CHAPTER XV.IT IS WELL WITH THE CHILD.
Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer;Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer.—Richard Realf.
Mrs. Doring had a friend, a gentle, patient, heavily-burdened woman who lived her difficult life with the high heroism of a daughter of the gods. Though fragile as a flower she kept the wolf at bay for her little family, and nobody ever saw a cloud on her face or heard a complaint from her lips. Born and bred to the refinements of life she met adversity as only the gently bred do meet it—by taking hold of whatever work was at hand, without questioning whether it was what is miscalled menial or not.
When her baby girl was born she begged Cartice to name her, which she did, giving her the name of the little sister who had died when she herself was a child—Isabel. To her mother’s great delight she grew to resemble Mrs. Doring as though of her flesh and blood, and loved her in the same degree. Now she was nearly three years old, bright and winsome, with never a day’s illness in her record.
But a fever came, and behind that stood the last enemy, who, however often routed, is sure to return sometime and win the battle. This was the time of his victory. In the night, when all was silent without, and solemn within, he came. Cartice had the baby in her arms in the last precious, awesome moments. The wasted little hand reached up and silently stroked her face, and the soft, dark eyes, unearthly large and earnest, looked at her with unutterable love. Something else, too, was in their speechless depths—a message not easy to translate, but it brought comfort. Then, that mysterious thing, the breath, which connects us with the universal life principle, ceased; the cold white veil dropped down, and little Isabel was dead.
After holding the silent form close to her heart a moment, Cartice laid it gently on the bed, and the two mother hearts so sorely bereft stood silent but tearless beside it.
Later, when it was ready for its bed in the bosom of the earth, and again together they looked down at its white silence, Cartice said:
“She shall know no evil thought; she shall do no evil deed; she shall tread no evil path. It is well with the child.”
“Yes, in spite of my sore heart, it is well,” said the mother. “I surrender her not to death, but to a larger life, and shall not mourn. Nomatter what comes, she is safe. My darling’s safe—safe and dead. Since her father’s death I have been troubled at times with fears for her future. I face the inevitable—a few months more here, and then—the end. For the two boys I have arranged. They will have homes and care, but it would have tried my courage to leave this one ewe lamb.”
“I would have been a mother to Isabel had you gone first,” said Mrs. Doring.
“I am sure of that; but you, too, may not tarry here long. Why should we ever worry about the future? In spite of all our planning and troubling all is managed by a higher hand. We have only to do the work of the hour, leaving what the next may bring to be met when it comes, and not in anticipation. The present alone concerns us. By living it aright the future takes care of itself. It is the thought for to-morrow that so often makes to-day gloomy. I distressed myself about my child’s future, yet, see, all is well with her.”
“I thank God for what I have learned of the mysterious event called death,” said Mrs. Doring. “Yet there are people who ask what good can come of knowing such things. What good? Is it nothing to know that the little image lying here is not our Isabel but her earthly investiture; that she is not dead nor separated from us; that her life is to go on from grace to grace, from strength to strength? Is it nothing to know thatSocrates, Plato, Swedenborg, Shakespeare, Emerson, Hugo, Morse, Fulton, all who have given the world the light of genius, have never died, and that this baby is equal heir with them to a life of vaster opportunities and greater blessings?”
“Others,” said Mrs. Benton, “wonder what good there is in the coming and going of so tiny a soul, who was here but for a day as it were. Yet her little life is as important in the divine plan as that of the greatest sage. She brought the gospel of pure love with her, and we are the better because of her brief visit to us—for it was but a pause on the great journey.”
On the evening after the discarded visible part of the child had been put out of sight, as Mrs. Doring was returning home from her friend’s house, two elderly men on the horse-car were talking of life, and their verdict was that they were tired of it.
One said it was an empty experience which he would not go through again for any consideration. The other said he had had a good time, had got as much pleasure out of life as any one, but that was all over now; he was getting old and full of aches and pains, and found no fun in living any more. The jumping off place had to be reached some day, and that would put an end to it.
His friend said that was the rub—the leap inthe dark. For his part he was disgusted with life, but abhorred death. He saw no good in either one or the other, and was inclined to believe that we are all victims of a tremendous cheat. If he could see anything to look forward to beyond a damp bed in the ground he could go on all right, but nobody knew anything about it—not even those who earned their bread talking about it in pulpits. They said they believed certain things, but they didn’t know any more than other folks. He wanted solid information.
The other tossed his head to show his indifference to the subject. He said it was something he had never thought about at all in his good times, and now he guessed he wouldn’t bother with it for his few remaining days.
Thus was the most important question that faces man disposed of by one whose opinion on any topic pertaining to commercial or political interests would be received with respect by his fellow townsmen and have weight with them. But both he and his friend had lived to venerable years without ever learning what they themselves were. Of that knowledge, which includes all other knowledge, they were as ignorant as earth worms. They had acquired what is miscalled education; had been factors in public affairs, and figures in social life, and yet never learned that they were not bodies to go to pieces some day like a broken machine, but spirits, with a life whose issues arespiritual and eternal, not material and perishable. To one, life had meant a chance to have a good time; to the other emptiness, because he had had no good time. Neither dreamed that its meaning is in the unseen, not in the seen,—in what they had become, not what they possessed or enjoyed. They lived in dense spiritual darkness, yet knew it not, and they were but two out of millions in the same condition.
Hearing their pathetic though unconscious confession of ignorance, Mrs. Doring wondered if little Isabel’s short, loving, trusting life was not more complete than theirs of long years full of impermanent and illusory importance. She wished she could tell them what she had learned of life and its meaning and future, but, alas! she had already been stoned and knew the danger of letting her light shine before those who had not become as little children—receptive, willing to learn.