The Chautauqua Girls At Home Part 29

"He can't read it now, daughter. I dare say it would comfort him if he could; but he is delirious; didn't know me; hasn't known any one since he was taken in the night. Keep the letter till this pa.s.ses off, then he will be ready for it."

Very kind and sympathetic were Ruth's friends. The girls came to see her, and kissed her wistfully, with tears in their eyes, but they had little to say. They knew just how sick her friend was, and they felt as though there was nothing left to say. Her father neglected his business to stay at home with her, and in many a little, thoughtful way touched her heavy heart, as the hours dragged by.

Not many hours to wait. It was in the early dawn of the third morning after the news had reached her, that the door-bell pealed sharply through the house. There was but one servant up; she answered the bell.

Ruth was up and dressed, and stood in the hall above, listening for what that bell might bring to her. She heard the hurried voice at the door; heard the peremptory order:

"I want to see Judge Erskine right away."

She knew the voice belonged to Nellis Mitch.e.l.l, and she went down to him in the library. He turned swiftly at the opening of the door, then stood still, and a look of blank dismay swept over his face.

"It was your father that I wanted to see," he said, quickly.

"I know," she answered, speaking in her usual tone. "I heard your message. My father has not yet risen. He will be down presently.

Meantime, I thought you might possibly have news of Mr. Wayne's condition. Can you tell me what your father thinks of him this morning?"

How very quiet and composed she was! It seemed impossible to realize that she was the promised wife of the man for whom she was asking.

Nellis Mitch.e.l.l was distressed; he did not know what to say or do. His distress showed itself plainly on his face.

"You need not be afraid to tell me," she said, half smiling, and speaking more gently than she was apt to speak to this young man. It almost seemed that she was trying to sustain him, and help him to tell his story. "I am not a child you know," she added, still with a smile.

"You do not know what you are talking about," he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "Ruth, won't you please go up-stairs and tell your father I want him as soon as possible?"

She turned from him half impatiently.

"My father will be down as soon as possible," she said, coldly. "He is not accustomed to keep gentlemen waiting beyond what is necessary.

Meantime, if you know, will you be kind enough to give me news of Mr.

Wayne? I beg you, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, to remember that I am not a silly child, to whom you need be afraid to give a message, if you have one."

He must answer her now; there was no escape.

"He is," he began, and then he stopped. And her clear, cold, grave eyes looked right at him and waited. His next sentence commenced almost in a moan. "Oh, Ruth, you _will_ make me tell you! It is all over. He has gone."

"Gone!" she repeated, incredulously, still staring at him. "Where is he gone?"

What an awful question! She realized it herself almost the instant it pa.s.sed her lips. It made her shudder visibly. But she neither screamed nor fainted, nor in any way, except that strange one, betrayed emotion.

Instead, she said:

"Be seated, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, and excuse me; father is coming." Then she turned and went back up-stairs.

He heard her firm step on the stairs as she went slowly up; and this poor bearer of faithful tidings shut his face into both his hands and groaned aloud for such misery as could not vent itself in any natural way. He understood that there was something more than ordinary sorrow in Ruth's face. It was as if she had been petrified.

Through the days that followed Ruth pa.s.sed as one in a dream. Everyone was very kind. Her father showed a talent for patience and gentleness that no one had known he possessed.

The girls came to see her; but she would not be seen. She shrank from them. They did not wonder at that; they were half relieved that it was so. Such a pall seemed to them to have settled suddenly over her life that they felt at a loss what to say, how to meet her. So when she sent to them, from her darkened and gloomy room, kind messages of thanks for their kindness, and asked them to further show their sympathy by allowing her to stay utterly alone for awhile, they drew relieved sighs and went away. This much they understood. It was not a time for words.

As for Flossy, she should not have been numbered among them. She did not call at all; she sent by Nellis Mitch.e.l.l a tiny bouquet of lilies of the valley, lying inside of a cool, broad green lily leaf, and on a slip of paper twisted in with it was written:

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." How Ruth blessed her for that word! Verily she felt that she was walking through the very blackest of the shadows! It reminded her that she had a friend.

Slowly the hours dragged on. The grand and solemn funeral was planned and the plans carried out. Mr. Wayne was among the very wealthy of the city. His father's mansion was shrouded in its appropriate c.r.a.pe, the rooms and the halls and the rich, dark solemn coffin glittering with its solid silver screws and handles, were almost hidden in rare and costly flowers. Ruth, in the deepest of mourning robes, accompanied by her father, from whose shoulder swept long streamers of c.r.a.pe, sat in the Erskine carriage and followed directly after the hea.r.s.e, chief mourner in the long and solemn train.

In every conceivable way that love could devise and wealth carry out, were the last tokens of respect paid to the quiet clay that understood not what was pa.s.sing around it.

The music was by the quartette choir of the First Church, and was like a wail of angel voices in its wonderful pathos and tenderness.

The pastor spoke a few words, tenderly, solemnly pointing the mourners to One who alone could sustain, earnestly urging those who knew nothing of the love of Christ to take refuge _now_ in his open arms and find rest there.

But alas, alas! not a single word could he say about the soul that had gone out from that silent body before them; gone to live forever. Was it possible for those holding such belief as theirs to have a shadow of hope that the end of such a life as his had been could be bright?

Not one of those who understood anything about this matter dared for an instant to hope it. They understood the awful solemn silence of the minister. There was nothing for that grave but silence. Hope for the living, and he pointed them earnestly to the source of all hope; but for the dead, silence.

What an awfully solemn task to conduct such funeral services. The pastor may not read the comforting words: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," because before them lies one who did not die in the Lord, and common sense tells the most thoughtless that if those are blessed who die in the Lord there must be a reverse side to the picture, else no sense to the statement. So the verse must be pa.s.sed by. It is too late to help the dead, and it need not tear the hearts of the living. He can not read, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."

G.o.d forbid, prays the sad pastor in his heart, that mother or father or friend shall so die as to go to this one, who did not die in the Lord.

We can not even hope for that. All the long line of tender, helpful verses, glowing with light for the coming morning, s.h.i.+ning with immortality and unending union must be pa.s.sed by; for each and every one of them have a clause which shows unmistakably that the immortality is glorious only under certain conditions, and in this case they have not been met.

There must in these verses, too, be a reverse side, or else they mean nothing. What shall the pastor do? Clearly he can only say, "In the midst of life we are in death." That is true; his audience feel it; and he can only pray: "So teach _us_ to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

But, oh, how _can_ the mothers stand by open graves wherein are laid their sons or daughters, and endure the thought that it is a separation that shall stretch through eternity! How wonderful that any of us are careless or thoughtless for a moment so long as we have a child or a friend unsafe!

During all this time of trial Ruth's three friends were hovering around her, trying by every possible attention and thoughtfulness to help or comfort her, and yet feeling their powerlessness in such a way that it almost made them shrink from trying.

"Words are such a mockery," Marion said to her one evening, as they sat together. "Sometimes I almost hate myself for trying to speak to you at all. What can any human being say to one who is shrouded in an awful sorrow?"

Ruth shuddered visibly.

"It _is_ an 'awful' sorrow," she said; "you have used the right word with which to express it; but there is a shade to it that you do not understand. I don't believe that by experience you ever will; I pray G.o.d that you may not. Think of burying a friend in the grave without the slightest hope of ever meeting him in peace again!"

"You have nothing to do with that, Ruth; G.o.d is the judge. I don't think you ought to allow yourself to think of it."

"There I think you are mistaken; I believe I ought to think of it.

Marion, you know, and _I_ know, that there is simply nothing at all on which to build a hope of meeting in peace the man we buried last week.

You think it almost shocking that I can speak of him in that way; I know you do. People are apt to hide behind the very flimsiest veil of fancied hopes when they talk of such things.

"Perhaps a merciful G.o.d permits some to hug a worthless hope when they think of their dead treasures, since it can do no harm to those who are gone; but I am not one of that cla.s.s of people. Besides, I am appearing to you, and everybody, in a false light. I am tired of it. Marion, Mr.

Wayne was not to me what he ought to have been, since I was his promised wife. You know how I have changed of late; you know there was hardly a thought or feeling of mine in which he could sympathize; but the worst of it is, he never did sympathize with me in the true sense; he never filled my heart.

"My promise to him was one of those false steps that people like me, who are ruled by society, take because it seems to be the proper thing to do next, or because we feel it might as well be that as anything; perhaps because it will please one's father in a business point of view, or please one's own sense of importance; satisfy one's desire to be foremost in the fas.h.i.+onable world. I am humiliating myself to tell you, plainly, that my promise meant not much more than that. I did not realize how empty it was till I found that all my plans, and aims, and hopes in life were changed. That, in short, life had come to seem more to me than a glittering weariness, that was to be borne with the best grace I could a.s.sume. This was nearly all I had found in society, or hoped to find.

"I followed Mr. Wayne to the grave in the position of chief mourner, because I felt that it was a token of respect that I owed to the memory of the man whom I had wronged, and because I felt that the world had no business with our private affairs; but he was not to me what people think he was, and I feel as though I wanted you to know it, even though it humiliates me beyond measure to make the confession. At the same time I have an awful sorrow, too awful to be expressed in words.

"Marion, I think you will understand what I mean when I say that I believe I have the blood of a lost soul clinging to my garments. I know as well as I sit here to-night that I might have influenced Harold Wayne into the right way. I know his love for me was so sincere, and so strong, that he would have been willing to try to do almost anything that I had asked. I believe in my soul that had I urged the matter of personal salvation on his immediate attention, he would have given it thought. But I _never_ did--_never_.

"Marion, even on that last evening of his life--I mean before he was sick--when he himself invited the words, I was silent. I did not mean to continue so; I meant, when I got ready, to speak to him about this matter; I meant to do everything right; but I was determined to take my own time for it, and I took it, and now he is _gone_! Marion, you know nothing about such a sorrow as that! Now, why did I act in this insane way?

"I know the reason, one of them at least; and the awful selfishness and cowardice of it only brands me deeper. It was because I was afraid to have him become a Christian man! I knew if he did I should have no excuse for breaking the pledges that had pa.s.sed between us; in plain words, I would have no excuse for not marrying him; and I did not want to do it! I felt that marriage vows would mean to me in the future what they never meant in the past, and that there was really nothing in common between Mr. Wayne and myself; that I could not a.s.sent to the marriage service with him, and be guiltless before G.o.d. So to spare myself, to have what looked like a conscientious excuse for breaking vows that ought never to have been made, I deliberately sacrificed his _soul_! Marion Wilbur, think of that!"

"You didn't mean to do that!" Marion said, in an awe-stricken voice; she was astonished and shocked, and bewildered as to what to say.