The mother looked worn and anxious, as though, even with Mrs. Dunsfold’s assistance, her rest had been insufficient.
“Mrs. Crowhurst,” said Catharine, “go to bed again directly. If you do not, you will be ill too. I will stay with Phœbe, at least for to-night, if anybody can be found to go to Eastthorpe to tell my mother I shall not be home.”
“Miss Catharine! to think of such a thing! I’m sure you shan’t,” replied Mrs. Crowhurst; but Catharine persisted, and a message was sent by Phœbe’s brother, who, although so young, knew the way perfectly well, and could be trusted.
The evening and the darkness drew on, and everything gradually became silent. Excepting Phœbe’s cough, not a sound could be heard save the distant bark of some farmyard dog. As the air outside was soft and warm, Catharine opened the window, after carefully protecting her patient. Phœbe was restless.
“Shall I read to you?”
“Oh, please, Miss; but there is nothing here for you to read but the Bible and a hymn-book.”
“Well, I will read the Bible. What would you like?”
Phœbe chose neither prophecy, psalm, nor epistle, but the last three chapters of St. Matthew. She, perhaps, hardly knew the reason why, but she could not have made a better choice. When we come near death, or near something which may be worse, all exhortation, theory, promise, advice, dogma fail. The one staff which, perhaps, may not break under us, is the victory achieved in the like situation by one who has preceded us; and the most desperate private experience cannot go beyond the garden of Gethsemane. The hero is a young man filled with dreams and an ideal of a heavenly kingdom which he was to establish on earth. He is disappointed by the time he is thirty. He has not a friend who understands him, save in so far as the love of two or three poor women is understanding. One of his disciples denies him, another betrays him, and in the presence of the hard Roman tribunal all his visions are nothing, and his life is a failure. He is to die a cruel death; but the bitterness of the cup must have been the thought that in a few days—or at least in a few months or years—everything would be as if he had never been. This is the pang of death, even to the meanest. “He that goeth down to the grave,” says Job, “shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.” A higher philosophy would doubtless set no store on our poor personality, and would even rejoice in the thought of its obliteration or absorption, but we cannot always lift ourselves to that level, and the human sentiment remains. Catharine read through the story of the conflict, and when she came to the resurrection she felt, and Phœbe felt, after her fashion, as millions have felt before, that this was the truth of death. It may be a legend, but the belief in it has carried with it other beliefs which are vital.
The reading ceased, and Phœbe fell asleep for a little. She presently waked and called Catharine.
“Miss Catharine,” she whispered, drawing Catharine’s hand between both her own thin hands, “I have something to say to you. Do you know I loved Tom a little; but I don’t think he loved me. His mind was elsewhere; I—saw where it was, and I don’t wonder. I makes no difference, and never has, in my thoughts,—either of him or of you. It will be better for him in every way, and I am glad for his sake. But when I am gone and I shan’t feel ashamed at his knowing it—please give him my Bible; and you may, if you like, put a piece of my hair in that last chapter you have been reading to-night.”