Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"Do you want to go?" pursued Mark, half-resentfully. "Don't you care to get well?"

"I have not cared to get well since I came to England. That is, I have not thought I should," she returned between the gasps of her laboured breath. "When I heard the bell toll out for Prince Albert, I asked who was I that I should be spared when he was taken? The next world has seemed very near to me since then. As if the doors of it had been brought down to earth, and stood always open."

That the death of the Prince, brought so palpably, as may be said, before her, had taken a great hold on the mind of Mrs. Cray there was no doubt. Several times during her later weeks of illness she had alluded to it. Her principal feeling in relation to it appeared to be that of gratitude. Not gratitude for his death; there was only sorrow for that; but for the strange impression it had left upon her own mind, the vista of the Hereafter. For the good and great prince to be taken suddenly from the earthly duties so much needing him was only an earnest, had one been wanting, that he had entered upon a better and higher sphere. It seemed that he had but been removed a step; a step on the road towards heaven; and it most certainly in a measure had the effect of reconciling her to her own removal, of tranquillising her weary heart, of bringing her thoughts and feelings into that state most fitting to prepare for it. Often and often had she awoke from a deep sleep, starting suddenly up and calling out, "I thought I heard St. Paul's bell again?"

"I wish the Great Wheal Bang had been in the sea!" gloomily exclaimed Mark Cray, who was no more calculated for a scene such as this than a child, and had little more control over his tongue. "But for that mine turning out as it did your illness might never have come on."

"Don't regret it, Mark," she feebly said. "God's hand was in it all. I look back and trace it. But for the trouble brought to me then, I might never have been reconciled to go. It is so merciful! God has weaned me from the world before removing me from it."

Mark Cray drew a little back and stood gazing at his wife a gloomy helpless sort of expression on his countenance as his right hand nervously pushed back his hair. Oswald was at the head of the sofa, Sara near to him, and Miss Bettina was at the far end of the room, looking after some comforting medicine drops. Thus there was a clear space before the sofa, and the red light from the fire played on Caroline's wasted features. That she was dying--dying suddenly, as may be said--there could be no doubt.

"If things had not turned out so crossly!" began Mark again. "I knew I should redeem the misfortunes of that Wheal Bang. I always told you I should extricate myself, Caroline."

"We shall all be extricated from our misfortunes here," came from her dying lips. "A few years more or less of toil, and strife, and daily care, and then redemption comes. Not the redemption that we work. O Mark, if you could see things as I now see them! When we are on the threshold of the next world our eyes are opened to the poor value of this. Its worst cares have been but petty trials, its greatest heartache was not worth the pang. They were but hillocks that we had to pass in our journey upwards, and God was always leading us. If we could but trust to Him! If we did but learn to resign our hands implicitly to his and be led as little children!"

Mark Cray felt somewhat awed. He began to doubt whether it were exactly the time and place to pour forth regrets after the misfortunes of the Great Wheal Bang, or enlarge on the future glories opening to him in the French capital.

"It is so much better for me to be at rest! God is taking me to the place where change and sickness cannot enter. I shall see Uncle Richard: I shall see poor Richard who went before him: I shall see papa and mamma, whom I have nearly forgotten. We all go, some sooner, some later. This world lasts but a little minute; that one is the home, the gathering-place. Mark, dear Mark! the troubles here are of so little moment; they are only trifling hindrances through which we must bear on to Eternity. Oh, trust God! They are all sent by him."