Part 5

I laughed in spite of myself; nor did the laugh seem to jar upon the sacred stillness of the place. Her words were drawing away the bitterness, as the sun was blotting the dull, dead greens of the ivy into its glow of golden color.

“But the Bible, Aunt Winifred.”

“The Bible does _not_ say a great deal on this point,” she said, “but it does not contradict me. In fact, it helps me; and, moreover, it would uphold me in black and white if it weren’t for one little obstacle.”

“And that?”

“That frowning ‘original Greek,’ which Gail Hamilton denounces with her righteous indignation. No sooner do I find a pretty verse that is exactly what I want, than up hops a commentator, and says, this isn’t according to text, and means something entirely different; and Barnes says this, and Stuart believes that, and Olshausen has demonstrated the other, and very ignorant it is in you, too, not to know it! Here the other day I ferreted out a sentence in Revelation that seemed to prove beyond question that angels and redeemed men were the same; where the angel says to John, you know, ‘Am I not of thy brethren the prophets?’ I thought that I had discovered a delightful thing which all the Fathers of the church had overlooked, and went in great glee to your Uncle Calvin, to be told that something was the matter,--a noun left out, or some other unanswerable and unreasonable horror, I don’t know what; and that it didn’t mean that he was of thy brethren the prophets at all!

“You see, if it could be proved that the Christian dead become angels, we could have all that we need, direct from God, about--to use the beautiful old phrase--the communion of saints. From Genesis to Revelation the Bible is filled with angels who are at work on earth. They hold sweet converse with Abraham in his tent. They are intrusted to save the soul of Lot. An angel hears the wail of Hagar. The beautiful feet of an angel bring the good tidings to maiden Mary. An angel’s noiseless step guides Peter through the barred and bolted gate. Angels rolled the stone from the buried Christ, and angels sat there in the solemn morning,--O Mary! if we could have seen them!

“Then there is that one question, direct, comprehensive,--we should not need anything else,--‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation?’

“But you see it never seems to have entered those commentators’ heads that all these beautiful things refer to any but a superior race of beings, like those from whose ranks Lucifer fell.”

“How stupid in them!”

“I take comfort in thinking so; but, to be serious, even admitting that these passages refer to a superior race, must there not be some similarity in the laws which govern existence in the heavenly world? Since these gracious deeds are performed by what we are accustomed to call ‘spiritual beings,’ why may they not as well be done by people from this world as from anywhere else? Besides, there is another point, and a reasonable one, to be made. The word angel in the original[A] means, strictly, _a messenger_. It applies to any servant of God, animate or inanimate. An east wind is as much an angel as Michael. Again, the generic terms, ‘spirits,’ ‘gods,’ ‘sons of God,’ are used interchangeably for saints and for angels. So, you see, I fancy that I find a way for you and Roy and me and all of us, straight into the shining ministry. Mary, Mary, wouldn’t you like to go this very afternoon?”

[A] ἄγγελος.

She lay back in the grass, with her face up-turned to the sky, and drew a long breath, wearily. I do not think she meant me to hear it. I did not answer her, for it came over me with such a hopeless thrill, how good it would be to be taken to Roy, there by his beautiful grave, with the ivy and the May-flowers and the sunlight and the clover-leaves round about; and that it could not be, and how long it was to wait,--it came over me so that I could not speak.

“There!” she said, suddenly rousing, “what a thoughtless, wicked thing it was to say! And I meant to give you only the good cheer of a cheery friend. No, I do not care to go this afternoon, nor any afternoon, till my Father is ready for me. Wherever he has most for me to do, there I wish,--yes, I think I _wish_ to stay. He knows best.”

After a pause, I asked again, “Why did He not tell us more about this thing,--about their presence with us? You see if I could _know_ it!”

“The mystery of the Bible lies not so much in what it says, as in what it does not say,” she replied. “But I suppose that we have been told all that we can comprehend in this world. Knowledge on one point might involve knowledge on another, like the links of a chain, till it stretched far beyond our capacity. At any rate, it is not for me to break the silence. That is God’s affair. I can only accept the fact. Nevertheless, as Dr. Chalmers says: ‘It were well for us all could we carefully draw the line between the secret things which belong to God and the things which are revealed and belong to us and to our children.’ Some one else,--Whately, I think,--I remember to have noticed as speaking about these very subjects to this effect,--that precisely because we know so little of them, it is the more important that we ‘should endeavor so to dwell on them as to make the most of what little knowledge we have.’”

“Aunt Winifred, you are such a comfort!”

“It needs our best faith,” she said, “to bear this reticence of God. I cannot help thinking sometimes of a thing Lauderdale said,--I am always quoting him,--from ‘Son of the Soil,’ you remember: ‘It’s an awfu’ marvel, beyond my reach, when a word of communication would make a’ the difference, why it’s no permitted, if it were but to keep a heart from breaking now and then.’ Think of poor Eugénie de Guèrin, trying to continue her little journal ‘To Maurice in Heaven,’ till the awful, answerless stillness shut up the book and laid aside the pen.

“But then,” she continued, “there is this to remember,--I may have borrowed the idea, or it may be my own,--that if we could speak to them, or they to us, there would be no death, for there would be no separation. The last, the surest, in some cases the only test of loyalty to God, would thus be taken away. Roman Catholic nature is human nature, when it comes upon its knees before a saint. Many lives--all such lives as yours and mine--would become--”

“Would become what?”

“One long defiance to the First Commandment.”

I cannot become used to such words from such quiet lips. Yet they give me a curious sense of the trustworthiness of her peace. “Founded upon a rock,” it seems to be. She has done what it takes a lifetime for some of us to do; what some of us go into eternity, leaving undone; what I am afraid I shall never do,--sounded her own nature. She knows the worst of herself, and faces it as fairly, I believe, as anybody can do in this world. As for the best of herself, she trusts that to Christ, and he knows it, and we. I hope she, in her sweet humbleness, will know it some day.

“I suppose, nevertheless,” she said, “that Roy knows what you are doing and feeling as well as, perhaps better than, he knew it three months ago. So he can help you without harming you.”

I asked her, turning suddenly, how that could be, and yet heaven be heaven,--how he could see me suffer what I had suffered, could see me sometimes when I supposed none but God had seen me,--and sing on and be happy.

“You are not the first, Mary, and you will not be the last, to ask that question. I cannot answer it, and I never heard of any who could. I feel sure only of this,--that he would suffer far less to see you than to know nothing about you; and that God’s power of inventing happiness is not to be blocked by an obstacle like this. Perhaps Roy sees the end from the beginning, and can bear the sight of pain for the peace that he watches coming to meet you. I do not know,--that does not perplex me now; it only makes me anxious for one thing.”

“What is that?”

“That you and I shall not do anything to make them sorry.”

“To make them sorry?”

“Roy would care. Roy would be disappointed to see you make life a hopeless thing for his sake, or to see you doubt his Saviour.”

“Do you think _that_?”

“Some sort of mourning over sin enters that happy life. God himself ‘was grieved’ forty years long over his wandering people. Among the angels there has been ‘silence,’ whatever that mysterious pause may mean, just as there is joy over one sinner that repenteth; another of my proof-texts that, to show that they are allowed to keep us in sight.”

“Then you think, you really think, that Roy remembers and loves and takes care of me; that he has been listening, perhaps, and is--why, you don’t think he may be _here_?”

“Yes, I do. Here, close beside you all this time, trying to speak to you through the blessed sunshine and the flowers, trying to help you, and sure to love you,--right here, dear. I do not believe God means to send him away from you, either.”

My heart was too full to answer her. Seeing how it was, she slipped away, and, strolling out of sight with her face to the eastern hills, left me alone.

And yet I did not seem alone. The low branches swept with a little soft sigh across the grave; the May-flowers wrapped me in with fragrance thick as incense; the tiny sparrow turned her soft eyes at me over the edge of the nest, and chirped contentedly; the “blessed sunshine” talked with me as it touched the edges of the ivy-leaves to fire.

I cannot write it even here, how these things stole into my heart and hushed me. If I had seen him standing by the stainless cross, it would not have frightened or surprised me. There--not dead or gone, but _there_--it helps me, and makes me strong!

“Mamie! little Mamie!”

O Roy, I will try to bear it all, if you will only stay!

VIII.

May 20.

The nearer the time has come for Aunt Winifred to go, the more it has seemed impossible to part with her. I have run away from the thought like a craven, till she made me face it this morning, by saying decidedly that she should go on the first of the week.

I dropped my sewing; the work-basket tipped over, and all my spools rolled away under the chairs. I had a little time to think while I was picking them up.

“There is the rest of my visit at Norwich to be made, you know,” she said, “and while I am there I shall form some definite plans for the summer; I have hardly decided what, yet. I had better leave here by the seven o’clock train, if such an early start will not incommode you.”

I wound up the last spool, and turned away to the window. There was a confused, dreary sky of scurrying clouds, and a cold wind was bruising the apple-buds. I hate a cold wind in May. It made me choke a little, thinking how I should sit and listen to it after she was gone,--of the old, blank, comfortless days that must come and go,--of what she had brought, and what she would take away. I was a bit faint, I think, for a minute. I had not really thought the prospect through, before.

“Mary,” she said, “what’s the matter? Come here.”

I went over, and she drew me into her lap, and I put my arms about her neck.

“I can _not_ bear it,” said I, “and that is the matter.”

She smiled, but her smile faded when she looked at me.

And then I told her, sobbing, how it was; that I could not go into my future alone,--I could not do it! that she did not know how weak I was,--and reckless,--and wicked; that she did not know what she had been to me. I begged her not to leave me. I begged her to stay and help me bear my life.

“My dear! you are as bad as Faith when I put her to bed alone.”

“But,” I said, “when Faith cries, you go to her, you know.”

“Are you quite in earnest, Mary?” she asked, after a pause. “You don’t know very much about me, after all, and there is the child. It is always an experiment, bringing two families into lifelong relations under one roof. If I could think it best, you might repent your bargain.”

“_I_ am not ‘a family,’” I said, feebly trying to laugh. “Aunt Winifred, if you and Faith only _will_ make this your home, I can never thank you, never. I shall be entertaining my good angels, and that is the whole of it.”

“I have had some thought of not going back,” she said at last, in a low, constrained voice, as if she were touching something that gave her great pain, “for Faith’s sake. I should like to educate her in New England, if--I had intended if we stayed to rent or buy a little home of our own somewhere, but I had been putting off a decision. We are most weak and most selfish sometimes when we think ourselves strongest and noblest, Mary. I love my husband’s people. I think they love me. I was almost happy with them. It seemed as if I were carrying on his work for him. That was so pleasant!”

She put me down out of her arms and walked across the room.

“I will think the matter over,” she said, by and by, in her natural tones, “and let you know to-night.”

She went away up stairs then, and I did not see her again until to-night. I sent Faith up with her dinner and tea, judging that she would rather see the child than me. I observed, when the dishes came down, that she had touched nothing but a cup of coffee.

I began to understand, as I sat alone in the parlor through the afternoon, how much I had asked of her. In my selfish distress at losing her, I had not thought of that. Faces that her husband loved, meadows and hills and sunsets that he has watched, the home where his last step sounded and his last word was spoken, the grave where she has laid him,--this last more than all,--call after her, and cling to her with yearning closeness. To leave them, is to leave the last faint shadow of her beautiful past. It hurts, but she is too brave to cry out.

Tea was over, and Faith in bed, but still she did not come down. I was sitting by the window, watching a little crescent moon climb over the hills, and wondering whether I had better go up, when she came in and stood behind me, and said, attempting to laugh:--

“Very impolite in me to run off so, wasn’t it? Cowardly, too, I think. Well, Mary?”

“Well, Auntie?”

“Have you not repented your proposition yet?”

“You would excel as an inquisitor, Mrs. Forceythe!”

“Then it shall be as you say; as long as you want us you shall have us,--Faith and me.”

I turned to thank her, but could not when I saw her face. It was very pale; there was something inexpressibly sad about her mouth, and her eyelids drooped heavily, like one weary from a great struggle.

Feeling for the moment guilty and ashamed before her, as if I had done her wrong, “It is going to be very hard for you,” I said.

“Never mind about that,” she answered, quickly. “We will not talk about that. I knew, though I did not _wish_ to know, that it was best for Faith. Your hands about my neck have settled it. Where the work is, there the laborer must be. It is quite plain now. I have been talking it over with them all the afternoon; it seems to be what they want.”

“With _them_”? I started at the words; who had been in her lonely chamber? Ah, it is simply real to her. Who, indeed, but her Saviour and her husband?

She did not seem inclined to talk, and stole away from me presently, and out of doors; she was wrapped in her blanket shawl, and had thrown a shimmering white hood over her gray hair. I wondered where she could be going, and sat still at the window watching her. She opened and shut the gate softly; and, turning her face towards the churchyard, walked up the street and out of my sight.

She feels nearer to him in the resting-place of the dead. Her heart cries after the grave by which she will never sit and weep again; on which she will never plant the roses any more.

As I sat watching and thinking this, the faint light struck her slight figure and little shimmering hood again, and she walked down the street and in with steady step.

When she came up and stood beside me, smiling, with the light knitted thing thrown back on her shoulders, her face seemed to rise from it as from a snowy cloud; and for her look,--I wish Raphael could have had it for one of his rapt Madonnas.

“Now, Mary,” she said, with the sparkle back again in her voice, “I am ready to be entertaining, and promise not to play the hermit again very soon. Shall I sit here on the sofa with you? Yes, my dear, I am happy, quite happy.”

So then we took this new promise of home that has come to make my life, if not joyful, something less than desolate, and analyzed it in its practical bearings. What a pity that all pretty dreams have to be analyzed! I had some notion about throwing our little incomes into a joint family fund, but she put a veto to that; I suppose because mine is the larger. She prefers to take board for herself and Faith; but, if I know myself, she shall never be suffered to have the feeling of a boarder, and I will make her so much at home in my house that she shall not remember that it is not her own.

Her visit to Norwich she has decided to put off until the autumn, so that I shall have her to myself undisturbed all summer.

I have been looking at Roy’s picture a long time, and wondering how he would like the new plan. I said something of the sort to her.

“Why put any ‘would’ in that sentence?” she said, smiling. “It belongs in the present tense.”

“Then I am sure he likes it,” I answered,--“he likes it,” and I said the words over till I was ready to cry for rest in their sweet sound.

22d.

It is Roy’s birthday. But I have not spoken of it. We used to make a great deal of these little festivals,--but it is of no use to write about that.

I am afraid I have been bearing it very badly all day. She noticed my face, but said nothing till to-night. Mrs. Bland was down stairs, and I had come away alone up here in the dark. I heard her asking for me, but would not go down. By and by Aunt Winifred knocked, and I let her in.

“Mrs. Bland cannot understand why you don’t see her, Mary,” she said, gently. “You know you have not thanked her for those English violets that she sent the other day. I only thought I would remind you; she might feel a little pained.”

“I can’t to-night,--not to-night, Aunt Winifred. You must excuse me to her somehow. I don’t want to go down.”

“Is it that you don’t ‘want to,’ or _is_ it that you can’t?” she said, in that gentle, motherly way of hers, at which I can never take offence. “Mary, I wonder if Roy would not a little rather that you would go down?”

It might have been Roy himself who spoke.

I went down.

IX.

June 1.

Aunt Winifred went to the office this morning, and met Dr. Bland, who walked home with her. He always likes to talk with her.

A woman who knows something about fate, free-will, and foreknowledge absolute, who is not ignorant of politics, and talks intelligently of Agassiz’s latest fossil, who can understand a German quotation, and has heard of Strauss and Neander, who can dash her sprightliness ably against his old dry bones of metaphysics and theology, yet never speak an accent above that essentially womanly voice of hers, is, I imagine, a phenomenon in his social experience.

I was sitting at the window when they came up and stopped at the gate. Dr. Bland lifted his hat to me in his grave way, talking the while; somewhat eagerly, too, I could see. Aunt Winifred answered him with a peculiar smile and a few low words that I could not hear.

“But, my dear madam,” he said, “the glory of God, you see, the glory of God is the primary consideration.”

“But the glory of God _involves_ these lesser glories, as a sidereal system, though a splendid whole, exists by the multiplied differing of one star from another star. Ah, Dr. Bland, you make a grand abstraction out of it, but it makes me cold,”--she shivered, half playfully, half involuntarily,--“it makes me cold. I am very much alive and human; and Christ was human God.”

She came in smiling a little sadly, and stood by me, watching the minister walk over the hill.

“How much does that man love his wife and children?” she asked abruptly.

“A good deal. Why?”

“I am afraid that he will lose one of them then, before many more years of his life are past.”

“What! he hasn’t been telling you that they are consumptive or anything of the sort?”

“O dear me, no,” with a merry laugh which died quickly away: “I was only thinking,--there is trouble in store for him; some intense pain,--if he is capable of intense pain,--which shall shake his cold, smooth theorizing to the foundation. He speaks a foreign tongue when he talks of bereavement, of death, of the future life. No argument could convince him of that, though, which is the worst of it.”

“He must think you shockingly heterodox.”

“I don’t doubt it. We had a little talk this morning, and he regarded me with an expression of mingled consternation and perplexity that was curious. He is a very good man. He is not a stupid man. I only wish that he would stop preaching and teaching things that he knows nothing about.

“He is only drifting with the tide, though,” she added, “in his views of this matter. In our recoil from the materialism of the Romish Church, we have, it seems to me, nearly stranded ourselves on the opposite shore. Just as, in a rebound from the spirit which would put our Saviour on a level with Buddha or Mahomet, we have been in danger of forgetting ‘to begin as the Bible begins,’ with his humanity. It is the grandeur of inspiration, that it knows how to _balance_ truth.”

It had been in my mind for several days to ask Aunt Winifred something, and, feeling in the mood, I made her take off her things and devote herself to me. My question concerned what we call the “intermediate state.”

“I have been expecting that,” she said; “what about it?”

“What _is_ it?”

“Life and activity.”

“We do not go to sleep, of course.”

“I believe that notion is about exploded, though clear thinkers like Whately have appeared to advocate it. Where it originated, I do not know, unless from the frequent comparisons in the Scriptures of death with sleep, which refer solely, I am convinced, to the condition of body, and which are voted down by an overwhelming majority of decided statements relative to the consciousness, happiness, and tangibility of the life into which we immediately pass.”

“It is intermediate, in some sense, I suppose.”

“It waits between two other conditions,--yes; I think the drift of what we are taught about it leads to that conclusion. I expect to become at once sinless, but to have a broader Christian character many years hence; to be happy at once, but to be happier by and by; to find in myself wonderful new tastes and capacities, which are to be immeasurably ennobled and enlarged after the Resurrection, whatever that may mean.”

“What does it mean?”

“I know no more than you, but you shall hear what I think, presently. I was going to say that this seems to be plain enough in the Bible. The angels took Lazarus at once to Abraham. Dives seems to have found no interval between death and consciousness of suffering.”

“They always tell you that that is only a parable.”

“But it must mean _something_. No story in the Bible has been pulled to pieces and twisted about as that has been. We are in danger of pulling and twisting all sense out of it. Then Judas, having hanged his wretched self, went to his own place. Besides, there was Christ’s promise to the thief.”

I told her that I had heard Dr. Bland say that we could not place much dependence on that passage, because “Paradise” did not necessarily mean heaven.