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The Mansion
by
For a long time he sat there watching and wondering. It was a very different world from that in which his mansion on the Avenue was built; and it looked strange to him, but most real–as real as anything he had ever seen. Presently he felt a strong desire to know what country it was and where the people were going. He had a faint premonition of what it must be, but he wished to be sure. So he rose from the stone where he was sitting, and came down through the short grass and the lavender flowers, toward a passing group of people. One of them turned to meet him, and held out his hand. It was an old man, under whose white beard and brows John Weightman thought he saw a suggestion of the face of the village doctor who had cared for him years ago, when he was a boy in the country.
“Welcome,” said the old man. “Will you come with us?”
“Where are you going?”
“To the heavenly city, to see our mansions there.”
“And who are these with you?”
“Strangers to me, until a little while ago; I know them better now. But you I have known for a long time, John Weightman. Don’t you remember your old doctor?”
“Yes,” he cried–“yes; your voice has not changed at all. I’m glad indeed to see you, Doctor McLean, especially now. All this seems very strange to me, almost oppressive. I wonder if–but may I go with you, do you suppose?”
“Surely,” answered the doctor, with his familiar smile; “it will do you good. And you also must have a mansion in the city waiting for you–a fine one, too–are you not looking forward to it?”
“Yes,” replied the other, hesitating a moment; “yes–I believe it must be so, although I had not expected to see it so soon. But I will go with you, and we can talk by the way.”
The two men quickly caught up with the other people, and all went forward together along the road. The doctor had little to tell of his experience, for it had been a plain, hard life, uneventfully spent for others, and the story of the village was very simple. John Weightman’s adventures and triumphs would have made a far richer, more imposing history,
full of contacts with the great events and personages of the time. But somehow or other he did not care to speak much about it, walking on that wide heavenly moorland, under that tranquil, sunless arch of blue, in that free air of perfect peace, where the light was diffused without a shadow, as if the spirit of life in all things were luminous.
There was only one person besides the doctor in that little company whom John Weightman had known before–an old bookkeeper who had spent his life over a desk, carefully keeping accounts–a rusty, dull little man, patient and narrow, whose wife had been in the insane asylum for twenty years and whose only child was a crippled daughter, for whose comfort and happiness he had toiled and sacrificed himself without stint. It was a surprise to find him here, as care-free and joyful as the rest.
The lives of others in the company were revealed in brief glimpses as they talked together–a mother, early widowed, who had kept her little flock of children together and labored through hard and heavy years to bring them up in purity and knowledge–a Sister of Charity who had devoted herself to the nursing of poor folk who were being eaten to death by cancer–a schoolmaster whose heart and life had been poured into his quiet work of training boys for a clean and thoughtful manhood–a medical missionary who had given up a brilliant career in science to take the charge of a hospital in
darkest Africa–a beautiful woman with silver hair who had resigned her dreams of love and marriage to care for an invalid father, and after his death had made her life a long, steady search for ways of doing kindnesses to others–a poet who had walked among the crowded tenements of the great city, bringing cheer and comfort not only by his songs, but by his wise and patient works of practical aid–a paralyzed woman who had lain for thirty years upon her bed, helpless but not hopeless, succeeding by a miracle of courage in her single aim, never to complain, but always to impart a bit of joy and peace to