CHAPTER XXXVIII

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“WAITING AND WATCHING FOR ME.”

It was the first of January when Rossie left Rothsay for St. Louis, and three weeks from that day a wild storm was sweeping over the hills of Vermont, and great clouds of sleet and snow went drifting down into the open grave in Bronson church-yard, toward which a little group of mourners was slowly wending its way. Neither Florida skies nor Florida air had availed to restore life and health to poor wasted, worn-out Mollie Morton, although at first she seemed much better, and Trix and Bunchie, in their childish way, thanked God, who was making their mamma well, while the Rev. Theodore, in Boston, felt something like new hope within him at the cheerful letters Mollie wrote of what Florida was doing for her. But the improvement was only temporary, and neither orange blossoms or southern sunshine could hold the spirit which longed so to be free, and which welcomed death without a shadow of fear.

“I have had much to make me happy,” Mollie said to Beatrice, one day, when that faithful friend sat by her holding the tired head upon her bosom, and gently smoothing the once black hair, which now was more than three-fourths gray, though Mollie was only thirty-one. “Two lovely children, and the kindest, best husband in the world,—the man I loved and wanted so much, and who I think, likes me, and will miss me some when I am gone forever.”

This she said, looking straight at Beatrice, whose face was very pale as she stooped to kiss the white forehead and answered:

“I am sure he will miss you, and so shall I, for I have learned to love you so much, and shall be so sorry when you are gone.”

“Truly, truly, will you be sorry when I am dead? I hardly thought anybody would be that but father and mother, and the children,” Mollie said, while the lips quivered and the great tears rolled down her cheeks as she continued: “We are alone now, for the last time it may be, and I want to say to you what has been in my heart to say, and what I must say before I die. When I was up in that dreary back room in New York, so sick, and forlorn, and poor, and you came to me, bright, and gay, and beautiful, I did not like it at all, and for a time I felt hard toward you and angry at Theodore, who, I knew, must see the difference between me,—faded, and plain, and sickly, and old before my time, and you, the woman he loved first,—fresh, and young, and full of life, and health, and beauty. How you did seem to fill the dingy room with brightness and beauty, and what a contrast you were to me; and Theodore saw it, too, when he came in and found you there. But if there was a regret in his heart,—a sigh for what ought to have been, he never let it appear, but after you were gone, and only the delicate perfume of your garments lingered in the room, he came and sat by me and held my thin, hard hands, so unlike your soft white ones, and tried by his manner to make me believe he was _not_ sorry, and when I could stand it no longer, and said to him: ‘I am not much like her, Theo, am I?’ he guessed what was in my mind, and answered me so cheerily, ‘No, Mollie, not a bit like her. And how can you be, when your lives have been so different; hers all sunshine, and yours full of care, and toil, and pain. But you have borne it bravely, Mollie; better, I think, than Bee would have done.’ He called you Bee to me for the first time, and there was something in his voice, as he spoke the name, which told me how dear you had been to him once, if, indeed, you were not then. But he was so good, and kind, and tender toward me that I felt the jealousy giving way, though there was a little hardness left toward you, and that night after Theo was sleeping beside me I prayed and prayed that God would take it away, and He did, and I came at last to know you as you are, the dearest, noblest, most unselfish woman the world ever saw.”

“No, no, you must not say that. I am not good or unselfish; you don’t know me,” Bee cried, thinking remorsefully of the times when she had ridiculed the brown alpaca dress and the woman who wore it, and how often she had tired of her society, in which she really found no pleasure, such as she might have found elsewhere.

But she could not wound her by telling her this. She could only protest that she was not all Mrs. Morton believed her to be. But Mollie would not listen.

“You must be good,” she said, “or you would never have left your beautiful home and your friends and attached yourself to me, who am only a drag upon you. But sometime in the future you will be rewarded; and, forgive me, Miss Belknap, if I speak out plain, now, like one who stands close down to the river of death, and, looking back, can see what probably will be. I do not know how you feel toward Theo, but of this I am sure, he has never taken another into the place you once filled, and at a suitable time after I am gone he will repeat the words he said to you years ago, and if he does, don’t send him away a second time. He is nearer to your standard now than he was then. He is growing all the time in the estimation of his fellow-men. They are going to make him a D. D., and the parish of which he is pastor is one of the best and most highly cultivated in Boston. And you will go there, I hope, and be a mother to my children, and bring them up like you, for that will please Theo better than my homely ways. Trix is like you now, and Bunchie will learn, though she is slower to imitate. You will be happy with Theo,—and I am glad for him and the children; but you will not let them forget me quite, but will tell them sometimes of their mother, who loved them so much. I hoped to see Theo once more before I died, but something tells me he will not be here in time; that when he comes I shall be dead. So you will ask him to forget the many times I worried and fretted him with my petty cares and troubles. Tell him that Mollie puts her arms around his neck and lays her poor head, which will never ache again, against his good, kind heart, and so bids him good-by, and goes away alone into the brightness beyond, for it is all bright and peaceful; and just over the river I am crossing I seem to see the distant towers of ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ gleaming in the heavenly sunshine, which lies so warm upon the everlasting hills. And my babies are there waiting and watching for me. Sing, can’t you, ‘Will some one be at the beautiful gate, waiting and watching for me?’”

There was too heavy a sorrow in Beatrice’s heart, and her voice was too full of tears for her to sing to the dying woman, who clung so closely to her. But what _she_ could not do, little Trixey did for her. She had entered the room unobserved, followed by Bunchie, whose hands were full of the sweet wild-flowers they had gathered and brought to their mother, who was past caring for such things now. The yellow jessamine and wild honeysuckle lay unheeded upon her pillow, but at the sound of her children’s voices a spasm of intense pain passed for a moment over her face, and was succeeded by a smile of peace as she whispered again: “Somebody sing of the beautiful gate,” and instantly Trixey’s clear voice rang through the room, mingled with little Bunchie’s lisping, broken notes, as she, too, struck in and sang:

“Will any one be at the beautiful gate, Waiting and watching for me?”

Dear little ones, they did not know their mother was dying; but Beatrice did, and her tears fell like rain upon the pinched, white face pillowed on her arm, as she kissed the quivering lips, which whispered softly:

“Darling Trix and Bunchie,—God bless them!—and tell Theo Mollie will be at the beautiful gate, waiting and watching for him, and for you all,—waiting and watching as they now wait and watch for me over there, the shining ones, crowding on the shore, and some are there to whom I first told the story of Jesus in the far-off heathen land. Tell Theo they are there, and many whom he led to the Saviour. It is no delusion, as some have thought. I see them, I see into Heaven, and it is so near; it lies right side by side with this world, only a step between.”

Her mind was wandering a little, for her words became indistinct, until her voice ceased altogether, and Beatrice watched her as the last great struggle went on and the soul parted from the body, which was occasionally convulsed with pain, as if it were hard to sever the tie which bound together the mortal and immortal.

At last, just as the beautiful southern sunset flooded the river and the fields beyond with golden and rosy hues, and the fresh evening breeze came stealing into the room, laden with the perfume of the orange and lemon blossoms it had kissed on its way, Mollie Morton passed from the world where she had known so much care to the life immortal, where the shining ones were waiting and watching for her.

And far down the coast, threading in and out among the little islands and streams, came the boat which bore the Rev. Theodore Morton to the wife he hoped to find alive. Bee’s summons had found him busy with his people, with whom he was deservedly popular, and who bade him God-speed, and followed him with prayers for his own safety, and, if possible, the recovery of his wife, whom they had never seen. But this last was not to be, and when about noon the boat came up to its accustomed landing-place, and Bee stood on the wharf to meet him, he knew by one glance at her face that he had come too late. Everything which love could devise was done for the dead, on whose white face the husband’s tears fell fast when he first looked upon it, feeling, it may be, an inner consciousness of remorse as he remembered that all his heart had not been given to her. But he had been kind, and tender, and considerate, and he folded her children in his arms, and felt that in all the world there was nothing so dear to him as his motherless little ones.

The next day they left Florida for the bleak hills of Vermont, where the wintry winds and drifting snow seemed to howl a wild requiem for the dead woman, whose body rested one night in the old home where the white-haired father and mother wept so piteously over it, and even Aunt Nancy forgot to care for the tracks upon her clean kitchen floor, as the villagers came in with words of condolence and sympathy. Beatrice was with the mourners who stood by the grave that wild January day when Mollie Morton was buried, and she gave the message from the dead to the husband, who wept like a child when he saw his wife laid away under the blinding snow, which, ere the close of the day, covered the grave in one great mountain drift.

Both Everard and Rossie had written to Beatrice telling her of Josephine’s arrival at the Forrest House, and, with a feeling that she was needed in Rothsay, she started for home the day after Mollie’s funeral.

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