CHAPTER XVII.

There is only a little more labor for my long-used wheel, and the threads of my uneven life will have run on to the crisis. I cannot console myself with the thought that it has been watched through its tedious progress, by loving or partial glances: the bobbin was faulty and stiff at times, and the worker grew pensive and weary. Sometimes, the sunlight broke over my toil, and I sang to the wheel as it was rolling; but sometimes again there were shadows, and the wheel was then heavy and slower. Sometimes, the threads grew so tangled, that I sighed with impatience and worry, the weft bears the marks in the weaving--they are plain, in unwinding the pirns--and still, 'twas a labor of love, this patchwork of sunlight and shadow, this discord of sorrow and song.

"The fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web" said George Eliot, and who knew the nature of the warp and weft of our human fabric better than she! We pa.s.s from our joy to our sorrow, as the night pa.s.ses into the day, it is part and parcel of the mechanism of our daily lives, smiling and sighing, we spin and we weave till the twilight's gray dusk overtakes us--then our tired hands are folded together, and the Master takes care of the rest.

From Alice Merivale's wedding, I was called to Hortense de Beaumont's bedside. In the comparatively short interval of our separation, she had wasted almost beyond recognition. We were mistaken when we persuaded ourselves, that she had baffled her former attack, she had never quite rallied, and when the March winds began to blow, her frail const.i.tution gave way anew. She drooped so quickly, that it was too late when real danger was apprehended, to take her to a warmer refuge.

Madame de Beaumont looked little better than her invalid daughter from weeping and worrying, when I arrived.

On the second day, only, was I allowed to see Hortense, and what a change I saw! There was death in every feature, every curve of her once beautiful face. She revived as usual, when I was announced, and wanted to sit up and talk a great deal more than the attending physician would allow, or than she was really able to do. They took advantage of this desire of hers, to coax her to nourish herself more than she was wont.

"If you take your prescriptions and obey orders, I shall let you have a half-hour's conversation with your friend every day," said the doctor one morning, in a bargaining tone; "if not" he added, pausing, and looking at her seriously--after which he shook his head slowly and emphatically, and said no more.

"Very well then, I will try to take them doubled if you like" she answered faintly, directing a playful glance towards me, and breaking into one of her old smiles. "I must talk to her!"

She could not "take them doubled," poor child, but she made heroic efforts to swallow them as prescribed, in order that she might have her talk with me. My poor Hortense! She never had but the one half-hour's conversation with me, for she pa.s.sed into a better world, before the birds had learned their summer songs.

"Put away that book, and come here, my Amey" she said faintly one afternoon, as I sat by her bedside watching with her. I closed the volume and going nearer to her, sat on the margin of her bed, and took her delicate hands in mine.

"I have something to tell you now--my big secret--that I wrote you about, you know."

She began in broken sentences, her breath was weak and short, and her voice like an echo.

"It would not be so long if you knew about--about Bayard, poor--Bayard, and that dreadful--" she stopped, and a crimson spot appeared on each pallid cheek. I leaned over her gently, and said in a soothing whisper:

"May be I do know it, my little woman. Is it about Bayard's unfortunate marriage? If so, they have told me the whole sad story."

She bowed her head, in answer to my question and muttered feebly:

"I am so glad because I hate to speak of it, but my secret is not that. Do you know where Inez is now?"

I nodded affirmatively. "Well, first when she went there, Bayard had a dreadful sickness, and he wanted to die--called out to death at every moment to come and rescue him, though he was not prepared; he would not hear of forgiving Inez, he declared he hated her, and was glad of her affliction, and still, with these sentiments he wanted to die! Oh, how I prayed against his prayer!" she exclaimed, with an effort of enthusiasm, "how I begged of G.o.d, to turn a deaf ear to his mad supplication, and lend a willing one to mine. I suffered an agony of suspense, and at last, the crisis came, he struggled with it, conquered it, and got better. So far my prayer was heard, but my trouble was not over, he regained his health and his strength, but he was a changed man otherwise. He hated his past life and the woman who was so intimately a.s.sociated with it; he became gloomy and reckless, gave up his religion with all its practices of piety, and abandoned himself to books of science, such as are the ruin of human souls all over the world. I remonstrated with him hourly, but without avail--" a slight coughing interrupted her here, I gave her a drink and shook up her pillows, and feeling somewhat refreshed, she lay back again and continued:

"Mamma thought that his solitude was perhaps his great enemy and wrote to his college chum, Mr. Dalton, to come and visit us for a little while." At the mention of Ernest Dalton's name a faint pink colour rose steadily into her face. "He came and spent three months with us, but did little good in the way we had hoped he could, but he was kind and consoling in another way. He gave poor mamma great comfort while he remained; when he left they sent me to Notre Dame, I don't know why, although it proved a great blessing in the end.

"My mother used to write me about Bayard's moods, which were now often worse, and never better. Ah! no one knew what a burden of grief I carried to and from the cla.s.s-room of Notre Dame Abbey. Sometimes I felt that only for my mother, death would be a merciful relief, which is a sad conviction for one so young. One day," she said, lowering her voice almost to a whisper and folding her thin hands over the white counter-pane "I was praying in the chapel and I began to think seriously of all my troubles, how dark and gloomy they looked and how weak and cowardly I seemed! Suddenly a little voice within me began to ask: 'Why don't you make some desperate effort to save those whose misfortunes are making you so miserable? Why would you not try some daring sacrifice for instance, so that your brother be set free and the ultimate recovery and conversion of his wife be obtained?' I hesitated and looked through my gathering tears at the flickering lamp in the sanctuary. What sacrifice could I make? _I_ had no pleasures, no real comforts in life--nor the prospect of any--except one, and even that was only a shadowy, misty hope, the merest uncertainty; but it was my dearest, best-loved fancy, and I could not do more then than resign it, so I knelt down, Amey, where you and I knelt side by side a few nights later before you went away, and--" a sob came into her throat and tears dimmed her eyes; my own were moist in expectation of what was coming. She rested a little, and allowing her tears to fall unwiped upon her cheeks, she took up the broken thread and added:

"I pledged myself to Our Blessed Lady, in soul and body for all the days of my life, if, by her holy intercession the double conversions of Bayard and Inez might be accomplished before I died."

"You mean that you promised--"

"Never to marry," she added eagerly "although at that time, only Heaven knew how I had grown to love Ernest Dalton. I did not know he was _your_ friend then, Amey. I fancied he had spoken in a particularly kind way to me and he could not but see how fondly I cherished his every word and look--but I gave him up--the only sacrifice I had to lay upon that altar of supplication. Afterwards I saw that what I had done out of solicitude for the welfare of those who are nearest and dearest to me on earth would, perhaps, have been exacted of me by the cruel irony of fate. Ernest Dalton loved you all along, I suspected it on that day when we examined his locket together, and your strange, conscious look when I spoke of him convinced me of it easily."

"Poor Hortense," I muttered in a half sob.--"He is my guardian, my G.o.d-father, and the picture in his locket is not mine at all, it is my mother's."

"Amey! Your mother's?"

"Yes, he loved her years ago before she married my father. There was some misunderstanding between them and they drifted apart, but he has always been faithful to her memory up to this. They say I am very like her," I added slowly, folding my hands and looking away towards the distant gray clouds outside.

"Her living image," said Hortense, wistfully, "if I may judge by that little picture, but you--didn't you love him too, Amey?" she asked with an eager look, stroking my hand gently with her own delicate palm.

"It is a time for confessions, Hortense," I answered timidly, "or I should never tell you this, however, we may as well be frank with one another now. I thought I did, until I had reason to suspect that you loved him also, from that moment I resigned him to you and refused to think of him ever again, except as an old, esteemed and devoted friend. I did not know at that time that he had ever known my mother, nor did I suspect the existence of the close ties that bind us to one another in a different way. I only knew that in encouraging my regard for him, I might be trespa.s.sing upon the peace and happiness of your life and that is something that Amey Hampden never would or could do to Hortense de Beaumont above all other living creatures."

"You thought he would return my love in time and that we would ultimately be happy together, and with this hope you made your sacrifice did you?" she questioned eagerly.

"I did, my darling little friend! I would not come between you and your life's projects, for all the world," I answered, clasping her wasted form in my strong, loving embrace. "I would have been well repaid, when I saw you happy with my help."

She leaned her head upon my shoulder and wept in silence for a moment.

I would have checked her, but there were sobs in my own voice, and water in my eyes. At last when I had calmed myself a little, I stroked her hair kindly and consolingly, entreating her to be quiet and composed. "You shall harm yourself, with crying, and they will blame me" I urged, "so cheer up like a good little woman, and be yourself again."

She looked up quickly, as I spoke, the fresh tears trembled on her lids, like dew upon the petals of some woodland flower, but a smile, as bright as the sun-ray that dispels the dew-drop broke over her wan and wasted countenance, as she answered:

"Blame _you_! Oh Amey I have never been so happy, as with you. You have been more than a sister to me, you have done for me what no one else in the world would have thought of doing for another but Amey Hampden!"

"It has brought you no benefit, my little woman" I said regretfully, "although I believed your happiness was partly in my hands at the time."

"It has brought me more than you can ever realize, Amey," she interrupted, falling back among her pillows, tired from her exertion.

"It has held the cup of a soothing friendship to my parched and fevered lip whose draught has dispelled every sorrow that lay hopeless and heavy upon my heart. If life could tempt me, now, to return to my former vigour and strength, it need only hold up to my dying eyes the picture of your unselfish heroism. When one has a friend, such as you have been, the pleasures of the world have a double sweetness; in a little while" she added, lowering her voice, and looking away towards the western horizon, into which the setting sun had begun to dip his yellow rays, "I will have left all these things behind me; the joys and sorrows of my young life will recede together into the mists of time, as I go on to my eternity--but, I know there will be some remaining who will carry my memory, the memory of my little life, that was not more than half spent, through all the years of her own happy one, someone to pray for me, to commune with me in spirit, even when I have pa.s.sed into that shadow-land. And that will be you, my Amey.

Perhaps it will comfort you then, to remember that I died in peace and contentment after all--for my poor prayer has been heard in heaven.

When I wrote you that last letter, about my dawning compensation, I could see that I had not made my sacrifice in vain, Bayard was changing, every one saw it, resolving himself into the better man, he has since become, and more than that, Amey--oh, how it thrills me to think of it!" she exclaimed with reverent ardour "a change has taken place elsewhere! We received a letter from the superintendent of the asylum where poor Inez is confined, telling us that she had many lucid moments of late, and that her attendants had frequently found her upon her knees, with streaming eyes and trembling hands, imploring forgiveness for her past follies. This was soon followed by a second one, which urged Bayard to go to her: her health and strength were failing, it said, and there were great hopes of her recovering her senses before death. His name, it further stated, was ever on her lips.

"Bayard had a terrible struggle with his pride and his pa.s.sions. He walked the room through the whole of one livelong night, sighing and moaning, and talking to himself in muttered syllables--mamma and I could hear him, and he prayed unceasingly, again and again. I renewed my promises and my life oblation. Towards morning Bayard grew calmer and when the sun rose he unlocked his door and came to seek us in our seclusion. How pale his handsome face had grown! How wild and dishevelled his wavy hair! How marked were the lines of misery and care around his mouth and eyes! He came to my bed and leaned tenderly over me, I could see the traces of his recent conflict so plainly then."

"'Good-bye, little sister,' he said, 'I am going away for a few days, take care of yourself during my absence,--and pray for me.' He kissed me with his cold, dry lips and turned away. When he came back a week later there was a peaceful sadness where his misery had been. He had seen Inez again; had sat by her death-bed and held her dying hand in generous forgiveness. He believed her then that she sorely repented of her past. Her dark hair had turned almost white, and where rich curves of beauty had marked the outlines of her face and form there were hollows and angles of emaciation and suffering. She died with a pleading for pardon and mercy upon her lips, and Bayard came back a better man. He says he will devote the remainder of his life to an atonement for his past, and this is what I have been waiting to hear before I could die in peace. I cannot presume to say," Hortense added humbly, "that my poor prayers alone could have brought about these wonderful conversions, but I suppose they have helped, the good sisters at Notre Dame always told us to 'ask and we should receive,'

and I believe them now. What is the pledge I have made to the fruit it has yielded? The happiness which the world affords is well lost in such a cause as this. Is it not, my Amey?"

"Indeed it is," I answered earnestly, "but all the same I think you have done the most n.o.ble and heroic of Christian actions in enlisting against your own earthly happiness to favor such a cause however worthy it may be."

"I do not regret it now, Amey," she said with a sweet, sad smile; "when we look back upon our lives from the watch-tower of a dawning eternity we are glad to see some n.o.ble effort standing out in relief from all the daily transgressions that confront us. I wish now there were more such purposes in my empty life."

"This one comprised all others, it seems to me," I put in, earnestly, "you renounced even the possible and uncertain joys of the world. You lived under the yoke of this voluntary self-sacrifice, which was bringing you nearer and nearer every day to your reward."

"I have been well repaid," she answered faintly, closing her tired lids wearily, and folding her hands; after a pause she opened them and continued:

"When they saw how ill I was they sent for Mr. Dalton again, and he came to see me. He told me you were on your way to visit Miss Merivale, who was to be married in a little while, and that you were said to be engaged to Doctor Campbell, which was puzzling news to me at that time. He spoke sympathetically but not regretfully, I thought, of your engagement, and I wondered more than ever what relationship existed between Ernest Dalton and you. He praised Doctor Campbell in the highest terms and said that you had 'made a man of him' for life.

Bayard was glad to have Mr. Dalton with us and kept him for several weeks. He left with a promise to return soon again, I suppose he likes to comfort Bayard while his sorrows are fresh," she added, closing her eyes languidly and sighing faintly.

Just then Mdme. de Beaumont came in on tip-toe with some tempting morsel for her little invalid. This broke the strain of confidence, and as Hortense showed symptoms of exhaustion and drowsiness, after taking her nourishment, we lowered the blinds and stole from the room.

In a few moments she was fast asleep.

CHAPTER XVIII.