Letters of Peregrine Pickle

by George P. Upton

[OLD BLOBBS REDIVIVUS.]

I THINK you never saw a happier little family circle than gathered about the breakfast table this morning. The dark cloud which has hovered over us so long, casting its shadow over all the household, has dissipated, and behind it we saw that the sun was still shining, although we faint hearts had begun to believe that we should never sit in the sunshine again.

Old Blobbs has past the crisis and weathered the storm. The staunch old man has baffled pallida mors by resolutely contesting every inch with him. For a day he hovered on the brink of the chasm between the two worlds, but there was no trace of terror, or even of impatience, in his serene face. I think he was so near to Heaven that gleams of its light irradiated him, for I never saw such a rapt face before. I think that he heard the sound of the harps coming faintly to him, as we sometimes hear music coming over the water in the hush of night, for now and then he would close his eyes and listen very attentively, seeming to forget us who were standing around, fearing that at any moment he might see the gate of Paradise and pass through, leaving us disconsolate on this side. And I know, by a quick glow of recognition and a smile of ineffable pleasure, which once lit up his face, that he saw the Maiden Aunt, and a little child who once left us, somewhere in that land so far from us, but so near to him, for he raised his thin white hand as if he would grasp the hand of another. We could not speak to him. In that solemn time we dared not. The doctor sat upon the bedside and watched him with anxious face. Mignon, in the intensity of her grief, sat with her face buried in her hands. She had placed the faded forget-me-not, which the Maiden Aunt sent to her as her dying souvenir, in Blobbs' hand, thinking, perhaps, that he might take it to her, as they do not grow where she is, for memory There is eternal.

It was growing towards sunset, and through the interlacing leaves of the ivy which covers the window, a golden shaft of sunlight shot into the room and fell upon the bed. It caught Old Blobbs' eye. He faintly smiled, turned his head away, and closed his eyes. The doctor lightly felt the pulse and motioned us to be silent. In a few minutes, the doctor beckoned us to retire to another room, and then said to us: "Your friend is sleeping. He has passed the crisis and will be spared to you. It is only necessary that he should be kept quiet."

On the day before the crisis, Parson Primrose called to see Old Blobbs in the performance of official duty, and undoubtedly actuated by a sincere desire to smooth his pathway into the Valley of the Shadow. There was just the faintest expression of impatience upon Blobbs' face, when he saw him enter. Primrose had assumed a conventional, business-like look of grief, not unmixed with a slight anxiety, as if he were not at all certain that Blobbs' pathway needed any smoothing. And I knew that Blobbs was convinced how utterly impotent Primrose was to afford him any consolation or shed any light upon the future.

In a dry, formalistic way, Primrose asked: "My dear brother, are you prepared for the great change!"

I never shall forget Blobbs' look of profound astonishment as he replied: "Yes, sir! Certainly. I have always been prepared for this from my boyhood up. I supposed it was a man's first duty to have his household always in order for such changes—most of all, the common change which may come any minute. Why, of course, sir, I am prepared, and hope I shall meet the change like a gentleman."

Primrose added: "And have you prepared yourself for this great change by attendance upon divine worship?"

"Yes, sir," replied Old Blobbs. "I may say to you, however, as we had better understand each other, that I have not always deemed it important to attend divine worship within four walls. I have been rather oppressed, sir, by this gregarious form of worship, and have not always received satisfaction or consolation from the gentlemen of your cloth—and this, with all respect, sir. I imagine that I have been rather exacting, and expected to find a guide, rather than a companion who knew no more of the way than myself. In such cases, I always found that I got much nearer the Great Father by going out into Nature, the house which He built, and by loving my fellow-man and all the forms of life which He has created, even down to the insects. There has always, I may say, sir, been more satisfaction to me in this warm, active love than in that affection which has been regulated by rules and bounded by dogmas."