Bab Bab 24 · Foreshadowings

. Foreshadowings

Two days after this, Alfred St. Clare and Augustine parted; and Eva,

who had been stimulated, by the society of her young cousin, to

exertions beyond her strength, began to fail rapidly. St. Clare was at

last willing to call in medical advice,—a thing from which he had

always shrunk, because it was the admission of an unwelcome truth.

But, for a day or two, Eva was so unwell as to be confined to the

house; and the doctor was called.

Marie St. Clare had taken no notice of the child’s gradually decaying

health and strength, because she was completely absorbed in studying

out two or three new forms of disease to which she believed she herself

was a victim. It was the first principle of Marie’s belief that nobody

ever was or could be so great a sufferer as _herself_; and, therefore,

she always repelled quite indignantly any suggestion that any one

around her could be sick. She was always sure, in such a case, that it

was nothing but laziness, or want of energy; and that, if they had had

the suffering _she_ had, they would soon know the difference.

Miss Ophelia had several times tried to awaken her maternal fears about

Eva; but to no avail.

“I don’t see as anything ails the child,” she would say; “she runs

about, and plays.”

“But she has a cough.”

“Cough! you don’t need to tell _me_ about a cough. I’ve always been

subject to a cough, all my days. When I was of Eva’s age, they thought

I was in a consumption. Night after night, Mammy used to sit up with

me. O! Eva’s cough is not anything.”

“But she gets weak, and is short-breathed.”

“Law! I’ve had that, years and years; it’s only a nervous affection.”

“But she sweats so, nights!”

“Well, I have, these ten years. Very often, night after night, my

clothes will be wringing wet. There won’t be a dry thread in my

night-clothes and the sheets will be so that Mammy has to hang them up

to dry! Eva doesn’t sweat anything like that!”

Miss Ophelia shut her mouth for a season. But, now that Eva was fairly

and visibly prostrated, and a doctor called, Marie, all on a sudden,

took a new turn.

“She knew it,” she said; “she always felt it, that she was destined to

be the most miserable of mothers. Here she was, with her wretched

health, and her only darling child going down to the grave before her

eyes;”—and Marie routed up Mammy nights, and rumpussed and scolded,

with more energy than ever, all day, on the strength of this new

misery.

“My dear Marie, don’t talk so!” said St. Clare. “You ought not to give

up the case so, at once.”

“You have not a mother’s feelings, St. Clare! You never could

understand me!—you don’t now.”

“But don’t talk so, as if it were a gone case!”

“I can’t take it as indifferently as you can, St. Clare. If _you_ don’t

feel when your only child is in this alarming state, I do. It’s a blow

too much for me, with all I was bearing before.”

“It’s true,” said St. Clare, “that Eva is very delicate, _that_ I

always knew; and that she has grown so rapidly as to exhaust her

strength; and that her situation is critical. But just now she is only

prostrated by the heat of the weather, and by the excitement of her

cousin’s visit, and the exertions she made. The physician says there is

room for hope.”

“Well, of course, if you can look on the bright side, pray do; it’s a

mercy if people haven’t sensitive feelings, in this world. I am sure I

wish I didn’t feel as I do; it only makes me completely wretched! I

wish I _could_ be as easy as the rest of you!”

And the “rest of them” had good reason to breathe the same prayer, for

Marie paraded her new misery as the reason and apology for all sorts of

inflictions on every one about her. Every word that was spoken by

anybody, everything that was done or was not done everywhere, was only

a new proof that she was surrounded by hard-hearted, insensible beings,

who were unmindful of her peculiar sorrows. Poor Eva heard some of

these speeches; and nearly cried her little eyes out, in pity for her

mamma, and in sorrow that she should make her so much distress.

In a week or two, there was a great improvement of symptoms,—one of

those deceitful lulls, by which her inexorable disease so often

beguiles the anxious heart, even on the verge of the grave. Eva’s step

was again in the garden,—in the balconies; she played and laughed

again,—and her father, in a transport, declared that they should soon

have her as hearty as anybody. Miss Ophelia and the physician alone

felt no encouragement from this illusive truce. There was one other

heart, too, that felt the same certainty, and that was the little heart

of Eva. What is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so

clearly, that its earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of

decaying nature, or the soul’s impulsive throb, as immortality draws

on? Be it what it may, it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet,

prophetic certainty that Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset,

sweet as the bright stillness of autumn, there her little heart

reposed, only troubled by sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.

For the child, though nursed so tenderly, and though life was unfolding

before her with every brightness that love and wealth could give, had

no regret for herself in dying.

In that book which she and her simple old friend had read so much

together, she had seen and taken to her young heart the image of one

who loved the little child; and, as she gazed and mused, He had ceased

to be an image and a picture of the distant past, and come to be a

living, all-surrounding reality. His love enfolded her childish heart

with more than mortal tenderness; and it was to Him, she said, she was

going, and to his home.

But her heart yearned with sad tenderness for all that she was to leave

behind. Her father most,—for Eva, though she never distinctly thought

so, had an instinctive perception that she was more in his heart than

any other. She loved her mother because she was so loving a creature,

and all the selfishness that she had seen in her only saddened and

perplexed her; for she had a child’s implicit trust that her mother

could not do wrong. There was something about her that Eva never could

make out; and she always smoothed it over with thinking that, after

all, it was mamma, and she loved her very dearly indeed.

She felt, too, for those fond, faithful servants, to whom she was as

daylight and sunshine. Children do not usually generalize; but Eva was

an uncommonly mature child, and the things that she had witnessed of

the evils of the system under which they were living had fallen, one by

one, into the depths of her thoughtful, pondering heart. She had vague

longings to do something for them,—to bless and save not only them, but

all in their condition,—longings that contrasted sadly with the

feebleness of her little frame.

“Uncle Tom,” she said, one day, when she was reading to her friend, “I

can understand why Jesus _wanted_ to die for us.”

“Why, Miss Eva?”

“Because I’ve felt so, too.”

“What is it Miss Eva?—I don’t understand.”

“I can’t tell you; but, when I saw those poor creatures on the boat,

you know, when you came up and I,—some had lost their mothers, and some

their husbands, and some mothers cried for their little children—and

when I heard about poor Prue,—oh, wasn’t that dreadful!—and a great

many other times, I’ve felt that I would be glad to die, if my dying

could stop all this misery. _I would_ die for them, Tom, if I could,”

said the child, earnestly, laying her little thin hand on his.

Tom looked at the child with awe; and when she, hearing her father’s

voice, glided away, he wiped his eyes many times, as he looked after

her.

“It’s jest no use tryin’ to keep Miss Eva here,” he said to Mammy, whom

he met a moment after. “She’s got the Lord’s mark in her forehead.”

“Ah, yes, yes,” said Mammy, raising her hands; “I’ve allers said so.

She wasn’t never like a child that’s to live—there was allers something

deep in her eyes. I’ve told Missis so, many the time; it’s a comin’

true,—we all sees it,—dear, little, blessed lamb!”

Eva came tripping up the verandah steps to her father. It was late in

the afternoon, and the rays of the sun formed a kind of glory behind

her, as she came forward in her white dress, with her golden hair and

glowing cheeks, her eyes unnaturally bright with the slow fever that

burned in her veins.

St. Clare had called her to show a statuette that he had been buying

for her; but her appearance, as she came on, impressed him suddenly and

painfully. There is a kind of beauty so intense, yet so fragile, that

we cannot bear to look at it. Her father folded her suddenly in his

arms, and almost forgot what he was going to tell her.

“Eva, dear, you are better now-a-days,—are you not?”

“Papa,” said Eva, with sudden firmness “I’ve had things I wanted to say

to you, a great while. I want to say them now, before I get weaker.”

St. Clare trembled as Eva seated herself in his lap. She laid her head

on his bosom, and said,

“It’s all no use, papa, to keep it to myself any longer. The time is

coming that I am going to leave you. I am going, and never to come

back!” and Eva sobbed.

“O, now, my dear little Eva!” said St. Clare, trembling as he spoke,

but speaking cheerfully, “you’ve got nervous and low-spirited; you

mustn’t indulge such gloomy thoughts. See here, I’ve bought a statuette

for you!”

“No, papa,” said Eva, putting it gently away, “don’t deceive

yourself!—I am _not_ any better, I know it perfectly well,—and I am

going, before long. I am not nervous,—I am not low-spirited. If it were

not for you, papa, and my friends, I should be perfectly happy. I want

to go,—I long to go!”

“Why, dear child, what has made your poor little heart so sad? You have

had everything, to make you happy, that could be given you.”

“I had rather be in heaven; though, only for my friends’ sake, I would

be willing to live. There are a great many things here that make me

sad, that seem dreadful to me; I had rather be there; but I don’t want

to leave you,—it almost breaks my heart!”

“What makes you sad, and seems dreadful, Eva?”

“O, things that are done, and done all the time. I feel sad for our

poor people; they love me dearly, and they are all good and kind to me.

I wish, papa, they were all _free_.”

“Why, Eva, child, don’t you think they are well enough off now?”

“O, but, papa, if anything should happen to you, what would become of

them? There are very few men like you, papa. Uncle Alfred isn’t like

you, and mamma isn’t; and then, think of poor old Prue’s owners! What

horrid things people do, and can do!” and Eva shuddered.

“My dear child, you are too sensitive. I’m sorry I ever let you hear

such stories.”

“O, that’s what troubles me, papa. You want me to live so happy, and

never to have any pain,—never suffer anything,—not even hear a sad

story, when other poor creatures have nothing but pain and sorrow, all

their lives;—it seems selfish. I ought to know such things, I ought to

feel about them! Such things always sunk into my heart; they went down

deep; I’ve thought and thought about them. Papa, isn’t there any way to

have all slaves made free?”

“That’s a difficult question, dearest. There’s no doubt that this way

is a very bad one; a great many people think so; I do myself; I heartily

wish that there were not a slave in the land; but, then, I don’t know

what is to be done about it!”

“Papa, you are such a good man, and so noble, and kind, and you always

have a way of saying things that is so pleasant, couldn’t you go all

round and try to persuade people to do right about this? When I am

dead, papa, then you will think of me, and do it for my sake. I would

do it, if I could.”

“When you are dead, Eva,” said St. Clare, passionately. “O, child,

don’t talk to me so! You are all I have on earth.”

“Poor old Prue’s child was all that she had,—and yet she had to hear it

crying, and she couldn’t help it! Papa, these poor creatures love their

children as much as you do me. O! do something for them! There’s poor

Mammy loves her children; I’ve seen her cry when she talked about them.

And Tom loves his children; and it’s dreadful, papa, that such things

are happening, all the time!”

“There, there, darling,” said St. Clare, soothingly; “only don’t

distress yourself, don’t talk of dying, and I will do anything you

wish.”

“And promise me, dear father, that Tom shall have his freedom as soon

as”—she stopped, and said, in a hesitating tone—“I am gone!”

“Yes, dear, I will do anything in the world,—anything you could ask me

to.”

“Dear papa,” said the child, laying her burning cheek against his, “how

I wish we could go together!”

“Where, dearest?” said St. Clare.

“To our Saviour’s home; it’s so sweet and peaceful there—it is all so

loving there!” The child spoke unconsciously, as of a place where she

had often been. “Don’t you want to go, papa?” she said.

St. Clare drew her closer to him, but was silent.

“You will come to me,” said the child, speaking in a voice of calm

certainty which she often used unconsciously.

“I shall come after you. I shall not forget you.”

The shadows of the solemn evening closed round them deeper and deeper,

as St. Clare sat silently holding the little frail form to his bosom.

He saw no more the deep eyes, but the voice came over him as a spirit

voice, and, as in a sort of judgment vision, his whole past life rose

in a moment before his eyes: his mother’s prayers and hymns; his own

early yearnings and aspirings for good; and, between them and this

hour, years of worldliness and scepticism, and what man calls

respectable living. We can think _much_, very much, in a moment. St.

Clare saw and felt many things, but spoke nothing; and, as it grew

darker, he took his child to her bed-room; and, when she was prepared

for rest; he sent away the attendants, and rocked her in his arms, and

sung to her till she was asleep.