Oh, how vividly I recalled the past, remembering with anguish the harsh words I had uttered when last I saw him. It was true I had once written, imploring pardon for my fault, and Lizzie, who answered my letter, had said “Father bade me say that you were freely forgiven;” but still I felt that I could not let him die until I had heard my forgiveness from his own lips. It was impossible for Anna to accompany me, and, as William would not leave her, I started alone, my heart filled with many dark forebodings, lest I should be too late.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.
All around the house was still; while within, the children and the neighbors trod softly as they went from room to room, and their faces wore an anxious, troubled look, as if they already felt the presence of the shadow hovering near. The heavy brass knocker was muffled, and the deep-toned churchbell across the way no longer told the hours of 12 and 9, for at each stroke the sick man had turned upon his pillow, and moaned as if in pain. So when the Sabbath came the people went up unsummoned to the house of God, where they reverently prayed for him, who was passing from their midst, and who, ere another week rolled round, would be “where congregations ne’er break up, and Sabbaths never end.”
For many days he had lain in a kind of stupor from which nothing roused him save the rush of the engine as it swept across the meadow at the foot of the hill. Then he would start up, asking eagerly if “they had come, Anna, Rose, and Jamie.” Much he talked of the absent ones, and as day by day went by and still they came not, he wept like a little child, as he said to his wife, “I shall never see them more.”
“And if you do not,” she asked, “what shall I tell them?”
For a time he lay as if her question was unheard—then opening his eyes he answered, “Tell Anna, my stricken one, that there is for her a balm in Gilead; that whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and though the waters through which she is passing be deep and troubled, they shall not overflow, for the everlasting arms are beneath her.”
“And Rosa, have you no message for her?” asked my mother as he ceased speaking.
“Oh, Rosa, Rosa,” he answered quickly, “Tell her—tell her everything—but not here—not in this room. She thinks I do not love her, and when she comes and finds me gone, go with her to my grave. She will believe you if you tell her there how dear she was to me, and how, through the long weary nights before I died, I wept and prayed for her that she might one day meet me in the better land. I never meant to love one child more than another, but if I did—tell her she was my pride, the one on whom I doted. She thought me cold and unfeeling, because I stayed not to bid her adieu that morning. Ah, she did not know that with the first dawn of day I stole up to her chamber to look on her once more for the last, last time. There were tears on her cheek, I kissed them away; tell her that, and perchance her heart will soften towards her poor old father.”
From that time he sank rapidly, and one bright September day, near the hour of sunset, it was told in Meadow Brook that he was dying. On such occasions, in a small country village, the liveliest sympathy is felt; and now those who knew and loved him spoke to each other softly and low, while even the little children ceased their noisy play upon the common, and with a timid, curious glance towards the open windows of the sick room, hastened home, where they kept closely at their mother’s side, wondering—asking of her what death was, and if she were sure that he, the dying one, would go to Heaven.
Meantime, the sun was almost set, and as its last golden rays fell upon the face of the sufferer, a radiant smile lit up his features, and he exclaimed aloud, “’Tis the glorious light of the Eternal shining down upon me. Do not weep, mother. We shall not be parted long,” he continued, as he felt upon his forehead a tear from the grey-haired, wrinkled woman, on whose bosom his head was pillowed, just as it had been, long, long ago, when first a tender babe he lay in that mother’s arms. To her it seemed not long, and yet it was fifty years since he was lent to her, and now, when God would have his own again, she said submissively, “Thy will be done.” Once before had a great sorrow fallen upon her, leaving her henceforth to walk alone, and then her soul had well-nigh fainted beneath the blow, for she was younger far by many years. But now she was old, and already she heard the roar of the deep dark river on whose very banks she stood, and down whose swift current her first born was floating; so she stifled her own grief, for, as he had said, she knew it would not be long ere they met again.