CHAPTER XXVI. THE LAST LOOK. Dead woman, shrouded white as snow While Death the shade broods darkly nigh, No prayer or blessing born of breath So close together after all, After long strife, stand thou and I, Good-bye the past and all its pain, Kissing thy poor dead hand, I cry- 'Good-bye!'-The Exile: a Poem. It would have been difficult to analyse accurately the emotions which filled the bosom of Ambrose Bradley, as he stood and looked upon the dead face of the woman who, according to the law of the land and the sacrament of the Church, had justly claimed to be his wife. He could not conceal from himself that the knowledge of her death brought relief to him and even joy; but mingled with that relief were other feelings less reassuring-pity, remorse even, and a strange sense of humiliation. He had never really loved the woman, and her conduct, previous to their long separation, had been such as to kill all sympathy in the heart of a less sensitive man, while what might be termed her unexpected resurrection had roused in him a bitterness and a loathing beyond expression. Yet now that the last word was said, the last atonement made, now that he beheld the eyes that would never open again, and the lips that would never again utter speech or sound, his soul was stirred to infinite compassion. After all, he thought, the blame had not been hers that they had been so ill-suited to each other, and afterwards, when they met in after years, she had not wilfully sought to destroy his peace. It had all been a cruel fatality, from the first: another proof of the pitiless laws which govern human nature, and make men and women suffer as sorely for errors of ignorance and inexperience as for crimes of knowledge. He knelt by the bedside, and taking her cold hand kissed it solemnly. Peace was between them, he thought, then and for ever. She too, with all her faults and all her follies, had been a fellow-pilgrim by his side towards. the great bourne whence no pilgrim returns, and she had reached it first. He remembered now, not the woman who had flaunted her shamelessness before his eyes, but the pretty girl, almost a child, whom he had first known. and fancied that he loved. In the intensity of his compassion and self-reproach he even exaggerated the tenderness he had once felt for her; the ignoble episode of their first intercouse catching a sad brightness reflected from the heavens of death. And in this mood, penitent and pitying, he prayed that God might forgive them both. When he descended from the room, his eyes were red with tears. He found the little boy sobbing wildly in the room below, attended by the kindly Frenchwoman who kept the house. He tried to soothe him, but VOL. III. G found it impossible, his grief being most painful to witness, and violent in the extreme. Ah, monsieur, it is indeed a calamity!' cried the woman. 'Madame was so good a mother, devoted to her child. But God is good-the little one has a father still!' Bradley understood the meaning of her words, but did not attempt to undeceive her. His heart was welling over with tenderness towards the pretty orphan, and he was thinking too of his own harsh judgments on the dead, who, it was clear, had possessed many redeeming virtues, not the least of them being her attachment to her boy. 'You are right, madame,' he replied, sadly, ' and the little one shall not lack fatherly love and care. Will you come with me for a few moments? I wish to speak to you alone.' |