Cardinal de Moulny was not ordinarily prone to yield to emotion--not
commonly open to the appeals of sentiment--yet the tears rolled down
his heavy cheeks as he read. It seemed to him so exquisitely piteous
that the reward of his dead friend’s unswerving devotion and lifelong
fidelity should have come too late to yield him joy.
Was it fancy? Was it some shadow cast athwart the dead face by a
wind-blown taper-flame that made the stern old beautiful mouth under
the white mustache that charitable hands had trimmed and waxed for
Dunoisse, seem to be smiling? The glassy, fixed eyes were a little
open. Had they not been shut a little while before? The steady nerves
of the questioner knew a strange thrill of awe.... He stepped to the
bedside, gazed earnestly in the still, white face. No doubt, death
was there! He touched the icy wrist,--bent his ear close to the cold,
shrouded heart--Death, beyond all doubt! Yet, remembering that he had
solemnly sworn, many years before, to be the friend of Dunoisse to the
edge of Death, and, if possible, beyond--he would do as some unseen
Mentor now prompted.... There was no sin in the thing.... It was an act
of charity....
So, as he would have shouted in the ears of an expiring penitent,
following the retiring consciousness to the remotest bounds of vitality
with the sacred words, the gracious consolations of Holy Church, now
with all the power of his splendid lungs de Moulny shouted the letter
of the dead woman in the ears of her dead lover. There was not a spark
of life in the glassy eyes glimmering between the rigid, livid eyelids.
The deadly chill of death bit him like a frost as he slipped the letter
within the folds of the shroud where the leather case that held its
comrades was hidden on the breast of Hector Dunoisse. He was a little
contemptuous of his own weakness as he dipped his fingers in the china
shell of holy water--sprinkled the head and feet of the corpse, and
murmured a Latin prayer commending the departed soul to the Divine
Mercy. Then he lifted his fur-lined mantle from the floor where he had
dropped it--and went out of the room with long, light, noiseless steps,
shutting the door.
* * * * *
The man who lay upon the flower-decked, white-draped bed, with dimly
burning tapers at his head and feet, and his dead love’s letters lying
upon his dead breast under the stiff white hands that held a Rosary,
saw the tall, corpulent figure in the purple cassock pass out of the
room. He heard the closing of the door.
He had heard the letter, every word of it. And the revelation of her
long-hidden secret had brought him unutterable joy--joy of which he
knew he must infallibly have died, had he not been already dead.
For he knew quite well that he was dead; but that his spirit had not
yet passed beyond the gates of its earthly tenement. He waited in
a great, cold, quiet void. The little busy world spun on, forever
divorced from him. He was one with the Immensity of Eternity. He
hung, an isolated point in Illimitable Space, upon the borders of the
Otherwhere. He knew no shrinking. Terrors are for nerves of flesh,
fears for the finite, mortal, perishable.... He lay like a drop of
water that is yet a boundless ocean, enclosed in the hollow of the
Almighty Hand.
It has been said and written by learned men, dead ages ago--that
the soul remains a prisoner for hours, perhaps days, when the spark
of Life is extinguished, and the heart is forever stilled. Perhaps
it was the third hour after death, perhaps the third day--who
knows?--when Dunoisse became aware that four walls no longer bounded
his horizon--that the peaks and ranges of the ancient snow-crowned
mountains now rose up about him.... He stood beside a new-made grave,
covered and surrounded with crosses and wreaths of fading flowers,
in the cemetery that lies on the hillside below Zeiden. The flush of
dawn was upon all Nature, the frosted grasses at his feet bowed to the
earth in slumber; the lake far below, lying in the lap of the wintry
woods and meadows, seemed to slumber and dream ... and in the East, to
which his face was turned--the mysterious East that has been, since the
childhood of this old world, the threshold across which Revelation has
stepped with shining feet--the moon was rising more gloriously than
he had ever known the great silvery-golden planet rise--or was it the
sun?...
Or was it a Lamp of inconceivable radiance upheld in the hands of a
Woman who stood upon the mountains, robed in the glory of sun and moon
and stars, adorned with all the beauty of earth and sea and sky, lovely
with the loveliness which human words are powerless to convey. A Wind,
going whither it listed, soughed past; it brought with it the sound
of rustling leaves and falling waters, with the cooing of doves; it
whispered in his ear a Name, the second his first childish lispings had
been taught to utter in prayer--reverenced and beloved above all on
earth or in Heaven, save One.
It was no Lamp she held, it was a Child of Wonder. A Child above Whose
Brow crossing and intertwisting and interweaving rays of light formed
the semblance of a Crown of Thorns. And from the Eyes of the Child, as
from its thorny diadem, all the Light emanated, all the glory flowed.
The vision faded, but the Light of those Eyes remained. He whom their
ineffable mild gaze had turned on, standing by his own new grave
in Zeiden Cemetery, understood at last. He comprehended now the
breadth and depth and height of the Divine Love. He saw how Supreme
Beneficence had worked for good and ultimate happiness through all the
disappointments, labors, agonies, sorrows, and sufferings of his own
ended life on earth. He saw it dispersing through a million million
channels, to irradiate, cleanse, and transform the souls of men and
make them fit for Heaven. He saw it flowing outwards through the gentle
hands of the woman, his soul’s beloved, appointed to carry out the
great work by which his own had been prompted and inspired. He reaped
his harvest bountifully. And what had been a trembling Hope in Life
became now after Death a glorious certainty of work not done in vain
by any laborer, however humble or unskilled, whose aim and end are the
honor and glory of God.
And he realized the huge dynamic force of Prayer, wielded by Christian
men and Christian women, and saw in Faith the fulcrum of the lever
that is daily moving the world. And by the Body of Christ, veritably
present in the Blessed Sacrament--in the Blood of Christ shed again for
us--in the Sacrifice that shall daily be renewed by Catholic priests at
Catholic altars until the End of Time--he knew that all the nations of
the earth shall be saved and pardoned and justified. He saw them with
the brightness that is the shadow of the ineffable Light upon their
faces, destroying their hideous engines of destruction, laying down
their weapons of war. He heard them crying: “Since we are the Sons of
God, let us be brothers in deed and verity!” And he saw purified holy
souls that have passed through Purgatory; blessed spirits that are now
in Paradise; all the Hierarchy of Angels, all the Thrones and Powers
and Dominations, all the crowned saints, martyrs, virgins, hail with
joy that day....
* * * * *
The solemn mountains were no longer round him. His temples were no
longer kissed by a breeze that was chill with the frosts of earthly
night. A balmy warmth, an exquisite fragrance, an enveloping, embracing
sense of light and peace and rest, were his now. He stood amidst vast,
illimitable fields of lilies,--tall blossomed stems that bowed and
swayed and whispered as though a wind were passing over them. Yet the
atmosphere was still--so still, so clear, so pure, that his unspoken
thought stirred it, sending waves of vibrations eddying through its
celestial ether, as uttered words of earthly speech set in motion the
mundane air:
“These are the Fields of Paradise,” was his thought. And--oh! with
what bliss unutterable he heard the Beloved answer in that wordless,
thrilling language that is common speech with the Blest:
“These are the Fields of Paradise--and I am here with you!”
He cried out: “Blessed be God!” seeing her coming.
She answered: “Blessed be God!” even as she came.
He had had earthly dreams of meeting her after Death in some roseate
land beyond the sunset, dressed in the well-loved, sober black silk
gown, white cap and little cape, walking upon the virgin shores of some
tideless, opal ocean.
This was the Divine reality--that she should move to him through a
whispering sea of lilies; robed in the spotless glory of her unstained
virginity, with the shining halo of her long martyrdom hovering over
her pure brow, reflected in her radiant eyes.
“O my Love!” she said, in that thought-speech of Paradise that is
sweeter than all the singing of all the nightingales of earth, “there
is no marriage in Heaven, but there is Oneness. It is God’s gift to
souls that have faithfully loved on earth!”
“O my Love!” he said, “I never dreamed you half so beautiful.”
“And ah! my Love,” she answered back, “I never knew before how glorious
you were!”
They were speechless for a moment, gazing on each other, while the
little years of our earth flitted by, and its men and women were born,
and grew up and grew old. She held out both hands to him then, and he
would have fallen at her feet, but, “No!” she said, and opened her dear
arms, and took him to her breast instead.
And heart to heart they stood; lips hushed on lips in the kiss of
Paradise that outweighs all the joys we covet. And the lilies kept
whispering as though they knew a secret. “_Who_ is coming?” they
rustled to each other. “We know!--we know!”
There was a Footstep in that holy place. The lilies ceased
whispering--it was still, so still! Who came, moving through His Garden
of Paradise as of old time He moved through His earthly Eden, calling
the man and the woman? The lilies knew, but they did not say.
The woman and the man heard His Voice. They turned, hand clasped in
hand, to see the Face of Love smiling under the Crown of Thorns; and,
oblivious even of each other in the bliss of the Beatific Vision, they
fell in adoration at those nail-pierced Feet that trod the Dolorous Way
under the weight of the Cross; toiling under the burden of their sins
and yours and mine--that, repentant--we might find pardon and salvation.