CHAPTER XIV.
We said in our last chapter that when Lord Barkley saw Flora Adair he was startled by her delicate appearance, therefore we may infer that time, which a poet has called "the only comforter when the heart hath bled," had not been a comforter to her.
One would have supposed that the pain of parting from Mr. Earnscliffe could hardly have been surpassed, for to Flora indeed
"Light was but where he look'd—life where he moved."
Yet time had developed still greater degrees of suffering than that which the mere separation from him caused her to endure.
As soon as they returned to Ireland, Flora devoted herself to reading works on the authority of the Church, and as much as possible avoided going into society. Had she been of a pious and passive temperament, she would naturally have had recourse to prayer, and to what are called the consolations of religion, in her great trial; but, unfortunately for her, she could find no solace in these, and reading such books as we have named was the only thing in which her restless, tortured spirit found even momentary rest. It seemed as if she had a craving for whatever could strengthen her still more in the conviction that the great principle of supernatural truth had positively demanded the tremendous sacrifice which she had made. Sometimes, indeed, when she saw her mother looking unusually unhappy about her she would try to rouse herself, and go about among their friends, but she quickly flagged again, and returned to the one absorbing study.
Thus the summer and autumn passed away, and November—with its short, gloomy days, and grey, foggy atmosphere—had set in, when one day, as Flora was looking over a list of new books, her hand suddenly trembled, and the paper almost fell from it, but she caught it in the other hand, and, with eager eyes, read over and over again to herself one title which appeared to grow until it covered the whole list, and she could see only it. That title was, "The Catholic Church: its Teachings and its Influence upon the Human Heart and Mind," by Edwin Earnscliffe.
"My child! what is the matter? You look so frightened!" exclaimed Mrs. Adair who was sitting opposite to her.
"Write for it, mamma," was Flora's answer, as she handed her the list, and pointed to Mr. Earnscliffe's name. "I —— something or other makes my hand shake to-day, so I would rather not write myself."
"It is better for you not to get it, dearest—it can only give you pain."
"Mamma, not read his book! I must read it whatever it is. I can guess but too well what its spirit must be; but, believe me, it is better that I should know its contents than that my imagination should picture them to me. Mamma, it would be cruel to wish to keep his book from me."
"My poor child! I only meant to spare you more suffering, and therefore it is that I would rather not get that book for you."
"Yes, I know; but, as I said, to refuse it to me will only add to my suffering. Write, mamma, please to write!" And Flora stood up, got a writing-book, and placed it before her mother; then she knelt down beside her, and again said in a low, pleading tone, "Write."
"I cannot refuse you, darling," replied Mrs. Adair, "yet to read that book will only foster sad memories which you must forget if you are ever to have peace of mind again. Would I could teach you to forget!" Mrs. Adair sighed deeply, and laid her hand on Flora's head.
"It would be as easy to teach the ivy to detach itself from the oak round which it twines, as to teach me to forget," rejoined Flora slowly, as she looked up earnestly at her mother.
Again Mrs. Adair sighed as she silently took the pen and wrote the desired order.
The book arrived from London by return of post, and Flora eagerly seized it, and carried it off to her room.
It possessed the almost irresistible fascination which such works always do possess when they appeal at the same time to the head and heart, and are written with the true eloquence flowing from "une âme passionnée." The eloquence of this book, however, flowed, alas! from the soul of one who, blinded by pride and passion, had turned away from Light, and devoted his grand powers to the advocacy of darkness, but who cast upon the darkness a halo of seeming truth and beauty. Over those pages, indeed, might angels have wept to see so much that was good and great perverted to evil.
Flora read that book in trembling, yet week after week she spent studying it almost line by line, until she must nearly have known it by heart. She would not, however, let even her mother read it, and when alone she would exclaim aloud, "It is too terrible to think that this is my work! It is as he himself said, 'You found me bereft of hope, but a calm fatalist; you send me from you a blasphemer!' When he was a calm fatalist he dragged none others down with him, but now that he has written this book, how many will be carried away by the powerful eloquence—gloomy and mysterious though it be—of his apparently profound reasoning! He will be responsible for the ruin of all those souls, but it is I who shall have made him become the cause of their ruin! O God! can he have been right when he said, 'It cannot be the voice of Truth or Charity which tells you that you ought to drive to desperation the wounded heart which you had won and promised to heal, rather than infringe a mere regulation of your Church?'"
Then would ensue a fierce struggle between the great contending powers of Faith and unbelief; but her constant study of Truth during the last few months now came to her aid, and gradually she would become calm again, remembering what she herself had so often said to her lover, namely, that the principle of obedience to a revealed and an unerring source of truth upon earth, must be maintained at any cost, or else the mysteries of life and death, of good and evil, would be irreconcilable with the existence of a beneficent Creator, and then life with its tremendous sufferings would be nothing short of a curse.
The cup of human misery seemed now to be filled to the very brim for Flora, and yet it was not; the last drop had to be added still, and the most bitter of all, for it was added by him whom she so loved, and that too when it depended on his own will alone to save her from any farther trouble. How true it is that the sufferings inflicted upon us by our fellow-creatures are almost always more difficult to bear than those which God sends us direct from His own hand!
A few days before Christmas Mina Blake went to see Flora, and after the usual greetings were over she said, "Poor Flora, how pale and tired you look; but I think I know something that will bring the roses back to your cheeks and the light to your eyes."
"Ah, Mina! you cannot know anything that would call the dead to life again; my roses and brightness, are buried for ever."
"Not so, Flora.... Would not the roses bloom and the eyes sparkle again, if the sun of former days could shine upon them once more?"
"Mina!" exclaimed Flora, almost indignantly, "how can you trifle so cruelly with me?"
"I am not trifling, Flora; the same sun in whose light you once so loved to bask is now free to shine upon you with greater brilliancy than ever, and the one dark obstacle to your full enjoyment of it is removed. Flora, Mrs. Stanly, alias Mrs. Earnscliffe, is no more!"
How unspeakable is the delight of having the portals of hope re-opened when we believed them to be closed to us for ever in this world! Flora uttered a cry of joy, as she heard that they were no longer closed to her; but then she covered up her face in her hands and did not speak again for some moments. At last, however, she said, putting down her hands and showing a face as flushed as it had been pale before, "How do you know it? Mina, tell me quickly, are you certain that it is so?"
"You surely can't suppose that I would have said anything to you about it until I knew it beyond all doubt. A week ago I saw the death of a Mrs. Alfred Stanly in the paper, and thought to myself, what joy it would be for you if she were the late Mrs. Earnscliffe; so without a moment's delay I wrote to a cousin of mine in London, to find out who the Mrs. Alfred Stanly—wife to one of the higher officials in the Foreign Office—who was just dead, had been before her marriage to Stanly. My cousin is a very matter-of-fact sort of person, so without many comments upon my curiosity about Mrs. Stanly, he wrote back to me saying that he had made the most particular inquiries about the deceased lady, and that after a little trouble he had succeeded in learning all about her. The 'all' was that she had been a Miss Foster; then the wife of a Mr. Earnscliffe, from whom she was divorced; and finally she became Mrs. Stanly. I received the glad tidings this morning, and, of course, rushed off to tell them to you at once."
Flora's joy, however, was not unmixed with anxiety; and when she was alone, and able to think with comparative calmness, there arose in her heart a timid dread that Mr. Earnscliffe would not value her love now that she was free to give it to him, having once persuaded himself that it was its weakness which had made her give him up. She knew well his proud nature, and how it must have galled him to think that what he called mere prejudice was stronger in her than her love for him; he could not brook not to be first in the heart of one whom he loved.
As these thoughts filled her mind she exclaimed aloud, "God knows that Edwin has been the first sole possessor of my heart! Light—life—everything—he was to me from the time I first knew him. But how can I prove it to him? The proof he asked for I dared not give, or my love for him would not have been true; and yet this is my crime, in his eyes—to have obeyed God, and loved him too well! Oh, Father of mercy, open his eyes,—let him see how I have loved him!"
Flora could pray now as she had not done for a long time; she could now plead for re-union with her beloved, without wishing for the death of a fellow-creature; and the star of hope—hope even of earthly happiness—shone again for her, although the more she thought the dimmer grew its rays. Every line of Mr. Earnscliffe's book was replete with concentrated anger against her, or, at least, against what her religion had made her in his sight; but yet through it all there still pierced a glimmer of that bright star of hope.
She had sent Mr. Earnscliffe from her, so now she thought it only right that she should make the first advance towards a reconciliation, and therefore she wrote to him as follows:—
"Your wife is dead, Edwin, and now, indeed, am I free to devote myself to you, if you will accept my devotion. You are unhappy. Your book tells it to me, even if my own heart had not made me feel it ever since we parted. Let me then try to banish that unhappiness. Let me heal the wounds that obedience to heaven forced me to inflict upon you!
"As fondly as I loved you when we stood together at Achensee, do I love you still—or, rather, far deeper is my love now, for it has been tested by the fierce fire of sacrifice."
She did not know where he was, so she begged Mina Blake to enclose it to his bankers in London, with a request that it might be forwarded to him at once. When this was done, she thought to herself, "If he rejects me now, the last and sharpest point will have been placed in my thorny crown; but, O God, let my misery at least win for him eternal light and life!"
For a time after this letter had been sent off, Flora looked brighter and happier. But it was like the light before death; for when a full month had passed and no answer came, she fell into a state of despondency far more dark and gloomy than that which preceeded this momentary brightening.
In her mother's presence she did her best to hide the despair which was gathering round her heart. But in vain she tried to apply herself to any occupation. The only thing that seemed to please her was to take long, solitary walks into the country; and every day, wet or dry, she went out for at least two or three hours, until at last she caught a heavy, feverish cold, and was obliged to keep her room for a week. But when she was able to go about again her love of walking had given place to a feeling of unconquerable lassitude; and she never expressed any wish save to be allowed to lie on the sofa. The illness of a cold was gone, but the cough remained, and the doctor talked about the necessity of rousing and amusing her. How this was to be done, was the question upon which poor Mrs. Adair daily and hourly pondered, as she watched with aching eyes her darling growing pale and thin. Mina Blake was unremitting in her attentions to her friend; driving out with her, sitting with her, talking to her, and trying by every means in her power to interest Flora in the present, and prevent her from dwelling so much on the past. But her success was not in proportion to her exertions, and she saw that unless Flora could be roused into interesting herself about something or other, there was no hope of saving her from falling into a gradual decline.
Summer came, but Flora did not regain her strength; and when, in the beginning of June, Lord Barkley so unexpectedly called and earnestly begged to see her, she felt scarcely equal to receiving him; but for Marie's sake she made the effort, and she thought herself richly rewarded when, at the end of a short time, Marie wrote to announce that her happiness was complete, as Colonel de St. Severan had consented that she should be married to Lord Barkley in the following October; and to ask Flora to be her bride's-maid.
Meanwhile Flora's health had not improved; her weakness and languor were slowly but steadily increasing. The doctors looked grave, shook their heads, and suggested the usual resource in such cases—a winter on the Continent—when they find that their skill fails to touch the patient's malady. So when Marie's letter arrived it was decided that they should start at once for Paris, rest there until after the wedding, and then go on to Rome, for Flora expressed so ardent a desire to spend the winter there in preference to any other place, that even the doctors said it was better not to thwart her, although the climate of Rome was not exactly the one which they would have chosen for her.
Rome—Frascati—the birthplace of her love, was most dear to Flora, and in her own heart she thought, "If I could only die in Rome! there where I first saw him, and where I feel certain he will one day bend in homage before the seat of Divine truth living upon earth, then at last he will understand me, and weep tears of love and sorrow over my grave,—tears which will reach me in eternity and make me blest."
Even trials could not make Flora a saint, and instead of praying like Teresa to suffer or to die, or like Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, to suffer and not to die, she prayed for death—for rest from earthly suffering....