"You ricollect the Bible says 'Love is strong as death,'" said Aunt Jane, "but that ain't always so. You'll see a husband or a wife die, and you'll think the one that's left never will git over grievin' for the one that's gone, and the first thing you know there's a second marriage, and that shows that death is stronger than love, and I reckon it's well that it's so. If one's taken and the other's left, it's because the livin' has got a work to do in this world. They can't spend their lives grievin' after the dead, and they oughtn't to try to foller the dead. But once in a while, honey, it's a good thing to find a love that's stronger than death. 'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.'"
The tremulous old voice ceased again and there was a long silence. At last, "What became of Hamilton Schuyler?" I asked softly.
Aunt Jane roused herself with a start. She also had known a love that was stronger than death, and her thoughts were not with Hamilton and Miss Amaryllis.
"Hamilton?" she said dreamily. "Oh, yes! Poor man! Poor man! It was all they could do to make him come away from the grave, and when they got him home and tried to persuade him to go to bed and take some rest, he'd throw out his arms and push 'em away and say, 'There's no more rest for me on this earth. How can a man get into his bed and sleep, when his wife and child are lyin' out in the frozen ground?' And for weeks he'd go out to the graveyard in the dead o' the night and wander up and down the house like a ghost. He stayed around the place till spring come, and when the flowers begun to bloom he got worse instead o' better. It looked like every flower and tree reminded him of Miss Amaryllis. And he'd walk down the gyarden lookin' at her rose-bushes and talkin' to himself, and every time a rose bloomed, he'd gether it and put it on her grave. And one mornin', about the last o' May, he told one o' the slaves to saddle his horse, and when they asked him where he was goin', he said: 'I'm going to find her. I found her once, and I can find her again.'
"They tried to reason with him, but they might as well 'a' talked to the air. He rode off like mad, and the next folks heard of him, he was 'way off yonder in some foreign country; and after a while the news come that he'd been found dead in his bed. Whether he grieved himself to death or whether he took his own life nobody ever knew. I ricollect how glad I was when I heard about it, for I knew he'd found Miss Amaryllis.
"But there's one thing, child, that troubles me and always has troubled me, especially since Abram died. You know that text that says there's neither marryin' nor givin' in marriage in heaven, but we'll all be like the angels? I've thought and thought about that text, but I can't see how a man and a woman that's loved each other and lived together as husband and wife for a lifetime in this world can ever be anything but husband and wife, no matter what other world they go to nor how long death's kept 'em parted from each other; and when death comes between 'em at the very beginnin', it looks like they ought to have their happiness in heaven. I know it's wrong to go against the words o' the Bible, and yet I can't help hopin' and trustin' that somehow or other Hamilton Schuyler found his wife and the little child that never drew a breath in this world; for that was all the heaven he wanted, and it looks like he had a right to it."
Does it call for laughter or for tears, this splendid audacity of the soul that gives us strength to stand among the wrecks of human life and in the face of inexorable law plead our right to love and happiness? And yet, is not inexorable law, but another name for the eternal justice that measures out to every man his just deserts? And who but the fool dare say that eternal justice is but a dream?
For "now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." And if faith and hope fail not, surely the love that is stronger than death shall one day find its own, and hold its own through all eternity.