_ CHAPTER XXXIII. INTO THE FULNESS OF LIFE
With the opening of cold weather the seeming betterment in Mrs. Britton's health proved but temporary. As the winter advanced she failed rapidly, until, unable to sit up, she lay on a low couch, wheeled from room to room to afford all the rest and change possible. Day by day her pallor grew more and more like the waxen petals of the lily, while the fatal rose flush in her cheek deepened, and her eyes, unnaturally large and lustrous, had in them the look of those who dwell in the borderland.
She realized her condition as fully as those about her, but there was neither fear nor regret in the eyes, which, fixed on the glory invisible to them, caught and reflected the light of the other world, till, in the last days, those watching her saw her face "as it had been the face of an angel."
No demonstration of sorrow marred the peace in which her soul dwelt the last days of its stay, for the very room seemed hallowed, a place too sacred for the intrusion of any personal grief.
Turning one day to her husband, who seldom left her side, she said,--
"My sorrow made me selfish; I see it now. Look at the good you have done, the many you have helped; what have I done, what have I to show for all these years?"
Just then Darrell passed the window before which she was lying.
"There is your work, Patience," Mr. Britton replied, tenderly; "you have that to show for those years of loneliness and suffering. Surely, love, you have done noble work there; work whose results will last for years--probably for generations--yet to come!"
Her face lighted with a rapturous smile. "I had not thought of that," she whispered; "I will not go empty-handed after all. Perhaps He will say of me, as of one of old, 'She hath done what she could.'"
From that time she sank rapidly, sleeping lightly, waking occasionally with a child-like smile, then lapsing again into unconsciousness.
One evening as the day was fading she awoke from a long sleep and looked intently into the faces gathered about her. Her pastor, who had known her through all the years of her sorrow, was beside her. Bending over her and looking into the eyes now dimmed by the approaching shadows, he said,--
"You have not much longer to wait, my dear sister."
With a significant gesture she pointed to the fading light.
"'Until the day break,'" she murmured, with difficulty.
He was quick to catch her meaning and bowed his head in token that he understood; then, raising his hand above her head, as though in benediction, in broken tones he slowly pronounced the words,--
"'Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.'"
Her face brightened; a seraphic smile burst forth, irradiating every feature with a light which never faded, for, with a look of loving farewell into the faces of husband and son, she sank into a sleep from which she did not wake, and when, as the day was breaking over the eastern hill-tops, her soul took flight, the smile still lingered, deepening into such perfect peace as is seldom seen on mortal faces.
As Darrell, a few moments later, stood at the window, watching the stars paling one by one in the light of the coming dawn, a bit of verse with which he had been familiar years before, but which he had not recalled until then, recurred to him with peculiar force:
"A soul passed out on its way toward Heaven
As soon as the word of release was given;
And the trail of the meteor swept around
The lovely form of the homeward-bound.
Glimmering, shimmering, there on high,
The stars grew dim as one passed them by;
And the earth was never again so bright,
For a soul had slipped from its place that night."
After Mrs. Britton's death, deprived of her companionship and of the numberless little ministrations to her comfort in which they had delighted, both Mr. Britton and Darrell found life strangely empty. They also missed the strenuous western life to which they had been accustomed, with its ceaseless demands upon both muscle and brain. The life around them seemed narrow and restricted; the very monotony of the landscape wearied them; they longed for the freedom and activity of the West, the breadth and height of the mountains.
As both were standing one day beside the resting-place of the wife and mother, which Mr. Britton had himself chosen for her, the latter said,--
"John, there are no longer any ties to hold us here. You may have to remain here until affairs are settled, but I have no place, and want none, in Hosea Jewett's home. I am going back to the West; and I know that sooner or later you will return also, for your heart is among the mountains. But before we separate I want one promise from you, my son."
"Name it," said Darrell; "you know, father, I would fulfil any and every wish of yours within my power."
"It was my wish in the past, when my time should come to die, to be buried on the mountain-side, near the Hermitage. But life henceforth for me will be altogether different from what it has been heretofore; and I want your promise, John, if you outlive me, that when the end comes, no matter where I may be, you will bring me back to her, that when our souls are reunited our bodies may rest together here, within sound of the river's voice and shielded by the overhanging boughs from winter's storm and summer's heat."
Father and son clasped hands above the newly made grave.
"I promise you, father," Darrell replied; "but you did not need to ask the pledge."
When John Britton left Ellisburg a few days later a crowd of friends were gathered at the little depot to extend their sympathy and bid him farewell. A few were old associates of his own, some were his wife's friends, and some Darrell's. To those who had known him in the past he was greatly changed, and none of them quite understood his quaint philosophizings, his broad views, or his seeming isolation from their work-a-day, business world in which he had formerly taken so active a part. They knew naught of his years of solitary life or of how lives spent in years of contemplation and reflection, of retrospection and introspection, become gradually lifted out of the ordinary channels of thought and out of touch with the more practical life of the world. But they had had abundant evidence of his love and devotion to his wife, and of his kindness and liberality towards many of their own number, and for these they loved him.
There was not one, however, who mourned his departure so deeply as Experience Jewett, though she gave little expression to her sorrow. She had hoped that after her sister's death his home would still be with them. This, not from any weak sentimentality or any thought that he would ever be aught than as a brother to her, but because his very presence in the home was refreshing, helpful, comforting, and because it was a joy to be near him, to hear him talk, and to minister to his comfort. But he was going from them, as she well knew, never to return, and beneath the brave, smiling face she carried a sore and aching heart.
Thus John Britton bade the East farewell and turned his face towards the great West, mindful only of the grave under the elms, to which the river murmured night and day, and with no thought of return until he, too, should come to share that peaceful resting place. _