“It is true she did wish it, it was on the first day of her illness that she spoke, ‘Write and tell Charles Taylor,’ she never said it but once.” “And you did not,” he uttered, his voice hoarse with emotion. “Do not reproach me! Do not reproach me!” cried Mrs. Brewster, clasping her hands in supplication, and the tears falling in showers from her eyes, “I did all for the best, I never supposed there was danger. I thought what a pity it would be to bring you back such a long journey, putting you to so much unnecessary trouble and expense.” Trouble and expense—in a case like that she could speak of expense to Charles—but he thought how she had to battle with both trouble and expense her whole life long, and that for her they must wear a formidable aspect, he remained silent. “I wish now I had written,” she resumed in the midst of her choking sobs, “as soon as the doctors said there was danger, I wished it, but,” as if she would seek to excuse herself, “what with the two upon my hands, she upstairs, Mary down here, I had not a moment for proper reflection.” “Did you tell her you had not written?” he asked, “or did you let her lie day after day, hour after hour, waiting and blaming me for my careless neglect?” “She never blamed any one, you know she did not,” wailed Mrs. Brewster, “and I think she was too sick to think even of you, she was only sensible at times. Oh, I say, do not reproach me, Mr. Taylor, I would give my own life to bring her back. I never knew her worth until she was gone, I never loved her as I love her now.” There could be no doubt that Mrs. Brewster was reproaching herself far more bitterly than any reproach could tell upon her from Charles Taylor, an accusing conscience is the worst of all evils. She sat there, her head bent, swaying herself backwards and forwards on her chair, moaning and crying. It was not a time Charles felt to say a word of her past heartless conduct in forcing Janey to breathe the infection of her sister’s sick room, and all that he could say, all the reproaches, all the remorse and repentance would not bring her back to life. “Would you like to see her,” whispered her mother, as he rose to go? “Yes.” She lighted a candle and led the way upstairs. Janey had died in her own room. At the door he took the candle from Mrs. Brewster. “I must go in alone.” He passed into the chamber and closed the door, on the bed laid out in a white robe, lay all that remained of Janey Brewster. Pale, still, pure, her face was wonderfully like what it had been in life, and a calm smile rested upon it, but Charles wished to be alone. Mrs. Brewster stood outside, leaning against the opposite wall, weeping silently, the glimmer from the hall lamp below faintly lighting the corridor, and she fancied that a sound of choking struck upon her ears, and she pulled around her a small black shawl that she wore, for grief had made her chilly, and wept the faster. He came out by and by, calm and quiet as ever, he did not see Mrs. Brewster standing there in the dimly lighted hall, and went straight down, carrying the candle. Mrs. Brewster caught up with him at Mary Ann’s room, and took the candle from him.
“She looks very peaceful, does she not?” was her whisper. “She could not look otherwise.” He went on down alone, intending to let himself out, but Eliza had heard his steps and was waiting at the door. “Good night Eliza,” he said, as he passed her. The girl did not answer, she slipped out into the yard after him. “Oh, sir, and didn’t you hear of it?” she whispered. “No.” “If anybody was ever gone away to be an angel, sir, its that sweet young lady, sir,” said Eliza, letting her tears and sobs come forth as they would, “She was just one here and she has gone to her own fit place.” “Yes, that is so.” “You should have been in this house throughout the whole of the illness to have seen the difference between them, sir. Nobody would believe it; Miss Brewster angry and snappish, and not caring who suffered or who was sick, or who toiled, so that she was served, Miss Janey lying like a tender lamb, patient and meek, thankful for all that was done for her. It does seem hard, sir, that we should lose her forever.” “Not forever, Eliza,” he answered. “And that is true, too; but sir, the worst is, one can’t think of that sort of consolation just when one’s troubles are the freshest. Good night, to you, sir.” Charles Taylor walked on, leaving the high road for a less frequented one; he went along, musing in the depth of his great grief; there was no repining. He was one to trace the finger of God in all things. A more entire trust in God it was, perhaps, impossible for any one to feel than was felt by Charles Taylor; it was what he lived under. He could not see why Janey should have been taken, why this great sorrow should fall upon him, but that it must be for the best he implicitly believed—the best, for God had done it. How he was to live on without her he did not know. How he could support the lively anguish of the future he did not care to think. All his hopes in this life gone, all his plans, his projects uprooted by a single blow, never to return. He might look yet for the bliss of a Hereafter that remains for the most heavy laden, thank God, but his sun of happiness in this world had set forever. The moon was not shining as it was the night he left Janey, when he left his farewell kiss. Oh! that he could have known that it was the last on the gentle lips of Janey. There was no moon now; the stars were not showing themselves, for a black cloud enveloped the skies like a pall, fit accompaniment to his blasted hopes and his path altogether was dark. But, as he neared the office of the doctor, he could see him sitting in his accustomed place. Charles thought that he would like to have a few minutes conversation with him. He walked to the door, opened it, and saw that the doctor was alone.
Chapter VI.
DR. BROWN EXPLAINS TO CHARLES.
DOCTOR, why did you not write to me?” the doctor brought down his fist on his desk with such force as to cause some of his vials to fall over and waste their contents; he had been bottling up his anger for some time against Mrs. Brewster, and this was the first explosion. “Because I understood that she had done so. I was there when the poor child asked her to do it. I found her on the floor in Mary Ann’s room; on the floor, if you will believe it, lying there because she could not hold her head up. Her mother had dragged her out of the bed that morning, sick as she was, and forced her to attend as usual upon Mary Ann. I got it all out of Eliza. ‘Mamma,’ she said, when I pronounced it to be the fever, though she was almost beyond speaking then, ‘you will write to Charles Taylor?’ I never thought but what she had done it; your sister inquired if you had been written for and I told her yes.” “Doctor,” came the next sad words, “could you not have saved her?” The doctor shook his head and answered in a quiet tone, looking down at the stopper of a vial which he had caused to drop upon the floor, “neither care nor skill could save her. I did the best that could be done, Taylor,” raising his quick, dark eyes, flashing them with a peculiar light; “she was ready to go; let it be your consolation.” Charles Taylor made no answer, and there was a pause of silence. The doctor continued: “As to her mother, I hope that she may have her heart wrung with remembrance for years to come. I don’t care what people preach about charity and forgiveness, I do wish it; but she will be brought to her senses, unless I am mistaken. She has lost her treasure and kept her bane a year or two more, and that is what Mary Ann will be.” “She ought to have written to me.” “She ought to do many things that she does not; she ought to have sent Janey from the house, as I told her, as soon as the disorder appeared in it. No, she kept her in her insane selfishness, and now I hope she is satisfied with her work. When alarming symptoms showed themselves in Janey, on the fourth day of her illness, I think it was, I said to her mother, it is strange what can be keeping Mr. Taylor. ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘I did not write for him.’ ‘Not write!’ I answered; and I fear I used an ugly word to her face. ‘I’ll write at once,’ returned she, humbly. ‘Of course,’ said I, ‘after the horse is stolen we always shut the barn door it’s the way of the world.’” Another pause.
“I would have given anything to have taken Janey from the house at the time; to take her away from the town,” observed Charles in a low tone. “I said so then, but it could not be.” “I should have done it in your place,” said the doctor; “if her mother had said no, I would have carried her away in front of her face. ‘Not married,’ you say. Rubbish to that; everybody knows she would have been safe with you, and you would have been married as soon as you could. What are forms and ceremonies and long tongues in comparison with a life like Janey’s?” Charles Taylor leaned his head upon his hand, lost in the retrospect. Oh that he had taken her, that he had set at naught what he had then bowed to, the conventionalities of society, she might have been by his side now in health and life to bless him. Doubting words interrupted the train of thoughts. “And yet I don’t know,” the doctor was repeating in a dreamy manner, “what is to be will be; we look back, all of us, and say, if I had acted thus, if I had done the other thing, it would not have happened; events would have turned out differently, but who is to be sure of it. Had you carried Janey out of harm’s way, as we might have thought, there is no telling but what she might have had the fever just the same; her blood might have become tainted before she left the house, there is no knowing, Mr. Taylor.” “True. Good evening, doctor.” He turned suddenly and hastily to go out of the door, but the doctor caught him before he had crossed the threshhold, and touched his arm to detain him. They stood there in obscurity, their faces shaded in the dusky night. “She left you a parting word, Mr. Taylor, an hour before she died; she was calm and sensible, though extremely weak. Mrs. Brewster had gone to her favorite, and I was left alone with Janey. ‘Has he not come yet?’ she asked me, opening her eyes. ‘My dear,’ I said, ‘he could not come, he was never written for,’ for I knew she alluded to you, and was determined to tell her the truth, dying though she was. ‘What shall I say to him for you?’ I continued. She raised her hand to motion my face nearer hers, for her voice was growing faint. ‘Tell him, with my dear love, not to grieve,’ she whispered between her panting breath, ‘tell him that I am but gone on before.’ I think they were almost the last words that she spoke.” Charles Taylor leaned against the post of the office entrance, and drank in the words; then he shook the doctor’s hand and departed, hurrying along like one who shrank from observation, for he did not care just then to encounter the gaze of his fellow-men. Coming with a quick step up the same street on which the office is situated was the Reverend Mr. Davis. He stopped to address the doctor. “Was that Mr. Taylor?” “Yes; this is a blow for him.” Mr. Davis’ voice insensibly sank to a whisper. “My wife tells me that he did not know of Janey’s death and sickness until he arrived here. He thought it was Mary Ann who died; he went to her mother’s thinking so.” “Mrs. Brewster is a fool,” was the complimentary rejoinder of the doctor. “She is in some things,” warmly assented the pastor. “The telegram she sent was so obscurely worded as to cause him to assume that it was Mary Ann.” “Well, she is only heaping burdens on her conscience,” rejoined the doctor in a philosophic tone, “she has lost Janey through want of care, as I firmly believe, in not keeping her out of the way of the infection, she prevented their last meeting through not writing to him, she—”
“He could not have saved her had he been here,” interrupted Mr. Davis. “Nobody said he could; there would have been satisfaction in it for him though, and for her, too, poor child.” Mr. Davis did not contest the point, he was so very practical a man that he saw little use in last interviews; unless they were made productive of actual good he was disposed to regard such as bordering on the sentimental. “I have been over to see Bangs,” he remarked. “They sent to the house after me while I was after mail; the boy said he did not believe he would live through the night and wanted the parson. I had a great mind to send word back that if he was in want of a parson he should have seen him before.” “He’s as likely to live through this night as he has been any night for the last six months,” said the doctor. “Not a day since then but what he has been as likely to die as not.” “And never to awaken to a thought that it might be desirable to make ready for the journey until the twelfth hour,” exclaimed the parson. “‘When I have a convenient season I will call for thee.’ If I have been to see him once I have been twenty times,” asserted the pastor, “and never could get him to pray. He wilfully put off all thought of death until the twelfth hour and then sends for me or one of my brethren and expects one hour’s devotion will ensure his entrance into heaven. I don’t keep the keys.” “Did Bangs send for you or did the family?” inquired the doctor. “He, I expect; he was dressed for the occasion.” “Will he live long?” “It is uncertain; he may last for six months or a year and he may die next week; it will be sudden when it does come.” The pastor walked away at a brisk rate. Mrs. Davis was out of the room talking with some late applicant when he arrived at home. Laying aside her wrap Mrs. Davis seated herself before the fire in a quiet merino dress, the blaze flickering on her face betrayed to the keen glance of the pastor that her eyelashes were wet. “Grieving about Janey, I suppose?” his tone a stern one. “Well,” continued the pastor, “she is better off. The time may come, we none of us know what is before us, when some of us who are left may wish we had died, as she has; many a one battling for very existence with the world’s carking cares wails out a vain wish that he had been taken early from the evil to come.” “It must be dreadful for Charles Taylor,” she resumed, looking straight into the fire and speaking as if in communion with herself more than her husband. “Charley Taylor must find another love.” It was one of those phrases spoken in satire only, to which the pastor of this village was occasionally given. He saw so much to condemn in the world, things which grated harshly on his superior mind, that his speech had become imbued with a touch of gall, and he would often give utterance to cynical remarks not at the time called for. There came a day, not long afterwards, when the residents of Bellville gathered at the church to hear and see the last of Janey Brewster. As many came inside as could, for it was known to the public that nothing displeased their pastor so much as to have irreverent idlers standing around the church staring and gaping and whispering their comments while he was performing the service of the burial of the dead, and his wishes were generally respected.
The funeral now was inside the church. It had been in so long that some eager watchers, estimating time by their impatience, began to think it was never coming out, but a sudden movement in the church reassured them. Slowly, slowly, on it came, the Reverend Mr. Davis leading the way, the coffin next, then came her mother and a few other relatives, and Charles Taylor with a stranger by his side; nothing more, save the pall-bearers with white scarfs and the necessary attendants. It was a perfectly simple funeral, corresponding well with what the dead had been in her simple life. The sight of this stranger took the curious gazers by surprise. Who was he? A stout gentleman, past middle age, holding his head high, with gold spectacles. He proved to be a cousin of Mrs. Brewster. The grave had been dug in a line with others not far from the edge of the burying ground. On it came, crossing the broad churchyard path which wound round to the road, crossing over patches of grass, treading between mounds and graves. The clergyman took his place at the head, the mourners near him, the rest disposing themselves quietly around. “Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one place.” The crowd held their breath and listened and looked at Charles Taylor. He stood there, his head bowed, his face still, the gentle wind stirring his thin dark hair. It was probably a wonder to him in afterlife how he had contrived in that closing hour to retain his calmness before the world. “The coffin is lowered at last,” broke out a little boy who had been more curious to watch the movements of the men than the aspect of Charles Taylor. “Hush, sir,” sharply rebuked his mother, and the minister’s voice again stole over the silence. “For as much as it has pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we, therefore, commit her body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile bodies that they may be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things to himself.” Every word came home to Charles Taylor’s senses, every syllable vibrated upon his heart-strings; that sure and certain hope laid hold of his soul never again to leave it. It diffused its own holy peace and calm in his troubled mind, and never until that moment did he fully realize the worth, the truth of her legacy. “Tell him that I am but gone on before,” a few years. God, now present with him alone, knew how few or how many, and Charles Taylor would have joined her in eternal life. But why did the minister come to a temporary pause? Because his eyes had fallen upon one then coming up from the entrance of the burying ground to take his place among the mourners, and who had evidently arrived in a hurry. He wore neither scarf nor hat-band, nothing but a full suit of plain black clothes. “Look, mamma,” cried a little boy. It was George Taylor, the cousin of Charles Taylor. He stood quietly by the side of his cousin, his hat in his hand, his head bowed, his curly hair waiving in the breeze. It was all the work of an instant, and the minister continued: “I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, write, from henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, even so, sayeth the spirit, for they rest from their labors,” and so went on the service to the end. The passage having been cleared, several mourning carriages were in waiting. Charles Taylor come forth leaning on his cousin’s arm, both of them still bare headed. They entered one, the friends and relatives filled the others, and soon several men were shovelling earth upon the coffin as fast as they could, sending it with a rattle on the bright plate which told who was moldering within, Janey Brewster, aged twenty-one years. “Charles,” cried his cousin George, leaning forward and seizing his cousin’s hand impulsively, as the carriage moved slowly on, “I should have been here in good time, but for a delay in the train.”