That night, Herminia Barton went up sadly to her own bedroom. It was
the very last night that Dolores was to sleep under the same roof with
her mother. On the morrow, she meant to remove to Sir Anthony
Merrick’s.
As soon as Herminia had closed the door, she sat down to her
writing-table and began to write. Her pen moved of itself. And this was
her letter:—
“MY DARLING DAUGHTER,—By the time you read these words, I shall be no
longer in the way, to interfere with your perfect freedom of action. I
had but one task left in life—to make you happy. Now I find I only
stand in the way of that object, no reason remains why I should endure
any longer the misfortune of living.
“My child, my child, you must see, when you come to think it over
at leisure, that all I ever did was done, up to my lights, to serve
and bless you. I thought, by giving you the father and the birth I
did, I was giving you the best any mother on earth had ever yet
given her dearest daughter. I believe it still; but I see I should
never succeed in making _you_ feel it. Accept this reparation. For
all the wrong I may have done, all the mistakes I may have made, I
sincerely and earnestly implore your forgiveness. I could not have
had it while I lived; I beseech and pray you to grant me dead what
you would never have been able to grant me living.
“My darling, I thought you would grow up to feel as I did; I
thought you would thank me for leading you to see such things as
the blind world is incapable of seeing. There I made a mistake; and
sorely am I punished for it. Don’t visit it upon my head in your
recollections when I can no longer defend myself.
“I set out in life with the earnest determination to be a martyr to
the cause of truth and righteousness, as I myself understood them.
But I didn’t foresee this last pang of martyrdom. No soul can tell
beforehand to what particular cross the blind chances of the
universe will finally nail it. But I am ready to be offered, and
the time of my departure is close at hand. I have fought a good
fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith I started
in life with. Nothing now remains for me but the crown of
martyrdom. My darling, it is indeed a very bitter cup to me that
you should wish me dead; but ’tis a small thing to die, above all
for the sake of those we love. I die for you gladly, knowing that
by doing so I can easily relieve my own dear little girl of one
trouble in life, and make her course lie henceforth through
smoother waters. Be happy! be happy! Goodbye, my Dolly! Your
mother’s love go forever through life with you!
“Burn this blurred note the moment you have read it. I enclose a
more formal one, giving reasons for my act on other grounds, to be
put in, if need be, at the coroner’s inquest. Good-night, my
heart’s darling. Your truly devoted and affectionate
MOTHER.
“Oh, Dolly, my Dolly, you never will know with what love I loved
you.”
When she had finished that note, and folded it reverently with kisses
and tears, she wrote the second one in a firm hand for the formal
evidence. Then she put on a fresh white dress, as pure as her own soul,
like the one she had worn on the night of her self-made bridal with
Alan Merrick. In her bosom she fastened two innocent white roses from
Walter Brydges’s bouquet, arranging them with studious care very
daintily before her mirror. She was always a woman. “Perhaps,” she
thought to herself, “for her lover’s sake, my Dolly will kiss them.
When she finds them lying on her dead mother’s breast, my Dolly may
kiss them.” Then she cried a few minutes very softly to herself; for no
one can die without some little regret, some consciousness of the
unique solemnity of the occasion.
At last she rose and moved over to her desk. Out of it she took a small
glass-stoppered phial, that a scientific friend had given her long ago
for use in case of extreme emergency. It contained prussic acid. She
poured the contents into a glass and drank it off. Then she lay upon
her bed and waited for the only friend she had left in the world, with
hands folded on her breast, like some saint of the middle ages.
Not for nothing does blind fate vouchsafe such martyrs to humanity.
From their graves shall spring glorious the church of the future.
When Dolores came in next morning to say goodbye, she found her
mother’s body cold and stiff upon the bed, in a pure white dress, with
two crushed white roses just peeping from her bodice.
Herminia Barton’s stainless soul had ceased to exist for ever.
THE END.