Dead woman, shrouded white as snow
While Death the shade broods darkly nigh,
Place thy cold hand in mine, and so--
‘Good-bye.’
No prayer or blessing hum of breath
Came from thy lips as thou didst die;
I loath’d thee living, but in death--
‘Good-bye!’
So close together after all,
After long strife, stand thou and I,
I bless thee, while I faintly call--
‘Good-bye!’
Good-bye the past and all its pain,
Kissing thy poor dead hand, I cry--
Again, again, and yet again--
‘Good-bye!’--_The Exile: a Poem._
It would have been difficult to analyse accurately the emotions which
filled the bosom of Ambrose Bradley, as he stood and looked upon the
dead face of the woman who, according to the law of the land and the
sacrament of the Church, had justly claimed to be his wife. He could not
conceal from himself that the knowledge of her death brought relief to
him and even joy; but mingled with that relief were other feelings less
reassuring--pity, remorse even, and a strange sense of humiliation.
He had never really loved the woman, and her conduct, previous to their
long separation, had been such as to kill all sympathy in the heart of
a less sensitive man, while what might be termed her unexpected
resurrection had roused in him a bitterness and a loathing beyond
expression. Yet now that the last word was said, the last atonement
made, now that he beheld the eyes that would never open again, and the
lips that would never again utter speech or sound, his soul was stirred
to infinite compassion.
After all, he thought, the blame had not been hers that they had been so
ill-suited to each other, and afterwards, when they met in after years,
she had not wilfully sought to destroy his peace. It had all been a
cruel fatality, from the first: another proof of the pitiless laws which
govern human nature, and make men and women suffer as sorely for errors
of ignorance and inexperience as for crimes of knowledge.
He knelt by the bedside, and taking her cold hand kissed it solemnly.
Peace was between them, he thought, then and for ever. _She_ too, with
all her faults and all her follies, had been a fellow-pilgrim by his
side towards the great bourne whence no pilgrim returns, and she had
reached it first. He remembered now, not the woman who had flaunted her
shamelessness before his eyes, but the pretty girl, almost a child, whom
he had first known and fancied that he loved. In the intensity of his
compassion and self-reproach he even exaggerated the tenderness he
had once felt for her; the ignoble episode of their first intercourse
catching a sad brightness reflected from the heavens of death. And in
this mood, penitent and pitying, he prayed that God might forgive them
both.
When he descended from the room, his eyes were red with tears. He found
the little boy sobbing wildly in the room below, attended by the kindly
Frenchwoman who kept the house. He tried to soothe him, but found it
impossible, his grief being most painful to witness, and violent in the
extreme.
‘Ah, monsieur, it is indeed a calamity!’ cried the woman. ‘Madame was so
good a mother, devoted to her child. But God is good--the little one has
a father still!’
Bradley understood the meaning of her words, but did not attempt to
undeceive her. His heart was welling over with tenderness towards the
pretty orphan, and he was thinking too of his own harsh judgments on the
dead, who, it was clear, had possessed many redeeming virtues, not the
least of them being her attachment to her boy.
‘You are right, madame,’ he replied, sadly, ‘and the little one shall
not lack fatherly love and care. Will you come with me for a few
moments? I wish to speak to you alone.’
He placed his hand tenderly on the child’s head, and again tried to
soothe him, but he shrank away with petulant screams and cries.
Walking to the front entrance he waited till he was joined there by the
landlady, and they stood talking in the open air.
‘How long had she been here, madame?’ he asked.
‘For a month, monsieur,’ was the reply. ‘She came late in the season
for the baths, with her _bonne_ and the little boy, and took my rooms.
Pardon, but I did not know madame had a husband living, and so near.’
‘We have been separated for many years. I came to Boulogne yesterday
quite by accident, not dreaming the lady was here. Can you tell me if
she has friends in Boulogne?’
‘I do not think so, monsieur. She lived quite alone, seeing no one, and
her only thought and care was for the little boy. She was a proud lady,
very rich and proud; nothing was too good for her, or for the child;
she lived, as the saying is, _en princesse_. But no, she had no friends!
Doubtless, being an English lady, though she spoke and looked like a
_compatriote_, all her friends were in her own land.’
‘Just so,’ returned Bradley, turning his head away to hide his tears;
for he thought to himself, ‘Poor Mary! After all, she was desolate like
myself! How pitiful that I, of all men, should close her eyes and follow
her to her last repose!’
‘Pardon, monsieur,’ said the woman, ‘but madame, perhaps, was not of our
Church? She was, no doubt, Protestant?’
It was a simple question, but simple as it was Bradley was startled by
it. He knew about as much of his dead wife’s professed belief as of the
source whence she had drawn her subsistence. But he replied:
‘Yes, certainly. Protestant, of course.’
‘Then monsieur will speak to the English clergyman, who dwells there on
the hill’ (here she pointed townward), ‘close to the English church. He
is a good man, Monsieur Robertson, and monsieur will find----’
‘I will speak to him,’ interrupted Bradley. ‘But I myself am an English
clergyman, and shall doubtless perform the last offices, when the time
comes.’
The woman looked at him in some astonishment, for his presence was the
reverse of clerical, and his struggle in and with the sea had left his
attire in most admired disorder, but she remembered the eccentricities of
the nation to which he belonged, and her wonder abated. After giving the
woman a few more general instructions, Bradley walked slowly and
thoughtfully to his hotel.
More than once already his thoughts had turned towards Alma, but he had
checked such thoughts and crushed them down in the presence of death;
left to himself, however, he could not conquer them, nor restrain a
certain feeling of satisfaction in his newly-found freedom. He would
write to Alma, as in duty bound, at once, and tell her of all that had
happened. And then? It was too late, perhaps, to make full amends, to
expect full forgiveness; but it was his duty to give to her in the sight
of the world the name he had once given to her secretly and in vain.
But the man’s troubled spirit, sensitive to a degree, shrank from the
idea of building up any new happiness on the grave of the poor woman
whose corpse he had just quitted. Although he was now a free man
legally, he still felt morally bound and fettered. All his wish and
prayer was to atone for the evil he had brought on the one being he
reverenced and loved. He did not dare, at least as yet, to think of
uniting his unworthy life with a life so infinitely more beautiful and
pure.
Yes, he would write to her. The question was, where his letter would
find her, and how soon?
When he had last heard from her she was at Milan, but that was several
weeks ago; and since then, though he had written twice, there had been
no response. She was possibly travelling farther southward; in all
possibility, to Home.
The next few days passed drearily enough. An examination of some letters
recently received by the deceased discovered two facts--first, that she
had a sister, living in Oxford, with whom she corresponded; and, second,
that her means of subsistence came quarterly from a firm of solicitors
in Bedford Bow, London. Next day the sister arrived by steamboat,
accompanied by her husband, a small tradesman. Bradley interviewed
the pair, and found them decent people, well acquainted with their
relative’s real position. The same day he received a communication from
the solicitors, notifying that the annuity enjoyed by ‘Mrs. Montmorency’
lapsed with her decease, but that a large sum of money had been settled
by the late Lord Ombermere upon the child, the interest of the sum to
be used for his maintenance and education, and the gross amount with
additions and under certain reservations, to be at his disposal on
attaining his majority.
On seeking an interview with the Rev. Mr. Robertson, the minister of the
English Church, Bradley soon found that his reputation had preceded him.
‘Do I address the famous Mr. Bradley, who some time ago seceded from the
English Church?’ asked the minister, a pale, elderly, clean-shaven man,
bearing no little resemblance to a Roman Catholic priest.
Bradley nodded, and at once saw the not too cordial manner of the other
sink to freezing point.
‘The unfortunate lady was your wife?’
‘Yes; but we had been separated for many years.’
‘Ah, indeed!’ sighed the clergyman with a long-drawn sigh, a furtive
glance of repulsion, and an inward exclamation of ‘no wonder!’
‘Although we lived apart, and although, to be frank, there was great
misunderstanding between us, all that is over for ever, you understand.
It is in a spirit of the greatest tenderness and compassion that I
wish to conduct the funeral service--to which I presume there is no
objection.’
Mr. Robertson started in amazement, as if a bomb had exploded under his
feet.
‘To conduct the funeral service! But you have seceded from the Church of
England.’
‘In a sense, yes; but I have never done so formally. I am still an
English clergyman.’
‘I could never consent to such a thing,’ cried the other, indignantly.
‘I should look upon it as profanity. Your published opinions are known
to me, sir; they have shocked me inexpressibly; and not only in my
opinion, but in that of my spiritual superiors, they are utterly
unworthy of one calling himself a Christian.’
‘Then you refuse me permission to officiate?’
‘Most emphatically. More than that, I shall require some assurance that
the lady did not share your heresies, before I will suffer the interment
to take place in the precincts of my church.’
‘Is not my assurance sufficient?’
‘No, sir, it is _not!_’ exclaimed the clergyman with scornful dignity.
‘I do not wish to say anything offensive, but, speaking as a Christian
and a pastor of the English Church, I can attach no weight whatever to
the assurances of one who is, in the public estimation, nothing better
than an avowed infidel. Good morning!’
So saying, with a last withering look, the clergyman turned on his heel
and walked away.
Seeing that remonstrance was useless, and might even cause public
scandal, Bradley forthwith abandoned his design; but at his suggestion
his wife’s sister saw the incumbent, and succeeded in convincing him
that Mrs. Montmorency had died in the true faith. The result of Mr.
Robertson’s pious indignation was soon apparent. The sister and her
husband, who had hitherto treated Bradley with marked respect, now
regarded him with sullen dislike and suspicion. They could not prevent
him, however, from following as chief mourner, when the day of the
funeral came.
That funeral was a dismal enough experience for Ambrose Bradley.
Never before had he felt so keenly the vanity of his own creed and the
isolation of his own opinions, as when he stood by the graveside and
listened to the last solemn words of the English burial service. He
seemed like a black shadow in the sacred place. The words of promise
and resurrection had little meaning for one who had come to regard
the promise as only beautiful ‘poetry,’ and the resurrection as only a
poet’s dream. And though the sense of his own sin lay on his heart like
lead, he saw no benign Presence blessing the miserable woman who had
departed, upraising her on wings of gladness; all he perceived was
Death’s infinite desolation, and the blackness of that open grave.