F. Chevreuse laughed slightly. “Only wait and see,” he said. “And now a score or two of penitents are waiting to confess, and F. O'Donovan is wondering if I am going to let him stay in the confessional till midnight. I must leave you. Why do you not go up and see Mrs. Ferrier? She has been anxiously inquiring for you to-day, and complaining a little. Go and make the good soul happy. Miss Pembroke will be glad to see you too, I am sure. She has gone to live with Mrs. Ferrier. They do not receive company; but send your name in, and you will be welcome.”
“I had forgotten them both!” Mr. Schöninger said with some compunction. “I will go at once.”
F. Chevreuse soon found that he had been mistaken in two of his assertions; F. O'Donovan was not in the confessional, and Miss Pembroke was not at that moment in Mrs. Ferrier's house. Both had gone to the convent, one called there, the other hastening to follow when she knew his errand.
Little Anita was dying, killed by her first vision of the wickedness and agony of the world. She had heard of sin as one living far inland hears of the ocean, which he has never seen; and now the bitter waves of that wide, salt sea she believed so far away and alien had rolled in about her. It touched her feet and her garments, and left its poisonous rime there; it caught and strangled before her eyes those she had trusted and been near to; it tossed its sacrilegious foam on to the very altar of God. Her soul trembled within her, and she turned her face away from life, and hid it in the bosom of her Lord.
“O my God! my God!” she prayed. “Forgive me! but I cannot live.”
There was no physical malady; but the heart, which, like a busy shuttle, tosses to and fro its rosy threads, weaving soul and body together, faltered, and let slip link after link. The invisible folded wings detached themselves, trembling; the spiritual hands left the bodily hands cold, and stretched [pg 675] out into eternity, trembling, always trembling; the whole soul, still full of the fear and agony of the world, shrank outward.
The Sisters knelt about her, cruelly grieved. Was this delicate saint to be torn away from them thus, leaving them no consolation but the memory of her blameless life? Was she to go down to the grave without a sign of victory? Were they to keep for ever this last vision of her, prostrate in the shadow of that low portal?
And even while they prayed, just giving up hope, as the slight form grew cold and rigid, all at once it shone out like a marble statue on which a sudden sunbeam falls. The eyes flashed wide open, the shining soul stood tiptoe in them an instant, then parted softly.
It is not for us to follow, even in fancy, the flight of that innocent soul, nor to witness the tears of mingled sorrow and joy which the Sisters shed over their young companion, nor to listen to the prayers they said, nor the sacred communings they held together.
Our business is with earth, with Honora Pembroke, driving homeward soberly through the still evening.