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PART III

The anniversary of Fannie’s bridal was the counterpart of the original. Sunny and genial, with here and there a white cloud floating near the horizon, denoting a long and happy married life, with but threatening troubles. How was the prophecy realized? Like all riddles of earthly solution, to the contrary?

The eight brothers, with faces of stern grief in the same old corner, side by side; the five sisters sobbing, tearful and quite overwhelmed with sorrow, sat opposite, Their eyes were fixed upon the same pair. Harwood knelt beside a couch in the middle of the room, and there lay Fannie; but how changed! They had all been summoned there, to see that new sister depart for another world; to see the young breath grow fainter and fainter; the bright eyes close for ever on them and their love. Oh! mystery of Life! thee we can know and understand; but, mystery of Death, dark and fearful, only thy chosen ones can comprehend thee. We walk to the verge of the valley of the shadow of death with those we love; but there our steps are stayed, and we look into the black void with wonder and despair. Oh! faith! if ye come not then to the rescue, that death is eternal.

Thus felt the thirteen; all older, care-worn, world-weary, standing beside the mere child-sister of the family, whose star of life was setting from their view behind an impassable mountain.

The sweet face was calm, but a hectic flush lay upon the cheek, as though some life-chord still bound her to earth.

“My child,” said the old white-haired physician, “if you have aught to say, speak now; when you will awaken from the sleep this draught will produce, it may then be too late.”

“My darling Fannie,” said the kneeling Harwood, “for my sake let no thoughts of earth disturb you; all will be well if–“

His voice was broken. He bowed his head upon the wasted hand he held, and wept.

“All will be well,” she said, smiling faintly. “I feel it now. Jessie, and you, elder brother, come near; nearer yet. I love you both, love you all. Having no relatives of my own, my husband’s are doubly mine. My heart, since our marriage-day, has been living in the hope of your reconciliation. I was too young; I undertook too much. I wept when my health began to fail; I did not then know that God was giving me my wish. I would have died to have seen you all happy. He has heard my prayer; the sacrifice is made; I go happy. Jessie, my dying wish is to see you once more the forgiving girl you were, when you knelt with your brothers at your mother’s knee. Oh! the chain of family love is never so rudely broken but it can be renewed. Jessie, the young lover, who died in his youth, would counsel you to forgive. The beloved parent would whisper, ‘love thy brother as thyself;’ He who bore the cross said ‘Father forgive them–.’ Jessie, a weak, dying girl begs you, for her sake, to be true to yourself.”

Jessie fell upon her brother’s neck, and wept. One universal sob arose from lip to lip. Brothers and sisters so long estranged, rushed into each other’s arms. Some cried aloud, others’ tears flowed silently: some there were, whose calm joys betrayed the disquietude of long years of disunion. They were all recalled by Harwood’s voice.

“Fannie! Fannie! This excitement will kill her.”

Half raised in the bed, her cheeks scarlet and eyes glowing with perfect delight, the sunlight making a halo around her head, was the young wife. She drank the draught the old physician gave her, with her eyes fixed on her husband. She murmured,

“‘Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.'”

With a sigh she dropped back upon the pillow; the eyes closed, the face became waxen white. Soon, those who watched could not tell her slumber from the sleep of death. Silence stole on tiptoe through the room, with her finger on her lip–