Part 25 (1/2)

”What would be the use of going to him for anything else?” I said. ”It is the only thing that can give me any comfort.”

”All people do not feel so, Pauline.”

”But you feel so, dear Sister Madeline, do you not? You can understand how I am burdened, and how I long to have the bands undone?”

”Yes, Pauline, I can understand.”

I am not inclined to give much weight to my own opinions, and as for my feelings, I know they were, then, those of a child, and in many ways will always be. I can only say what comforted me, and what I longed for.

There had always been great force to me, in the Scripture that says, ”Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained,” even before I felt the burden of my sins.

I had once seen the ordination of a priest, and I suppose that added to the weight of the words ever after in my mind. I never had any doubt of the power then conferred, and I no sooner felt the guilt and stain of sin upon my soul, than I yearned to hear the pardon spoken, that Heaven offered to the penitent. I had been tangibly smitten; I longed to be tangibly healed.

Whatever shame and pain there was about laying bare my soul before another, I gladly embraced it, as one poor means at my command of showing to Him whom I had offended, that my repentance was actual, that I stopped at no humiliation.

It may very well be that these feelings would find no place in larger, grander, more self-reliant natures; that what healed my soul would only wound another. I am not prepared to think that one remedy is cure for all diseases, but I know what cured mine. I bless G.o.d for ”the soothing hand that Love on Conscience laid.” I mark that hour as the beginning of a fresh and favored life; the dawning of a hope that has not yet lost its power

”to tame The haughty brow, to curb the unchastened eye, And shape to deeds of good each wavering aim.”

CHAPTER XX.

THE HOUR OF DAWN.

Slowly light came, the thinnest dawn, Not suns.h.i.+ne, to my night; A new, more spiritual thing, An advent of pure light.

All grief has its limits, all chastenings their pause; Thy love and our weakness are sorrow's two laws.

The winter that followed seemed very long and uneventful. After Sister Madeline went away, my days settled themselves into the routine in which they continued to revolve for many months. I was as lonely as formerly, save for the companions.h.i.+p of well-chosen books, and for the direction of another mind, which I felt to be the truest support and guidance. I was taught to bend to my uncle's wishes, and to give up constant church-going, and visiting among the poor, which would have been such a resource and occupation to me. And so my life, outwardly, was very little changed from former years--years that I had found almost insupportable, without any sorrow; and yet, strange to say, I was not unhappy.

My hours were full of little duties, little rules. (I suppose my heart was in them, or I should have found them irksome.) Above all, I was not permitted to brood over the past: I was taught to feel that every thought of it indulged, was a sin, and to be accounted for as such: I could only remember the one for whom I mourned, on my knees, in my prayers. This checked, as nothing else could have done, the morbid tendency of grief, in a lonely, unoccupied, undisciplined mind. I was thoroughly obedient, and bent myself with all simplicity to follow the instructions given me. Sometimes they seemed very irrelevant and useless, but I never rebelled against any, even one that seemed as hard to flesh and blood as this. And I have, sooner or later, seen the wisdom of them all, as I have worked out the problem of my correction.

Obedient as I was, though, and simple as the routine of my life continued, sometimes there came crises that were beyond my strength.

I can remember one; it was a furious storm--a day that nailed one in the house. There was something in the rage without that disturbed me; I wandered about the house, and found myself unable to settle to any task.

Some one to speak to! Oh, it was so dreary to be alone. I went into my uncle's room where there were many books. Among those that were there I found one in French, (I have no idea how it came there, I am sure my uncle had never read it.) I carelessly turned it over, and finally became absorbed in it. I came upon this pa.s.sage:

Quel plus noir abime d'angoisse y a-t-il an monde que le coeur d'un suicide? Quand le malheur d'un homme est du a quelque circonstance de sa vie, on pent esperer de l'en voir delivrer par un changement qui pent survenir dans sa position. Mais lorsque ce malheur a sa source en lui; quand c'est l'ame elle-meme qui est le tourment de l'ame; la vie elle-meme qui est le fardeau de la vie; que faire, que de reconnaitre en gemissant qu'il n'y a rien a faire--rien, selon le monde; et qu'un tel homme, plus a plaindre que ce prisonnier que l'histoire nous peint dans les angoisses de la faim, se repaissant de sa propre chair, est reduit a devorer la substance meme de son ame dans les horreurs de son desespoir. Et qu'imagine-t-il done pour echapper a lui-meme, comme a son plus cruel ennemi? Je ne dis pas: 'Ou ira-t-il loin de l'esprit de Dieu? ou fuira-t-il loin de sa face?' Je demande, ou ira-t-il loin de son propre esprit? ou fuira-t-il loin de sa propre face? Ou descendra-t-il qu'il ne s'y suive lui-meme; ou se cachera-t-il qu'il ne s'y trouve encore?

Insense, dont la folie egale la misere, quand tu te seras tue, on dira: 'Il est mort;' mais ce sont les autres qui le diront; ce ne sera pas toi-meme. Tu seras mort pour ton pays, mort pour ta ville, mort pour ta famille; mais pour toi-meme, pour ce qui pense en toi, helas! pour ce qui souffre en toi, tu vivras toujours.

Et comment ne sens-tu pas, que pour cesser d'etre malheureux, ce n'est pas ta place qu'il faut changer, c'est ton coeur.

Que tu disparaisses sous les flots, qu'un plomb meurtrier brise ta tete, ou qu'un poison subtil glace tes veines; quoi que tu fa.s.ses, et ou que tu ailles, tu n'y peux aller qu'avec toi-meme, qu'avec ton coeur, qu'avec ta misere! Que dis-je?

Tu y vas avec un compte de plus a rendre, a la rencontre du grand Dieu qui doit te juger; tu y vas avec l'eternite de plus pour souffrir, et le temps de moins pour te repentir!

A moins que tu ne penses peut-etre, parceque l'oeil de l'homme n'a rien vu au-dela de la tombe, que cette vie n'ait pas de suite. Mais non, tu ne saurais le croire! Quand tous les autres le penseraient, toi, tu ne le pourrais pas. Tu as une preuve d'immortalite qui t'appartient en propre. Cette tristesse qui te consume, est quelque chose de trop intime et de trop profond pour se dissoudre avec tes organes, et ce qui est capable de tant souffrir ne pent pas s'aller perdre dans la terre. Les vers heriteront de la poussiere de ton corps, mais l'amertume de ton ame, qui en heritera? Ces extases sublimes, ces tourments affreux; ces hauteurs des cieux, ces profondeurs des abimes; qu'y a-t-il d'a.s.sez grand ou d'a.s.sez abaisse, d'a.s.sez eleve ou d'a.s.sez avili pour les revetir en ta place? Non, tu ne saurais jamais croire que tout meurt avec le corps; ou si tu le pouvais tu n'en serais que plus insense, plus miserable encore.

It is proof how child-like I had been, how obedient in suppressing all forbidden thoughts, that these words smote me with such horror. I had indulged in no speculation; I had never thought of him as haunted by the self he fled; as still bound to an inexorable and inextinguishable life,