<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII"></SPAN>CHAPTER XLIII</h2>
<h3>THE PEARL</h3>
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_393" id="Page_393"></SPAN></span>The next morning rose calm and bright with that wonderful
and mystical stillness and serenity which glorify autumn
days. It was impossible that such skies could smile
and such gentle airs blow the sea into one great waving
floor of sparkling sapphires without bringing cheerfulness
to human hearts. You must be very despairing indeed,
when Nature is doing her best, to look her in the face sullen
and defiant. So long as there is a drop of good in your
cup, a penny in your exchequer of happiness, a bright day
reminds you to look at it, and feel that all is not gone yet.</p>
<p>So felt Moses when he stood in the door of the brown
house, while Mrs. Pennel was clinking plates and spoons
as she set the breakfast-table, and Zephaniah Pennel in his
shirt-sleeves was washing in the back-room, while Miss
Roxy came downstairs in a business-like fashion, bringing
sundry bowls, plates, dishes, and mysterious pitchers from
the sick-room.</p>
<p>"Well, Aunt Roxy, you ain't one that lets the grass
grow under your feet," said Mrs. Pennel. "How is the
dear child, this morning?"</p>
<p>"Well, she had a better night than one could have expected,"
said Miss Roxy, "and by the time she's had her
breakfast, she expects to sit up a little and see her friends."
Miss Roxy said this in a cheerful tone, looking encouragingly
at Moses, whom she began to pity and patronize,
now she saw how real was his affliction.</p>
<p>After breakfast Moses went to see her; she was sitting<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_394" id="Page_394"></SPAN></span>
up in her white dressing-gown, looking so thin and poorly,
and everything in the room was fragrant with the spicy
smell of the monthly roses, whose late buds and blossoms
Miss Roxy had gathered for the vases. She seemed so
natural, so calm and cheerful, so interested in all that went
on around her, that one almost forgot that the time of her
stay must be so short. She called Moses to come and look
at her drawings, and paintings of flowers and birds,—full
of reminders they were of old times,—and then she would
have her pencils and colors, and work a little on a bunch
of red rock-columbine, that she had begun to do for him;
and she chatted of all the old familiar places where flowers
grew, and of the old talks they had had there, till Moses
quite forgot himself; forgot that he was in a sick room, till
Aunt Roxy, warned by the deepening color on Mara's
cheeks, interposed her "nussing" authority, that she must
do no more that day.</p>
<p>Then Moses laid her down, and arranged her pillows so
that she could look out on the sea, and sat and read to her
till it was time for her afternoon nap; and when the evening
shadows drew on, he marveled with himself how the
day had gone.</p>
<p>Many such there were, all that pleasant month of September,
and he was with her all the time, watching her
wants and doing her bidding,—reading over and over with
a softened modulation her favorite hymns and chapters,
arranging her flowers, and bringing her home wild bouquets
from all her favorite wood-haunts, which made her sick-room
seem like some sylvan bower. Sally Kittridge was
there too, almost every day, with always some friendly
offering or some helpful deed of kindness, and sometimes
they two together would keep guard over the invalid while
Miss Roxy went home to attend to some of her own more
peculiar concerns. Mara seemed to rule all around her
with calm sweetness and wisdom, speaking unconsciously<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_395" id="Page_395"></SPAN></span>
only the speech of heaven, talking of spiritual things, not
in an excited rapture or wild ecstasy, but with the sober
certainty of waking bliss. She seemed like one of the
sweet friendly angels one reads of in the Old Testament,
so lovingly companionable, walking and talking, eating
and drinking, with mortals, yet ready at any unknown
moment to ascend with the flame of some sacrifice and be
gone. There are those (a few at least) whose blessing it
has been to have kept for many days, in bonds of earthly
fellowship, a perfected spirit in whom the work of purifying
love was wholly done, who lived in calm victory over
sin and sorrow and death, ready at any moment to be called
to the final mystery of joy.</p>
<p>Yet it must come at last, the moment when heaven
claims its own, and it came at last in the cottage on Orr's
Island. There came a day when the room so sacredly
cheerful was hushed to a breathless stillness; the bed was
then all snowy white, and that soft still sealed face, the
parted waves of golden hair, the little hands folded over
the white robe, all had a sacred and wonderful calm, a rapture
of repose that seemed to say "it is done."</p>
<p>They who looked on her wondered; it was a look that
sunk deep into every heart; it hushed down the common
cant of those who, according to country custom, went to
stare blindly at the great mystery of death,—for all that
came out of that chamber smote upon their breasts and
went away in silence, revolving strangely whence might
come that unearthly beauty, that celestial joy.</p>
<p>Once more, in that very room where James and Naomi
Lincoln had lain side by side in their coffins, sleeping restfully,
there was laid another form, shrouded and coffined,
but with such a fairness and tender purity, such a mysterious
fullness of joy in its expression, that it seemed more
natural to speak of that rest as some higher form of life
than of death.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_396" id="Page_396"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>Once more were gathered the neighborhood; all the
faces known in this history shone out in one solemn picture,
of which that sweet restful form was the centre.
Zephaniah Pennel and Mary his wife, Moses and Sally,
the dry form of Captain Kittridge and the solemn face of
his wife, Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, Miss Emily and Mr.
Sewell; but their faces all wore a tender brightness, such
as we see falling like a thin celestial veil over all the faces
in an old Florentine painting. The room was full of sweet
memories, of words of cheer, words of assurance, words of
triumph, and the mysterious brightness of that young face
forbade them to weep. Solemnly Mr. Sewell read,—</p>
<p>"He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord
God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke
of his people shall he take away from off all the
earth; for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be said
in that day, Lo this is our God; we have waited for him,
and he will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for
him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation."</p>
<p>Then the prayer trembled up to heaven with thanksgiving,
for the early entrance of that fair young saint into
glory, and then the same old funeral hymn, with its mournful
triumph:—</p>
<p style="margin-left:2em">
"Why should we mourn departed friends,<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or shake at death's alarms,</span><br/>
'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To call them to his arms."</span><br/></p>
<p>Then in a few words Mr. Sewell reminded them how
that hymn had been sung in this room so many years ago,
when that frail, fluttering orphan soul had been baptized
into the love and care of Jesus, and how her whole life,
passing before them in its simplicity and beauty, had come
to so holy and beautiful a close; and when, pointing to
the calm sleeping face he asked, "Would we call her
back?" there was not a heart at that moment that dared<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_397" id="Page_397"></SPAN></span>
answer, Yes. Even he that should have been her bridegroom
could not at that moment have unsealed the holy
charm, and so they bore her away, and laid the calm smiling
face beneath the soil, by the side of poor Dolores.</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>"I had a beautiful dream last night," said Zephaniah
Pennel, the next morning after the funeral, as he opened
his Bible to conduct family worship.</p>
<p>"What was it?" said Miss Roxy.</p>
<p>"Well, ye see, I thought I was out a-walkin' up and
down, and lookin' and lookin' for something that I'd lost.
What it was I couldn't quite make out, but my heart felt
heavy as if it would break, and I was lookin' all up and
down the sands by the seashore, and somebody said I was
like the merchantman, seeking goodly pearls. I said I had
lost my pearl—my pearl of great price—and then I
looked up, and far off on the beach, shining softly on the
wet sands, lay my pearl. I thought it was Mara, but it
seemed a great pearl with a soft moonlight on it; and I
was running for it when some one said 'hush,' and I
looked and I saw <i>Him</i> a-coming—Jesus of Nazareth, jist
as he walked by the sea of Galilee. It was all dark night
around Him, but I could see Him by the light that came
from his face, and the long hair was hanging down on his
shoulders. He came and took up my pearl and put it on
his forehead, and it shone out like a star, and shone into
my heart, and I felt happy; and he looked at me steadily,
and rose and rose in the air, and melted in the clouds, and
I awoke so happy, and so calm!"</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />