“Ask me anything, Kenneth, only stay with me. Oh! do not leave me yet,” and burning tears blinded her.
“‘My ways are not thy ways, nor my thoughts thy thoughts’: do you remember these words, my own wife? And then—only a little while, when we shall meet where the for evermore will indeed be eternal! But not of this did I wish to speak, Elaine, but”—and he hesitated—“if my faith could be taught to my little ones?”
She did not reply at first, but, with one gaze of devoted, earnest love, she turned, and kneeling by his side, with the weak precious hand clasped within her own, she repeated: “And receive, O Lord, thy servant into thy holy church, for which her heart hungers.” And he answered, “Amen!”
But this was no sudden desire influenced by her devotion to her husband; for, six years before, when she had listened to the sweet vesper service, the latent life had wakened, and the slumber had seen sleep no more, but the message, “Wake to thy salvation!” electrified her soul, and her whole nature thrilled its amen there; since then she had been peculiarly situated, and shrank from provoking anger in her father, as she realized how very stern he could be when he felt himself aggrieved. But now her heart told her she must no longer hesitate, the great crisis asked for action, and she felt that all worldly considerations must be forgotten when her husband, and her own
heart also, called for a decision which shaped her life. So she was baptized by the holy father beside the bed where her husband lay dying; and the priest’s voice was very tender as he welcomed this stricken daughter Christ had given to his fold.
Only a few days after, she laid her husband to rest beneath the poplars at “Holleywood,” where many of his comrades were lying; and then came the gloomy, stormy March, and the sad April when the snowy flag was folded, and it was during this season that the widowed mother was received into her husband’s church.
The war had closed, and we all remember the fearful wreck that followed when Madelaine Arnaud found herself battling with the grim wolf whose shadow darkened her door. Her husband’s fortune was all gone, and the delicate, dependent woman felt that she had but little to hope for from her father; still she would not believe that he could entirely forsake her, even though she had become a member of the church his soul abhorred. So she wrote in her extremity and asked for advice. Many anxious days and nights passed, and no letter came; a fortnight intervened, when, one morning, she opened the envelope handed to her by the postman, and read:
“You have chosen your way in life, and, when you forsook your father’s faith, he also separated from one who had joined herself to idols. I enclose all that you may ever claim from me.
“Thomas Stanfield.”
She found enclosed the last note written by her mother, only a few hours before her death, and a silver crucifix, with the name “Madelaine Crécy, La.,” inscribed on the back or flat side of the cross.