That brought the tears to Lucy’s eyes and made her feel very humble, possibly because she could not deny to herself that there was truth in the gracious words. Oh, to have Charlie again, and yet to be all that she had grown into since he had gone away—since this awful silence! And an inner voice bade her take cheer, for was not this what was sure to happen here or there—sooner or later?
“What a pitiful bliss we should make for ourselves if we were left to do it without God!” Lucy cried, thinking even of the sweetest dreams of courting days, the best aspirations of married life. For after one taste of “the peace which passeth understanding,” one vision of the joy which has absorbed the strength of sorrow into it, mere “happiness” looks but a poor thing, even as a child’s cheap, pretty toy shows beside a masterpiece of genius.
Lucy’s slumbers now were deep and calm. Almost every morning she awoke with a sense of refreshment, as when one returns to labour after being among kind hearts in lovely places. Sometimes she knew she had dreamed, and such dream memories as lingered, elusive, for a few waking moments, were always bright and cheering. Visions of Charlie had come during the first nights after the great blow. He never seemed to speak, but he was always smiling, always confident that all was well and would be well. His dream form always appeared in positions and in scenes which Lucy could recall as having figured in peculiarly happy times. And yet these scenes had been at the time so slight and evanescent that Lucy had quite forgotten them till the dream revived the remembrance. It was as if, in her sleep, her soul was drawn so near the light and warmth of love that even the invisible records of memory started into view.
After those first few occasions Charlie came no more into any dream which she could recall even at the instant of waking. But the soothing spirit of hope and reassurance remained. If she dreamed of Florence, Florence wore the simple frocks of her girlhood and spoke as she used to do. Jem Brand, too, appeared only on his kind and helpful side. Once she had a curious dream of seeing two Jem Brands exactly alike, save that one was fresh and smiling and friendly, and inclined to nudge his strange dissipated-looking twin, and to ask why he was so grumpy and heavy. In her sleep, too, she saw Mrs. Morison, and Jane Smith, and Clementina, and each was back in her old place and doing well. Lucy could never remember what passed between them and her in the land of sleep, but somehow she knew it was something that explained things, something which made them feel that the past could not have ended otherwise than it had, but which also made her feel that it was quite natural that they should begin again and do better.
She thought to herself once as she awoke—
“I feel as if wherever Charlie is I am in his every thought, and that his every thought is a prayer always ascending on every way by which it can bring back blessing.”
It was about this time that it struck Lucy that strangers very often spoke to her. She scarcely ever entered an omnibus or a railway carriage without somebody appealing to her for some trifling assistance, or confiding to her some little difficulty which they seemed to think might grow clearer if it were talked over. Once or twice she noticed that old folks or little children let ever so many people pass them by and then asked her to ring a stiff bell for them or to decipher an address.
Sometimes she caught herself softly repeating Adelaide Proctor’s lines—
“Who is the angel that cometh?
Pain!