Eva always sat near the window with her eyes sadly fixed on the heavens. This position, which is peculiar to those who indulge in reveries, attracted my attention but little at first, but before long it created a deep impression. Whilst my book lay open on my knees, I watched Madame Meredith, and being sure that her eyes would not detect me, I observed her closely. Eva gazed up to heaven, and my eyes followed the same direction as hers. “Ah!” I said, with a half smile, “she thinks that she will rejoin him above!” and I would turn to my book, thinking how happy it was for the weakness of woman, that such fancies came to the aid of her grief.
As I told you, my sojourn in the midst of students had filled my head with notions of an evil tendency. But each day I saw Eva in the same attitude, and each day my reflections were recalled to the same subject. By degrees I began to think that hers was a pleasant dream; and I even regretted that I could not believe it a true one. The soul, heaven, an eternity, all that my curate had formerly impressed on me, passed through my mind, as I sat at eve before the open window, and I said, “What the old curate taught me is more consoling than the cold realities which science discloses;” and then I would look on Eva, who still gazed on the heavens, whilst the bell of the village church sounded in the distance, and the rays of the setting sun shone brightly upon the cross of the steeple. And often did I return and sit near that poor widow, firm in her grief as in her holy hopes.
What! thought I, is so much love no longer attached but to a little dust already mingled with the earth; do these sighs all tend to no good?
William is gone, in the flower of his youth, and with him his strong affections, and his heart where all was still in bloom; she loved him but a year, one little year, and all is told. There is naught above us but the air—love, that feeling so deep within us, is but a flame placed in the dark prison of our body, where it shines and burns, but dies away when the frail wall around it crumbles! A little dust is all that remains of our loves, our hopes and thoughts and passions, of all that breathes and moves and elevates within us!
And there was a long silence in my breast.
In truth, I had ceased to think. I was as one stupefied, between that which I no longer denied nor yet believed. At last, on a beautiful starlight evening, when Eva clasped her hands in prayer, I could not account for it, but my hands too closed, and my lips opened to breathe a prayer. Then, through a happy chance, for the first time, did Eva Meredith see what was passing around her, as if a secret instinct had warned her that my soul was united in harmony with her own.
“Thanks,” said she, extending her hand to me, “remember him, and pray for him sometimes.”
“Oh! madame,” I cried, “may we all find a better world, whether our lives be long or short, happy, or sorely tried.”
“The immortal soul of William is on high,” she said, in a grave tone; and her gaze, at once sad and bright, was again fixed on heaven.
Since that day, in accomplishing the duties of my profession, I have often seen men die, but to them who survived, I have ever spoken consoling words of a better life—and those words I truly felt.