An elderly servant in plain clothes had admitted her. The man’s face
bore traces of watching and anxiety. And at the stair-foot waited the
matronly woman who bore the quaint name of Husnuggle, and the first
glance at her quivering lips and reddened, swollen eyelids told the
daughter that all was not well in the sick-room.
The shadow of Death brooded over the great canopied bed in the
luxurious chamber, where a face that was the pallid wraith of Ada’s own
lay low amidst the lace-trimmed pillows; its pinched and wasted beauty
framed in the dainty little muslin cap that covered the still luxuriant
and glossy hair.
A nurse from the Hospice rose up from her seat near the bed-foot, made
her report in a few low-toned sentences, and was dismissed to take her
needed rest, as a tiny china clock upon the mantelshelf struck one.
And as her daughter bent above the sick woman and kissed the fair,
unwrinkled forehead between the bands of gray-brown, the sunken eyes
opened widely, and the weak voice said:
“You have come back!... Is it very late?... The time has seemed
long!...”
“Dear mother, I should never have left you had you not wished it so.
Have you been lonely in the midst of all the pain?”
“I have been thinking!...” said the toneless voice.
“Of me, dear mother?”
“Chiefly of you, my own.”
She wished to be raised a little on her pillows, and the daughter’s
skilled hands tenderly performed this office, and put nourishment
between the pale lips. You saw Ada, moving to and fro in her filmy,
trailing laces and flashing jewels, between the glimmer of the silver
night-lamp and the oblong patches of gray dawn that showed between the
window-curtains, like some fair ministering spirit of pity and love....
And the feeble voice resumed after an interval:
“It is you who will be lonely, child, when I am gone. Then you may
think more favorably of--of the course that others follow, and welcome
those natural ties, my Ada, that make the happiness of life.”
Ada answered, putting up a hand to hide her tears:
“When you are with God I shall be lonely, dearest, but not sorrowful,
knowing you in His safe keeping. As for marriage, urge it upon me no
more, my mother! For something tells me that these natural ties you
speak of, sweet and pleasant as they are, are not destined for me.”
“Why not? You would make a noble wife and mother, Ada. You are young,
and cultivated, and beautiful, and have so many other gifts and graces,
that, were you possessed of no worldly advantages, my child, you might
still expect to make what Society calls an advantageous match....”
“Mother--my mother!--let us forget the world and Society!... To-night
I have heard both applaud a God-defying crime as a stroke of exquisite
diplomacy, and exalt a murderer as the saviour of his country, and
their plaudits ring in my ears yet.... And I have seen the change--the
base, corroding, ugly change!--they can wreak upon a nature that
was--how short a time ago!--brave, and chivalrous, and simple; and a
character that was honorable, upright, and sincere. I have a quarrel
with Society and the world, mother; let them go by! And speak to me
of marriage no more, in the little time we yet may have on earth
together. For without love--such love as God has created, and blessed,
and sanctioned between men and women--such love as you and my father
knew!--I will never take on me the name of wife, or be the mother of
any man’s children. Do not be vexed, dear mother!” she begged, in
sweet, entreating tones.
“My daughter,” the dying woman said, “I am only grieved for you....
For I have fancied--if, indeed, it was fancy?--that your heart
was not quite free; that your imagination had been touched, your
thoughts attracted, Ada, by someone of different religion, language,
and nationality, met and known abroad. Someone, the recollection of
whom--forgive me if I am wrong, dearest!--has made you indifferent to
the good qualities of Englishmen of your own rank and social standing,
cold to their merits and blind to their attractions----”
“Mother, are you not talking too much? Will you not try to sleep?”
“My dear, I have but little time left for talk, and in a very few
hours my sleep will know no earthly waking. Answer my question now!”
Ada Merling laid down the thin, frail hand that she had clasped, rose
up, and went to the window, moved the blind, adjusted the curtain, went
a step or two about the room, and having, possibly, controlled some
emotion that had threatened to master her, resumed her seat beside the
pillow and took the feeble hand again, saying:
“Mother, there can be no concealment between us!... I have allowed
myself to think too constantly of a man whom I met not quite three
years ago; and who appeared to be, morally and mentally, as he
undoubtedly is physically, as superior to the common run of men as
Hector must have seemed, compared with the other sons of Priam; or the
young David, set amongst the warrior-chiefs of Saul; or Kossuth, placed
side by side with the man who rules in France to-day.” She added rather
hurriedly, as the mother would have spoken: “Remember that I only said
‘_appeared_.’ For I was doomed to know the pain of disillusion, and
witness the breaking of the idol I had made for myself.... I shall
be better for the lesson, painful though it has been! And so, let us
speak of this no more! Even to you it has been difficult to confess my
absurdity. Now, will you not try to rest?”
“Presently ... presently! Tell me more!--I should have known of this
sooner! If any misunderstanding has arisen between you and one who
loves you--and who could fail to love you?--it might have been cleared
away by the exercise of a little tact--a measure of discrimination. But
you, Ada--_you_ to be despised and slighted! You, to give your love to
one who makes no return!... The thought is incredible ... it bewilders
and astounds me. Perhaps I err through excess of pride in you, but I
cannot take this in!”
“Listen to me, dear, and you will understand more clearly....”
The face of the speaker was set to the desperate effort. Unseen by the
dim eyes of the listener, the pang of self-revelation contracted and
wrung it; the anguish of the confession blanched it to a deadly white.
“This is not a question of being appreciated or not appreciated, valued
or undervalued. Your daughter, of whom you are so proud, threw away her
heart unasked; and on the strength of a single meeting, built up the
flimsy fabric of her house of dreams. To-night I met the man again, and
the charm was broken. I saw him, not as I had imagined him to be, but
as he is! Not the young Bayard of my belief, but the _beau chevalier_
of Paris salons; not as the man of unstained honor and high ideals,
but as the attaché of the Elysée, the servant of its unprincipled
master--the open lover of Madame de Roux.”
She hid her face, but her shoulders shook with weeping, and little
streams of bright tears trickled between the slender white jeweled
fingers, and were lost amidst the snowy laces of her dress.
“Again, I say that I cannot conceive it!” the mother faltered. “The man
was hardly known to you?...”
“I had heard him glowingly described and fondly praised by one who
loved him....”
“He is a foreigner?... A Frenchman?... A Roman Catholic?...”
“He is a Bavarian Swiss by birth; French by naturalization and
education, and a Catholic, without doubt.”
“And had he asked you, you would have left us all to follow him?”
“Mother, you did the like at my father’s call!”
“Our parents approved!”
“If they had not, would you have abandoned him?”
“I cannot reply; it is for you to answer me.... Would you, had this
man loved and sought you in marriage, have changed your religion and
embraced his?”
“Mother, you ask a question I need not answer. He did not love me ...
he never sought me.... Were our paths, that lie so far apart, to cross
now ... did he ask of me that which I might once have gladly given, I
should deny it, knowing him to be unworthy of the gift.”
“Ada, I must have your answer! Would you have deserted the faith of
your Protestant forefathers?”
“It may be, mother, that I should have returned to the faith in which
their fathers lived and died. Remember, we Merlings were Catholic
before the Reformation.”
“Those were dark days for England. A purer light has shown the path to
a better world since then.”
“Dear one,” the sweet voice pleaded, “we have never thought alike upon
this matter.”
“To my bitter, secret sorrow,” the mother answered, “I have long known
that we did not; or say, since you returned from your course of study
in the Paris hospitals I have seen it, and guessed at the reason of
the change! For you have lived with Roman Catholic nuns in convents,
Ada, and have listened to their specious arguments. Snares may have
been set--may Heaven pardon me if I judge wrongly!--to lure the English
heiress into the nets of Rome.”
“No, no, dear mother! there were no arguments, no efforts. The Sisters
treated me with the kindest courtesy, while they seemed to shun, rather
than to desire, to discuss the difference of creed. I gathered at
the most that I was pitied for having missed a great good, a signal
blessing, an unspeakable privilege; that had fallen to their more happy
lot. And when I have seen the Sisters’ faces as they came from their
early, daily Communion, and when I have seen the little children--the
tiniest creatures--fed with the Bread of Life, in which I might not
share----”
She broke off. The sick woman said reproachfully:
“Had you not the privileges of your own reformed faith? Could you not
have attended the monthly Communion at some French Protestant church,
to your spiritual profit and refreshment?”
“Without doubt,” was the reply, “if I had needed nothing more than
these.”
“Then.... You bewilder me, Ada! What can you find lacking in the
services of your Church?”
She said, slowly and thoughtfully:
“What?... I have thought and reflected much upon this question, and
I have decided that the coldness and narrowness that have chilled my
soul, and the aching sense of something being wanting, arise from the
lack of belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament,
and in the deliberate, purposeful absence of love, and honor, and
worship towards His Mother----”
She was interrupted by an outcry of feeble vehemence.
“You horrify me, Ada. Worship towards a created being!... A sinful
vessel of common human clay!”
She rose and said, standing beside the pillow, with the light of dawn
upon her hair:
“Mother, there is profanation in the thought that the vessel chosen
by its Maker for that tremendous service could be anything but
immaculately, divinely spotless.... Can pure water be drawn from an
impure well? or good fruit, to quote the words of her Divine Son, be
gathered from a tree that is evil? How could the Mother from whose
flesh was formed the sinless Body of the Redeemer, be capable of sin?
My God-given reason tells me it is impossible! And--can I ever forget
that the Heart that poured forth its Blood upon the Cross was filled
from the veins of Mary, when there is not a single Gospel that does not
tell me so?”
There was no answer from the pale lips. She said with energy:
“How can we pay her too much reverence, accord her a devotion too
profound, to whom Archangels bend the knee and the Son of God accorded
filial obedience? Being perfect Man, He is a perfect Son; the desire of
such a Son must be to see His Mother honored. From a child I felt the
incomparable beauty, the resistless charm, of that Divine Maternity....
I used to steal away alone to think of It. I used to say to myself,
seeing you dressed for some dinner or ball, in all your laces and
jewels, ‘My earthly mother is beautiful, but my heavenly Mother is far,
far more fair!’ and I loved to imagine myself as a little child at
Nazareth who had fallen down and lay crying with pain beside the well
from whence she nightly drew her pitcher of fresh water, and whom she
gathered in her arms and comforted. If love of the Mother of Jesus were
prayer, surely I prayed to her then!”
Still there was no response. She sighed and resumed her seat beside the
pillow; and said, stooping and touching with her lips the waxen hand:
“I ought to tell you that I wished and tried, to put many questions
to the Sisters. But they had pledged their word to discuss with me
no question of religious faith, and they were adamant--not at all to
my delight. ‘But I am a heretic,’ I said to Sister Édouard-Antoine.
‘Am I not worth the effort to convince and enlighten?’ She said: ‘My
dear, when Our Lord wishes to enlighten and convince you, He will do
it from within, not from without!’ Now I have told you all there is
to tell--nothing is kept back--no shadow lies between us. Are you not
content with me now?”
“I shall know peace,” said the relentless voice from the pillow, “only
when I have your promise--a pledge that, once given, I know my Ada will
keep. Say to me: ‘Mother, I will never become a Romanist, or marry any
man who holds the Catholic faith!’ That pledge once given will be kept
by you, I know...!”
In her very feebleness lay the strength that was not to be gainsaid or
resisted. Her daughter’s tears fell as she whispered in the dying ear:
“Dear little mother, when you have crossed the deep, swift river that
separates Time from Eternity, and the Veil has fallen behind you,
you will be so wise, so wise!... Not one of the kings, and priests,
and prophets who lived of old, will have been so wise as you. Think,
dearest and gentlest!--if, by the light that shines upon you then, you
were to see that the ancient Faith is the true Faith and the Mother
Church the One Church ... would you not grieve to know your Ada shut
off from peace--deprived of the true and only Bread of Life--fettered
and shackled, body and soul, by an irrevocable vow?... Would you not--”
Her voice broke and faltered. But the pale head upon the pillow made
the negative sign, and she went on:
“Will not you--who have submitted yourself so meekly to the will
of Almighty God in accepting this cup of death that He now offers
you--leave the issue of affairs--in faith that He will do all for the
best--to Him? and forbear to exact this promise, which my heart tells
me will bring me sorrow and pain!”
* * * * *
In vain her pleading. The tongue that was already stiffening uttered
one inexorable word.
“No!”
“Oh, then I promise, mother!” she cried through bursting tears. “And
may God forgive me if I promise wrongly, seeing how much I love you,
dearest dear!”
* * * * *
Ah me! the dying!--how pitiless they are! What heavy fetters their
feebleness can rivet on our limbs, what galling yokes their parting
wishes have power to lay upon our aching necks! How they stretch us on
the rack with their strengthless hands; ruthlessly seize the levers,
turn the jolting wheel; and wring from us, with tears of blood, and
groanings of the flesh and of the spirit, the pledge we most shrink to
give! and pass content, knowing we dare not break the promise given to
one upon whom the grave is about to close.
“Promise me, my son,” I heard the worn-out drudge of a London
insurance office say to his boy of twelve years, grasping the small
warm hand in his, that was gaunt and cold, and damp with the sweat of
death--“promise me that when I lie beside your mother in the cemetery
you will never fail to visit our grave each Sunday; and lay upon it of
the flowers that are in season, the freshest and best, as you have seen
and helped me to do ever since she died! Promise me that weeds shall
never grow above her resting-place; that dust and soil shall never
smirch the stone we placed above her; and see that the fee to the man
who mows the grass be regularly paid. Do not fail me in this, my little
son!”
Little son, with wide blue eyes fixed in awe and terror upon the
whitening stare of impending dissolution, sobbed out the asked-for
promise, and the bankrupt died content.
He knew that on the day following the shabby funeral that was to
swallow up the last remaining five-pound note of his miserable savings,
his penniless child was to be taken by his sole living relative--a
struggling tradesman resident in a remote London suburb--to help the
uncle in his business as a tobacconist and newsvendor, clean the shop
windows, carry out the papers, perform odd offices in the household,
and generally fulfill the duties of an unpaid errand-boy, yet he died
content!
No realization of the crushing weight of responsibility laid on those
thin, childish shoulders; no thought of the desperate, fruitless effort
to be made, Sunday after Sunday, to keep the extorted pledge, marred
the moribund’s happy complacency in the undertaking given. Almost with
his final breath he whispered something about the flowers in season,
and the tidy gravestone, and the weeds that were never to be allowed to
grow....
“Promise me, swear to me!” pants the departing wife to the man who has
been faithful to his marriage-vow, but has realized every day since the
glamour of the honeymoon faded, that his union with this woman has been
a terrible mistake. “Let me go hence contented in the knowledge that
you will never marry again, dear! I could not bear to think of you
happy in the arms of another woman. Say, now, that it shall never be!”
She is thinking of one special woman as she feebly turns the
thumbscrew, and forces her victim to open his jaws to take in the
iron choke-pear of the prohibitive vow. He has not the courage or the
inhumanity to resist her. Nay! it is impious to refuse to grant the
wish of one about to die. So he yields, and she departs; and he goes
lonely and unmated for all the days that are his upon earth.
And perhaps it may be the bitter punishment of those who have exacted
from us these cruel promises; that, with eyes from which the films of
earth have been purged for evermore, they may be fated to see them kept.