This was the beginning of Rose’s first knowledge of Ellen Lawton’s
so-called religious life; they sat and talked all that morning about it. With a sweet smile upon her calm face, the invalid said quietly that she believed there might be a God; she was not sure, of course; but if there was one, he was kind and good, and loved to see her happy. She made life as bright and beautiful as she possibly could always; it was given her to enjoy. Books and music and art and flowers were parts of her religion; beyond this world she did not look; what came after death she knew not and cared not; if there was a God, he was good and would be good to her; if there was not, the thought of annihilation did not distress her. Rose watched her closely after this; she never heard an impatient word or saw a hasty movement; the life was an exposition of what a great many people would call “the beautiful,” and Rose found in it more and more satisfaction for her extreme intellectual cravings.
One morning a servant ran in with blanched face to tell her that Miss Lawton was dead. Rose had known that heart-disease was the fatal malady which was surely sapping at her friend’s life, yet this blow fell upon her with an awful suddenness. She went to the house, where they left her to do as she would, for she was the nearest friend Miss Lawton had there; she went up to the silent room, and shut herself in alone with the silent dead. Ellen Lawton lay as they had found her; she must have risen in the morning and dressed with her usual dainty care; then, perhaps feeling some acute pang of the pain to which she was subject, she had sunk upon the couch by the window. Her face was, as in life, calm and noble; about her lay her books that she had loved, her rare pictures looked
down upon her, her flowers scented the room; outside the sun shone brightly on the grand hills she had been used to watch, finding in them food for heart and soul both, she said. None of these moved her now at all.
Rose went close to her and looked at her, and looked, and looked, as if she would waken her by the very fixedness of her gaze. What was this thing lying there, this beautiful clay, this voiceless, motionless, tenantless body? Yesterday it spoke to her, kissed her, loved her; what had changed it, gone out of it? The spirit? The soul? Where was that soul then?
She knelt down trembling, and put her hand where the heart had beat not five short hours ago. There was no movement now; and the silence in the room grew terrible. Where was that which yesterday she spoke with? Nowhere? Then to-morrow she herself might be nowhere and nothing.
Suddenly there came to her a memory which she had striven for years to banish. A stranger had preached at the time of that unforgotten revival; he had painted vividly and unsparingly the torments of the lost. Often in the night Rose had wakened from a dream of it, and found herself cold with horror, and cried out, “I never will believe it.” Now like a painting she seemed to see it all again, and through her mind rang the words with which the sermon had ended, “Doubt on as you will, O unbeliever, O careless soul, O faithless Christian! Laugh on as you will, forget as you will. But suppose that you wake up after death and find this true! What then?”
John Howson, hearing the news at school, hurried home at noon to comfort Rose, but she was gone.
He found her in that room of death, rocking to and fro upon her knees, her hands held out over the dead, while she was whispering in hoarse tones: “Ellen, is it true? Tell me it is not true.” And no one answered.
John lifted her tenderly, and she clung to him like a little child. “Take me home!” she cried, quivering all over. She could not walk; he had to carry her, and all the way she clung to him as if the very touch of something that lived and loved was comfort. “O John! I am so glad you are alive,” she sobbed. “Dear John, do not die, do not die!”