CHAPTER XXVIII.

GOOD-NIGHT AND GOOD-BY.

It is well for us that faith is able to decipher what De Quincey calls “the hieroglyphic meanings of human suffering”; and that, though the interpretation should not at once be made plain to us, we may, at least, be sure that it is merciful. As St. Peter stands supreme, holding in his hand the shining keys of heaven, which none but he can set in the wards, and none but he can turn, so to each Christian on earth is given the golden key to a personal heaven, and none but he can open the door, and none but he can close it. Within that door sits the interpreter, and when the soul is still it hears his voice reading, with praise and amen, both day and night: and some riddles he makes clear, and on some he sets the seal with the Holy Name; and that is God’s secret, and one day he will speak to the soul concerning it. He who seeks to tear away that seal finds only darkness and confusion; but he who folds his hands above it will at last be illuminated.

Never once during his trial had Dick Rowan rebelled against God, or questioned him. Nature might writhe in pain, and forget for a time the words of praise, but it submitted; and, according to the tumult and darkness that had prevailed, so were the light and peace that followed. It was thorough work, as all the work in this soul had been from the first, and his convalescence was like a new birth.

On the morning after Edith’s parting with Carl Yorke, Dick remained in his room unvisited, keeping all his strength for that first drive. At length the carriage came to the door, and Mr. Williams, who had insisted on remaining at home to superintend what he called the “launching” of his step-son, came down-stairs with Dick. Mrs. Williams, all smiles, followed after, rustling in silks donned in honor of this great occasion. Edith and Ellen Williams stood in the entry, awaiting the little procession. Miss Ellen, blushing and bedizened, was to accompany the two on their drive. Edith had preferred to stay at home and prepare for her evening exodus to Hester’s.

“Why, Dick, you look like an Esquimaux!” she exclaimed. “I cannot even see your nose. How are you to get any fresh air?”

He laughed. “I told mother that I could not breathe anything but fur; but she is a tyrant.”

“It isn’t often I get the chance to play the tyrant over you,” Mrs. Williams remarked, and began giving orders to have sundry hot soap-stones, and gay afghans put into the carriage.

“Mother,” her son exclaimed, “I am ashamed of having such a fuss made over me! I will run away. I will leave the country. I will go back to bed.”

He really blushed, and seemed annoyed.

They went out, and there was the parade of getting settled in their places, Mrs. Williams pleasantly conscious, and her son distressfully so, that several of the neighbors were looking on with interest. The inquiries for Dick had, indeed, been constant from all the neighborhood, even from persons with whom they had no acquaintance. Not a woman, young or old, but had looked kindly on the young sailor, and known when he sailed away, and when he came back; not a child but smiled and nodded to him through the window when he passed. Of course they had all surmised that the lovely young girl whom they had seen there before, and who had now been taking care of him, was one day to be his wife. She divided their attention with him as she stood on the step, and watched him drive away.

It was the hour of the steamer’s departure; and when Edith was alone, she shut herself into her chamber, and, kneeling there, prayed fervently that God would keep the traveller wherever he might wander, and that, though far from her, he might be ever near to heaven.

She did not leave her room when she heard the others come home; and after a while Mrs. Williams came to say that Dick would like to see her.

“We had a delightful drive, and he is not a bit the worse for it,” the mother said. “He will be well enough to go to Mrs. Cleaveland’s to see you, now; but I think he wants to have a good talk with you before you go away. He told me not to let any one interrupt.”

Edith knew well what the summons meant, and with one upward aspiration, “O Spirit of light and truth!” she went immediately.

Dick was sitting in his arm-chair by the window when she entered, and he looked around with a bright smile and greeting, “Well, little sister!” and motioned her to a chair near him.

On hearing that title, she stopped, and clasped her hands on her bosom.

“It was a brother who sent for you,” he said. “Come!”

She seated herself, speechless, almost breathless.

“Edith, where is Carl Yorke?” he asked gently.

She gave the answer with a quiet that looked like coldness. “He left in the steamer to-day for England. From there he continues his travels to the East, I do not know where else. No person is to know this but you and me, as his mother cannot be told.”

The color and the smile left Dick Rowan’s face. Surprise and pain for a moment deprived him of the power of speech.

“I am astonished and distressed!” he said, at length. “I wished to see him, to talk with him. But that he is not a Catholic, I should have wished to see you married soon.”

A deep blush of wounded delicacy rushed to Edith’s cheeks. “Dick Rowan,” she said, “you have yet much to learn about women, or, at least, about me. Whatever feelings of sympathy and affection I may have had for Carl Yorke, my conduct and conversation with him have been irreproachable, and so have my thoughts even. The thought of marriage has not crossed my mind. I do not wish to hear you speak of it.”

Her dignified answer disconcerted him for a moment. He had made the mistake nearly always made by men, often made by women, of misinterpreting the nature, or, at least, the degree of development, of an affection as yet angelically pure, if ardent.

“You were quite right in supposing that I would marry no one but a Catholic,” she remarked.

“I have done you a great wrong, Edith,” he said hastily, “and I wish to repair it as far as I can. But, first, will you tell me why you promised to marry me?”

“Because you told me that your life hung in the balance, and that I was your only hope and aim,” she answered. Her voice trembled slightly, and her eyes softened as she remembered how nearly he had spoken the truth. “You had been my first and most faithful friend. I considered my obligations stronger to you than any one else. I could not tolerate the thought of your suffering through me, when I was the only person you cared for.”

While she spoke, his eyes were downcast, and a deep color burned in his face. “Did my dependence on you attract your affection?” he asked, still looking down.

“It attracted my pity and anxiety,” she replied, without hesitation. “I should respect more a man who would be able to live without me. I do not believe that these violent feelings are either healthy or lasting; and I would not choose to act the Eastern myth of the tortoise supporting a world.”

“Oh! how mean I was!” he exclaimed. “How contemptibly selfish! Let me tell you all. I had a strong affection for you, that is true; but I can see now that there were unworthy motives mingled with it. There were pride, ambition, and self-will. I was determined to take you away from Carl Yorke. I knew that he thought of you, and I believed that he would win you, unless I prevented it. Your antecedents of birth, your tastes and social position, your kind of education, all were the same, and made you suited to each other. I said to myself that my being a Catholic gave me the precedence; but in my heart I knew that there was no reason why he, as well as I, should not receive the gift of faith. I knew, indeed, that his friendship for Alice Mills had predisposed him toward it, and that he read Catholic books. But I was determined to have you. I did not dare to ask if you would be quite content. I would not contemplate any other possibility. When I asked you if you were willing, it was only after you had promised. I confess this with shame and contrition!”

“Dick,” Edith asked breathlessly, “have you quite got over caring very much about me? Are you not disappointed?”

He raised his face, and all the shame and distress passed away from it. “The only disappointment I am now capable of feeling,” he said, with the emphasis of truth, “would be in case any earthly object should come between me and God. In the last few weeks I have learned to shrink with fear and aversion from all earthly affection. There is nothing but harm in those attachments which are so strong that the loss of their object brings destruction. They are mistaken in their aim. Why, Edith, what I worshipped in you was not simply what you are, a good and amiable girl, but a goddess. You were magnified in my eyes, I put you in a niche. That niche is now empty. Or, no!” he added, raising his brightening eyes, “it is not empty, but the right one stands there. You could never have satisfied the enthusiasm of my expectation. The great and wonderful good which I vaguely looked for with you, I should never have won. I mistook my object.”

He looked out thoughtfully, and she sat looking at him. At length he said, with a faint smile, “I wrote you last year of a visit I paid to the island and cave of Capri. That scene is like my past life. That cave was an enchanted place, so fair, so blue, so unreal! All ordinary critical sense deserted me as I gazed. I could easily have believed that the walls and ceiling were of jewels, and the watery floor some magical blue wine. As I sat in the boat and looked back, I saw a white star in the distance. Everything but that, and a long white ray from it, was blue. I rowed toward that star, I looked at it as my goal, just as I made you my goal. But when I came near, I found that it was no star. It was only the low entrance to the cave. Or, rather, it was for me the passage to sunshine and the heavens. And that you have been to me, Edith,” he said, turning toward her. “Thank God that your influence with me has always been for good, and that, in leaving you, I progress rather than change! You inspired me, and kept me from what was low, when I had no religion to help me. I can see it all now. The very excess and enthusiasm of my affection for you was necessary in order to govern me and keep me from harm. Besides, it is my nature to do with my might what my hands find to do. I was not then capable of resolving to do right for the sake of right; but when I was strong enough, then you drew aside, and left me face to face with God!”

His breath came quickly, and his wide-opened eyes were fixed on the western sky, and caught its golden light.

“Of course there was a struggle,” he resumed, “for I was sincere. But that is over. My unreasonable affection for you is as thoroughly eradicated as if it had never been a part of my life. I am ashamed of having so given myself up to it.”

Edith hesitated, then put the test. “Dick, I must be satisfied that I am really free. If you were sure now that no other, deeper sympathy stood between me and you, and that I were ready and willing to fulfil my engagement with you, would you still say that God alone held your heart?”

His expression was one of terror and shrinking. “It is not so, Edith!” he exclaimed. “God forbid that it should be so! I could no more go back to those hopes and wishes of the past than I could be a little boy again!”

After the momentary fear and suspense that had accompanied her question, Edith’s first feeling was one of joyful relief and freedom, her second an indignant sense of the wrong that had been done her. She rose from her chair, walked to the other window, and stood there looking out with eyes that saw no object before her. Her mind glanced swiftly back over the last year and a half. She remembered the bright peacefulness of her life, yet half-enshrouded in the mists of childhood, the vision of her womanhood shining large and vague just above the line of her eyelids; for she cared not yet to look at or question that future. She recollected the hopes and aims that had begun to form themselves, of doing good, of making herself such a Catholic as would be a credit to the faith, of helping and instructing her poor, of trying to bring her uncle’s family into the church; and she remembered a faint rose-tinge of personal happiness, soft and rare, and too delicate to be seen, but felt by some finer intuition. Then came the sudden call that had put her life in confusion, the future wrenched rudely open, the many clustering interests trampled by one that demanded to be made paramount. And there was no more cause than this!

Indignation swelled to the point of speech. She turned about, and faced Dick Rowan, and her eyes flashed.

“You may well be ashamed,” she said, “for you have been unmanly! I do not speak of what I have suffered in my own mind; but you have exposed my reputation, which, next to my character, I hold sacred. You have deprived me of your mother’s friendship; for she will never cease to blame me. You have had me proclaimed as your promised wife, every one supposing that the promise was freely given. Yet, when I went down-stairs that day, I was like a victim going to be immolated. Nothing but prayer had strengthened my resolution. I thought that a refusal would be your destruction. You had said as much. You have exposed me to the condemnation of shallow judges, who will be only too glad to find fault. Those people who pronounce without knowing, and think that they can include the motives of another’s whole life in three words, will all condemn me. I, who have tried with constant watchfulness to walk to a hair’s-breadth in the path of womanly propriety, shall be pointed at as the girl who jilted you and broke your heart. And all this, not from the blindness of real affection, which would have excused you in my eyes, but from will, and pride, and a mere fascination. Don’t tell me of eradicating a real affection. It may be conquered, and made subject to duty; but sympathy is not to be eradicated. That feeling which has died in your heart was, indeed, a false blossom.”

She turned and stretched her hands out toward the East, where, far away, the steamer that bore Carl Yorke ploughed the twilight wave. “O Carl! you would not have done it,” she cried, and burst into tears; the usual womanly peroration to such a discourse.

“O God, accept my humiliation!”

She heard that tremulous prayer through her sobs, and, starting, looked at Dick. His face was bowed forward in his hands, as though he could never again raise it. She recollected herself. It was God who had cured and enlightened him. He was not a man who had turned from one fickle fancy to another. He was in the hands of God.

She wiped her eyes, and, after a little while, went and knelt beside his chair. “Forgive me, Dick, for reproaching you so,” she said. “It is over now. We all make mistakes, and those only do well who acknowledge them, and forgive others. My childhood’s dear friend, let us forget all that is painful in the past. God will direct. There is much in life besides marrying and giving in marriage, and I do not wish to think of that again, not for a long, long time, if at all. Set the seal on the events of the last two years. They never happened. I am happy now. You know that, though I was born at the North, I have a Southern temper. See! the little cyclone is past, and I am clear from every cloud. We are two sober friends, who wish each other no end of good. Tell me what you mean to do.”

He raised his head, and the one absorbing interest of his new life came back and obliterated the passing trouble. “I do not know, Edith, and I lay no plans. I have no reason to trust my own will or wish. I give myself up entirely to direction, and am certain on but one point: God will not let me go, and I will not let him go. When I lay bruised and helpless before him, he took me in his arms and healed me, and I will never know another love. He has kindled a fire in my heart which my life shall guard. I rejected him once, but will never again. That night I spent in the church, before my baptism, a voice from the altar asked me, I thought, to give up all for God; and it would have been easy then for me to promise. As I meditated on heaven, the Mother of Christ drew to herself all that is lovely in woman; all that was strong, and true, and protecting in a guide clustered around the church; all that was adorable, that passed beyond speech, was there before me in the tabernacle. I thought then that to be a brother in any religious order, or a servant in the church, to sleep under the same roof that sheltered the head of Christ, to light the candles, to care for his altar, to serve Mass, all that would be the highest honor and happiness. I think so now, but I ask nothing. I thought then with self-contempt how I had toiled to earn money, when the ‘inexhaustible riches of God’ had lain untouched at my hand; how I had travelled to see the wonders of the earth, when the wonders of God had appealed to me in vain. But when daylight came, I treated the whole as a dream, a mere exaltation of the fancy, and impracticable. I know now that what I took for a dream is the only reality, and what I thought reality is but a dream. I resisted the inspiration, and have been lacerated on the briers of my own obstinacy.”

He paused, looking out toward the west, and in the fine golden light that was left from sunset, with the new moon and the evening star half-drowned there, his face looked beautiful. Calmness, humility, solemnity, and sweetness mingled in its expression.

Edith whispered a low “Well, Dick?” to make him speak again; for he had, apparently, forgotten her.

“Father John has promised me that I may make a retreat as soon as he thinks me well enough,” he said, rousing himself at the sound of her voice. “I do not look beyond that. I do not know anything. I wait.” And again there was silence.

After a while, Edith said timidly, for he seemed buried in a reverie, “Do you remember last year, Dick, when we went about the city, like two strange sight-seers? You said then that the poor and the suffering looked at you in an asking way different from the look they gave others. Don’t you think it might have been the Lord who asked through their eyes?”

“I have not a doubt of it,” he answered.

“Nothing else is of worth!” he said after a minute, as if speaking to himself--“nothing else is of worth!” And again, “O miserable waste!”

Presently she spoke again, very softly: “Sometimes, when one has meditated a long while, everything seems unspeakably good and beautiful, as if all were in God. A warmth and sweetness flow around the soul. If your enemy should come to injure you, you would embrace him. If your friend were taken away from you, you would smile, and let him go. For, turning to the Lord, you find all there. Nothing is lost. When you go away, you feel still, and speak lowly. You want to do something for some one; and, wherever you look, you see the Lord, and whatever you do is done for him. He accepts it all, and nothing is small, and nothing is great. If you see any one suffer, you pity, and try to help, and, perhaps, you weep; but the agony of pain you feel at other times at the sight of suffering, you do not feel now. You get a glimpse of the reason why angels can witness so much pain, yet still be happy.”

Dick, looking out at the sky, smiled. “Yes!” he said, “yes!”

A carriage drove up to the door, Hester’s carriage, come for Edith. Twilight had fallen softly round them, and their faces were dim to each other in that curtained chamber.

“My dear friend,” Edith said earnestly, “is there peace between us?”

“All is peace, Edith,” he answered.

“Then, before I go,” she said, “I want you to put your hand on my head, and say, ‘God bless you!’”

He did as she bade him, laid his hand on her head, and said, “God bless you for ever! Good-night!”

Both of them knew that good-night meant good-by, yet they parted with a smile.