“Do you forgive and love everybody?” Alice asked, sighing as she saw the bitter expression flash for an instant over the pinched features, while the white lips answered, “Not Adah, no, not Adah.”
Alice could not pray after that, not aloud at least, and a deep silence fell upon the group assembled around the death-bed, while ’Lina slept quietly on Hugh’s strong arm. Gradually the hard expression on the face relaxed, giving way to one of quiet peace, as they waited anxiously for the close of that long sleep. It was broken at last, but ’Lina seemed lost to all save the thoughts burning at her breast,—thoughts which brought a quiver to her lips, and forced out upon her brow great drops of sweat. The noonday sun of May was shining broadly into the room, but to ’Lina it was night, and she said to Alice, now kneeling at her side, “It’s growing dark; they’ll light the street lamps pretty soon, and the band will play in the yard, but I shall not hear them. New York and Saratoga are a great ways off, and so is Terrace Hill. Tell Adah I do forgive her, and I would like to see her, for she is my half sister. The bitter is all gone. I am in charity with everybody, everybody. May I say ‘Our Father’ now? It goes and comes, goes and comes, forgive our trespasses, my trespasses; how is it, Hugh? Say it with me once, and you, too, mother.”
Mrs. Worthington, with a low cry began with Hugh the soothing prayer in which ’Lina joined feebly, throwing in ejaculatory sentences of her own. “Forgive my trespasses as I forgive those that trespass against me. Bless Hugh, dear Hugh, noble Hugh. Forgive us our trespasses, forgive us our trespasses, our trespasses, forgive my trespasses, me, forgive, forgive.”
It was the last words which ever passed ’Lina’s lips, “Forgive, forgive,” and Hugh, with his ear close to the lips, heard the faint murmur even after the hands had fallen from his neck where, in the last struggle, they had been clasped, and after the look which comes but once to all had settled on her face. That was the last of ’Lina, with that cry for pardon she passed away, and though it was but a death-bed repentance, and she, the departed, had much need for pardon, Alice clung to it as to a ray of hope, knowing how tender and full of compassion was the blessed Saviour, even to those who turn not to him until the river of death is bearing them away. Very gently Hugh laid the dead girl back upon the pillow, and leaving one kiss on her white forehead, hurried away to his own room, where, unseen by mortal eye, he could ask for knowledge to give himself to the God who had come so near to them.
The next day was appointed for the funeral, and just as the sun was setting, a long procession wound across the fields, and out to the hillside, where the Spring Bank dead were buried, and where they laid ’Lina to rest, forgetting all her faults, and speaking only kindly words of her as they went slowly back to the house, from which she had gone forever.
CHAPTER XXXV.
JOINING THE ARMY.
Ten days after the burial, there came three letters to Spring Bank, one to Hugh, from Murdoch, as he now chose to be called, saying that though he had sought and was still searching for the missing Adah, he could only trace her, and that but vaguely, to the Greenbush depot, where he lost sight of her entirely, no one after that having seen a person bearing the least resemblance to her. After a consultation with the doctor, he had advertised for her, and he enclosed a copy of the advertisement, as it appeared in the different papers of Boston, Albany, and New York.
“If A—— H—— will let her whereabouts be known to her friends, she will hear of something to her advantage.”
This was the purport of Murdoch’s letter, if we except a kind enquiry after ’Lina, of whose death he had not heard.
The second, for Alice, was from Anna Richards, who having heard of ’Lina’s decease, spoke kindly of the unfortunate girl, and then wrote. “I have great hopes of my erring brother, now that I know how his whole heart goes out towards his beautiful boy, our darling Willie. I wish poor, dear Lily could have seen him when, on his arrival at Terrace Hill, he knelt by the crib of his sleeping child, waking him at once, and hugging him to his bosom, while his tears dropped like rain. I am sure she would have chosen to be his wife, for her own sake as well as Willie’s.