For hours there lasted an interview, during which he, with the delirium
of hope, she with the delirium of despair, drained at their young lips
that cup of life which is full of the first confession of love.
In recollections so overwhelming did this meeting leave Gordon on the
next morning, that he was unmindful of everything beside; and among the
consequences of absentmindedness was the wound that he gave himself by
the careless handling of his gun.
When Ezra had set out for the convent that morning he had walked with
him, saying that he would go to the station for a daily paper, but
chiefly wishing to escape the house and be alone. They had reached in
the fields a rotting fence, on each side of which grew briers and
underwood. He had expected to climb this fence, and as he stood beside
it speaking a few parting words to Ezra he absently thrust his gun
between two of the lower rails, not noticing that the lock was sprung.
Caught in the brush on the other side, it was discharged, making a wound
in his left leg a little below the thigh. He turned to a deadly
paleness, looked at Ezra with that stunned, bewildered expression seen
in the faces of those who receive a wound, and fell.
By main strength the old man lifted and bore him to the house and
hurried off to the station, near which the neighbourhood physician and
surgeon lived. But the latter was away from home; several hours passed
before he came; the means taken to stop the haemorrhage had been
ineffectual; the loss of blood had been very great; certain foreign
matter had been carried into the wound; the professional treatment was
unskilful; and septic fever followed, so that for many days his life
hung upon a little chance. But convalescence came at last, and with it
days of clear, calm thinking. For he had not allowed news of his
accident to be sent home or to his friends; and except the old couple,
the doctor, and the nurse whom the latter had secured, he had no company
but his thoughts.
No tidings had come to him of Sister Dolorosa since his accident; and
nothing had intervened to remove that sad image of her which had haunted
him through fever and phantasy and dream since the night of their final
interview. For it was then that he had first realised in how pitiless a
tragedy her life had become entangled, and how conscience may fail to
govern a woman's heart in denying her the right to love, but may still
govern her actions in forbidding her to marry. To plead with her had
been to wound only the more deeply a nature that accepted even this
pleading as a further proof of its own disloyalty, and was forced by it
into a state of more poignant humiliation. What wonder, therefore, if
there had been opened in his mind from that hour a certain wound which
grew deeper and deeper, until, by comparison, his real wound seemed
painless and insignificant.
Nevertheless, it is true that during this interview he had not been able
to accept her decision as irreversible. The spell of her presence over
him was too complete; even his wish to rescue her from a lot, henceforth
unhappier still, too urgent; so that in parting he had clung to the
secret hope that little by little he might change her conscience, which
now interposed the only obstacle between them.
Even the next day, when he had been wounded and life was rapidly flowing
from him, and earthly ties seemed soon to be snapped, he had thought
only of this tie, new and sacred, and had written to her. Poor boy!--he
had written, as with his heart's blood, his brief, pathetic appeal that
she would come and be united to him before he died. In all ages of the
world there have been persons, simple in nature and simple in their
faith in another life, who have forgotten everything else in the last
hour but the supreme wish to grapple to them those they love, for
eternity, and at whatever cost. Such simplicity of nature and faith
belonged to him; for although in Kentucky the unrest of the century
touching belief in the supernatural, and the many phases by which this
expresses itself, are not unknown, they had never affected him. He
believed as his fathers had believed, that to be united in this world in
any relation is to be united in that relation, mysteriously changed yet
mysteriously the same, in another.
But this letter had never been sent. There had been no one to take it at
the time; and when Ezra returned with the physician he had fainted away
from loss of blood.
Then had followed the dressing of the wound, days of fever and
unconsciousness, and then the assurance that he would get well. Thus,
nearly a month had passed, and for him a great change had come over the
face of nature and the light of the world. With that preternatural calm
of mind which only an invalid or a passionless philosopher ever obtains,
he now looked back upon an episode which thus acquired fictitious
remoteness. So weak that he could scarcely lift his head from his
pillow, there left his heart the keen, joyous sense of human ties and
pursuits. He lost the key to the motives and forces of his own
character. But it is often the natural result of such illness that while
the springs of feeling seem to dry up, the conscience remains sensitive,
or even burns more brightly, as a star through a rarer atmosphere. So
that, lying thus in the poor farm-house during dreary days, with his
life half-gone out of him, and with only the sad image of her always
before his eyes, he could think of nothing but his cruel folly in having
broken in upon her peace; for perfect peace of some sort she must have
had in comparison with what was now left her.
Beneath his pillow he kept her letter, and as he often read it over he
asked himself how he could ever have hoped to change the conscience
which had inspired such a letter as that. If her heart belonged to him,
did not her soul belong to her religion; and if one or the other must
give way, could it be doubtful with such, a nature as hers which would
come out victorious? Thus he said to himself that any further attempt to
see her could but result in greater suffering to them both, and that
nothing was left him but what she herself had urged--to go away and
resign her to a life from which he had too late found out that she could
never be divorced.
As soon as he had come to this decision, he began to think of her as
belonging only to his past. The entire episode became a thing of memory
and irreparable incompleteness; and with the conviction that she was
lost to him her image passed into that serene, reverential sanctuary of
our common nature, where all the highest that we have grasped at and
missed, and all the beauty that we have loved and lost, take the forms
of statues around dim walls and look down upon us in mournful,
never-changing perfection.
As he lay one morning revolving his altered purpose, Ezra came quietly
into the room and took from a table near the foot of the bed a waiter on
which were a jelly-glass and a napkin.
"_She_ said I'd better take these back this morning," he observed,
looking at Gordon for his approval, and motioning with his head towards
that quarter of the house where Martha was supposed to be.
"Wait awhile, will you, Ezra?" he replied, looking at the old man with
the dark, quiet eye of an invalid. "I think I ought to write a few lines
this morning to thank them for their kindness. Come back in an hour,
will you?"
The things had been sent from the convent; for, from the time that news
had reached the Mother Superior of the accident of the young stranger
who had visited the convent some days before, there had regularly come
to him delicate attentions which could not have been supplied at the
farmhouse. He often asked himself whether they were not inspired by
_her_; and he thought that when the time came for him to write his
thanks, he would put into the expression of them something that would
be understood by her alone--something that would stand for gratitude and
a farewell.
When Ezra left the room, with the thought of now doing this another
thought came unexpectedly to him. By the side of the bed there stood a
small table on which were writing materials and a few books that had
been taken from his valise. He stretched out his hand, and opening one
of them took from it a letter which bore the address, "Sister Dolorosa."
It contained those appealing lines that he had written her on the day of
his accident; and with calm, curious sadness he now read them over and
over, as though they had never come from him. From the mere monotony of
this exercise sleep overtook him, and he had scarcely restored the
letter to the envelope and laid it back on the table before his eyelids
closed.
While he still lay asleep, Ezra came quietly into the room again, and
took up the waiter with the jelly-glass and the napkin. Then he looked
around for the letter that he was to take. He was accustomed to carry
Gordon's letters to the station, and his eye now rested on the table
where they were always to be found. Seeing one on it, he walked across,
took it up and read the address, "Sister Dolorosa," hesitated, glanced
at Gordon's closed eyes, and then, with an intelligent nod to signify
that he could understand without further instruction, he left the room
and set out briskly for the convent.
Sister Dolorosa was at the cistern filling a bucket with water when he
came up and, handing her the letter, passed on to the convent kitchen.
She looked at it with indifference; then she opened and read it; and
then in an instant everything whirled before her eyes, and in her ears
the water sounded loud as it dropped from the chain back into the
cistern. And then she was gone--gone with a light, rapid step, down, the
avenue of elms, through the gate, across the meadows, out into the
fields--bucket and cistern, Mother Superior and sisterhood, vows and
martyrs, zeal of Carmelite, passion of Christ, all forgotten.
When, nearly a month before, news had reached the Mother Superior of the
young stranger's accident, in accordance with the rule which excludes
from the convent worldly affairs, she had not made it known except to
those who were to aid in carrying out her kindly plans for him. To
Sister Dolorosa, therefore, the accident had just occurred, and
now--now as she hastened to him--he was dying.
During the intervening weeks she had undergone by insensible degrees a
deterioration of nature. Prayer had not passed her lips. She believed
that she had no right to pray. Nor had she confessed. From such, a
confession as she had now to make, certain new-born instincts of
womanhood bade her shrink more deeply into the privacy of her own being.
And therefore she had become more scrupulous, if possible, of outward
duties, that no one might be led to discover the paralysis of her
spiritual life. But there was that change in her which soon drew
attention; and thenceforth, in order to hide her heart, she began to
practise with the Mother Superior little acts of self-concealment and
evasion, and by-and-by other little acts of pretence and feigning,
until--God pity her!--being most sorely pressed by questions, when
sometimes she would be found in tears or sitting listless with her hands
in her lap like one who is under the spell of mournful phantasies, these
became other little acts of positive deception. But for each of them
remorse preyed upon her the more ruthlessly, so that she grew thin and
faded, with a shadow of fear darkening always her evasive eyes.
What most held her apart, and most she deemed put upon her the angry ban
of Heaven, was the consciousness that she still loved him, and that she
was even bound to him the more inseparably since the night of their last
meeting. For it was then that emotions had been awakened which drew her
to him in ways that love alone could not have done. These emotions had
their source in the belief that she owed him reparation for the
disappointment which she had brought upon his life. The recollection of
his face when she had denied him hope rose in constant reproach before
her; and since she held herself blamable that he had loved her, she took
the whole responsibility of his unhappiness.
It was this sense of having wronged him that cleft even conscience in
her and left her struggling. But how to undo the wrong--this she vainly
pondered; for he was gone, bearing away into his life the burden of
enticed and baffled hope.
On the morning when she was at the cistern--for the Sisters of the Order
have among them such interchange of manual offices--if, as she read the
letter that Ezra gave her, any one motive stood out clear in the stress
of that terrible moment, it was, that having been false to other duties
she might at least be true to this. She felt but one desire--to atone to
him by any sacrifice of herself that would make his death more peaceful.
Beyond this everything was void and dark within her as she hurried on,
except the consciousness that by this act she separated herself from her
Order and terminated her religious life in utter failure and disgrace.
The light, rapid step with which she had started soon brought her across
the fields. As she drew near the house, Martha, who had caught sight of
her figure through the window, made haste to the door and stood awaiting
her. Sister Dolorosa merely approached and said--
"Where is he?"
For a moment the old woman did not answer. Then she pointed to a door at
the opposite end of the porch, and with a sparkle of peculiar pleasure
in her eyes she saw Sister Dolorosa cross and enter it. A little while
longer she stood, watching the keyhole furtively, but then went back to
the fireside, where she sat upright and motionless with the red flannel
pushed back from her listening ears.
The room was dimly lighted through half-closed shutters. Gordon lay
asleep near the edge of the bed, with his face turned towards the door.
It might well have been thought the face of one dying. Her eyes rested
on it a moment, and then with a stifled sob and moan she glided across
the room and sank on her knees at the bedside. In the utter
self-forgetfulness of her remorse, pity, and love, she put one arm
around his neck, she buried her face close beside his.
He had awaked, bewildered, as he saw her coming towards him. He now took
her arm from around his neck, pressed her hand again and again to his
lips, and then laying it on his heart crossed his arms over it, letting
one of his hands rest on her head. For a little while he could not trust
himself to speak; his love threatened to overmaster his
self-renunciation. But then, not knowing why she had come unless from
some great sympathy for his sufferings, or perhaps to see him once more
since he was now soon to go away, and not understanding any cause for
her distress but the tragedy in which he had entangled her life--feeling
only sorrow for her sorrow and wishing only by means of his last words
to help her back to such peace as she still might win, he said to her
with immeasurable gentleness--
"I thought you would never come! I thought I should have to go away
without seeing you again! They tell me it is not yet a month since the
accident, but it seems to me so _long_--a lifetime! I have lain here
day after day thinking it over, and I see things differently now--so
differently! That is why I wanted to see you once more. I wanted you to
understand that I felt you had done right in refusing--in refusing to
marry me. I wanted to ask you never to blame yourself for what has
happened--never to let any thought of having made _me_ unhappy add
to the sorrow of your life. It is my fault, not yours. But I meant it--God
_knows_, I meant it!--for the happiness of us both? I believed that
your life was not suited to you. I meant to make you happy! But since you
_cannot_ give up your life, I have only been unkind. And since you
think it wrong to give it up, I am glad that you are so true to it! If you
_must_ live it, Heaven only knows how glad I am that you will live it
heroically. And Heaven keep me equally true to the duty in mine, that I
also shall not fail in it! If we never meet again, we can always think
of each other as living true to ourselves and to one another. Don't deny
me this! Let me believe that your thoughts and prayers will always follow
me. Even your vows will not deny me this! It will always keep us near each
other, and it will bring us together where they cannot separate us."
He had spoken with entire repression of himself, in the slow voice of an
invalid, and on the stillness of the room each word had fallen with hard
distinctness. But now, with the thought of losing her, by a painful
effort he moved closer to the edge of the bed, put his arms around her
neck, drew her face against his own, and continued--
"But do not think it is easy to tell you this! Do not think it is easy
to give you up! Do not think that I do not love you! O Pauline--not in
_another_ life, but in _this_--_in this_!" He could say no
more; and out of his physical weakness tears rose to his eyes and fell
drop by drop upon her veil.