CONQUERED BY THE ANGEL.
“It is nothing, it is over,” murmured Luis as he saw his
brother-in-law coming towards them. “A sharper attack than usual ...
to-morrow....”
Leon stood looking at him but he did not touch him; silent, gloomy,
and oppressed by his recent nightmare, he dared not trust his own
feelings.
“No,” he said to himself, “it is nothing more than an antipathy which
will fade into pity--for the poor wretch is dying.”
Luis took his sister’s hands and addressed her in his weak,
quavering, broken voice, half-solemn but excited by the force of the
fever that was consuming him:
“The worst danger that awaits you is that you will be asked to yield
to compromises, to arrange matters. Guard yourself against this snare
of the devil. It is a snare, though it is hidden under roses, my
child. Between faith and unfaith no compromise is possible. Nay, can
you conceive of any between everlasting life and death? There is no
common measure for the temporal and the eternal. Make no concessions,
do not yield an inch of the firm and lofty ground you now stand upon.
You cannot be religious by halves; if you are not wholly religious
you are not religious at all. Our Lord requires that the work, to
be perfect, shall be so intimately complete that the abstraction
of a single jot nullifies the whole. Beware, I say, beware of the
snare!... Compromise is the note of the times we live in, and it
has sent more souls to hell than the crassest infidelity.... But
you ... remember me, think of me. Do not forget that I came here to
save you, to call you into the true path, and to die in your arms
that my presence should be more real to you. God sent us into the
world together and he bids us meet again at the foot of his throne of
glory.... María! María...!”
“Be calm; pray, pray be calm,” said María in desperate alarm.
Luis opened his eyes and looking up at Leon exclaimed in bewildered
accents: “there is some one there! María, who is that man?”
“It is Leon--my husband.... Send for the doctor, do not you think
that we ought, Leon? Call the servants--where are they all...?”
María started up and was going to call some one, but her brother
clung to her arm.
“Do not leave me alone,” he said. “Your husband, did you say; oh,
God, what is this doubt that torments me? Is it a foolish scruple,
like so many others I have suffered from, or is it a true warning of
conscience? Tell me, who is it...? Leon did you say?” But neither
of them replied and he went on: “I have offended him? What an idea.
I only gave my sister such advice as my faith required of me. It
was God that spoke through me ... God himself.... It is a mere
scruple--and yet even a scruple must be listened to.... Ah! here is
my good Paoletti!” But his eyes were still fixed on Leon.
“Padre Paoletti, tell me, have I offended him?” Then after a pause,
as though he had heard an answer he added: “no, no, very true. I
cannot have offended him, and if I have, to-morrow--on my death-bed,
I will ask his forgiveness. Then, too, I will warn her--María ...
once more....”
“We must carry him indoors,“ said Leon.
“I will call the servants,” gasped María who could hardly speak. But
the dying man pushed her aside, as she and Leon were about to lift
him.
“Let me be,” he said. “Sit down by me.” María obeyed, and bent
her head over his. “To-morrow, to-morrow when I have received my
Saviour--I will deliver up my soul ... but how cold it is! It is
snowing, is it not?” his dimmed eyes wandered heavenwards.
“There are no stars to-night,” he murmured hoarsely. “A dark night
before the dawn of glory. To-morrow--I will ask forgiveness of you
all, and fall asleep in the Lord’s arms--you see I am quite easy now,
quite at rest.... My only fear is that this respite may prolong my
life. Oh! I do not long for health, I do not want to be better, all I
ask is to suffer, to choke--suffocate--die. The relief I feel now....”
His head fell gently on his sister’s shoulder and lay there as
helplessly as though his neck were broken. He shut his eyes, his
breathing was no more than a fluttering sigh. He was dying as softly
as a bird drops to sleep.
“It is over,” said Leon bending over him.
María clung to the body and kept it from falling to the ground, and
when the servants came hurrying out and carried him to his bed, she
kissed him passionately again and again, kneeling by the cold form.
Leon, hardly certain even now that he could be dead, came to the
bedside to feel his pulse and hold a mirror to his lips; but his
wife started to her feet and standing in front of her husband, with
a prohibitory gesture and eyes flashing with horror and tears, she
cried out in a tone of furious scorn:
“Wretch! would you dare to touch him?”