Atlantic Monthly - - (free e books to read txt) 📗

of those calm, thoughtful, womanly young girls, that seem born for pattern elder sisters, and for the stay and support of mothers’ hearts. She watched with a gentle, quiet curiosity the quick and eager fingers that soon were busy in exposing the mysteries of the parcel.

“There’s a dress for Rose,” said Amy, triumphantly drawing out a delicate muslin; “I can always tell what’s for her.”

“How?” put in the father, who stood regarding the proceeding with that air of amused superiority with which the wearers of broadcloth look down on the mysteries of muslin and barége.

“How?” said Amy, “why, because they look just like her. If I were to see that lilac muslin in China, I should say it was meant for Rose. Now this is mine, I know,—this bright pink; isn’t it, mamma? No half shades about me!”

“No, indeed,” said her mother; “that is your greatest fault, Amy.”

“Oh, well, mamma, Rose has enough for both; you must rub us together, as they do light red and Prussian blue, to make a neutral tint. But oh, what a ribbon! oh, mother, what a love of a ribbon! Rose! Rose! look at this ribbon! And oh, those buttons! Fred, I do believe they are for your new coat! Oh, and those studs, father, where did you get them? What’s in that box? a bracelet for Rose, I know! oh, how beautiful! perfectly exquisite! And here—oh!”

Here something happened to check the volubility of the little speaker; for as she hastily, and with the license of a petted child, pulled the articles from the parcel, she was startled to find lying among the numerous colored things a black crape veil. Sombre, dark, and ill-omened enough it looked there, with pink, and lilac, and blue, and glittering bijouterie around it!

Amy dropped it with instinctive repugnance, and there was a general exclamation, “Mamma, what’s this? how came it here? what did you get this for?”

“Strange!” said Olivia; “it is a mourning veil. Of course I did not order it. How it came in here nobody knows; it must have been a mistake of the clerk.”

“Certainly it is a mistake,” said Amy; “we have nothing to do with mourning, have we?”

“No, to be sure; what should we mourn for?” chimed in little Fred and Mary.

“What a dark, ugly thing it is!” said Amy, unfolding and throwing it over her head; “how dismal it must be to see the world through such a veil as this!”

“And yet till one has seen the world through a veil like that, one has never truly lived,” said another voice, joining in the conversation.

“Ah, Father Payson, are you there?” said two or three voices at once.

Father Payson was the minister of the village, and their nearest neighbor; and not only their nearest neighbor, but their nearest friend. In the afternoon of his years, life’s day with him now stood at that hour when, though the shadows fall eastward, yet the colors are warmer, and the songs of the birds sweeter, than even in its jubilant morning.

God sometimes gives to good men a guileless and holy second childhood, in which the soul becomes childlike, not childish, and the faculties in full fruit and ripeness are mellow without sign of decay. This is that songful land of Beulah, where they who have travelled manfully the Christian way abide awhile to show the world a perfected manhood. Life, with its battles and its sorrows, lies far behind them; the soul has thrown off its armor, and sits in an evening undress of calm and holy leisure. Thrice blessed the family or neighborhood that numbers among it one of these not yet ascended saints! Gentle are they and tolerant, apt to play with little children, easy to be pleased with simple pleasures, and with a pitying wisdom guiding those who err. New England has been blessed in numbering many such among her country pastors; and a spontaneous, instinctive deference honors them with the title of Father.

Father Payson was the welcome inmate of every family in the village, the chosen friend even of the young and thoughtless. He had stories for children, jokes for the young, and wisdom for all. He “talked good,” as the phrase goes,—not because he was the minister, but because, being good, he could not help it; yet his words, unconsciously to himself, were often parables, because life to him had become all spiritualized, and he saw sacred meanings under worldly things.

The children seized him lovingly by either hand and seated him in the arbor.

“Isn’t it strange,” said Amy, “to see this ugly black thing among all these bright colors? such a strange mistake in the clerk!”

“If one were inclined to be superstitious,” said Albert, “he might call this an omen.”

“What did you mean, sir,” asked Rose, quietly seating herself at his feet, “by ‘seeing life through this veil’?”

“It was a parable, my daughter,” he said, laying his hand on her head.

“I never have had any deep sorrow,” said Olivia, musingly; “we have been favored ones hitherto. But why did you say one must see the world through such a medium as this?”

“Sorrow is God’s school,” said the old man. “Even God’s own Son was not made perfect without it; though a son, yet learned he obedience by the things that he suffered. Many of the brightest virtues are like stars; there must be night or they cannot shine. Without suffering, there could be no fortitude, no patience, no compassion, no sympathy. Take all sorrow out of life, and you take away all richness and depth and tenderness. Sorrow is the furnace that melts selfish hearts together in love. Many are hard and inconsiderate, not because they lack capability of feeling, but because the vase that holds the sweet waters has never been broken.”

“Is it, then, an imperfection and misfortune never to have suffered?” said Olivia.

Father Payson looked down. Rose was looking into his face. There was a bright, eager, yet subdued expression in her eyes that struck him; it had often struck him before in the village church. It was as if his words had awakened an internal angel, that looked fluttering out behind them. Rose had been from childhood one of those thoughtful, listening children with whom one seems to commune without words. We spend hours talking with them, and fancy they have said many things to us, which, on reflection, we find have been said only with their silent answering eyes. Those who talk much often reply to you less than those who silently and thoughtfully listen. And so it came to pass, that, on account of this quietly absorbent nature, Rose had grown to her parents’ hearts with a peculiar nearness. Eighteen summers had perfected her beauty. The miracle of the growth and perfection of a human body and soul never waxes old; parents marvel at it in every household as if a child had never grown before; and so Olivia and Albert looked on their fair Rose daily with a restful and trusting pride.

At this moment she laid her hand on Father Payson’s knee, and said earnestly,—“Ought we to pray for sorrow, then?”

“Oh, no, no, no!” interrupted Olivia, with an instinctive shudder,—such a shudder as a warm, earnest, prosperous heart always gives as the shadow of the grave falls across it,—“don’t say yes!”

“I do not say we should pray for it,” said Father Payson; “yet the Master says, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ not ‘Blessed are they that prosper.’ So heaven and earth differ in their judgments.”

“Ah, me!” said Olivia, “I am afraid I have not courage to wish to be among the blessed.”

“Well,” said Albert, whom the gravity of the discussion somewhat disturbed. “let us not borrow trouble; time enough to think of it when it happens. Come, the dew is falling, let us go in. I want to show Father Payson some peaches that will tempt his Christian graces to envy. Come, Rose, gather up here.”

Rose, in a few moments, gathered the parcel together, and quietly flitted before them into the house.

“Now,” said Albert, “you’ll see that girl will have everything quietly tucked away in just the right place; not a word said. She is a born housewife; it’s in her, as much as it is in a pointer to show game.”

“Rose is my right hand,” said Olivia; “I should be lost without her.”

Whence comes it, that, just on the verge of the great crises and afflictions of life, words are often spoken, that, to after view, seem to have had a prophetic meaning? So often do we hear people saying, “Ah, the very day before I heard of this or that, we were saying so and so!” It would seem sometimes as if the soul felt itself being drawn within the dark sphere of a coming evil, of which as yet nothing outward tells. Then the thoughts and conversation flow in an almost prophetic channel, which a coming future too well interprets.

The evening passed cheerfully with our friends, notwithstanding the grave conversation in the arbor. The mourning veil was laid away in a drawer along with many of its brilliant companions, and with it the thoughts it had suggested; and the merry laugh ringing from the half-open parlor-door showed that Father Payson was no despiser of the command to rejoice with them that do rejoice.

Rose played and sung, the children danced, and the mirth was prolonged till a late hour in the evening.

Olivia and Albert were lingering in the parlor after the departure of the family, busy in shutting windows, setting back chairs, and attending to all the last duties of orderly householders.

A sudden shriek startled them; such a shriek as, once heard, is never forgotten. With an answering cry of horror, they rushed up the stairs. The hall lamp had been extinguished, but the passage and staircase were red with a broad glare from the open door of the nursery.

A moment more showed them the drapery of the bed in which their youngest child was sleeping all in flames; then they saw a light form tearing down the blazing curtains.

“Oh, Rose! Rose! take care, for God’s sake! your dress! you’ll kill yourself! oh, God help us!”

There were a few moments—awful moments of struggle—when none knew or remembered what they did; a moment more and Rose lay panting in her father’s arms, enveloped in a thick blanket which he had thrown around her burning night-dress. The fire was extinguished, the babe lay unawakened, and only the dark flecks of tinder scattered over the bed, and the trampled mass on the floor, told what had been. But Rose had breathed the hot breath of the flame, deadly to human life, and no water could quench that inward fire.

A word serves to explain all. The child’s nurse had carelessly set a lamp too near the curtains, and the night breeze had wafted them into the flame. The apartment of Rose opened into the nursery, and as she stood in her night-dress before her mirror, arranging her hair, she saw the flashing of the flame, and, in the one idea of saving her little sister, forgot every other. That act of self-forgetfulness was her last earthly act; a few short hours of patient suffering were all that remained to her. Peacefully as she had lived, she died, looking tenderly on her parents out of her large blue eyes, and only intent to soothe their pain.

“Yes, I suffer,” she said, “but only a short pain. We must all suffer something. My Father thinks a very little enough for me. I have had such a happy life, I might bear just a little pain at the last.”

A little later her mind seemed to wander. “Mamma, mamma,” she said, hurriedly, “I put the things