The breathing seemed to her a greeting from a pure and sisterly soul--a greeting from that dear land of joy where one can laugh by day and sing in the dusk and sleep by night.
Nathaniel loved the hymns for the dying.
He a.s.serted that they filled him with true mirth. The more he could gibe at h.e.l.l or hear the suffering of the last hours put to scorn, the more could he master a kind of grim humour. He, the shepherd of souls, felt it his duty to venture upon the valley of the shadow to which he had so often led the trembling candidate of death, with the boldness of a hero in battle.
This poor, timid soul, who had never been able to endure the angry barking of a dog, played with the terror of death like a bull-necked gladiator.
"Read me a song of death, but a strengthening one," he would say repeatedly during the day, but also at night, if he could not sleep.
He needed it as a child needs its cradle song. Often he was angry when in her confusion and blinded by unshed tears, she chose a wrong one. Like a literary connoisseur who rolls a Horatian ode or a Goethean lyric upon his tongue--even thus he enjoyed these sombre stanzas.
There was one: "I haste to my eternal home," in which the beyond was likened to a bridal chamber and to a "crystal sea of blessednesses."
There was another: "Greatly rejoice now, O my soul," which would admit no redeeming feature about this earth, and was really a prayer for release. And there was one filled with the purest folly of Christendom: "In peace and joy I fare from hence." And this one promised a smiling sleep. But they were all overshadowed by that rejoicing song: "Thank G.o.d, the hour has come!" which, like a cry of victory, points proudly and almost sarcastically to the conquered miseries of the earth.
The Will to Live of the poor flesh intoxicated itself with these pious lies as with some hypnotic drug. But at the next moment it recoiled and gazed yearningly and eager eyed out into the sweet and sinful world, which didn"t tally in the least with that description of it as a vale of tears, of which the hymns were so full.
Mary read obediently what he demanded. Close to her face she held the narrow hymn-book, fighting down her sobs. For he did not think of the tortures he prepared for his anxiously hoping wife.
Why did he thirst for death since he knew that he _must_ not die?
Not yet. Ah, not yet! Now that suddenly a whole, long, unlived life lay between them--a life they had never even suspected.
She could not name it, this new, rich life, but she felt it approaching, day by day. It breathed its fragrant breath into her face and poured an exquisite bridal warmth into her veins.
It was on the fourth day of his imprisonment in his room. The physician had promised him permission to go out on the morrow.
His recovery was clear.
She sat at the window and inhaled with quivering nostrils the sharp fragrance of the burning pine cones that floated to her in bluish waves.
The sun was about to set. An unknown bird sat, far below, in the orange grove and, as if drunk with light and fragrance, chirped sleepily and ended with a fluting tone.
Now that the great dread of the last few days was taken from her, that sweet languor the significance of which she could not guess came over her again.
Her neighbour had already come home. She opened her window and closed it, only to open it again. From time to time she sang a few brief tones, almost like the strange bird in the grove.
Then her door rattled and Angeline"s voice cried out with jubilant laughter: "_Une lettre, Madame, une lettre_!"
"_Une lettre--de qui?_"
"_De lui!_"
Then a silence fell, a long silence.
Who was this "he?" Surely some one at home. It was the hour of the mail delivery.
But the voice of the maid soon brought enlightenment.
She had managed the affair cleverly. She had met him in the hall and saluted him so that he had found the courage to address her. And just now he had pressed the envelope, together with a twenty-franc piece, into her hand. He a.s.serted that he had an important communication to make to her mistress, but had never found an opportunity to address himself to her in person.
"_Tais-toi donc--on nous entend_!"
And from now on nothing was to be heard but whispering and giggling.
Mary felt now a wave of hotness, started from her nape and overflowing her face.
Listening and with beating heart, she sat there.
What in all the world could he have written? For that it was he, she could no longer doubt.
Perhaps he had declared his love and begged for the gift of her hand.
A dull feeling of pain, the cause of which was dark to her, oppressed her heart.
And then she smiled--a smile of renouncement, although there was surely nothing here for her to renounce!
And anyhow--the thing was impossible. For she, to whom such an offer is made does not chat with a servant girl. Such an one flees into some lonely place, kneels down, and prays to G.o.d for enlightenment and grace in face of so important a step.
But indeed she did send the girl away, for the latter"s slippers could he heard trailing along the hall.
Then was heard gentle, intoxicated laughter, full of restrained jubilation and arch triumph: "_O comme je suis heureuse! Comme je suis heureuse!"_
Mary felt her eyes grow moist. She felt glad and poignantly sad at the same time. She would have liked to kiss and bless the other woman, for now it was clear that he had come to claim her as his bride.
"If she doesn"t pray, I will pray for her," she thought, and folded her hands. Then a voice sounded behind her, hollow as the roll of falling earth; rasping as coffin cords:
"Read me a song of death, Mary."
A shudder came over her. She jumped up. And she who had hitherto taken up the hymn-book at his command without hesitation or complaint, fell down beside his bed and grasped his emaciated arm: "Have pity--I can"t! I can"t!"
Three days pa.s.sed. The sick man preferred to stay in bed, although his recovery made enormous strides. Mary brewed his teas, gave him his drops, and read him his songs of death. That one attempt at rebellion had remained her only one.
She heard but little of her neighbour. It seemed that that letter had put an end to her talkative merriment. The happiness which she had so jubilantly confessed seemed to have been of brief duration.
And in those hours when Mary was free to pursue her dreams, she shared the other"s yearning and fear. Probably the old uncle had made difficulties; had refused his consent, or even demanded the separation of the lovers.
Perhaps the dark gentleman had gone away. Who could tell?
"What strange eyes he had," she thought at times, and whenever she thought that, she shivered, for it seemed to her that his hot, veiled glance was still upon her.
"I wonder whether he is really a good man?" she asked herself. She would have liked to answer this question in the affirmative, but there was something that kept her from doing so. And there was another something in her that took but little note of that aspect, but only prayed that those two might be happy together, happy as she herself had never been, happy as--and here lay the secret.
It was a Sunday evening, the last one in January.
Nathaniel lay under the bed-clothes and breathed with difficulty. His fever was remarkably low, but he was badly smothered.
The lamp burned on the table--a reading lamp had been procured with difficulty and had been twice carried off in favour of wealthier guests. Toward the bed Mary had shaded the lamp with a piece of red blotting paper from her portfolio. A rosy shimmer poured out over the couch of the ill man, tinted the red covers more red, and caused a deceptive glow of health to appear on his cheek.
The flasks and vials on the table glittered with an equivocal friendliness, as though something of the demeanour of him who had prescribed their contents adhered to them.
Between them lay the narrow old hymnal and the gilt figures, "1795"