An idea struck him as he looked from the dead face to the envelope, obviously yellowed, addressed in a delicate old-fashioned handwriting—handwriting faded as though by the passage of many years—to an address in Paris that had belonged to Dunoisse many years previously—now re-addressed in blacker ink in a modern upright hand. And as he looked, yielding to a sudden impulse, he tore open the envelope and mastered the contents. He read by the light of the death-tapers that flickered on the altar at the bed-foot, set on either side of the Crucifix, carved in dark walnut with the Emblems of the Passion, that had hung above the head of the bed. The letter bore the date of thirty-nine years back. It ran thus:
“It has been made clear to me that what it is my determination to reveal to you in this letter cannot be known by you while the hand that penned it is yet warm and living. So, once written, it shall lie in the shabby desk most people laugh at until my summons comes from that High Power Whose call we must all obey. There was a time, though you have never suspected it, when for the sake of the sweetness of the earthly love you had not then offered me, I would have taken my hand from the plow.
“Nor when the gift was made, was I without my hour of doubt and hesitation, for, had I linked my life with yours, I must have broken a vow. Well!—I was spared the choice by the verdict of the London physicians—the relentless progress of the disease that bound me prisoner to this room within whose four walls I have now for so many years lived and labored.... Dear friend!—dearest of all earthly friends!—there is no marriage in that world where blessed spirits dwell, but there is Oneness. It is the gift of God to souls that have purely loved upon earth. Oh my beloved! whom I loved from the first—whom I shall love to the last—and this world is not the last, thanks be to God for it!—I do most humbly trust in Him that we who have been so long divided here on earth shall meet and be one in Heaven.”
CIX
Cardinal de Moulny was not ordinarily prone to yield to emotion—not commonly open to the appeals of sentiment—yet the tears rolled down his heavy cheeks as he read. It seemed to him so exquisitely piteous that the reward of his dead friend’s unswerving devotion and lifelong fidelity should have come too late to yield him joy.
Was it fancy? Was it some shadow cast athwart the dead face by a wind-blown taper-flame that made the stern old beautiful mouth under the white mustache that charitable hands had trimmed and waxed for Dunoisse, seem to be smiling? The glassy, fixed eyes were a little open. Had they not been shut a little while before? The steady nerves of the questioner knew a strange thrill of awe.... He stepped to the bedside, gazed earnestly in the still, white face. No doubt, death was there! He touched the icy wrist,—bent his ear close to the cold, shrouded heart—Death, beyond all doubt! Yet, remembering that he had solemnly sworn, many years before, to be the friend of Dunoisse to the edge of Death, and, if possible, beyond—he would do as some unseen Mentor now prompted.... There was no sin in the thing.... It was an act of charity....
So, as he would have shouted in the ears of an expiring penitent, following the retiring consciousness to the remotest bounds of vitality with the sacred words, the gracious consolations of Holy Church, now with all the power of his splendid lungs de Moulny shouted the letter of the dead woman in the ears of her dead lover. There was not a spark of life in the glassy eyes glimmering between the rigid, livid eyelids. The deadly chill of death bit him like a frost as he slipped the letter within the folds of the shroud where the leather case that held its comrades was hidden on the breast of Hector Dunoisse. He was a little contemptuous of his own weakness as he dipped his fingers in the china shell of holy water—sprinkled the head and feet of the corpse, and murmured a Latin prayer commending the departed soul to the Divine Mercy. Then he lifted his fur-lined mantle from the floor where he had dropped it—and went out of the room with long, light, noiseless steps, shutting the door.
The man who lay upon the flower-decked, white-draped bed, with dimly burning tapers at his head and feet, and his dead love’s letters lying upon his dead breast under the stiff white hands that held a Rosary, saw the tall, corpulent figure in the purple cassock pass out of the room. He heard the closing of the door.
He had heard the letter, every word of it. And the revelation of her long-hidden secret had brought him unutterable joy—joy of which he knew he must infallibly have died, had he not been already dead.