CVIII
He was very weary, the great Churchman who had traveled from Mölkenzell—but when he reached his private rooms at the hotel he could not rest. Something urged him with a soundless voice, plucked at him with invisible hands, constrained him to return to the death-chamber.... He dined, and snatched brief sleep beset with dreams upon a preposterous, green-plush sofa. Then he obeyed the entreaty, or the mandate, and took hisbiretta, and threw a heavy cloak about him, for it was night and cold; and stepped out upon the Promenade.
It was a dazzling night of stars; great blazing jewels spilt with a lavish hand upon the purple lap of the Night. From south-west to north-east the Milky Way made an arch across the sky-dome. Bootes made the outline of a kite, its fiery tail Arcturus. Vega in Lyra made a wondrous show. Cardinal de Moulny looked up at them, and murmured a prayer for the soul he had helped to depart. The Home was but a few minutes’ walk from the Promenade; he reached it in a few moments. The hall-door stood open; some silent-footed men in black came out as His Eminence mounted the steps.
The vestibule was fragrant with laurel-leaves, with leaves of fern and scattered petals of pure white blossoms, dropped in the hasty unpacking of memorial wreaths and crosses from the florists’ boxes that had already begun to arrive. Men and women and children of many nations and ranks and classes had also brought flowers. Many of these people were standing on the pavement near the door, and a crowd had gathered in the street, and were pointing out, with sorrowful faces, the half-open, blinded windows on the floor above theentresol.
“He is lying there,” a peasant woman said to her little daughter, as the Cardinal passed. And the keen, austere blue eyes of the Churchman turned upon the speaker, and he said to her in a kindly tone of rebuke:
“‘Was’ lying there, my daughter. He is now with God. He died a blessed death. May yours and mine be as holy!”
He traversed the vestibule and passed upstairs. The diligent hands of the Little Sisters had already completed the last arrangements. Into the middle of the lofty room, with its consecrated burning candles and massed votive wreaths and crosses, the narrow, white-draped bed had been drawn. At the foot of it stood the altar, with its Crucifix, and its vases of flowers, and burning tapers. The pure frosty night breeze, scented with larch and pine needles, flowed in through the open windows; in the bay of the one that looked south-east stood the black-draped bust, with a great Cross of violets and bay-leaves leaning against its pedestal, and a crown of white lilies on its crape-veiled head.
One of the Little Sisters of the Poor knelt on aprie-Dieunear the bed-foot. There would be a public Lying-in-State upon the morrow, when members of Religious Sodalities would take part in the solemn function; when a guard of honor, drawn from the Army of the Swiss Republic, would be posted to watch the illustrious dead. Meanwhile, the Little Sister, with her fellow-nun to relieve her at intervals, would thus keep watch through the night-hours. His Eminence must know it would be not only a duty but a pleasure to render these sacred duties to the remains of one so good as Monsieur.
Then, as de Moulny turned towards the bed to sprinkle it and its occupant from the little stoup of holy water that stood upon a small stand close by, an oblong patch of whiteness showing relief against its purple cover drew his attention. The meek, good eyes of the Sister had followed the Cardinal’s. They now encountered them.
“It was I who placed it there,” the Sister explained, with a little innocent confusion. “It arrived by the afternoon post. It is a letter from England—M. Dunoisse received one in that handwriting regularly once a year at Noël ... its arrival was Monsieur’s great festival!” She added, as the Cardinal took the letter in his hand: “Thegood God permitted Monsieur to suffer a terrible bereavement in the death of the dear friend who thus remembered him!” She glanced at the crape-veiled bust in the window-bay, and added: “In August he received the news. At the close of September comes this letter—a message from the dead to the dead.”
The Cardinal’s expression of composed stem gravity did not change as the Sister made her explanation.
“Leave me, my child,” he said to the nun, “and rest until I again summon you. I desire to remain alone awhile by this bed of holy death.”
The Sister withdrew, leaving the Cardinal standing with the letter in his hand by the old white head that rested upon the flower-strewn pillow. A snow-pure veil of unutterable peace had been drawn by the hand of gentle Death over the splendid, powerful brow, the sealed eyes, and the high, clear-cut, aquiline features. The face was wonderfully noble, marvelously grand.
A great prelate, a subtle theologian, a profound scholar, no priest was more deeply read than Cardinal de Moulny in the pages of the Book of Life and Death. Long years of experience among the living, stores of knowledge accumulated beside innumerable deathbeds, had taught him that the deeper you read between the pages of that Book, the less you know that you know.
An idea struck him as he looked from the dead face to the envelope, obviously yellowed, addressed in a delicate old-fashioned handwriting—handwriting faded as though by the passage of many years—to an address in Paris that had belonged to Dunoisse many years previously—now re-addressed in blacker ink in a modern upright hand. And as he looked, yielding to a sudden impulse, he tore open the envelope and mastered the contents. He read by the light of the death-tapers that flickered on the altar at the bed-foot, set on either side of the Crucifix, carved in dark walnut with the Emblems of the Passion, that had hung above the head of the bed. The letter bore the date of thirty-nine years back. It ran thus:
“It has been made clear to me that what it is my determination to reveal to you in this letter cannot be known by you while the hand that penned it is yet warm and living. So, once written, it shall lie in the shabby desk most peoplelaugh at until my summons comes from that High Power Whose call we must all obey. There was a time, though you have never suspected it, when for the sake of the sweetness of the earthly love you had not then offered me, I would have taken my hand from the plow.“Nor when the gift was made, was I without my hour of doubt and hesitation, for, had I linked my life with yours, I must have broken a vow. Well!—I was spared the choice by the verdict of the London physicians—the relentless progress of the disease that bound me prisoner to this room within whose four walls I have now for so many years lived and labored.... Dear friend!—dearest of all earthly friends!—there is no marriage in that world where blessed spirits dwell, but there is Oneness. It is the gift of God to souls that have purely loved upon earth. Oh my beloved! whom I loved from the first—whom I shall love to the last—and this world is not the last, thanks be to God for it!—I do most humbly trust in Him that we who have been so long divided here on earth shall meet and be one in Heaven.”
“It has been made clear to me that what it is my determination to reveal to you in this letter cannot be known by you while the hand that penned it is yet warm and living. So, once written, it shall lie in the shabby desk most peoplelaugh at until my summons comes from that High Power Whose call we must all obey. There was a time, though you have never suspected it, when for the sake of the sweetness of the earthly love you had not then offered me, I would have taken my hand from the plow.
“Nor when the gift was made, was I without my hour of doubt and hesitation, for, had I linked my life with yours, I must have broken a vow. Well!—I was spared the choice by the verdict of the London physicians—the relentless progress of the disease that bound me prisoner to this room within whose four walls I have now for so many years lived and labored.... Dear friend!—dearest of all earthly friends!—there is no marriage in that world where blessed spirits dwell, but there is Oneness. It is the gift of God to souls that have purely loved upon earth. Oh my beloved! whom I loved from the first—whom I shall love to the last—and this world is not the last, thanks be to God for it!—I do most humbly trust in Him that we who have been so long divided here on earth shall meet and be one in Heaven.”