CHARLES TAYLOR’S REGRETS.
Janey had passed within its portals, and the great gulf which divides
time from eternity seemed to be but a span. Now, to Charles Taylor,
it was as if he in spirit had followed her in from being a place far
off. Vague, indefinite, indistinct, it had suddenly been brought
to him close and palpable, or he to it. Had Charles Taylor been an
atheist, denying a hereafter--Heaven in its compassion have mercy upon
all such--that one moment of suffering would have recalled him to a
sense of his mistake. It was as if he looked aloft with the eyes of
inspiration and saw the truth; it was as a brief passing moment of
revelation from God. She, with her loving spirit, her gentle heart,
her simple trust in God, had been taken from this world to enter
upon a better. She was as surely living in it, had entered upon its
mysteries, its joys, its rest as that he was living here. She, he
believed, was as surely regarding him now, and his great sorrow as that
he was left alone to battle with it. From this time Charles Taylor
possessed a lively, ever-present link with that world, and knew that
its gates would, in God’s good time, be open for him. These feelings,
impressions, facts--you may designate them as you please--took up their
places in his mind, all in that first instant, and seated themselves
there forever; not yet very consciously to his stunned senses. In
his weight of bitter grief nothing could be to him very clear; ideas
passed through his brain quickly, confusedly, like unto the changing
scenes in a phantasmagoria. He looked round as one bewildered, the bed
smoothed ready for occupancy, on which on entering he had expected to
see the dead, but not her. There was between him and the door Mary Ann
Brewster, in her invalid chair by the fire, a table at her right hand,
covered with adjuncts of the sick room, a medicine bottle with its
accompanying wine-glass and tablespoon, jelly and other delicacies to
tempt a faded appetite.
Mary Ann sat there and gazed at him with her hollow eyes, from which
the tears dropped slowly on her cadaverous cheeks. Mrs. Brewster
stood before him, sobs choking her voice, wringing her hands. Yes,
both were weeping, but he-- It is not in the presence of others that
man gives way to grief, neither will tears come to him in the first
leaden weight of anguish. Charles Taylor listened mechanically, as one
cannot do otherwise, to the explanations of Mrs. Brewster. “Why did you
not prepare me? why did you let it come upon me with this startling
shock?” was his first remonstrance. “I did prepare you,” sobbed Mrs.
Brewster. “I telegraphed to you as soon as it happened; I wrote the
message to you with my own hand, and sent it to the office before I
turned my attention to anything else.” “I received the message, but
you did not say--I thought it was--” Charles Taylor turned his eyes
toward Mary Ann. He remembered her condition in the midst of his own
anguish and would not alarm her. “You did not mention Janey’s name,”
he continued, to Mrs. Brewster; “how could I suppose you alluded to
her or that she was sick?” Mary Ann divined his motive of hesitation;
she was uncommonly keen in penetration, sharp--as the world goes--as
the world says, and she had noted his words on entering, when he began
to soothe Mrs. Brewster for the loss of a child. She had noticed his
startled recoil when the news fell on him. She spoke up; a touch of her
old vehemence; the tears stopped on her face and her eyes glistened.
“You thought it was I who had died! Yes, you did, Mr. Taylor; and
you need not try to deny it; you would not have cared, so that it
was not Janey.” Charles had no intention of contradicting her; he
turned from her in silence to look inquiringly and reproachfully at
her mother. “Mr. Taylor, I could not prepare you better than I did,”
said Mrs. Brewster, “when I wrote the letter telling of her illness.”
“What letter?” interrupted Charles; “I received no letter.” “But you
must have received it,” replied Mrs. Brewster, in her quick and sharp
manner, not sharp with him, but from a rising doubt whether the letter
had been miscarried. “I wrote it, and I know that it was safely mailed;
you should have received it before you did the dispatch.” “I never
had it,” said Charles. “When I waited in your drawing-room now I was
listening for Janey’s footsteps to come to me.” Charles Taylor upon
inquiry found that the letter had arrived duly and safely at Waterville
at the time mentioned by Mrs. Brewster, but it appears that it was
overlooked by the postmaster; but the shock had come now. He took a
seat by the table, and covered his eyes with his hands, as the mother
gave him a detailed account of her sickness and death. Not all the
account that she or anybody else could give could take one iota from
the dreadful fact staring him in the face; she was gone, gone forever
from this world; he could never meet the glance of her eyes again or
hear her voice in response to his own. Ah! reader, there are griefs
that tell, rending the heart as an earthquake would rend the earth,
and all that can be done is to sit down under them and ask of heaven
strength to bear--to bear as best we can, until time shall shed a few
drops of healing balm from its wings.
On the last night that Charles had seen her, Janey’s eyes and brow
were heavy, she had cried much during the day and supposed the pain
to have arisen from that circumstance. She had given this explanation
to Charles Taylor. Neither he nor she had a thought that it could
come from any other source. More than a month ago Mary Ann had taken
the fever; fears of it for Janey had passed away, and yet those dull
eyes, that hot head, that heavy weight of pain, were only the symptoms
of the sickness approaching. A night of tossing and turning, in fits
of disturbed sleep, of terrifying dreams, and Janey awoke to the
conviction that the fever was upon her.
About the time she generally arose she rang the bell for Eliza. “I do
not feel well,” she said, “as soon as mamma is up will you ask her to
come to me? do not disturb her before.”
Eliza obeyed her orders. But her mother, tired and worn out with her
attendance upon Mary Ann, with whom she had been up half the night,
did not rise until between nine and ten. The maid went to her then and
delivered the message.
“In bed, still; Miss Janey in bed, still?” exclaimed Mrs. Brewster. She
spoke in much anger, for Janey had to be up in time, attending to Mary
Ann, it was required of her to be so. Throwing on a dressing-gown, Mrs.
Brewster proceeded to Janey’s room, and there she broke into a storm of
reproach and anger, never waiting to ascertain what might be the matter
with Janey, anything or nothing.
“Ten o’clock, and that poor child to have been till now with nobody
to go near her but a servant!” she reiterated, “you have no feeling,
Janey!”
Janey drew the covering from her flushed face and turned her glittering
eyes, dull last night, shining with the fever now upon her, upon her
mother.
“Oh, mamma, I am sick; indeed I am. I can hardly lift my head for the
pain; feel how hot it is. I did not think I ought to get up.”
“What is the matter with you?” sharply inquired Mrs. Brewster.
“I cannot tell,” answered Janey, “I know that I feel sick all over. I
feel, mamma, as if I could not get up.”
“Very well; there’s that dear, suffering angel lying alone, and you can
think of yourself before her; if you choose to lie in bed you must,
but you will reproach yourself for your selfishness when she is gone;
another twenty-four hours and she may not be with us; do as you think
best.”
Janey burst into tears and caught hold of her mother’s robe as she was
turning away. “Mamma, do not be angry with me; I hope I am not selfish,
mamma,” and her voice sank to a whisper, “I have been thinking that it
may be the fever.”
“The fever?” reproachfully echoed Mrs. Brewster, “Heaven help you for a
selfish and fanciful child; did I not send you to bed with a headache
last night, and what is it but the remains of that headache that you
feel this morning? I can see what it is, you have been fretting about
the departure of Charles Taylor; get up out of that hot bed and dress
yourself, and come in and attend on your sister; you know she can’t
bear to be waited on by anybody but you; get up, I say.”
Will Mrs. Brewster remember this to her dying day? I should were I in
her place. She suppressed all mention of it to Charles Taylor. “The
dear child told me that she did not feel well, but I only thought she
had the headache and that she would feel better up,” were the words
that she used to him.
What sort of a vulture was gnawing at her heart as she spoke them? It
was true that in her blind selfishness for one undeserving child she
had lost sight of the fact that sickness could come to Janey; she had
not allowed herself to believe the probability; she, who accused of
selfishness that devoted, generous girl, who was ready at all hours to
put her hands under her sister’s feet, and would have given her own
life to save Mary Ann’s. Janey got up, got up as best she could, her
limbs aching, her head burning; she went into her sister’s room and
did for her what she was able, gently, lovingly, anxiously, as before.
Ah, my dear reader, let us be thankful that it was so; it is well to
be stricken down in the active path of duty, working until we can work
no more. She did so. She stayed where she was until the day was half
gone, bearing up it is hard to say how. She could not eat breakfast;
she could not eat anything. None saw how sick she was; her mother was
wilfully blind. Mary Ann had eyes and thoughts for herself alone. “What
are you shivering for?” her sister once fretfully asked her. “I feel
cold, dear,” was Janey’s unselfish answer; not a word more did she
say of her illness. In the afternoon Mrs. Brewster was away from the
room attending to domestic affairs, and when she returned the doctor
was there; he had been prevented from calling earlier in the day; they
found Mary Ann dropped into a doze and Janey stretched out on the floor
before the fire, groaning; but the groans ceased as she entered. The
doctor, regardless of the waking invalid, strode up to Janey and turned
her face to the light. “How long has she been like this?” he asked, his
voice shrill with emotion. “Child, child, why did they not send for
me?” Poor Janey was then too sick to reply. The doctor carried her up
to her room in his arms, and the servants undressed her and laid her in
the bed from which she was never more to rise. The fever took violent
hold of her, precisely as it had attacked Mary Ann, though scarcely as
bad, and danger for Janey was not looked for by her mother. Had Mary
Ann not got over a similar crisis they would have feared for Janey, so
given are we to judge by collateral circumstances. It was on the fourth
or fifth day that highly dangerous symptoms supervened, and then her
mother wrote to Charles the letter which had not reached him; there was
this much of negative consolation to be derived from the non-receipt,
that had it been delivered to him on the instant of its arrival he
could not have been in time to see her. “You ought to have written to
me as soon as she was taken sick,” he said to Mrs. Brewster. “I would
have done it had I apprehended danger,” she repentantly answered, “but
I never did, and the doctor never did. I thought how pleasant it would
be to get her safely through the danger and sickness before you knew of
it.” “Did she not wish me written to?” The question was asked firmly,
abruptly, after the manner of one who will not be cheated out of his
answer. Her mother could not evade it; how could she, with her child
lying dead over her head?
“It is true she did wish it, it was on the first day of her illness
that she spoke, ‘Write and tell Charles Taylor,’ she never said it but
once.” “And you did not,” he uttered, his voice hoarse with emotion.
“Do not reproach me! Do not reproach me!” cried Mrs. Brewster, clasping
her hands in supplication, and the tears falling in showers from her
eyes, “I did all for the best, I never supposed there was danger. I
thought what a pity it would be to bring you back such a long journey,
putting you to so much unnecessary trouble and expense.” Trouble and
expense--in a case like that she could speak of expense to Charles--but
he thought how she had to battle with both trouble and expense her
whole life long, and that for her they must wear a formidable aspect,
he remained silent. “I wish now I had written,” she resumed in the
midst of her choking sobs, “as soon as the doctors said there was
danger, I wished it, but,” as if she would seek to excuse herself,
“what with the two upon my hands, she upstairs, Mary down here, I had
not a moment for proper reflection.” “Did you tell her you had not
written?” he asked, “or did you let her lie day after day, hour after
hour, waiting and blaming me for my careless neglect?” “She never
blamed any one, you know she did not,” wailed Mrs. Brewster, “and I
think she was too sick to think even of you, she was only sensible at
times. Oh, I say, do not reproach me, Mr. Taylor, I would give my own
life to bring her back. I never knew her worth until she was gone, I
never loved her as I love her now.” There could be no doubt that Mrs.
Brewster was reproaching herself far more bitterly than any reproach
could tell upon her from Charles Taylor, an accusing conscience is
the worst of all evils. She sat there, her head bent, swaying herself
backwards and forwards on her chair, moaning and crying. It was not
a time Charles felt to say a word of her past heartless conduct in
forcing Janey to breathe the infection of her sister’s sick room,
and all that he could say, all the reproaches, all the remorse and
repentance would not bring her back to life. “Would you like to see
her,” whispered her mother, as he rose to go? “Yes.” She lighted a
candle and led the way upstairs. Janey had died in her own room. At the
door he took the candle from Mrs. Brewster. “I must go in alone.” He
passed into the chamber and closed the door, on the bed laid out in a
white robe, lay all that remained of Janey Brewster. Pale, still, pure,
her face was wonderfully like what it had been in life, and a calm
smile rested upon it, but Charles wished to be alone. Mrs. Brewster
stood outside, leaning against the opposite wall, weeping silently,
the glimmer from the hall lamp below faintly lighting the corridor,
and she fancied that a sound of choking struck upon her ears, and she
pulled around her a small black shawl that she wore, for grief had
made her chilly, and wept the faster. He came out by and by, calm and
quiet as ever, he did not see Mrs. Brewster standing there in the
dimly lighted hall, and went straight down, carrying the candle. Mrs.
Brewster caught up with him at Mary Ann’s room, and took the candle
from him.
“She looks very peaceful, does she not?” was her whisper. “She could
not look otherwise.” He went on down alone, intending to let himself
out, but Eliza had heard his steps and was waiting at the door. “Good
night Eliza,” he said, as he passed her. The girl did not answer, she
slipped out into the yard after him. “Oh, sir, and didn’t you hear
of it?” she whispered. “No.” “If anybody was ever gone away to be an
angel, sir, its that sweet young lady, sir,” said Eliza, letting her
tears and sobs come forth as they would, “She was just one here and she
has gone to her own fit place.” “Yes, that is so.” “You should have
been in this house throughout the whole of the illness to have seen the
difference between them, sir. Nobody would believe it; Miss Brewster
angry and snappish, and not caring who suffered or who was sick, or
who toiled, so that she was served, Miss Janey lying like a tender
lamb, patient and meek, thankful for all that was done for her. It
does seem hard, sir, that we should lose her forever.” “Not forever,
Eliza,” he answered. “And that is true, too; but sir, the worst is,
one can’t think of that sort of consolation just when one’s troubles
are the freshest. Good night, to you, sir.” Charles Taylor walked on,
leaving the high road for a less frequented one; he went along, musing
in the depth of his great grief; there was no repining. He was one to
trace the finger of God in all things. A more entire trust in God it
was, perhaps, impossible for any one to feel than was felt by Charles
Taylor; it was what he lived under. He could not see why Janey should
have been taken, why this great sorrow should fall upon him, but that
it must be for the best he implicitly believed--the best, for God
had done it. How he was to live on without her he did not know. How
he could support the lively anguish of the future he did not care to
think. All his hopes in this life gone, all his plans, his projects
uprooted by a single blow, never to return. He might look yet for the
bliss of a Hereafter that remains for the most heavy laden, thank
God, but his sun of happiness in this world had set forever. The moon
was not shining as it was the night he left Janey, when he left his
farewell kiss. Oh! that he could have known that it was the last on the
gentle lips of Janey. There was no moon now; the stars were not showing
themselves, for a black cloud enveloped the skies like a pall, fit
accompaniment to his blasted hopes and his path altogether was dark.
But, as he neared the office of the doctor, he could see him sitting in
his accustomed place. Charles thought that he would like to have a few
minutes conversation with him. He walked to the door, opened it, and
saw that the doctor was alone.