Whatever the mystery might be, Dr. Grey resolved to pursue the subject no further; but wait patiently and learn all from the beautiful lips of the white-faced sphinx, who alone possessed the right to unseal the record of her blighted life.
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“Who might have been—ah, what, I dare not think! We all are changed. God judges for us best. God help us do our duty, and not shrink, And trust in heaven humbly for the rest.” |
CHAPTER XXII.
The profound stillness that pervades a room where life and death grapple for mastery, invites and aids that calm, inexorable introspection, which Gotama Buddha prescribes as an almost unerring path to the attainment of peace; and, in the solemn silence of his last and memorable vigil, Dr. Grey brought his heart into complete unmurmuring subjection to the Divine will. A soi-disant “resignation” that draws honied lips to the throne of grace, leaving a heart of gall in the camp of sedition, could find no harbor in his uncompromisingly honest nature; and though the struggle was severe, he felt that faith in Eternal wisdom and mercy had triumphed over merely human affection and earthly hopes, and his strong soul chanted to itself the comforting strains of Lampert’s “Trust Song.”
No mere gala barge, gay with paint and gaudy with pennons, was his religion; no fair summer-day toy bearing him lightly across the sun-kissed, breeze-dimpled sea of prosperity and happiness, and frail as the foam that draped its prow with lace; but a staunch, trim, steady, unpretending bark, that with unfaltering faith at the helm, rode firmly all the billows of adversity, and steered unerringly harborward through howling tempests and impenetrable gloom. Human friendships and sympathy he considered unstable and treacherous as Peter, when he shrank from his Lord; but Christian trust was one of the silver-tongued angels of God, ringing chimes of patience and peace, far above the din of wailing, bleeding hearts, and the fierce flames of flesh martyrdom.
One o’clock found Dr. Grey sitting near the pillow, where for five hours Mrs. Gerome had slept as quietly as a tired child. The fever-glow had burned itself out, and left an ashen hue on the lips and cheeks.
Wishing to arouse her, he spoke to her several times and 287 raised her head, but though she drank the powerful stimulant he held to her mouth, her heavy eyelids were not lifted, and when he smoothed the pillow and laid her comfortably upon it, she slumbered once more.
At the foot of the bed, with his keen yellow eyes fastened on his mistress, crouched the greyhound, his silky head on his paws; and on a pallet in one corner of the room slept Katie, ready to render any assistance that might be required.