We were interrupted in our talk by some call for Gabrielle, and I was left alone to ponder the strange matter, with I think, a crude kind of expectancy that we approached transcendent mysteries, dwelling unconfessed in my mind. But I was not a little alarmed also. Gabrielle's delicate texture, her spiritualized emotions, which also in their poignant intensity of feeling assumed now to me the aspect of a thaumaturgic power, might induce some mental derangement. Uncertain what to do, and unwilling to tell the affair to our parents, who would only see in it a new urgency for Gabrielle's transportation to changed fields of association, I concluded to confide everything Gabrielle had told me to Blanchette.
Blanchette was incredulous. She could not believe it. It offended her robust sense of actual living and the sharp realization in her of the materiality of the senses. You see in Blanchette something of the captain's skepticism, his naked Voltairism had developed. She was silent for a while, and then answered very slowly my question, "What is best to do?"
"Alfred, Gabrielle is unwell; you must get her away. She lives too lonely a life, reads too much, and is unsociable. Let her once live among the hard facts of the hospital, and the training school, and—Ah! then—it will all go, like the fogs—comme les brouillards s'evanouis-saient quand le soleil les éclate. Eh? Alfred, you know that."
I did not know it, and I was ill disposed at first to adopt Blanchette's view. But she was very tender and affectionate, and I was blind and too happy—too miserable too, as I must soon leave her—to do justice to Gabrielle. And so it came about that I argued the matter with Gabrielle, and insisted that she must try Paris, and the school, and the doctors, and forget the visitations, and mingle with the world a little, and, amongst new acquaintances, put to flight the aggravating "voices," for—the other marvel—the shining image—had never returned.
This latter fact contributed a better efficacy to my persuasions, as it seemed to prove that the whole business was some delusion of the mind. Gabrielle was not a bit convinced, but she was so dutiful, so resigned, and so faithful, that she yielded, put on the address of willingness she did not really feel, just to please me.
I took her to Paris and entrusted her with, O so many adjurations, to Doctor Manuelle Herissois, who was most considerate and pleasing and talked with Gabrielle with great adroitness and—I left her smiling, but as she kissed me Adieu, her dear eyes were very wet indeed, and for a moment in my own heart I mistrusted the part I had played, and might have, in an instant, reversed the whole transaction, when Gabrielle turned half away, while our hands yet pressed each other, and said; "Adieu Alfred. Do not come to see me when you go away to America. I could not stand it. Write only. That will do," and then, with a half stifled cry she fled into her room—her apartment in the school, and quickly closed the door, and I was left mute and irresolute.
What is more bitter than the remembrance of careless acts, thoughtless things we have done which caused grief to those we loved, and yet, while loving, neglected. It all came wrong, and still—assurement le bon Dieu, Il le faisait—it ended the war!
That night—I well recall it, I think, each minute of it—Blanchette ravished me with her loveliness, her joyous salutation, her infectious gayety, and lost in my own pleasure, the foolish vanities of doting youth, poor Gabrielle in her loneliness, was altogether forgotten. Dear sweet sister, with the patient heart, the endless resignation, the guileless impulses, and with that inscrutable mysticism of feeling, that finally brought to her the discarnate souls of the slain, the ghostly assault of the unnumbered dead—Ah! Malheureuse! not yet! again my tell-tale tongue, the hurrying scribble of my heedless pen!
Well, there were so many things to think of, and Blanchette was so eager to see me every minute, that when I had taken leave of all of our friends, and father and mother had invoked blessings on my head, and exacted promises that I would write each week, and the captain had made me very sure that he wanted a few pounds of the Texas pecan nuts sent to him, and Privat Deschat asked for a half dozen hanks of Texas cotton, if they could be found in the Galveston stores, Emile Chouteau (it was after he had left the school), wished only my happy return, that the waters would be propitious, the winds and the waves, and, if storms, why then:
dicto citius tumida aequora placat
Collectasque fugat nubes, solemque reducit;