Short Fiction · Disappeared from Her Home (14/14) (2/2)

“Mr. Warden,” he said, “I have come in to say goodbye; I shall leave, I think, before daylight tomorrow, for a little run through Spain. I am rather interested in Dr. Lytton’s account of the Moorish excavations going on just now. You are looking so thoroughly well and happy, that I quite feel my services are no longer needed.”

He spoke carelessly, almost indifferently, but there was a mournful ring in the last few words which went straight to Amy’s heart.

“He must not go, he shall not leave us in this way,” she exclaimed, suddenly turning from the window, addressing her father, but stretching out her hands to Lord Hardcastle. The old bright look had come back to her eyes, the old imperious tones sounded once more in her voice, “How can we thank him? What can we do for him who has done so much for us. Lord Hardcastle,” she continued, turning impetuously towards him, with flushed face and sparkling eyes, “I was very rude to you a short time ago, can you forgive me? You were wearing my ruby ring, will you take it back again, and keep it forever and ever in remembrance of my gratitude to you? I have so little to offer,” she added apologetically, with a little sigh, drawing the ring from her finger and holding it towards him.

“But I want something more than the ring to keep forever and ever,” said Lord Hardcastle, in low earnest tones, for Amy’s voice and manner, told him that the icy barriers between them were broken down at last. “Not now, Amy,” he added tenderly, as he felt the little hand he had contrived to secure, trembling in his own; “not now, for we have scarcely as yet passed from beneath the cloud of the shadows of death, but by-and-by, when the dark winter days have come and gone, and the bright spring sun shines down once more upon us, then I shall hope to come to you and ask not only for this little hand, but for all you have to give, even for your own sweet self!”

There was yet one more dark shadow to fall before the travellers started on their homeward journey. Amy had proposed to her father that they should pay a farewell visit to the little brown nuns at St. Geneviève, to thank them for their hospitality to her. Mr. Warden gladly acceded to her request, and the visit was paid the day before they started for England. On leaving the convent, they purposed visiting Isola in her lonely little hut in the valley, intending to make some permanent provision for her comfort for the rest of her life.

“Poor faithful creature,” said Mr. Warden pityingly, as they descended by the wild steep footway, “I would gladly ask her to return with us, were it not for the recollection of falsehood and misery which her face brings with it.”

Before they reached the hut, however, they were met by Isola’s nephew, the young woodcutter, of whom mention has already been made. He looked grave and sad, and lifting his hat respectfully to Mr. Warden, waited for him to speak.

“How is your aunt this morning, André,” said Amy, “shall we find her within?”

The young man shook his head.

“She is gone, mademoiselle, she will never return. This morning at daybreak the angels carried her soul away. Since mademoiselle left us, she wearied and sickened, she eat nothing, she never slept. There in the window is her lace cushion with the bobbins untouched, and day and night she sat and moaned in her wicker chair. Yesterday, when I tried to make her take some food, she turned her face to the wall, ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘the summer flowers are faded and dead, why should the withered leaf hang upon the bough?’ She never spoke to me afterwards, and this morning, when I went to her room to ask how she was, I found her lying dead and silent on her bed. Will mademoiselle come in and see her as she lies? She looks beautiful with her wreaths and garlands of flowers.”

This, however, Mr. Warden would not permit, for he felt his young daughter had already been tried beyond her strength, and Amy, with the mists of tears hanging over her eyes, looked her last at the Cevenol valley, and said a long farewell to the beautiful solitude.

And so the winter snows and clouds came and went, and the spring sun shone out once more, calling into life and being a thousand sweet sights and sounds. It lighted up the grey house at Harleyford, and fell slantwise through the tall elms on to the tender grass beneath. It shone through the east window of Harleyford Old Church, on to a quiet wedding party assembled there one bright May morning, and played in many coloured beams on two monuments standing side by side in the grassy graveyard.

And far away in the lonely valley of the Cevennes, the same spring sunshine lighted up a quiet weed-grown resting-place, and fell in quivering lines and curves upon a simple wooden cross, engraved in rude peasant’s carving, with these few words⁠—

“Isola.”

“Fidèle jusques à la mort.”