Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/75

1857.] The evening passed cheerfully with our friends, notwithstanding the grave conversation in the arbor. The mourning veil was laid away in a drawer along with many of its brilliant companions, and with it the thoughts it had suggested; and the merry laugh ringing from the half-open parlor-door showed that Father Payson was no despiser of the command to rejoice with them that do rejoice.

Rose played and sung, the children danced, and the mirth was prolonged till a late hour in the evening.

Olivia and Albert were lingering in the parlor after the departure of the family, busy in shutting windows, setting back chairs, and attending to all the last duties of orderly householders.

A sudden shriek startled them; such a shriek as, once heard, is never forgotten. With an answering cry of horror, they rushed up the stairs. The hail lamp had been extinguished, but the passage and staircase were red with a broad glare from the open door of the nursery.

A moment more showed them the drapery of the bed in which their youngest child was sleeping all in flames; then they saw a light form tearing down the blazing curtains.

“Oh, Rose! Rose! take care, for God’s sake! your dress! you'll kill yourself! oh, God help us!”

There were a few moments—awful moments of struggle—when none knew or remembered what they did; a moment more and Rose lay panting in her fathers arms, enveloped in a thick blanket which he had thrown around her burning night-dress. The fire was extinguished, the babe lay unawakened, and only the dark flecks of tinder scattered over the bed, and the trampled mass on the floor, told what had been. But Rose had breathed the hot breath of the flame, deadly to human life, and no water could quench that inward fire.

A word serves to explain all. The childs nurse had carelessly set a lamp too near the curtains, and the night breeze had wafted them into the flame. The apartment of Rose opened into the nursery, and as she stood in her nightdress before her mirror, arranging her hair, she saw the flashing of the flame, and, in the one idea of saving her little sister, forgot every other. That act of self-forgetfulness was her last earthly act; a few short hours of patient suffering were all that remained to her. Peacefully as she had lived, she died, looking tenderly on her parents out of her large blue eyes, and only intent to soothe their pain.

“Yes, I suffer,” she said, “but only a short pain. We must all suffer something. My Father thinks a very little enough for me. I have had such a happy life, I might bear just a little pain at the last.”

A little later her mind seemed to wander. Mamma, mamma, she said, hurriedly, I put the things all away; the lilac muslin and the barége. Mamma, that veil, the mourning veil, is in the drawer. Oh, mamma, that veil was for you; dont refuse it; our Father sends it, and he knows best. Perhaps you will see heaven through that veil.

It is appalling to think how near to the happiest and most prosperous scene of life stands the saddest despair. All homes are haunted with awful possibilities, for whose realization no array of threatening agents is required,—no lightning, or tempest, or battle; a peaceful household lamp, a gust of perfumed evening air, a false step in a moment of gayety, a draught taken by mistake, a match overlooked or mislaid, a moments oversight in handling a deadly weapon,—and the whole scene of life is irretrievably changed!

It was but a day after the scene in the arbor, and all was mourning in the so lately happy, hospitable house; everybody looked through tears. There were subdued breathings, a low murmur, as of many listeners, a voice of prayer, and the wail of a funeral hymn,—and then the heavy tread of bearers, as, beneath the black pall, she was carried over the threshold of her home, never to return.