+THE SISTER OF MERCY+
IT was now the middle of summer, and remarkably hot for the season. All
our friends had left, or were leaving Paris, and yet we still lingered
on in our pretty apartment of the Avenue Gabriel.
One morning, suddenly looking up from my embroidery, I was struck with
the pallor of Evelyn’s countenance, and the look of weariness she wore.
A book was lying open on a table near; but she did not read. Silently
she dreamed, her head resting on her hand.
“Dear Evelyn,” I said, while she started as one aroused from sleep;
“shall we not soon go to the country? You look far from well—and Ella
would cull fresh roses at the sea, or at Baden.”
“Ella is very well,” she answered listlessly, “and attends her classes
daily. I, too, am well enough,” and she heaved a sigh so heartsore it
was almost a sob.
“Indeed, dearest, you have been suffering for three weeks—ever since the
last ball at the Tuilleries, when you looked like a sunset cloud, as Mr.
D’Arcy said.” She gave a short, quick start, “all in golden colored
tulle and hazy blonde. I never saw you look more lovely.”
“Not enough,” returned Evelyn gloomily, “would I were a thousand times
more beautiful. Even then,” she whispered, as if to herself, “I should
not match with the matchless.”
“Is it possible? and are you serious?” I said, painfully alive to her
emotion; “is your happiness so entirely involved in—”
“In _him_. Yes, my kind—my too forbearing friend. Evelyn, the once
idolized, petted, spoiled—the capricious, the heartless coquette—the
once proud beauty—loves for the first time, with that love which is her
doom. His presence is my light and life; his absence my soul’s despair.
And yet, Mary, not one word of love has he ever spoken; and since that
ball he has never been here—never written—he so exact, so chivalrous in
his politeness. Oh, Mary, why—why this so sudden change?”
She fixed her sad eyes, round which were two dark circles—sign of many a
sleepless night—imploringly on my face.
“I will find out for you,” I said; “you shall at least be spared the
pangs of suspense.”
“Ah, me!” she murmured, “men little know the hours of patient watching
and waiting we poor women suffer. ’Tis not to be wondered at we make the
best Christians—‘_the patience of hope_.’ I understand it now.”
I took a _coupé_, and in less than an hour I had returned, for D’Arcy
resided in the Rue Castiglione.
Evelyn, still seated where I had left her, sprang to her feet, almost
shrieking as she saw my solemn countenance, “Bad news! Oh, tell me the
worst!” “Mr. D’Arcy,” I said, “is ill.”
“Not dead!—not dead! Oh, speak!”
“No; but seriously ill.”
“I will go to him, instantly.”
“Stay, Evelyn,” I said, with authority, “he is unworthy of your love.”
She looked at me in blank astonishment.
“The fever he has, he caught in the low neighborhoods, and among the
disreputable company he frequents.”
She laughed hysterically.
“What!” she said, “the noble D’Arcy—the refined, the spiritual. Never,
by my hopes of Heaven. Go, Mary, would you have me hate you? Look you,
he is true and pure as the blessed sunlight.—Unhand me, I say; let me
fly to him.”
“Oh! Evelyn, pause, I implore you. What will the world say?”
“What it likes. Ah! is it _my_ Mary who would dissuade me from tending a
fellow-creature in sickness—a stranger in a strange land? No; she will
rather assist me, and when exhausted nature requires that the ‘sister of
mercy’ should take food and rest, _my_ Mary will then relieve her at her
post.”
Evelyn passed her arm caressingly around me. How could I find it in my
heart to refuse her? and so our compact was sealed with a kiss.
It was time the sick man should have a tender and loving nurse; he was
suffering from a low, nervous fever, with typhoid symptoms
superadded.—Three physicians were in constant attendance. All light in
the chamber was strictly forbidden, and the least noise caused the
patient to start as at the firing of a park of artillery. Evelyn’s first
act was to dismiss the coarse, fat nurse, who sat dozing and
occasionally snoring in a comfortable easy-chair.—Taking the authority
of a sister upon her, she paid the woman, and stated her firm intention
of remaining the sole attendant at the bedside of her brother. Then
gently and softly she moved about, robed in a _peignoir_ of delicate
white muslin, putting all in order. The sick man—half delirious—seemed
to feel there was some change, for he murmured tenderly, “what angel is
here?” Evelyn gently laid her cool hand on the fevered brow, but spoke
not, for to do so was forbidden. The touch soothed and quieted the
sufferer, and the physicians, when they came, found a slight change for
the better. For six days and nights did Evelyn and myself watch
alternately by the bedside of poor D’Arcy, who in his moments of
wandering, seemed earnestly engaged in conversation with a spirit he
named as Lilian, his affianced bride. As if in reply, he would say:
“I will obey you implicitly. Lilian, my sweet sister, bride no longer,
since you so will it. I have now another guardian angel near. Say you
so? and you warn me not to pass by my destiny. You caution me against
such blindness, and you leave me.”
Much more was said, but so incoherent we could not gather the sense—and
then, fatigued, the patient would doze off into the restless,
unrefreshing sleep of fever. At length we could no longer deceive
ourselves; the poor sufferer grew weaker and weaker, till at last the
doctors unanimously shook their learned heads, and augured the worst.
The principal physician, taking me apart, said,
“My dear lady, break it gently to the poor sister—for in twelve hours
her brother will he no more.”
Evelyn, pale as marble, and almost as cold and motionless, waved me off.
She had heard too well the ominous whisper. For twelve long hours, her
arm tenderly sustained the head of the dying man, the other hand
ceaselessly engaged in the last painful offices of affection. Utterly
forgetful of self—even of her overwhelming sorrow—her one thought was
how she could best soften the parting agony. Every moment she listened
for the almost imperceptible breathing, each instant feeling for the
beating of the heart. But the pulse waxed fainter and fainter, the
death-rattle came to the throat—a long, long sigh—another, and
another—then the heart ceased to beat, and all was over.
The doctors ascertained the fact of the decease, and were too glad to
leave the house of mourning. Evelyn, tearless, desolate, despairing,
sank on her knees beside the couch—_she believed in prayers for the
dead_. I knelt beside her, and our united supplications ascended to the
throne of the Most High. At length I arose, and would have led the
afflicted one away. She resisted. “I will not leave him,” she said.
Finding it useless endeavoring to change her resolve, I went home, and
returned later, determined not to give up the point. Reluctantly the
mourner consented to take some repose. She arose from her knees; then
suddenly, and as one frantic, she flung herself upon the lifeless
corpse.
“I will not leave thee, Philip—mine in death, if not in life.”
She clung to the helpless clay, her warm, fresh mouth pressing the
ice-cold lips, her pure breath entering the paralyzed lungs. The
passionate heart, full of the magnetism of life, beating against that
stone-cold breast—now, alas! still for ever.
“Philip,” she cried again and again, straining the dear form closer and
yet closer in her fond embrace, “come back to your Evelyn,” when, O
wondrous to relate! the spirit just about to take wing, and emerge from
the dark terrors of the “valley of the shadow of death,” or intermediate
state, into life and immortality, paused,—wavered—looked back lovingly,
and returned to the body. A Divine influx descending through that tender
woman’s bosom, established a human sympathy once more with the
apparently lifeless frame, and D’Arcy again breathed the breath of life.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------