CIX
Cardinal de Moulny was not ordinarily prone to yield to emotion—not commonly open to the appeals of sentiment—yet the tears rolled down his heavy cheeks as he read. It seemed to him so exquisitely piteous that the reward of his dead friend’s unswerving devotion and lifelong fidelity should have come too late to yield him joy.
Was it fancy? Was it some shadow cast athwart the dead face by a wind-blown taper-flame that made the stern old beautiful mouth under the white mustache that charitable hands had trimmed and waxed for Dunoisse, seem to be smiling? The glassy, fixed eyes were a little open. Had they not been shut a little while before? The steady nerves of the questioner knew a strange thrill of awe.... He stepped to the bedside, gazed earnestly in the still, white face. No doubt, death was there! He touched the icy wrist,—bent his ear close to the cold, shrouded heart—Death, beyond all doubt! Yet, remembering that he had solemnly sworn, many years before, to be the friend of Dunoisse to the edge of Death, and, if possible, beyond—hewould do as some unseen Mentor now prompted.... There was no sin in the thing.... It was an act of charity....
So, as he would have shouted in the ears of an expiring penitent, following the retiring consciousness to the remotest bounds of vitality with the sacred words, the gracious consolations of Holy Church, now with all the power of his splendid lungs de Moulny shouted the letter of the dead woman in the ears of her dead lover. There was not a spark of life in the glassy eyes glimmering between the rigid, livid eyelids. The deadly chill of death bit him like a frost as he slipped the letter within the folds of the shroud where the leather case that held its comrades was hidden on the breast of Hector Dunoisse. He was a little contemptuous of his own weakness as he dipped his fingers in the china shell of holy water—sprinkled the head and feet of the corpse, and murmured a Latin prayer commending the departed soul to the Divine Mercy. Then he lifted his fur-lined mantle from the floor where he had dropped it—and went out of the room with long, light, noiseless steps, shutting the door.
The man who lay upon the flower-decked, white-draped bed, with dimly burning tapers at his head and feet, and his dead love’s letters lying upon his dead breast under the stiff white hands that held a Rosary, saw the tall, corpulent figure in the purple cassock pass out of the room. He heard the closing of the door.
He had heard the letter, every word of it. And the revelation of her long-hidden secret had brought him unutterable joy—joy of which he knew he must infallibly have died, had he not been already dead.
For he knew quite well that he was dead; but that his spirit had not yet passed beyond the gates of its earthly tenement. He waited in a great, cold, quiet void. The little busy world spun on, forever divorced from him. He was one with the Immensity of Eternity. He hung, an isolated point in Illimitable Space, upon the borders of the Otherwhere. He knew no shrinking. Terrors are for nerves of flesh, fears for the finite, mortal, perishable.... He lay like a drop of water that is yet a boundless ocean, enclosed in the hollow of the Almighty Hand.
It has been said and written by learned men, dead ages ago—that the soul remains a prisoner for hours, perhaps days, when the spark of Life is extinguished, and the heart is forever stilled. Perhaps it was the third hour after death, perhaps the third day—who knows?—when Dunoisse became aware that four walls no longer bounded his horizon—that the peaks and ranges of the ancient snow-crowned mountains now rose up about him.... He stood beside a new-made grave, covered and surrounded with crosses and wreaths of fading flowers, in the cemetery that lies on the hillside below Zeiden. The flush of dawn was upon all Nature, the frosted grasses at his feet bowed to the earth in slumber; the lake far below, lying in the lap of the wintry woods and meadows, seemed to slumber and dream ... and in the East, to which his face was turned—the mysterious East that has been, since the childhood of this old world, the threshold across which Revelation has stepped with shining feet—the moon was rising more gloriously than he had ever known the great silvery-golden planet rise—or was it the sun?...
Or was it a Lamp of inconceivable radiance upheld in the hands of a Woman who stood upon the mountains, robed in the glory of sun and moon and stars, adorned with all the beauty of earth and sea and sky, lovely with the loveliness which human words are powerless to convey. A Wind, going whither it listed, soughed past; it brought with it the sound of rustling leaves and falling waters, with the cooing of doves; it whispered in his ear a Name, the second his first childish lispings had been taught to utter in prayer—reverenced and beloved above all on earth or in Heaven, save One.
It was no Lamp she held, it was a Child of Wonder. A Child above Whose Brow crossing and intertwisting and interweaving rays of light formed the semblance of a Crown of Thorns. And from the Eyes of the Child, as from its thorny diadem, all the Light emanated, all the glory flowed.
The vision faded, but the Light of those Eyes remained. He whom their ineffable mild gaze had turned on, standing by his own new grave in Zeiden Cemetery, understood at last. He comprehended now the breadth and depth and height of the Divine Love. He saw how Supreme Beneficencehad worked for good and ultimate happiness through all the disappointments, labors, agonies, sorrows, and sufferings of his own ended life on earth. He saw it dispersing through a million million channels, to irradiate, cleanse, and transform the souls of men and make them fit for Heaven. He saw it flowing outwards through the gentle hands of the woman, his soul’s beloved, appointed to carry out the great work by which his own had been prompted and inspired. He reaped his harvest bountifully. And what had been a trembling Hope in Life became now after Death a glorious certainty of work not done in vain by any laborer, however humble or unskilled, whose aim and end are the honor and glory of God.
And he realized the huge dynamic force of Prayer, wielded by Christian men and Christian women, and saw in Faith the fulcrum of the lever that is daily moving the world. And by the Body of Christ, veritably present in the Blessed Sacrament—in the Blood of Christ shed again for us—in the Sacrifice that shall daily be renewed by Catholic priests at Catholic altars until the End of Time—he knew that all the nations of the earth shall be saved and pardoned and justified. He saw them with the brightness that is the shadow of the ineffable Light upon their faces, destroying their hideous engines of destruction, laying down their weapons of war. He heard them crying: “Since we are the Sons of God, let us be brothers in deed and verity!” And he saw purified holy souls that have passed through Purgatory; blessed spirits that are now in Paradise; all the Hierarchy of Angels, all the Thrones and Powers and Dominations, all the crowned saints, martyrs, virgins, hail with joy that day....
The solemn mountains were no longer round him. His temples were no longer kissed by a breeze that was chill with the frosts of earthly night. A balmy warmth, an exquisite fragrance, an enveloping, embracing sense of light and peace and rest, were his now. He stood amidst vast, illimitable fields of lilies,—tall blossomed stems that bowed and swayed and whispered as though a wind were passing over them. Yet the atmosphere was still—so still, so clear, so pure, that his unspoken thought stirred it,sending waves of vibrations eddying through its celestial ether, as uttered words of earthly speech set in motion the mundane air:
“These are the Fields of Paradise,” was his thought. And—oh! with what bliss unutterable he heard the Beloved answer in that wordless, thrilling language that is common speech with the Blest:
“These are the Fields of Paradise—and I am here with you!”
He cried out: “Blessed be God!” seeing her coming.
She answered: “Blessed be God!” even as she came.
He had had earthly dreams of meeting her after Death in some roseate land beyond the sunset, dressed in the well-loved, sober black silk gown, white cap and little cape, walking upon the virgin shores of some tideless, opal ocean.
This was the Divine reality—that she should move to him through a whispering sea of lilies; robed in the spotless glory of her unstained virginity, with the shining halo of her long martyrdom hovering over her pure brow, reflected in her radiant eyes.
“O my Love!” she said, in that thought-speech of Paradise that is sweeter than all the singing of all the nightingales of earth, “there is no marriage in Heaven, but there is Oneness. It is God’s gift to souls that have faithfully loved on earth!”
“O my Love!” he said, “I never dreamed you half so beautiful.”
“And ah! my Love,” she answered back, “I never knew before how glorious you were!”
They were speechless for a moment, gazing on each other, while the little years of our earth flitted by, and its men and women were born, and grew up and grew old. She held out both hands to him then, and he would have fallen at her feet, but, “No!” she said, and opened her dear arms, and took him to her breast instead.
And heart to heart they stood; lips hushed on lips in the kiss of Paradise that outweighs all the joys we covet. And the lilies kept whispering as though they knew a secret. “Whois coming?” they rustled to each other. “We know!—we know!”
There was a Footstep in that holy place. The lilies ceased whispering—it was still, so still! Who came, moving through His Garden of Paradise as of old time Hemoved through His earthly Eden, calling the man and the woman? The lilies knew, but they did not say.
The woman and the man heard His Voice. They turned, hand clasped in hand, to see the Face of Love smiling under the Crown of Thorns; and, oblivious even of each other in the bliss of the Beatific Vision, they fell in adoration at those nail-pierced Feet that trod the Dolorous Way under the weight of the Cross; toiling under the burden of their sins and yours and mine—that, repentant—we might find pardon and salvation.
THE END