Hope and Have Part 16

"I am here," replied f.a.n.n.y, almost choked with emotion.

"We shall meet in heaven," said the dying one. "Have you been very naughty?"

"I have," sobbed f.a.n.n.y.

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 f.a.n.n.y, for the sake of her dying friend, Jenny Kent._"

"Take this, f.a.n.n.y: G.o.d 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.

"f.a.n.n.y," gasped she, extending her trembling hand.

f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y, and murmured,--

"HOPE AND HAVE."

She was silent then; her bosom soon ceased to heave; the ransomed spirit rose from the pain-enc.u.mbered body, and soared away to its angel-home!

CHAPTER X.

GOOD OUT OF EVIL.

Peacefully, on what had been her couch of pain, lay the silent form of Jenny. The room resounded with the sobs of the mother and the brother, and hardly less with the wailings of the stranger, who, in a few brief hours had found and lost the truest and best of earthly friends. The darkness gathered, and still they wept--the darkness from which Jenny had fled to the brightness of the eternal world, where there is no night or sorrow. There was woe in that humble abode, while heaven's high arches rang with paeans of rejoicing that a ransomed soul had joined the happy bands above.

There were no kind and sympathizing friends to go into that hovel and deck the marble form in the vestments of the grave. f.a.n.n.y was the first to realize that there was something to be done: she was a stranger to such a scene; she knew not what to do; but she told Mrs. Kent that she would go out and obtain a.s.sistance. With hurried step she walked down to the residence of the physician who had so gently and feelingly ministered to the sufferer. She found the doctor at home, and informed him of the sad event. Since his return he had told his wife and daughter of the beautiful girl who was dying in the cottage up the street. He called them into his library, and f.a.n.n.y, with tearful eyes and broken voice, repeated her narrative of the pa.s.sing away of poor Jenny.

The ladies promptly expressed their intention to visit the bereaved mother, and discharge the duties the occasion required. A carriage was called, in which the benevolent physician, his wife and daughter, and f.a.n.n.y, proceeded to the house of Mrs. Kent. They were the kindest and tenderest of friends, and the sorrowing mother, grateful to them for their good offices, and grateful to G.o.d for sending them to her, was relieved of a great load of pain and anxiety. At a late hour they departed, with the promise to come again on the following day.

Hour after hour Mrs. Kent and f.a.n.n.y sat in the chamber of death, talking about the gentle one who had pa.s.sed away, and was at rest. It was nearly morning before f.a.n.n.y, worn out by excitement and fatigue, could be prevailed upon to take the rest she needed. Mrs. Kent made a bed for her on the kitchen floor, and she slept for a few hours. When she awoke, her first thought was of Jenny; and all the events of the previous day and evening pa.s.sed in review before her. Her soul had been sanctified by communion with the sainted spirit of her departed friend.

On the day before, her current of being seemed suddenly to have stopped in its course, and then to have taken a new direction. Her thoughts, her hopes, her aspirations had all been changed. She had resolved to be good--so solemnly and truly resolved to be good, that she felt like a new creature.

She prayed to the good Father, who had been revealed to her by the dying girl; and from her prayers came a strength which was a new life to her soul. From her strong desire to be good--to be what Jenny had been--had grown up a new faith.

In the forenoon came the wife and daughter of the good physician again upon the mission of mercy. They had requested the attendance of an undertaker, and a.s.sumed the whole charge of the funeral of Jenny, which was to take place on the third day after her death.

f.a.n.n.y had hardly thought of herself since the angel of death entered the house, though she had been weighed down by a burden of guilt that did not embody itself in particular thoughts. In her sincere penitence, and in her firm and sacred resolve to be good and true, she had found only a partial peace of mind. She had not a doubt in regard to her future course: she must return to Woodville, and submit to any punishment which her kind friends might impose upon her. She was willing to suffer for what she had done; she was even willing to be sent to her uncle's in Minnesota; and this feeling of submission was the best evidence to herself of the reality of her repentance.

She was not willing to return to Woodville till she had seen the mortal part of Jenny laid away in its final resting-place. But Mr. Grant, who was at Hudson with his daughters, might already have been informed of her wicked conduct; and Mr. Long was probably still engaged in the search for her. There was a duty she owed to her friends which her awakened conscience would not permit her to neglect. The family would be very anxious about her, for wayward and wilful as she had been, she felt that they still loved her. Procuring pen and paper, she wrote a letter to Mrs. Green, informing her that she should return home on Friday; that she would submit to any punishment, and endeavor to be good in the future. She sealed the note, and put it in the post-office, with a feeling that it was all she could do at present as an atonement for her faults. If it was not all she could do, it was an error of judgment, not of the heart.

On Thursday the form of Jenny was placed in the coffin. It was not a pauper's coffin; it was a black-walnut casket--plain, but rich--selected by Mrs. Porter, the physician's lady, who could not permit the form of one so beautiful to be enclosed in a less appropriate receptacle. The choicest flowers lay upon her breast, and a beautiful wreath and cross were placed upon the casket before the funeral services commenced.

The clergyman was a friend of Dr. Porter, and he was worthy to be the friend of so true a man. The service was solemn and touching; no word of hope and consolation was omitted because they stood in the humble abode of poverty and want. He spoke of the beautiful life and the happy death of Jenny, and prayed that her parents might be comforted; that the little brother might be blessed by her short life, and that "the devoted young friend, who had so tenderly watched over the last hours of the departed," might be sanctified by her holy ministrations. The father, living or dead, wherever suffering, or wherever battling against the foes of his country, was remembered.

f.a.n.n.y wept, as all in the house wept, when the good man feelingly delineated the lovely character of her who was still so beautiful in her marble silence; when he recalled those tender scenes on the evening of her death, which had been faithfully described to him by f.a.n.n.y. The casket was placed in the funeral car, and followed by two carriages,--one of which contained Mrs. Kent, Eddy, and f.a.n.n.y, and the other the family of Dr. Porter,--to Greenwood Cemetery. Sadly the poor mother turned away from the resting-place of her earthly treasure, and the little _cortege_ returned to the house from which the light had gone out. The last solemn, sacred duty had been performed; Jenny had gone, but her pure influence was still to live on, and bless those who had never even known her.

When the little party reached the house, Dr. Porter, after some remarks about the solemn scenes through which they had just pa.s.sed, inquired more particularly than he had been permitted to do before into the circ.u.mstances of the family. He promised to procure for her the money due to her as a soldier's wife, and to obtain some light employment for her. Mrs. Kent was very grateful to him for his kind interest in herself, and in her lost one, a.s.suring him that she did not ask for charity, and was willing to work hard for a support.

"You have been a blessing to me, f.a.n.n.y," said Mrs. Kent, when the physician and his family had departed. "I am sure that G.o.d sent you here to save me from misery and despair. What should I have done if you had not come?"

"I think I was sent for my own sake, rather than for yours, for I know that it has been a greater blessing to me than to you," replied f.a.n.n.y.

"That can't be."

"It is so. When I told Jenny that I had been a very wicked girl, I meant so."

"I'm sure that one who has been so kind can't be very bad," added Mrs.

Kent, rather bewildered by the confession of her benefactor. "Where did you say you lived, f.a.n.n.y?"

The wanderer had been obliged to invent a story in the beginning to account for her absence from home, and the poor woman's heart had been too full of grat.i.tude to permit any doubt to enter there.

"I have deceived you, Mrs. Kent," replied f.a.n.n.y, bursting into tears.

"I do not live in the city; my home is twenty-five miles up the river.

But I did not mean to deceive poor Jenny. I wanted to tell her what a wicked deed I had done, but she would not let me."

"She was too good to think evil of any one, and especially of you, who have been so generous to us."

"You know the paper she wrote and gave to me?"

"Yes."

"I know from that she believed I had done something very bad."

"Perhaps she did."

"She told me how to be good. The very sight of her made me feel how wicked I was. I mean to be good."

"Then I am sure you will be."

"I shall always think of Jenny, and the anchor she gave me, when I am tempted to do wrong. I feel that Jenny has saved me, and made me a new being."

"I'm sure I hope so; and I am glad you came here for your own sake, as well as for mine. But I can't believe that one who has been good to my dear lost one can be very bad," replied Mrs. Kent, gloomily.