Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/808

770 and the Gays, finding it dull at the cure when there was no longer need for staying there, went away after Thanksgiving.

Farmington was growing so prosperous that it hardly took note of the coming or the going.

But even prosperous Farmington had its dark days and its losses. Heaviest of all that could befall it, except in the death of its rector, it experienced in the death of his wife. Mrs. Angell departed this life as one sets out on an unexpected journey. The death was sudden enough to startle the community and call forth from the members of the congregation all the feeling of which they were individually capable.

Heart-broken mourners followed her to the grave. The sincere and generous spirit in which was no guile, had won sincere and generous lovers, and certain it was that she would never be forgotten by those who understood the true meaning of her life. Now and then we are astonished by hearing the alive praise, with warmth and tears, the dead over whom "the long green grass is waving." Among those who would command such precious tribute, was Mrs. Lydia Angell.

Neither would it ever be forgotten how, when the funeral procession was about to be formed, Mr. Angell walked out of the house with Hannah, they two leading Minnie between them, and followed by Duncan and his wife, and how these took their places in the road behind the hearse. General Clift's carriage, as everybody knew, was waiting to convey the mourners; but Mr. Angell said, "We will walk to her burial." So the carriage was driven off, and other riders dismissed their vehicles, and the train made its slow way on foot to the grave.

"She was so incapable of ostentation that I could not mourn for her with anything like display," said the minister to Mrs. Gift afterward. "The unspeakable comfort, the encouragement, the help she has been to me, I must not attempt to express."

He might have said all that as a hypocrite—it is so easy to praise the dead—but as Marian listened to the sober words, and met the look which accompanied them, she knew that he had spoken with neither hypocrisy nor remorse.

Why did he say this? Because he so vividly recalled what had happened only a few days before his wife's death? Yes—so much was evident.

Mrs. Clift had called for Archibald, and while he was busy over the exercise which he begged he might complete, Mr. Angell went out to tell his mother—and as she waited, he stood and talked with her. Beside her on the carriage-seat was a basket of flowers, mosses, and vines. The splendid bloom attracted his attention, and suggested a theme for talk. How she improved it! saying such simple words as these, but with the recollection of the past, of all of it, in them,

"I gathered them for your wife, Theodore, will you take them to her for me?"

"My grace is sufficient!" For a moment the minister felt that the doors of his heart had been thrown wide open, and a sepulchre revealed. In that instant, too, it seemed as if the blessedness of his Farmington experience had been wholly swept away. He stood as one who felt his helplessness. It was on his lips to say, "Why did you come here to torment my life! To make me carry on this everlasting war with myself which humbles me in the dust! which keeps me forever on guard as though I were keeper of a devil! If you have