I am afraid that the letters which I wrote her at this time must have given her much pain; for I thought that she would recover, and marry L——, who was now, as I supposed, free; and I used to write to her about it, meaning to encourage her. She never answered my letters, but she sent one of them to Giulia, and wrote to her—“The Signora Francesca deceives herself always; it is better so.”
L——, finding that his professions of love would not soften Ida, next tried to work on her compassion. He wrote to her that there was great delay about paying his pension, and that his children were starving!
She sent him twenty francs for his children in a letter: she did not have the money with her, and she was obliged to write to her sister Giulia to lend it to her, saying that she could not bear the thought that L——’s children should suffer. After she went back to Florence she wished to pay this money, but Giulia would never take it from her; which I suppose was one reason why she left Giulia what she did at the time of her death, rather more than four months afterwards.
Having gone back to Florence much worse than she had left it, she finally obtained the much-wished-for promise from L——, who agreed to marry his wife legally, and to make what reparation he could to his unfortunate children. Up to this time Ida had not been willing to follow the urgent advice of Giulia, and break off all communication with L——. As I did not know these facts until after her death, of course it is not possible for me to say what her reasons were; but I imagine, from what I know of Ida’s character and of all her conduct in this matter, that it was her wish that this love which had cost her her life should not be altogether wasted, and that it was a comfort to her, in resigning all her own hopes of happiness, to think that she might save L—— from sin, and his family from misery.
Giulia had wished her to let me know all these particulars, saying, “The Signora Francesca would tell us what we ought to do.” To which Ida replied, “I know what I ought to do, and I will do it[8]; the Signora loves me, and would be unhappy if she knew of my troubles.” But now she agreed to her sister’s wish, and wrote a kind letter taking leave of L——, and asking him not to answer it, nor to write to her again. She told him, that he must not think that she had any hard feeling against him because she made this request, but she thought that it would be more for the happiness of both of them, that they should cease all communication with each other.
The effort of writing this letter was so great, that at first it nearly killed her, and she became suddenly so much worse, that Giulia wished it had never been written. However, after a few days, that singular peacefulness began to come over her, which afterwards remained until she died; and she told Giulia that she felt more tranquil than for a great while before, and that if L—— should write her another letter she would not even look at it, but would give it to her sister to read and answer, that she might keep all these past troubles out of her mind.
I have done now with all the worldly part of my Ida’s story: what remains will be only the account of her most wonderful and glorious passage into the other world, and of the singular and almost visible help which it pleased the Lord to give her in her long illness. So, before going any farther, I will just tell what little more I know about L——. He never wrote to her again, but he continued to send occasionally to the house for news of her, almost until the time of her death. I have never been able to discover whether he ever kept his promise and married his wife legally, but I hope that he did so.[9] She appears from what I have heard of her, to have been by no means a very amiable character; but then there are few tempers so sweet as not to be soured by such trouble as hers.
So October came, and once again I found myself in Florence; where almost my first visit was to Ida’s room. My first thought on seeing her was that she looked better than when I had left her. She sat in an easy chair by the open window,—that window that looked away over the roofs into the open country; and she had her sewing as usual, for she always worked until she became so feeble as to make it actually impossible. I remember her, and everything about her, as if the scene were still before me. She was dressed in a sort of gray loose gown put on over her white night-dress, which gave her something of a monastic look, and her chair was covered with a chintz of a flowered pattern; her work-basket stood in a chair at her knee, and by her side was a little old table, with a few books on it, much worn. She was very white certainly, but it was a clear luminous white that was extremely beautiful, and her lips still retained their bloom, which indeed they never lost. Her soft hair was partly dishevelled, for she had just been lying down; but it was such hair as never could look rough, and as it fell loosely about her face and neck, it so concealed their wasting that she appeared almost like one in health. Her eyes were larger and brighter than ever—all full of light, it seemed to me—and her face had lost that worn, patient look, which it had borne so long, and appeared all illuminated with happiness.
But if the first sight of her gave me hope, as soon as she began to speak the hope was gone. Her voice had grown very feeble, and nearly every sentence ended in a cough, so violent that it seemed as if it would carry her away in a minute. She was quite overcome with joy and thankfulness at seeing me again, and it was difficult to keep her from talking more than was prudent. “Oh, Signora Francesca, how I have wanted you to come!” she kept saying, and her little feverish half-transparent hands closed very tightly about mine, and her beautiful eyes looked into my face as if they could never see enough of me. Meanwhile Giulia sat watching us with a flushed, anxious face, and blue eyes that kept filling with tears. No doubt about which of the sisters suffered the most, now!
As for me, I tried not to look troubled, and to remember all that I could about Venice, and what I had seen on my journey, to tell Ida; and I sang her some of the old tunes that she had been so fond of, and read her a little in the Testament, and she was very happy, and we made it as much like old times as we could. After that I always went to Ida, at first two or three times a week, and afterwards every day, as long as she lived. She could not talk to me a great deal, but the few words that she said were full of comfort.