But a cloud was gathering over these sunny days of courtship. M. de Gondriac was summoned to Paris by the chief of the War Office. The call, of course, brooked no delay. His arm, though nearly healed, still incapacitated him from joining his regiment; but he must go in person and certify to this. Though they might admit him unfit for active service, he might be retained in attendance on the emperor; Bonaparte liked to have high-sounding names upon his personal staff. But Hermann would not alarm Alba by suggesting this possibility. They parted in sweet sorrow, looking forward to meeting soon again.
Alas! is it a decree of fate that the course of true love never shall run smooth? Are poets prophets, or do the loves of all humanity conspire to make their voice an oracle? The days went by, and Alba waited; but Hermann neither came nor wrote, and they could get no tidings of him. Had he been ordered to the frontier, in spite of his disabled arm, and killed or taken prisoner? Doubts crowded upon Alba’s heart until they almost stopped its pulses. But Virginie feared even worse than this, and, if her fears were true, there was no comfort in store. M. de Gondriac had felt strong enough to brave the emperor’s displeasure at a distance; but how when he stood face to face with it, with the power of that magnetic will, with the ridicule of his equals, with the blandishments of refined court ladies? Was his love of the metal to challenge these antagonistic forces and prevail?
Spring passed, and summer, and now it was harvest-time; the reapers waded through the yellow fields, the sickle was singing in the corn, the grapes hung heavy on the vine. But no news came from Hermann. Alba pined and drooped, and at last fell ill. The doctor came from X—— and saw her, and said that it would be nothing; it was weakness and oppression on the heart; she wanted care and nourishment. But no care revived her. She grew weaker and weaker, and the low fever came, and there was no strength left to battle with it. But Virginie would not see the danger; when the neighbors came for news, she would answer, with a smile on her wan face: “Thank God! no worse. The child is very weak; but last night she slept a little.” Thus twenty days went by, and then there came a change, and on the twenty-first day, as the Vesper bell was tolling, the curé came, and Alba was anointed as a bride for heaven. The old man wept like a child as he blessed her and departed. “God comfort you, Mère Virginie!” he said, laying his hand heavily on the mother’s head. But Virginie was like one in whom the faculty of pain or of despair was paralyzed. “She will not die, M. le Curé. God is merciful; his heart is kind,” she said. When the sun was going down, Alba spoke: “Mother, bring me his picture and the pearls he gave me; I should like to wear them once before I go....” They brought the pearls and decked her in them; they smoothed back the moist, dark hair and crowned her with the queenly coronet; they clasped the necklace round her throat and the bracelets on her arms, while she lay quite passive, as if unconscious of what they were doing. Never had she looked so beautiful as at this hour in the deepening twilight, with the shadow of death stealing on her and touching her features with a celestial pathos. Virginie could not but see it now. Alba was going from her. But, no! it should not be. No, there was a God in heaven, a merciful, all-powerful God; it should not be. He would save her child even at this extremity. She had not cried to him loud enough before, but now she would cry and he should hear her, now that she knew how dire was her need of him. She knelt down at a little distance from the bed and began to pray. It was terrible to see her; to see how despair and faith wrestled within her. The agony of the strife was visible in her face; it was pale as death, and the big drops stood upon her brow, that was contracted as by breathless pain; her eyes were open, fixed in a rigid stare as on some unseen presence; her white lips, drawn in, were slightly parted, as if to let the words escape that she could not articulate; her hands were locked together, bloodless from the fierce grip of the fingers. Old Jeanne cowered in the corner as she watched her.
An hour went by. The tide was coming in; the waves were washing on the shore with the old familiar sound. The moon rose and stirred the shadows on the plain; its light stole through the latticed window and overflowed in a silver stream upon the bed, illuminating it like a shrine in the darkened chamber.
“Mother!” murmured Alba faintly.
“My child!”
“Kiss me, mother.... I am going....”
“Alba! my child!... O God! O God! have pity on me....”
But Alba had passed beyond the mother’s voice.