Works of Ellen Wood, page 152
“What?” asked William eagerly.
“Patience says I have ten ears where I ought to have two; and I think thee hast the same. Fare thee well,” she added, as they reached her door. “Thank thee for coming for me.”
William waited at the gate until Anna was admitted, and then hastened home. Jane was alone, working as usual.
“Mamma, is it true that Janey is dying?”
Jane’s heart gave a leap; and poor William, as she saw, could scarcely speak for agitation. “Who told you that?” she asked in low tones.
“Anna Lynn. Is it true?”
“William, I fear it may be. Don’t grieve, child! don’t grieve!”
William had laid his head down upon the table, the sobs breaking forth. His poor mother left her seat, and bent her head down beside him, sobbing also.
“William, for my sake don’t grieve!” she whispered. “God alone knows what is good. He would not take her unless it were for the best.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE END
April passed. May was passing; and the end of Jane Halliburton was at hand. There was no secret now about her state; but she was going away very peacefully.
In this month, May, there occurred another vacancy in the choir of the cathedral. Little Gar — but he was growing too big now to be called Little Gar — proved to be the successful candidate; so that both boys were now in the choir.
“It will be such a help to me, learning to chant, should I ever try for a minor canonry,” boasted Gar, who never tired of telling them that he meant to be a clergyman.
“Gar, dear, did you ever sit down and count the cost?” asked Mrs. Halliburton. “I fear it will not be your luck to go to college.”
“Labor omnia vincit,” cried out Gar. “You have heard us stumbling over our Latin often enough, mamma, to know what that means. Frank will need to count the cost, too, if he is ever to make himself into a barrister; and he says he will be one.”
“Oh, you two vain boys!” cried Jane, laughing.
“Mamma,” spoke up Janey from the sofa — and her breathing was laboured now— “is there harm in their wishing this?”
“Not at all. They are laudable aims. Only Frank and Gar are so poor and friendless that I fear the hopes are too ambitious to end in anything but disappointment.”
Janey called Gar to her, and pulled his face down to a level with hers, whispering softly, “Strive well, Gar, and trust in God.”
Later, when Jane had to be out on an indispensable errand, Dobbs came in to sit with Janey. She brought her some jelly in a saucer.
“I am nearly tired of it, Dobbs,” said Janey. “I grow tired of everything. And I don’t like to say so, because it seems so ungrateful.”
“It’s the nature of illness to get tired of things,” responded Dobbs, who thought it was her mission never to cease buoying Janey up with hope. “You’ll be better when the hot weather comes in.”
“No, I shan’t, Dobbs. I shall never get better now.”
A combination of feelings, indignation predominating, nearly took away Dobbs’s breath. “Who on earth has been putting that grim notion in your head?” asked she.
“It is true, Dobbs.”
“True!” ejaculated Dobbs. “Who has been saying it to you? I want to know that.”
“Mamma for one. She — —”
“Of all the stupids!” burst forth Dobbs, drowning what Janey was about to say. “To frighten the child by telling her she’s going to die!”
“It does not frighten me, Dobbs. I like to lie and think of it.”
Dobbs fell into a doubt whether Janey was in her senses. “Like to lie and think of being screwed down in a coffin, and put into the cold ground, and left there till the judgment day!” uttered she.
“Oh, but, Dobbs, you must know better than that,” returned Jane. “We are not put into the coffin; it is only our bodies that are put into the coffin; we go into the world of departed spirits.”
“De-par-ted what?” ejaculated Dobbs, whose notions of the future — the life after this life — were not very definite; and who could not have been more astonished had Jane begun to talk to her in Greek.
“Mamma has always tried to explain these things to us,” said Jane. “She has made them as clear to us as they can be made, and she has taught us not to fear death. She says a great mistake is often made by those who bring up children. They are taught to run away from death as something gloomy and frightful, instead of being shown its bright side.”
“Well, I never heard the like!” exclaimed Dobbs, lost in wonder. “How can there be a bright side to death? — in a horrid coffin, with brass nails and tin-tacks that screw you down?”
Tears filled Janey’s eyes. “Oh, Dobbs, you must learn better than that, or how will you ever be reconciled to death? Don’t you know that when we die, we — our spirit, that is, for it is our spirit that lives and thinks — leave our body behind us? There’s no more consciousness in our body, and it is put into the grave till the last day. It is like the shell that the silkworm casts away when it comes into the moth: the life is in the moth: not in the cast-off shell. You cannot think what trouble mamma has taken with us always to explain these things; and she has talked to me so much lately.”
“And where does the spirit go — by which, I suppose, you mean the soul?” asked Dobbs.
Janey shook her head, to express her ignorance at the best. “It is all a mystery,” she said; “but mamma has taught us to believe that there’s a place for the departed, and that we shall be there. It is not to be supposed that the soul, a thing of life, could be boxed up in a coffin, Dobbs. When Jesus Christ said to the thief on the cross, ‘To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise,’ he meant that world. It is a place of light and rest.”
“And the good and bad are there together?”
Again Janey shook her head. “Don’t you remember, in the parable of the rich man and the beggar, there was a great gulf between them, and Abraham said that it could not be passed? I dare say it will be very peaceful and happy there: quite different from this world, where there’s so much trouble and sickness. Why should I be afraid of death, Dobbs?”
Dobbs sat looking at her, and was some minutes before she spoke. “Not afraid to die!” she slowly said. “Well, I should be.”
Janey’s eyes were wet. “Nobody need be afraid to die when they have learnt to trust in God. Don’t you know,” she answered with something like enthusiasm, “that many people, when dying, have seen Jesus waiting for them? What does it matter, then, where our bodies are put? We are going to be with Jesus. Indeed, Dobbs, there’s nothing sad in dying, if you only can look at it in the right way. It is those who look at it in the wrong way that are afraid to die.”
“The child’s as learned as a minister!” was Dobbs’s inward comment. “Ours told us last Sunday evening at Chapel that we were all on the high road to perdition. I’d rather listen to her creed than to his: it sounds more encouraging. Their ma hasn’t brought ’em up amiss; and that’s the truth!”
The soliloquy was interrupted by the return of Mrs. Halliburton. Almost immediately afterwards some visitors came in — Mary Ashley and Anna Lynn. It was the first time Mary had been there, and she had come to bring Janey some more books. She was one of those graceful children whom it is pleasant to look at. A contrast in attire she presented to the little Quakeress, with her silk dress, her straw hat, trimmed with a wreath of flowers and white ribbons, her dark curls falling beneath it. She was much younger than her brother Henry; but there was a great resemblance between them — in the refined features, the bright complexion, and the soft dark eyes. Somehow, through a remark made by Dobbs, the conversation turned upon Jane’s inability to recover; and Mary Ashley heard with extreme wonder that death was not dreaded. “Her ma has taught her different,” was Dobbs’s comment.
“Mamma takes great pains with us,” observed Mary; “but I should not like to die. How is it?” she added, turning to Mrs. Halliburton. “Jane is not much older than I, and yet she does not dread it!”
“My dear,” was the reply, “I think it is simply this. Those whom God is intending to take from the world, He often, in His mercy and wisdom, weans from the love of it. You are healthy and strong, and the world is pleasant to you. Jane has been so long weak and ill that she no longer finds enjoyment in it; and this naturally causes her to look beyond this world to the rest and peace of the next. All things are well ordered.”
Mary Ashley began to think they must be. Chattering Anna, vain Anna, sat gazing at Mary’s pretty hat, her drooping curls; none, except Anna herself, knew with what envious longing. Anna, at any rate, was not tired of the world.
The end grew nearer and nearer. There came a day when Jane did not get up; there came a second, and a third. On the fourth morning, Janey, who had passed a comfortable night, compared with some nights which had preceded it, was sitting up in bed when her brothers came in from school. They hurried over their breakfast and ran up to her, carrying the remains of it in their hands.
The first few minutes after breakfast had always been devoted by Jane to reading to her children; in spite of her necessity for close working they were so devoted still. “I will read here this morning,” she observed, as the boys stood around the bed.
“Mamma,” interrupted Janey, “read about the holy city, in the Book of Revelation.”
Mrs. Halliburton turned to the twenty-first chapter, and had read to the twenty-third verse— “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” — when Jane suddenly started forward in bed, her eyes fixed on some opposite point. Mrs. Halliburton paused, and endeavoured to put her gently back again.
“Oh, mamma, don’t keep me!” she said in a strangely thrilling tone; “don’t keep me! I see the light! I see papa!”
There was a strange light, not as of earth, in her own face, an ineffable smile on her lip, that told more of heaven. Her arms dropped; and she sank back on the pillow. Jane Halliburton had gone to her Heavenly Father; it may be also to her earthly one. Gar screamed.
Dobbs arrived in the midst of the commotion. And when Dobbs saw what had happened, she fell into a storm of anger, of passionate sobs, half ready to knock down Mrs. Halliburton with words, and the poor boys with blows. Why was she not called to see the last of her? The only young thing she had cared for in all the world, and yet she could not be allowed to wish her farewell! She’d never love another again as long as her days lasted! In vain they strove to explain to her that it was sudden, unexpected, momentary: Dobbs would not listen.
Mrs. Halliburton stole away from Dobbs’s storm — anywhere. Her heart was brimful. Although she had known that this must be the ending, now that it had come she was as one unprepared. In her grief and sorrow, she was tempted for a moment — but only for a moment — to question the goodness and wisdom of God.
Some one called to her from the foot of the stairs, and she went down. She had to go down; she could not shut herself up, as those can who have servants to be their deputies. Anna Lynn stood there, dressed for school.
“Friend Jane Halliburton, Patience has sent me to ask after Janey this morning. Is she better?”
“No, Anna. She is dead.”
Jane spoke with unnatural calmness. The child, scared at the words, backed away out at the garden door, and then flew to Patience with the news. It brought Patience in. Jane was nearly prostrate then.
“Nay, but thee art grieving sadly! Thee must not take on so.”
“Oh, Patience! why should it be?” she wailed aloud in her despair and bereavement. “Anna left in health and joyousness; my child taken! Surely God is dealing hardly with me.”
“Thee must not say that,” returned Patience gravely. “But thee art not thyself just now. What truth was it that I heard thee impress upon thy child not a week ago? That God’s ways are not as our ways.”
CHAPTER VIII.
A WEDDING IN HONEY FAIR.
But that such contrasts are all too common in life, you might think it scarcely seemly to go direct from a house of death to a house of marriage. This same morning which witnessed the death of Jane Halliburton, witnessed also the wedding of Mary Ann Cross and Ben Tyrrett. Upon which there was wonderful rejoicing at the Crosses’ house.
Of course, whether a wedding was a good one or a bad one (speaking from a pecuniary point of view), it was equally the custom to feast over it in Honey Fair. Benjamin Tyrrett was only what is called a jobber in the glove trade, earning fifteen or sixteen shillings a week; but Mary Ann Cross made up her mind to have him — in defiance of parental and other admonitions that she ought to look over Ben’s head. They had gone to work Honey Fair fashion, preparing nothing. Every shilling that Mary Ann Cross could spare went in finery — had long gone in finery. In vain Charlotte East impressed upon her the necessity of saving: of waiting. Mary Ann would do neither one nor the other.
“All that you can spare from back debts, and from present actual wants, you should put by,” Charlotte had urged. “You don’t know how many more calls there are for money after marriage than before it.”
“There’ll be two of us to earn it then,” logically replied Mary Ann.
“And two of you to live,” said Charlotte. “To marry upon nothing is to rush into trouble.”
“How you do go on, Charlotte East! He’ll earn his wages, and I shall earn mine. Where’ll be the trouble? I shan’t want to spend so much upon my back when I am married.”
“To marry as you are going to do, must bring trouble,” persisted Charlotte. “He will manage to get together a few bits of cheap furniture, just what you can’t do without, to put into one room; and there you will be set up, neither of you having one sixpence laid by to fall back upon; and perhaps the furniture unpaid, hanging like a log upon you. What shall you do when children come, Mary Ann?”
Mary Ann Cross giggled. “If ever I heard the like of you, Charlotte! If children do come, they must come, that’s all. We can’t send ’em back again.”
“No, you can’t,” said Charlotte. “They generally arrive in pretty good troops: and sometimes there’s little to welcome them on. Half the quarrels between man and wife, in our class of life, spring from nothing but large families and small means. Their tempers get soured with each other, and never get pleased again.”
“Folks must take their chance, Charlotte.”
“There’s no must in it. You are nineteen, Ben Tyrrett’s twenty-three; suppose you made up your minds to wait two or three years. You would be quite young enough then: and meanwhile, if both of you laid by, you would have something in hand to meet extra expenses, or sickness if it came.”
“Opinions differs,” shortly returned Mary Ann. “If folks tell true, you were putting by ever so long for your marriage, and it all ended in smoke. I’d rather make sure of a husband when I can get him.”
An expression of pain crossed the face of Charlotte East. “Whether I marry or not,” she answered calmly, “I shall be none the worse for having laid money by instead of squandering it. If the best man that ever was born came to me, I would not marry him if we had made no better provision for a rainy day than you and Tyrrett have. What can come of such unions, Mary Ann?”
“It’s the way most of us girls do marry,” returned Mary Ann.
“And what comes of it, I ask? Blows sometimes, Mary Ann; the workhouse sometimes; trouble always.”
“Is it true that you put by, Charlotte?”
“Yes. I put by what I can.”
“But how in wonder do you manage it? You dress as well as we do. I’m sure our backs take all our money; father pretty nigh keeps the house.”
“I dress better than you in one sense, Mary Ann. I don’t have on a silk gown one day and a petticoat in rags the next. No one ever sees me otherwise than neat and clean, and my clothes keep good a long while. It’s the finery that runs away with your money. I am not ashamed to make a bonnet last two years; you’d have two in a season. Another thing, Mary Ann: I do not waste my time — I sit to my work; and I dare say I earn double what you do.”
“Let us hear what you earned last week, if it isn’t impertinent,” was Mary Ann’s answer.
“Ten and ninepence.”
“Look at that!” cried the girl, lifting her hands. “I brought out but five and twopence, and I left no money for silk, and am in debt two quarterns. ‘Melia was worse. Hers came to four and eleven. That surly old foreman says to me when he was paying, ‘What d’ye leave for silk, Mary Ann Cross? There’s two quarterns down.’ ‘I know there is, sir,’ says I, ‘but I don’t leave nothing to-day.’ He gave a grunt at that, the old file did.”
“And I suppose you spent your five shillings in some useless thing?”
“I had to pay up at Bankes’s, and the rest went in a new peach bonnet-ribbon.”
“Peach! You should have bought white, if you must be married.”
“Thank you, Charlotte! What next? Do you suppose I’m going to be married in that shabby old straw, that I’ve worn all the spring? Not if I know it.”
“Where’s your money to come from for a new one? There will be other things wanted, more essential than a bonnet.”
“I’ll have a new one if I go in trust for it,” returned Mary Ann. “Tyrrett buys the ring. And it is of no use for you to preach, Charlotte; if you preach your tongue out, it’ll do no good.”
Charlotte might, indeed, have preached a very long sermon before she could effect any change in the system of improvidence obtaining in Honey Fair. Neither Benjamin Tyrrett nor Mary Ann Cross was gifted with forethought, and they took no pains to acquire it.
The marriage was carried out, and this was the happy day. Mrs. Cross gave an entertainment in honour of the event, at which the bride and bridegroom assisted — as the French say — with as many others as the kitchen would hold. Tea for the ladies, pipes and ale for the gentlemen, supper for all, with spirits-and-water handed round.
