University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
A VOICE FROM THE SPIRIT LAND.

Harry Davis took his homeward way with a
light heart, and entered his mother's door with
a joyous spring. The tea-table was neatly prepared
for that pleasantest of New England rustic meals,
“the tea.”

There were few industrious and sober people in
the county poorer than the Davises. But poverty, in
its received sense, is not a word applicable to any
such American family. What would a starving house-wife
in an Irish shanty, or one of the poor peasant
women of the continent of Europe, say to Mrs. Davis's
tea-table, with its white cloth, its whole and fitting

earthen ware, its bright knives, its tea, sugar, and
cream, its white bread, blackberry pie, and fried fish?

“This looks comfortable,” said Davis, obeying the
pleasant announcement, “Tea is ready!” and turning
his chair around from his desk and his inventions.
“I have done a good job at head-work to-day,” he
added, “and have had nothing to eat but a slice of
bread and some knick-knacks the neighbors sent in for
Lucy. Mother is so notional, she won't let the poor
child touch them.”

“Ah! but, father,” interposed Annie, “the doctor
said, if there were more people would do as mother
does, and give to the well the custards, and cake,
and sweetmeats, the neighbors send in for the sick,
they would save a great many patients from his
hands.”

“Tut! nonsense, Annie — as if sickness did not
come of itself, or when the Lord chooses to send it.
How came Lucy sick? I should like to know that.
Your mother keeps her on bread and milk, and potatoes
and meat not above once a day. How came she
brought up with a fever?”

“The doctor says, sir, it was brought on by the
unripe plums you gave her at Deacon Carr's. When
fevers are about, doctor says they will set in upon
any bad derangement of the stomach.”

“O, that's nothing but a new-fangled notion.
Children eat every thing. I have eaten just what I
fancied, and all the tasty things I could get all my
life, and I never had a fever.” Davis's lank, sallow
cheeks were not the best evidence of his wise mode
of living; and, — poor man! — as little Lucy became
worse from day to day, he silently resolved never
again to give his children unripe fruit. Alas! the
wisdom only learned by failure comes too late. We
have seldom the same experience twice.

Mrs. Davis did not reproach her husband. She
was not of those who find relief in imputing blame.
She hoped, from day to day, that little Lucy would be
better. She took the whole care of the child, with the
aid of Harry and Annie. She would not follow the
common rural custom of letting in upon the patient
all the kind neighbors who call to express sympathy and
offer aid. She had often observed sick children either

shrinking from the touch of strangers, or too much
excited by them. Contrary to all usage in our country
parts, she declined watchers; and, when urged by her
kind friends to accept their services, she said, “No;
I could not sleep soundly while my child is so ill, if
she had the best watcher in Salisbury. I sleep beside
her, and wake at her least movement. It is a small
tax upon me, but it is a hard strain upon another. I
have always been against having watchers when you
can help it, and I wish to be consistent.”

“Consistent” good Mrs. Davis was in making all the
detail of her life a manifestation of her theory of her duty.
Davis never watched. “He was a remarkable heavy
sleeper,” he said; “watching never agreed with him!”

There was one visitor only excepted from the general
prohibition — the poor, outcast Clapham. He was
expected daily, watched for by Lucy, and welcomed
with her sweetest smile and out-stretched hand. The
doctor prescribed feverbush tea, and Clapham, of
course, brought the feverbush from the mountain.
The next day, winter-greens were recommended, and
each day some rural febrifuge, which Clapham's woodcraft

enabled him to supply. With the herbs, Clapham
brought strings of bright berries, which Annie
strung, and Lucy amused herself, at her best intervals,
with wreathing around her white arms. The flowers
were few and faded on the hill side and by the brook,
but the lovely fringed gentian was still in perfection,
and Clapham had always a handful of these, which he
called “Lucy's flowers.”

“I do wish, Clapham,” said Lucy, “that you and
Harry would carry me along the brook, and lay me
down on the soft grass, where the cool wind blows,
and where I could drink all the time. Here it's so
hot! Feel, how my hand burns! You will carry me
there when I am a little better, won't you, boys?”
Both boys eagerly promised; but alas! the cruel disease
was making rapid progress.

The next day, when, as usual, Clapham came in late
in the afternoon, the family, with the exception of
Davis, who had gone of an errand to the village, were
in the little bed-room. A change had taken place.
Lucy was dying. Her distress was over. Nature had
given up the struggle, and her young life was ebbing

away. Mrs. Davis heard Clapham lift the latch of the
outer door, and beckoned to him to come softly in.
He did so, and knelt at the foot of the trundle-bed.
Lucy was supported by pillows. The hue of life was
paled on her cheek. Her mother's, lying beside it,
was of the deepest crimson. Her mother was on her
knees, and so were Harry and Lucy, each holding one
of those little hands that seemed to grasp every fibre
of their hearts. “My children, pray with me,” said
the mother; and in a low, but perfectly distinct voice,
she said, “Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed
be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be
done —” She stopped. There needed no more.
These all-comprehending words expressed the unbounded
prayer of her heart; her faith that God
was her Father, the Father of her children; her desire
to utter his name with awe and love; her complete
resignation of her own hopes and purposes for
her child; and the present indulgence of her affections.
As she concluded, Harry said to her, in a low, trembling
voice, “Mother, it never before seemed to me
hard to pray that prayer!”

“Is it hard, now, my son?”

“Hard? Yes, mother.”

“It should not be, my children. We give up
little Lucy to wiser, greater love than ours. The
kingdom of heaven is coming to her. No more pain
for her —”

Lucy at this moment opened her eyes, and consciousness,
without pain, revived. There was even a
slight movement of her lips to kiss her mother, and, as
her mother pressed hers to her, she faintly, but perceptibly
smiled, and with her finger made a beckoning
motion to Clapham to come nearer. He rose and
knelt by Annie. Lucy spread out her little hand so
as to embrace both theirs. At this moment, the setting
sun shone out from a cloud, and its rays fell,
like a halo, around little Lucy's fair hair.

“Pretty moon!” she said. The mists of death
were gathering over her sight, and the sun was no
longer bright to her eye.

They all felt as if they were near the visible
presence of God. The curtain that hides the other
world was slowly rising, and they felt the beautiful

reality of the goodness and love to which the precious
child was going. It was not death. It was life —
immortal life. A solemn but not painful feeling pervaded
them. No one stirred or moved, till Lucy
looked from one to the other, and then rested her eye
on Harry, and he seemed unconsciously to answer to
the glance in saying, “How I love you, darling!” She
replied, slowly, feebly, but with perfect distinctness, so
that each heard her, “We—all—love—one another!”
These were the last words she spoke — words that
bound them in a sacred band, to be cruelly assailed,
but never broken.

From this time, her breathing became fainter and
fainter. There was no struggle, and when the twilight
had faded away, and the stars began to appear,
she sank to her rest as quietly as if it had been to
her night's sleep.

The spell of solemn silence was first broken by
the sweet voice of the mother.

“She is gone! my children,” she said — “gone
to Him who said, `Suffer little children to come
unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the

kingdom of heaven — gone from our sight, but not
from us.”

“Not from us, mother?” asked Annie, in a perplexed
tone of voice.

“No, my children, I hope not. I believe not.
Little Lucy is an angel now, and I think she will
love to be near us; and nothing but our evil-doing
can separate us.”

This was a new thought to the children. It
seemed to them to take away the sting of separation,
and, at the same time, to give them an acute sense of
responsibility, an intense desire to be pure, so that that
purified and loved spirit might dwell with them. Mrs.
Davis's calmness, her faith, and her gentle submission,
had converted this chamber of death into the vestibule
of heaven. Death did not appear to these children the
king of terrors, but a messenger of love who had come
to take their dear little companion to happiness and
immortality, and to inspire them with a faith and hope
that taught them how to value and how to use life.

To Clapham it seemed a vision; a revelation; and
after all the necessary offices had been performed,

after the kind neighbors had come and gone, after
the good village minister had made his prayer with
the family, and after he had seen the form of little
Lucy laid out in its white robes, her head encircled
with a wreath of the fringed gentians he had brought
that afternoon for her, and on her bosom sweet, half-open
rose-buds old Mrs. Allen had sent in from her
monthly rose, — after this, he took his way homeward.
Slowly, thoughtfully he went. Suddenly a loathing
revulsion from his own most loathsome dwelling came
over him; he turned back, retraced his way, and lay
down on the ground on the outside of that little bed-room
window. There he waked and slept alternately,
and had visions of his little friend now by the brook
on Rhigi, and now an angel amidst beauty and glory
that never before had dawned on his mind. Thoughts
of his real condition, of his dreadful home, came
like demons among these angel visitations. The poor
boy was struggling in the mysteries of life. Still
there was something that whispered hope and peace—
something that breathed into his soul the feeling
expressed in the following beautiful stanza:—