I shall never forget the effect her words had on me, nor her face as she uttered them. The night was far spent. The emotions of the day, the long watch, and perhaps the flickering of our bedroom candle that was burning low, all conspired to give an unwonted pallor to her features that imbued them with an almost ethereal beauty. I always think of her now as she sat there, in her girlish white dressing-gown, her hands locked resting on her knees, her head thrown back, and her eyes looking up, so still, as if some far beyond were breaking on her gaze and holding it transfixed.
Nothing broke on mine. In my dull blindness I did not see that I was assisting at the beginning of a great mystery, a spectacle on which the gaze of angels was riveted—the wrestling of a soul with God: the soul resisting; the Creator pleading and pursuing.
She left us at the end of January to return home. We parted with many tears, and a promise to correspond often and pray for each other daily.
For a time we did correspond very regularly—for nearly a year. During this period her life was an unpausing whirl of dissipation. Balls, visits, operas, and concerts during the season in town were succeeded in the country by more balls, and hunting, and skating, and the usual round of amusements that make up a gay country life. Mary was everywhere the beauty of the place, the admired of all admirers. Strange to say, in spite of her acknowledged supremacy, she made no enemies. Perhaps it would have been stranger still if she had. Her sweet, artless manner and perfect unconsciousness of self went for at least as much in the admiration she excited as her beauty. If she danced every dance at every ball, it was never once for the pleasure of saying she did it, of triumphing over other girls, but for the genuine pleasure of the dance itself.
Her success was so gratuitous, so little the result of coquetry on her side, that, however much it might be envied, it was impossible to resent it.
I am not trying to make out a case for Mary, or to excuse, still less justify, the levity of the life she was leading at this time. My only aim is to convey a true idea of the spirit in which she was leading it—mere exuberance of spirits, the zest of youth in the gay opportunities that were showered upon her path. She was revelling like a butterfly in flowers and sunshine. The spirit of worldliness in its true and worst sense did not possess her; did not even touch her. Its cankerous breath had not blown upon her soul and blighted it; the worm had not eaten into her heart and hardened it. Both were still sound—only drunk; intoxicated with the wine of life. She went waltzing through flames, like a moth round a candle; like a child letting off rockets, and clapping hands with delight at the pretty blue blaze, without fear or thought of danger. There was no such thing as premeditated infidelity in her mind. She was not playing a deliberate game with God; bidding him wait till she was ready, till she was tired of the world and the world of her. No, she was utterly incapable of such a base and guilty calculation. She had simply forgotten that she had a soul to save. The still, small voice that had spoken to her in earlier days, especially on that night of the 15th of January, stirring the sleeping depths, and calling out momentary yearnings toward the higher life, had altogether ceased its pleadings. How could that mysterious whisper make itself heard in such a din and clangor of unholy music? There was no silent spot in her soul where it could enter and find a listener. But Mary did not think about it. She was inebriated with youth and joy, and had flung herself into the vortex, and raced round with it till her head reeled. On the surface, all was ripple and foam, rings running round and round; but the depths below were sleeping. The one, the visible hold that she retained on God at this time was her love for his poor. Her heart was always tender to suffering in every form, but to the poor especially. As an instance of this, I may mention her taking off her flannel petticoat, on a bitter winter's day, to give it to a poor creature whom she met shivering at the roadside, and then running nearly a mile home in the cold herself.
After about a year our correspondence slackened, and gradually broke down altogether. I heard from her once in six months, perhaps. The tone of her letters struck me as altered. I could not exactly say how, except that it had grown more serious. She said nothing of triumphs at archery meetings or of brushes carried off "at the death;" there seemed to be no such feats to chronicle. She talked of her family and of mine, very little of herself. Once only, in answer to a direct question as to what books she read, she told me that she was reading Father Faber, and that she read very little else. This was the only clue I gained to the nature of the change that had come over her.
At the expiration of about two years, a clergyman, who was an old friend of her family, and a frequent visitor at the house, came to Paris, and gave me a detailed account of the character and extent of the change.
The excitement into which she had launched on returning home, and which she had kept up with unflagging spirit, had, as might have been expected, told on her health, never very strong. A cough set in at the beginning of the winter which caused her family some alarm. She grew thin to emaciation, lost her appetite, and fell into a state of general ill-health. Change of air and complete rest were prescribed by the medical men. She was accordingly taken from one sea-side place to another, and condemned to a régime of dulness and quiet. In a few months the system told favorably, and she was sufficiently recovered to return home.
But the monotony of an inactive life which was still enforced, after the mad-cap career she had been used to, wearied her unspeakably. For want of something better to do, she took to reading. Novels, of course. Fortunately for her, ten years ago young ladies had not taken to writing novels that honest men blush to review, and that too many young ladies do not blush to read. Mary did no worse than waste her time without active detriment to her mind. She read the new novels of the day, and, if she was not much the better, she was probably none the worse for it. But one day—a date to be written in gold—a friend, the same who gave me these particulars, made her a present of Father Faber's All for Jesus. The title promised very little entertainment; reluctantly enough, Mary turned over the pages and began to read. How long she read, I cannot tell. It might be true to say that she never left off. Others followed, all from the same pen, through uninterrupted days, and weeks, and months. She told me afterward that the burning words of those books—the first especially, and The Creator and the Creature—pursued her even in her dreams. She seemed to hear a voice crying after her unceasingly: "Arise, and follow!"