Loosed
“VTEAKLY a year has passed since most of the fore- -Ll going chapters were written. Now the three babies who made the nursery such a busy place have left us, for what the children call “Jesus’ upstairs nursery.”
The two who went first, swept off by the first touch of a cold-weather epidemic, were so delicate that they could never have been as other children are. Little Amethyst never grew except in gladness, and the Sunflower seemed to wither as she grew. But we took such care of them that we thought in our ignorance death could not find a way in to reach them. Little Amethyst, our first Temple baby, went first. It was night. I had carried her out into the courtyard, as if relief from the clutch of the pain could be won for her outside. The light little body lay still in my arms, warm and breathing, but so still after the first sudden pain had passed, that I did not know the moment when she left me, did not know her gone till I looked down, and the moonlight showed so white on the empty little face. Then in that first moment a sudden doubt swept over, like a cold, cold wave — has never a mother known it? — Where has she gone, my baby? Is it true she lives somewhere? Or is it all a myth, a dream? Is she nowhere, nothing, dead?
Next morning very early, a happy voice surprised me. I was not expecting happy voices, for this first break in our family had meant more to us all than some will understand. “AmmiH! have you seen it? Her verse comes in the reading!” It was Star, her face bright with the discovery that the Scripture Union portion held our baby’s verse that day: “And the foundations of the city were garnished with precious stones... The twelfth an Amethyst.”
As we carried her that same morning to her little grave as if to her cot, the village people gathered to look at her; but they would hardly believe her dead, the little lips were so red and sweet, just curving in a smile. And we knew with an assurance beyond the reach of doubt, that the baby was not really dead but only lifted over to the sunny side of life. Safe, safe, alive and well, with Him that liveth and was dead, and is alive for evermore. This, the first little Temple child, so far as is known, ever laid to rest as a Christian child, was sown as a seed that morning in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Sunflower was lying between life and death when we carried our Amethyst babe to her grave. For a week longer, day and night we toiled to save that little life, but it passed from us and we felt bereft; and the only one left, our treasure child, became trebly a treasure to us all, and we held her tight, so tight, in our arms, as if our poor weak human arms could hold her when the word had come, “Loose her and let her go.”
Up till the month of that fatal sickness she had been a perfectly healthy child, a bit of loveliness and joy, whole and dear, from the hand of God. On the last unshadowed day before the epidemic came, we made a feast in the new room. The children sat in rows on the floor, gay as a garden of living flowers. “Indraneela! Indraneela!” they kept calling from side to side and end to end, and the baby laughed and clapped her hands, and tried to walk to every one who called; the pretty little dancing feet were never a moment still. Everything seemed bright that day, for the delicate babes were fairly well, and all the children were good and well; and the treasure babe, who was always well, was fuller than ever of joyousness. The sweet little ways of a babe beloved, untroubled by any hurting thing, seemed sweeter than ever that happy day, as we played altogether, and all with her, and she held out her arms to one and another, and leaped and laughed and tried to talk, the merriest of us all. Then when the feast was over we went into the courtyard, and the baby clapped her little hands as the wind stirred the leaves of the tulip tree, and blew its flowers down upon her; and the children made a little crown, and crowned their baby queen. One sees it all so distinctly to-day: the gleeful children, the little child with brown eyes shining with excitement and delight, the little crown of pink blossoms on the fluffy dark hair.
Only a fortnight later, but it seemed as if years had passed since that bright evening, Indraneela lay too quietly upon my mother’s knee. The baby loved her Atah (baby word for grandmother), who had come to stay with us for a year, and was nowhere more contented than on her Atah’s knee. That evening, as she lay watching everything we did, she almost seemed to understand, and to be trying to help us, so wise were all her little ways. Then when the sound of the children singing on their way home from school reached us in the nursery, she raised her hands as she always did at the sound of singing, and tried to clap. These little signs of intelligence helped to blind us to what was coming. And we went on hoping — hoping against hope. So it was as if she tried to tell us. Six of the children were ill in another room. We divided the nursing; Star and I shared the early morning with the babe. Just before dawn she called, and, holding her little hand as high as she could reach, she pointed up. Then she pointed to a toy musical-box which we always kept beside her, and when it was given to her she turned the handle till the first notes came. She had often tried before, but never quite succeeded in turning the handle herself. Now she stopped and looked up with those joyous eyes, so unlike a baby’s eyes in stedfastness of expression:
“Let me to my heaven go!
A little harp me waits thereby,
A harp whose strings are golden all,
And tuned to music spherical,
Hanging on the green life tree
Where no willows ever be.
Shall I miss that harp of mine?”
She held out her little hands to be kissed, and then, tired, fell asleep....
“She was not an Earth-child,” eaid the kindly village
WOULD GIVE HIM THIS” 283
women as they came and looked at her, “we always said so. She was beautiful beyond our common children. She was a little Heaven-child who came down here to stay for awhile. And now she has gone to her own place.” She was the child of an ancient royal race; every dainty way and pretty imperious gesture showed it. There was something very noble about the little child: she was our best. The children were not prepared for what had happened. We led them to the courtyard garden where they had crowned her queen. It opens off the nursery where she lay asleep, the little head half - turned upon the pillow, the little hands curled softly as in life. The children looked at the flowers — poor, sick nasturtiums which do not flourish here; blue convolvulus bells, hanging all over the trellis; and one single lily, the first we had ever had, which had blossomed that same morning. “If Jesus came to our garden to-day, what flower should we give to Him? A poor, little sick nasturtium which we do not want at all? or a pretty blue convolvulus which we would not miss very much?” But the children ran to the lily: “We would give Him this,” they said. Over and over it came to us, “We would give Him this: we would give Him this.” Thou art worthy, 0 Lord Jesus, to receive this, our Best.
The doubt that had chilled one’s heart before had not dared to come again. It was a dart from the enemy. “The twelfth an Amethyst” had come between, like a shield made of a jewel. But even as Indraneela passed, the memory of that simple consolation came to us, and that afternoon this happened:
That while I was resting in my room, trying to gather strength for the parting with the cherished little form that must be made before sunset, I listened, hardly listening, to Mr. Walker teaching his convert boys on the verandah. They were reading aloud: “And Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord upon his two shoulders for a memorial.” Verses followed about the chain of pure gold, the wreathen work, the breastplate with its settings of stones, even four rows of stones: $ ’ “The second row shall be an emerald, a Sapphire” / *? - Safe, safe for evermore, set on His breast, close to His heart, His Sapphire.