Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 53

"William, I fear it may be. Don't grieve, child! don't grieve!"

William had laid his head down upon the table, the sobs breaking forth.

His poor mother left her seat, and bent her head down beside him, sobbing also.

"William, for my sake don't grieve!" she whispered. "G.o.d alone knows what is good. He would not take her unless it were for the best."

CHAPTER VII.

THE END.

April pa.s.sed. May was pa.s.sing; and the end of Jane Halliburton was at hand. There was no secret now about her state; but she was going away very peacefully.

In this month, May, there occurred another vacancy in the choir of the cathedral. Little Gar--but he was growing too big now to be called Little Gar--proved to be the successful candidate; so that both boys were now in the choir.

"It will be such a help to me, learning to chant, should I ever try for a minor canonry," boasted Gar, who never tired of telling them that he meant to be a clergyman.

"Gar, dear, did you ever sit down and count the cost?" asked Mrs.

Halliburton. "I fear it will not be your luck to go to college."

"Labor omnia vincit," cried out Gar. "You have heard us stumbling over our Latin often enough, mamma, to know what that means. Frank will need to count the cost, too, if he is ever to make himself into a barrister; and he says he _will_ be one."

"Oh, you two vain boys!" cried Jane, laughing.

"Mamma," spoke up Janey from the sofa--and her breathing was laboured now--"is there harm in their wishing this?"

"Not at all. They are laudable aims. Only Frank and Gar are so poor and friendless that I fear the hopes are too ambitious to end in anything but disappointment."

Janey called Gar to her, and pulled his face down to a level with hers, whispering softly, "Strive well, Gar, and trust in G.o.d."

Later, when Jane had to be out on an indispensable errand, Dobbs came in to sit with Janey. She brought her some jelly in a saucer.

"I am nearly tired of it, Dobbs," said Janey. "I grow tired of everything. And I don't like to say so, because it seems so ungrateful."

"It's the nature of illness to get tired of things," responded Dobbs, who thought it was her mission never to cease buoying Janey up with hope. "You'll be better when the hot weather comes in."

"No, I shan't, Dobbs. I shall never get better now."

A combination of feelings, indignation predominating, nearly took away Dobbs's breath. "Who on earth has been putting that grim notion in your head?" asked she.

"It is true, Dobbs."

"True!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Dobbs. "Who has been saying it to you? I want to know that."

"Mamma for one. She----"

"Of all the stupids!" burst forth Dobbs, drowning what Janey was about to say. "To frighten the child by telling her she's going to die!"

"It does not frighten me, Dobbs. I like to lie and think of it."

Dobbs fell into a doubt whether Janey was in her senses. "Like to lie and think of being screwed down in a coffin, and put into the cold ground, and left there till the judgment day!" uttered she.

"Oh, but, Dobbs, you must know better than that," returned Jane. "_We_ are not put into the coffin; it is only our bodies that are put into the coffin; we go into the world of departed spirits."

"De-par-ted what?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Dobbs, whose notions of the future--the life after this life--were not very definite; and who could not have been more astonished had Jane begun to talk to her in Greek.

"Mamma has always tried to explain these things to us," said Jane. "She has made them as clear to us as they can be made, and she has taught us not to fear death. She says a great mistake is often made by those who bring up children. They are taught to run away from death as something gloomy and frightful, instead of being shown its bright side."

"Well, I never heard the like!" exclaimed Dobbs, lost in wonder. "How can there be a bright side to death?--in a horrid coffin, with bra.s.s nails and tin-tacks that screw you down?"

Tears filled Janey's eyes. "Oh, Dobbs, you must learn better than that, or how will you ever be reconciled to death? Don't you know that when we die, we--our spirit, that is, for it is our spirit that lives and thinks--leave our body behind us? There's no more consciousness in our body, and it is put into the grave till the last day. It is like the sh.e.l.l that the silkworm casts away when it comes into the moth: the life is in the moth: not in the cast-off sh.e.l.l. You cannot think what trouble mamma has taken with us always to explain these things; and she has talked to me so much lately."

"And where does the spirit go--by which, I suppose, you mean the soul?"

asked Dobbs.

Janey shook her head, to express her ignorance at the best. "It is all a mystery," she said; "but mamma has taught us to believe that there's a place for the departed, and that we shall be there. It is not to be supposed that the soul, a thing of life, could be boxed up in a coffin, Dobbs. When Jesus Christ said to the thief on the cross, 'To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise,' he meant that world. It is a place of light and rest."

"And the good and bad are there together?"

Again Janey shook her head. "Don't you remember, in the parable of the rich man and the beggar, there was a great gulf between them, and Abraham said that it could not be pa.s.sed? I dare say it will be very peaceful and happy there: quite different from this world, where there's so much trouble and sickness. Why should I be afraid of death, Dobbs?"

Dobbs sat looking at her, and was some minutes before she spoke. "Not afraid to die!" she slowly said. "Well, I should be."

Janey's eyes were wet. "n.o.body need be afraid to die when they have learnt to trust in G.o.d. Don't you know," she answered with something like enthusiasm, "that many people, when dying, have seen Jesus waiting for them? What does it matter, then, where our bodies are put? We are going to be with Jesus. Indeed, Dobbs, there's nothing sad in dying, if you only can look at it in the right way. It is those who look at it in the wrong way that are afraid to die."

"The child's as learned as a minister!" was Dobbs's inward comment.

"Ours told us last Sunday evening at Chapel that we were all on the high road to perdition. I'd rather listen to her creed than to his: it sounds more encouraging. Their ma hasn't brought 'em up amiss; and that's the truth!"

The soliloquy was interrupted by the return of Mrs. Halliburton. Almost immediately afterwards some visitors came in--Mary Ashley and Anna Lynn.

It was the first time Mary had been there, and she had come to bring Janey some more books. She was one of those graceful children whom it is pleasant to look at. A contrast in attire she presented to the little Quakeress, with her silk dress, her straw hat, trimmed with a wreath of flowers and white ribbons, her dark curls falling beneath it. She was much younger than her brother Henry; but there was a great resemblance between them--in the refined features, the bright complexion, and the soft dark eyes. Somehow, through a remark made by Dobbs, the conversation turned upon Jane's inability to recover; and Mary Ashley heard with extreme wonder that death was not dreaded. "Her ma has taught her different," was Dobbs's comment.

"Mamma takes great pains with us," observed Mary; "but I should not like to die. How is it?" she added, turning to Mrs. Halliburton. "Jane is not much older than I, and yet she does not dread it!"

"My dear," was the reply, "I think it is simply this. Those whom G.o.d is intending to take from the world, He often, in His mercy and wisdom, weans from the love of it. You are healthy and strong, and the world is pleasant to you. Jane has been so long weak and ill that she no longer finds enjoyment in it; and this naturally causes her to look beyond this world to the rest and peace of the next. All things are well ordered."

Mary Ashley began to think they must be. Chattering Anna, vain Anna, sat gazing at Mary's pretty hat, her drooping curls; none, except Anna herself, knew with what envious longing. Anna, at any rate, was not tired of the world.

The end grew nearer and nearer. There came a day when Jane did not get up; there came a second, and a third. On the fourth morning, Janey, who had pa.s.sed a comfortable night, compared with some nights which had preceded it, was sitting up in bed when her brothers came in from school. They hurried over their breakfast and ran up to her, carrying the remains of it in their hands.

The first few minutes after breakfast had always been devoted by Jane to reading to her children; in spite of her necessity for close working they were so devoted still. "I will read here this morning," she observed, as the boys stood around the bed.

"Mamma," interrupted Janey, "read about the holy city, in the Book of Revelation."

Mrs. Halliburton turned to the twenty-first chapter, and had read to the twenty-third verse--"And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of G.o.d did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof"--when Jane suddenly started forward in bed, her eyes fixed on some opposite point. Mrs. Halliburton paused, and endeavoured to put her gently back again.