He was very weary, the great Churchman who had traveled from
Mölkenzell--but when he reached his private rooms at the hotel he
could not rest. Something urged him with a soundless voice, plucked
at him with invisible hands, constrained him to return to the
death-chamber.... He dined, and snatched brief sleep beset with dreams
upon a preposterous, green-plush sofa. Then he obeyed the entreaty, or
the mandate, and took his _biretta_, and threw a heavy cloak about
him, for it was night and cold; and stepped out upon the Promenade.
It was a dazzling night of stars; great blazing jewels spilt with
a lavish hand upon the purple lap of the Night. From south-west to
north-east the Milky Way made an arch across the sky-dome. Bootes made
the outline of a kite, its fiery tail Arcturus. Vega in Lyra made a
wondrous show. Cardinal de Moulny looked up at them, and murmured a
prayer for the soul he had helped to depart. The Home was but a few
minutes’ walk from the Promenade; he reached it in a few moments. The
hall-door stood open; some silent-footed men in black came out as His
Eminence mounted the steps.
The vestibule was fragrant with laurel-leaves, with leaves of fern and
scattered petals of pure white blossoms, dropped in the hasty unpacking
of memorial wreaths and crosses from the florists’ boxes that had
already begun to arrive. Men and women and children of many nations and
ranks and classes had also brought flowers. Many of these people were
standing on the pavement near the door, and a crowd had gathered in the
street, and were pointing out, with sorrowful faces, the half-open,
blinded windows on the floor above the _entresol_.
“He is lying there,” a peasant woman said to her little daughter, as
the Cardinal passed. And the keen, austere blue eyes of the Churchman
turned upon the speaker, and he said to her in a kindly tone of rebuke:
“‘_Was_’ lying there, my daughter. He is now with God. He died a
blessed death. May yours and mine be as holy!”
He traversed the vestibule and passed upstairs. The diligent hands of
the Little Sisters had already completed the last arrangements. Into
the middle of the lofty room, with its consecrated burning candles
and massed votive wreaths and crosses, the narrow, white-draped bed
had been drawn. At the foot of it stood the altar, with its Crucifix,
and its vases of flowers, and burning tapers. The pure frosty night
breeze, scented with larch and pine needles, flowed in through the
open windows; in the bay of the one that looked south-east stood the
black-draped bust, with a great Cross of violets and bay-leaves leaning
against its pedestal, and a crown of white lilies on its crape-veiled
head.
One of the Little Sisters of the Poor knelt on a _prie-Dieu_ near
the bed-foot. There would be a public Lying-in-State upon the morrow,
when members of Religious Sodalities would take part in the solemn
function; when a guard of honor, drawn from the Army of the Swiss
Republic, would be posted to watch the illustrious dead. Meanwhile, the
Little Sister, with her fellow-nun to relieve her at intervals, would
thus keep watch through the night-hours. His Eminence must know it
would be not only a duty but a pleasure to render these sacred duties
to the remains of one so good as Monsieur.
Then, as de Moulny turned towards the bed to sprinkle it and its
occupant from the little stoup of holy water that stood upon a small
stand close by, an oblong patch of whiteness showing relief against its
purple cover drew his attention. The meek, good eyes of the Sister had
followed the Cardinal’s. They now encountered them.
“It was I who placed it there,” the Sister explained, with a little
innocent confusion. “It arrived by the afternoon post. It is a letter
from England--M. Dunoisse received one in that handwriting regularly
once a year at Noël ... its arrival was Monsieur’s great festival!”
She added, as the Cardinal took the letter in his hand: “The good God
permitted Monsieur to suffer a terrible bereavement in the death of the
dear friend who thus remembered him!” She glanced at the crape-veiled
bust in the window-bay, and added: “In August he received the news. At
the close of September comes this letter--a message from the dead to
the dead.”
The Cardinal’s expression of composed stem gravity did not change as
the Sister made her explanation.
“Leave me, my child,” he said to the nun, “and rest until I again
summon you. I desire to remain alone awhile by this bed of holy death.”
The Sister withdrew, leaving the Cardinal standing with the letter
in his hand by the old white head that rested upon the flower-strewn
pillow. A snow-pure veil of unutterable peace had been drawn by the
hand of gentle Death over the splendid, powerful brow, the sealed eyes,
and the high, clear-cut, aquiline features. The face was wonderfully
noble, marvelously grand.
A great prelate, a subtle theologian, a profound scholar, no priest was
more deeply read than Cardinal de Moulny in the pages of the Book of
Life and Death. Long years of experience among the living, stores of
knowledge accumulated beside innumerable deathbeds, had taught him that
the deeper you read between the pages of that Book, the less you know
that you know.
An idea struck him as he looked from the dead face to the envelope,
obviously yellowed, addressed in a delicate old-fashioned
handwriting--handwriting faded as though by the passage of many
years--to an address in Paris that had belonged to Dunoisse many
years previously--now re-addressed in blacker ink in a modern upright
hand. And as he looked, yielding to a sudden impulse, he tore open
the envelope and mastered the contents. He read by the light of the
death-tapers that flickered on the altar at the bed-foot, set on either
side of the Crucifix, carved in dark walnut with the Emblems of the
Passion, that had hung above the head of the bed. The letter bore the
date of thirty-nine years back. It ran thus:
“_It has been made clear to me that what it is my determination to
reveal to you in this letter cannot be known by you while the hand
that penned it is yet warm and living. So, once written, it shall lie
in the shabby desk most people laugh at until my summons comes from
that High Power Whose call we must all obey. There was a time, though
you have never suspected it, when for the sake of the sweetness of the
earthly love you had not then offered me, I would have taken my hand
from the plow._
“_Nor when the gift was made, was I without my hour of doubt and
hesitation, for, had I linked my life with yours, I must have broken
a vow. Well!--I was spared the choice by the verdict of the London
physicians--the relentless progress of the disease that bound me
prisoner to this room within whose four walls I have now for so many
years lived and labored.... Dear friend!--dearest of all earthly
friends!--there is no marriage in that world where blessed spirits
dwell, but there is Oneness. It is the gift of God to souls that
have purely loved upon earth. Oh my beloved! whom I loved from the
first--whom I shall love to the last--and this world is not the last,
thanks be to God for it!--I do most humbly trust in Him that we who
have been so long divided here on earth shall meet and be one in
Heaven._”