Upon the chancel casement, and upon that grave of mine,
In the early, early morning the summer sun will shine.
I shall not forget you, mother; I shall hear you when you pass,
With your feet above my head on the long and pleasant grass.
Good night, good night! When I have said, good night for evermore,
And you see me carried out from the threshold of the door,
Don't let Effie come to see me till my grave is growing green:
She'll be a better child to you than I have ever been.
Here Harold paused; for, looking at Olive, he saw her tears falling fast; but Mrs. Rothesay, generally so easily touched, was now quite unmoved. On her face was a soft calm. She said to herself, musingly,
“How terrible for one's child to die first. But I shall never know that pang. Go on, Mr. Gwynne.”
He read—what words for him to read!—the concluding stanzas; and as he did so, the movement of Mrs. Rothesay's lips seemed silently to follow them.
O sweet and strange it seems to me, that ere this day is done,
The voice which now is speaking may be beyond the sun,
For ever and for ever with those just souls and true,
And what is life that we should moan? Why make we such ado?
For ever and for ever all in a blessed home,
And there to wait a little while till you and Effie come;
To lie within the light of God, as I lie upon your breast,
Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.
After he concluded, they were all three very silent. What thoughts were in each heart? Then Mrs. Rothesay said,
“Now, my child, it is growing late. Read to us yourself, out of the best Book of all.” And when Olive was gone to fetch it, she added, “Mr. Gwynne will pardon my not asking him to read the Bible, but a child's voice sounds so sweet in a mother's ears, especially when”—— She stopped, for Olive just then entered.
“Where shall I read, mamma?”
“Where I think we have come to—reading every night as we do—the last few chapters of the Revelations.”
Olive read them—the blessed words, the delight of her childhood—telling of the heavenly kingdom, and the afterlife of the just. And he heard them: he who believed in neither. He sat in the shadow, covering his face with his hands, or lifting it at times with a blind, despairing look, like that of one who, staggering in darkness, sees afar a faint light, and yet cannot, dare not, believe in its reality.