sometimes, Bessie," she said; "it will do
me good, because you have such a nice clear way of putting things, and
you never mind trouble. I know I can't take Hatty's place, but if you
will let me do things for you sometimes, and feel that I am a help, for
we are sisters as much as you and Hatty were, and I want to get nearer
to you somehow."
"And so you shall, dear," replied Bessie, touched by this humility. "You
must not think that I do not love you because Hatty was so much to me.
There is nothing I would not do for you, Chrissy--oh, you may be sure of
that;" and Bessie kissed her affectionately.
This conversation made Christine happier, for she was a good-hearted
girl, and her repentance was very real, and it strengthened Bessie in
her resolve to do her best for them all. Sorrow is a great test of
character; it makes the selfish more selfish, and hardens the proud, but
Bessie grew softer under its influence. After all, Edna was right in
saying that it was harder to suffer through one's own fault. An
affliction that comes straight from God's hand (though, in one sense,
all trouble is permitted by His providence) wounds, and yet heals at the
same time, and Bessie was to learn this by degrees; and, after all, her
cross was wreathed with the soft flowers of hope.
One morning early in October Bessie had a most unexpected pleasure. She
had just returned from a long walk, and was on her way to the
morning-room in search of her mother, when Christine opened the
drawing-room door and beckoned to her with a very excited face.
"Do come in, Betty," she said, in a loud whisper that must have been
distinctly audible inside the room. "What a time you have been! and
there is a friend of yours waiting for you."
Bessie quickened her steps, feeling somewhat mystified by Christine's
manner, and the next moment she was face to face with Edna. Bessie
turned very pale and could hardly speak at first for surprise and
emotion; but Edna took her in her arms and kissed her.
"My dear Bessie," she said softly; and then she laughed a little
nervously, and it was not the old musical laugh at all--"are you very
surprised to see me? Oh, it was a bright idea of mine. I have been
visiting those same friends (I had returned from them that day, you
know, when we were snowed up together). Well, when I saw Sheen Valley,
all of a sudden the thought popped into my head that I would stop at
Cliffe, and take a later train; so I telegraphed to mamma, who is in
London, and now I have a whole hour to spend with you. Is not that
nice?"
"Very nice indeed. I am so glad to see you, Edna; but you are looking
delicate; you have lost your color."
"What nonsense!" with a touch of her old impatience. "You are as bad as
mamma; she is always finding fault with me. People who live in glass
houses should not throw stones at their neighbors. You do not look like
yourself either, Bessie."
"Oh, that is different," and Bessie's lips trembled a little; "I have
gone through so much since we parted. I try to take it properly, and
every one helps me, but I think I miss my Hatty more every day."
"You want a change," returned Edna kindly, for she was much touched by
the alteration in her friend's looks.
Bessie had lost her pretty fresh color, and looked pale and subdued in
her black dress; her gray eyes had a sad look in them, even her voice
had lost its old cheery tones, and her very movements were quieter; the
bright elasticity that had been her charm was missing now, and yet Edna
thought she had never looked so sweet.
"My poor little Daisy," she continued, "you have a crushed look. You
want country air to revive you. Will you come to us? Mamma will be
delighted; you are such a favorite of hers; and as for myself, I want
you more than I can say."
"Not yet; I could not leave mother yet," returned Bessie; but a faint
color stole into her face. No, she could not leave her post, and yet it
would have been nice to see The Grange again, and Richard's friendly
face; he had been so kind to her; and there was Whitefoot, and the dear
dogs, and the lanes would be full of hips and haws. "No, not yet; but I
should like to come again one day."
"Well, well, I will not tease you; bye and bye I will make another
appeal, but if your mother be not well----" She paused, and then
something of the old mischief came into her eyes. "You see I am
improving, Bessie; I am not always trying to get my own way; my goodness
makes mamma quite uneasy. I think she has got it into her head that I
shall die young; all good young people die--in books. No, it was wrong
of me to joke," as a pained look crossed Bessie's face. "Seriously, I am
trying to follow your advice; but, oh! it is such hard work."
"Dear Edna, do you think I do not see the difference in you?"
"Am I different?" she asked eagerly, and a wistful look came into her
lovely eyes. "Richard said the other day how much nicer I was; we are
quite friends, Ritchie and I, now, and I won't let mamma be so hard on
him. He was very kind to me when--when--Neville went away; he tells me
about him sometimes, for once or twice he has seen him in London; but
just fancy, Bessie, he never even asked after me. 'Are your people
well?' That is all he said; but of course he will never forgive me; men
are like that."
"He may not think that you want to be forgiven," returned Bessie.
Edna's color rose.
"He will never know it," she said proudly; but the next moment her tone
changed. "Oh, Bessie, what shall I do? Sometimes I am so miserable that
I hardly know how I am to go on living. I never thought I should miss
Neville like this, but I do--I do."
"Do not think me unkind if I say that I rejoice to hear it; it proves
how deep and real your affection was."
"It was the only real part of me," was the reply. "Now it is too
late, I have discovered it for myself. I never would let myself
think seriously of my engagement. I liked Neville, and I meant to
marry him one day, and that was all I thought about it; but now I
see that the real feeling was there all the time, only choked up
with rubbish, and I am quite sure that I could never care for any
one else in the same way--never--never."
"Poor Edna! it is very hard, and I am so sorry for you."
But as Bessie spoke Christine came back into the room with a small tray
of refreshments, and her mother followed, so she and Edna were obliged
to break off the conversation.