A Child’s First Encounter With Death

From London to Loch Lomond! Kind reader, do not call the transition a leap. In the alphabet it is not a step; in this book it merely involves the turning over one page and commencing another; whilst in that generally awful thing which we so briefly term “reality,” it is but comfortably taking up a defensive position opposite one’s fellow passengers in a railway carriage, eating at intervals with incredible velocity, changing trains occasionally, being wearied to death travelling for a certain number of hours at various rates of speed (vide Bradshaw’s inexplicable Guide), coaching, and perhaps boating a little,—and the thing is happily accomplished. London, pro tem., becomes to the tourist a dream of memory, whilst Loch Lomond gradually assumes the character of a fact.

Would that any pen—whether plucked from the 59wing of a lineal descendant of her who saved Rome, or manufactured by Gillott, or tipped with gutta percha, or made of imperishable gold—were gifted with the same amount of actuality as that same wonderful chemin de fer, which in these later days conveys one so rapidly from amidst the ceaseless bustle and turmoil of man’s work to the majestic grandeur and awful truth of God’s; from the “great city” to the lonely country; from the flush of England’s roses to the glow of Scotland’s heather; from the rich flatness and eternal sameness of the South to the rapid streams and boiling torrents, and mountains and moors and glorious scenery of the North,—and I would write as I feel of that portion of this lovely world, where the waters dance and the mountains frown, and the deer wander through trees upon sunny islands; where history, and time, and events, and nature, have all combined to cast strange spells over every height and hollow, every lonely moor and narrow gloomy street, making all enchanted holy ground.

O Scotland, dear Scotland, ennobled by heroism, sanctified by religion, great in misfortune, steadfast in principle, unparalleled in genius, beautified with the tear-drops of sorrow, hallowed by the steps of warriors, patriots, high-souled men, noble hearted 60women, authors, poets, painters; where Bruce fought and Wallace died, and a fair queen wept, and Rizzio sang, and myriads of the great departed sleep tranquilly,—who ever dared to speak of thee, after him whose name were alone enough to bear thine triumphantly down the river of time, to the point where that river becomes merged in the ocean of eternity, that did not waste his energies and mar his theme?

But who would not give something to be able to say he was born within sight of Ben Nevis? who would not relinquish much to speak of that country as “Fatherland”? who, even in these utilitarian days, would be so commonplace and unromantic as not to desire to have a native’s right to pluck the blooming heather, and call the place where it grows so luxuriantly, home? who, in fine, would not, even with a very indifferent guide, turn over the page and stand for a few minutes in imagination one August evening in a garden rich in all rare flowers and sweet perfumes, and richer still in commanding a view over that stern old lake, Loch Lomond?

You, reader, I know will oblige me by doing so, when I add that the mental journey must be performed ere you can learn some further particulars of those so briefly and unceremoniously introduced 61to your notice at the conclusion of the preceding chapter.

The setting sun was flinging a sort of glory across the lake: trees looked brighter, and mountains grander, and islets lovelier, and waters clearer, and ruins lonelier as the last rays of the proud lord of day fell on and lit up them all; and upon something loftier, more imperishable, more apparently transitory—yet millions of times more precious in the sight of the universal Creator—did those warm beams fall softly,—on the heads of a grey-haired man, one some ten years his junior, and a child.

For a brief period the eyes of the two former—of those, created not for time merely, but for eternity—dwelt with a glance of strange, unutterable admiration, in which a mournful expression mingled also, upon the earthly, panorama, with its ceaseless change, yet endless sameness; but at length with a deep drawn sigh, the elder turned from his contemplation of nature to speak to the child.

“You should have more patience, Mina,” he said, half chidingly; “the flowers will bloom, and the seeds come up, much more rapidly without your assistance, believe me.”

The little girl, to whom the above remark was addressed, had been busily engaged in pushing the 62rich fine mould from the top of a bulbous root, to ascertain if the same were actually sprouting; but she paused in her employment for a moment, whilst the gardener, who completed that trio, standing in the midst of a sort of fairy Paradise, so near to Loch Lomond, added,

“Ye dinna gie the bits o’ things time till do onything, Miss Mina, for ye are never but pulling them out o’ the ground althegither, or else shoving the earth frae off them, long before they’re half ready, to see if they’re growing.”

The child raised her head as he concluded, and casting back a profusion of glossy curls from her face, and shading her eyes with her hand, looked confidently into the countenance of the first speaker as she answered,

“It’s because, uncle, they won’t be green half quick enough: when Colin puts the seeds and roots and things in the ground, I can wait, indeed I can, for a day or two; but it’s impossible for me to believe they are really growing after that, unless I see them; that’s why I pull them up.”

“And to you, Mina, it seems a very sufficient reason, I have no doubt,” returned the old man with a sad smile; then, addressing the gardener, who, like himself, was a sincere follower of Calvin, 63he added, “You see how the want of faith comes in everywhere, Colin; we are blind creatures, yet delude ourselves into the belief that we can alter the current of our destinies, and compel circumstances, just as Mina here fancies, by looting, she will make the plants grow sooner. We repine at the trials God sends us, as if He did not see and know and order what was best for us. There is a lamentable absence of faith throughout the world—of trust in the breasts of all.”

“’Deed and ye may weel say that, sir,” mournfully acquiesced Colin; “the Almighty surely has great tholing with us.”

“But I don’t think,” interposed Mina at this juncture, “that I can make them flower any quicker than they would do of themselves; only when I cannot see them, it is quite impossible for me to believe they ever will blow—that’s it, uncle.”

“But do you not know, Mina,” he returned, “that although the earth may, and does, hide the seeds and bulbs from you, it cannot do so from God? You should, therefore, leave all in his hands, and wait patiently for the result.”

“Yes, yes,” was the response, uttered so eagerly that it bordered on the very confines of irritability, “I know He sees them, and makes them grow; 64but sometimes, too, He lets them die, and so I just push the mould back a wee weeny bit, uncle, to see if they are living or dead.”

“And so kill half poor Colin’s annuals from overanxiety and want of belief,” he said, looking sadly on the child, whilst the gardener groaned forth an interjection concerning the “old Adam,” which, reaching Mina’s ear, caused her to exclaim,

“Papa says, Colin, it is not fair for you to be always blaming him without just cause; for that in regard of Mina and the flowers, it is not old Adam, but young Eve that’s in fault.”

A sad smile broke for a moment over her uncle’s face, but immediately it vanished; and bending a look full of mournful import upon his niece, he said,

“Your papa is far too fond of you, Mina, I fear.”

“And he fears I am far too fond of you,” she returned, moving closer to the old man’s side; then, taking one of his hands betwixt her’s, which were covered over with mould, and looking wistfully up in his face, she inquired in a subdued, altered voice, “When will my dear papa be well?”

“Soon,” answered her uncle, averting his glance from hers, and gazing away, with a troubled expression of countenance, into the far distance—“soon.”

65The gardener fastened his eyes for a brief moment upon him who had uttered the simple monosyllable, then bending towards a white moss rose tree, that the action might remain unnoticed, he wiped something wondrously like a tear from his cheek, with the back of a horny hand; after which, he glanced cautiously at the child.

She had buried her face in her little palms, and tears came streaming abundantly through the fingers, making strange long tracks amidst the clay upon them. At first her grief was silent; but, at last, hearing a half suppressed sob, her uncle withdrew his eyes from the spot where the sun was setting, and bending them mournfully on the slight young figure bowed now in the agony of its first bitter sorrow; he asked,

“Why are you weeping, Mina?”

“Because you said it—so—” she cried.

“How?” he demanded.

“As if —, as if —,” she gasped, “though you said ‘soon,’ you did not think it.”

“Did you ever know me to say anything I did not think?” he gently enquired.

“No,” she responded.

“Well then, Mina, dear little Mina, I did indeed 66mean your papa would soon be well—in heaven—but never here.”

A sharp wild cry escaped the trembling lips, when this answer broke the stillness of that lovely summer’s evening, and freeing herself from the kindly hand which would have detained her, Mina sped with the fleetness of the wind towards the house, up a flight of stairs, then along a corridor, and finally into a room, the windows of which looked westwards to the hills and the mountains, where the sun was setting.

In that chamber a life was ebbing away. More rapidly even than the golden tints were fading from the sky, was consciousness retreating from the frame of him, who, the child’s uncle said, “loved Mina too well:” who, even in death, hearing her weep and expostulate with those who would have denied her entrance, murmured faintly,

“Don’t make Mina cry—let her come.”

“Papa, my own papa,” she whispered in a choking voice, raining tears over his face as she nestled close to him, “say you are not going to die—to leave me.”

His lips touched hers for a brief instant, and he faintly answered, “only for a time;” but the child, flinging her arms around him, shrieked out in her 67agony, “Oh! papa, take me with you—wherever you are going, take me too.”

If he could have done it he would; he clasped her convulsively to his heart, and even whilst he did so, ceased on this earth—to be. He had gone to that land where troubles enter not; but she remained to breast all sorrows as she might.

“He is dead,” said some one in a low solemn tone; and at the sound of that brief sentence, Mina shrunk back appalled from the sight of that which had been her father and was not. A loving friend bore her away from the room; there was a mist before her eyes for a minute; she did not understand—she could not tell exactly what had happened. It seemed to her a horrible dream: time came when she knew it was an awful reality.

The widow was counting the dreary hours as they dragged on during the course of that interminable night: her son was standing weeping by her side; the lonely watcher by the bed of death had fallen into uneasy slumber; the candles were burning dimly, and those who thought of Mina at all imagined the child was sleeping also, when a little figure clad all in white, its face pale as that of the corpse, its feet bare, and its eyes tearless, came noiselessly stealing into that chamber, whence a soul 68had but lately departed. It drew very close unto the side of the couch; it looked long and earnestly in the stony countenance of the dead, then timidly laid a childish hand on his.

“Lord bless me, Miss Mina, what are you doing?” cried the woman, starting at length from sleep, and alarmed at the sight of the intruder. “What are you doing?”

“Watching my papa,” was the response.

The person, whose employment Mina had thus, in a manner, taken from her, gazed at the child for a moment; then said in a low earnest tone,

“Are you not afraid?”

“No,” answered Mina, “not afraid — only —” a sort of shudder shook her frame, and she paused in her reply.

“Miss Mina,” continued the woman, “this is no place fit for you; you ought never to have been here; you will let me take you back to bed, won’t you?” and she arose to do so: but Mina put her arms around her neck, and exclaimed so entreatingly and mournfully,—

“No, no; let me stay with you: I cannot bear to be alone or away from him; it makes me far more frightened: let me stay,”—that, whether right or wrong, she was permitted to remain.

69The woman wrapped a shawl around her and took her on her knee, and held her to her heart, and bent her head down over her, and thus they talked in whispers about him, and how good he had been, and where he was gone; until, finally, towards morning, perfectly exhausted with weeping, and sorrow, and excitement, Mina dropped her head upon the breast of an honest, though not perhaps very sensible, humble friend, and fell into a dreamless sleep; from which, when the sun was high in heaven, she awoke with a premature knowledge of grief in her heart, and the memory of that scene to be a sort of dreary companion through life: never again, no, never! to seem in aught, save years, what she had actually been twenty-four hours previously—a child!

How soon the curtain of existence rises before some! for how long nought save its pleasant side is revealed unto others! What an utter folly it seems to count age by years, when the heart of the boy is sometimes older in all life’s saddest experiences than that of the gray-haired man! What peaceful or pleasant incidents illumine most of the chapters that make up the story of a fortunate few! what stirring or depressing scenes form, on the other hand, the preface to the eventful book of existence in the histories of most!

70And how frequently also does the first circumstance that brings knowledge of grief to the soul, prove a sort of type of those which must, if life be spared, succeed thereto: from girlhood some women seem destined to watch by the bed of sickness, tend the invalid, read to the aged, bring with noiseless feet, and gentle words, and willing hands, and bright sweet smiles, sunshine into dark places; whilst others again appear born to be witnesses of, or actors in, scenes of violence, sin, or misery—from infancy words of anger or recrimination sound incessantly in their ears. And as thus the first solemn reality of life which Mina Frazer ever beheld was the corpse of her father, so it was fated that many of the incidents in her lot in after years were to be chequered more with darkness than light.

It was perhaps a dread of this, arising from actual knowledge of the state of his nephew’s affairs, the character of his widow, and the nature of the child, that caused her grand-uncle, the old laird of Craigmaver, the head of the Frazer clan, to look with such a double portion of anxious sorrow on Mina as she twined her arms around him, and laid her head upon his shoulder and wept there, when he came to talk a little to her on the day of her father’s interment.

71“Poor little Mina,” he said, twisting the long curls round his finger, and speaking in a very tremulous voice. “My dear child, poor little Mina.”

The sobs grew louder as he uttered these words; but, at length, she murmured in a reproachful tone,

“They have taken away my dear papa: they have buried him.”

“God has taken his soul, Mina,” replied the old man; “we have only buried his body. Don’t you like to think, dear child, when you look up, up, away into the clear blue heavens, that he is there waiting and watching for you?”

Mina dashed the tears from her eyes and gazed for a moment at the azure sky, as if endeavouring to realize the idea to herself; but then she dropped her face once again on the breast of her relative, and answered, with a choking sob, “No.”

“No,” he echoed in some astonishment, “why not?”

“Because, I am sure,” she wept forth, “my own papa would rather I was with him. He won’t be happy waiting and watching for me; I know he won’t, he wanted to take me with him—but—but—he had not time—or—something.”

And at the bare memory of that farewell she cried till her hair was damp and wet, as it fell loose 72and unregarded over her face. She could not understand death. Ah! which among us can? It grew to her a stranger mystery, a sadder thought, the more she, in her vague terrified childish way, reflected concerning it.

“He knows now what we believe here, Mina; that whatever lot is appointed for us by the Great Disposser of events, is for our good. Had it been well for you to go to heaven with your dear father, God would assuredly have permitted you to do so. Do you comprehend me, my little niece? What I mean is, that He is able to order all things, and does order all things for our ultimate happiness; if not in this world, most certainly in the next. Do you comprehend me, Mina?”

“Yes; I know what you mean.”

“And you will be very good, and try to feel it, won’t you?”

“Yes,” she answered abstractedly, pushing back once again the curls from her face, and gazing up at the sky beyond which he had said her father was; but somehow the sight of the corpse had clogged both her faith and her imagination with much of earth’s heavy clay; and the funeral and the churchyard were to her much more tangible and frightful, than heaven with its joys was real and beautiful.

73“I wonder——” she murmured.

“What?” her uncle inquired.

“Whether, when God can do all things, he took the spiders out of my papa’s grave;” and a shiver told the horror wherewith the things she had lately seen and reflected upon had inspired her.

“He could do it,” answered her uncle, after a painful pause, “if it were His will.”

The trembling little hands grasped his almost convulsively, as Mina returned,

“Yes, but I am afraid He would not, uncle, and—and I have been thinking about that ever since they said he was to be buried.”

“You hear and see and think about a great many things you should not, Mina,” said her relative, half sorrowfully, half sternly; and the remark was perfectly true, but it was not her fault that she did so. “Who puts all these ideas into your mind, tell me, dear, who is it?”

“No one; they come of themselves, and I wish they would not,” she answered simply, clasping both hands across her forehead, “for they make me feel so unhappy.”

“And I wish they would not either, Mina,” he said, “for they make me unhappy too;” and he fixed a troubled look on the young face, as if striving 74to read something of her future destiny from that treacherous index.

“I suppose,” Mina continued, “it’s because I cannot help thinking about things that mamma calls me; ‘a strange old-fashioned child,’—my papa never said that:” and once again a deluge of tears came streaming from the dark eyes, and her relative had no heart to say anything more to her then, excepting, “My dear child, my poor little Mina!”

Who could have rebuked the tender creature—the wild love she felt for, and the strange thoughts she entertained regarding, him who had most erroneously imagined his daughter to be perfection; who had fancied her prettier and better than any child that had ever previously existed; who used to take her with him everywhere—riding, driving, walking, boating, over the mountains, across the moors, on the water—to visit his relatives; who encouraged the wayward fancies which the lonely life, the desolate scenery, and above all, the lack of young companions, engendered in her; who had dreamt that life must be bright unto his little Mina, and who had died just when a doubt of the correctness of this idea first entered his mind.

“He spoiled the child,” every one said, “and made her too much an object of his constant care:” 75and accordingly, when people heard Captain Frazer was dead, the first question that sprung to the lips of most was, “What will little Mina do?” for it was well known that whilst the father lavished his affection on his daughter, the mother bestowed hers on her son: of course she felt attachment for both, but it was by no means an equal one; for whilst her very heart was wrapt up in the boy, who was handsomer and gayer than Mina had ever been, she somehow always felt that a very sufficient gulf yawned betwixt herself and her youngest born. “That old-fashioned incomprehensible creature,” as she remarked to her friends in private, “whom the captain is bringing up, I sadly fear to be a perfect little oddity;” and the lady shrugged up her shoulders, and visitors and confidants condoled with her in becoming terms upon the dreadful misfortune that threatened the slight delicate girl: for it is one of the most beautiful things in our most unexceptionable state of society, that whilst affectation is cultivated as one of the graces of life, oddity, or in other words, originality of character in either woman or child is considered a sort of sin, a contagion to be avoided, a monster to be smothered in its birth.

And thus it came to pass that most persons, save 76those who were themselves eccentric, mourned over Mina Frazer, or else pitied her and her misguided parent in terms which hovered much nearer the confines of contempt than those of love; and even her uncle, who was one of those true undemonstrative men whom in these later days we reverence and honour with such a treble portion of respect and admiration, because we so rarely encounter them, sorrowed over the child whilst her father lived, because he feared he was far too fond of her; and after that parent’s death, he grieved doubly concerning her, because she had no relative left on earth, save himself, possessed of the capability of bestowing on her even a tithe of the affection which had been lavished on the strange pale child by him, whom Mina said, “would have taken her with him, only he had not time, or—something.”