University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
WHILE THE MUSIC PLAYED.

It was the very last of June, when, for hours and
days, death stood waiting in Elizabeth's little room;
and Dr. Erskine fought with him, and at length won
the victory. But for his wonderful skill, and still more
wonderful care, as Elizabeth knew afterwards, neither
she nor her child would ever have lived through those
dark hours. For days both their lives seemed to hang
on a very frail thread; but the poor young mother was
delirious all the time, slipping from one wild dream into
another; and when at length she woke to consciousness,
the danger was past, and her week-old baby lay
on the bed beside her.

She looked at the exquisite child as if that, too, were
a dream. Then she put out her hand and touched the
pink, soft flesh, and drew it back again, satisfied. The
little morsel had rings of dusky, silken hair like her
own, and faint, shadowy eyelashes resting on its cheeks.
How eagerly she watched it, only mothers know. She
and it were all alone. She scarcely dared to breathe,
lest she should break the slumber which wrapped it like

a spell. She lay there in a kind of ecstasy till it awoke,
— not with a cry, but with a soft rustle, a stretching
out of the little arms here and there, a low murmur,
then wide opening eyes. Elizabeth looked into those
eyes eagerly. They were the darkest of gray.

“Thank God,” she said, under her breath. “The child
is stamped mine, not his. It will not be like him in a
single feature.”

It uttered, just then, a little, twittering cry, in which
she fancied she heard the music of the spheres. The
faint sound brought in Madame Ponsard. Her eyes
filled with tears when she saw Elizabeth's face of quiet
content, and realized that the crisis was past, and the
reign of hope had begun. But she only said with true
French tact, going up to the bedside, — “So madame
concluded to wake up and look at her little daughter?
I hope madame is satisfied with the prettiest baby in
Paris?”

“My little daughter, — my little daughter.” Elizabeth
said the words over to herself. A girl with her
eyes, her nature. God save her from her fate! She
would need to have a great many prayers said for her,
this little one.

Two weeks more went by before Elizabeth could sit
up, — and two weeks after that before she could go out
into the beautiful summer, and gather the flowers of
which the wide, rambling, old-fashioned garden, far
down underneath her windows, was full. During all
this time Dr. Erskine came daily, and brought in the
sunshine with him, — sunshine blossoming in roses and

jasmine, or globed in luscious fruits. And Elizabeth
was happy, for the first time in her life, with an untold,
indescribable happiness. She thought it was all because
of the baby fingers with their waxen touches, the tender
lips which drained her sorrow dry.

The baby, — whom she had named Marian Nugent,
after her mother, but whom every one called “mignonne,”
or “chérie,” or “little angel,” — was indeed
queen of the old house in the Rue Jacob. Madame
Ponsard adored the little one. Childless through all
her life herself, the instinct of motherhood, so powerful
with women, came now to the surface, and overflowed
in devotion to this child, born under her roof, and half
her own, therefore, as she reasoned. Monsieur Ponsard
drank less absinthe, and gave up a good many games
of baccarat, to look wonderingly at this new importation
from Heaven, this last and most touching of miracles.
The gay widow on the first floor, even, came up
to lay her offerings on the universal shrine. And as for
the doctor, it became a customary thing not only for
him to spend half his leisure time indoors, wherever the
white-robed wonder might be found, but to take it
down with him, and out into the garden, in his great,
strong, tender arms.

Elizabeth's eyes and heart kindled over the new sight
of a man so masterful and yet so gentle. When she
got well enough, she used to follow down to the old
garden, and sit there, and look after him and her baby,
as they went to and fro among the flowers. Sometimes
the little one would go to sleep, and then Dr. Erskine

would bring her and lay her in her mother's arms, and
stay and watch them both, and talk of “life, death, and
the vast forever;” or Elizabeth would tell him stories
of her old life in Lenox, — never, by any chance, of her
sad married years, — making pictures for him of each old
scene, till hills and trees and arching sky grew familiar
to his thought as to her own. Then, when the afternoon
began to grow chill, he would hurry them both
in again, — these two, whom he liked still to call his
patients.

So peacefully and blessedly August and September
went by. Elizabeth never stopped to think what gave
to this wine of life she was quaffing its so keen zest.
Sometimes, when she loved her baby most, and was
happiest in all its untold sweetness, an accusing prick of
conscience would bring the child's father to her mind, —
not as lover or husband of her own, not even as the
cool, cynical Mephistopheles of her life, but purely in
his aspect of the child's father, who had been defrauded
by her act of all these delights which made her own
heart so rich. But she tried to think that she had acted
for the best, and that Heaven itself, in giving her the
means of deliverance, had endorsed her course. Nor did
these conscience pricks come often to sting their pain
through her pleasure. For the most part she was entirely,
overflowingly happy, as she had never been
before, without thought or care for yesterday or to-morrow.

With October, the winds blowing down from the
North Sea grew chiller; and it was only now and then

that there was a day bright enough to take little Marian
into the garden. But still Dr. Erskine continued his
daily visits. Elizabeth declared that she was jealous,
because the baby stretched out her hands to go to him,
before she had ever accorded her a similar token of
preference. It was a very good-natured jealousy which
she felt, however; and somehow it gave a wonderful
brightness to her face.

One day the doctor insisted that she should go with
him for a ramble in the gardens of the Tuileries. Little
Marian would do excellently with Madame Ponsard,
he said; and Madame Nugent herself was certainly
suffering for a breath of fresh air.

“He has a right to command you,” Madame Ponsard
remarked while the question was pending. “But for
him neither you nor the child would be alive to-day.”

So Elizabeth tied on her bonnet and went, — the first
walk she had ever taken with Dr. Erskine.

They were very silent, as they wandered round the
grand old gardens which Le Nôtre laid out in the seventeenth
century, — Le Nôtre, whose dust long ago, let
us hope, blossomed in roses. They went on till they
came to Coustou's Venus, and sat down on the old stone
bench near at hand, to look at that vision of sculptured
grace. Then, at last, Dr. Erskine said, — “The time
is nearly come at which I purposed to return to
America.”

Elizabeth felt a curious sensation of chill, though the
October sun was shining. Just then the band began to
play some slow, sad music. The time came afterwards

when, standing face to face with death, as she thought,
she seemed to see again those stately gardens, to look
at Coustou's statue, and to hear the slow, sad music
play, and Dr. Erskine's voice telling her it was almost
time for them to part. It was the first time she had
realized that he and she and Madame Ponsard, and the
baby they all loved, were not to go on eternally, just
as they had been going on for the swift, short two
months which lay behind her. She drew a sharp
breath, but she did not speak.

And the band played, and the October sun shone, and
the prophetic wind blew from the north through all the
trees, and after a while Dr. Erskine spoke again.

“I have no right, I know, to ask the question, but if
you feel towards me enough like a friend to give me
your confidence, will you tell me just this one thing, —
was your marriage a happy one?”

“No.”

She could not have spoken another word. She wondered
how that one had got itself said through the
chill that was stiffening her lips and turning her heart
to stone.

After a little space, Dr. Erskine's voice came to her,
low, clear, and yet, as it seemed, from far away, — “If
you had said yes, I should not have told you what I am
going to tell you now. I love you very dearly. I am
thirty-eight years old, and I never loved a woman before.
I should not have dared to say this to you if I
had thought there was nothing but a grave between
you and a man whom you had loved. But, if you have

never been made happy, let me make you happy. I
can. I will. Do you believe me?”

Did she believe him? Oh, God, did she not believe
him? Had her punishment overtaken her? — for now
she felt that in fleeing from Fate she had failed to
evade Responsibility, or escape Retribution. She made
a strong effort, and forced her lips to articulate the
words which almost refused to come.

“I must not hear another word. I have no right.”

“No right?”

“No, for my husband is not dead. I am still the
wife of Marian's father.”

She was frightened at the look his face took on, —
such a look as she had never seen a man's face wear
before. She made haste to tell him her story, — briefly
as she could, but not sparing herself, or withholding
any thing of the truth. And meantime the children
wandered round with their bonnes, fashionable ladies
passed with their cavaliers, — the autumn sun shone,
the autumn wind blew, and the slow, sad music played.

When all was told, she looked timidly up into his
face. Heavens! how sweet hers was! the dark eyes
full of passionate appeal, the scarlet lips trembling.
He was almost mad enough to kiss those lips then and
there, — to tell her there was no law on earth so
potent as that law of the soul which gave them to
each other. Into the turbulence of his mood her low,
pleading voice stole, — “Dr. Erskine, do you blame me
so very much? I was young, and I thought I cared
for him at first. Afterwards I know I ought to have

been more patient; and I did very wrong to come
away. But my punishment has overtaken me.”

“Yours!” How his eyes kindled over her. “Is it
a punishment to you? Do you care?”

“Do you think I could give you pain, — you who
saved my life, and baby's, — and not care?”

“But for yourself, I mean. Elizabeth, have you any
heart?”

The swift color flushing the poor, pale face answered
him better than her low words, — “For myself I have
no right to care. I deserve any suffering that may
come; but you are blameless.”

“Tell me one thing, — just one. If you were free,
what then? Do you think I could have made you
happy?”

“You are cruel. I will not think. God help me,
I dare not.”

The last words were so low, his strained ears could
scarcely catch them. Just then Satan was tempting
him sorely. He had not needed to be taken into any
high mountain to see what for him would have outweighed
all the kingdoms of this world, and the glory
of them. He had never yet compromised with his conscience;
but he was trying to do it now.

“Why should she not be held free, in this new
world, from the old ties?” the Tempter was whispering.
“You saved her life. Have you then no claim on
it? Could you not make yourself a law to her soul?
Does she not love you enough to obey you? You love
her, — you would make her happy. That other man

never loved her. God never joined those two together,
— why should they not be put asunder? Are they
not more utterly asunder already than even Death
could ever make two who loved?”

He listened to these subtle whispers, coming gradually
to believe in them, till the music ceased to play, its
hour being over; till bonnes and children began to go
away, and then he got up and gave Madame Nugent
his arm.

As they walked, he said to her, — “Do you mean
ever to go back to the old ties?”

“Never!” she answered, upon her first impulse.

“Then, — old things having passed away, — why
should not all things become new? Elizabeth, you
think I saved your life. Give it for ever into my keeping.
You know how I will care for you and the child.
I think I have a right to you. Oh, my darling, my
darling, come and lay your destiny in my hands.”

She turned on him eyes dark with unutterable
woe. In her voice there was the faintest quiver of
reproach.

“It is not your best self which is speaking, Dr.
Erskine,” she said, mournfully. “I think you care for
me too much to tempt me, if you realized what you
were saying. I will never do any thing to make myself
unworthy to be Marian's mother; and, however we may
reason about the matter, the simple truth remains.
I am that man's wife, and no sophistry can make it
right for me to hear words of love from any other.”

She had uttered these sentences with an effort which

made her faint; but there was in them no faltering of
purpose. After they were spoken, the two walked
home in silence.

The next morning, a note was given to Elizabeth,
which contained only these words:—

Elizabeth was weak or womanly enough to press
this note to her lips, in a sudden passion of love
and pain. Then she caught up her baby, and kissed
its soft, unconscious cheeks, talking her heart out to it,
as mothers do, — as she could not have done to any
one else on earth.

“Well, baby, dear, we must learn to do without him.
He will go away across the great, wide sea; and we
must be all the world to each other, you and I, — what
an empty world, when he is gone out of it.”

But either the sudden passion of her kisses frightened
the child, or the sadness of her voice saddened it,
— it burst into one of its infrequent fits of sobbing;
and Elizabeth, taught unselfishness by motherhood, as
women are, had to put aside her own pain, and comfort
her little one.