HOPE AND HAVE.
Fanny got out of the horse car at the Park. She was in the midst of the
great city, but she felt no interest in the moving, driving scene
around her, for the thought of poor Jenny still engrossed her. She had
even forgotten Mr. Long, and the dreaded policemen who might be on the
watch for her. This was the good time for which she had stolen the
money and run away from her happy home at Woodville. It was a mockery,
and she even wished she had been caught before she left Pennville.
It was now two o'clock in the afternoon, though hours enough seemed to
have elapsed since she left Woodville to make a week. She had eaten
nothing but an ice-cream since breakfast, and she was faint from the
excitement and the exertion of the day. She found a saloon for ladies,
and entered; but the nice things of which she had dreamed in the
morning no longer existed for her. She ate a simple dinner, and walked
down Broadway till she came to the Museum, which she had regarded as an
important element in the enjoyment of her week in the city.
She paid the admission fee, and went in. She wandered from room to room
among the curiosities, hardly caring for anything she saw, till she
came to the exhibition-room, where plays were acted. She had never seen
a play performed, and she had looked forward with brilliant
anticipations to the pleasure of seeing one. She was disappointed, for
it had not entered into her calculation that a clean conscience is
necessary for the full enjoyment of anything. The actors and the
actresses strutted their brief hour before her; but to her the play was
incomprehensible and silly. It had no meaning, and even the funny
things which the low comedian said and did could not make her laugh.
Before the performance was half finished, she had enough of it, and
left the place in disgust.
Jenny Kent was rapturously happy, dying in a hovel, in the midst of
poverty and want, while she was miserable with health and strength,
with plenty to eat, drink, and wear. Fanny tried to shake off the
strange depression which had so suddenly come over her. She had never
been troubled with any such thoughts and feelings before. If she had
occasionally been sorry for her wrong acts, it was only a momentary
twinge, which hardly damped her spirits. She was weighed down to the
earth, and she could not rid herself of the burden that oppressed her.
She wanted to go into some dark corner and cry. She felt that it would
do her good to weep, and to suffer even more than she had yet been
called upon to endure.
"I'll bear your name to heaven with me," had been the words of the
dying girl to Fanny; but what a reproach her name would be to the pure
and good of the happy land! In some manner, not evident to our human
sight, or understood by our human minds, the words of Jenny had given
the wayward girl a full view of herself--had turned her thoughts in
upon the barrenness of her own heart. Her wrong acts, so trivial to her
before, were now magnified into mountains, and the crime she had
committed that morning was so monstrous and abominable that she
abhorred herself for it.
In spite of the reproaches which every loving word of the dying girl
hurled into the conscience of Fanny, there was a strange and
unaccountable fascination in the languid look of the sweet sufferer.
Wherever she turned, Jenny seemed to be looking at her with a glance
full of heaven, while the black waters of her own soul rose up to choke
her.
Fanny struggled to get rid of these strange thoughts, but she could
not; and she was compelled to give herself wholly up to them.
Something, she knew not what, drew her irresistibly towards the dying
girl, and she started up Broadway to find the flowers she had promised
to carry to her. In a shop window she saw what she wanted. The flowers
were of the rarest and most costly kinds; but nothing was too good for
Jenny, and she paid four dollars for a bouquet. In another store she
purchased some jelly and other delicacies such as she had seen the
ladies at Woodville send to sick people. Thus prepared to meet the
dying girl, she took a horse car, and by six o'clock reached the humble
abode of Mrs. Kent.
"How is Jenny?" asked she, as she entered the house, without the
ceremony of knocking.
"She don't seem so well this afternoon," replied Mrs. Kent.
"Does she have a doctor?"
"Not now; we had one a while ago, but he said he could do nothing for
her."
"Don't you think we had better have one?"
"He might do something to make her easy, but Jenny don't complain. She
never speaks of her pains."
"I have come to stay all night with Jenny, if you are willing I
should," continued Fanny, doubtfully.
"You are very kind."
"I will only sit by her; I won't talk to her."
"I should be very glad to have you stay; and Jenny thinks ever so much
of you."
"If you please, I will go after a doctor."
Mrs. Kent consented, and Fanny, after sending in her bouquet, went for
a physician whose name she had seen on a fine house near Central Park,
judging from the style in which he lived that he must be a great man.
She found him at home, and he consented to return with her to Mrs.
Kent's house. He examined Jenny very carefully, and prescribed some
medicine which might make her more comfortable. He did not pretend that
he could do anything more for her, and he told Fanny that the sufferer
could not live many days, and might pass away in a few hours. Fanny
offered him his fee; he blushed, and peremptorily refused it.
Physicians who live in fine houses are often kinder to the poor than
the charlatans who prey upon the lowest strata of society.
Fanny procured the medicine which the kind-hearted doctor had
prescribed, and administered it with her own hands. Jenny gave her such
a sweet smile of grateful encouragement, that she was sorry there was
nothing else to be done for her.
"Now sit down, Fanny, and let me take your hand. I feel better to-night
than I have felt for a long time."
"I am glad you do," replied Fanny.
"You have made me so happy!"
"I wish I was as good as you are, Jenny," said Fanny, struggling with
the emotions which surged through her soul.
"You are better than I am."
"O, no!"
"You are an angel! You have been as good as you could be. Fanny, we
shall meet in heaven, for I feel just as though I could not live many
days. We shall be friends there, if we cannot long be here."
"I hope you will get better," added Fanny, because she could think of
nothing else to say.
"No, I may die before morning, Fanny; but I am ready. You are so
good----"
"O, Jenny! I am not good! I cannot deceive you any longer!" exclaimed
Fanny, bursting into tears.
"Now I know that you are good. The blessed Bible says, 'He that
humbleth himself shall be exalted.' I'm glad you don't think you are
good."
"But I am not good, indeed I am not," sobbed Fanny.
"Don't weep, dear Fanny. I know how you feel; I have felt just so
myself, when it seemed to me I was so wicked I couldn't live."
"You don't know how wicked I have been; what monstrous things I have
done," added Fanny, covering her face with her hands. "If you knew, you
would despise me."
"You wrong yourself, Fanny. Such a good, kind heart as you have would
not let you do anything very bad."
"I have done what was very bad, Jenny; I have been the worst girl in
the whole world; but I am so sorry!"
"I know you are. If you have done anything wrong,--we all do wrong
sometimes,--you could not help being sorry. Your heart is good."
"Shall I tell you what I did?" asked Fanny, in a low and doubtful tone.
"O, no! Don't tell me; tell it to God. He will pity and forgive you
because you are really sorry."
"You would despise me if you knew how wicked I have been. It was seeing
you, and thinking how good you are, which made me feel that I had done
wrong."
"I'm sure, after all you have done for mother and for me, I can't help
believing that you are an angel. I love you, and I know that you are
good."
"I mean to be good, Jenny. From this time I shall try to do better than
I ever did before."
"Then you will be, Fanny."
"I don't think I ever tried to be good, but I shall now," replied the
penitent girl, as she wiped away her tears.
Jenny seemed to be weary, and Fanny sat by the bedside gazing in
silence at her beautiful and tranquil expression. The sufferer was
looking at the rich flowers of the bouquet, which had been placed on a
stand at the side of the bed. They were a joy to her, a connecting link
between the beautiful of heaven and the beautiful of earth.
"Will you sing me a hymn, Fanny?" asked the sick girl, without removing
her gaze from the flowers.
Without any other reply to the question, Fanny immediately sang this
verse:--
"If God hath made this world so fair,
Where sin and death abound,
How beautiful, beyond compare,
Will Paradise be found!"
"How beautiful!" murmured Jenny, her eyes still fixed upon the flowers.
"Will you take out that moss-rose, Fanny, and let me hold it in my
hand?"
Fanny gave her the flower, and then sang another hymn. For an hour she
continued to sing, and Jenny listened to the sweet melodies, entranced
and enraptured by the visions of heaven which filled her soul. Then she
asked Fanny to read to her from the Bible, indicating the book and
chapter, which was the eighth chapter of Romans.
"'For we are saved by hope,'" Fanny read.
"Now, stop a moment: 'For we are saved by hope,'" said the sufferer.
"Do you know what the emblem of Hope is, Fanny?"
"An anchor."
"Will you hand me that little box on the table?"
Fanny passed the box to her, and she took from it a little gold
breastpin, in the form of an anchor.
"This was given to me by my father when I was a little girl. My
Sunday-school teacher told me years ago what an anchor was the emblem
of, and told me at the same time to remember the verse you have just
read--'For we are saved by hope.' That anchor has often reminded me
what was to save me from sin. Fanny, I will give you this breastpin to
remember me by."
"I shall never forget you, Jenny, as long as I live!" said Fanny,
earnestly.
"But when you remember me, I want you to think what the anchor means.
You say you are not good, but I know you are. You mean to be good, you
hope to be good; and that will make you good. Do you know we can always
have what we hope for, if it is right that we should have it? What we
desire most we labor the hardest for. If you really and truly wish to
be good, you will be good."
Fanny took the breastpin. If it had been worth thousands of dollars, it
would not have been more precious to her. It was the gift of the loving
and gentle being who was soon to be transplanted from earth to heaven;
of the beautiful girl who had influenced her as she had never been
influenced before; who had lifted her soul into a new atmosphere. She
placed it upon her bosom, and resolved never to part with it as long as
she lived.
"Hope and have, Fanny," said Jenny, when she had rested for a time.
"Hope for what is good and true, and you shall have it; for if you
really desire it, you will be sure to labor and to struggle for it."
"Hope and have," repeated Fanny. "Your anchor shall mean this to me.
Jenny, I feel happier already, for I really and truly mean to be good.
But I think I ought to tell you how wicked I am."
"No, don't tell me; tell your mother."
"I have no mother."
"Then you are poorer than I am."
"And no father."
"Poor Fanny! Then you have had no one to tell you how to be good."
"Yes, I have the kindest and best of friends; but I have been very
ungrateful."
"They will forgive you, for you are truly sorry."
"Perhaps they will."
"I know they will."
Jenny was weary again, and Fanny sang in her softest and sweetest tones
once more. It was now the twilight of a long summer day, and Mrs. Kent,
having finished her household duties, came into the room. Soon after,
the sufferer was seized with a violent fit of coughing, which seemed to
weaken and reduce her beyond the possibility of recovery. When it left
her, she could not speak aloud.
"I am going, mother," said she, a little later. "Fanny!"
"I am here," replied Fanny, almost choked with emotion.
"We shall meet in heaven," said the dying one. "Have you been very
naughty?"
"I have," sobbed Fanny.
Jenny asked for paper and pencil, and when her mother had raised her on
the bed, she wrote, with trembling hand, these words:--
"_Please to forgive Fanny, for the sake of her dying friend,
Jenny Kent._"
"Take this, Fanny: God will forgive you."
It was evident to the experienced eye of Mrs. Kent that Jenny was going
from earth. The sufferer lay with her gaze fixed upon the ceiling, and
her hands clasped, as in silent prayer. She seemed to be communing with
the angels. She struggled for breath, and her mother watched her in the
most painful anxiety.
"Good by, mother," said she, at last. "Good by, Eddy: I'm going home."
Mrs. Kent took her offered hand, and kissed her, struggling all the
time to be calm. Little Eddy was raised up to the bed, and kissed his
departing sister.
"Fanny," gasped she, extending her trembling hand.
Fanny took the hand.
"Good by."
"Good by, Jenny," she answered, awed and trembling with agitation at
the impressive scene.
The dying girl closed her eyes. But a moment after she pressed the hand
of Fanny, and murmured,--
"HOPE AND HAVE."
She was silent then; her bosom soon ceased to heave; the ransomed
spirit rose from the pain-encumbered body, and soared away to its
angel-home!