A Changed Heart Part 78

"Yes, yes," she said, eagerly. "Bring Father Lennard. Oh, how short the time is, and so much to be done."

Mr. Blake found Father Lennard at home, and had to go over again the weary story of wrong-doings and falsehood. He was a very old man; his hair had grown gray in his holy calling, and he was long used to tales of sorrow and sin--sorrow and sin, that go so surely hand in hand. He had learned to listen to such recitals--as a pitiful doctor, who knows all the ailments poor human nature is subject to, does to stories of bodily suffering--tenderly, sadly, but with no surprise. He had known Nathalie Marsh from babyhood; he had had a father's affection for the pretty, gentle, blue-eyed little girl, who had knelt at his confessional so often, lisping out her childish faults; he had moaned for her tragic fate; and he had nothing but pity, and prayer, and sorrow for her now.

Mrs. Marsh and Miss Rose were in the room with the dying girl when they returned; Mrs. Marsh sitting at the foot of the bed, weeping incessantly, and the pale governess kneeling beside the pillows, holding the cold thin hands in hers, and reading prayers for the sick out of a missal. Both arose when the Father entered, and the dying face lit up with a sudden light of recognition and hope.

"My poor child! my poor baby!" the old man said, tenderly, bending over her. "Is it thus I find my little Natty again? Thank G.o.d that reason has returned to you in your last hours."

The mother and friend of the dying girl quitted the room, leaving the old priest alone to prepare the departing soul for its last great journey. Miss Rose knelt in silent, fervent prayer all the time; but Mrs. Marsh--poor weak soul!--could do nothing but sit and cry. Val had found Mr. Wyndham in the kitchen, leaning against the wooden chimney-piece, with a white, despairing face; and, pitying him in spite of his misdoings, turned comforter as best he could. He walked up and down the hall restlessly between whiles, feeling in the solemn hush of the house as if he were in the tomb. His watch, which he was perpetually jerking out, pointed to ten; and he was thinking he would have to run down to the office presently, when, opening the parlor-door to announce that intention, he saw Father Lennard come out of the sick-room.

"Well, Father?" Val said, anxiously.

"All is well, thank G.o.d! She is quite resigned now; and if sincere contrition ever atoned for sin, hers will surely be pardoned. Are you in a hurry, Val?"

"I should be very much hurried indeed, Father, if I could not do anything you or she may desire! What is it?"

"Will you go to Redmon, and fetch that unhappy young lady here. The poor child says she cannot die until she has heard her pardon her."

"I'll go," said Val, "but I'm not so sure Mrs. Wyndham will come. You see, she is one of your proud and high-stepping people, and is in such trouble herself that----"

"Let me go with you, Mr. Blake," cried Miss Rose, starting up; "I think she will come with me."

"All right, then! Put your bonnet on while I run round and make Peter get out the buggy."

The buggy came round to the front door, and Val a.s.sisted the governess in and drove off.

Father Lennard returned to the sick-room, and sat there holding the hand of the dying, whose sad, sunken blue eyes never left his face, and talking of that merciful Redeemer, who once said to another poor sinful creature, "Neither do I condemn thee!" Nathalie lay, clasping a crucifix to her breast, her pale lips moving in ceaseless inward prayer, while she listened, her face calm and beautiful in its holy hope. The hours that intervened seemed very short, and then the carriage wheels crunched over the gravel, and Nathalie caught her breath with a sort of gasp.

"Oh, Father, do you think she has come?"

"I trust so, dear child! I will go and see."

As he entered the drawing-room, the front door opened. Val stalked in, followed by Miss Rose and--yes, by a figure stately and tall, dressed very plainly, and closely vailed. The priest knew that majestic figure, although the face, seen dimly through the vail, was so changed that he hardly knew it.

"You may go in," he said, in reply to Miss Rose's appealing look; "she is waiting for you."

As the door closed upon the tall vailed form, and the two women, united to the same man, were face to face, Father Lennard took his hat to go.

"I shall return again in the afternoon," he said; "I would stay all day if I could, but it is impossible."

"I will drive you into town," said Val; "Peter can fetch the traps back.

Oh, here's the doctor!"

Dr. Leach opened the garden-gate as they came out, and lifted his hat to the clergyman.

"How is she?" he asked.

"Failing fast," said Father Lennard. "I do not think she will wear the night through!"

"You are coming back, I suppose?"

"I shall endeavor to do so. I promised her I would, poor child!"

The doctor went into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Marsh, through her tears, told him who was with her. The old doctor looked dissatisfied.

"They'll agitate her too much--I know they will, with their crying and taking on. If they stay long, I will go and turn them out!"

He waited for a quarter of an hour, watch in hand, frowning impatiently at the dial-plate, and then the chamber-door reopened and the half-sisters came out. The swollen eyes of the governess told how she had been weeping, but the other had dropped her vail once more, and was invisible. Dr. Leach bowed to her, but she pa.s.sed on without seeming to see him. Miss Rose followed her to the door, and looked wistfully out at the wet, foggy November weather, and the hopeless slough of mud.

"You cannot walk back, Harriet. I will send Peter to Redmon for the carriage. You will get your death of cold to walk there, unused as you are to walking."

"What does it matter?" she said, in a strangely hollow voice, "the sooner I get my death the better. If I could only die like her, I should rejoice however soon it came!"

"But, Harriet----"

But Harriet was gone, even while she spoke, walking rapidly through the drizzling rain and clammy mud--she, who had had a fastidious horror of mud on her dainty boots--and knowing nothing of either. All that was best in her nature had been roused into life by that dying-bed, but still that utter sense of despair and desolation filled her soul. Her life was done--there was no future for her--in all the wide universe there was not such another miserable woman as herself, she thought--desolate, unloved, and alone.

There were not many people abroad that bad November day; but those who were, and who recognized Mrs. Wyndham through her vail, and bowed ceremoniously, felt themselves outraged at receiving the cut direct. She never saw them--she walked straight forward to that stately home that was hers no longer, as people walk in sleep, with eyes wide open and staring straight before her, but seeing nothing.

Dr. Leach went into the sick-room as the others left it; but he returned presently, frowning again.

"Where is the fellow to be found?" he asked, impatiently; "she will excite herself in spite of all I can say. She must see him, she says, if only for ten minutes."

"Is it Mr. Wyndham?" asked Miss Rose; and the doctor nodded crossly.

It was the first time that the dying girl had spoken of him; and Miss Rose, who knew he was in the house, left the room without a word.

"Oh, he is here, is he?" said Dr. Leach. "I might have known it! Hem!

Here he comes!"

Paul Wyndham followed the governess into the parlor, looking so haggard that even the old doctor pitied him.

"Now, Mr. Wyndham," he said, "my patient is not to be unnecessarily excited, remember! I give you just ten minutes, not a second more!"

Mr. Wyndham bowed his head and pa.s.sed into the chamber; and Dr. Leach, watch in hand, planted himself at the door, and grimly counted the minutes. When the ten had pa.s.sed, he opened the door.

"Time's up," he said; "say good-bye, Mr. Wyndham, and come out!"

They were all merciful enough not to look at him as he obeyed. Dr. Leach went in and found poor Nathalie lying with her eyes closed, clasping her crucifix, her lips still moving in voiceless prayer. She looked up at him with her poor, pleading eyes.

The old doctor departed, and the two women were left alone with the dying wife of Paul Wyndham. Miss Rose sat by the bedside, reading, in her sweet, low voice, the consoling prayers for the sick, while poor, weak, useless Mrs. Marsh only rocked backward and forward in the rocking-chair, moaning and crying in feeble helplessness. And Paul Wyndham, in the room on the other side of the hall, walking restlessly up and down, or stopping to gaze out of the window, or running to Midge every five minutes to go and inquire how she was--felt and suffered as men only can feel and suffer once in a lifetime.

The leaden hours of the twilight deepened into night--black, somber, starless. With the night came the wind and fell the rain. The storm had been gathering sullenly all day, and broke with the night fast and furious. The rain lashed the windows, and the melancholy autumn winds shrieked and wailed alternately around the cottage, waking a surging roar in the black cedar woods beyond. The feeble hands still fold themselves over the precious crucifix--that "sign of hope to man"--but the power of speech has gone. She cannot move, either; her eyes and lips are all that seem alive, but her sense of hearing remains. She hears the sound of carriage-wheels outside, and hears when Father Lennard, Dr.

Leach, and faithful Val enter the drawing-room. The old priest takes Miss Rose's place, to administer the last solemn rites to the dying, and Nathalie smiles faintly up in his face and kisses the cross he holds to her lips. Val Blake goes into the room where he knows Paul Wyndham must be, and finds him lying as Midge found him a quarter of an hour before.

He stoops down and finds he is asleep--Ah! when had he slept night or day before?--and his face looks so haggard and heart-broken in repose that Val says "Poor fellow!" and goes softly out.

And so, with death in their midst, the faithful watchers sit and keep vigil, while the stormy night wore on. Ah! Heaven strengthen us all for that dread death-watch, when we sit beside those we love, and watch and wait for the soul to take its fight. No one spoke, except in hushed whispers, and the roaring of the wild storm sounded awfully loud in the stillness. They can hear the voice of the old priest as he reads, or talks, or prays with that fluttering spirit, already in the shadow of the valley of death. As the watch of Val points to eleven, Miss Rose glides softly out, with a face like snow, and tells them to kneel, while Father Lennard reads the prayers for the dying. So they kneel and bow their heads with awe-struck spirits, while the solemn and beautiful prayers of the old church are read, and thrill as they hear that awful adjuration: "Depart, Christian soul, out of this world!" and then, as it is finishing, there is a pause. What does it mean? The service for the dying is not ended. A moment later and they know--Father Lennard goes on, but it is prayers for the dead he renders now, and they know all is over; and Val Blake leans his head on his arm and feels it grow wet, while the sad and solemn voice of the old priest goes on. Then they all arise, Father Lennard reverentially closes the blue eyes, that have looked their last on this mortal life, and there is a wild outbreak of motherly love from poor Mrs. Marsh; and Miss Rose, with her face buried in the pillow, is crying as she has not cried for many a day; and Val and the old doctor go softly in and look on the beautiful dead face, and think of the bright, happy Nathalie Marsh of last year--for whom all the world might have prophesied a long and happy life--and feel that neither youth, nor health, nor beauty, nor all the glory of the world, can save us one hour from death.