A Knight of the Nineteenth Century Part 53

Amy shook her head. "It's too awful. What can I tell her?" she faltered.

"It is indeed inexpressibly sad, but I think I can tell the child without its seeming awful to her, and yet tell her the truth," he replied. "Shall I try to explain?"

"Yes, and let me listen, too, if you can rob the event of any of its unutterable horror."

"Will Bertie come and listen to me if I will tell her about papa?"

The child climbed into his lap at once, and turned her large blue eyes up to his in perfect faith.

"Don't you remember that papa spoke last night of leaving you; but said you would surely meet again?"

At this the child's lip began to quiver, and she said: "But papa always comes and kisses me good-by before he goes away."

"Perhaps he did, Bertie, when you were asleep in your crib last night."

"Oh yes, now I'm sure he did if he's gone away, 'cause I 'member he once woke me up kissing me good-by."

"I think he kissed you very softly, and so you didn't wake. Our dear Saviour, Jesus, came last night, and papa went away with him. But he loves you just as much as ever, and he isn't sick any more, and you will surely see him again."

"Do you think he will bring me something nice when he comes?"

"When you see him again he will have for you, Bertie, more beautiful things than you ever saw before in all your life, but it may be a long time before you see him."

The child slipped down from his knees quite satisfied and full of pleasant antic.i.p.ation, and went back to her play on the piazza.

"Do you believe all that?" asked Amy, looking as if Bertha had been told a fairy tale.

"I do, indeed. I have told the child what I regard as the highest form of the truth, though expressed in simple language. Miss Amy, I know that your father was ever kind to you. Did he ever turn coldly away from any earnest appeal of yours?"

"Never, never," cried the girl, with a rush of tears.

"And can you believe that his Heavenly Father turned from his touching appeal last night? Christ said to those who were trusting in him, 'I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also.' As long as your father was conscious, he was clinging to that divine hand that has never failed one true believer in all these centuries. Surely, Miss Amy, your own reason tells you that the poor helpless form that we must bury today is not your father. The genial spirit, the mind that was a power out in the world, the soul with its n.o.ble and intense affections and aspirations--these made the man that was your father. Therefore I say with truth that the man, the imperishable part, has gone away with him who loved humanity, and who has prepared a better place for us than this earth can ever be under the most favoring circ.u.mstances. You can understand that the body is but the changing, perishing shadow.

"When you compare the poor, disease-shattered house in yonder room, with the regal spirit that dwelt within it, when you compare that prostrate form--which, like a fallen tree in the forest, is yielding to the universal law of change--with the strong, active, intelligent man that was your father, do not your very senses a.s.sure you that your father has gone away, and, as I told Bertha, you will surely see him again? It may seem to you that what I said about the good-by kiss was but a fiction to soothe the child, but in my belief it was not. Though we know with certainty so little of the detail of the life beyond, we have two good grounds on which to base reasonable conjecture. We know of G.o.d's love; we know your father's love; now what would be natural in view of these two facts? I think we can manage to keep Bertha from seeing that which is no longer her father, and thus every memory of him will be pleasant.

We will leave intact the impression which he himself made when he acted consciously, for this which now remains is not himself at all."

Further conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Dr. Orton; but Haldane saw that Amy had grasped at his words as one might try to catch a rope that was being lowered to him in some otherwise hopeless abyss.

"I feared that such might be the end," said the doctor, gloomily, on learning from Haldane the events of the night; "it frequently is in const.i.tutions like his." Then he went up and saw Mrs. Poland.

The lady's condition gave him much anxiety, but he kept it to himself until they were alone. After leaving quieting medicines for her with Amy, and breaking utterly down in trying to say a few words of comfort to the fatherless girl, he motioned to Haldane to follow him.

"Come with me to the city," he said, "and we will arrange for such disposal of the remains as is best."

Having informed Amy of the nature of his errand, and promising to telegraph Mrs. Arnot, Haldane accompanied the physician to the business part of town.

"You have been a G.o.dsend to them," said the kind-hearted old doctor, blowing his nose furiously. "This case comes a little nearer home than any that has yet occurred; but then the bottom is just falling out of everything, and it looks as if we would all go before we have a frost.

It seems to me, though, that I can stand anything rather than see Amy go. She is engaged to a nephew of mine--as fine a fellow as there is in town, if I do say it, and I love the girl as if she were my own child.

My nephew is travelling in Europe now, and I doubt if he knows the danger hanging over the girl. If anything happens to her it will about kill him, for he idolizes her, and well he may. I'm dreadfully anxious about them all. I fear most for Mrs. Poland's mind. She's a New England lady, as I suppose you know--wonderfully gifted woman, too much brain power for that fragile body of hers. Well, perhaps you did not understand all that was said last night; but Mrs. Poland has always been a great reader, and she has been carried away by the materialistic philosophy that's in fashion nowadays. Queer, isn't it? and she two-thirds spirit herself. Her husband and my best friend was as genial and whole-souled a man as ever lived, fond of a good dinner, fond of a joke, and fond of his family to idolatry. His wife had unbounded influence over him, or otherwise he might have been a little fast; but he always laughed at what he called her 'Yankee notions,' and said he would not accept her philosophy until she became a little more material herself. Poland was a square, successful business man, but I fear he did not lay up much. He was too open-hearted and free-handed--a typical Southerner I suppose you would say at the North, that is, those of you who don't think of us as all slave-drivers and slave-traders. I expect the North and South will have to have a good, square, stand-up fight before they understand each other."

"G.o.d forbid!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Haldane.

"Well, I don't think you and I will ever quarrel. You may call us what you please if you will take care of Poland's family."

"I have already learned to have a very thorough respect both for your head and heart, Doctor Orton."

"I'm considerably worse than they average down here. But as I was telling you, Mrs. Poland was a New England woman, and to humor her her husband employed such white servants as could be got in the city, and poor trash they were most of the time. When the fever appeared they left instantly. Poland bought the old colored people who are there with the place, and gave them their freedom, and only they have stood by them.

What they would have done last night if you had not come, G.o.d only knows. Poor Amy, poor Amy!" sighed the old doctor tempestuously; "she's the prettiest and pluckiest little girl in the city. She's half frightened out of her wits, I can see that, and yet nothing but force could get her away. For my nephew's sake and her own I tried hard to induce her to go, but she stands her ground like a soldier. What is best now I hardly know. Mrs. Poland is so utterly prostrated that it might cost her life to move her. Besides, they have all been so terribly exposed to the disease that they might be taken with it on the journey, and to have them go wandering off the Lord knows where at this chaotic time looks to me about as bad as staying where they are, and I can look after them. But we'll see, we'll see." And in like manner the sorely troubled old gentleman talked rapidly on, till they reached the undertaker's, seemingly finding a relief in thus unburdening his heart to one of whose sympathy he felt sure, and who might thus be led to feel a deeper interest in the objects of his charge.

Even at that time of general disaster Haldane's abundant funds enabled him to secure prompt attention. It was decided that Mr. Poland's remains should be placed in a receiving vault until such time as they could be removed to the family burying-ground in another city, and before the day closed everything had been attended to in the manner which refined Christian feeling would dictate.

Before parting with Haldane, Doctor Orton had given him careful directions what to do in case he recognized symptoms of the fever in any of the family or himself. "Keep Amy and Bertha with their mother all you can," he said; "anything to rouse the poor woman from that stony despair into which she seems to have fallen."

The long day at length came to an end. Haldane of necessity had been much away, and he welcomed the cool and quiet evening; and yet he knew that with the shadow of night, though so grateful after the glare and heat to which he had been subjected, the fatal pestilence approached the nearer, as if to strike a deadlier blow. As the pioneer forefathers of the city had shut their doors and windows at nightfall, lest their savage and lurking foes should send a fatal arrow from some dusky covert, so now again, with the close of the day, all doors and windows must be shut against a more subtle and remorseless enemy, whose viewless shafts sped with a surer aim in darkness.

Amy had spent much of the day in unburdening her heart in a long letter to her cousin Laura, in which in her own vivid way she portrayed the part Haldane had acted toward them. She had also written to her distant and unconscious lover, and feeling that it might be the last time, she had poured out to him a pa.s.sion that was as intense and yet as pure as the transparent flame that we sometimes see issuing from the heart of the hard-wood maple, as we sit brooding over our winter fire.

"Come and sit with us, and as one of us," she had said to Haldane, and so they had all gathered at the bedside of the widow, who had scarcely strength to do more than fix her dark, wistful eyes on one and another of the group. She was so bewildered and overwhelmed with her loss that her mind had partially suspended its action. She saw and heard everything; she remembered it all afterward; but now the very weight of the blow had so stunned her that she was mercifully saved from the agony of full consciousness.

Little Bertha climbed upon Haldane's lap and pleaded for a story.

"Yes, Bertie," he said, "and I think I know a story that you would like.

You remember I told you that your papa had gone away with Jesus; would you not like to hear a story about this good friend of your papa's?"

"Yes, yes, I would. Do you know much about him?"

"Quite a good deal, for he's my friend too. I know one true story about him that I often like to think of. Listen, and I will tell it to you.

Jesus is the G.o.d who made us, and he lives 'way up above the sky.' But he not only made us, Bertie, but he also loves us, and in order to show us how he loves us he is always coming to this world to do us good; and once he came and lived here just like a man, so that we might all be sure that he cared for us and wanted to make us good and happy. Well, at that time when he lived here in this world as a man he had some true friends who loved him and believed in him. At a certain time they were all staying on the sh.o.r.e of a sea, and one evening Jesus told his friends to take a little boat and go over to the other side of the sea, and he would meet them there. Then Jesus, who wanted to be alone, went up the side of the mountain that rose from the water's edge. Then night came and it began to grow darker and darker, and at last it was so dark that the friends of Jesus that were in the boat could only see a very little way. Then a moaning, sighing wind began to rise, and the poor men in the boat saw that a storm was coming, and they pulled hard with their oars in hopes of getting over on the other side before the storm became very bad; but by the time they reached the very middle of the sea, the wind began to blow furiously, just as you have seen it blow when the trees bent 'way over toward the ground, and some perhaps were broken down. A strong wind at sea makes the water rise up in waves, and these waves began to beat against the boat, and before very long some of the highest ones would dash into it. The men pulled with their oars with all their might, but it was of no use; the wind was right against them, and though they did their best hour after hour, they still could get no nearer the sh.o.r.e. How sad and full of danger was their condition! the dark, dark night was above and around them, the dark, angry waves dashing by and over them, the cold, black depths of water beneath them, and no sound in their ears but the wild, rushing storm. What do you think became of them?"

"I'm afraid they were drowned," said Bertha, looking up with eyes that were full of fear and trouble.

"Have you forgotten Jesus?"

"But he's 'way off on the side of the mountain."

"He is never so far from his friends but that he can see them and know all about them. He saw these friends in the boat, for Jesus can see in the darkness as well as in the light; and when the night grew darkest, and the waves were highest, and his friends most weary and discouraged, he came to them so that they might know that he could save them, when they felt they could not save themselves. And he came as no other help could have come--walking over the very waves that threatened to swallow up his friends; and when he was near to them he called out, 'Be of good cheer, it is I; be not afraid.' Then he went right up to the boat and stepped into it among his friends. Oh! what a happy change his coming made, for the winds ceased, the waves went down, and in a very little while the boat reached the sea-sh.o.r.e. The bright sun rose up, the darkness fled away, and the friends of Jesus were safe. They have been safe ever since. Nothing can harm Jesus' friends. He takes care of them from day to day, from year to year, and from age to age. Whenever they are in trouble or pain or danger he comes to them as he did to his friends in the boat, and he brings them safely through it all. Don't you think he is a good friend to have?"

"Isn't I too little to be his friend?"

"No, indeed; no one ever loved little children as he does. He used to take them in his arms and bless them, and he said, 'Suffer them to come to me'; and where he lives he has everything beautiful to make little children happy."

"And you say papa is with him?"

"Yes, papa is with him."

"Why can't we all go to him now?"

"As soon as he is ready for us he will come for us."