41. CHAPTER XLI.
L'ENVOI.
The story is done, and in leaving these our friends and sometime associates
to the chances of the future, we may please ourselves in remembering that each
and all of them have learned at the hands of that stern mentor, Experience, lessons
which rightly applied should insure peace, content and beneficent influences
to the coming years.
Forestalling the secrets of those years, we may fancy Vaughn and Neria, in
harmony at last with each other and with life, the noble, dignified and gracious
heads of a well-ordered household, ruling their children and their dependents
with such loving wisdom, such mild authority, that the law becomes delight, and
obedience is as involuntary as affection.
We see Fergus and Francia, returning after years of exile, happy in themselves
and in each other, the asperities of his character softened, as the weaknesses
of hers are strengthened by the harmonizing influences of time and love,
and we no longer fear lest harshness on the one hand, or levity on the other
should destroy the happiness so long desired, so hardly won.
And Claudia? Yes, let us hope even for Claudia, for under the sin and passion
and weakness that have hurried her to shipwreck, lies a great, strong heart,
a heart whose deepest fountains were stirred while she lay upon her knees at
Neria's feet that day in the lonely farm-house, and heard that the husband she
had wronged would even yet forgive and grant her the opportunity for repentance
that she had counted already lost.
Yes, Claudia, though thy sins were as scarlet, there is a Fountain wherein
they may be washed white. And so, bidding them and you good-bye, O friend,
let me hope that what has been told may have taught some lesson, however
vague; may have won to momentary forgetfulness some aching heart, or solaced
an idle hour for those whose hearts have not yet learned to ache; may have
stirred an aspiration in the forecasting mind of youth, or a tender memory in
that of age; or, failing all else, may have awakened one friendly feeling toward
the narrator who lingeringly and regretfully closes this the happy toil of months.
THE END.
