 | CHAPTER XII.
FACE TO FACE. Some women's hearts |  |
12. CHAPTER XII.
FACE TO FACE.
No trace remained next morning of the fated steamer.
The sky was as coolly blue as if no fierce flames had
ever kindled a great funeral pyre below it. The sea
was tranquil. The day was still. The officers of the
French barque, seeing that they had done all they could,
set sail for Fayal, intending to leave there the rescued
passengers. But before that day was over they fell in
with another barque, bound for Halifax, to which as
many as could be accommodated were transferred, and
among them Elizabeth.
So it came about that before Christmas her wanderings
were over, and she went back again, a widow, indeed,
and utterly free now, into that house from which
she had fled to secure her freedom.
The excitement through which she had passed had
roused her effectually from the apathy which had succeeded
to the death of her little child, and which, otherwise,
might not improbably have found its termination
in insanity. She was in full possession of all her
powers, — a sad woman, the colors of whose life had
faded, but a woman who was mistress of herself.
She communicated to Mrs. Murray Le Roy's death,
and the manner of it, leaving her to inform the rest of
the household. Then she sent for her husband's man
could, all the business details for which her presence
would be desirable, as she wished to leave New York
at the earliest possible moment.
The time had come to her now, she thought, when
indeed she was done with life, and ready to go back to
Lenox, and wait for death under those skies. She felt
no desire to see any of the old faces; but her memories
of the lonely, lovely hills appealed to her irresistibly.
She thought she had tasted all the keen delights or
sharp pangs which this life held for her; and now she
longed only for rest. She wrote to Lawyer Mills, requesting
him to secure for her a residence as near to
her old home as possible; and learned, in reply, that
the old home itself would be for sale in the spring.
The youngest of the “three Graces,” her cousin Emmie,
would be married in February, and the widowed mother
wished to give up housekeeping, and reside alternately
with her daughters. So she began to look forward
with homesick longing to the sheltered nook which the
hills shut in, where she meant to pass the evening of her
days, — this woman who fancied herself so old at twenty-five,
that Hope and she had parted company for ever.
Sometimes, during those months, her thoughts went
back to the old house in the Rue Jacob. Madame Ponsard
would read of the destruction of the ill-fated steamer
in which she had sailed, and believe her to be dead.
That was best. She felt no inclination to write, and
undeceive her. It was better to be dead to that old
life, — dead as her youth was, and her heart within her.
presently; though, to be sure, she would never forget
her or the baby. Elizabeth knew if she should go back
to Paris, after ten years had gone, she would find immortelles
on little Chérie's grave, which madame would
have hung there with pious care, — madame, who, childless
herself, had loved that baby face so well. Still
madame would be hearty, and healthy, and merry, and
French.
And Dr. Erskine, — but she always stopped there,
and told herself that she had no right to think of him
at all. Of course, he would outgrow the old past,
which had been only pain at its happiest, and love and
woo some more fortunate woman; and that was best,
too.
She was content; but, oh, the difference between
that content which is born of resignation, and that
other which is the paradise-flower of hope.
And so the winter wore away, and the spring, — and,
at last feeling herself, with her share of her husband's
fortune, quite too rich for her modest needs, Elizabeth
went back to Lenox, and took possession of the old
home, the purchase of which Lawyer Mills had in the
mean time arranged for her.
She entered its doors, as it chanced, on the last day
of May, the seventh anniversary of that day on which
she had first met Elliott Le Roy. “Only seven years!”
she said to herself, as this memory came back to her, —
only seven years, and in them she had weighed the
world, love, life, in her balances, and found them all
no sheaves with her.
The summer came to her there, in the old home,
— the brilliant New England summer, with its long,
blue days, its flush of roses and flow of streams; the
autumn, with its ripe fruits, and prophetic winds, and
the haze upon all its hills; the long, white winter, keen
and cold as death; and then the spring came again, and
the summer.
This space had been for Elizabeth a time of healing.
Its quiet had fallen upon her soul like a benediction.
She had lived almost in solitude. The old friends who
called on her could find no fault with the gentle courtesy
with which she welcomed them; but she made her
deep mourning an excuse for not returning their visits,
and they did not feel free to repeat them. For the most
part she was alone with Nature; and I think the dear
old mother seldom fails to comfort the tired children
who lean close upon her breast.
Insensibly, gradually, almost imperceptibly, Elizabeth
grew towards peace; until, when the second summer
came, she had begun to feel that her days were
good days, — that there was a positive, pure joy in
being alive, — alive where one could feel the sunshine,
and hear the birds, and gather the roses. There were
some keener delights in life, for which her hour was
passed; but, just as they were, her days were not barren
of enjoyment.
She thought a great deal about her little child; but
now her thoughts of it were among her sweetest consolations.
sea for the little casket under the sods of Pére la
Chaise, and bury it anew, where she could go often
and stand above it in the long and pleasant grass. But
as her health of mind and body began to be restored,
she ceased to wish for this. She thought less of the bit
of marble she had buried, with the white rose of peace
frozen in its sculptured fingers, and more of the immortal
little one, — alive, and free, and still her own, —
still near her, perhaps; for she remembered and believed
what Dr. Erskine had said, that whole eternities
could not separate a mother from her child.
She thought, too, very often of Dr. Erskine, — for
now she believed herself able to think of him unselfishly
and abstractly. I told you, long ago, that this
Elizabeth of mine did not understand herself; and all
the experiences through which she had passed had still
left her on the very threshold of self-knowledge. She
thought, — because she never expected to see John
Erskine again, or hear any words from his lips, and, so
expecting, yet found that skies were blue, and birdsongs
sweet, and summer days pleasant, and life had
not lost all its savor, — that the old past in which she
had felt so much for him was as dead as a dead day.
She honestly believed herself capable of seeing him
again without an extra heart-beat, — and I rather think
she would have liked to try the experiment.
He, meantime, was daring to love her, because he
believed that she was dead. He knew of the destruction
of the ill-starred German steamer, and the loss of almost
never met his eye; and he thought that Le Roy and
Elizabeth had gone up together, through flame and
flood, to stand at God's bar of judgment, for the final
solving of the sad problem of their lives.
How far Elizabeth had been wrong, he did not know
or question. He only knew that, whether her faults
were great or small, she was for him the one woman in
the wide universe of souls; and to that knowledge he
trusted, as to a sure pledge, that he should find her
again in some life, some world. So that all the living
women on the earth, with all their smiles, their cheeks
of tempting bloom, their lips ripe for kisses, were less
to him than the memory of one sweet, sad face, with
dark eyes which had never answered his pleading, and
lips which he had never kissed.
He had staid in Paris for a year, after he returned
from Brittany and found that Elizabeth had left with
her husband, and the ship in which they sailed had gone
down. He had not the courage, at first, to go back,
and take up the burden of American work-a-day life;
so he lingered on, in the French capital, until his mood
changed, and he began to long for work as a means for
his own healing. Then he went home; and through
the winter and spring found himself full of business. A
friend — the old Boston physician, with whom he had
studied his profession — took advantage of his return
to visit Europe himself, leaving his practice in Dr.
Erskine's hands. So the Doctor was both busy and
prosperous.
When the summer came, however, he was comparatively
at leisure. Almost all of Dr. Gordon's patients
went away to sea-side or mountains; and Dr. Erskine
found himself able to take a few days of vacation for his
own pleasure. He used them to make a pilgrimage.
Ever since his return, he had been longing to go to
Lenox. His fancy was haunted by the pleasant pictures
Elizabeth had made of it in the summer afternoons
when she sat in the old garden of the Rue Jacob, her
sleeping child upon her knees, while he watched and
listened, — thinking then that she would be his, some
day.
Now, it seemed to him that, if souls could come back
to earth, hers would walk among those hills she had
loved so well. He almost fancied he should see her, a
radiant ghost, — a slight, swift shape, with pale, fair
face, and luminous eyes, and hair of silken dusk, — the
Elizabeth he had loved and lost. So he went to
Lenox.
He left the cars at the railroad station in the village,
and then walked across the fields by himself. He would
not ask his way. He thought he could find the old
Fordyce place, and know it from Elizabeth's descriptions.
Presently the roomy old house rose before him,
— the tall trees in front making a leafy darkness, the
grassy pathway leading up from the gate to the front
doorstone. He was sure that he had found the spot.
Just so had Elizabeth described it. Just so, many a
time, had it risen before his fancy, and he had pictured
her, a gentle, serious child, going about under those
with her book.
The sun had just set. He turned to look at the
clouds that kindled the west, and to wonder where,
beyond them, she was, — his love.
Somehow the thought of her death had never much
dwelt with him. He had never lingered morbidly over
her possible sufferings. By flood or flame the agony had
been short, doubtless; and he knew her well enough to
believe the release had been welcome. He had loved,
instead, to think of her as gone home, — translated into
the sure refuge of God's peace, — her little one again
in her arms, perhaps, as she sat among the heavenly
gardens, where the very flowers of Eden made sweet
the celestial air. Thinking of her thus to-night, as he
had so often done before, the vision became very real to
him, and he was scarcely surprised to see it taking form
before him, as he turned back again to look at the old
house.
Down towards the gate a shape was coming, like one
he used to know, walking dreamily, and lifting its rapt
face towards the sunset sky. He hardly dared to
breathe as he drew near and watched this miracle of
resurrection. Scarcely knowing what he did, he spoke
at last one word, — “Elizabeth.”
The uplifted eyes came back to earth. The dreamy
footsteps paused. A heavenly smile curved the lips.
A soft blush rose to the rounded cheeks. Do ghosts
then blush and smile? He went forward, trembling
with strange ecstasy, and they were face to face.
He touched the extended hand. The soft and slender
fingers which trembled in his own were flesh and blood
surely. The red lips, “dear and dewy,” the eyes shy
and sweet, — this was no ghost, no vision.
“I thought you were dead,” he said.
“And I thought I should never see you again till we
were both immortal,” she answered.
Then there was a silence, which John Erskine broke
at last; though his voice was hoarse with some secret
struggle, as he asked, — “Were you both saved, — you
and he?”
“He was taken and I was left,” she said, slowly.
“God knows why. My husband saved my life. He
lowered me into the boat, and lost his own chance. We
had both been wrong in our lives; but he was noble in
his death.”
“And you have been free all this time, — alive and
free? Why did you never let me know? Did you
never once think that your life belonged to me now?”
“I dared not think so. You know what I believed.
I thought my darling was taken from my arms because
I sinned, in those days, in caring for you too much; and
it seemed to me God would be best pleased by my living
out my life alone.”
“And you meant to offer Him your own sad, solitary
future, and mine, as a sacrifice of expiation? Oh, Elizabeth!”
“I meant only to offer Him mine. I thought you
would be happy with some one else.”
John Erskine's face kindled with a grand light.
“Child,” he said, “I should have waited for you, —
no matter through how many lives or worlds, — sure
through them all that you would be mine at the
last.”
Then, for a moment more, he looked at her, in all
her shadowy loveliness, and after that look some gust
of emotion swayed him from his calm. His words were
strong with a passion whose power startled her.
“Did you forget that our Father in Heaven pities
us, as a Father pities his children? He wants to
see us happy, believe it. You are mine, — my wife.
Flame and flood spared you, because you were for me.
Do you think I will give you up now?”
He took her into his arms, shy and startled, trembling
like a girl of sixteen before her lover. Her very agitation
calmed him, and he let her go before he had even
kissed her lips.
“You shall come to me of your own free will, or not
at all,” he said, gently. “I called you mine, — are you
mine, Elizabeth?”
Through the dusk which had gathered round them,
she felt rather than saw his ardent, longing look. The
moon, a pale crescent, was already high in the heavens,
and one star glittered beside it. A late bird, going
home, dropped a note full of hope and joy into the
heart of the fragrant, dewy night. Half unconsciously
she noted moon, and star, and bird-song, and the tender
fragrance of the summer dusk. Had every thing believed
and rejoiced in the Father's love except her
heart, — and now had her hour come? Was her life at
Erskine, close into the arms that once more shut her
in, — not passionately now, but gently, thankfully,
with a clasp that claimed, and accepted, and would
never again let her go.
| CHAPTER XII.
FACE TO FACE. Some women's hearts | |