Children -- Death -- Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Farm life -- Juvenile fiction; Siblings -- Juvenile fiction
Elizabeth met the clear intent eye which, she did not know
why, fixed hers while he spoke; and then dropping her own,
trembled greatly with constrained feeling. She could not tell
in the least how to answer, either words or look; but it would
have been impossible for her to stir an inch from the spot
where she stood.
"Does it seem terrible to you?" he said. "It need not. Will
you see her?"
Elizabeth wished very strongly not; but as she hesitated how
to speak, he had gently taken her hand and was leading her
forward out of the room; and Elizabeth could not draw away her
hand nor hinder the action of his; she let him lead her
whither he would.
"Are you afraid?" he said, as he paused with his hand upon the
door of the other room. Elizabeth uttered an incomprehensible
'no,' and they went in.
"There is no need," he said again in a gentle grave tone as he
led her to the side of the bed and then let go her hand.
Elizabeth stood where he had placed her, like a person under a
spell.
'There was no need' indeed, she confessed to herself, half
unconsciously, for all her thoughts were in a terrible whirl.
Winnie's face looked as though it might have been the prison
of a released angel. Nothing but its sweetness and purity was
left, of all that disease and weariness had ever wrought
there; the very fair and delicate skin and the clustering
sunny locks seemed like angel trappings left behind. Innocence
and rest were the two prevailing expressions of the face, --
entire, both seemed. Elizabeth stood looking, at first awe-
stricken; but presently thoughts and feelings, many and
different ones, began to rise and crowd upon one another with
struggling force. She stood still and motionless, all the
more.
"There is no pain in looking there?" said her companion
softly. Elizabeth's lips formed the same unintelligible 'no,'
which her voice failed to bring out.
"Little sleeper!" said Winthrop, combing back with his fingers
the golden curls, which returned instantly to their former
position, -- "she has done her work. She has begun upon her
rest. I have reason to thank God that ever she lived. -- I
shall see the day when I can quietly thank him that she has
died."
Elizabeth trembled, and in her heart prayed Winthrop not to
say another word.
"Does not this face look, Miss Haye, as if its once owner had
'entered into peace?'"
If worlds had depended on Elizabeth's answering, she could not
have spoken. She could not look at the eye which, she knew, as
this question was put, sought hers; her own rested only on the
hand that was moving back those golden locks, and on the white
brow it touched; she dared not stir. The contact of those two,
and the signification of them, was as much as she could bear,
without any help. She knew his eye was upon her.
"Isn't it worth while," he said, "to have such a sure foothold
in that other world, that the signal for removing thither
shall be a signal of _peace?_"
Elizabeth bowed her head low in answer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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