Chapter V.
CHARLES TAYLOR’S REGRETS.
JANEY had passed within its portals, and the great gulf which divides time from eternity seemed to be but a span. Now, to Charles Taylor, it was as if he in spirit had followed her in from being a place far off. Vague, indefinite, indistinct, it had suddenly been brought to him close and palpable, or he to it. Had Charles Taylor been an atheist, denying a hereafter—Heaven in its compassion have mercy upon all such—that one moment of suffering would have recalled him to a sense of his mistake. It was as if he looked aloft with the eyes of inspiration and saw the truth; it was as a brief passing moment of revelation from God. She, with her loving spirit, her gentle heart, her simple trust in God, had been taken from this world to enter upon a better. She was as surely living in it, had entered upon its mysteries, its joys, its rest as that he was living here. She, he believed, was as surely regarding him now, and his great sorrow as that he was left alone to battle with it. From this time Charles Taylor possessed a lively, ever-present link with that world, and knew that its gates would, in God’s good time, be open for him. These feelings, impressions, facts—you may designate them as you please—took up their places in his mind, all in that first instant, and seated themselves there forever; not yet very consciously to his stunned senses. In his weight of bitter grief nothing could be to him very clear; ideas passed through his brain quickly, confusedly, like unto the changing scenes in a phantasmagoria. He looked round as one bewildered, the bed smoothed ready for occupancy, on which on entering he had expected to see the dead, but not her. There was between him and the door Mary Ann Brewster, in her invalid chair by the fire, a table at her right hand, covered with adjuncts of the sick room, a medicine bottle with its accompanying wine-glass and tablespoon, jelly and other delicacies to tempt a faded appetite.
Mary Ann sat there and gazed at him with her hollow eyes, from which the tears dropped slowly on her cadaverous cheeks. Mrs. Brewster stood before him, sobs choking her voice, wringing her hands. Yes, both were weeping, but he— It is not in the presence of others that man gives way to grief, neither will tears come to him in the first leaden weight of anguish. Charles Taylor listened mechanically, as one cannot do otherwise, to the explanations of Mrs. Brewster. “Why did you not prepare me? why did you let it come upon me with this startling shock?” was his first remonstrance. “I did prepare you,” sobbed Mrs. Brewster. “I telegraphed to you as soon as it happened; I wrote the message to you with my own hand, and sent it to the office before I turned my attention to anything else.” “I received the message, but you did not say—I thought it was—” Charles Taylor turned his eyes toward Mary Ann. He remembered her condition in the midst of his own anguish and would not alarm her. “You did not mention Janey’s name,” he continued, to Mrs. Brewster; “how could I suppose you alluded to her or that she was sick?” Mary Ann divined his motive of hesitation; she was uncommonly keen in penetration, sharp—as the world goes—as the world says, and she had noted his words on entering, when he began to soothe Mrs. Brewster for the loss of a child. She had noticed his startled recoil when the news fell on him. She spoke up; a touch of her old vehemence; the tears stopped on her face and her eyes glistened. “You thought it was I who had died! Yes, you did, Mr. Taylor; and you need not try to deny it; you would not have cared, so that it was not Janey.” Charles had no intention of contradicting her; he turned from her in silence to look inquiringly and reproachfully at her mother. “Mr. Taylor, I could not prepare you better than I did,” said Mrs. Brewster, “when I wrote the letter telling of her illness.” “What letter?” interrupted Charles; “I received no letter.” “But you must have received it,” replied Mrs. Brewster, in her quick and sharp manner, not sharp with him, but from a rising doubt whether the letter had been miscarried. “I wrote it, and I know that it was safely mailed; you should have received it before you did the dispatch.” “I never had it,” said Charles. “When I waited in your drawing-room now I was listening for Janey’s footsteps to come to me.” Charles Taylor upon inquiry found that the letter had arrived duly and safely at Waterville at the time mentioned by Mrs. Brewster, but it appears that it was overlooked by the postmaster; but the shock had come now. He took a seat by the table, and covered his eyes with his hands, as the mother gave him a detailed account of her sickness and death. Not all the account that she or anybody else could give could take one iota from the dreadful fact staring him in the face; she was gone, gone forever from this world; he could never meet the glance of her eyes again or hear her voice in response to his own. Ah! reader, there are griefs that tell, rending the heart as an earthquake would rend the earth, and all that can be done is to sit down under them and ask of heaven strength to bear—to bear as best we can, until time shall shed a few drops of healing balm from its wings.
On the last night that Charles had seen her, Janey’s eyes and brow were heavy, she had cried much during the day and supposed the pain to have arisen from that circumstance. She had given this explanation to Charles Taylor. Neither he nor she had a thought that it could come from any other source. More than a month ago Mary Ann had taken the fever; fears of it for Janey had passed away, and yet those dull eyes, that hot head, that heavy weight of pain, were only the symptoms of the sickness approaching. A night of tossing and turning, in fits of disturbed sleep, of terrifying dreams, and Janey awoke to the conviction that the fever was upon her.
About the time she generally arose she rang the bell for Eliza. “I do not feel well,” she said, “as soon as mamma is up will you ask her to come to me? do not disturb her before.”
Eliza obeyed her orders. But her mother, tired and worn out with her attendance upon Mary Ann, with whom she had been up half the night, did not rise until between nine and ten. The maid went to her then and delivered the message.
“In bed, still; Miss Janey in bed, still?” exclaimed Mrs. Brewster. She spoke in much anger, for Janey had to be up in time, attending to Mary Ann, it was required of her to be so. Throwing on a dressing-gown, Mrs. Brewster proceeded to Janey’s room, and there she broke into a storm of reproach and anger, never waiting to ascertain what might be the matter with Janey, anything or nothing.