Stepping Heavenward Part 3

"It is always a trying task to visit the afflicted," mother said, "and you make it doubly hard to your friends by putting on a gloomy, forbidding air, and by refusing to talk of your dear father, as if you were resolved to keep your sorrow all to yourself."

"I can't smile when I am so unhappy," I said.

A good many people have been here to-day. Mother has seen them all, though she looked ready to drop. Mrs. Bates said to me, in her little, weak, watery voice:

"Your mother is wonderfully sustained, dear. I hope you feel reconciled to G.o.d's will. Rebellion is most displeasing to Him, dear."

I made no answer. It is very easy for people to preach. Let me see how they behave when they their turn to lose their friends.

Mrs. Morris said this was a very mysterious dispensation. But that she was happy to see that Mother was meeting it with so much firmness. "As for myself," she went on, "I was quite broken down by my dear husband's death. I did not eat as much as would feed a bird, for nearly a week. But some people have so much feeling; then again others are so firm. Your mother is so busy talking with Mrs. March that I won't interrupt her to say good-bye. I came prepared to suggest several things that I thought would comfort her; but perhaps she has thought of them herself."

I could have knocked her down. Firm, indeed! Poor mother.

After they had all gone, I made her lie down, she looked so tired and worn out.

Then, I could not help telling her what Mrs. Morris had said.

She only smiled a little, but said nothing.

"I wish you would ever flare up, mother," I said.

She smiled again, and said she had nothing to "flare up" about.

"Then I shall do it for you!" I cried. To hear that namby-pamby woman, who is about as capable of understanding you as an old cat, talking about your being firm! You see what you get by being quiet and patient! People would like you much better if you refused to be comforted, and wore a sad countenance."

"Dear Katy," said mother, "it is not my first object in life to make people like me."

By this time she looked so pale that I was frightened. Though she is so cheerful, and things go on much as they did before, I believe she has got her death-blow. If she has, then I hope I have got mine. And yet I am not fit to die. I wish I was, and I wish I could die. I have lost all interest in everything, and don't care what becomes of me.

Nov. 23.-I believe I shall go crazy unless people stop coming here, hurling volleys of texts at mother and at me. When soldiers drop wounded on the battle-field, they are taken up tenderly and carried "to the rear," which means, I suppose, out of sight and sound. Is anybody mad enough to suppose it will do them any good to hear Scripture quoted sermons launched at them before their open, bleeding wounds are staunched?

Mother a.s.sents, in a mild way, when I talk so and says, "Yes, yes, we are indeed lying wounded on the battle-field of life, and in no condition to listen to any words save those of pity. But, dear Katy, we must interpret aright all the well-meant attempts of our friends to comfort us. They mean sympathy, however awkwardly they express it."

And then she sighed, with a long, deep sigh, that told how it all wearied her.

Dec. 14.-Mother keeps saying I spend too much time in brooding over my sorrow. As for her, she seems to live in heaven. Not that she has long prosy talks about it, but little words that she lets drop now and then show where her thoughts are, and where she would like to be.

She seems to think everybody is as eager to go there as she is. For my part, I am not eager at all. I can't make myself feel that it will be nice to sit in rows, all the time singing, fond as I am of music.

And when I say to myself, "Of course we shall not always sit in rows singing," then I fancy a mult.i.tude of shadowy, phantom-like beings, dressed in white, moving to and fro in golden streets, doing nothing in particular, and having a dreary time, without anything to look forward to.

I told mother so. She said earnestly, and yet in her sweetest, tenderest way,

"Oh, my darling Katy! What you need is such a living, personal love to Christ as shall make the thought of being where He is so delightful as to fill your mind with that single thought!"

What is "personal love to Christ?"

Oh, dear, dear! Why need my father have been s.n.a.t.c.hed away from me, when so many other girls have theirs spared to them? He loved me so!

He indulged me so much! He was so proud of me! What have I done that I should have this dreadful thing happen to me? I shall never be as happy as I was before. Now I shall always be expecting trouble. Yes, I dare say mother will go next. Why shouldn't I brood over this sorrow? I like to brood over it; I like to think how wretched I am; I like to have long, furious fits of crying, lying on my face on the bed.

Jan. I, 1832.-People talk a great deal about the blessed effects of sorrow. But I do not see any good it has done me to lose my dear father, and as to mother she was good enough before.

We are going to leave our pleasant home, where all of us children were born, and move into a house in an out-of-the-way street. By selling this, and renting a smaller one, mother hopes, with economy, to carry James through college. And I must go to Miss Higgins' school because it is less expensive than Mr. Stone's. Miss Higgins, indeed!

I never could bear her! A few months ago, how I should have cried and stormed at the idea of her school. But the great sorrow swallows up the little trial.

I tried once more, this morning, as it is the first day of the year, to force myself to begin to love G.o.d.

I want to do it; I know I ought to do it; but I cannot. I go through the form of saying something that I try to pa.s.s off as praying, every day now. But I take no pleasure in it, as good people say they do, and as I am sure mother does. n.o.body could live in the house with her, and doubt that.

Jan. 10.-We are in our new home now, and it is quite a cozy little place. James is at home for the long vacation and we are together all the time I am out of school. We study and sing together and now and then, when we forget that dear father has gone, we are as full of fun as ever. If it is so nice to have a brother, what must it be to have a sister! Dear old Jim! He is the very pleasantest, dearest fellow in the world!

Jan. 15.-I have come to another birthday and am seventeen. Mother has celebrated it just as usual, though I know all these anniversaries which used to be so pleasant, must be sad days to her now my dear father has gone. She has been cheerful-and loving, and entered into all my pleasures exactly as if nothing had happened. I wonder at myself that I do not enter more into her sorrows, but though at times the remembrance of our loss overwhelms me, my natural elasticity soon makes me rise above and forget it. And I am absorbed with these school-days, that come one after another, in such quick succession that I am all the time running to keep up with them. And as long as I do that I forget that death has crossed our threshold, and may do it again. But to night I feel very sad, and as if I would give almost any thing to live in a world where nothing painful could happen.

Somehow mother's pale face haunts and reproaches me. I believe I will go to bed and to sleep as quickly as possible, and forget everything.

Chapter 3

III

July 16.

My school-days are over! I have come off with flying colors, and mother is pleased at my success. I said to her today that I should now have time to draw and practice to my heart's content.

"You will not find your heart content with either," she said.

"Why, mother!" I cried, "I thought you liked to see me happy!"

"And so I do," she said, quietly. "But there is something better to get out of life than you have yet found."

"I am sure I hope so," I returned. "On the whole, I haven't got much so far."

Amelia is now on such terms with Jenny Underhill that I can hardly see one without seeing the other After the way in which I have loved her, this seems rather hard. Sometimes I am angry about it, and sometimes grieved. However, I find Jenny quite nice. She buys all the new books and lends them to me. I wish I liked more solid reading; but I don't. And I wish I were not so fond of novels; but I am. If it were not for mother I should read nothing else. And I am sure I often feel quite stirred up by a really good novel, and admire and want to imitate every high-minded, n.o.ble character it describes.

Jenny has a miniature of her brother "Charley" in a locket, which she always wears, and often shows me. According to her, he is exactly like the heroes I most admire in books. She says she knows he would like me if we should meet. But that is not probable. Very few like me. Amelia says it is because I say just what I think.

Wednesday.-Mother pointed out to me this evening two lines from a book she was reading, with a significant smile that said they described me:

"A frank, unchastened, generous creature, Whose faults and virtues stand in bold relief."

"Dear me!" I said, "so then I have some virtues after all!"

And I really think I must have, for Jenny's brother, who has come here for the sake of being near her, seems to like me very much.

n.o.body ever liked me so much before, not even Amelia. But how foolish to write that down!

Thursday.-Jenny's brother has been here all evening. He has the most perfect manners I ever saw. I am sure that mother, who thinks so much of such things, would be charmed with him but she happened to be out, Mrs. Jones having sent for her to see about her baby. He gave me an account of his mother's death, and how he and Jenny nursed her day and night. He has a great deal of feeling. I was going to tell him about my father's death, sorrow seems to bring people together so, but I could not. Oh, if he had only had a sickness that needed our tender nursing, instead of being s.n.a.t.c.hed from us in that sudden way!

Sunday, Aug. 5.-Jenny's brother has been at our church all day. He walked home with me this afternoon. Mother, after being up all night with Mrs. Jones and her baby, was not able to go out.

Dr Cabot preaches as if we had all got to die pretty soon, or else have something almost as bad happen to us. How can old people always try to make young people feel uncomfortable, and as if things couldn't last?