"She is not dead, but sleepeth." There was another silence, till both turned to go. Then the father spoke again in a low, half-audible tone:
"My lamb—my own sweet, gentle lamb! If I did not know you were safe with the good Shepherd, how could I bear it!"
Roland Graeme left the house without a word; but Nora, who caught a passing glimpse of him—his usually happy eyes filled with tears—felt a stronger personal interest in him than she had ever done before. Somehow, he had always seemed to have so little personal stake in life, to live so completely for others and for the cause he had at heart, that he almost conveyed the idea of a transparency,—of a personality without much color of its own. After all, it is perhaps the faults and weaknesses of others that excite most interest in us; and Roland had seemed almost "faultily faultless." But this personal sorrow of his seemed to have emphasized his personality at last; and Nora, for the first time, began to think of him as an individuality, rather than as simply the champion of a worthy cause.
Of course Roland attended the funeral, walking behind Mr. Alden and Frank, with one of the younger boys. It was a warm and lovely day at the end of March, when the first robin's liquid notes were promising the coming spring, and the swelling buds were just beginning to diffuse a subtle fragrance. The grass in the cemetery was growing green, and nature herself seemed to breathe a soothing balm over the sorrowful hearts. After all was over, Mr. Alden remained a while behind the rest; and Roland, sharing his feeling, lingered too, not far off, unwilling to leave him—unwilling too, in his heart, to leave her!
At last, the stricken father raised his head, and, after a gesture that looked like a benediction over the new-made grave, turned slowly and reluctantly away. Roland silently approached him and the two set out on their homeward walk.
"'I am the resurrection and the life,'" said Mr. Alden; "if I did not remember that, I think my heart would break, to go and leave her there. But she's not there!" And then, as he looked back at the cemetery, lying peaceful in the sunset light, he murmured, half to himself, those beautiful lines of Whittier's, that have expressed the feeling of so many sorrowing hearts:—
"Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere—meet we must;
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day,
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever Lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!"
Roland was silent for a while. He did not share Mr. Alden's firm faith; yet, just then, he could not bear to think otherwise. At last, he ventured to say, in his gentlest tone:
"I like the way in which it has been put by a country-man of my own—a young Canadian poet, who has since gone to verify his 'faith':
"'I have a faith—that life and death are one;
That each depends upon the self-same thread;
And that the seen and unseen rivers run
To one calm sea, from one dear fountain-head.'"[2]