The Wide, Wide World

Shall there His beams display;
And not one moment's darkness mix
With that unvaried day."

"'Not one moment's darkness!' Oh," thought little Ellen, "there are a great many here!" Still gazing up at the bright calm heavens, while the tears ran fast down her face, and fell into her lap, there came trooping through Ellen's mind many of those words she had been in the habit of reading to her mother and Alice, and which she knew and loved so well.

"And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light; and they shall reign for ever and ever. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him; and they shall see His face; and His name shall be in their foreheads. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things have passed away."

"And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."

While Ellen was yet going over and over these precious things, with a strong sense of their preciousness in all her throbbing grief, there came to her ear through the perfect stillness of the night the faint, far-off, not-to-be-mistaken sound of quick-coming horse's feet, nearer and nearer every second. It came with a mingled pang of pain and pleasure, both very acute; she rose instantly to her feet, and stood pressing her hand to her heart while the quick-measured beat of hoofs grew louder and louder, until it ceased at the very door. The minutes were few, but they were moments of intense bitterness. The tired horse stooped his head, as the rider flung himself from the saddle and came to the door where Ellen stood fixed. A look asked, and a look answered, the question that lips could not speak. Ellen only pointed the way, and uttered the words, "up stairs;" and John rushed thither. He checked himself, however, at the door of the room, and opened it and went in as calmly as if he had but come from a walk. But his caution was very needless. Alice knew his step, she knew his horse's step too well; she had raised herself up and stretched out both arms towards him before he entered. In another moment they were round his neck, and she was supported in his. There was a long, long silence.

"Are you happy, Alice?" whispered her brother.

"Perfectly. This was all I wanted. Kiss me, dear John."

As he did so, again and again, she felt his tears on her cheek, and put up her hands to his face to wipe them away; kissed him then, and then once again laid her head on his breast. They remained so a little while without stirring, except that some whispers were exchanged too low for others to hear, and once more she raised her face to kiss him. A few minutes after those who could look saw his colour change; he felt the arms unclasp their hold; and as he laid her gently back on the pillow, they fell languidly down; the will and the power that had sustained them were gone. Alice was gone; but the departing spirit had left a ray of brightness on its earthly house; there was a half smile on the sweet face, of most entire peace and satisfaction. Her brother looked for a moment, closed the eyes, kissed, once and again, the sweet lips, and left the room.

Ellen saw him no more that night, nor knew how he passed it. For her, wearied with grief and excitement, it was spent in long heavy slumber. From the pitch to which her spirits had been wrought by care, sorrow, and self-restraint, they now suddenly and completely sank down; naturally and happily, she lost all sense of trouble in sleep.

When sleep at last left her, and she stole downstairs into the sitting-room in the morning, it was rather early. Nobody was stirring about the house but herself. It seemed deserted; the old sitting-room looked empty and forlorn; the stillness was oppressive. Ellen could not bear it. Softly opening the glass door, she went out upon the lawn, where everything was sparkling in the early freshness of the summer morning. How could it look so pleasant without, when all pleasantness was gone within? It pressed upon Ellen's heart. With a restless feeling of pain, she went on, round the corner of the house, and paced slowly along the road till she came to the footpath that led up to the place on the mountain John had called the Bridge of the Nose. Ellen took that path, often travelled and much loved by her; and slowly, with slow-dripping tears, made her way up over moss wet with the dew, and the stones and rocks with which the rough way was strewn. She passed the place where Alice at first found her; she remembered it well; there was the very stone beside which they had kneeled together, and where Alice's folded hands were laid. Ellen knelt down beside it again, and for a moment laid her cheek to the cold stone while her arms embraced it, and a second time it was watered with tears. She rose up again quickly and went on her way, toiling up the steep path beyond, till she turned the edge of the mountain and stood on the old place where she and Alice that evening had watched the setting sun. Many a setting sun they had watched from thence; it had been a favourite pleasure of them both to run up there for a few minutes before or after tea and see the sun go down at the far end of the long valley. It seemed to Ellen one of Alice's haunts; she missed her there; and the thought went keenly home that there she would come with her no more. She sat down on the stone she called her own, and leaning her head on Alice's, which was close by, she wept bitterly, yet not very long; she was too tired and subdued for bitter weeping; she raised her head again, and wiping away her tears, looked abroad over the beautiful landscape. Never more beautiful than then.

The early sun filled the valley with patches of light and shade. The sides and tops of the hills looking towards the east were bright with the cool brightness of the morning; beyond and between them deep shadows lay. The sun could not yet look at that side of the mountain where Ellen sat, nor at the long reach of ground it screened from his view, stretching from the mountain foot to the other end of the valley; but to the left, between that and the Cat's Back, the rays of the sun streamed through, touching the houses of the village, showing the lake, and making every tree and barn and clump of wood in the distance stand out in bright relief. Deliciously cool, both the air and the light, though a warm day was promised. The night had swept away all the heat of yesterday. Now, the air was fresh with the dew and sweet from hayfield and meadow; and the birds were singing like mad all around. There was no answering echo in the little human heart that looked and listened. Ellen loved all these things too well not to notice them even now; she felt their full beauty; but she felt it sadly. "She will look at it no more!" she said to herself. But instantly came an answer to her thought: "Behold I create new heavens, and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended."

"She is there now," thought Ellen, "she is happy, why should I be sorry for her? I am not; but oh! I must be sorry for myself. Oh, Alice! dear Alice!"

She wept; but then again came sweeping over her mind the words with which she was so familiar, "the days of thy mourning shall be ended;" and again with her regret mingled the consciousness that it must be for herself alone. And for herself, "Can I not trust Him whom she trusted?" she thought. Somewhat soothed and more calm, she sat still looking down into the brightening valley or off to the hills that stretched away on either hand of it; when up through the still air the sound of the little Carra-carra church bell came to her ear. It rang for a minute and then stopped. It crossed Ellen's mind to wonder what it could be ringing for at that time of day; but she went back to her musings and had entirely forgotten it, when again, clear and full through the stillness, the sound came pealing up.

"One – two!"

Ellen knew now! It went through her very heart.

It is the custom in the country to toll the church bell upon occasions of death of any one in the township or parish. A few strokes are rung by way of drawing attention; these are followed after a little pause by a single one if the knell is for a man, or two for a woman. Then another short pause. Then follows the number of years the person has lived, told in short, rather slow strokes, as one would count them up. After pausing once more the tolling begins, and is kept up for some time; the strokes following in slow and sad succession, each one being permitted to die quite away before another breaks upon the ear.

Ellen had been told of this custom, but habit had never made it familiar. Only once she had happened to hear this notice of death given out; and that was long ago; the bell could not be heard at Miss Fortune's house. It came upon her now with all the force of novelty and surprise. As the number of the years of Alice's life was sadly told out, every stroke was to her as if it fell upon a raw nerve. Ellen hid her face in her lap and tried to keep from counting, but she could not; and as the tremulous sound of the last of the twenty-four died away upon the air, she was shuddering from head to foot. A burst of tears relieved her when the sound ceased.

Just then a voice close beside her said low, as if the speaker might not trust its higher tones, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help!"

How differently that sound struck upon Ellen's ear! With an indescribable air of mingled tenderness, weariness, and sorrow, she slowly rose from her seat and put both her arms round the speaker's neck. Neither said a word; but to Ellen the arm that held her was more than all words; it was the dividing line between her and the world, on this side everything, on that side nothing.

No word was spoken for many minutes.

"My dear Ellen," said her brother softly, "how came you here?"

"I don't know," whispered Ellen, "there was nobody there – I couldn't stay in the house."

"Shall we go home now?"

"Oh yes – whenever you please."

But neither moved yet. Ellen had raised her head; she still stood with her arm upon her brother's shoulder; the eyes of both were on the scene before them; the thoughts of neither. He presently spoke again.

"Let us try to love our God better, Ellie, the less we have left to love in this world; that is His meaning – let sorrow but bring us closer to Him. Dear Alice is well – she is well, and if we are made to suffer, we know and we love the hand that has done it, do we not, Ellie?"

Ellen put her hands to her face; she thought her heart would break. He gently drew her to a seat on the stone beside him, and still keeping his arm round her, slowly and soothingly went on —

"Think that she is happy; think that she is safe; think that she is with that blessed One whose face we seek at a distance, satisfied with His likeness instead of wearily struggling with sin; think that sweetly and easily she has got home; and it is our home too. We must weep, because we are left alone; but for her 'I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord'!"

As he spoke in low and sweet tones, Ellen's tears calmed and stopped; but she still kept her hands to her face.

"Shall we go home, Ellie?" said her brother, after another silence.

She rose up instantly and said yes. But he held her still, and looking for a moment at the tokens of watching and grief and care in her countenance, he gently kissed the pale little face, adding a word of endearment which almost broke Ellen's heart again. Then taking her hand they went down the mountain together.

CHAPTER XLIII

I have seen angels by the sick one's pillow;
There was the soft tone and the soundless tread,
Where smitten hearts were drooping like the willow,
They stood "between the living and the dead."

    – Unknown.

The whole Marshman family arrived to-day from Ventnor, some to see Alice's lovely remains, and all to follow them to the grave. The parsonage could not hold so many; the two Mr. Marshmans, therefore, with Major and Mrs. Gillespie, made their quarters at Thirlwall. Margery's hands were full enough with those that were left.

In the afternoon, however, she found time for a visit to the room, the room. She was standing at the foot of the bed, gazing on the sweet face she loved so dearly, when Mrs. Chauncey and Mrs. Vawse came up for the same purpose. All three stood some time in silence.

The bed was strewn with flowers, somewhat singularly disposed. Upon the pillow, and upon and about the hands which were folded on the breast, were scattered some of the rich late roses, roses and rosebuds, strewn with beautiful and profuse carelessness. A single stem of white lilies lay on the side of the bed; the rest of the flowers, a large quantity, covered the feet, seeming to have been flung there without any attempt at arrangement. They were of various kinds, chosen, however, with exquisite taste and feeling. Beside the roses, there were none that were not either white or distinguished for their fragrance. The delicate white verbena, the pure feverfew, mignonette, sweet geranium, white myrtle, the rich-scented heliotrope, were mingled with the late blossoming damask and purple roses; no yellow flowers, no purple, except those mentioned; even the flaunting petunia, though white, had been left out by the nice hand that had culled them. But the arranging of these beauties seemed to have been little more than attempted; though indeed it might be questioned whether the finest art could have bettered the effect of what the overtasked hand of affection had left half done. Mrs. Chauncey, however, after a while began slowly to take a flower or two from the foot and place them on other parts of the bed.

"Will Mrs. Chauncey pardon my being so bold," said Margery then, who had looked on with no pleasure while this was doing, "but if she had seen when those flowers were put there, it wouldn't be her wish, I am sure it wouldn't be her wish, to stir one of them."

Mrs. Chauncey's hand, which was stretched out for a fourth, drew back.

"Why, who put them there?" she asked.

"Miss Ellen, ma'am."

"Where is Ellen?"

"I think she is sleeping, ma'am. Poor child! she's the most wearied of us all with sorrow and watching," said Margery, weeping.

"You saw her bring them up, did you?"

"I saw her, ma'am. Oh, will I ever forget it as long as I live!"

"Why?" said Mrs. Chauncey gently.

"It's a thing one should have seen, ma'am, to understand. I don't know as I can tell it well."

Seeing, however, that Mrs. Chauncey still looked her wish, Margery went on, half under her breath.