CHAPTER VII. CHRISTMAS-TIDE AND THE GOLDEN GATE.

 

"Oh, that thou didst look forward to the great hereafter with half the longing wherewith then longest for an earthly future!

"This a few days at the most will bring thee. Look forward to the meeting of the dead, as to the meeting of the absent."—Longfellow

 

AFTER the poet had finished, a sister whose face had been chiseled into expressive beauty by the hand of Duty, and ennobled by adverse experiences bravely met and overcome, said there was one chapter in her own life that might be of interest. The group awaited her story with a silence which more eloquently than words expressed their desire and attention.

 

My boy, my only child, was an idiot. I strove to believe otherwise; I nurtured fondly the least ray of hope, and flattered myself that his development was tardy, and after awhile he would be as other children. I did not know it at first, for all infants are nearly the same. They have their instinctive wants, and satisfy them in similar manner. I did not know, but I felt there was something at fault. How it dawned on me! At the time a child should stretch out its arms, and clutch at its mother's tresses, mine threw his aimlessly, and there was no recognition in his eyes, no sparkle of love, or tears of distress. They were blank, soulless eyes that made me shudder to look into. He grew in body, became strong, but walked uncertainly, unsteadily, as though objectless. At three be ought to have been able to talk—other children do—but he could only say "Mamma," with a pitiful sound like a bird's note.

 

I knew—I knew from the first, and I also knew that through me a sin had been incarnated, and that I must for life bear and suffer. My boy was an imbecile; the boy I had with a mother's fond dream expected with joy, and proudly fancied his future nobleness; imbecile to mantle my cheeks with shame, to need my constant attention, to be a thorn in my heart which could not be extracted.

 

And yet for no sin of mine—no wrong I had committed—was this affliction borne. No sin, unless it be a sin to love one who was my ideal of manliness; a promise of all a woman's heart most earnestly craves. Everything? I knew not that all his excellence of character was conquered by one habit, and at times he gave the rein into the hands of drink. I learned too soon his fatal thirst, but reckoned not that it would stamp its terrible impress on our child. I thought I should gain in my boy that which I lost in his father. I should have his society, enjoy his pleasures, and be proud of his success in the great world when he entered active life. It was all gone by. I sat down by the ashes of hope. I moaned as for one dead. Worse than dead, a thousand times worse than dead! A body that ate to live, not to think; a maw of flesh without a soul! O God! have mercy on me and my child! It was cruel and unjust to afflict him for his father's sake. It made me doubt the existence of God and right.

 

My boy grew with handsome face, but soulless. He reeled and staggered when he walked, and as he clung to my dress would look up with such a besotted leer—I could not help it—it made me creep and shiver. Men drink and become intoxicated; my poor child was born intoxicated. He knew not what soberness meant. His brain reeled and was benumbed and clouded. There were only despair and the bitter sadness of regret for me.

 

At ten years he was a tall lad, and by incessant labor I had taught him other words than mamma. He had begun to receive and express a few ideas, not complex, but of most simple form. He distinguished objects, and went on errands and was pleased to do so.

 

However aimless his other actions, his love for me was most fervent, and through his love I educated his sluggish faculties. As I toiled on, beating into his mind by painful repetition the simplest thoughts, I envied the mothers of the bright urchins who passed on their way to school. No words can express my sorrow, my remorse, my disappointment; the deep pity I felt, which nerved me to untiring effort for his improvement.

 

He was ten years old that autumn. We went one afternoon to the lake, a long blue expanse of water, reflecting every tint of the environing shore, as in a mirror. The frosts had touched the forests, and the trees were clothed in the fantastic glory of gold and carmine. A fine purple haze softened the distance, and fell like a veil over the remote hills and mountains. I talked of the trees and the flowers, and we listened to the songs of the birds yet delaying their flight to sunnier climes.

 

Time passed, and the sun was low in the west. Magnificent clouds, like vast robings, seemed to grow out of the purple sky, and across the fields of light were crimson bars and streaks of flame through which the sun sank like a great red globe on which the eye could undazzled rest The splendid scene touched even the stolid nature of my boy. His face glared with childish delight, and he cried:—

 

"Mamma, mamma, see!" "Yes, my dear Archie," I said, "I see. It is indeed beautiful. It will soon, like all bright things, turn to gloom. The night will come only too soon, and we must go home."

 

"The night," he repeated. "The night! Then it will be dark. Will the night come?"

"Very soon it will come. The Golden Gate of Day will close on the sun, and then it will be dark."

 

"The Golden Gate," he repeated musingly; "the Golden Gate! I see the bars, but not the gate. Mamma, who shuts the gate?"

 

My child never before had expressed an inquiry. My heart gave a great bound at this awakening of his intellect, I clasped him to my heart and, wept for joy. "At last," I cried, "at last he is awaking from his stupor, and I shall see him day by day grow mentally stronger." Brief was my moment of enjoyment, for with this one gleam of thought, like a star momentarily seen through a rift of cloud, he relapsed into stolidity, and when I took his hand to lead him home, he passively yielded, and, half supported, walked with the pitiful, uncertain step that made my heart quiver to see.

 

That night I was awakened by a low moan from the bed where Archie slept. It was like and yet unlike his voice. I hastily arose, and went to his side. He had thrown back the coverings, and his face was flushed with fever. He was ill, very ill, and it was useless to relate how rapidly he grew worse. How I watched and wept, and wept and prayed, and the disease advanced, until Hope closed her wings, and darkness brooded over me. Sitting by the side of my dying boy, justice and love seemed ruled out of the world, and life given only to bear the sting of pain.

 

It was midnight. The soft autumn days bad been succeeded by the days of storm, and the winds lashed the trees, and the rain beat against the windows with angry dashes. Midnight, when the great magnetic tides of the earth are in negative ebb, and the life forces are most depressed. I sat listening and thinking, in the half conscious, yet acutely sensitive mood induced by the torture of grief. The clock struck twelve; it seemed to me faster and harder than wont, and as its vibrations died away, I was startled by a call from my boy:—

 

"Mamma!" "Yes, darling."

 

"The Golden Gate!" He had raised himself on his arm, and looked above my head with a wrapt and intensely excited gaze. His expression had changed from stolidity to one of refined spiritual intelligence. His eyes were penetrated by a clear, angelic light, and his wavy hair framed his white face like an aureola.

 

"What will come now?" I involuntarily asked, as my fever-stricken boy was transformed into this vision of loveliness. His lips parted, and he made several efforts to speak without my being able to hear even a whisper. He threw up his arms; his hands seemed to clasp invisible ones, and then every vestige of the old stolidity vanished from his face. Through every feature, as though crystal, radiated the spiritual light of thought, animation, emotion, and affection.

 

"O mamma!" he cried in a voice softly inflected, unlike his old monotone. "O mamma! the beautiful lady will lead me away to the hills overlooking the lake, where we were at sunset. She says she will show me the golden gate where the sun passes through, and it will open for us, and we shall follow, and the spirits of the air will bring it together noiselessly. We saw the ban, dear mamma; the gate was closed. It will open when the lady leads me through the path from the hills along the edges of the clouds and down to the place where the sky kisses the sea. Is it not beautiful? And she says there is a group of children waiting for me, and we shall play the day long, and I shall learn from dear teachers who will come there, and no one will laugh at me, for I shall be free from the foolishness of this body."

 

His hand unclasped, and he fell back on his pillow exhausted.

I placed my hand on his forehead, and my heart was so full I could only caress the wet brow.

 

After a few minutes he opened his eyes and gazed wistfully at me for a long time.

 

"Mamma," he at length said, "your eyes are red and you have been weeping. You must not. I have been a great trouble to you. I have from pity received your lavished love. I gave you hope because I was preparing to die, not because I was outgrowing my deformity. Preparing to die, and the fool body loosened its hold on me. That is what the beautiful lady says. She approaches!" He again reached up his hands. He seemed lifted from the pillow. "I am going now, dear mamma. I do not know when I shall come back; where the lady chooses to lead I am going; to the sunset, through the golden gate, to the happy children—I love you, mamma—you must come to me—to the gate; its bars will open—and we shall—"

 

He did not finish, but fell on his pillow, leaving the sentence uncompleted. There was a slight sigh, and the radiance slowly faded from his face, which settled into an expression of sweet repose, as the flush went out of his cheeks and the whiteness of death stole over the waxen features.

 

I uttered no cry of grief. I am in doubt if I grieved or rejoiced. If the angels, gladly received him I ought not to mourn. He was still my child, refined, purified, spiritualized, with the dreadful taint of hereditary sin washed away. I had prayed for his restoration, and he had been restored; not after the manner of my desires, but perhaps in a better way!

 

I knew he was an angel with angels, and though I wept, my tears were like the drops the clouds let fall to reflect the rainbow's perfect glory.

 

Kind hands assisted to prepare the body for its final rest I combed his wavy hair, and placed a wild aster with mosses, such as he loved, on his breast. Some unknown friend lined the grave with evergreens. It was very thoughtful and kind, and the casket was placed gently in the prepared couch of leaves and flowers.

 

I heeded not the words of the preacher, "dust to dust," for I knew that here rested only the broken cage; my bird of song had escaped. I wept, for that body was all that was tangible to my senses; wept over the ashes of my earthly castles, but I had seen through the bars of the sunset, and knew that the clouds so black on one side were aflame with light on the other.

 

As time went by, I thought anxiously of my boy. Where was he? Did he return, or remember me? love me? Would I recognize him when we met? Or would we ever meet? Perhaps God's universe is so vast we might never meet! Never find each other, for he would be beguiled into new paths, the brightness and joy of which mortals cannot comprehend, and he will not wait for me. He will have traversed a long distance, that to me will be insurmountable, because I shall go in another direction! Thus I distressed myself with doubts and fears until the end came, and over the world darkness came like a veil. I fell to sleep that was not sleep; more profound, more absorbing. When I awoke a new light illuminated the world. It was with spiritual eyes I saw by rays of spiritual light, by spiritual ears I heard sounds in the spiritual atmosphere, and feeling became a refined consciousness, receptive of a thousand waves breaking on my being from the spirit ether.

 

I perceived a group of radiant beings, in the midst of whom was my boy, my Archie, matured in stature as in mind, as he would have been under the most favorable conditions of earth-life. He came and took my hands, and with a thrill of delight I arose out of the earthly body with a glad bound, and received the congratulations of the attendant angels. There came music from afar, like the sighing of winds among pines, with distant falling water and faint notes of birds, for the ether was tremulous with sweet sounds.

 

My Archie folded me in his arms and kissed my cheek, and said: "You are by the shadows, dear mother, and we will conduct you along the archway, through the Golden Gate, which allows joy to pass, but admits neither care nor sorrow."

 

I will supplement your heart story with an episode of yesterday, said a sister, who had before kept herself in retiring silence I was with my class of beautiful children, and describing to them the scenes of earth-life, and how in the coming Christmas-day the broken family circle would be reunited under the old home-tree, and around the warm hearth or social board the recollections of childhood would again be revived.

 

Of that group there were two who had no recollections of Christmas, for they had been transplanted in the earliest hour, and two others who only remembered the gifts of that time. Then spoke one, a slender girl, whose eyes were crystalline in the purity of thought they expressed: "If the family circle is to be reunited in my dear old home, then I ought to be there. Brother Ben will come from the West and sister from the East, and, oh! would it not be sweet to see the welcome they will receive!"

 

"And I, too, long to go," exclaimed another, "for it has been a whole year since I met the friends I left."

 

There were others who desired to go and others who did not, for the earth with its shadow and light had passed from them, and there was nothing to call them from their present uninterrupted delight.

 

Then the teacher said to the two anxious ones: "You may visit the earth and remain as long as you desire with your friends, but, while there you must record the most meritorious action you observe, and report when you return."

 

"How shall we find the earth and our homes?" asked the gratified angels in one voice.

 

"I will lead you," replied the teacher, and taking them by the hands the three passed away over the headlands and down the glittering way to the earth, which spread out like a vast map, with its green continents and dark seas beneath. Before they were aware, each one found herself in her old home, and tears wet their glad eyes at the sight of the familiar scenes. They mingled with their friends, but no one knew or recognized them; and they wearied, and went out into the street to observe the good deeds, the records of which they were to bear like a priceless treasure. After long wanderings they returned and bade their homes good-by, and impelled by volition, passed the ether like a flash of thought, and appeared before their teacher. They gave and received a hundred kisses, and the mellow voices of welcome floated out on the ambient air, where the flowers listened in their loveliness.

 

Then the eldest and tallest, whom they called Azalia, said, softly: "In the city were a great number of orphans, who bad no one to give them food or care for them, and when all the world were happy on Christmas, they were cold and hungry. A good lady heard of this, and in a large hall, where for once these orphans could be warm and comfortable, she brought them, and gave them a splendid dinner, like the best in the land."

 

"A noble deed of charity," replied the teacher, "and earth would be the better if there were more like her." Turning to the other, who was white as a white rose, she said: "What has our darling Camile to relate?"

 

"Of little importance to the deed of the great lady," replied Camile. "At the feast was a little boy, pale and ill-clad. He ate not the viands given him, but carried them to his mother, who was prostrated by overwork and famine in a cold and darksome attic, and although himself famishing, tasted not until she had satisfied her hunger."

 

The teacher threw her arms about her, drew her close, kissed her white forehead, and in a voice of sweetest melody said: "The deed you relate is worth ten thousand such as the great lady performed; for out of her abundance she gave, nor felt the loss or deprived herself of a single pleasure; she gave as a means of enjoyment; but the boy sacrificed himself for the good of another. He gave all he had, and that without expecting return, It is such deeds of love which make the night of earth hopeful of the brighter day."

 

"If mortals only knew," said Hero, sadly; "only knew the future, how much joy would come to their cup of sorrow! Death, the complement of life, and its extension to fields of vastly broader opportunities, did mortals know, would have no terrors, and the habiliments of woe would be exchanged for the flowers of gladness." She continued:—

 

"I saw a mother sitting by the bedside of her dying child. It was on a dark, tempestuous night. The icy garb of winter wrapped the cheerless earth. Nature seemed dead—all but the wild wind that roared through the sounding darkness! Oft there would be a pause, dull and sullen, in which the distant booming of the far-off forest could be heard like the ocean; then the next blast came on, gathering strength to dash in one terrific burst, pass on, and die in a long, fiendish wail. To the young mother, holding the hand of her dying child, it seemed like the revel of legions of troubled spirits. Closely she bent over the little pale face. She wrapped the clothing around the cold form, and clasped it with her arms.

 

Juline was a fond and devoted mother. So far her life had been one of unalloyed bliss. She, in youth, had been the idol of her parents. She was loved and loved in return the husband now sharing her grief beside her. Their darling boy was the great light of their hearts. He was the first and only representative of their unchanging love, and on him was poured without measure their parental affection. Never had a thought of separation from him occurred to them. They never dreamed of his dying. They lived in the present, and the future was begirt with bows of promise. How can parents otherwise than anticipate when their children bear their united lives to remotest future, and if their children are truly noble, how can they resist an adoring affection?

 

Diphtheria was abroad. Here it had broken an idol: there torn a beautiful vine ruthlessly from its trellis. But Juline was not alarmed; her boy was too healthy to be in danger. "It is only the frail who are taken," she said, "or those who have not proper care." She was not fearful of its approach. O mortal how easily allured by the phantasma of Hope! How duped by a wish which becomes not a reality!

 

October's haze had fallen in the month of November. Day after day, soft, mellow, dreamy, visited the earth, beautifully, sadly sweet, with the consciousness of age and winter of death. The frost yet spared the late flowers of autumn, and the hills were still green with maturing grasses. Suddenly the Snow King rode down from the North, faster than the fleet reindeer can travel. Around him rolled black clouds, and beneath him gathered the white snow. All the lingering souvenirs of summer were buried in a common grave. Many a bird of passage, beguiled into tarrying by the warm smiles of autumn, was buried with them.

 

Far more dreadful, the Snow King brought the fearful malady to many hearts, and only manifested his sympathy for the suffering in wailings. At night, Juline discovered her Albion unwell. His little frame felt the first scorch of fever. The next day he became hoarse and refused to swallow his food. At night the physician pronounced him beyond hope.

 

Juline spoke not a word when she heard his doom. She only took his little hand in hers. Oh, it was too much for so young a creature to combat with death! Death, old as Time, strong as Omnipotence. The little sufferer threw his hands upwards, and a smile, pure and sweet as the gleam of a star, flashed over his before agonized face. He raised his head from the pillow and cried, Grandma! grandma!" and fell back dead. But the smile remained, as the light of the sun already set gilds the mountain top. Just on the threshold of the Spirit-world all its divine beauty flashed on the spirit, and as it departed from the body it stamped it with its joy.

 

Juline uttered no wild cry, but with dry eyes she said like one in a dream:—

 

"I will not yield him to the grave! He shall not die and grow cold!"

 

"Oh! the darling," she moaned, "why should you be taken from me? I would pray to God, but there can be no God, else in his love and justice this would never have come! My darling, who never thought of wrong, suffering such cruel pain and burned by the fever till his precious life went out! Oh! I would have suffered a thousandfold, I would die so willingly if he would only breathe and speak again."

 

She bent over the sweet face, cold and still, as wax, yet reflecting a smile of angelic sweetness; his little hands over his breast holding flowers, callas, and tuberoses, which seemed plucked from some blooming garden in the angel land; the silky hair shaded the forehead; the blue eyes were as in sleep, they opened not at her call, nor would they ever open with the glad surprise that warmed her mother's heart. She bent over her babe and kissed the lips which gave no response. "A year old to-morrow!" she murmured; "a year which has been too full of joy. I ought to have known it could not last. If I thought it was my fault, my neglect, my sin for which my babe suffered, I could not endure it a moment. It is wrong, it is cruel, it is unjust! and to-morrow the sun will shine and the birds sing as though no life had gone out, no heart broken. The sun ought never to shine again, nor the silver moon, nor the birds sing."

 

She bowed low her head on the pillow by the side of that of the dead child, and her stifled sobs told of a sorrow such as only a mother can know. It was storming without, and the rain drifted against the window panes, and the wind wailed and moaned as it went by; a sad, sad night of storm as though nature wept, at the great wrong she had wrought.

 

The sobbing ceased. Did the worn watcher sleep? No, she did not sleep and yet she was not awake. She felt a sweet calm fall over her, and a balm was poured into her lacerated heart After a time an angel stood by her side. She could see the radiant features of that angel, and the re resplendent garments which draped her lovely form.

 

"Do not weep till you see the end," sweetly spoke the angel. "Do not say there is no love or justice until you know whereof you speak."

 

Then there came a series of pictures or a panorama moving before her, and the panorama was the life of her child, had he remained on earth. She saw him as a child, as a youth at school, as grown to manhood. As the scenes unrolled the background grew darker and more obscure, she became impressed with a choking grief, disappointment and despair mingled with hopelessness. The young man before her was handsome, and in his coarse outline could be traced the features of the babe, but how changed!

 

Desires and appetites and fiery passions had gained unbridled sway. She felt her influence had given way to stronger forces and he had drifted away from her.

 

She shuddered as she saw him yield to the persuasions of companions and lose his self-respect, his pride, his sense of right, and slowly the shadow of crime darkened the scene. Then came the overwhelming sense of remorse and the gnawing of regret, and the resolve for a better life; a resolve scarcely uttered until broken.

 

The last terrible scene was an interminable stretch of hills over which the fires had swept, leaving ashes, with here and there trunks of trees once green, but now shattered and blackened. On the gnarled roots of one of these sat an old man, with thin white hair, an unkempt beard, his face wrinkled, not so much with age as by the incisive chisel of depraved appetites. His tattered clothing afforded scant protection, and there was no one near to give the water and the food he craved. Night came and death at last, but the mother was spared the increasing sorrow of a view into the beyond. A profounder sleep came, and she saw her child borne in the arms of an angel and its eyes beamed with inquiry and surprise, for it comprehended not the change mortals know as death. A widening vista opened before her, and in the distance she saw an angel radiantly beautiful, wise and pure as the spotless raiment he wore, and like a refrain of sweetest music she heard his voice calling, "Mother."

 

Juline raised her eyes and saw the angel; her mother whom the child beheld in the last agony of death.

 

"And thy mission here, oh, mother?"

 

"To bear thy child to the sphere of purity."

 

Conscious that all was well, she awoke, smiling, weeping, sighing:—

 

"It is best—it is best. I resign him without a murmur to the care of those who are better than I."

 

The neighbors who kindly came to perform the last Offices of the living for the dead were surprised at her cheerfulness, and many cold hearts spoke of her indifference. Ah, they knew not that an angel had been with her, and opened her soul to a knowledge of heavenly things.