For every day made it more plain to them all that Mrs Vane’s death was near. Sorrowful days they were; but joy mingled with their sorrow; for her peace flowed still and deep.
She had never been a person of strong mind, and the training of her early days had not been of a kind to strengthen her mentally or morally. Out of the pain and weariness of these last years there had come no strength, but a great longing for rest, and a fear, vague but horrible, of death, and the unknown future beyond.
And so the words of peace, spoken by the old man whom Frederica had brought in for shelter, had come as a message from God to her soul. To the trembling hope of a Saviour which it awakened she clung, as a child in the dark clings to the unseen hand that holds it; and by-and-by, as the light of truth grew clearer to her eyes, she knew the hand she held was the hand of Jesus, strong and tender, with power to hold her safe for ever, and then she was at rest.
From the very first the light had been clear to Selina, and she was never weary of telling the wondrous story of Christ’s love and life and death to her mother. Over and over daily, sometimes hourly, the same words were repeated with patient, nay, with joyful iteration, and Selina became God’s messenger to her mother. He spake to the dying woman through her child’s voice; and peace, beyond all power of earthly things to trouble, rested on her. In her state of weakness she was less capable than ever of continued thought on any subject; but she saw clearly, and held firmly to this, “He loved me, and gave Himself for me” and His promise was made good to her, “My peace I leave with you.”
What strange, still, dream-like days they were which followed till the end came! Frederica, standing, in her care for them all, a little apart from her mother and sister, looked on with wonder. Selina was doing for her mother all that she used to dream of doing. She was comforting, sustaining, and showing her the way to heaven, which was drawing near. She did not grudge Selina this joy. Far from that! Seeing their mother’s constant peace; seeing the sudden sweet gleams of something that was more than peace that shone sometimes in the beautiful wasted face, Frederica was ready to say that nothing else mattered much. In the certainty of her mother’s blessedness, she wished to forget—she did forget at times—all else that could trouble her.
“If only papa could come home,” she said a hundred times a day to herself. To her mother she spoke hopefully and cheerfully of his return. The tidings that came mail by mail varied. Sometimes he was better, and sometimes worse, and the time seemed long to them all.
“We shall meet again,” said his wife often; and once she added, “and we shall not misunderstand or vex one another any more.” But whether she meant in this world or in heaven, her children did not know.
So day after day they waited. Miss Agnace, strong, and gentle, and patient, with watchful eyes and silent lips, went in and out among them—an angel of help and kindness. To her, even more than to Frederica, the change that had come over the dying woman was wonderful.
“She is no longer the same,” said she, in one of her many confidences to Father Jerome. “They were reading about ‘a new creature’ the other day. That is what she has become. ‘Old things have passed away, all things have become new.’ I do not understand it. Is it well with her, think you, father? If at the end you are with her, to lay hands on her and touch her with the oil of blessing, do you not think it may be well with her? It is Jesus on whom she relies. Is that enough, father?”
“Let us wait until the end,” said Father Jerome gravely, and to Sister Agnace he would say no more.