“I think you will feel as I do, dear, that it was like Jim to go that way—faithful to the end. We laid him to rest this morning in the side of the Spruce Ridge, near the great old tree to which you and he used to climb so often, especially when you were a little girl. You will remember how he loved the sweep of country from there. The morning was beautiful and clear—the very kind of day he loved best; and as we carried him up the hill, and laid him to rest, a meadow-lark sat on the stump of a quaking-asp and sang over and over again. That was the only prayer there was—that and our thoughts—but I am sure Jim would have chosen that for his farewell song.”
Virginia could read no more. She pulled the head of the startled black horse away from the alders, and struck him with her spur. He started furiously down the hill, through the pines, and out into the country road. On and on they went, mile after mile, but still in Virginia’s ears rang her father’s words, “Dear old Jim left us last night to begin life over again Somewhere Else.” Jim, the comrade of her life, her trusted friend and adviser, whom she would never see again!
Again she struck the black horse with her spur. But the pounding of his feet on the hard road could not drown her father’s words. And no one would understand, she cried to herself—not even Mary and Priscilla. To them Jim was a dear, interesting old man; to Dorothy a “character”; to Imogene a “common hired helper”! They would not be able to comprehend her grief, just as they had never been able to understand her love for him.
But riding did not help as she had hoped. She would go back. A half hour later she left the horse at the stable, and walked homeward, alone with her grief. She could not bear to see the girls just yet, so she turned aside and followed the woodsy little path that led to St. Helen’s Retreat. It was still there—comfortingly still. She pushed open the door, and entered the little chapel, through whose long and narrow windows the sunlight fell in golden shafts upon the floor, and upon the white cloth that covered the little altar. Obeying something deep within her heart, Virginia knelt by the altar rail; and somehow in the stillness, the beauty and faithfulness of Jim’s honest life overcame a little the sadness of his death.
“Virginia knelt by the altar rail.”
How long she knelt there she did not know, but all at once she felt an arm around her, and heard Miss Wallace’s voice say:
“Why, my dear child, what is it? Come out into the sunlight and tell me. You will take cold in here!”
Together they went out under the pines where the sun was warm and bright; and sitting there, with Miss Wallace’s arms around her, Virginia told of her sorrow, and of dear old Jim, of whom Miss Wallace had already heard. Then she read her father’s letter, and the tears which stood in Miss Wallace’s eyes quite overflowed when she came to the part about the meadow-lark.
“And he loved the meadow-lark so!” sobbed Virginia. “It seems as though that one must have known!”