Nancy Part 65

I think he has looked Death in the face, as nearly as any one ever did without falling utterly into his cold embrace, but he pulls through.

By very slow, small, and faltering steps, he creeps back to convalescence. His recovery is a tedious business, with many tiresome checks, and many ebbings and flowings of the tide of life; but--he lives. Weak as any little tottering child--white as the sheets he lies on; with prominent cheek-bones, and great and languid eyes, he is given back to us.

Life, worsted daily in a thousand cruel fights, has gained one little victory. To-day, for the first time, we all three at once leave him--leave him coolly and quietly asleep, and dine together in Mrs.

Huntley's little dusk-shaded dining-room.

We are quite a party. Mother is here, come to rejoice over her restored first-born son; the Brat is here; he has run over from Oxford. Musgrave is here. I am in such spirits; I do not know what has come to me. It seems to me as if I were newly born into a fresh and altogether good and jovial world.

Not even the presence of Musgrave lays any constraint upon my spirits.

For the first time since the dark day in Brindley Wood, I meet him without embarra.s.sment. I answer him: I even address him now and then.

All the small civilizations of life--the flower-garnished table; the lamps softly burning; the evening-dresses (for the first time we have dressed for dinner)--fill me with a keen pleasure, that I should have thought such little etceteras were quite incapable of affording.

I seem as if I could not speak without broad smiles. I am tired, indeed, still, and my eyes are heavy. But what does that matter? Life has won!

Life has won! We are still all six here!

"Nancy!" says the Brat, regarding me with an eye of friendly criticism, "I think you are _cracked_ to-night!--Do you remember what our nurses used to tell us? 'Much laughing always ends in much crying.'"

But I do not heed: I laugh on. Barbara is not nearly so boisterously merry as I, but then she never is. She is more overdone with fatigue than I, I think; for she speaks little--though what she does say is full of content and gladness--and there are dark streaks of weariness and watching under the serene violets of her eyes. She is certainly very tired; as we go to bed at night she seems hardly able to get up the stairs, but leans heavily on the banisters--one who usually runs so lightly up and down.

Yes, _very_ tired, but what of that? it would be unnatural, _most_ unnatural if she were not; she will be all right to-morrow, after a good long night's rest--yes, all right. I say this to her, still gayly laughing as I give her my last kiss, and she smiles and echoes, "All right!"

CHAPTER XLIX.

"So mayst thou die, as I do; fear and pain Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!"

All right! Yes, for Barbara it _is_ all right. Friends, I no more doubt that than I doubt that I am sitting here now, with the hot tears on my cheeks, telling you about it; but oh! not--_not_ for us!

"Much laughing will end in much crying." The Brat was right. G.o.d knows the old saw has come true enough in my case. I exulted too soon. Too soon I said that the all-victor was vanquished. He might have left us our one little victory, might not he?--knowing that at best it was but a reprieve, that soon or late--soon or late, Algy--we all, every human flower that ever blossomed out in this world's sad garden, must be embraced in the icy iron of his arms.

I always said that we were too many and too prosperous; long ago I said it. I always wondered that he had so long overlooked us. And now that he comes, he takes our choicest and best. With nothing less is he content.

Barbara sickens. Not until the need for her tender nursing is ended, not until Algy can do without her, does she go; and then she makes haste to leave us.

On the morning after my mad and premature elation, it is but too plain that the fever has laid hold of her too, and in its parching, withering clasp, our unstained lily fades. We take her back to Tempest at her wish, and there she dies--yes, _dies_.

Somehow, I never thought of Barbara dying. Often I have been nervous about the boys; out in the world, exposed to a hundred dangers and rough accidents, but about Barbara--_never_, hardly more than about myself, safely at home, scarcely within reach of any probable peril. And now the boys are all alive and safe, and Barbara is going. One would think that she had cared nothing for us, she is in such a hurry to be gone; and yet we all know that she has loved us well--that she loves us still--none better.

Alas! we have no long and tedious nursing of her. She has never given any trouble in her life, and she gives none now. Almost before we realize the reality and severity of her sickness, she is gone. Neither does she make any struggle. She never was one to strive or cry; never loud, clamorous, and self-a.s.serting, like the boys and me; she was always most meek, and with a great meekness she now goes forth from among us--meekness and yet valor, for with a full and collected consciousness she looks in the face of Him from whom the nations shuddering turn away their eyes, and puts her slight hand gently into his, saying, "Friend, I am ready!"

And the days roll by; _but_ few, _but_ few of them, for, as I tell you, she goes most quickly, and it comes to pa.s.s that our Barbara's death-day dawns. Most people go in the morning. G.o.d grant that it is a good omen, that for them, indeed, the sun is rising!

We are all round her--all we that loved her and yet so lightly--for every trivial thing called upon her, and taxed her, and claimed this and that of her, as if she were some certain common thing that we should always have within our reach. Yes, we are all about her, kneeling and standing in a hallowed silence, choking back our tears that they may not stain the serenity of her departure.

Musgrave is nearest her; her hand is clasped in his; even at this sacred and supreme moment a pang of most bitter earthly jealousy contracts my heart that it should be so. What is he to her? what has he to do with our Barbara?--_ours, not his, not his!_ But it pleases her.

_She_ has never doubted him. Never has the faintest suspicion of his truth dimmed the mirror of her guileless mind, nor will it ever now. She goes down to the grave smiling, holding his hand, and kissing it. Now and then she wanders a little, but there is nothing painful or uneasy in her wanderings.

Her fair white body lies upon the bed, but by the smile that kindles all the dying loveliness of her face, by the happy broken words that fall from her sweet mouth, we know that she is already away in heaven. Now and again her lips part as if to laugh--a laugh of pure pleasantness.

"As the man lives, so shall he die!" As Barbara has lived, so does she die--meekly, unselfishly--with a great patience, and an absolute peace.

O wise man! O philosophers! who would take from us--who have all but taken from us--our Blessed Land, the land over whose borders our Barbara, at that smile, seems setting her feet--you _may_ be right--I, for one, know not! I am weary of your pros and cons! But when you take it away, for G.o.d's sake give us something better instead!

Who, while they kneel, with the faint hand of their life's life in theirs, can be satisfied with the _probability_ of meeting again? G.o.d!

G.o.d! give us _certainty_.

The night has all but waned, the dawn has come. G.o.d has sent his messenger for Barbara. An awful hunger to hear her voice once more seizes me, _masters_ me. I rise from my knees, and lean over her.

"Barbara!" I say, in a strangling agony of tears, "you are not _afraid_, are you?"

_Afraid!_ She has all but forgotten our speech--she, who is hovering on the confines of that other world, where our speech is needed not, but she just repeats my word, "_Afraid!_"

Her voice is but a whisper now, but in all her look there is such an utter, tender, joyful disdain, as leaves no room for misgiving.

Nay, friends, our Barbara is not at all afraid. She never was reckoned one of the bravest of us--never--timorous rather! Often we have laughed at her easy fears, we bolder ones. But which of us, I pray you, could go with such valiant cheer to meet the one prime terror of the nations as she is doing?

And it comes to pa.s.s that, about the time of the sun-rising, Barbara goes.

"She is gone! G.o.d bless her!" Roger says, with low and reverent tenderness, stooping over our dead lily, and, putting his arm round me, tries to lead me away. But I shake him off, and laugh out loud.

"Are you _mad_?" I cry, "she is _not_ dead! She is no more dead than _you_ are! Only a moment ago, she was speaking to me! Do dead people speak?"

But rave and cry as I may, she _is_ dead. In smiling and sweetly speaking, even while yet I said "She is here!" yea, in that very moment she went.

Our Barbara is asleep!--to awake--when?--where?--we know not, only we altogether hope, that, when next she opens her blue eyes, it will be in the suns.h.i.+ne of G.o.d's august smile--G.o.d, through life and in death, _her friend_.

CHAPTER L.

"Then, breaking into tears, 'Dear G.o.d,' she cried, 'and must we see, All blissful things depart from us, or e'er we go to Thee; We cannot guess Thee in the wood, or hear Thee in the wind: Our cedars must fall round us e'er we see the light behind.

Ay, sooth, we feel too strong in weal to need Thee on that road; But, woe being come, the soul is dumb that crieth not on G.o.d.'"

I am twenty years old now, barely twenty; and seventy is the appointed boundary of man's date, often exceeded by ten, by fifteen years. During all these fifty--perhaps sixty--years, I shall have to do without Barbara. I have not yet arrived at the _pain_ of this thought: _that_ will come, quick enough, I suppose, by-and-by!--it is the _astonishment_ of it that is making my mind reel and stagger!

I suppose there are few that have not endured and overlived the frightful _novelty_ of this idea.

I am sitting in a stupid silence; my stiff eyes--dry now, but dim and sunk with hours of frantic weeping--fixed on vacancy, while I try to think _exactly_ of her face, with a greedy, jealous fear lest, in the long apathy of the endless years ahead of me, one soft line, one lovely line, may become faint and hazy to me.

How often I have sat for hours in the same room with her, without one glance at her! It seems to me, now, _monstrous_, incredible, that I should ever have moved my eyes from her--that I should ever have ceased kissing her, and telling her how altogether beloved she was by me.

If all of us, while we are alive, could stealthily, once a year, and during a moment long enough to exchange but two words with them, behold those loved ones whom we have lost, death would be no more death.