CHAPTER XIV.
SORROW AND SYMPATHY.
Unwilling to be separated from me, Clara proposed in 1882 that she and her two children should spend the summer in New England. Her Uncle William had placed his furnished house at our disposal; so Mr. Merrick and I had the novel experience of housekeeping in the land of the Pilgrims. We had the social pleasure of entertaining most interesting people, among them Miss Lucretia Noble, the author of “A Reverend Idol.”
After this visit Clara wrote a critique of this much-talked-of book, published in the New Orleans Times-Democrat, in which these words occur: “Miss Noble reminds one forcibly of that charming woman—Genevieve Ward. The identity of the ‘Idol’ is supposed to be established in the character of the worshiped and worshipful Phillips Brooks.” Clara had at times been a newspaper contributor, and often said a timely word for “the Cause that needed assistance.” She had addressed an open letter, just before leaving the city, to Mr. Paul Tulane, the philanthropist whose monument is Tulane University, urging vainly that this great institution should be co-educational in its scope. It was said of her that while her intellect and style were exquisitely womanly they possessed firm rationality and searching analytical qualities.
Rev. W. F. Warren, D. D., president of Boston University, came also with his most attractive family to Wilbraham. The friendship and love of his wife, Harriet Cornelia Merrick, proved a source of great comfort in that season of sorrow, and a true satisfaction as long as she lived. Her vigorous, wholesome, sympathetic nature was one on which everybody was willing to ease off their own burdens. Her intellectual abilities ranked high, for she had acquired the culture of seven years spent in Europe. She was widely known for twenty-four years, as the editor of the Heathen Woman’s Friend—the organ of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was an artist in music and a master of the French, German and Italian languages. A friend in Germany said: “Her German is perfect. She is never taken for an American; for does she not possess all the virtues of a German housewife? Does she not dearly love to fill her chest with fine linen, and take the best care of her household? And then she cultivates her flowers, makes fine embroideries, and last is a good knitter. She cannot be an American lady!” Yet she was a model mother after the American ideal; besides being a trustee of the New England Conservatory of Music, and a leading officer of numerous other boards. She had a breezy fashion of conversation, a fascinating smile, a cheery word, a fun-sparkling eye and bright hair waving prettily from a broad brow. When I confided to her the fact of my daughter’s threatened life by a latent disease, she gave such heartful sympathy that I have never ceased to be grateful, and shed many tears when she too was called away.
I needed a close friend this sad summer, for though my daughter was not in usual health when we left home, none knew of the presence of a fatal malady. After a physician from Springfield had told us that she might survive a year in a warmer climate, it was difficult to keep strong enough to show her a cheerful face; but the medical orders were that Clara should not be informed of her own danger if we expected to take her home alive. I telegraphed for Mr. Guthrie. When he arrived and saw her looking as usual, sitting by an open window, bright, and beautifully dressed, he sent an immediate message to New Orleans allaying anxiety. But it was soon evident that she had entered upon the beginning of the end. She drove out every day and did not suffer: and we found her serenely conscious of her own condition. She said: “It is all right, if I die. I have been as happy as opportunities, and kindness, and attentions, and love can make a human being. It is beautiful to die here in Wilbraham where every one is so kind.” Every day she was bright and cheerful, and looked her own sweet self. One day her father assisted her into the carriage, and I knew it was for her a last drive. Though almost prostrated with grief, I was able to welcome her cheerfully when she returned. The next morning she got up as usual, and calling for her children, took a tender leave of all of us. “Don’t grieve, mother dear, don’t!” she said; “I am safe in God’s keeping.”
“Oh, my child, what can I do without you!” I cried. “Do as other bereaved mothers have done and bear it bravely! and you will have both my little children to rear; they are yours.” When at the last she fixed her beautiful eyes on me and said: “My mother!” her earthly word was silenced, her life-work done.
I find that I wrote thus to a dear friend at that time: “Here I am—sitting in the chamber of my dead. The Marthas and the Marys are here doing according to their natures. Mary sits in the quiet with me, Martha writes of our loss to the absent, or prepares dinner. God help us! the business of life must go on even in the presence of death. My Clara lies on the lounge, wrapped in white cashmere, so still—so cold;—and this is the last day she can so lie before she is buried from my sight. The wind blows cool, as often in a New England August, but it drives pangs into my sore heart, and the day seems different from any other day of my life. Why does God leave us at such times set apart to suffer, as on some eminence? The people pity us. Her father says the time is short and we shall soon go to her. Yes—and then the air and the sunshine will take on a new nature for some one else—for our sakes. But it is different to lay old frames in the dust from putting under the daisies’ bed the young in their glorious prime. God knows best. It may be that she is taken from evil to come. She lived happily, and has laid down all of earth bravely to go into the other life.
“The students stop in passing, and seeing our mourning door ask, ‘Who is dead?’ My dead is nothing to them. They never saw Clara—nor me. It is only an idle question. We are only two atoms among earth’s millions. O Lord, forget not these particles in Thy universe,—for we are being tossed to and fro,—and bring us to a resting place somewhere in Thy eternal kingdom!
“I know the world must still go on, though it is stationary for me, and I am honestly trying to have patience with its cheerful progress; but even the playfulness of my two motherless little ones jars upon me. It is useless for me to try to realize human sympathy from the lonely height where I sit and weep over the untimely death of my two beautiful daughters. They were God-given, and my very own by ties of blood, but more by that happy responsiveness of soul which constitutes ‘born friends.’ After being as the woman whose children rise up and call her blessed, I am now like Rachel of old, refusing to be comforted because they are not. I lie down in humble submission because I cannot help myself. I say over and over, ‘Thy will be done!’—but all the same I would have them back if I could. None of us try to raise a controversy with the inevitable. We are grateful for kind words and sympathy. They cannot change anything, but they give just a drop of comfort to a desolate, disrupted life on the human side of that gateway, through which the majority have gone down into the silence where ‘the dead praise not the Lord.’”