Chapter XXXII: Part II: She Sang (12)

Mr. Schöninger did not appear to have heard the last words. He stood up and drew in a strong breath, and shivered all through. The thought that it was to be for him no slow fight for liberty, but that liberty was at the threshold, had at length entered his mind.

“Let me out of here!” he exclaimed, almost gasping. “I cannot breathe! Open the door. You cannot hold me any longer. Open the door, sir!” he cried to the warden, who stood outside, looking at him in astonishment.

F. Chevreuse began a hasty explanation to the officer; but the prisoner seized the bars of the door in his delirious impatience, and tried to wring them from their places.

“Seven months in a cage!” he exclaimed. “I cannot bear it another hour. Open the door, I say! Why do you stand there talking?”

“With all my heart, Mr. Schöninger!” the warden said. “But you must try to be calm. You have borne confinement patiently for seven months; try to bear it a little longer till the formalities of the law shall have been complied with. We cannot dispense with them. There shall be no delay, I assure you, sir.”

Mr. Schöninger was too proud to need a second exhortation to control himself; was, perhaps, annoyed that he should have incurred one. He immediately drew back, and seated himself. “Allow me to say, sir,” he remarked coldly, “that I have not borne imprisonment patiently. I have merely endured it because I was obliged to submit to force. And now will you please to open the door? I will not go out till I may; but set the door wide. Do not keep me any longer under lock and key.”

The warden called to his guard, who were not far away. Indeed, several of them, curious to know what was going on, had gathered in the corridor, only just out of sight of those in the cell.

“Unlock the door of Mr. Schöninger’s cell,” he said in a loud voice. “He is no longer a prisoner.”

The bolts shot back, and the door clanged open against the stone casing.

“Let me be the first one to congratulate you, sir,” the officer added.

Mr. Schöninger did not see the hand offered him, though he replied to the words. He was looking past the officer, past the wondering faces of the guard who peeped in at the door, and his glance flashed along the corridor, through which a ray of sunlight shone from the guard‐room, and fresh breezes blew. A slight quiver passed through his frame, and he seemed to be resisting an impulse to rush out of the prison.

It was only for one instant. The next, he became aware of the eyes that curiously observed him, and, by the exercise of that habit of self‐control which had become to him a second nature, shut off from his face every ripple of emotion.

“I thank you, sir!” he said in answer to the warden’s compliments. “And perhaps you will be so good as to send those men away from the corridor, and to let Mr. Benton know that I want to see him here immediately.”

The guard disappeared at once, one of them as messenger to Mr. Schöninger’s lawyer; but the warden still lingered.

“You will want to change your clothes,” he said. “And after that, I shall be happy to place a room in my house at your disposal, where you may receive your friends and transact business till the time comes for you to go free.”

Mr. Schöninger glanced down with loathing on his prison uniform, remembering it for the first time since that day of horror and despair when he had waked from a half‐swoon to find himself invested with it and laid on the narrow bed in his cell.

Perhaps the officer, too, remembered that day when he had said that he would rather resign his office than receive such a prisoner into his care, when he had exhausted arguments and persuasions to induce him to submit to prison rules, and how, when at last he had felt obliged to hint at the employment of force, he had seen the strong man fall powerless before him.

“These clothes would hardly fit Mr. Lawrence Gerald,” Mr. Schöninger remarked, smiling scornfully. “But perhaps there will be no question of his wearing them.”

The warden uttered an exclamation. “Is it Lawrence Gerald? It cannot be!” He had not been told the name.

“And why not, sir?” demanded the Jew haughtily.

The officer was silent, disconcerted by the question, which he did not attempt to answer.

“Poor Mrs. Gerald!” he said, looking at F. Chevreuse.

Mrs. Gerald’s fondness for her son was almost a proverb in Crichton.

“Mrs. Gerald’s troubles are over,” said the priest briefly.

Mr. Schöninger went to the window, and stood there looking out, his back to his companions. To his hidden tumult of passions, his fierce, half‐ formed resolutions, his swelling pride, his burning anger and impatience, this news came with as sudden a check as if he had seen the cold form of the dead woman brought into the cell and laid at his feet.

He had been thinking of the world of men, of the bigoted crowd which had condemned him unheard, of the judge who had pronounced sentence, and the jury who had found him guilty—of all the cold outside world which has to be conquered by strength, or to be submitted to; and now rose up before him another world of pitying women, whose tenderness reversed the decisions pronounced by the intellects of men, or swept over them with an imperious charity; who were ever at the side of the sufferer, even when they knew him to be the sinner, and whose silent hearts felt the rebound of every blow that was struck. He saw the priest’s mother, a sacrifice to the interests of her son; the criminal’s wife, as he had seen her that night in his cell, with the only half‐veiled splendor of her silks and jewels mocking the pallid misery of her face; and now this last victim, more pitiful than all! A sighing wind seemed to sweep around him, far‐ reaching and full of mingled voices, the infinite wail of innocent and suffering hearts. How gross and demoniac in comparison were the bitter, warring voices of hate and pride and revenge! To his startled mental vision it was almost as though there appeared before him hideous and brutal forms cowering away from faces full of a pure and piercing sorrow.

He perceived that he had been taking low ground, and, with a firm will, caught himself back, setting his foot on the temptation that had been making him a companion for demons. Wronged he had been in a way that he could not help; but he could at least prevent their lowering him in mind. They should not induce him to yield to passion or to meanness.

He turned proudly toward his two companions, who still waited for him to speak. “If the arrest of Lawrence Gerald is not necessary for my release, then I hope he may escape,” he said. “It is bad enough to be shut up in this way when one has a clear conscience; but with such a conscience as he must have, imprisonment could lead only to madness or suicide.”

“Or to penitence,” added F. Chevreuse with emphasis.

Mr. Schöninger did not reply; this alternative was beyond his comprehension. But he glanced at the priest; and in doing so, his eyes were attracted to the doorway, which was quite filled by the ample figure of Mrs. Ferrier.

“I couldn’t help coming, father,” she said quite humbly. “And, besides, Honora Pembroke said she thought it right that I should. I sha’n’t stay long or say much. I only want to say that when Mr. Schöninger goes out of this place, my house and all in it are at his disposal.”

The scene she had witnessed had quieted her completely, and there was even a certain dignity in her submissive air. But when she turned to Mr. Schöninger, her tears burst forth again, in spite of her efforts to restrain them. “You’ll have to learn to forgive and forget,” she said in a stifled voice, which she vainly strove to render calm. “I’m the only one left to make amends to you.”

Mr. Schöninger came forward instantly, and extended his hands to her. “I have nothing to forgive in you,” he said warmly; “and I would not wish to forget your kindness. I thank you for your offer, but I cannot give any answer to it now. If I decline, it will not be because I am ungrateful. And now let me say good‐by to you till a more favorable time.”

She had had the discretion not to wait for this intimation, and had of herself made the motion to go.

“Try to forgive and forget,” she whispered hoarsely; and, pulling her veil over her tear‐swollen face, hurried away.

This was Mr. Schöninger’s first visitor, but not his last. Before an hour had passed, the news had overspread the whole city, producing a strange revulsion of feeling. There were, perhaps, those who were, at heart, sorry to know that the Jew was innocent. They had from the first expressed their belief in his guilt, and they had been loud in their opinion that he should be sentenced to the full extent of the law. This class were not only disappointed in their prejudices, but humbled in their own persons. They could not but feel that they had rendered themselves at once odious and ridiculous. But the majority of the people were disposed to render full justice. All the Protestant clergymen called on him, though but few of them had ever spoken to him. It was right, they said, that every man of dignity and position in the city should pay some respect to the stranger who had suffered in their midst such a cruel injustice, and the fact that he was a Jew should make them all the more anxious in doing so; for the public must see that they did not persecute any one for his religious belief. Judges, lawyers, bankers, professors, men of wealth, who were nothing but men of wealth—all came to express their regrets and to offer their hospitality.

He saw none of them, though he sent courteous messages to some. He was too much engaged in business that day to receive visitors. Only one received a decided rebuff. “As for the judge who sentenced me to be hanged,” Mr. Schöninger said, “no compliment which he can pay will ever render his presence tolerable to me.”

All the young ladies took their walk in the direction of the prison that day, and all the young gentlemen followed the young ladies; and, in passing, they lingered and looked, or cast sidelong glances, at the windows of the warden’s parlor, where it was understood Mr. Schöninger was. People who did not like to be suspected of romance or of curiosity had some excuse for going in that direction, and those who had business in the prison were esteemed fortunate. Probably one‐half the town took occasion that day to look at the windows of the warden’s house. But it cannot be said that they were wiser for having done so, for not a glimpse did one of them get of Mr. Schöninger.

But when the soft spring evening deepened, and all the curious crowd had withdrawn, and the same full moon which Lawrence Gerald and his wife had seen the night before, flooding with its radiance the melancholy splendors of Rome, was veiling with a light scarcely less brilliant the beautiful young city of Crichton, two men emerged from the warden’s house, and, taking a quiet by‐street, where the trees made a delicate shadow with their budding branches, climbed the hill to South Avenue. They walked leisurely, and almost in silence, only exchanging now and then a quiet word; but one who watched closely the taller of the two might have perceived that his quiet signified anything but indifference to the scene around him, and that he was full of a strong though controlled excitement. He stepped as though curbed, and every moment glanced up at the sky or at the branches over his head, and drew in deep breaths of the fresh spring air. A fine delight ran bubbling through his veins. All the feverish mass of humanity, with its petty hates and still more hateful loves, its jealousies, its trivial fears and despicable hopes, was put aside, and he was entering into a new and freshly‐blooming creation, where mankind, too, might partake of the nobility of nature.

They passed Mrs. Ferrier’s house, with its broad front and long gardens, looking very stately in that softening light, and, after a few minutes, reached the summit of the hill, where only a single tree stood guard, and all about them the world, of which they seemed to be the centre, lay spread in tranquil beauty, its hills and dales, its towns and forests, bound with a ring of mountains that showed with a soft richness against the sky. The city lay white beneath them, and the Saranac wound like a silver ribbon across the view. Where the hills dipped, one sparkling point, audible with dashing foam, told where the Cocheco danced day and night with white and blithesome feet.

F. Chevreuse, standing one silent moment to contemplate the scene, was startled to see his companion break from his side, and, running to the tree at a little distance, catch one of its branches, and swing himself into the air by it. The priest’s first glance was one of dismay; his second, a smiling one. He understood the abounding joy of which the act was an outbreak, and was pleased with the boyishness of it, and that the impulse should have been yielded to in his presence. Sad as he was, he could not help feeling glad to see another possessed by a full and unthinking happiness.

Mr. Schöninger laughed, as he returned to his companion.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said; “I am not a lunatic. I am free! Do you know what a delight it is to be in a place where you can swing your arms without hitting anything? I could run here half an hour, and neither turn nor be obliged to stop; and I can stand upright without feeling as though my head were going to strike.” While speaking, he was continually making slight motions, as though trying if he had the free use of his limbs; and when he stopped, he lifted his head to its full height, and drew in a long breath.

“How delicious the air is!” he exclaimed. “How fresh and pure! It comes here from the forests and the mountains and the sea. There is no smell of lime or close dampness or human breaths in it. Pah! F. Chevreuse, when you preach again, and tell your people what they have to be thankful for, in spite of sorrow and poverty, remind them of the air they breathe, the sun that shines on them, the sky above their heads, and the power to move about as they will. If this sky were gray, and pouring down rain, I should still think it beautiful; for it is the sky, and not a stone.”

He walked away again to a little distance.

“Instead of being obliged to give a reason for being happy, I think we should be obliged to account for being unhappy,” he said, coming back. “How many sources of delight we have which we overlook because we are accustomed to them! Mere motion, walking, running, any natural and unconstrained motion, is a pleasure; breathing is a pleasure; the eyes have a thousand delights. It is a source of pleasure to exercise one’s strength and overcome obstacles. I never went up a hill in the country or climbed any height but I felt like singing. Swimming, skating, riding, driving—how exhilarating they are! And for all these delights you do not need the companionship of man. Yourself and nature—these are enough.”

“I did not know you were so fond of nature,” F. Chevreuse said, smiling.

“I do not think I ever mentioned it to any one before,” remarked the other carelessly.

The priest was struck by this reply, and looked with astonishment on the man who for thirty years had loved nature, yet never said a word in praise of it. Could it be because of a reserved and unsocial disposition? Or was it that he had been too much isolated? The priest was almost afraid to speak, lest he should check a confidence at once so charming and so manly. He quite understood that it was the unusual and deep agitation of Mr. Schöninger’s mind which had brought this feeling to light, as the sea, in its agitation, may toss up a pearl.

He said nothing, therefore, but waited for his companion to speak again, not observing him, but looking up at the illuminated dome above.

“When one is free, and has the use of one’s limbs, and is happy, then one believes in a good God, who is a father to his creatures,” Mr. Schöninger resumed in a voice as gentle as he might have used when a child at his mother’s knee. He had been holding his hat in his hand; but in speaking, he covered his head. At the same instant, F. Chevreuse uncovered his, and the Jew and the Christian, each after his manner, acknowledged the presence of God in that thought, which was almost like a visible presence.

“To me,” said the priest, “the acknowledgment comes more surely when I am in trouble. It seems to me that if I were in chains and torments, he would be nearer to me than ever before.”

“That is because you have been taught to believe in a suffering God,” was the calm reply. “I have been taught to see in God a being infinitely glorious and strong, a mighty, shoreless ocean of deep joy. That he could suffer pain, that his puny creatures could torment and kill him, has always been to me a thought at once absurd and blasphemous. It is probably for this reason that you see him best in sorrow, and I in joy.”

He stood a little while thinking, then added quietly, as if speaking to himself: “Yet it is a sweet and comforting thought.”

F. Chevreuse blushed red with a sudden gladness, but said nothing. It was no time for controversy; and, besides, he had the wisdom to leave souls to God sometimes. That people are to be converted by a constant pelting of argument and attack he did not believe. His experience had been that converts of any great worth were not made in that way, and that the soul that studied out its own way helped by God, and teased as little as possible by man, was by far the most steadfast in the faith.

They went slowly down the hill together in the direction of the priest’s house, and stopped a moment to lean on Mrs. Ferrier’s gate in passing. That lady had just entered her house, having been all the day and evening at Mrs. Gerald’s. She would gladly have stayed all night had Honora allowed it.

The two men had, unseen or unrecognized, been near enough to hear the long sigh the good creature gave as she mounted the steps to her door, and the exclamation she made to the servant who followed her: “Little did I think last night at this time what horrible things were going to happen within twenty‐four hours.” Some persons have that way of dating backward from startling events, and renewing thus the vividness of their sensations.

She did not know what kind thoughts were following her in at the door, or she might have been comforted.

They went on, and soon came in sight of what had been Mrs. Gerald’s home. The blinds were all closed, and not a ray of light was visible. Under the vines and large, over‐hanging trees the cottage appeared to shrink and hide itself.

“I would like to go in for one minute, if you do not object to waiting,” F. Chevreuse said. “That poor girl means to sit up all night, and she is likely to have no one else in the room. It is a gloomy watch, and she may feel better, if I speak a word to her.”

“Pray do not think of me!” Mr. Schöninger exclaimed.

F. Chevreuse stepped into the yard, and, as he held the gate open for his companion, Mr. Schöninger followed, though with some hesitation. There were many reasons why he would not be willing to enter that house. Indeed, the priest well knew that it was no time to take him there openly; but for some reason he wished him to come near enough, at least, to feel the sorrow and desolation which had fallen upon it. Perhaps he wished to soften Mr. Schöninger still more toward the unhappy man the burden of whose guilt he had borne; perhaps he wanted to remind him how entirely that burden had been removed from him by showing how cruelly it had fallen elsewhere.

The priest tried the door before ringing, and, finding it not locked, stepped quietly into the entry, which was lighted through the open doors of rooms at either side. In one of these rooms sat three or four persons. He said a few words to them, and closed the door of their room before going to the other.

Mr. Schöninger held back a moment, but could not resist longer the temptation to approach. The outer door was still open, and a soft light shone over the threshold of it from the parlor. Drawn step by step, he went to the threshold, and stood just where the light and shadow met, and the door framed a picture for him. The room seemed to be nearly all white and flowers. White draperies covered the windows, the pictures, and the cabinets and tables, the coldness changed to a tender purity by flowers and green leaves, arranged, not profusely, but with good taste. On what appeared to be a sofa covered with black lay a motionless, white‐draped form lying easily, as one might sleep; but there needed not the covered face to show that it was the sleep of death. Candles burned at the head of the sofa, and a _prie‐dieu_ stood before it. All this Mr. Schöninger took in at a glance; but his eyes rested on what was to him the principal object in the room—Honora Pembroke, sitting near the head of the sofa, with the light of the candles shining over her. She looked up, but did not speak, as F. Chevreuse came in and knelt at the _prie‐dieu_. Her eyes dropped again immediately to her folded hands, and she sat there motionless, an image of calm and silent grief. Her face was pale and utterly sad and languid with long weeping, her hands lay wearily in her lap, and her plain black dress, and the hair all drawn back together and fastened with a comb, showed how distant from her mind was the thought of personal adornment. Yet never had she looked more lovely or shown how little her beauty depended on ornament.

Mr. Schöninger, looking at her attentively, perceived that her face was thinner than when he had seen it last; and though the sight gave him a certain pain, it gave him, too, a certain pleasure. He would have thought her cruel had she been quite prosperous and happy while he was in torment.

F. Chevreuse rose from his knees, and Miss Pembroke looked up and waited for him to speak.

“Had you not better go to bed, and leave the others to watch?” he asked. “You will be exhausted.”

“I do not want to leave her, father,” she replied. “If she had had a long illness, it would have been different; but it is all so short, so sudden!” She stopped a moment, for her voice begun to tremble a little; but resumed: “She has no one left but me, and I want to stay by her till the last.”

“You will not be lonely?” he asked, dropping further objections.

“Oh! no. The others will sit all night in there, with the doors open between. At daybreak Mrs. Ferrier is coming down, and then I shall go to rest. I am glad you came in.”

“I was passing by with Mr. Schöninger,” he said, “and I asked him to wait for me a moment.”

Her eyes had dropped again while she spoke, seeming too heavy to be lifted; but as the priest said this, she glanced into his face; then, becoming aware that the street‐door was open, looked toward it.

Mr. Schöninger stood there motionless.

A change passed over her face, her sadness becoming distress. She rose from her seat and went to him, her hands clasped.

“Mr. Schöninger,” she said, “she was the last person who would have wronged you or any one.”

Then, seeing that he had not come as an accuser, she held out her hands to him.

The night before he had been like one buried alive, and his hand had been against all the world; to‐night life had crowded back upon him with its honors, its friendships, its pathos, and this last scene of sorrow and tenderness.

He bent, and kissed the hands she gave him, but did not utter a word, and they parted instantly. Honora returned to the _prie‐dieu_, and, kneeling there, hid her face and began to weep again, and Mr. Schöninger went out to the gate without giving a backward glance.

F. Chevreuse joined him immediately.

“All these wretched doings have left Miss Pembroke very lonely,” he said. “She has really no one left who is near to her, though she has a host of friends. But what, after all, is a host of friends, as the world calls them, worth? When a thunderbolt falls on you, people always gather round, and a great deal of kind feeling is struck out; but, perhaps, you have needed the kindness a great deal more in the long, dry days when there was no thunder. It is the constant, daily, intimate friendship that gives happiness. But there! it is of no use to abuse the world, especially when one forms a part of it, and is thus abusing one’s self. All of us feel our hearts warm towards people who are in great affliction, when we do not think of them in their ordinary trials. It is only God who is constant to all needs, who knows all. Mr. Schöninger, you are welcome.”

They had reached the house, and the priest turned on the threshold to offer his hand to the man whom he had so long courted in vain, and who had so many times refused his friendship. He knew that he had conquered when his hospitality was accepted.

He had conquered, in so much as he had won the Jew’s friendship and confidence; for, having renounced his distrust, Mr. Schöninger was, in an undemonstrative way, generously confiding. Hard to win by one whose circumstances were so alien to his own, when won, there was no reserve.

F. Chevreuse’s sitting‐room was never a very pleasant one, except for his presence. It had too many doors, was too shut in from outside, and had also the uncomfortable air of being the first of a _suite_. One never feels at rest in the first room of a _suite_. He felt the unpleasantness of the place, without in the least knowing the cause of it, and always took his special visitors into his mother’s room.

Mother Chevreuse had, woman‐like, known precisely what her son’s apartment lacked, and had given it a pleasant look by employing those little devices which can introduce a fragment of beauty into the most desolate place; but her mantle had not fallen on Jane, the housekeeper, and thus it chanced that the priest had, without knowing it, lost more than his mother.

Her sitting‐room was cheerfully lighted when the two entered it, and the table, prepared for supper, awaited them. It was the Thursday before Palm Sunday, and F. Chevreuse had eaten nothing since taking a cup of coffee and a crust of bread in the morning; and now, the work and excitement of the day over, and nothing worse than he had anticipated having happened, he felt like resting and refreshing himself. If Mrs. Gerald had been alive and mourning, he would have been tormented by the thought of her; but she was safe in the care of God, and he left her there in perfect trust.

Andrew, the man‐servant, sacristan, and factotum of the establishment, was lurking somewhere about when the priest entered, and came forward to make a crabbed salutation. If he ever felt in an amiable mood or was satisfied with anything, this man took good care that no one should know it; and not all the cheerfulness, patience, and amiability of F. Chevreuse could for a moment chase away the cloud that brooded over his face, or make him acknowledge that there was anything but tribulation in his life. The priest bore more patiently the constant, petty trial of such a presence about him because he believed that sorrow for the death of Mother Chevreuse had changed the old man from bad to worse, when the truth was that the lady had skilfully hidden much of their servant’s crabbedness, or had so displayed the comical phase of it that it had ceased to be an annoyance, and was often amusing.

“Tell Jane to give us our supper right away, Andrew,” the priest said. “And bring up a bottle of wine with it.”

“Jane is gone to bed, sir,” Andrew announced, and stood stubbornly to be questioned, his whole air saying plainly that all had not been told.

“Gone to bed!” echoed F. Chevreuse. “What is the matter with her?”

“She says she is sick.” The man suffered an acrid smile to show in the corners of his mouth.

“Jane sick!” said the priest, much concerned. “Is there any one with her? Has anything been done for her?”

In speaking, he took a step toward the door.

“Oh! don’t you trouble yourself, sir,” interposed Andrew quickly, finding that he must deny himself the pleasure of a long cross‐examination. “She says she doesn’t want anything or anybody. She’ll get well when she’s ready. She’s got the supper, and I can manage to bring it up. All the doctors and all the nurses in the world won’t make her well till she’s a mind to be.”

“Well, well!” said F. Chevreuse, rather mortified at this exposition of his domestic trials. “Bring up the supper.”

Jane had, in fact, one of those convenient illnesses sometimes indulged in by some women, and now and then by men, when they are seized by a fit of ungovernable ill‐humor which they dare not show in its true guise, or when they desire to appear very much abused, or to escape blame for some ill‐ doing. F. Chevreuse had not been home since early morning, and dinner had been prepared, had waited, and been put away—no small grievance to even a good‐natured housekeeper. Secondly, about noon, when all the rest of the city knew it, Andrew above all, the great news of the day had burst upon Jane. It was too much; and when, toward evening, Andrew had come home with an order that supper should be prepared for two that night, and a little extra preparation made, and that, moreover, the priest’s visitor would stay all night, the housekeeper’s cup ran over. News had started from the priest’s house, and made the circuit of the city, electrifying everybody, and she had been the last to hear it, and had heard it at last from Andrew! She would not have dared to hint such a thing; but she thought that F. Chevreuse should have told her before leaving the house, even if he had commanded her silence. It would have saved her the mortification of being taken entirely by surprise and displaying such utter ignorance.

While she mused, the fire burned. She would henceforth bear herself very stiffly toward F. Chevreuse. Since he thought that she was not to be trusted, that she was nothing but a servant, she would act like a servant. All those things which she had done for his comfort without being asked she would now wait to be asked to do. He should see the difference between a housekeeper, who should, according to her opinion, be in some sort a friend, and a mere hired servant. She would be very dignified, and immensely respectful and reverential; would be astonished if he should ask if anything was the matter; would do in great and anxious haste whatever he should command, and no more than he commanded; and she would go to F. O’Donovan for confession. In short, this woman, who knew that all the comfort of the priest’s home depended on her, marked out for herself a line of conduct which would have made that home a place of penance to him, and herself a minister of torment; while at the same time she could not only hold herself guiltless of fault, but even assume an air of unwonted sanctity.

To be frankly and honestly disagreeable or wicked, one does not need to study; but a pious hatefulness requires careful preparation.

Her plan of future conduct arranged, Jane perceived that a notable pivot was needed where it should turn from her past behavior; and what so suitable as a short illness? Besides, she did not feel equal to assuming her new _rôle_ as yet. The temptation was too strong to give way to anger. She bewailed Mrs. Gerald, therefore, with many tears; Mrs. Gerald’s death, which might have happened from any other cause, being the only point in the whole story which she would recognize or hear anything about. Weeping brought on a headache, and the headache increased. At five o’clock in the afternoon Jane bound her head up in a wet linen band, and began to feel unable to stand or walk. Duty alone compelled her to keep about. What would become of the house, if she were to give up? What could a poor woman do who had no home or friends of her own, and was obliged to take care of a priest’s house? She must work and watch early and late, sick or well. Nobody but herself knew what a trial it was. And here the victim began to weep over her own misfortunes.

Presently, at six o’clock, Jane began to feel a pain in her back; but nothing would induce her to rest. F. Chevreuse had sent word that he would have some one to sup and stay all night, and she must get the bed‐room ready, and cook something extra. She didn’t see how she could do it, but it must be done.

When her gossips had gone home, after vainly offering their assistance, Andrew came in and found the housekeeper holding on to her head with one hand, while with the other she did work which there was not the least need of doing. He had been watching with great interest the progress of her malady, and perceived that it was near the crisis.

The supper‐hour had been casually mentioned in the priest’s message as about seven o’clock. At half‐past six Jane could not suppress an occasional moan of pain; and at ten minutes before seven she consigned the supper, which was all prepared, to the care of Andrew, and staggered into her own room, holding on by chairs and tables as she went. She would not, perhaps, have indulged in such violent symptoms had she seen the smiles with which her fellow‐servant beheld her tottering progress across the room. Fully persuaded that she had vanquished his scepticism, and half convinced herself that she was suffering severely, Jane set herself to listen for the priest’s coming.

Seven o’clock came, but not F. Chevreuse; half‐past seven, and still he had not appeared.

Jane stole out into the kitchen, scarcely able to stand, and renewed the spoiling dishes. She did not wish to leave anything to be complained of, meaning to be herself the only one ill‐used. At length she heard a foot on the door‐step, and, making haste to shut herself into her room, with only a very little opening left, Jane became a prey to grief and pain.

All these movements Andrew had listened to with great edification; but what Andrew did not know was that the invalid, skurrying out to stand at the foot of the stairs when she heard talking in the room above, had had the pleasure of listening to the whole conversation regarding her state of health.

Ten minutes after, F. Chevreuse, without much surprise, it must be owned, saw his housekeeper coming feebly into the room where he sat at table, her face red and swollen with laborious weeping, and expressing chief among its varied emotions and sentiments a saint‐like and anxious desire and determination to sacrifice herself to the utmost rather than omit the smallest possible duty.

It was an unwelcome vision. There was a point beyond which even he did not want to have his sympathies drained. He felt that he was human, and would like to rest both mind and body.

“I am afraid, F. Chevreuse,” she began, in a very sick voice, leaning against the side of the door—“I am afraid that your toast is too dry. I made it fresh three times....”

“Never mind, Jane,” he interrupted, rather impatiently. “It does very well. You need not trouble yourself.”

Jane came into the room a few tottering steps, and rested on the back of a chair.

“I don’t know how Andrew brought things up,” she said, very short of breath, but not so much so but she could fire this little shot. “I suppose they are all at sixes and sevens. But I wasn’t able to do any....”

“If you are not well, you had better go to bed,” said the priest quite sharply. “Andrew will do all I want done.”

Taken unawares by this unusual severity, Jane lost her discretion. “It is my place to look that things are properly done in the house, and I shall do it,” she said, half defiant, half hysterical, and took a step nearer to the table.

As she did so, her eyes fell on the pale and haggard face of their guest. At that sight she paused, transfixed with a genuine astonishment, for she had expected to see F. O’Donovan; and, after one wild glance, as if she had seen a ghost, uttered a cry and covered her face with her hands.

“Jane!” exclaimed the priest in a voice that told her he was not to be tried much further. “Have you lost your senses?”

“My heart is broken for Mrs. Gerald!” she cried, weeping loudly. “I haven’t been able to stand hardly since I heard about her. Oh! such a wicked world as this is. I shall be glad when the Lord takes me out of it. To think that I shall never see her again, that....”

F. Chevreuse laid down his knife and fork, which he had made a pretence of using. “You and Mrs. Gerald were by no means such intimate friends that her death should plunge you in this great affliction,” he said. “Her nearest friends bear their sorrow with fortitude. Your agitation is therefore quite uncalled for. I have no further need of you to‐night. If you want anything done for you, Andrew will go for some of your friends.”

There was no possibility of resisting this intimation, and the housekeeper retired speechless with rage and mortification.

“Mr. Schöninger,” remarked the priest gravely, when they were alone, “women are sometimes very troublesome.”

“F. Chevreuse,” returned his visitor with equal gravity, “men are sometimes very troublesome.”

“That is very true,” the priest made haste to admit. “I didn’t mean to say anything against women.”

And yet, at the woman’s first glance and cry of horror and aversion, Mr. Schöninger’s face had darkened. “Was he always to have these vulgar animosities intruded on him?” he asked himself.

It was one of those annoyances which a proud and fastidious person would like to have the power to banish for ever with a gesture of the hand or a word.

The two friends talked long together that night, and Mr. Schöninger told the priest quite freely all his plans.

“I shall stay here and take up my life where I left it off, except that I must now give up all contest for that disputed inheritance,” he said. “All I had has been thrown away in the struggle. Whether there would, in any case, have been a possible success for me I do not know. It is now too late. This infernal persecution—I shall never call it anything else, sir—has destroyed my last chance, and I have only to dismiss the subject from my mind as far as possible. I received to‐day a letter signed by all my former pupils, begging me to resume my instruction of them. They expressed themselves very well, and I shall consent. The Unitarian minister has invited me to play the organ in their church, but I have not decided on that yet.”

“I would like to have you play in my church,” the priest said. “Our organist is dead, and the singing is getting to be miserable. Our music would, I am sure, be more pleasing to you; but, if doctrines make any difference, you would find yourself more at home with the Unitarians. I don’t see any difference between them and the reformed Jews.”

“Doctrines do not make any difference, especially as I am not obliged to listen to them,” Mr. Schöninger replied with a dignity that verged on coldness. “In music I do not find any doctrines; and it is not necessary to believe in order to give the words their proper expression. Or rather, I might say that the artist has a poetical faith, a faith of the imagination, in all things grand, noble, or beautiful, and can utter with fervor, in his art, sentiments which have no place in his daily life; or, if they have a place, it is not such as would be assigned to them by the theologian. In his mind a pagan goddess and a Christian priest may have niches side by side, and it would be hard to say which he preferred. Your Raphael painted with equal delight and success a Madonna and a Galatea. Your Mozart wrote Masses and operas, and vastly preferred to write operas. He says that he wrote church music when he could do nothing else.”

“So much the worse for them!” said F. Chevreuse rather hotly. “Raphael would have painted better Madonnas—Madonnas which would have answered their true purpose of inspiring holy thoughts—if he had devoted his gifts entirely to God; and Mozart would have written better Masses, if he had done the same. When you see a thorough Christian artist, it will be one who will never lower himself to a subject contrary to, or disconnected with, religion. The others have been false, and consequently have had only glimpses where they might have had visions. Some of them were great, but they might have been immeasurably greater. No, I repeat, do not imagine that you are going to feel or play our music as you might if you were a good Catholic. But excuse me!” he said, recalling himself. “I have given you rather more of a lecture than I meant to. I still want you to take our music in hand, if you will.”

“I will with pleasure, if you will be content with my interpretation of it,” Mr. Schöninger said with a smile.

He was not in the least displeased with the priest’s lecture, and, on the contrary, decidedly liked it. He was stirred by anything which consecrated art as an embodiment of the divine rather than a mere expression of the human.

Surprise is but a short‐lived emotion; and when Mr. Schöninger was left alone that night, with the first opportunity in many months of thinking in an unobserved solitude, he wondered more at his own calmness than at anything which had happened to him. The hideous suffering from which he had but just escaped looked far away, and so alien that he could contemplate it almost with a cold inquisitiveness, as something in which he had no part. It was scarcely more to him than the delirious dreams of a fever which had passed away. Indignation and a desire to revenge himself might rise again, would rise again; but for the present they slept. The first joy of freedom, too, was over. Nothing remained but a feeling of quiet and security. Doubtless he had, without knowing it, been soothed by the many kind and regretful words that had been addressed to him that day, and felt less disposed to dwell on his own wrongs when he knew that so many others were thinking and speaking of them.

All round the room assigned to him hung the pictures that had belonged to Mother Chevreuse—an old‐fashioned portrait of her husband in the uniform of a French officer, a S. Ignatius of Loyola, a S. Antony preaching to the fishes, a print, on a gold ground, of the miraculous Lady of Perpetual Succor, and a Santa Prassede sleeping on her slab of granite.

Mr. Schöninger held his candle up to examine each of these, all but the portrait familiar to him in their originals; and as he looked, the places where he had first seen them, the stately palaces and the quiet churches, enclosed his imagination within their walls. He saw again the lines of sombre columns leading up to the glowing mosaics of the tribune, where the vision of S. John hung petrified in air; the dim lamp in the mysterious chapel of the _Colonna Santa_ shone out again inside its grating, and the walls glittered dimly back. He saw the thickets of camellias mantled with bloom under an April sky, a little forest of white at the right hand, and a forest of rose‐red at the left, and ever the fountains sparkling through.

How strange it was! He set down his candle, almost impatiently, as if a beautiful vision were being melted in the light of it, and blew it out. How strange it was! When he was in Rome, he had hated it while he admired it; but now, as the thought of it came up, his heart yearned out towards it, and grew tender and full with longing for it. How strange that his dearest affections should cluster where his deepest hates had pierced, and that, whenever an accusing thought arose, an excusing one immediately answered it. The city of the Ghetto was becoming to him also the city of the silvery‐haired old man who had opened its gates. To remember him was like remembering a pure white star that had shone out one still evening long ago.

Mr. Schöninger put aside the curtain that hardly barred the full moonlight from the room, and leaned out into the night. Not many streets distant Honora Pembroke sat wakeful and mourning, alone with her dead. By what fatality was it that the silent woman lying there, and the weeping one beside her, should have the power to stand, with their softness and their pallor, between him and his remembrance of that gloomy mansion of hate and crime, the shadow of whose portal had but just slipped from him? The cold and trembling hands he had kissed that night had quenched for a time all anger in his heart.

He sighed, thinking of that sad household, and his gaze turned tenderly and steadily in its direction. He would have liked to call down a blessing on the head he loved had it not been so much nearer the source of all blessing than he was. She was right, no matter what she believed. All she held good was good, at least as far as she was concerned, and no blame of false doctrine could be imputed to her.

A ray of light stronger than that of the moon shining across his eyes attracted his attention. It came from F. Chevreuse’s sitting‐room, the one window of which was at right angles with the window where he leaned. A small, displaced fold of the curtain showed him the priest on his knees there before a crucifix, his hands clasped, his black‐robed form as motionless as if it had been carved out of ebony. Here, too! Could he have no other friend than a Christian priest for his hand and heart to cling to?

Yet all was sweet and peaceful, and everything conspired to soothe him. The air touched him with a breath too soft to be called a breeze, the city was still about him, and only a foamy murmur told where the sleepless river flowed.

Triumph, joy, and sweetness he had felt, and at last came gratitude to God and forgiveness of man. One of his last thoughts that night was of pity for Lawrence Gerald.

In that pity he was not alone; for nearly the whole of Crichton shared it. They had known the young man from his childhood, had blamed and petted him, had put every temptation in his way, and been ready to defend him when he yielded. In spite of his haughtiness and assumption, there was not a single person in the city, perhaps, who really disliked him. His captivating beauty and wayward sweetness won more affection than the highest virtues or the noblest gifts of mind would have won. When a stranger and a Jew was accused, they could believe him to have been actuated by the most cruel malignity; but it was impossible to impute such feelings to Lawrence Gerald. He was weak and imprudent, and had become involved, and so led on beyond his intention. Each one could imagine, even before the confession was made public, just how it had happened; and when they read the confession, the feeling was almost universal in favor of his escape. Only a few, sternly just, insisted on hoping that he would be brought to suffer the full penalty of the law. Fathers and mothers whose boys, scarcely more governable than he, had played and grown up with him, looked with terror on their own children; and young men who secretly knew themselves to have been preserved only by what they would have called chance from crimes as bad as his, shuddered at the thought of his being brought back among them to be tried for his life. A sort of panic seized upon all when they saw what horrors could grow out of that which had seemed to be mere youthful errors, and how criminal had been the leniency of public opinion and of the law. Mr. Schöninger’s case had held no moral for them, for he was an alien; but what Lawrence Gerald was some of their own might be. They were conspicuously generous, these people, in that charity which stays at home and makes excuses for its own little circle; and for this time, at least, they regretted that their charity had not gone beyond that boundary, and extended to the stranger within their gates.