The following day, with her few clothes, her ticket, and a small lunch-box which Delia had smuggled to her, Meg set out on her journey. To her it was a new experience, for since her orphanhood she had scarcely been away from Valencia. It would have been a pleasurable trip, but for the sorrow which she anticipated at its close.
She was so intensely alive, that everything interested her: the occupants of the car, and the moving panorama without, the rolling prairies of her own State, the cool, wooded forests of Missouri, the rich farms of Illinois. But as she neared her journey’s end, and contemplated what it meant to her, and to that other lonely woman who loved him, her thoughts took shape, and, closing her eyes, she tried to realize the full force of the blow that had fallen alike upon his mother and herself.
In imagination she saw it all! A dim, high-ceilinged cathedral, with the monastery at the rear. The gloom was relieved only by the candles at the altar. A priest was droning the Latin of his prayer-book, while the organ in the loft was playing some soft, monotonous air, that got into her brain and nearly soothed her into forgetfulness. Suddenly it burst into a triumphant Te Deum, as the altar boys appeared, followed by other priests, and lastly, by five young men clad in the brown robe of the order of St. Francis.
Her eyes sought their faces, one by one, till the last one was reached. He was white, and in his eyes was the look of a man who had lived, and loved, and lost. Over the heads of the other novitiates, beyond the forms of the priests, his eyes met and held hers. And when he should have responded in Latin, with the others, no sound issued from his lips, but his eyes, fixed on hers, said: “Margie, I love you so! You are dearer to me than all the world, dearer to me than the cloistered life I thought would be all-sufficing!”
She held out her arms to him, but into his face had come the gray pallor of a living death. The service went on and on, endlessly, it seemed to her. It was all so meaningless! Her mind comprehended nothing. Her heart, tense and ready to break, knew only that he was leaving her. The beauty of the music, the impressiveness and solemnity of the service meant but the one thing,—Robert was leaving her!
The service ended, his eyes said farewell to her,—and, with the others, to the same monotonous music of the organ that had first lulled her senses, he retreated, farther and farther away from her, until at last he disappeared entirely. There was a moment of terrible suspense, as she strained her ears to listen. Then came the clang of the monastery gates, as they closed behind him, shutting him out of her life forever!
“Missy, de train’s done reached Welcomeville. Ain’t dis where you all get off?”
Meg sat up straight and looked at the colored porter in a dazed manner for a moment. Then, gathering her few possessions together, she left the train.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
“Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy.”