MY RETURN
It is fifteen years today since Blanchette died. I have grown old since then with an age not of years, though by reason of a sister's love, I have been consoled, strengthened, even, and now, in the presence of the world's disaster, succumb to some unutterable conviction that the ends of God have little need of the prayers of men.
After my delirium in San Antonio had passed, I resumed my normal self-possession, though a nervous weakness—since developing into a muscular paralysis—made me at moments inert or half trembling with a deceitful dread that set my heart beating curiously. How well I recall it all; those days of anguish, with the twilight glimmering of joy that I had come in time to see her, and with too a mystical sense of attachment between us both, lasting beyond death, and bathed, as with a consecration, in the bitterest waters of Marah.
I had rushed from San Antonio to New York, and from New York to Havre, and thus, in two weeks, almost exactly, stood halting before the gate of the captain's house in St. Choiseul. The autumn season already had begun to stain the woods with red and yellow, the delicate atmosphere of early fall filled the fair scenes of meadow and hill and clustered homesteads, with ravishing tints. Everything, as I despairingly gazed upon it was so eloquent of beauty and peace and—realization! And what lay in the house before me? I almost fell to my knees in the crushed agony of suspense, but Ah! No! it was not suspense. I knew; that psychic power which dwelt in my Gabrielle, which brought to her the myriad voices of the dead in their awful supplications—Eh bien, not that now—some of that power was with me too, and every step I went forward to that pitiless revelation of defeat, accompanied the stern record in the thought that hope was delusion. I had met no one; the deserted village was itself a presage.
I looked up at the silent house charming in its vines, flowers, into the walled garden blushing now in the hectic flush of royal gladiolus, up at the empty windows, and above, far above into the depthless blue sky, where we men and women somehow place the everlasting dwelling-place of the Almighty. Almost as I reached the door it opened, and in its frame stood Gabrielle, much changed; I saw that at once, through all my sadness, but solemnly beautiful I thought. My heart leaped towards her; in the fast approaching desolation she, my blessed sister, would save me, lift me up from the terrors of bereavement, not with strength, but with the divine compassion that I felt now visibly abided in her.
Gabrielle opened wide her arms. I caught her in my own, and she whispered in my ear; "Alfred I knew you were here. Before I saw you the sense of it was with me."
"Gabrielle, is there no hope—no hope?" The words choked me like some insurmountable obstruction in my throat.
"Yes Alfred," the voice, always soft and delightful, was just a little tremulous with sympathy, her own deep love. "There may be; the fever has subsided a little, but—Well, come in. Blanchette asks for you so much. Come, the spare room is at the head of the stairs. Be noiseless. I will fix everything."
We ascended the stairs, and I waited outside the closed door with my head pressed against its lintels, murmuring—what were they?—Prayers? Possibly.
It opened softly in a few minutes, and Gabrielle with a gesture of invitation to enter and with her finger on her lips, moved before me into the room. I saw the waiting group at the side of a low wide bed. The captain, erect, still, with features blanched into a pallor that matched his white disordered hair, his figure bent slightly forward as he leaned on his cane, and kept his eyes unchangingly riveted upon the bed, whose occupant I could not see. At the bed-side was the watching doctor, and to him now Gabrielle approached, withdrawing then a little to one side with her head bowed, but with her eyes noting the sick girl whom yet I could not see.