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Hope and Have; Fanny Grant Among the Indians

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CHAPTER IX. HOPE AND HAVE. Fanny got out of the horse car at the Park. She was in the midst of the great city, but she felt no interest in the moving, driving scene around her, for the thought of poor Jenny still engrossed her. She had even forgotten Mr. Long, and the dreaded policemen who might be on the watch for her. This was the good time for which she had stolen the money and run away from her happy home at Woodville. It was a mockery, and she even wished she had been caught before she left Pennville. It was now two o'clock in the afternoon, though hours enough seemed to have elapsed since she left Woodville to make a week. She had eaten nothing but an ice-cream since breakfast, and she was faint from the excitement and the exertion of the day. She found a saloon for ladies, and entered; but the nice things of which she had dreamed in the morning no longer existed for her. She ate a simple dinner, and walked down Broadway till she came to the Museum, which she had regarded as an important element in the enjoyment of her week in the city. She paid the admission fee, and went in. She wandered from room to room among the curiosities, hardly caring for anything she saw, till she came to the exhibition-room, where plays were acted. She had never seen a play performed, and she had looked forward with brilliant anticipations to the pleasure of seeing one. She was disappointed, for it had not entered into her calculation that a clean conscience is necessary for the full enjoyment of anything. The actors and the actresses strutted their brief hour before her; but to her the play was incomprehensible and silly. It had no meaning, and even the funny things which the low comedian said and did could not make her laugh. Before the performance was half finished, she had enough of it, and left the place in disgust. Jenny Kent was rapturously happy, dying in a hovel, in the midst of poverty and want, while she was miserable with health and strength, with plenty to eat, drink, and wear. Fanny tried to shake off the strange depression which had so suddenly come over her. She had never been troubled with any such thoughts and feelings before. If she had occasionally been sorry for her wrong acts, it was only a momentary twinge, which hardly damped her spirits. She was weighed down to the earth, and she could not rid herself of the burden that oppressed her. She wanted to go into some dark corner and cry. She felt that it would do her good to weep, and to suffer even more than she had yet been called upon to endure. "I'll bear your name to heaven with me," had been the words of the dying girl to Fanny; but what a reproach her name would be to the pure and good of the happy land! In some manner, not evident to our human sight, or understood by our human minds, the words of Jenny had given the wayward girl a full view of herself—had turned her thoughts in upon the barrenness of her own heart. Her wrong acts, so trivial to her before, were now magnified into mountains, and the crime she had committed that morning was so monstrous and abominable that she abhorred herself for it. In spite of the reproaches which every loving word of the dying girl hurled into the conscience of Fanny, there was a strange and unaccountable fascination in the languid look of the sweet sufferer. Wherever she turned, Jenny seemed to be looking at her with a glance full of heaven, while the black waters of her own soul rose up to choke her. Fanny struggled to get rid of these strange thoughts, but she could not; and she was compelled to give herself wholly up to them. Something, she knew not what, drew her irresistibly towards the dying girl, and she started up Broadway to find the flowers she had promised to carry to her. In a shop window she saw what she wanted. The flowers were of the rarest and most costly kinds; but nothing was too good for Jenny, and she paid four dollars for a bouquet. In another store she purchased some jelly and other delicacies such as she had seen the ladies at Woodville send to sick people. Thus prepared to meet the dying girl, she took a horse car, and by six o'clock reached the humble abode of Mrs. Kent. "How is Jenny?" asked she, as she entered the house, without the ceremony of knocking. "She don't seem so well this afternoon," replied Mrs. Kent. "Does she have a doctor?" "Not now; we had one a while ago, but he said he could do nothing for her." "Don't you think we had better have one?" "He might do something to make her easy, but Jenny don't complain. She never speaks of her pains." "I have come to stay all night with Jenny, if you are willing I should," continued Fanny, doubtfully. "You are very kind." "I will only sit by her; I won't talk to her." "I should be very glad to have you stay; and Jenny thinks ever so much of you." "If you please, I will go after a doctor." Mrs. Kent consented, and Fanny, after sending in her bouquet, went for a physician whose name she had seen on a fine house near Central Park, judging from the style in which he lived that he must be a great man. She found him at home, and he consented to return with her to Mrs. Kent's house. He examined Jenny very carefully, and prescribed some medicine which might make her more comfortable. He did not pretend that he could do anything more for her, and he told Fanny that the sufferer could not live many days, and might pass away in a few hours. Fanny offered him his fee; he blushed, and peremptorily refused it. Physicians who live in fine houses are often kinder to the poor than the charlatans who prey upon the lowest strata of society. Fanny procured the medicine which the kind-hearted doctor had prescribed, and administered it with her own hands. Jenny gave her such a sweet smile of grateful encouragement, that she was sorry there was nothing else to be done for her. "Now sit down, Fanny, and let me take your hand. I feel better to-night than I have felt for a long time." "I am glad you do," replied Fanny. "You have made me so happy!" "I wish I was as good as you are, Jenny," said Fanny, struggling with the emotions which surged through her soul. "You are better than I am." "O, no!" "You are an angel! You have been as good as you could be. Fanny, we shall meet in heaven, for I feel just as though I could not live many days. We shall be friends there, if we cannot long be here." "I hope you will get better," added Fanny, because she could think of nothing else to say. "No, I may die before morning, Fanny; but I am ready. You are so good——" "O, Jenny! I am not good! I cannot deceive you any longer!" exclaimed Fanny, bursting into tears. "Now I know that you are good. The blessed Bible says, 'He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.' I'm glad you don't think you are good." "But I am not good, indeed I am not," sobbed Fanny. "Don't weep, dear Fanny. I know how you feel; I have felt just so myself, when it seemed to me I was so wicked I couldn't live." "You don't know how wicked I have been; what monstrous things I have done," added Fanny, covering her face with her hands. "If you knew, you would despise me." "You wrong yourself, Fanny. Such a good, kind heart as you have would not let you do anything very bad." "I have done what was very bad, Jenny; I have been the worst girl in the whole world; but I am so sorry!" "I know you are. If you have done anything wrong,—we all do wrong sometimes,—you could not help being sorry. Your heart is good." "Shall I tell you what I did?" asked Fanny, in a low and doubtful tone. "O, no! Don't tell me; tell it to God. He will pity and forgive you because you are really sorry." "You would despise me if you knew how wicked I have been. It was seeing you, and thinking how good you are, which made me feel that I had done wrong." "I'm sure, after all you have done for mother and for me, I can't help believing that you are an angel. I love you, and I know that you are good." "I mean to be good, Jenny. From this time I shall try to do better than I ever did before." "Then you will be, Fanny." "I don't think I ever tried to be good, but I shall now," replied the penitent girl, as she wiped away her tears. Jenny seemed to be weary, and Fanny sat by the bedside gazing in silence at her beautiful and tranquil expression. The sufferer was looking at the rich flowers of the bouquet, which had been placed on a stand at the side of the bed. They were a joy to her, a connecting link between the beautiful of heaven and the beautiful of earth. "Will you sing me a hymn, Fanny?" asked the sick girl, without removing her gaze from the flowers. Without any other reply to the question, Fanny immediately sang this verse:— <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> "If God hath made this world so fair, Where sin and death abound, How beautiful, beyond compare, Will Paradise be found!" </div> </div> "How beautiful!" murmured Jenny, her eyes still fixed upon the flowers. "Will you take out that moss-rose, Fanny, and let me hold it in my hand?" Fanny gave her the flower, and then sang another hymn. For an hour she continued to sing, and Jenny listened to the sweet melodies, entranced and enraptured by the visions of heaven which filled her soul. Then she asked Fanny to read to her from the Bible, indicating the book and chapter, which was the eighth chapter of Romans. "'For we are saved by hope,'" Fanny read. "Now, stop a moment: 'For we are saved by hope,'" said the sufferer. "Do you know what the emblem of Hope is, Fanny?" "An anchor." "Will you hand me that little box on the table?" Fanny passed the box to her, and she took from it a little gold breastpin, in the form of an anchor. "This was given to me by my father when I was a little girl. My Sunday-school teacher told me years ago what an anchor was the emblem of, and told me at the same time to remember the verse you have just read—'For we are saved by hope.' That anchor has often reminded me what was to save me from sin. Fanny, I will give you this breastpin to remember me by." "I shall never forget you, Jenny, as long as I live!" said Fanny, earnestly. "But when you remember me, I want you to think what the anchor means. You say you are not good, but I know you are. You mean to be good, you hope to be good; and that will make you good. Do you know we can always have what we hope for, if it is right that we should have it? What we desire most we labor the hardest for. If you really and truly wish to be good, you will be good." Fanny took the breastpin. If it had been worth thousands of dollars, it would not have been more precious to her. It was the gift of the loving and gentle being who was soon to be transplanted from earth to heaven; of the beautiful girl who had influenced her as she had never been influenced before; who had lifted her soul into a new atmosphere. She placed it upon her bosom, and resolved never to part with it as long as she lived. "Hope and have, Fanny," said Jenny, when she had rested for a time. "Hope for what is good and true, and you shall have it; for if you really desire it, you will be sure to labor and to struggle for it." "Hope and have," repeated Fanny. "Your anchor shall mean this to me. Jenny, I feel happier already, for I really and truly mean to be good. But I think I ought to tell you how wicked I am." "No, don't tell me; tell your mother." "I have no mother." "Then you are poorer than I am." "And no father." "Poor Fanny! Then you have had no one to tell you how to be good." "Yes, I have the kindest and best of friends; but I have been very ungrateful." "They will forgive you, for you are truly sorry." "Perhaps they will." "I know they will." Jenny was weary again, and Fanny sang in her softest and sweetest tones once more. It was now the twilight of a long summer day, and Mrs. Kent, having finished her household duties, came into the room. Soon after, the sufferer was seized with a violent fit of coughing, which seemed to weaken and reduce her beyond the possibility of recovery. When it left her, she could not speak aloud. "I am going, mother," said she, a little later. "Fanny!" "I am here," replied Fanny, almost choked with emotion. "We shall meet in heaven," said the dying one. "Have you been very naughty?" "I have," sobbed Fanny. Jenny asked for paper and pencil, and when her mother had raised her on the bed, she wrote, with trembling hand, these words:— <div class="blockquote"> "Please to forgive Fanny, for the sake of her dying friend,       Jenny Kent." </div> "Take this, Fanny: God will forgive you." It was evident to the experienced eye of Mrs. Kent that Jenny was going from earth. The sufferer lay with her gaze fixed upon the ceiling, and her hands clasped, as in silent prayer. She seemed to be communing with the angels. She struggled for breath, and her mother watched her in the most painful anxiety. "Good by, mother," said she, at last. "Good by, Eddy: I'm going home." Mrs. Kent took her offered hand, and kissed her, struggling all the time to be calm. Little Eddy was raised up to the bed, and kissed his departing sister. "Fanny," gasped she, extending her trembling hand. Fanny took the hand. "Good by." "Good by, Jenny," she answered, awed and trembling with agitation at the impressive scene. The dying girl closed her eyes. But a moment after she pressed the hand of Fanny, and murmured,— "Hope and Have." She was silent then; her bosom soon ceased to heave; the ransomed spirit rose from the pain-encumbered body, and soared away to its angel-home! <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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