Chapter Nineteen

"Well, my little wife, how has the day gone with you?" Horace asked, as she ran to greet him in the hall, on his return that night.

"It has gone well, like all my days," she said, gaily.

"So as mine, unlike all my days," he returned. "I have something to tell you that will please you, I know."

"I hope it is about a horse."

"No; it is about a boy. About young Rooney. He has come out such a fair and square Christian. You know how he has tried my faith and patience. And only last Sunday he was so outrageous that if it had not been for my certainty that you were praying for him, I would have dismissed him from the school. But I resolved to give him one more chance, and today he came down to the office, to ask my pardon, and you never saw a fellow more humble or penitent. He says that his behavior on Sunday was the devil's parting grip, and that he has since then ‘given him as good as he sent.'"

"What talk!"

"Oh, there's no cant or humbug about him, and there never will be. If he goes on he'll make an original, useful man."

"I wish you would be a little more enthusiastic, Maggie. I thought you would be perfectly delighted with this news."

"So I am. But you know I can say anything when I feel greatly moved."

"Yes, I do know it. But I wish you would outgrow that. It makes people misunderstand you so."

"I suppose it does. But one must get used to being misunderstood. Tell me some more about Rooney; it does my heart good."

"I will, after dinner. Oh, no; after dinner I have to go and see Aunt Jane. I received a mysterious note from her this morning that I can make nothing of. Just run it over and see if you can guess what she means."

Maggie turned pale, as she cast her eye over the note.

"Why, what can have happened to her since our visit? She seemed then as well as usual, don't you think so?"

"I saw no change in her except that, if that were possible, she seemed more delightful than ever. But it is plain that something is stirring her soul."

"Something very serious," said Maggie. "Do go the moment dinner is over."

A shadow had fallen upon them both. Horace loved Aunt Jane with ever-increasing devotion, and her love to him was one of the bright spots of his life. And Maggie loved her, not simply from gratitude, but with wondrous Christian affection known to those only who are walking heavenward hand in hand.

Horace was gone all the evening. Maggie sat watching for him hour after hour; the passing footsteps were heard less frequently; at last all was silence in the street, and still he came not. Could anything have happened to him? she asked herself, with a pang. And suppose there had--what then? Why, then--ah, who that saw that upturned face could have helped loving our Maggie!

"Are you all tired out waiting for your old husband?" asked his welcome voice at last.

"Not tired now that you have come!" she said, joyfully.

"Well, what is it, dear, good news or bad?"

"Everything has its two sides," he answered, evasively. "Aunt Jane will tell you, the next time you see her. But she has forbidden my doing it."

"I shall see her tomorrow, then."

"Yes. You had better go."

She watched his face as he spoke, but could learn nothing from it, but she felt that his arms enfolded her more closely than usual, as if afraid that she might slip away unawares. But when, the next morning, she was ushered into Aunt Jane's bright parlor, and met her bright smile, she reproved herself for foolish anxieties.

"I don't think I shall let you give me hug as you did the other night," said Aunt Jane, holding off a little as she welcomed her. "Take off your things, darling, and we'll have a nice long talk. I knew you were on the way here, knew at just about what hour you would come; you know ‘mind knows the approach of mind,' sometimes, at least."

"Yes. Your note to Horace startled me a little."

"I meant it should. Maggie dear, if I should tell you that I was about to go to Europe for some years, would it pain you very much?"

"That depends on how glad you were to go. If you were glad, I am sure I should not be asking how I was glad, I am sure I should not be asking how I was to get along without you. I should be thinking of your pleasure."

"Yes, you would. Well, dear, don't be troubled when I tell you that I am going on a much longer voyage, and shall not come back."

Maggie's color came and went, yet she did not say a word for some moments, but sat with the dear old hand clasped in both hers.

"Will the voyage be long? Will it be hard?" she whispered at last.

"Yes, dear; long and hard. But what then? Why, a beautiful getting into port, and the casting anchor there."

"Oh, Aunt Jane!"

"Do you know, my child, that I can look on curiously at your tears, and take no part in them? It seems such a very little thing for a woman of my age to drop down by the wayside. Why, it is happening every hour; why not to me?"

"And the suffering?"

"Oh, the flesh shrinks from that, of course. But still, what then? It is not the fashion of human souls to part company with the house of clay they have lived in without a hue and cry on the part of the latter. I supposed you have guessed my secret by this time?"

"Yes. And to think that I must have hurt you that night!"

"It did not signify. And now you will want to hear how long I have known this. I have known it six months. I may live six months more, but about that I have not inquired. All my worldly affairs, thanks to Horace, are now settled. But I want the pleasure, before I go, of seeing you and him more comfortably established. That house did very well for a beginning, and you have both behaved beautifully in it. But I am sort of mother to you, you know, and I am going to beguile myself of some of my weary days by putting you into another. You see it would be impossible to live in such close quarters if you had children."

"But we have not any."

"Not now. But they're coming. I am not going to make you rich, but I am going to lift the burden you have borne so patiently. No, do not say a word; the thing I settled, and has long been settled in my mind. Hitherto you two have not had the necessaries of life; I have just found that out."

"Why, Aunt Jane! We have had them and more, too."

"No; I got it out of Horace last night how heavy and sleepy he is every evening, how often depressed and out of sorts, and all for want of proper exercise. I really think you owed it to me, who loves you so, to tell me he had been ordered to ride. But those hard days are over. He is to begin to ride this very day. And as to you, my precious little Maggie, you shall have something to make your domestic wheels go easier, and something for your poor folks beside. So you see my going off to be well and happy, by-and-by, is to add to your health and happiness, too."

"We would rather have you, and go on living for ever, just as we have done."

"I have no doubt of it. But you see that God has other plans for you. And now we'll talk about the place I am going to, if you feel like it."

"Oh, Aunt Jane! You're glad you are going to leave us!"

"Yes--that is, I am glad I am going where I am, though not glad to leave you. Think how easily I can go! No husband, no child to hold me back: you and Annie and Horace are all nicely settled, and happy; why, it is wonderful! And I have so long felt more at home there than I have here. Not that I would have you fancy that I have not been happy, very happy, among you all."

"You have been ready to go this long time, I know."

"Yes, I have. If I were going to Europe now, I should have quite a time of it, making my preparations. But for this voyage I have not a thing to do. It was all made for me long, long ago; such kind and thoughtful and loving preparation! All I shall have to do will be to step on board."

"And we shall be following after," said Maggie, drying her tears. "I am ashamed of myself for crying so. I ought to be congratulating you instead of putting on this doleful face. Dear Aunt Jane, I will not do it again. You are going to enjoy a great deal more than we are going to suffer; and what if we do suffer? Yes, I am ashamed of myself."

"Ah, I am too happy in the thought of going, to mind your crying a little. I always was a selfish old thing. But all that will soon be over. I shall not be selfish in heaven. I shall never crimson with shame nor sigh with grief; I shall be with my Savior and like Him. All the rest of my time I am here I want to spend in magnifying Him; but I am afraid that towards the last I shall only be able to do that in a very imperfect way. Remember, dear Maggie youth and health are the time and the season for glorifying Him. I am afraid a sick-bed, with its distracting pains and weaknesses, is a poor place for it."

"I think you have glorified Him all along."

"Not as I now wish I had. Life looks very strange and impressive as one casts on it a backward glance. Perhaps you fancy that it looks insignificant. But it does not. On the contrary, even its little details have an importance of their own; just as moments make hours, so trifles make life; not one can be spared out of the great whole, each has its own account to give to God. And now, dear, we'll make it a point; you and I, to have very cheery meetings together, while I stay, shall we not?"

"I shall want to come very often, and I will be cheerful, too. This has been a great shock to me; I want to get home and pray it over."

"Why can't we pray it over now? For my part, I have on my soul such a weight of gratitude that I want to pray and sing, too. To think that I, a poor sinner, am so soon to be called home! I can hardly believe it."

Maggie went home, after a time, with a full heart, fuller of joy than of pain, for the courage and faith of the one heart had strengthened and elevated the other. She found Annie waiting for her.

"I have been here an age," was her salutation. "But you have been crying. Why, Maggie darling!"

"Yes, but I am ashamed of myself. Yet you will cry, too, when you hear about Aunt Jane!"

She told the story in a few words, and Annie was, for a time, completely overcome with grief.

"Aunt Jane is just the same as an own aunt," she said, at last. "How dreadful it is to love people so! Sometimes I wish I were as heartless as a stone. And you say she is bright and cheerful as ever? Then she must have been inwardly sad and sorrowful when she thought her so happy. For, of course, it is the expectation of meeting her husband and child again that makes her glad to die."

"Oh, I do not think so! She never mentioned them."

"I am sure that if Tom and baby should die, I should want to go too," pursued Annie.

Maggie knew that it would be of no use to argue this question. Annie was too far behind her in the Christian life to comprehend what she and Aunt Jane so well understood: that heaven is Christ, that Christ is heaven; that that city hath no need of sun, or moon, or human food, or earthly tie, because the Lord Himself doth lighten it.

"I suppose I shall have to go to see her?" Annie asked, finding Maggie's silence not agreeable. "But I shall not know what to say to her. Do you think I need say anything? Wouldn't it do to talk of other things, and not of this?"

"You will not find it embarrassing at all. She will talk about dying just as honestly and naturally as she does about living. I would go today, if I were you."

"Oh, I can't go today--I've made such a fright of myself, crying. Perhaps I'll make Tom take me some evening. Dear me, how dreadful it all is!"

"You won't feel so after you've seen her. Think now, she had known it for six months, and not one of us has seen the least difference in her."

Yet Annie felt the dread and the repugnance to seeing Aunt Jane that is natural enough in young people, and she put off day to day the visit she yet felt she ought to make. So she was not a little ashamed when, one morning, Aunt Jane came to see her.

"As the mountain wouldn't come to the Mahomet, Mahomet has had to come to the mountain," was the salutation that greeted her as she entered the parlor. "You need not be afraid of your old aunt because she is on the wing."

"Oh, Aunt Jane, I was so shocked, so grieved!"

"Shocked that I have had an invitation from a King? Grieved that I am going to accept it joyfully? Why, my child, the past six months have been delightful ones!"

"You must have loved your husband and your son with wonderful love," said Annie.

"My husband, my son? Aye, and so I did. But it is not to find them that I am going on this long, hard journey; though I doubt not I shall find them at its ending. Listen to me, and never forget my words. I loved my husband and my boy with a mad idolatry that made heaven, when they went there, only heaven because it became their home. And now I love Christ so that heaven is only heaven because it is His eternal abode. Don't you remember, dear, how you children, when you had been away at school, always asked, on your return, ‘Is mother at home?' never adding, ‘and father and all the rest of them.' And if mother was at home you were satisfied, even if the others were all absent, and came in later."

Annie listened, but with a troubled face. "No one can make me believe," she said, at last, with great decision, "that I could be contented in heaven without Tom and baby."

Would it have done any good to argue the point with her? Suppose a child of four years says to his mother, "I am as tall now as I ever shall be," can prove to his faithless, ignorant little mind that this is not true? No; she can only say, "Wait, and see!"

But Annie wanted to dispute and argue, and kept trying to lead Aunt Jane into a discussion. "It stands to reason," she said, "that if I could not be happy without them here, I could not there. For I have God for my Friend now; and yet I want my husband and baby, besides. Why did He give them to me? Was it not that I might love them?"

But as Aunt Jane only smiled kindly at her vehement, excited words, Annie checked herself, and came back to the point whence she had started, and said how dreadful it all was.

"There is nothing dreadful about it yet, dear, and when that part of it comes you will be away in the country with your baby, and need see none of it."

"Ah, but you will suffer, all the same."

"Yes, I know. But I shall forget all that when I've been in heaven five minutes."

"And you really want to die?"

"It is not so much wanting to die as to live. For once out of this world my real life will begin. That thought makes me very happy."

"I don't want to go till Tom and baby do," said Annie, returning uneasily to that thought. "It wouldn't be heaven if they were not there."

We are only too apt to yield to the self-conceit, beloved child of ignorance, that utters such cries. It would be well if we could once get it into our heads that those who express religious views to which we are strangers, have gained them, as he who travels in advance of his comrade sees, before he does, what there is to be seen on the way. And instead of arguing with him who spies out the land, and brings back grapes from Eshcol, suppose we penetrate that land, and look for fruit it has likewise in store for us.

"Hast Thou but one blessing, O my father?
Bless me, even me also!"

Aunt Jane was like a mariner, who, foreseeing a coming storm, trims his sails, and, if need be, casts overboard his treasures. She knew that all her faith and patience, and natural courage, were now about to be tested, and that good people and bad people would look to see how she met the gale. But before it broke loose upon her in relentless fury, she busied herself with the interests of all those who would be in any way affected by her death. She determined to see with her own eyes that the burden was lifted from some of the homes she loved. Naturally enough, she thought first of Horace and Maggie. She did not propose to make them rich, but only to make their way easier. And the plan of putting them into a more comfortable house, grew out of their grief at the thought of parting with her. She thought that moving and getting into their new abode would be a wholesome distraction for them, and that when her hard struggle came, there would be a full time for them to weep and mourn. She had great sympathy, too, for country ministers and their wives, and had not a few on her heart to whom she now gave a loving, helpful hand. Then when those affairs were all arranged, there was an endless number of little blessings to scatter here and there; parting visits to make, while possessing her secret, and so avoiding formal farewell; letters to write, kinds words to speak, sick rooms to beautify. She thought of everything and everybody, and kept to the wing long after many a less courageous sufferer would have fainted and fallen. And she was so full of love and sympathy that she turned not a few heads; not knowing out of what a storehouse she gave to them, each fancied himself a peculiarly favored hero, and went about rich and happy in gems of affectionate words that she flung about with lavish hands, as we throw pebbles. If her spirits flagged, if at times she said to herself, "This cannot, must not be," no eye witnessed the conflict; she fought her battles in silence and in prayer and won her victories there also.

Neither Horace nor Maggie took much pleasure in their new home, though they knew the change was good in every respect. But to Horace, Aunt Jane was little less than a mother; he loved her only less than he loved his wife; and the thought of seeing her suffer, and then of parting with her, at times overwhelmed him. And Maggie, in addition to the love she naturally had for her, knew that there was a wonderful golden link between them; the love stronger than death, that unites together those who have perfect Christian sympathy. Her counselor, her guiding star, was about to be taken from her, and how many a long year might pass before they should meet again! But such shadows are good for us, and perpetual sunshine is not. These twain clung together, and clung to Christ as prosperity could not have them do; they were sad and sorrowful, but not gloomy or unhappy. The thorny path bears some of the sweetest flowers that adorn life; and when naked, bleeding feet we walk upon a flinty soil, we often find diamonds. But nobody believes that save those who have dared the thorn and the flint, plucked the flower, and seized the gem.

"It really does my heart good," said Aunt Jane, lying back in her chair and looking about her, "to see how much more comfortable you and Horace are in this house than you were in the other. There'll be frolicking on these wide stairs one of these days, you may depend. And how much better Horace seems."

"You have been too good to us, Aunt Jane," was Maggie's answer. "But, then, you always were."

"You mean that God has been too good to me. And so He has. Well, I am very glad to see you in your new home before I go to mine."

"You have been like a mother to a great many young people, as well as to us. What makes you so fond of us? I thought that as people grew older they lost sympathy with those who had less experience of life, and only enjoyed the society of the very wise and the very good," said Horace.

"Ah, but I never grew old! I often tried to do so, but I couldn't. You young creatures, with your little romances, your honeymoons, your smiles and your tears, kept me always on the qui-vive. and now I wish I could tell you how easy I feel about leaving you. I see you so happy in each other, so happy in God and in working for Him, that I have not a wish ungratified. You will have your trials and your sorrows, your rainy days and your tempestuous ones; and what is worse, you will have your prosperous ones. But you will not be overwhelmed by the one or swept away by the other."

"You will give us ever so mach good counsel before you go, won't you, dear Auntie?" asked Maggie, tearfully.

"Good counsel! Ah, it is easily given. It is this: Take counsel of God. Everything I have to say is included in that."

They were all silent for a long time after this. Yet it was not the silence that separates, but that which unites. Aunt Jane lay back again in her chair, looking pale and exhausted, but there was a smile on her lips, and her bright eyes seemed to penetrate into a far future, into ineffable peace and joy.

"To think," she said, at last, "that I am really on the wing! Half way there!"

They sat on each side, holding one of her hands in theirs, and could almost see what she saw.

"This is my first and last visit in this house of yours, children," she said, when it was time to take leave. "That is to say, it is the last I shall make in this old tumble-down of a body. But I shall often be here in spirit, watching you and blessing you, if I may."

"Shall we know it?" whispered Maggie.

"I fancy not. But I see no reason why departed friends should not hover over beloved ones still upon earth, watching their progress and rejoicing in it."

"But all their friends will not be making progress," said Horace.

"Perhaps that painful sight will be hidden. However, it is all speculation. And now, dear children. I must go. Peace be within these walls!"

She drove home in silence, though Horace was with her, for she was extremely fatigued. A faithful, dearly loved servant came to meet her as she reached her own door.

"That's right, Sarah. I knew you would be waiting. Before long it will be my turn to be waiting and watching for you. Good night, Horace, my own dear boy."

There was nothing new in these words, but they fell painfully on his ear. Yes, he was her boy, her dear boy, her own dear boy. She had done more towards making and saving him than any other human being. How many times in his thoughtless youth her prayers had so hedged him round that he could not get out! How many times they had called to the rescue that blessed Spirit that is ever waiting to be gracious, yet waits to be called. He would have been glad to throw himself into her arms and cry like a child, but no one should ever do that any more.

So he went sorrowfully away to his house, and he and Maggie wept and prayed there. And Aunt Jane entered hers to leave it no more. She had come to the very limit of her strength, and now, exhausted in body, but with an undaunted soul, she retired from the gaze of the world to fight a battle whose terrible scenes have found no record, save in a few faithful hearts that witnessed and shared them. It was a battle, but ever and anon she stopped to bind up the wounds of a fellow-sufferer; now there was a quaint word that made her tearful watchers smile in spite of themselves; now there was a hymn, and now a song, and now a shout of victory.

"Oh, Aunt Jane! Will this never be over?" Maggie asked, when months came and went and came, and only brought new pain, more weariness. "How can I see you suffer so another day?"

"And mayn't I ask Him to let you go?"

"You may ask him"--with a smile--"but He will listen to me, not to you. He won't dismiss me till school is done, nor would I go till then."

But only a few days later "school was done;" the bright-eyed, faithful scholar went home.

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