“I am Marie Sauvée. I hope you remember.”
She said these words in French. The change of language served instantly to recall the long train of impressions stored away, who knew how or where, about the name and memory of this girl.
“Marie Sauvée! You—HERE!” I exclaimed in her own tongue.
At the name, now, the whole story, like the bright side of a dark-lantern, flashed. It was a tale of sorrow and shame, as sad, perhaps, as any that it had been my lot to meet. So far as I had ever known, the little French girl, thrown in my way while I was serving in barracks at Washington, had baffled every effort I had made to win her affection or her confidence, and had gone out of my life as the thistle-down flies on the wind. She had cost me many of those precious drops of the soul’s blood which all such endeavor drains; and in the laboratory of memory I had labelled them, “Worse than Wasted,” and sadly wondered if I should do the same again for such another need, at just such hopeless expenditure, and had reminded myself that it was not good spiritual economy, and said that I would never repeat the experience, and known all the while that I should.
Now here, a spirit saved, shining as the air of Heaven, “without spot or any such thing”—here, wiser in heavenly lore than I, longer with Him than I, nearer to Him than I, dearer to Him, perhaps, than I—here was Marie Sauvée.
“I do not know how to apologize,” I said, struggling with my emotion, “for the way in which I spoke to you just now. Why should you not be here? Why, indeed? Why am I here? Why”—
“Dear Miss Mary,” cried the girl, interrupting me passionately, “but for you it might never have been as it is. Or never for ages—I cannot say. I might have been a ghost, bound yet to the hated ghost of the old life. It was your doing, at the first—down there—all those years ago. Miss Mary, you were the first person I ever loved. You didn’t know it. I had no idea of telling you. But I did, I loved you. After you went away, I loved you; ever since then, I loved you. I said, I will be fit to love her before I die. And then I said, I will go where she is going, for I shall never get at her anywhere else. And when I entered this place—for I had no friend or relative here that I knew, to meet me—I was more frightened than it is possible for any one like you to understand, and wondered what place there could be for one like me in all this country, and how I could ever get accustomed to their ways, and whether I should shock and grieve them—you can’t understand that; I dreaded it so, I was afraid I should swear after I got to Heaven; I was afraid I might say some evil word, and shame them all, and shame myself more than I could ever get over. I knew I wasn’t educated for any such society. I knew there wasn’t anything in me that would be at home here, but just”—
“But just what, Marie?” I asked, with a humility deeper than I could have expressed.
“But just my love for you, Miss Mary. That was all. I had nothing to come to Heaven on, but loving you and meaning to be a better girl because I loved you. That was truly all.”
“That is impossible!” I said quickly. “Your love for me never brought you here of itself alone. You are mistaken about this. It is neither Christianity nor philosophy.”