"Herbert"s face!" they heard her whisper, in an awe-struck voice.
"Then I have died at last, and am in heaven. Oh, how merciful! but I have not deserved it,--a sinner such as I."
"Magdalene, my darling, you are in our own home! It is I who was lost, and have come back to you. Look at me. It is only the children that are in heaven. You and I are spared to each other on earth." But for a long time her scattered faculties failed to grasp the truth.
Phillis went home at last, and left them. There was nothing she could do, and she was utterly spent; but Miss Mewlstone kept watch beside her charge until late into the night.
Little by little the truth dawned slowly on the numbed brain; slowly and by degrees the meaning of her husband"s tears and kisses sank into the clouded mind. Now and again she wandered, but Herbert"s voice always recalled her.
"Then I am not dead?" she asked him, again and again. "They do not cry in heaven, and Barby was crying just now. Barby, am I dreaming! Who is this beside me? is it Herbert"s ghost? only his hands are warm, and mine are so terribly cold. Why you are crying too, love; but I am to tired to understand." And then she crept wearily closer and closer into his arms, like a tired-out child who has reached home.
And when Herbert stooped over her gently, he saw that the long lashes lay on her cheek. Magdalene had fallen asleep.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
MOTES IN THE SUNSHINE.
That sleep was, humanly speaking, Magdalene"s salvation.
At the greatest crisis of her life, when reason hung in the balance,--when the sudden influx of joy might have paralyzed the overwrought heart and brain,--at that moment physical exhaustion saved her by that merciful, overpowering sleep.
When she woke, it was to the resurrection of her life and love. Months afterwards she spoke of that waking to Phillis, when she lay in her bed weak as a new born babe, and the early morning light streamed full on the face of her slumbering husband.
They were alone; for Miss Mewlstone had just crept softly from the room. Her movement had roused Magdalene. Herbert, who was utterly worn out by his long watching, had just dropped asleep, with his head resting against the wood-work. He was still sitting in the arm-chair beside her, and only the thin profile was visible.
The previous night had been pa.s.sed by Magdalene in a semi-conscious state: delirious imaginations had blended with realities. There were flashes and intervals of comparative consciousness, when the truth rushed into her mind; but she had been too weak to retain it long.
That she was dreaming or dead was her fixed idea: that this was her husband"s greeting to her in paradise seemed to be her one thought.
"Strange that the children do not kiss me too," they heard her say once.
But now, as she opened her eyes, there was no blue misty haze through which she ever feebly sought to pierce. She was lying in her own room, where she had pa.s.sed so many despairing days and nights. The window was open; the sweet crisp morning air fanned her temples; the birds were singing in the garden below; and there beside her was the face so like, yet so unlike, the face from which she had parted four years ago.
For a little while she lay and watched it in a sort of trance; and then in the stillness full realization came to her, and she knew that she was not mad or dreaming. This was no imagination: it was reality.
With incredible effort, for she felt strangely weak, she raised herself on her elbow to study that dear face more closely, for the change in it baffled her. Could this be her Herbert? How bronzed and thin he had grown! Those lines that furrowed his forehead, those hollows in the temples and under the eyes, were new to her. And, oh, the pity of those gray hairs in the place of the brown wavy locks she remembered! But it was when she laid her lips against the scarred wrist that Herbert woke, and met the full look of recognition in his wife"s eyes, for which he had waited so long.
Now he could fall upon his knees beside her, and crave that forgiveness for words and acts that had seared his conscience all these years like red-hot iron. But at the first word she stopped him, and drew his head to her breast:
"Oh, Herbert, hush! What! ask forgiveness of me, when I have sinned against you doubly,--trebly,--when I was no true wife, as you know?
Oh, do not let us ask it of each other, but of G.o.d, whom we have so deeply offended! He has punished us; but He has been merciful too. He has taken our children because we did not deserve them. Oh, Herbert!
what will you do without them?--for you loved Janie so!" And then for a little while the childless parents could only hold each other"s hands and weep, for to Herbert Cheyne the grief was new, and at the sight of her husband"s sorrow Magdalene"s old wounds seemed to open and bleed afresh; only now--now she did not weep alone.
When Miss Mewlstone entered the room, shortly afterwards, she found Magdalene lying spent and weary, holding her husband"s hand.
Joy had indeed returned to the White House, but for a long time it was joy that was strangely tempered with sorrow. Upstairs no sound greeted Herbert from the empty nurseries; there were no little feet pattering to meet the returned wanderer, no little voices to cry a joyous "Father!" And for years the desolate mother had borne this sorrow alone.
As the days pa.s.sed on, Magdalene regained her strength slowly, but neither wife nor husband could hide from each other the fact that their health was broken by all they had gone through. Herbert"s const.i.tution was sadly impaired for the remainder of his life: he knew well that he must carry with him the consequences of those years of suffering. Often he had to endure intense neuralgic agony in his limbs and head; an unhealed wound for a long time troubled him sorely.
Magdalene strove hard to regain strength, that she might devote herself to nurse him, but, though her const.i.tution was superb, she had much to bear from her disordered nerves. At times the old irritability was hard to vanquish; there were still dark moods of restlessness when her companionship was trying; but it was now that Herbert proved the n.o.bleness and reality of his repentance.
For he was ever gentle with her, however much she might try him. Some talk he had had with her doctor had convinced him that she was not to blame for these morbid moods; that the nerves had become disorganized by those years of solitary misery. "We must bear all our troubles together," as he often told her; and so he bore this, as he did the trial of his children"s loss, with grave fort.i.tude, and a patience that surprised all who knew him.
And he was not without his reward, for, the dark fit over, Magdalene"s smile would greet him like sunshine after a storm, and she would thank him with tears and caresses for his forbearance.
"I can"t think what makes me still so horrid, when I am so happy," she said once to him, when the first year of their reunion had pa.s.sed. "I do my best to fight against these moods, but they seem stronger than myself and overcome me. Do not be so good to me next time, Herbert; scold me and be angry with me, as you used in the old days."
"I cannot," he answered, smiling. "I never loved you in the old days as I do now. I would not change my wife, in spite of all the trouble she gives me, for any other woman upon earth. You believe this, love, do you not?" looking at her beautiful face anxiously, for it had clouded a little at his last words.
"Yes, but I do not like to trouble you: it is that that frets me. I wanted to be a comfort to you, and never to give you a moment"s uneasiness; but I cannot help myself, somehow. I love you, I don"t believe you know yet how I love you, Herbert; but it seems as if I must grieve you sometimes."
"Never mind; I will hear your trouble and my own too," he answered, cheerily; and in this way he always comforted her. But to Magdalene her own self ever remained a mystery; the forces of her own nature were too strong for her, and yet she was not a weak woman. She had expected that in her case love and happiness would have worked a miracle, as though miracles were ever effected by mere human agencies,--that she would rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of her past, reborn, rejuvenated, with an inexhaustible fund of moral strength.
Now she had Herbert, all would go smoothly; she would no longer mourn for her little ones. Since her husband was there to comfort her, with his constant presence to sustain her, all must be well; never again would she be nervous, irritable, or sarcastic. Poor Magdalene! she was creating heaven for herself upon earth; she was borrowing angels"
plumes before the time; she had forgotten the conditions of humanity, "the body of the flesh," which weighed down greater souls than hers.
There are Gethsemanes of the spirit to the weary ones of earth, hours of conflict that must be lived through and endured. Nature that groaneth and travaileth cannot find its abiding place of rest here. To the end of time it seems to be written in enduring characters that no human lot shall be free from suffering: sooner or later, more or less,--that is all! Magdalene had still to learn this lesson painfully: that she was slow in learning it, proved the strength and obduracy of her will. True, she was rarely sarcastic,--never in her husband"s presence, for a word or a look from him checked her, and she grew humble and meek at once. It was her unruly nerves that baffled her; she was shocked to find that irritable words still rose to her lips; that the spirit of restlessness was not quelled forever; that thunder still affrighted her; and that now and then her mind seemed clouded with fancied gloom.
She once spoke of this to Miss Middleton, with tears in her eyes.
"It is so strange," she said. "Herbert is different, but I am still so unchanged."
"The conditions of your health are unchanged, you mean," answered Elizabeth, with that quiet sympathy that always rested people. "This is the mistake that folk make: they do not distinguish between an unhealthy mind and a diseased soul: the one is due to physical disorganization, the other to moral causes. In your case, dear Mrs.
Cheyne, one may safely lay the blame on the first cause."
"Oh, do you think so?" she asked, earnestly. "I dare not cheat my conscience in that way: it is my bad temper, my undisciplined nature, that ought to bear the blame."
"No; believe me," answered Elizabeth, for they had grown great friends of late, "I have watched you narrowly, and I know how you try to conquer this irritability; there is no black spot of anger in your heart, whatever words come to your lips. You are like a fretful child sometimes, I grant you that, who is ailing and unconscious of its ailment. When you would be calm, you are strangely disturbed; you speak sharply, hoping to relieve something that oppresses you."
"Oh, yes!" sighed Magdalene; "and yet Herbert never speaks crossly to me."
"He never will, for he knows what you suffer. Well, dear friend, what of this? This is a cross that you must carry perhaps all your life.
You are not the only one who has to bear the torment of disordered nerves: it must be borne with resignation, as we bear other troubles.
Once you felt you could not love G.o.d; you ceased to pray to Him; now you love Him a little. Go on loving; thank him for your husband"s patience, and pray that you may have patience with yourself. One is weary of always living with one"s self, I know that well," finished Elizabeth, with a charming smile.
Mr. Drummond would have verified Miss Middleton"s opinion that Magdalene was not so unchanged as she believed herself to be.
At his first interview with her after Herbert Cheyne"s return, he could almost have sworn that she was a different woman.
Phillis, who spent all her spare time at the White House,--for they both made much of Herbert"s "good angel," as he still called her jestingly,--was sitting alone with Mrs. Cheyne when Archie was announced.
His old enemy greeted him with a frank smile.
"This is kind of you, Mr. Drummond," she said, quite warmly. "How I wish my husband were not out, that I could introduce him to you! I have told him how good you have tried to be to me, but that I was ungrateful and repulsed you."
Archie was shaking hands with Phillis, who seemed a little disturbed at his entrance. He turned around and regarded the beautiful woman with astonishment. Was this really Mrs. Cheyne? Where was the hard, proud droop of the lip, the glance of mingled coldness and _hauteur_, the polished sarcasm of voice and manner? Her face looked clear and open as a child"s; her eyes were brilliant with happiness.
Magdalene was in one of her brightest moods when she was most truly herself.