_ CHAPTER XIX. "I MUST NOT THINK OF MYSELF"
Bessie's words to Edna had been strangely prophetical--"Trouble may come to me one day;" it had come already, in its most crushing form. The bond of sisterhood is very strong; it has peculiar and precious privileges, apart from other relationships; a sort of twinship of sympathy unites many sisters who have grown up together. Their thoughts and interests are seldom apart. All their little pleasures, their minor griefs, youthful hopes, disappointments, are shared with each other. They move together through the opening years of their life. Sometimes old age finds them still together, tottering hand in hand to the grave. Of all her sisters, Bessie could least spare Hatty, and her death left a void in the girl's life that was very difficult to fill. From the first, Bessie had accepted the responsibility of Hatty. Hatty's peculiar temperament, her bad health and unequal spirits, had set her apart from the other members of the family, who were all strong and cheerful and full of life.
Bessie had realized this and had made Hatty her special charge and duty; but now there was a gap in her daily life, a sense of emptiness and desolation. There was no need now to hurry through her morning's task that she might sit with Hatty. When she went out, there was no Hatty to watch for her return and listen to all her descriptions of what she had seen. At night, when Bessie went upstairs, she would creep softly into a certain empty room, which was dearer to her than any other room. Hatty's little gowns, her few girlish possessions, were all locked away in the wardrobe; but her Bible and Prayer-book, and her shabby little writing-case, lay on the table. Bessie would pull up the blinds, and kneel down by the low bed; she liked to say her prayers in that room. Sometimes as she prayed the sense of her sister's presence would come over her strongly; she could almost feel the touch of the thin little hands that had so often toiled in her service. Hatty's large wistful eyes seemed to look lovingly out of the darkness. "Oh! my Hatty, are you near me?" she would sob; but there was no answer out of the silence.
Who has not tasted the bitterness of these moments, when the craving for the loved presence seems insupportable, hardly to be borne? How our poor human hearts rebel against the unnatural separation, until the thrilling words make themselves heard: "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." Oh, yes, of the living! Cease, then, to mourn, poor soul, as one without hope. Somewhere, not here, but in the larger room of a purified existence, your beloved one lives, breathes, nay, thinks of thee. Be comforted; one day we shall meet them, and the friendship of time will become the love of eternity.
Bessie strove hard not to be selfish in her grief. Her mother's strength, never very great, had broken down utterly for a time. Bessie knew that this failure of power added to her father's anxiety, and in the most touching manner she tried to console them both. When she looked back at these sad days, Bessie owned that she had been marvellously helped and supported. With the day's burden had come daily strength to bear it.
"I must not think of myself; I must think of father and mother," she would say, as she awoke in the morning with that blank sense of loss. "There is nothing to do for Hatty now, but there are others who need me." And this thought helped her through the day.
In that busy household there was no time to sit alone and brood. A quiet walk now and then, and that half hour in Hatty's room, was all Bessie could conscientiously spare. If she stayed away for an hour, Christine complained of dullness, and her mother looked sadder on her return. Ella and Katie, too, made constant demands on her time and patience. Christine was very unlike Bessie in temperament. She was a pretty, bright girl, warm-hearted and high-spirited, but she did not possess Bessie's contented nature. Christine often found her quiet life irksome. She was inquisitive, restless, eager to see the world. She had insatiable curiosity; a love of change, her small girlish ambitions. She wanted to plume her wings a little--to try them in flights hither and thither. The gay world seemed to her ignorance a land flowing with milk and honey. She had yet to spell the meaning of the words illusion and vanity. Bessie was fond of Christine. She loved all her sisters dearly, but there was less sympathy between them than there had been between herself and Hatty.
Hatty, in spite of her morbid humors and difficult tendencies, had a refined and cultured mind; her chief source of fretfulness was that she loved the best, and failed to reach it. The very loftiness of her standard produced despondency akin to despair.
Hatty's faith was pure, but feeble. She hated everything false and mean. She despised the conventionalities of life, while Bessie laughed at them. She and Bessie had their ideals, their simple secrets, their crude girlish notions, that were nevertheless very true and sweet.
Bessie could make allowances for Hatty's sharp speeches as she watched her daily struggles with her faulty temper. She could rejoice in Hatty's victories all the more that she had borne so patiently with her failures, and there was no abiding sting in her grief now, no remorseful feelings for duties undone and opportunities wasted; but with Christine things were different.
One Sunday afternoon when Bessie was stealing away for a quiet half hour in Hatty's room, she was surprised to find Christine following her.
"May I come in too, Bessie?" she said very humbly, and her eyes were full of tears; "I do so want a little comfort, and I can't talk to mother. I am making myself miserable about Hatty."
"About our dear Hatty! Oh, Chrissy, what can you mean?" asked Bessie reproachfully. "We can talk here, and perhaps our poor darling may be listening to us. I do love this room; it seems to breathe of Hatty somehow. There, I will open the window. How sweet the air is? and look, how red the leaves are, though it is only the end of September!" And then she added, softly: "Hatty has been six weeks in her new home."
"Oh, how I envy you, Bessie!" sighed Christine, "you can talk and think happily about our dear little Hatty, but with me it is all so different. If I had only been good to her, if she had not made me so impatient But I cannot help remembering how horrid I used to be." And here one tear after another rolled down Christine's pretty, troubled face.
Bessie's soft heart grew very pitiful. "Dear Chrissy," she said gently, "there is no need to fret over that now. Hatty was always fond of you, and you of her; she told me that night, when I came home, how kind you had been to her. There was no one but you to do things, and you were such a comfort to her."
"How could I help being kind to her, when she was so ill, and there was the fear of losing her? Somehow, I never thought there was much amiss with Hatty. I could not get it out of my mind that she always made the most of every little ailment, and that it was wrong of you and mother to give in to her. I never thought it would come to this." And Christine sobbed afresh.
"Yes, I know what you mean; but, indeed, Chrissy, dear, you need not distress yourself so. Hatty forgave everything long ago; she was never one to bear malice--no, her nature was too sweet for that."
"But I might have made her happier," persisted Christine. "I need not have minded her worrying so over every little trifle, but I was always losing patience, and getting vexed with her. I used to wonder at your bearing with her as you did, and I thought it a mistake to give way to all her humors. I never imagined that she was cross because she was suffering, but father says all her gloomy fancies and tiresome little ways came from her bad health."
"I might have made her happier!" That speech went to Bessie's heart. "Listen to me, darling," she said eagerly; "think rather of how, by your waywardness, you have wounded the loving heart of Jesus, and sinned against Him. Let the sense of Hatty's loss send you to him in penitence for pardon. Nothing can now undo the past; but you can set yourself in the grace and strength which Jesus gives to do all in your power to make the lives of those around you happier. I do not want to make you more miserable, but what you have just said reminds me so of a passage I copied only the other day out of one of Tom's books; it was written by a man who failed in his own life, but was very gentle and very tolerant of other people. 'Oh, let us not wait,' he says, 'to be just, or pitiful, or demonstrative toward those we love, until they or we are struck down by illness, or threatened with death. Life is short, and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!' And then in another place he says, and that is so true, too, 'Never to tire, never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart, to hope always like God; to love always--this is duty.'"
Christine made a despairing gesture. "It is a duty in which I have utterly failed," she said bitterly.
"You think you might have been kinder to Hatty; that is just what Tom said of himself the other day. I am afraid many people have these sort of reproachful thoughts when they lose one they love. Everything seems different," she continued, in a musing tone; "we see with other eyes. Death seems to throw such a strange, searching light over one's life; big things are dwarfed, and little things come into pre-eminence; our looks and words and actions pass in review before us--we see where we have failed, and our successes do not comfort us."
"But you, at least, are free from these thoughts, Bessie?"
"Not entirely. There were times when I found Hatty trying, when she depressed me, and made me impatient. Indeed, Chrissy dear, we must remember that we are human, and not angels. None of us are free from blame; we have all failed in our turn. You have never been morbid before; try to forget the little everyday frictions, for which Hatty was to blame as well as you, and only remember how good you were to her in her illness--what a comfort to me as well as to her. 'Chrissy has been such a darling,' Hatty said to me one day."
After all, Christine was quite willing to be comforted, and presently she dried her eyes.
"You must let me talk to you sometimes, Bessie," she said; "it will do me good, because you have such a nice clear way of putting things, and you never mind trouble. I know I can't take Hatty's place, but if you will let me do things for you sometimes, and feel that I am a help, for we are sisters as much as you and Hatty were, and I want to get nearer to you somehow."
"And so you shall, dear," replied Bessie, touched by this humility. "You must not think that I do not love you because Hatty was so much to me. There is nothing I would not do for you, Chrissy--oh, you may be sure of that;" and Bessie kissed her affectionately.
This conversation made Christine happier, for she was a good-hearted girl, and her repentance was very real, and it strengthened Bessie in her resolve to do her best for them all. Sorrow is a great test of character; it makes the selfish more selfish, and hardens the proud, but Bessie grew softer under its influence. After all, Edna was right in saying that it was harder to suffer through one's own fault. An affliction that comes straight from God's hand (though, in one sense, all trouble is permitted by His providence) wounds, and yet heals at the same time, and Bessie was to learn this by degrees; and, after all, her cross was wreathed with the soft flowers of hope.
One morning early in October Bessie had a most unexpected pleasure. She had just returned from a long walk, and was on her way to the morning-room in search of her mother, when Christine opened the drawing-room door and beckoned to her with a very excited face.
"Do come in, Betty," she said, in a loud whisper that must have been distinctly audible inside the room. "What a time you have been! and there is a friend of yours waiting for you."
Bessie quickened her steps, feeling somewhat mystified by Christine's manner, and the next moment she was face to face with Edna. Bessie turned very pale and could hardly speak at first for surprise and emotion; but Edna took her in her arms and kissed her.
"My dear Bessie," she said softly; and then she laughed a little nervously, and it was not the old musical laugh at all--"are you very surprised to see me? Oh, it was a bright idea of mine. I have been visiting those same friends (I had returned from them that day, you know, when we were snowed up together). Well, when I saw Sheen Valley, all of a sudden the thought popped into my head that I would stop at Cliffe, and take a later train; so I telegraphed to mamma, who is in London, and now I have a whole hour to spend with you. Is not that nice?"
"Very nice indeed. I am so glad to see you, Edna; but you are looking delicate; you have lost your color."
"What nonsense!" with a touch of her old impatience. "You are as bad as mamma; she is always finding fault with me. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones at their neighbors. You do not look like yourself either, Bessie."
"Oh, that is different," and Bessie's lips trembled a little; "I have gone through so much since we parted. I try to take it properly, and every one helps me, but I think I miss my Hatty more every day."
"You want a change," returned Edna kindly, for she was much touched by the alteration in her friend's looks.
Bessie had lost her pretty fresh color, and looked pale and subdued in her black dress; her gray eyes had a sad look in them, even her voice had lost its old cheery tones, and her very movements were quieter; the bright elasticity that had been her charm was missing now, and yet Edna thought she had never looked so sweet.
"My poor little Daisy," she continued, "you have a crushed look. You want country air to revive you. Will you come to us? Mamma will be delighted; you are such a favorite of hers; and as for myself, I want you more than I can say."
"Not yet; I could not leave mother yet," returned Bessie; but a faint color stole into her face. No, she could not leave her post, and yet it would have been nice to see The Grange again, and Richard's friendly face; he had been so kind to her; and there was Whitefoot, and the dear dogs, and the lanes would be full of hips and haws. "No, not yet; but I should like to come again one day."
"Well, well, I will not tease you; bye and bye I will make another appeal, but if your mother be not well----" She paused, and then something of the old mischief came into her eyes. "You see I am improving, Bessie; I am not always trying to get my own way; my goodness makes mamma quite uneasy. I think she has got it into her head that I shall die young; all good young people die--in books. No, it was wrong of me to joke," as a pained look crossed Bessie's face. "Seriously, I am trying to follow your advice; but, oh! it is such hard work."
"Dear Edna, do you think I do not see the difference in you?"
"Am I different?" she asked eagerly, and a wistful look came into her lovely eyes. "Richard said the other day how much nicer I was; we are quite friends, Ritchie and I, now, and I won't let mamma be so hard on him. He was very kind to me when--when--Neville went away; he tells me about him sometimes, for once or twice he has seen him in London; but just fancy, Bessie, he never even asked after me. 'Are your people well?' That is all he said; but of course he will never forgive me; men are like that."
"He may not think that you want to be forgiven," returned Bessie.
Edna's color rose.
"He will never know it," she said proudly; but the next moment her tone changed. "Oh, Bessie, what shall I do? Sometimes I am so miserable that I hardly know how I am to go on living. I never thought I should miss Neville like this, but I do--I do."
"Do not think me unkind if I say that I rejoice to hear it; it proves how deep and real your affection was."
"It was the only real part of me," was the reply. "Now it is too late, I have discovered it for myself. I never would let myself think seriously of my engagement. I liked Neville, and I meant to marry him one day, and that was all I thought about it; but now I see that the real feeling was there all the time, only choked up with rubbish, and I am quite sure that I could never care for any one else in the same way--never--never."
"Poor Edna! it is very hard, and I am so sorry for you."
But as Bessie spoke Christine came back into the room with a small tray of refreshments, and her mother followed, so she and Edna were obliged to break off the conversation. _