IT IS WELL WITH THE CHILD.
Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is
fairer;
Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer.
--_Richard Realf._
Mrs. Doring had a friend, a gentle, patient, heavily-burdened woman
who lived her difficult life with the high heroism of a daughter of
the gods. Though fragile as a flower she kept the wolf at bay for her
little family, and nobody ever saw a cloud on her face or heard a
complaint from her lips. Born and bred to the refinements of life she
met adversity as only the gently bred do meet it--by taking hold of
whatever work was at hand, without questioning whether it was what is
miscalled menial or not.
When her baby girl was born she begged Cartice to name her, which she
did, giving her the name of the little sister who had died when she
herself was a child--Isabel. To her mother’s great delight she grew
to resemble Mrs. Doring as though of her flesh and blood, and loved
her in the same degree. Now she was nearly three years old, bright and
winsome, with never a day’s illness in her record.
But a fever came, and behind that stood the last enemy, who, however
often routed, is sure to return sometime and win the battle. This was
the time of his victory. In the night, when all was silent without,
and solemn within, he came. Cartice had the baby in her arms in the
last precious, awesome moments. The wasted little hand reached up and
silently stroked her face, and the soft, dark eyes, unearthly large
and earnest, looked at her with unutterable love. Something else, too,
was in their speechless depths--a message not easy to translate, but
it brought comfort. Then, that mysterious thing, the breath, which
connects us with the universal life principle, ceased; the cold white
veil dropped down, and little Isabel was dead.
After holding the silent form close to her heart a moment, Cartice laid
it gently on the bed, and the two mother hearts so sorely bereft stood
silent but tearless beside it.
* * * * *
Later, when it was ready for its bed in the bosom of the earth, and
again together they looked down at its white silence, Cartice said:
“She shall know no evil thought; she shall do no evil deed; she shall
tread no evil path. It is well with the child.”
“Yes, in spite of my sore heart, it is well,” said the mother. “I
surrender her not to death, but to a larger life, and shall not mourn.
No matter what comes, she is safe. My darling’s safe--safe and dead.
Since her father’s death I have been troubled at times with fears
for her future. I face the inevitable--a few months more here, and
then--the end. For the two boys I have arranged. They will have homes
and care, but it would have tried my courage to leave this one ewe
lamb.”
“I would have been a mother to Isabel had you gone first,” said Mrs.
Doring.
“I am sure of that; but you, too, may not tarry here long. Why should
we ever worry about the future? In spite of all our planning and
troubling all is managed by a higher hand. We have only to do the work
of the hour, leaving what the next may bring to be met when it comes,
and not in anticipation. The present alone concerns us. By living it
aright the future takes care of itself. It is the thought for to-morrow
that so often makes to-day gloomy. I distressed myself about my child’s
future, yet, see, all is well with her.”
“I thank God for what I have learned of the mysterious event called
death,” said Mrs. Doring. “Yet there are people who ask what good can
come of knowing such things. What good? Is it nothing to know that the
little image lying here is not our Isabel but her earthly investiture;
that she is not dead nor separated from us; that her life is to go on
from grace to grace, from strength to strength? Is it nothing to know
that Socrates, Plato, Swedenborg, Shakespeare, Emerson, Hugo, Morse,
Fulton, all who have given the world the light of genius, have never
died, and that this baby is equal heir with them to a life of vaster
opportunities and greater blessings?”
“Others,” said Mrs. Benton, “wonder what good there is in the coming
and going of so tiny a soul, who was here but for a day as it were.
Yet her little life is as important in the divine plan as that of the
greatest sage. She brought the gospel of pure love with her, and we are
the better because of her brief visit to us--for it was but a pause on
the great journey.”
* * * * *
On the evening after the discarded visible part of the child had been
put out of sight, as Mrs. Doring was returning home from her friend’s
house, two elderly men on the horse-car were talking of life, and their
verdict was that they were tired of it.
One said it was an empty experience which he would not go through again
for any consideration. The other said he had had a good time, had got
as much pleasure out of life as any one, but that was all over now; he
was getting old and full of aches and pains, and found no fun in living
any more. The jumping off place had to be reached some day, and that
would put an end to it.
His friend said that was the rub--the leap in the dark. For his part
he was disgusted with life, but abhorred death. He saw no good in
either one or the other, and was inclined to believe that we are all
victims of a tremendous cheat. If he could see anything to look forward
to beyond a damp bed in the ground he could go on all right, but nobody
knew anything about it--not even those who earned their bread talking
about it in pulpits. They said they believed certain things, but they
didn’t know any more than other folks. He wanted solid information.
The other tossed his head to show his indifference to the subject. He
said it was something he had never thought about at all in his good
times, and now he guessed he wouldn’t bother with it for his few
remaining days.
Thus was the most important question that faces man disposed of by
one whose opinion on any topic pertaining to commercial or political
interests would be received with respect by his fellow townsmen
and have weight with them. But both he and his friend had lived to
venerable years without ever learning what they themselves were. Of
that knowledge, which includes all other knowledge, they were as
ignorant as earth worms. They had acquired what is miscalled education;
had been factors in public affairs, and figures in social life, and yet
never learned that they were not bodies to go to pieces some day like
a broken machine, but spirits, with a life whose issues are spiritual
and eternal, not material and perishable. To one, life had meant a
chance to have a good time; to the other emptiness, because he had had
no good time. Neither dreamed that its meaning is in the unseen, not in
the seen,--in what they had become, not what they possessed or enjoyed.
They lived in dense spiritual darkness, yet knew it not, and they were
but two out of millions in the same condition.
Hearing their pathetic though unconscious confession of ignorance,
Mrs. Doring wondered if little Isabel’s short, loving, trusting life
was not more complete than theirs of long years full of impermanent
and illusory importance. She wished she could tell them what she had
learned of life and its meaning and future, but, alas! she had already
been stoned and knew the danger of letting her light shine before those
who had not become as little children--receptive, willing to learn.