‘Is there a telegram?’
There was a telegram, and it was given to her immediately. Before seeing a word, Miss Tucker knew what the missive had to tell,—knew that her dearly loved sister had passed away. She opened it, and burst into a flood of tears. Reaching home, Miss Dixie led her to her own room, and there left her for a little while alone.
Probably no sorrow in all her lifetime, except the death of her Father and the death of Letitia, had touched her so closely as this sorrow; and even they were not the same, because through them she always had still her Laura. Now the sense of loneliness pressed upon her heavily. Whatever she had thought, whatever she had wished, whatever had aroused her interest or appealed to her sympathies, the immediate impulse had ever been to tell it to Mrs. Hamilton,—perhaps even more during these long years in a far-off land, than in her English life. But indeed from very childhood, from the time when Laura was a little rosy, sweet-tempered, merry maid of four, and Charlotte was a wild-spirited, impulsive, and ambitious child of eight, the tie between them had been of a very unusual nature. They did not love merely as sisters, but as the nearest and dearest of intimate personal friends. What made the one happy made the other happy. What grieved the one grieved the other.
And now for a while the tie was seemingly broken; intercourse was at an end. True, Charlotte Tucker had been for sixteen long years and more separated by land and ocean from her sister. But the communion of mind with mind had been incessant throughout. True, the break was for a very little while. But this she could not possibly know. Old as she was, old in some respects beyond her years, she yet had a strong constitution, and a marvellous amount even now of wiry vigour. Weak she might be, in a sense; nevertheless she could get through a round of work daily which few women of seventy would dream of attempting. It was well within the bounds of possibility that her life might be extended through another ten or twelve years, or even longer.
‘She felt her sister’s death most dreadfully,’ one of her nieces has said. Yet she did not lie crushed beneath the weight of her grief. Work had still to be done; and others had to be thought of and comforted.
On the very day that she received the telegram she wrote to Mrs. Hamilton’s daughter a letter full of sympathy for her niece’s loss, scarcely mentioning her own.
‘I would take you as it were into my arms, ... and weep with you, so that I might possibly even remind you of the sympathy of the precious Mother, whom you have not lost, but parted with for a little while. O, when you meet in Eternity, what a little while it will appear!... You have the blessing of holy memories; you know that you were a great comfort to the precious Invalid; and you have the joy of hope, the hope of re-union. We are only pilgrims on the same road; and one arrives before the other. Both have the same Home.
‘“And who can tell the rapture, when the circle is complete,
And all the Family of God around the Father meet?”
’ ... It will be a solace to you to look after your beloved Mother’s poor. I am sure that many had cause to bless her. All her works of love done so quietly and unostentatiously; but every one marked down in God’s “book of remembrance.” What a wonderful joy the opening of that book will be! Little kindnesses, acts of love, words of holy counsel, all marked down, not one forgotten.... Try to realise your Mother’s happiness! Has she not looked on the Lord Jesus, heard His Voice, received His welcome?’