University of Virginia Library

5. V.

May 7.

I was awakened and nearly smothered this
morning by a pillow thrown directly at my
head.

Somewhat unaccustomed, in the respectable,
old maid's life that I lead, to such a pleasant
little method of salutation, I jerked myself upright,
and stared. There stood Faith in her
night-dress, laughing as if she would suffocate,
and her mother in search of her was just
knocking at the open door.

“She insisted on going to wake Cousin Mary,
and would n't be washed till I let her; but I
stipulated that she should kiss you softly on
both your eyes.”

“I did,” said Faith, stoutly; “I kissed her
eyes, both two of 'em, and her nose, and her
mouth and her neck; then I pulled her hair,
and then I spinched her; but I thought she 'd
have to be banged a little. Was n't it a bang,
though!”

It really did me good to begin the day with
a hearty laugh. The days usually look so
long and blank at the beginning, that I can
hardly make up my mind to step out into
them. Faith's pillow was the famous pebble
in the pond, to which authors of original
imagination invariably resort; I felt its
little circles widening out all through the
day. I wonder if Aunt Winifred thought of
that. She thinks of many things.

For instance, afraid apparently that I should
think I was afflicted with one of those professional
visitors who hold that a chance relationship
justifies them in imposing on one from
the beginning to the end of the chapter, she
managed to make me understand, this morning,
that she was expecting to go back to
Uncle Forceythe's brother on Saturday. I
was surprised at myself to find that this
proposition struck me with dismay. I insisted
with all my heart on keeping her for a week
at the least, and sent forth a fiat that her
trunks should be unpacked.

We have had a quiet, homelike day. Faith
found her way to the orchard, and installed
herself there for the day, overhauling the
muddy grass with her bare hands to find

dandelions. She came in at dinner-time as
brown as a little nut, with her hat hanging
down her neck, her apron torn, and just about
as dirty as I should suppose it possible for a
clean child to succeed in making herself. Her
mother, however, seemed to be quite used to
it, and the expedition with which she made her
presentable I regard as a stroke of genius.

While Faith was disposed of, and the house
still, auntie and I took our knitting and spent
a regular old woman's morning at the south
window in the dining-room. In the afternoon
Mrs. Bland came over, babies and all, and
sent up her card to Mrs. Forceythe.

Supper-time came, and still there had not
been a word of Roy. I began to wonder at,
while I respected, this unusual silence.

While her mother was putting Faith to bed,
I went into my room alone, for a few moments'
quiet. An early dark had fallen, for it
had clouded up just before sunset. The dull,
gray sky and narrow horizon shut down and
crowded in everything. A soldier from the
village, who has just come home, was walking
down the street with his wife and sister. The
crickets were chirping in the meadows. The
faint breath of the maple came up.

I sat down by the window, and hid my
face in both my hands. I must have sat
there some time, for I had quite forgotten
that I had company to entertain, when the
door softly opened and shut, and some one
came and sat down on the couch beside me.
I did not speak, for I could not, and, the first
I knew, a gentle arm crept about me, and she
had gathered me into her lap and laid my
head on her shoulder, as she might have gathered
Faith.

“There,” she said, in her low, lulling voice,
“now tell Auntie all about it.”

I don't know what it was, whether the voice,
or touch, or words, but it came so suddenly, —
and nobody had held me for so long, — that
everything seemed to break up and unlock in
a minute, and I threw up my hands and cried.
I don't know how long I cried.

She passed her hand softly to and fro across
my hair, brushing it away from my temples,
while they throbbed and burned; but she did
not speak. By and by I sobbed out: —

“Auntie, Auntie, Auntie!” as Faith sobs out
in the dark. It seemed to me that I must
have help or die.

“Yes, dear. I understand. I know how

hard it is. And you have been bearing it
alone so long! I am going to help you, and
you must tell me all you can.”

The strong, decided words, “I am going to
help you,” gave me the first faint hope I have
had, that I could be helped, and I could tell
her — it was not sacrilege — the pent-up story
of these weeks. All the time her hand
went softly to and fro across my hair.

Presently, when I was weak and faint with
the new comfort of my tears, “Aunt Winifred,”
I said, “I don't know what it means to
be resigned; I don't know what it means!”

Still her hand passed softly to and fro
across my hair.

“To have everything stop all at once! without
giving me any time to learn to bear it.
Why, you do not know, — it is just as if a
great black gate had swung to and barred
out the future, and barred out him, and left
me all alone in any world that I can ever live
in, forever and forever.”

“My child,” she said, with emphasis solemn
and low upon the words, — “my child, I do
know. I think you forget — my husband.”

I had forgotten. How could I? We are
most selfishly blinded by our own griefs. No

other form than ours ever seems to walk with
us in the furnace. Her few words made me
feel, as I could not have felt if she had said
more, that this woman who was going to
help me had suffered too; had suffered perhaps
more than I, — that, if I sat as a little
child at her feet, she could teach me through
the kinship of her pain.

“O my dear,” she said, and held me close,
“I have trodden every step of it before you,
— every single step.”

“But you never were so wicked about it!
You never felt — why, I have been afraid I
should hate God! You never were so wicked
as that.”

Low under her breath she answered “Yes,”
— this sweet, saintly woman who had come to
me in the dark as an angel might.

Then, turning suddenly, her voice trembled
and broke: —

“Mary, Mary, do you think He could have
lived those thirty-three years, and be cruel to
you now? Think that over and over; only
that. It may be the only thought you dare
to have, — it was all I dared to have once, —
but cling to it; cling with both hands, Mary,
and keep it.”

I only put both hands about her neck and
clung there; but I hope — it seems, as if I
clung a little to the thought besides; it was
as new and sweet to me as if I had never
heard of it in all my life; and it has not left
me yet.

“And then, my dear,” she said, when she
had let me cry a little longer, “when you
have once found out that Roy's God loves
you more than Roy does, the rest comes
more easily. It will not be as long to wait
as it seems now. It is n't as if you never
were going to see him again.”

I looked up bewildered.

“What 's the matter, dear?”

“Why, do you think I shall see him, —
really see him?”

“Mary Cabot,” she said abruptly, turning
to look at me, “who has been talking to you
about this thing?”

“Deacon Quirk,” I answered faintly, —
“Deacon Quirk and Dr. Bland.”

She put her other arm around me with a
quick movement, as if she would shield me
from Deacon Quirk and Dr. Bland.

“Do I think you will see him again? You
might as well ask me if I thought God made

you and made Roy, and gave you to each
other. See him! Why, of course you will
see him as you saw him here.”

“As I saw him here! Why, here I looked
into his eyes, I saw him smile, I touched him.
Why, Aunt Winifred, Roy is an angel!”

She patted my hand with a little, soft, comforting
laugh.

“But he is not any the less Roy for that, —
not any the less your own real Roy, who will
love you and wait for you and be very glad to
see you, as he used to love and wait and be
glad when you came home from a journey on
a cold winter night.”

“And he met me at the door, and led me in
where it was light and warm!” I sobbed.

“So he will meet you at the door in this
other home, and lead you into the light and
the warmth. And cannot that make the cold
and dark a little shorter? Think a minute!”

“But there is God, — I thought we went to
Heaven to worship Him, and —”

“Shall you worship more heartily or less,
for having Roy again? Did Mary love the
Master more or less, after Lazarus came back?
Why, my child, where did you get your ideas
of God? Don't you suppose He knows how
you love Roy?”

I drank in the blessed words without doubt
or argument. I was too thirsty to doubt
or argue. Some other time I may ask her
how she knows this beautiful thing, but not
now. All I can do now is to take it into
my heart and hold it there.

Roy my own again, — not only to look at
standing up among the singers, — but close to
me; somehow or other to be as near as — to
be nearer than — he was here, really mine
again! I shall never let this go.

After we had talked awhile, and when it
came time to say good night, I told her a little
about my conversation with Deacon Quirk,
and what I said to him about the Lord's will.
I did not know but that she would blame me.

“Some time,” she said, turning her great,
compassionate eyes on me, — I could feel
them in the dark, — and smiling, “you will
find out all at once, in a happy moment, that
you can say those words with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your
strength; it will come, even in this world, if
you will only let it. But, until it does, you do
right, quite right, not to scorch your altar with
a false burnt-offering. God is not a God to be
mocked. He would rather have only the old

cry: `I believe; help mine unbelief,' and wait
till you can say the rest.

“It has often grated on my ears,” she added,
“to hear people speak those words unworthily.
They seem to me the most solemn words that
the Bible contains, or that Christian experience
can utter. As far as my observation goes, the
good people — for they are good people —
who use them when they ought to know better
are of two sorts. They are people in actual
agony, bewildered, racked with rebellious
doubts, unaccustomed to own even to themselves
the secret seethings of sin; really persuaded
that because it is a Christian duty to
have no will but the Lord's, they are under
obligations to affirm that they have no will
but the Lord's. Or else they are people who
know no more about this pain of bereavement
than a child. An affliction has passed over
them, put them into mourning, made them
feel uncomfortable till the funeral was over,
or even caused them a shallow sort of grief,
of which each week evaporates a little, till it is
gone. These mourners air their trouble the
longest, prate loudest about resignation, and
have the most to say to you or me about our
`rebellious state of mind.' Poor things! One

can hardly be vexed at them for pity. Think
of being made so!”

“There is still another class of the cheerfully
resigned,” I suggested, “who are even
more ready than these to tell you of your desperate
wickedness —”

“People who have never had even the
semblance of a trouble in all their lives,” she
interrupted. “Yes. I was going to speak of
them. Of all miserable comforters, they are
the most arrogant.”

“As to real instant submission,” she said
presently, “there is some of it in the world.
There are sweet, rare lives capable of great
loves and great pains, which yet are kept
so attuned to the life of Christ, that the cry
in the Garden comes scarcely less honestly
from their lips, than from his. Such, like
the St. John, are but one among the Twelve.
Such, it will do you and me good, dear, at least
to remember.”

“Such,” I thought when I was left alone,
“you new dear friend of mine, who have
come with such a blessed coming into my
lonely days, — such you must be now, whatever
you were once.”

If I should tell her that, how she would
open her soft eyes!