University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.
A DEATH-BED.

A profitable lesson in the economy of human
life might have been learned in the dying Paulina's
apartment. Her last excess, her last draught of
gin, taken in an excited and feverish state, had
accelerated her disease. She had a raging fever,
and her cough was attended by spasms that, at
each recurrence, threatened her with instant death.
Charlotte, after in vain searching for some comfortable
garments among the relics of Paulina's
evil days—after turning over stained silk dresses,
tattered gauzes, yellow blonde laces, and tangled
artificial flowers, had furnished from her own
stores clean apparel suitable for a sick woman.

“Oh, Lottie, please,” said Paulina, pointing to
the various articles of old finery that hung about
the room, or over the sides of her broken bandboxes,
“please put them all out of my sight—they
seem like so many witnesses against me—they
taunt me for my sin and folly. How good this
clean snug cap feels—how kind it is of you to
lend me these things!”

“I have plenty, Paulina; we always calculate
to have a good store of necessaries. Susan and I
think, if we don't want them, they will come in play
for somebody—and, with a little industry and forecast,
they are easily got. You can buy a dozen
such caps as that of mine for the half of what one
of yours cost, Paulina.”

“I can't help that now,” retorted Paulina, pettishly;
“I did not mean to speak so,” she added,
after a moment's pause—“but oh, Lottie, every
thing stings me.”

“And I am sure,” said the gentle Charlotte, “I
did not mean to hurt your feelings; but I did not
know but you might think it strange such a poor
person as I should boast of abundance.”

“You poor, Lottie!—you poor!—oh, I can tell
you what it is to be poor. To be without any
worldly possessions is not to be poor, for you have
a treasure laid up in heaven. To be what the
world calls friendless is not to be poor, for you
have God and conscience for friends. But to be
as I am, memory tormenting!—without hope—to
have no inward peace—no store of pleasant
thoughts of good done! Oh, this is poverty. Poverty
is nothing outside, Lottie.”

For a moment, Paulina's mind would seem to
have more even than its natural strength and clearness:
but such bright intervals were short, and
succeeded by hours when she seemed to be heavily
sleeping away her existence; and Charlotte
would long to see her awaken to a consciousness
of her ebbing life, and employing the little time
that remained in preparation for her departure.
But, alas for those who leave their preparation for

the death-bed! who defer to a few suffering hours
the work for which life is given!

“Who would have thought, Lottie,” said Susan,
as the sisters sat together, watching Paulina's
troubled sleep, “that you would have lived to
nurse her on her death-bed! It is teaching to look
at you and then at her.”

And, as Susan said, it was “teaching.” It taught
that, if the laws of nature, which are the laws of
God, are obeyed, the frailest, most delicate constitution
may be preserved; and that the most vigorous
health must be destroyed by a violation of
those laws. Charlotte, by strict temperance, by
regular exercise, by prudence and thoughtfulness,
had preserved the little remnant of health left by
the cruel accident she had endured in her childhood.
But, what was far better, by the religious
performance of her duties—by contentment, both
with the gifts and the denials of Providence—by
forgetting herself, and remembering everybody
else—by loving, and (a most sure consequence)
being loved in turn—she had preserved that sweet
serenity of spirit that shone through her pale face,
and all those faculties in active operation, that,
slender and fragile as she was, made her the comfort
of her family; the dear Aunt Lottie of the
home she blessed.

Fifteen years before Paulina was the picture of
health, and in possession of the virtues (or rather
accidents) which are usually found with a sound
and vigorous constitution. She was good-humoured,
bright, courageous, and kind-hearted. But,
alas! she was brought up by an ignorant mother,
in ignorance and the excessive love of pleas

ure. She was pretty, and she was flattered at
home and abroad. That love of dress which pervades
all classes of women, which grows with
their growth and strengthens with their strength,
which is cherished by the conversation of their
own sex and the flattery of the other, which degrades
the rich and ruins so many poor girls, was
one of the most efficient causes of Paulina's destruction.[1]

“Do you remember,” continued Susan, “how
clear and full her eye was? and now how sunken,
and those yellow, dropsical-looking bags about it;
and her cheeks, I remember father used to say they
looked like rare-ripes; dear me! how the bones
stick out now where the fair round flesh was; and
how like old tripe it looks where she has had the
paint on; and her lips, what a bright cherry-red
pair they were: dear! dear! how blue they are;
and see her neck and arms, Lottie, that were so
plump and white, now how shrivelled and skinny
they look. Dear Lottie,” she added, “I can't help
saying it, as I turn my eye from Paulina to you;
you seem like a temple in which the spirit of God
dwelleth. Oh! what a comfort it is to have
cherished, and not abused. God's good gifts!”

“Hush! Susan, she is waking!” and poor Paulina
awoke from a troubled dream, coughing and
gasping. “Oh!” said she, as soon as she could
speak, “I thought I was dead and in misery, but
I am still living; and, Lottie, does not the Bible
say—I have almost forgotten all I knew about the
Bible—but does it not say there is hope for the
living?”

“Yes, Paulina; if they repent of their evil
deeds, and turn to the Lord, there is with him
plenteous redemption.”

“Does it say so?”—a suffocating fit of coughing
interrupted her. “My mind,” she continued,
when she could get her breath, “My mind is so
confused, I have so given up my thoughts to folly
and sin, that I can't even think good thoughts;
how can I repent?—I am so sleepy—” and, as she
yet spoke, the words died away on her lips, and a
heavy sleep came over her, from which she started
as from a nightmare.

“I have done one good thing,” she said: “I
was good to Juliet!”

“That should comfort you!” said Susan, seizing,
as eagerly as a drowning man catches at a straw,
at Paulina's single consoling recollection.

“But, Susan, I was not kind as you would have
been—such as I can't be so. I did keep my evil
life out of her sight; I have always paid something
extra, that she might have a little room to herself.”

“That was considerate, Paulina.”

“Do you think so, Lottie? Dear me! if I had
only realized how soon it would come to this, I
should have lived so differently! My God! but
the other day we were playing together in Essex,

and now! Do you think me very, very near
death?” she added, rightly interpreting the expression
of her friends' faces.

“You cannot have long to live,” replied Charlotte,
in a voice of the tenderest pity.

“Then why don't you send for a minister?”

“We will, if you wish it, Paulina.”

“I do, I do—pray be quick!” Susan went to
the door and despatched a messenger, while Paulina
looked eagerly after her; but, when Susan returned
to the bed, the poor creature shook her head
and said, with the awful solemnity of deep conviction—“What
good can he do me?—It lieth between
me and my Maker!” Her lips then murmured
a low, broken prayer;—suddenly stopping, she
implored Lottie to pray for her. “I cannot pray,”
she said; “don't let me go to sleep, Susan.” Susan
chafed her temples and hands, while Charlotte
knelt and besought pardon for the dying-woman, as
a confiding child asks favours from a parent she
supremely loves. Her prayer expressed her faith
in the compassions of God, as revealed by his son;
her face shone with love and mercy, from her soul,
his faint image. But poor Paulina was past all
comfort. When Charlotte finished, she said, faintly—“Say
it again, Lottie, I could not hear you.
Come nearer, I don't see you!—Give me air!—did
mother speak!—no, I mean the minister!—has he
come?—tell Juliet—no, not that—thank you, Susan—my
God!—it's so sudden!—help me, Lottie!”
And thus, uttering at intervals broken sentences,
more and more incoherent, she continued
almost unconscious of the ministrations of her

friends, till she sunk into a lethargy which ended
in death.

The sisters wept over her such tears as angels
might shed. “I remember,” said Susan, “almost
crying my eyes out when mother died; I have
often cried, Lottie, to see you patiently bearing
cruel pain, and I cried till my tears seemed all
spent when my angel baby died—but I never shed
such bitter tears as these; there is no sight in this
world so sad as the death-bed of the sinner!
But, Lottie, don't you think we were some comfort
to her?”

Two days after, as Aikin and his family, according
to the village custom of his native place,
were following the remains of Paulina to their last
abode, they were intercepted by a long train of
funeral carriages. In the first, in deep weeds, was
Morris Finley, following the body of his only son
William Arthur. The boy had died suddenly, and,
according to the common saying, of a “most mysterious
disease.” Such mysteries are easily solved
if we would honestly look at the truth. The
boy's stomach had been vitiated from infancy by
all sorts of delicacies and luxuries, permitted by
his foolish mother. The instrument, strained to its
utmost—and a slight accident—a trifling excess,
destroyed him.

We need not conjecture the reflections of Morris
Finley on this occasion, when, for a little while
at least, he must have felt his wealth mocking him
with its emptiness.