This was the first great sorrow of Star’s wedded life; but she strove to bear it cheerfully, at least in Mr. Rosevelt’s presence, resolving that no mourning or repining should cloud the little time that remained to him to live—that there should be nothing but peace, and a looking forward to the great change as simply the sweeping aside of a misty vail and an entrance into something more blessed and beautiful than earth could give.
Now the crisis had come, and the old man, his wan face turned toward the fading light of a glorious day, felt that his strength and senses were slipping away from him, and told the constant watcher by his side that the “night had come.”
“No, I ought not to have said that,” he repeated, after a few moments of rest, while a smile parted his pale lips; “the night is past, and you, dear one, have been my guiding star in the midst of its deepest gloom. I did not have much faith in a better future until I knew you; you set me to thinking that night on the angry deep, when you told me you ‘had been taught to trust our Heavenly Father,’ and that ‘one could hardly have much faith in one’s self at such a time as that.’ Yes, your simple trust in your Father’s faith, your pure and gentle life, my Star, has led me to God, and without a fear I resign myself into His hands; before another day dawns I shall have entered into my rest, and the Sun of Righteousness will shine upon me.”
“Oh, Uncle Jacob,” Star said, her voice full of unshed tears, but with a holy awe shining in her beautiful face, “you have never talked so plainly to me—you have never opened your heart like this to me, and I am so thankful to you for speaking such precious words to me before——”
She stopped; her trembling lips could not frame the words to complete the sentence.
“Before I leave you, never more to look upon your dear face in this life,” he said, with a tender smile on his lips, while the light of faith grew brighter in his eyes. “Yes, dear, it is so. We both know it, and why not speak of it calmly, as of a journey, during which we should be separated only for a little while. I shall go first, my darling, but the vail that will hide us from each other is dropping very softly and gently. You will not grieve for me, my child?”
“No, no, Uncle Jacob; only for myself, who will be so very lonely without you.”
But Star could not quite keep back the quiver from her voice as she said this. He noticed it, and put out his thin hand to clasp it.
“Be comforted, my darling, with the thought of what you have made the last years of my life—a season of peace and content. Remember always that without you I should have groped on in darkness until my soul would literally have gone out into the ‘night.’ But now, as I have said, I have no fear. No; a bright vision rises up before me; I seem to see just beyond the ‘great white throne’ of which you read only last Sabbath, and where sits the form of Him who has taken from me all the guilt of sin and unbelief. It is Jesus, the Lamb of God, and you, my beloved, by the gentle influence of your beautiful faith, have led me thither.”
Star bent down and kissed the pale hand clasping hers, and which was growing cold even then, while the tears which she could not restrain fell hotly upon it.