And so it was in almost everything. Her life after that strange Christmas Eve was one of constant, heroic, personal service for others, in the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The brilliant woman was never seen again at ball or hunt, but beside the beds of the sick and suffering she was daily to be found, making the most painful, repulsive cases her special care. And she, who had delighted in daintiest apparel, never wore again after that Christmas morning jewels or costly clothing. “I have tasted once the sweetness of faring like my Lord,” she said impetuously to her husband. “Do not break my heart by making me all warm and full and comfortable again.” And he, whose high soul answered nobly to her own, never tried to hold her back, but followed her eagerly in her earnest following of her Lord.
Yet the self-willed nature cost its owner many sufferings before it learned submission to the divine Master. It pleased God that Jane Everett should live to an advanced and very strong old age, and it also pleased him through all those years to conform her will to his by constant and peculiar trials. The husband whom she loved with an almost idolatrous love was taken from her, without an instant’s warning, by a fearful accident. Her sons, whom she dedicated to God’s holy priesthood, died in their cradles; her daughters grew into the fairest bloom of womanhood, only to become the brides of death. Yet nothing quenched the fire in her eye, and the cry of her heart for years was still its old cry: “O God! I cannot bear it. Yes, I can. God’s will is best. But I cannot understand.”
One Advent the last remaining friend of her youth sent to her, begging her to come with haste to pass with her the last Christmas they could expect to be together on earth; and the brave old woman, though craving to spend the holy season near her darlings’ graves, went forth to face the inclement weather with as stout a heart as in her youth she had sped along Exeter Beach under the threatening sky. In a little village, with no one near who knew her except her servants, Death laid his hand upon her who had desired him for many days.
“This is a serious illness,” the physician said to her. Then, reading rightly the spirit with which he had to deal, he added: “A sickness unto death, madam.”
“Harness the horses, then,” she said, lifting herself, “and let me get to Ewemouth and die there.”
“Send for a priest,” the doctor answered her. “You have no time to lose.”
“It has been always so, father,” Jane said, looking up pitifully into the face of the priest when at last he came. “From the time that I first earnestly gave myself to God, up to this time, he has thwarted me in every way. Sixty years ago this very Christmas Eve he did it. It all comes back to me as hard to bear as then; and all my life has been like that.” And slowly and with pauses Jane told the story of her night at Lonely Cove.
“It has always been so, father. Whenever I have loved any one or tried to help any one, I have failed or they have left me.”
“My daughter,” the priest replied, “God’s work in a life like yours is far more the subjection of the will than the number of holy actions for others. Be sure that what we think failure is often success in God’s eyes and through his power. He asks one last sacrifice from you. Madam, God has brought you here to add the crowning blessing to your life—the opportunity of a last and entire surrender of your will to his most blessed will. Will you offer to him your whole life, that to you seems so incomplete and marred, judged by your own plans and wishes, saying to him without reserve that you believe, certainly, that his way is far better than yours?”
He held the crucifix before her, and suddenly the long years seemed to vanish like a dream, and she felt once more the biting cold in the haunted house at Lonely Cove, and again a child nestled upon her heart, bringing with it the thought of the manger-bed, and the question, Why should so much suffering be? And from that manger her thoughts returned to the hard couch of the cross; and to all that mystery of suffering came the mysterious answer, “Not my will, but thine, be done.”