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GRACIE'S SNOWDROPS.
It was a little bunch of snowdrops which a child laid on my
window. They were very beautiful, with their soft, delicate
green, and their petals white and pure, and fleecy as the great
flakes of snow the children used to catch in their fingers, standing
in Grandfather's porch, on a Thanksgiving morning. They
reminded me of those old days, when I, too, held the snow-flakes
in my fingers, and watched to see them melt. Weary years had
passed since then, wherein my feet were wandering far away
from the old homestead, and the thanksgiving on my lips was
sobbed upward through tears. I had seen many other things
melt beside snow-flakes, and sometimes an avalanche had fallen
upon my brightest hopes; but not for these things I wept, holding
between my fingers the snowdrops which little Grace had laid
upon my window. My gaze was turned inward, and I seemed to
see another Grace, and other flowers, heavy with the tears of a
yet wilder sorrow.
Our little Grace — “Little Blossom,” as Grandmother loves to
call her — is strangely fair. Her loveliness is of the most ethereal
type out of heaven. You, with your poetical fancy, would compare
it to white clouds of a summer evening, or the transient
gleam of an angel's wing, in those spring days when the sky
seems lovingly bending nearer, and the very glory of heaven is
scarcely hidden by the blue between. Her rare loveliness does
delicate tracery of her blue veins, or the clear azure of her eye,
and the pale gold of her hair. Beyond all this, there is beauty
of a higher order, which lends to her every word and act an
indescribable charm. It shines in her smile, it rings in her gleeful
laugh, and makes graceful every movement of her flexile
figure. But we gaze on her oftenest through tears; for even so
looked and moved and brightened before our eyes our other
Grace, her mother before her. Grace Vinton had been the pet
and darling of the whole village. She was beautiful, and an
heiress; and yet the rarest of her charms was her entire forgetfulness
of self. O, how we all loved her! how we blessed the
fate that constituted her my father's ward!
She made our whole lives radiant with a new charm, even in
the days of her early childhood. The breath of the flowers was
sweeter when her hand gathered them; the bird-songs swelled
up with a clearer melody when her sweet voice joined their
chorus; and our very prayers grew eloquent with a deeper faith,
at her low, silvery “Amen!” And then, when she grew up
to womanhood, every day getting fairer and sweeter, fuller of
music and poetry, and all things good and glorious, what wonder
we looked on her with almost superstitious awe, and whispered
to each other that God had sent his angel to dwell among us?
The house grew strangely dark and dull when she left us to
spend a few months in the great city. Brother Frank declared
himself a victim to “dog-days” long after the autumn wind
had swept the last sere leaf from the drooping willow. We
heard of her very often; — how noble and gifted ones had
knelt before her in homage; how her angel nature seemed to
fashion; and brother Frank listened with a frown on his brow,
and declared the dog-days had lasted, this year, into January.
But she came back to us, after a time, looking lovelier and
more radiant than ever, — all our own Grace still! And then, in
the simple country church, Grace became in very truth my sister,
my brother Frank's wife. Surely never was there a fairer bride.
There were no pearls or diamonds in her hair, no costly Point
D'Alençon lace floating over her white neck and graceful arms;
but I don't think the veriest fashion-monger in the world would
have thought they could improve Gracie. She looked so fair, so
ethereal, in her simple white muslin, with her rich tresses
looped up with a wreath of snowdrops! Never did a young husband's
eyes turn on his loved one with more of idolizing tenderness,
and never was there a warmer welcome than that with
which our parents held her to their hearts, and called her their
child, their life's best blessing.
A year had passed, and the room where Grace lay sleeping
was dark and very still. She opened her eyes, at length, with a
shudder, and cried out, “Nellie, O Nellie! did you say it?
Must I die? Must I leave the husband who has made my life
so happy, the baby that has only one short week been pillowed
on my bosom, and go, no one knows or can tell where?
Must I, Nellie?”
My answer was a burst of tears, and then once more Gracie
murmured, “O, must I? Why did n't any one tell me, before,
that I had got to die? Why was I taught everything but this?
O, Nellie, Nellie! it is very bitter!” And then she turned her
face toward the wall, and went down alone into that dark valley,
mental agony passed over her pure face; memories of unrepented
sins came up like ghosts before her, who, we thought,
had committed no sin; and in that hour spirit-hands held to her
lips a cup filled to the brim with those waters of Marah which
men call Repentance, that bitter portion which every mortal one
day must drink. But the struggle passed over, and up to her
eyes there drifted a peace which comes to those only whose feet
tread the borders of the land of promise.
We placed snowdrops in her coffin, and loving, almost breaking
hearts moistened them with tears; and one heart, whereon
her head had rested, throbbed with a sorrow too wild for utterance,
too mighty for tears!
We named her baby Grace, and she lives and brightens before
our eyes, as like to the Grace of our earliest love as the lily
nodding fresh and fragrant on the stalk to the last year's blossom
mouldering beneath. But, ah! the eyes that gaze on her are
oft-times dim with tears, as my heart goes sorrowfully backward
through the spectre-haunted fields of memory, whither Gracie's
snow-drops have carried me this morning.
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