In April, 1910, a radiant celestial traveler, with flaming silvery
hair, came rushing back out of the inconceivable, immeasurable spaces
that lie beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune, drawn by that strange
mysterious need that impels it--at the close of each successive period
of eighty to eighty-five years--to revisit the dim glimpses of this
speck of Earth, where once the Supreme Architect of the Universe dwelt,
a poor man amongst men--and make its transit of the cooling sun,
before it passes into the Southern Hemisphere, beyond the reach of the
astronomer’s lens, pursuing the path appointed it to follow towards the
unknown end....
In the opal dawn of mornings in late April it gleamed, a pale and
sinister radiance under the white knee of the waning moon. In May it
made a luminous streak of whiteness in the north-west after sunset,
where an unknown comet had hung in the February of the year.
That strange new comet of February, and now this.... Old Hector
Dunoisse was vaguely uneasy as he gazed at the dazzling-pale wonder.
Did it presage some great approaching misfortune? Some visitations of
War, or pestilence, or famine? Some cataclysmic disaster, such as the
earthquake of Messina? Some great irreparable loss to the world in the
sweeping away, by one swift stroke of the Death Angel’s sword, of some
lofty, notable, familiar figure of man or woman, raised in virtue of
high gifts, or lofty deeds, or elevated ranks above the heads of the
rest?....
* * * * *
To each bird’s breast its own nest is the nearest. Old Hector trembled,
remembering the great age of the woman who was the one joy and comfort
of his life. But early in May, when the faces of men and women of
British race were drawn and livid with suspense, as the electrical
waves throbbed out from London, telling the hushed and waiting world
how a great King’s last sands of life were dancing out of the glass, he
breathed more freely, despite the sorrow that he felt.
“He was a pretty boy when first I saw him,” he said to one who brought
him the latest, saddest news. “He was a splendid sportsman and an
accomplished _viveur_, besides one of the greatest diplomats that
have ever lived. He never spoke a discourteous word, or revenged a
private grudge. He never pardoned an impertinence, or asserted his high
rank, or forgot it! He fought for the political freedom of creeds he
did not hold--he honored Art--and practiced hospitality. The world is
better for his nine years’ reign! Take off my cap, my Sister,” he bade
the nun, “and make for me the Sign of the Cross. May the soul of Edward
the Peacemaker and the souls of all the faithful departed, by the Mercy
of God, rest in peace!”
Thenceafter he was mentally less troubled, but yet in body he was
failing. Those about him shook their heads. It was what they had long
anticipated--what else, indeed, should be looked for but that one so
laden with years should let their burden slip from the bowed shoulders?
They did not know of his determination not to lay down life while yet
his loved one lived.
The summer was gray, and wet, and cold. He suffered as all Nature
did, for lack of wholesome vivifying sunshine. Rheumatic pains racked
his paralyzed limbs; his great black eyes were less brilliant under
their bushy arched eyebrows, his memory was less vivid, his speech
less clear and concise. Sleep rarely visited him, to whom sleep was
nourishment and tonic. When it came it brought terrible dreams. Dreams
in which endless pageants of tortured faces and mutilated bodies, in
bullet-pierced and shot-torn uniforms, defiled before him, and clashing
martial music drowned the cries of dying men. And other dreams in which
he, Dunoisse, died and passed into a gray void of Nothingness, in which
no ray of the Divine Love might reach his groping soul--and wandered in
a formless, boundless wilderness, peopled with dim intangible shapes
that flitted by him--and when pursued turned on him faces of despair
and horror unspeakable, crying: “Away! Trouble us not! We once were
Christian men and lived on earth, were guided by priests and clergymen,
and believed in the fair promises of Religion. Where now is God of Whom
the preachers talked? Where are the spirits of those who have gone
before with the Sign of Faith, in the blessed hope of Salvation? We
cannot find One or the others--yet this is the World beyond the Grave!”
He would wake from such a dream in an agony. What consolation, then,
to see, shadowed against the purple-black sky of midnight or the
gray-white sky of dawn, the sculptured outline of the thoughtful
bending head and the pure gentle face of his dear lady. He would look
from it to the walnut Crucifix with the Emblems of the Passion, and
reflect:
“God made her good, therefore He must be Goodness. And though a whole
lifetime has gone by since my eyes saw, and my hands touched her--yet
she lives, and is, and has her being beyond those snowy mountains
of Switzerland and the broad fertile fields of France--and across
the restless Channel, in the big black city of London I should find
her--had I but strength to follow my will--had I but courage to disobey
her command.”
For that had been the guerdon of his great and tireless labors, to be
sent away empty-handed, beggared of all but a little hope. He had gone
on patiently toiling among the sick and wounded soldiers in the camps
at the Crimea, shunning no service that could be rendered, bearing the
heaviest and most irksome burdens; always repeating to himself, over
and over, the words he had said at parting to his beloved:
“When I have erased all those black entries from the Book of the
Recording Angel!--when I have washed my soul clean of the guilt of all
this blood, I will come and claim my priceless joy--my great reward of
you! I will deserve so much of God that He will give me even you!”
Even when he knew her there, engaged in her great work of reforming and
reorganizing the war-hospitals at Balaklava, he had made no attempt to
see or speak with her; he had waited to be worthier still.... Sometimes
a distant glimpse of the tall, slight figure was vouchsafed him, as she
went from hospital to hospital with her nurses and Sisters of Charity;
or her mule-drawn basket-wagon would rattle by, upon the uneven tracks
that led to the various camps. But the man in the sheepskin coat and
cap, who led the little donkey with panniers, was not recognizable
among hundreds of other men, clad similarly. Or at least Dunoisse
thought so.
But the yearning to touch her hand and hear her voice again was
torture. One night, looking from afar at the light in the windows
of the hut she occupied, it seemed to him that he could bear it no
more. Trembling, he ventured to the door and knocked. A Sister, with
a fair, kind, placid face, opened.... From her he learned that some
days previously the Lady-in-Chief had been stricken down with a second
attack of fever and conveyed to the Sanatorium; that the illness had
yielded to treatment; but that the doctors would not hear of her
remaining in the Crimea. And that she had, that very morning, been
carried down to the harbor upon a stretcher, borne by soldiers, and
accompanied by nurses and Sisters of Charity, and embarked, upon the
yacht of a friend, for Scutari.
It was Summer, and the myriad wild-flowers of the Tauric Chersonese had
sprung up upon the brown plains, and between the stones and boulders;
and as in the beech-forest near the Inn of the Three Herons long ago,
Dunoisse flung himself face downwards amidst the flaunting blooms and
wept. Then he rose up and went back to his labors among the sick and
suffering. But he wrote to her; and presently received a letter in the
beloved handwriting, telling him that she had returned to England in
feeble health.
* * * * *
The Allied Armies were withdrawn from the seat of war--the hospitals
were closed, yet Dunoisse hesitated to follow her. He had not earned
the right, it seemed to him. He volunteered as a surgeon’s assistant
on one of the French hospital-ships and returned to Marseilles. Here
he rendered service to his wounded countrymen, and--simultaneously
with the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny--was called back to Paris, to be
present at the death-bed of Marshal Dunoisse.
The stately mansion in the Rue Chaussée d’Antin had fallen into
decay. A dusty board upon the weather-stained portico advertised it
as Unfurnished and To Let. In the little ground-floor back room of
the porter’s lodge, inhabited by Auguste and his plump-faced wife,
the late master of the big house lay dying, his fur-lined cloak
spread above the patchwork coverlet and drawn up to his long-unshaven
chin. The curly-brimmed beaver hat was perched upon the top of the
wardrobe--the gold-mounted teeth were in their morocco case on the deal
toilet-table--the ambrosial wig hung upon the looking-glass--the big
Malacca cane, its chased golden top replaced by a knob of tarnished
pewter, lay beside the Marshal on the frowsy bed.... Monseigneur would
have it, Auguste’s stout wife explained, to shake at devils that
worried him. When he got too weak to do this she had set a plaster
Crucifix on the chest of drawers that stood at the foot of the bed.
The Marshal’s race was nearly run, that was evident. But he was
conscious, with lapses into semi-delirium. He recognized his son.
“When I said that Flemish Buonaparte should never pick my bones, I
forgot you!” he told Hector. “So, when that woman of yours came to me
for money for her dear imprisoned one--I gave, though I knew myself a
fool! Then de Fleury sent to me, saying that--though your sentence was
for life and the Emperor’s resentment was implacable--he could insure
your freedom for--I forget how much, but I know it was a thumping
sum of money!--and what in the name of a thousand thunders was a man
with bowels to do? You were a poor creature, but Marie’s son, after
all!--and so I let them plunder me.... Ah-h! What are you up to now,
you rascals, you?”
He saw devils, and roared and brandished his big cane at them. Only
in imagination, because his voice had sunk to a crackling whisper,
and his hand was powerless. A little child--the year-old son of the
ex-coachman’s daughter--sat on the bed, holding one of the shrunken
fingers--undismayed by the fierce glare of the bloodshot eyes....
Monseigneur had been kind to Toto, Auguste’s wife whispered....
Dunoisse, seeing the end approach, signed to her to take the boy away.
* * * * *
A change of mood came upon the old man presently.
“Let me rise up!” he said to the coachman’s wife, a trifle wildly. “I
tell you that I am in the presence of the great!...”
He added, with the rattle in his throat:
“Guilty, M. the President, upon all these counts and charges. But I
never showed my back to an enemy, or gave the cold shoulder to a friend
in trouble.... I am a soldier of Napoleon, I! And when I see him--even
if he be chained down in Purgatory with imps swarming over him, I will
draw my sword and cry: ‘_Be off, you singed rapscallions!--I come, my
Emperor!_’ For I fear God,--but He knows me better than to suppose I
shall turn tail before a rabble of fiends....” He made an ineffectual
grasp at the cane--rose in imaginary stirrups, and thundered, in that
crackling whisper: “Form column of squadrons! Behind the enemy is our
rallying-point! Charge!”
Then he fell back into the hollowed bed limply as an empty saddle-bag,
and Dunoisse, with an indescribable pang at the heart, knew that his
father, who had loved him after all, was dead, and that he had died
without a word of love or gratitude from the son for whom he had gone
down beggared to the grave.
The poor remnant of a once handsome fortune was left to that son
without conditions. The funeral over, Dunoisse sold what remained of
the lease of the house--the furniture, plate, and pictures having
mysteriously vanished--and left Paris for the East. Wherever the red
star of battle burned, thenceforwards the son of Marie-Bathilde was to
be found aiding the torn and mutilated victims of that grim Moloch we
adorn with gold and scarlet; bow down before; give honorable titles to;
hang with Orders and Crosses, as though in mockery of the Son of Peace,
who died for Love upon the bitter tree.
When the Austrians crossed the Ticino and the French troops entered
Piedmont, he quitted the hospitals of Lucknow and hurried to Italy. At
Solferino he met with a kindred spirit, and erelong became enrolled
a member of a band of high-souled men and women of many nations, who
presently were gathered together under the banner bearing the symbol
of the Crimson Cross. The funds that were needed to establish the
Society upon a sound working basis were supplied from an unexpected
source: for when Luitpold, Regent of Widinitz, quitted this life,
having been predeceased by his wife, his son, and both his daughters,
it was found, by some strange freak of will, that he had bequeathed
his vast private estates to the son of Marie-Bathilde. Thus, the dowry
of three hundred thousand silver thalers having been repaid to the
Prioress of the Carmelite Convent at Widinitz, Dunoisse spent the huge
sum that remained in the realization of his dream; and when Love and
Pity, Charity and Mercy, were leagued all the world over, in a vast,
comprehensive Society--when Kings and Emperors praised and thanked the
man whose genius for organization and consummate mastery of detail had
perfected this vast machine for the alleviation of suffering--whose
riches had been poured out unstintingly to further the cause--it seemed
to him that he might now seek out the woman of his worship. And he
wrote to Ada Merling asking, “May I come to you?” and she answered:
“Come!”
It was after the fall of the French Empire. MacMahon had succeeded
Thiers as President. Upon the journey Dunoisse, whose exertions had
been unceasing during the Franco-Prussian War, scarcely ate or slept.
He answered at random those who spoke to him. When he reached the door
of the house in Park Lane he trembled, so that he had to lean for
support against the railings. He had changed and aged much in the last
fifteen years.
He was admitted to the beautiful, quiet drawing-room. An elderly
servant knocked at a door communicating with this, and went away. The
door opened, and the wraith of Ada Merling stood upon the threshold. So
white, so wan, so frail, that but for the indomitable fire burning in
the blue-gray eyes, and the resolute, energetic setting of the lips, he
who loved her, would hardly have known her.... He cried out, stricken
to the soul with anguish.... She said to him, with no sign of emotion
beyond a tremble in her voice:
“You too are changed--you too have suffered! That you should suffer
no longer I have decided to tell you all. There can be no question
of any closer tie between us--but while I live you have my faithful
friendship. And it may be that I shall live for years--though I shall
never leave my room again!”
She added, as Dunoisse sank down in a chair, and covered his face with
his hands:
“Do not grieve. Try to be glad that the path I am to tread has been
pointed out so clearly....”
“Oh! my beloved!” said Dunoisse brokenly. “If you have never loved me
I am glad of it for your sake!... But, remembering that evening in the
Cemetery at Scutari--can you tell me truly that it is so?”
“I will answer you in a letter,” she said, “when I have gathered
strength sufficiently. How soon you will receive the letter, I cannot
say!” She added, when they had sat together for a little space in
silence: “Now bid me good-by and leave me. Never seek me!--do not
follow me! If you can, find earthly happiness elsewhere. For we are set
apart while we both live, by the Will of God. Nevertheless, in His good
time, and in the place He has appointed, I believe that you and I shall
meet again!”
And so he had left her, and never since seen her. Yearly a letter from
her had reached him, but it had never been _the_ letter. Now you
know why Dunoisse would not consent to die. He was waiting for the
letter that told him of her love.
He had already waited fifty-six years. Well! he would go on waiting....
The letter was sure to come.