Bessie's Fortune. Mary Jane Holmes
Europe, which he hoped to visit some day, in company with his sister.
"Not that I can ever see them," he said, "but I shall know just how they look, because you will describe them so vividly, and I can hear the dash of the sea at Naples, and feel the old pavements in Pompeii, and the hot lava of Vesuvius. And, oh, perhaps we will go to the Holy Land, and stand just where Christ once stood, and you will see the hills He looked upon, and the spot on which He suffered. And I shall be so glad and somehow feel nearer to Him. And, oh, if He could be there as He was once—a man, you know—I'd cry to Him louder than ever old Bartimeus did, and tell Him I was a little blind boy from America, but that I loved Him, and wanted Him to make me see. And He would, I know."
Such were the dreams of the enthusiastic boy, but they were never to be realized. Always delicate as a child, he grew more and more so as he became older, so that at last all mental labor was put aside, and when he was sixteen, and Lucy nineteen, they took him to St. Augustine, where he could hear the moan of the sea and fancy it was the Mediterranean in far-off Italy. Lucy was of course with him, and made him see everything with her eyes, and took him to the old fort and led him upon the sea wall and through the narrow streets and out beneath the orange trees, where he liked best to sit and feel the soft, warm air upon his face and inhale the sweet perfume of the southern flowers.
But all this did not give him strength. On the contrary, the hectic flush on his cheek deepened daily, his hands grew thinner and paler, and the eyelids seemed to droop more heavily over the sightless eyes. Robin was going to die, and he knew it, and talked of it freely with his sister, and of Heaven, where Christ would make him whole.
"It will be such joy to see," he said to her one night when they sat together by the window of his room, with the silvery moonlight falling on his beautiful face and making it like the face of an angel. "Such joy to see again, and the very first one I shall look at after Christ and mother, will be old blind Bartimeus, who sat by the roadside and begged. I have not had to do that, and my life has been very, very happy, for you have been my eyes, and made me see everything. You know I have a faint recollection of the grass, and the flowers, and the trees in the park, and that has helped me so much; and I have you in my mind, too, and you are so lovely I know, for I have heard people talk of your sweet face and beautiful eyes; starry eyes I have heard them called."
"Oh, Robbie, Robbie, don't!" came like cry of pain from Lucy's quivering lips. But Robin did not heed her, and went on:
"Starry eyes—that's just what they are, I think; and I can imagine how lovingly they look at me, and how pityingly, too. There is always something so sad in your voice when you speak to me, and I say to myself, 'That's how Lucy's eyes look at me, just as her voice sounds when it says brother Robbie.' I shall know you in heaven, the moment you come, and I shall be waiting for you, and when I see your eyes I shall say, 'That is sister Lucy, come at last!' Oh, it will be such joy!—no night, no blindness, no pain, and you with me again as you have been here, only there, I shall be the guide, and lead you through the green pastures beside the still waters, where never-fading flowers are blooming sweeter than the orange blossoms near our window."
Lucy was sobbing hysterically, with her head in his lap, while he smoothed the dark braids of her hair, and tried to comfort her by asking if she ought not to be glad that he was going where there was no more night for him, and where she, too, would join him in a little while.
"It is not that!" Lucy cried, "though it breaks my heart to think of you gone forever. How can I live without you? What shall I do when my expiatory work is finished?"
"Expiatory work?" Robin repeated, questioningly. "What do you mean? What have you to expiate?—you, the noblest, most unselfish sister in the world!"
"Much, much. Oh, Robbie, I cannot let you die with this upon my mind, even if the confession turn your love for me into hate—and you do love me, I have made your life a little less sad than it might have been but for me."
"Yes, sister, you have made my life so full of happiness that, darkened as it is, I would like to cling to it longer, though I know heaven is so much better."
"Thank you, Robbie—thank you for that" Lucy said; then, lifting up her head, and looking straight into her brother's face, she continued: "You say you have a faint recollection of the grass, and the flowers, and the trees in the park. Have you also any remembrance, however slight, how I looked when we were little children playing together at home?"
"I don't know for sure," Robin replied, while for an instant a deep flush stained his pale cheeks: "I don't know for sure. Sometimes out of those dim shadows of the past which I have struggled so hard to retain, there comes a vision of a little girl—or, rather, there is a picture which comes before my mind more distinct than the grass, and the trees, and the flowers, though I always try to put it away; but it repeats itself over and over again, and I see it in my dreams so vividly, and especially of late, when life is slipping from me."
"What is the picture?" Lucy said, and her face was whiter than the one above her.
"It is this," Robin replied. "I seem to see myself looking up, with outstretched arms, toward a little girl who is standing above me, looking down at me with a face which cannot—cannot be the one I shall welcome to heaven and know as my sister's; for this in the picture has a cruel expression on it, and there is hatred in the eyes, which are so large and black, and stare so fixedly at me. Then there is a crash, and darkness, and a horrible pain, and loud cries, and the eyes fade away in the blackness, and I know no more till you are sobbing over me and begging me to say that I can see you. I remember that, I am sure, or else it has been told me so often that it seems as if I did; but the other, the face above me, is all a fancy and a delusion of the brain. You never looked at me that way—never could."
Here he paused, and the girl beside him withdrew herself from him, and clasping her hands tightly together, knelt abjectly at his feet as she said:
"Oh, Robbie, Robbie! my darling, if you could know with what shame, and anguish, and remorse I am kneeling before you, you would pity and perhaps forgive me when I have told you what I must tell you now. But don't touch me—don't put your hands upon me, for that would quite unnerve me," she continued, as she saw the thin hands groping to find her. "Sit quite still and listen, and then, if you do not loathe me with a loathing unutterable, call me sister once more, and that will be enough."
The old cathedral clock was striking twelve when that interview ended, and when it struck the hour of midnight again Robin Grey lay dead in the room which looked toward the sea, and the soft south wind, sweet with the perfume of roses and orange blossoms, kissed his white face and stirred the thick curls of golden hair clustering about his brow. As is often the case with consumptives, his death had been sudden at the last, so sudden that Lucy scarcely realized that he was dying, until she held him dead upon her bosom. But so long as life lasted he kept repeating her name in accents of unutterable tenderness and love.
"Lucy, Lucy, my precious sister, God bless you for all you have been to me, and comfort you when I am gone, darling, darling Lucy, I love you so much; Lucy, Lucy, Lucy where are you? You must not leave me. Give me your hand till I reach the river-bank where the angels are waiting for me, I can see them and the beautiful city over the dark river, though I can't see you; but I shall in heaven, and I am almost there. Good-by, good-by, Lucy."
It almost seemed as if, he were calling to her from the other world, for death came and froze her name upon his lips which never moved again, and Lucy's work was done. Other hands than hers cared for the dead body, which was embalmed, and then sent to its northern home.
There were crowds of people at the church where the funeral was held and where Robin had been baptized. The son of Captain Grey was worthy of respect, and the citizens turned out en masse, so that there was scarcely standing room in the aisles for all who came to see the last of Robin. Very touchingly the rector spoke of the deceased, whose short life had been so pure and holy, and then he eulogized the sister who had devoted herself so unselfishly to the helpless brother, and who, he said, could have nothing to regret, nothing to wish undone, so absolute and entire had been her sacrifice. Hitherto Lucy had sat as rigid as a stone, but as she listened to her own praises she moved uneasily in her seat, and once put up her hand