Thus felt the thirteen; all older, care-worn, world-weary, standing beside the mere child-sister of the family, whose star of life was setting from their view behind an impa.s.sable mountain.
The sweet face was calm, but a hectic flush lay upon the cheek, as though some life-chord still bound her to earth.
"My child," said the old white-haired physician, "if you have aught to say, speak now; when you will awaken from the sleep this draught will produce, it may then be too late."
"My darling Fannie," said the kneeling Harwood, "for my sake let no thoughts of earth disturb you; all will be well if--"
His voice was broken. He bowed his head upon the wasted hand he held, and wept.
"All _will_ be well," she said, smiling faintly. "I feel it now.
Jessie, and you, elder brother, come near; nearer yet. I love you both, love you all. Having no relatives of my own, my husband"s are doubly mine. My heart, since our marriage-day, has been living in the hope of your reconciliation. I was too young; I undertook too much. I wept when my health began to fail; I did not then know that G.o.d was giving me my wish. I would have died to have seen you all happy. _He_ has heard my prayer; the sacrifice is made; I go happy.
Jessie, my dying wish is to see you once more the forgiving girl you were, when you knelt with your brothers at your mother"s knee. Oh!
the chain of family love is never so rudely broken but it can be renewed. Jessie, the young lover, who died in his youth, would counsel you to forgive. The beloved parent would whisper, "love thy brother as thyself;" He who bore the cross said "Father forgive them--." Jessie, a weak, dying girl begs you, for her sake, to be true to yourself."
Jessie fell upon her brother"s neck, and wept. One universal sob arose from lip to lip. Brothers and sisters so long estranged, rushed into each other"s arms. Some cried aloud, others" tears flowed silently: some there were, whose calm joys betrayed the disquietude of long years of disunion. They were all recalled by Harwood"s voice.
"Fannie! Fannie! This excitement will kill her."
Half raised in the bed, her cheeks scarlet and eyes glowing with perfect delight, the sunlight making a halo around her head, was the young wife. She drank the draught the old physician gave her, with her eyes fixed on her husband. She murmured,
""Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.""
With a sigh she dropped back upon the pillow; the eyes closed, the face became waxen white. Soon, those who watched could not tell her slumber from the sleep of death. Silence stole on tiptoe through the room, with her finger on her lip--
While the sunset kept shining and shining between The old hawthorn blossoms and branches so green.
PART IV.
Day was dawning in the watch room; the lamp was dying away, the thirteen with pale expectant faces, now shadowed by fear, now lighted with hope, were motionless. With his face bowed upon his arms, Harwood had neither looked up nor spoken since Fannie slept.
The old clock had struck each hour from the dial of time into the abyss of the past. Never before had time seemed to them so precious, worth so much.
The physician with his fingers upon the patient"s pulse had sat all night; once he placed his hand over her mouth, and rising with a puzzled look, walked to the window and thrust his head into the vines; then drawing his hand over his eyes, he resumed his place, and all was silent again, save the clock with its monotonous tick, tick, beating as calmly as, though human pa.s.sions were trifles, and the pa.s.sing away of a soul from earth, only the falling of the niches of eternity.
The sun arose, and a little bird alighting on a spray near the window, poured a flood of melody into the room. The sleeper smiled; the doctor could have sworn it was so. Her breath comes more quickly, you could see it now, fluttering between her lips; she opened her eyes and fixed them on Harwood; he took her hand and gave her the cordial prepared by the physician.
"She is saved," was telegraphed through the apartment. The brothers prepared to go to their duties. The sisters divided, part to go home, the rest to stay and watch Fannie. Harwood, with a radiant yet anxious face, could not be persuaded to lie down, but still held the little hand and counted the life beats of her heart.
"Ah! well!" said the old doctor to the elder brother, as he b.u.t.toned his coat and pressed his hat down upon his head. "Well; there was one great doubt upon my mind--in spite of all favourable symptoms--_she was too good for earth_;--it says somewhere--and it kept coming into my mind all the night long--"Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of G.o.d.""
THE LOVER AND THE HUSBAND.
IN his "Dream Life," Ik Marvel thus pleasantly sketches the lover and the husband:--
You grow unusually amiable and kind; you are earnest in your search of friends; you shake hands with your office boy, as if he were your second cousin. You joke cheerfully with the stout washerwoman; and give her a shilling overchange, and insist upon her keeping it; and grow quite merry at the recollection of it. You tap your hackman on the shoulder very familiarly, and tell him he is a capital fellow; and don"t allow him to whip his horses, except when driving to the post-office. You even ask him to take a gla.s.s of beer with you upon some chilly evening. You drink to the health of his wife. He says he has no wife--whereupon you think him a very miserable man; and give him a dollar, by way of consolation.
You think all the editorials in the morning papers are remarkably well-written,--whether upon your side or upon another. You think the stock-market has a very cheerful look,--with Erie--of which you are a large holder--down to seventy-five. You wonder why you never admired Mrs. Hemans before, or Stoddart, or any of the rest.
You give a pleasant twirl to your fingers, as you saunter along the street; and say--but not so loud as to be overheard--"She is mine--she is mine!"
You wonder if Frank ever loved Nelly one-half as well as you love Madge? You feel quite sure he never did. You can hardly conceive how it is, that Madge has not been seized before now by scores of enamoured men, and borne off, like the Sabine women in Romish history. You chuckle over your future, like a boy who has found a guinea in groping for sixpences. You read over the marriage service,--thinking of the time when you will take _her_ hand, and slip the ring upon her finger; and repeat after the clergyman--"for richer--for poorer, for better--for worse!" A great deal of "worse"
there will be about it, you think!
Through all, your heart cleaves to that sweet image of the beloved Madge, as light cleaves to day. The weeks leap with a bound; and the months only grow long when you approach that day which is to make her yours. There are no flowers rare enough to make bouquets for her; diamonds are too dim for her to wear; pearls are tame.--And after marriage, the weeks are even shorter than before; you wonder why on earth all the single men in the world do not rush tumultuously to the altar; you look upon them all, as a travelled man will look upon some conceited Dutch boor, who has never been beyond the limits of his cabbage-garden. Married men, on the contrary, you regard as fellow-voyagers; and look upon their wives--ugly as they may be--as better than none.
You blush a little at first telling your butcher what "your wife"
would like; you bargain with the grocer for sugars and teas, and wonder if he _knows_ that you are a married man? You practise your new way of talk upon your office boy: you tell him that "your wife"
expects you home to dinner; and are astonished that he does not stare to hear you say it!
You wonder if the people in the omnibus know that Madge and you are just married; and if the driver knows that the shilling you hand to him is for "self and wife?" You wonder if anybody was ever so happy before, or ever will be so happy again?
You enter your name upon the hotel books as "Clarence--and Lady;"
and come back to look at it,--wondering if anybody else has noticed it,--and thinking that it looks remarkably well. You cannot help thinking that every third man you meet in the hall, wishes he possessed your wife; nor do you think it very sinful in him to wish it. You fear it is placing temptation in the way of covetous men, to put Madge"s little gaiters outside the chamber-door at night.
Your home, when it is entered, is just what it should be--quiet, small,--with everything she wishes, and nothing more than she wishes. The sun strikes it in the happiest possible way; the piano is the sweetest toned in the world; the library is stocked to a charm; and Madge, that blessed wife, is there--adorning and giving life to it all. To think, even, of her possible death, is a suffering you cla.s.s with the infernal tortures of the Inquisition.
You grow twain of heart and of purpose. Smiles seem made for marriage; and you wonder how you ever wore them before!
NELLIE.
THERE she sat, with both little hands covering her face. It was twilight, and beyond the little finger glanced a watchful eye towards the door, to see if Theodore _would_ go. She didn"t think he would. He came back.
"Is the little child crying?" he asked, relentingly, as he took the pretty fingers, one by one, away from the youthful face, hard as she tried to keep them there. At last she gave up, and broke into a merry laugh.
"You little hypocrite!" said her husband, in rather an incensed tone of voice--men _do_ hate to be gulled into soothing a laughing wife.
"Well! can"t I go?" pleaded the enchanting little creature, looking up into his eyes _so_ beseechingly.
"Why, Nellie, it isn"t becoming for you to go without me."
"Yes, it is!" she answered, in a very low way, as if she hardly dared say it, and at the same time running her forefinger through the hem of her silk ap.r.o.n. "May I go?" and she lifted up her eyes in the same beseeching way again.
"Why are you so anxious to go, to-night?"
"O, because!"
"But that is not a good reason!"
"Well, I want to dance a little!"