19th.
Yet I think that took away the sting.
The days are slipping away now very quietly, and--to her I am sure, and
to me for her sake--very happily.
She suffers less than I had feared, and she lies upon the bed and
smiles, and Faith comes in and plays about, and the cheery morning
sunshine falls on everything, and when her strong hours come, we have
long talks together, hand clasped in hand.
Such pleasant talks! We are quite brave to speak of anything, since we
know that what is to be is best just so, and since we fear no parting. I
tell her that Faith and I will soon learn to shut our eyes and think we
see her, and try to make it _almost_ the same, for she will never be
very far away, will she? And then she shakes her head smiling, for it
pleases her, and she kisses me softly. Then we dream of how it will all
be, and how we shall love and try to please each other quite as much as
now.
“It will be like going around a corner, don’t you see?” she says. “You
will know that I am there all the while, though hidden, and that if you
call me I shall hear.” Then we talk of Faith, and of how I shall comfort
her; that I shall teach her this, and guard her from that, and how I
shall talk with her about heaven and her mother. Sometimes Faith comes
up and wants to know what we are saying, and lays poor Mary Ann, sawdust
and all, upon the pillow, and wants “her toof-ache kissed away.” So
Auntie kisses away the dolly’s “toof-ache”; and kisses the dolly’s
little mother, sometimes with a quiver on her lips, but more often with
a smile in her eyes, and Faith runs back to play, and her laugh ripples
out, and her mother listens--listens--
Sometimes, too, we talk of some of the people for whom she cares; of her
husband’s friends; of her scholars, or Dr. Bland, or Clo, or poor ’Bin
Quirk, or of somebody down town whom she was planning to help this
winter. Little Clo comes in as often as she is strong enough to see her,
and sends over untold jellies and blanc-manges, which Faith and I have
to eat. “But don’t let the child know that,” Auntie says.
But more often we talk of the life which she is so soon to begin; of her
husband and Roy; of what she will try to say to Christ; how much dearer
He has grown to her since she has lain here in pain at His bidding, and
how He helps her, at morning and at eventide and in the night-watches.
We talk of the trees and the mountains and the lilies in the garden, on
which the glory of the light that is not the light of the sun may shine;
of the “little brooks” by which she longs to sit and sing to Faith; of
the treasures of art which she may fancy to have about her; of the home
in which her husband may be making ready for her coming, and wonder what
he has there, and if he knows how near the time is now.
But I notice lately that she more often and more quickly wearies of
these things; that she comes back, and comes back again to some loving
thought--as loving as a child’s--of Jesus Christ. He seems to be--as she
once said she tried that He should be to Faith--her “_best_ friend.”
Sometimes, too, we wonder what it means to pass out of the body, and
what one will be first conscious of.
“I used to have a very human, and by no means slight, dread of the
physical pain of death,” she said to-day; “but, for some reason or
other, that is slowly leaving me. I imagine that the suffering of any
fatal sickness is worse than the immediate process of dissolution. Then
there is so much beyond it to occupy one’s thoughts. One thing I have
thought much about; it is that, whatever may be our first experience
after leaving the body, it is not likely to be a _revolutionary_ one. It
is more in analogy with God’s dealings that a quiet process, a gentle
accustoming, should open our eyes on the light that would blind if it
came in a flash. Perhaps we shall not see Him,--perhaps we could not
bear it to see Him at once. It may be that the faces of familiar human
friends will be the first to greet us; it may be that the touch of the
human hand dearer than any but His own shall lead us, as we are able,
behind the veil, till we are a little used to the glory and the wonder,
and lead us so to Him.
“Be that as it may, and be heaven where it may, I am not afraid. With
all my guessing and my studying and my dreaming over these things, I am
only a child in the dark. ‘Nevertheless, I am not afraid of the dark.’
God bless Mr. Robertson for saying that! I’m going to bless him when I
see him. How pleasant it will be to see him, and some other friends
whose faces I never saw in this world. David, for instance, or Paul, or
Cowper, or President Lincoln, or Mrs. Browning. The only trouble is that
_I_ am nobody to them! However, I fancy that they will let me shake
hands with them.
“No, I am quite willing to trust all these things to God.
‘And what if much be still unknown?
Thy Lord shall teach thee that,
When thou shalt stand before His throne,
Or sit as Mary sat.’
I may find them very different from what I have supposed. I know that I
shall find them infinitely _more_ satisfying than I have supposed. As
Schiller said of his philosophy, ‘Perhaps I may be ashamed of my raw
design, at sight of the true original. This may happen; I expect it; but
then, if reality bears no resemblance to my dreams, it will be a more
majestic, a more delightful surprise.’
“I believe nothing that God denies. I cannot overrate the beauty of his
promise. So it surely can have done no harm for me to take the comfort
of my fancying till I am there; and what a comfort it has been to me,
God only knows. I could scarcely have borne some things without it.”
“You are never afraid that anything proving a little different from what
you expect might--”
“Might disappoint me? No; I have settled that in my heart with God. I do
not _think_ I shall be disappointed. The truth is, he has obviously not
_opened_ the gates which bar heaven from our sight, but he has as
obviously not _shut_ them; they stand ajar, with the Bible and reason in
the way, to keep them from closing; surely we should look in as far as
we can, and surely, if we look with reverence, our eyes will be holden,
that we may not cheat ourselves with mirages. And, as the little Swedish
girl said, the first time she saw the stars: ‘O father, if the _wrong
side_ of heaven is so beautiful, what must the _right side_ be?’”
January.
I write little now, for I am living too much. The days are stealing away
and lessening one by one, and still Faith plays about the room, though
very softly now, and still the cheery sunshine shimmers in, and still we
talk with clasping hands, less often and more pleasantly. Morning and
noon and evening come and go; the snow drifts down and the rain falls
softly; clouds form and break and hurry past the windows; shadows melt
and lights are shattered, and little rainbows are prisoned by the
icicles that hang from the eaves.
I sit and watch them, and watch the sick-lamp flicker in the night, and
watch the blue morning crawl over the hills; and the old words are
stealing down my thought: _That is the substance, this the shadow; that
the reality, this the dream_.
I watch her face upon the pillow; the happy secret on its lips; the
smile within its eyes. It is nearly a year now since God sent the face
to me. What it has done for me He knows; what the next year and all the
years are to be without it, He knows, too.
It is slipping away,--slipping. And I--must--lose it.
Perhaps I should not have said what I said to-night; but being weak from
watching, and seeing how glad she was to go, seeing how all the peace
was for her, all the pain for us, I cried, “O Auntie, Auntie, why can’t
we go too? Why _can’t_ Faith and I go with you?”
But she answered me only, “Mary, He knows.”
We will be brave again to-morrow. A little more sunshine in the room! A
little more of Faith and the dolly!
The Sabbath.
She asked for the child at bedtime to-night, and I laid her down in her
night-dress on her mother’s arm. She kissed her, and said her prayers,
and talked a bit about Mary Ann, and to-morrow, and her snow man. I sat
over by the window in the dusk, and watched a little creamy cloud that
was folding in the moon. Presently their voices grew low, and at last
Faith’s stopped altogether. Then I heard in fragments this:--
“Sleepy, dear? But you won’t have many more talks with mamma. Keep awake
just a minute, Faith, and hear--can you hear? Mamma will never, _never_
forget her little girl; she won’t go away very far; she will always love
you. Will you remember as long as you live? She will always see you,
though you can’t see her, perhaps. Hush, my darling, _don’t_ cry! Isn’t
God naughty? No, God is good; God is always good. He won’t take mamma a
great way off. One more kiss? There! now you may go to sleep. One more!
Come, Cousin Mary.”
June 6.
It is a long time since I have written here. I did not want to open the
book till I was sure that I could open it quietly, and could speak as
she would like to have me speak, of what remains to be written.
But a very few words will tell it all.
It happened so naturally and so happily, she was so glad when the time
came, and she made me so glad for her sake, that I cannot grieve. I say
it from my honest heart, I cannot grieve. In the place out of which she
has gone, she has left me peace. I think of something that Miss Procter
said about the opening of that golden gate,
“round which the kneeling spirits wait.
The halo seems to linger round those kneeling closest to the door:
The joy that lightened from that place shines still upon
the watcher’s face.”
I think more often of some things that she herself said in the very last
of those pleasant talks, when, turning a leaf in her little Bible, she
pointed out to me the words:--
“It is expedient for you that I go away; for, if I go not away, the
Comforter will not come.”
It was one spring-like night,--the twenty-ninth of March.
She had been in less pain, and had chatted and laughed more with us than
for many a day. She begged that Faith might stay till dark, and might
bring her Noah’s ark and play down upon the foot of the bed where she
could see her. I sat in the rocking-chair with my face to the window. We
did not light the lamps.
The night came on slowly. Showery clouds flitted by, but there was a
blaze of golden color behind them. It broke through and scattered them;
it burned them, and melted them; it shot great pink and purple jets up
to the zenith; it fell and lay in amber mist upon the hills. A soft wind
swept by, and darted now and then into the glow, and shifted it about,
color away from color, and back again.
“See, Faith!” she said softly; “put down the little camel a minute, and
look!” and added after, but neither to the child nor to me, it seemed:
“At eventide there shall be light.” Phœbe knocked presently, and I
went out to see what was wanted, and planned a little for Auntie’s
breakfast, and came back.
Faith, with her little ark, was still playing quietly upon the bed. I
sat down again in my rocking-chair with my face to the window. Now and
then the child’s voice broke the silence, asking Where should she put
the elephant, and was there room there for the yellow bird? and now and
then her mother answered her, and so presently the skies had faded, and
so the night came on.
I was thinking that it was Faith’s bedtime, and that I had better light
the lamp, when a few distinct, hurried words from the bed attracted my
attention.
“Faith, I think you had better kiss mamma now, and get down.”
There was a change in the voice. I was there in a moment, and lifted the
child from the pillow, where she had crept. But she said, “Wait a
minute, Mary; wait a minute,”--for Faith clung to her, with one hand
upon her cheek, softly patting it.