Bessie had realized this and had made Hatty her special charge and duty; but now there was a gap in her daily life, a sense of emptiness and desolation. There was no need now to hurry through her morning’s task that she might sit with Hatty. When she went out, there was no Hatty to watch for her return and listen to all her descriptions of what she had seen. At night, when Bessie went upstairs, she would creep softly into a certain empty room, which was dearer to her than any other room. Hatty’s little gowns, her few girlish possessions, were all locked away in the wardrobe; but her Bible and Prayer-book, and her shabby little writing-case, lay on the table. Bessie would pull up the blinds, and kneel down by the low bed; she liked to say her prayers in that room. Sometimes as she prayed the sense of her sister’s presence would come over her strongly; she could almost feel the touch of the thin little hands that had so often toiled in her service. Hatty’s large wistful eyes seemed to look lovingly out of the darkness. “Oh! my Hatty, are you near me?” she would sob; but there was no answer out of the silence.
Who has not tasted the bitterness of these moments, when the craving for the loved presence seems insupportable, hardly to be borne? How our poor human hearts rebel against the unnatural separation, until the thrilling words make themselves heard: “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Oh, yes, of the living! Cease, then, to mourn, poor soul, as one without hope. Somewhere, not here, but in the larger room of a purified existence, your beloved one lives, breathes, nay, thinks of thee. Be comforted; one day we shall meet them, and the friendship of time will become the love of eternity.
Bessie strove hard not to be selfish in her grief. Her mother’s strength, never very great, had broken down utterly for a time. Bessie knew that this failure of power added to her father’s anxiety, and in the most touching manner she tried to console them both. When she looked back at these sad days, Bessie owned that she had been marvellously helped and supported. With the day’s burden had come daily strength to bear it.
“I must not think of myself; I must think of father and mother,” she would say, as she awoke in the morning with that blank sense of loss. “There is nothing to do for Hatty now, but there are others who need me.” And this thought helped her through the day.
In that busy household there was no time to sit alone and brood. A quiet walk now and then, and that half hour in Hatty’s room, was all Bessie could conscientiously spare. If she stayed away for an hour, Christine complained of dullness, and her mother looked sadder on her return. Ella and Katie, too, made constant demands on her time and patience. Christine was very unlike Bessie in temperament. She was a pretty, bright girl, warm-hearted and high-spirited, but she did not possess Bessie’s contented nature. Christine often found her quiet life irksome. She was inquisitive, restless, eager to see the world. She had insatiable curiosity; a love of change, her small girlish ambitions. She wanted to plume her wings a little—to try them in flights hither and thither. The gay world seemed to her ignorance a land flowing with milk and honey. She had yet to spell the meaning of the words illusion and vanity. Bessie was fond of Christine. She loved all her sisters dearly, but there was less sympathy between them than there had been between herself and Hatty.
Hatty, in spite of her morbid humors and difficult tendencies, had a refined and cultured mind; her chief source of fretfulness was that she loved the best, and failed to reach it. The very loftiness of her standard produced despondency akin to despair.
Hatty’s faith was pure, but feeble. She hated everything false and mean. She despised the conventionalities of life, while Bessie laughed at them. She and Bessie had their ideals, their simple secrets, their crude girlish notions, that were nevertheless very true and sweet.
Bessie could make allowances for Hatty’s sharp speeches as she watched her daily struggles with her faulty temper. She could rejoice in Hatty’s victories all the more that she had borne so patiently with her failures, and there was no abiding sting in her grief now, no remorseful feelings for duties undone and opportunities wasted; but with Christine things were different.
One Sunday afternoon when Bessie was stealing away for a quiet half hour in Hatty’s room, she was surprised to find Christine following her.
“May I come in too, Bessie?” she said very humbly, and her eyes were full of tears; “I do so want a little comfort, and I can’t talk to mother. I am making myself miserable about Hatty.”