CHAPTER XXXV.
Mr. Bond's pale face brightens up as Nannie enters the sick room, and he seems to rally again, but the physician says there is no hope of his restoration. He has failed very rapidly. A paralytic stroke has deprived him of the use of his right side, and it is very evident that he will not make one of the pleasant party in the sunny attic again. It is a great happiness to the weary man to feel that his work upon earth is almost over. He has done it more than cheerfully, even gladly! but he is not sorry to rest from it now, there's a great reward coming—besides the face of his merciful and loving Father, there is another, the gift of that same Father whom they both ever reverenced, that is winning him with its seraphic expression, and he is quite ready to go. There are some things to be settled, though, while he has the ability to do it, and he calls Pat and Nannie to him, and places the girl's hand in the lad's, blessing them doubly—first with the fadeless benison that cometh from above, sometimes through the petitions of a departing and righteous soul—and then with an earthly dower from the purse that had never been closed to the poor and needy, neither had unwisely nor imprudently emptied itself upon them. There was nothing else for Peter Bond to do but to compose himself, and peacefully await the parting moment. There were very profitable hours spent beside the sick man's bed; hours that left their impress upon the after-life of Mrs. Bates and her two children, for Pat is as Nannie, now, the minister has made them man and wife beside the couch of their benefactor. It was by his express wish; what if they are young! So much the more closely will the sacred bonds be interlaced until no earthly power can loose them.
They demur, on account of the unseemliness of a joyous ceremony at a time, to them, so sad and trying; but it is a last request, and they yield. It is very hard to think that their kind friend is passing from them, and that they have no power to detain him; but so it is, and he falls asleep with his closing eyes fixed upon the face on the canvas, and the beloved name on his lips. There are a good many in to look upon him as he lies there so majestically calm. There is such a sublimity in the noble countenance now stamped with so sacred a seal!
There are no relations there, for he has outlived all of kindred blood; but there are others crowding around to get a parting glimpse of the kind face that has cheered them through many an adverse season, and the family of his adoption leave him not until the trees that shade the maiden's grave wave also over his, and the fragrance of the flowers which his own hand hath planted on the green hill-side afar off, breath upon the tombs of both united.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
It is a very quiet subdued sort of night. A solemn stillness broods over the attic room where the bereaved trio are gathered. It is August again, and two of the group recall a bitter evening one August, long ago, when the pitiless rain cast them shelterless into the street—and their grateful hearts dwell upon the peace and comfort that resulted from that one, apparently adverse, providence.
The other member of the little circle dwells upon the single kind act that made his subsequent good fortune. There is no doubt in either mind of the especial guardianship of an Almighty power. Every little blessing, every happy consequence from what, at first, seemed an evil, is plainly before them, and the review of the few past years is working out a settled confidence in the over-ruling Hand.
Mrs. Bates thinks of the hours of heaviness when, a poor huckster woman, she trudged wearily along with her loaded basket, and of the many times she sought the miserable cellar without a morsel of bread for her famishing children, and her heart clings fondly to the memory of the real friend who wrought so glorious a change in her condition. Nannie goes back to the pinched and pallid infant in the darkened room, and the days and weeks of sadness spent away from the light and air, and she comes again to the happy home, and the angel sister, and the lovely little Dora—and a tear moistens her eye as she feels that the kind heart that has so long imparted to their life its purest pleasures has forever ceased to beat. Pat is more occupied with the bright present than with past ills. The vile place where he once groveled is erased from his mind by the hallowed sanctuary that is now his Christian home, and the blessed consciousness that Nannie Bates is his, now and forever, banishes every feeling of sadness, leaving room for no regrets save the one that Mr. Bond is hidden from them, to be seen no more on earth.
Pat has acquired such an universal benevolence since Nannie is so fast bound unto him, that even Mike Dugan is welcomed into their little circle with a true cordiality.