She seemed no more languid—only drowsy—the next afternoon, as I
fluttered into the room and leaned over her in a glow of excitement:
“Cousin Mollie, darling! I have come in to say that Junius Fishburn is
down-stairs. He is in town for a day on his way to Newport.”
The great eyes opened wide, a smile lighted them into liveliness.
“Oh, I am so glad!” she gasped.
She was “glad” of everything that gave me pleasure. I had never doubted
that. I had never gone to her with a pain or a pleasure without getting
my greedy fill of sympathy.
When I had said a hearty “_bon voyage!_” to my caller, I went back
to tell her of the interview. She was dying. We watched by her from
evening to morning twilight.
Ned Rhodes, who was in Boston when he got my letter, telling briefly
what had come to us, sent me lines I read then for the first time. Had
the writer shared that vigil with us, he could not have described it
more vividly:
“We watched her breathing thro’ the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
Our very hopes belied our fears;
Our fears our hopes belied:
We thought her dying while she slept,
And sleeping when she died.”
At midnight there was a rally for a few minutes. I was wetting the
dry lips, leaning over the pillow, so that she looked into my eyes in
unclosing hers. A smile of heavenly sweetness played over her face—a
ray that irradiated, without moving a feature or line. The poor mouth
stirred ever so slightly. I bent closer to it to hear the whisper:
“I’m almost there!”
Two months later I wrote to my old friend:
“Our great sorrow in July was my first affliction. Yet I
was wonderfully supported under it, and the _terrible_
desolation that has grown upon us, instead of lessening. I
say ‘supported,’ for not once have I wished her back; but I
miss her—oh, so sadly!
“‘I cannot make her dead!’
“Then mother went to the country for a month, and I was
left as housekeeper, with the whole care of the family
on my hands. Rising betimes to preside at father’s early
breakfast, pickling, preserving, sewing, overseeing the
servants, etcetera.
“Enough of this! Although the little girls’ lessons begin
again to-day, and I have my sister’s domestic and social
duties to perform in addition to my own, I have more leisure
than you might think, and you shall have the benefit of
a spare half-hour on this bright Monday morning. (Alice
practising, meanwhile, in the same room!)
“Mea is still in Boston and the vicinity, and will not
return for a month or more. Lizzie M. is to be married late
in October or early in November, and wishes to have Mea with
her. Another of the three Lizzies, and the prettiest—Lizzie
N.—married last week a Mr. L.—a nice young man, Mea says. I
have never seen him, although they have been engaged for
some time. He has taken up his abode in Boston, to keep his
lovely wife with her invalid mother.
“And while upon marriage—E. G. is to wed on October 11th,
Mr. R. H., one of _ten_ brothers. She is ‘doing very well,’
say the gossips.
“Sarah and Mr. Budwell are at home again, he handsomer than
ever, while she looks prettier and happier than she ever was
before.
“While retailing news, let me chronicle the arrival of
Master Robert Wallace Courtney, an interesting youth, who—as
father dryly remarked, when I said that he ‘came from a
foreign shore’—‘speaks the language of the Cry-mea.’
“Heigho! so goes this mad world of ours: death; marriage;
birth. Ranks are mowed down, and filled up as soon. Few
of us appreciate what a fearful thing it is to die, and
fewer yet how awful it is to live—writing our histories by
our actions in the Book of God’s Remembrance, a stroke for
every word, movement, and thought! Again I say, if Death be
fearful, Life is awful!
“We are prone to forget, as one and another fall, and the
chasm is closed up and Life seems the same—except within
the bleeding hearts of mourners—that our day is coming as
surely as those others have gone. In effect, we arrogate
immortality for ourselves.
“The longer I live, and the more I see of the things that
perish with the using, the more firmly persuaded am I that
there is but one reality in life, and that is Religion. Why
not make it an every-day business? Since the loving care of
the Father is the only thing that may not be taken from us,
why do we not look to it for every joy, and cling to it for
every comfort?...
“Write soon. Will you not _come_ to me? I am very lonely at
times. One sister _gone_! Another absent!
“I am wondering if you have changed as much as I feel
that I have? It is not natural to suppose that you have.
You have not the same impression of added responsibility,
the emulation to throw yourself into the breach made by
the removal of one so beloved, and, in her quiet way,
exercising so much influence. If I could but hope that
patience and prayerful watchfulness would ever make me
‘altogether such an one’ as she was!
“How many and how happy have been the meetings in heaven
since I last saw you! Dear little Sallie B.! How often in
fancy do I see her walk away in the moonlight night of our
parting! I never look from the front window in the evening
without recalling that hour.”