There, now! I’ve read your letter through
Three times; I’ll read it once again
If you say so; it rests with you.
[2]What? loan you paper, ink and pen?
Why, man you’re weaker than a child.
To-morrow I will gladly write
Whate’er you wish. Be reconciled,
[3]Compose yourself and rest to-night.
You think we nuns are good to tend
The sick, to count our beads, and pray,
But that we do not comprehend
How worldly people dread delay
In getting word from those they love:
Why, sir, you know not what you say—
Ah! this dark robe too well doth prove
The sorrow of that by-gone
[4] day—
No, no; I fully understand
What you would say. There’s no offence;
Naught to forgive. There take
[5] my hand.
We now are friends. In confidence
The story of a broken life,
Before the doctor comes, I’ll tell:
Of how I shunned
[6] the cold world’s strife
And sought a quiet convent cell.
Far back
[7] in life I loved a man,
A gen’rous, noble heart and true:
And he loved me as only can,
As only gallant natures do.
Our days passed by so quietly,
Love’s dream so rosy-hued had grown
That seasons glided by
[8] ere we
Would note that e’en a month had flown.
Thus ran my girlhood and his youth,
Till came the naming of the happy day—
Our wedding day—that would in truth
Have made us man and wife for aye,
When, like a blow from one we love,
There came an unexpected woe;
In vain ’gainst
[9] fate we madly strove;
Each cherished hope lay scattered
[10] low.
A crime had been committed in
The village where lived he and I;
And ’mid the first wild, senseless din
That marked the people’s hue and cry,
Suspicion on him
[11] fell, and so,
To ’scape the frenzied, ‘vengeful mob,
He, innocent, resolved to go
Away
[12]—and I to stay and sob.
Then, bending low, said he, “This thing
Will only for a season last,
A moment full relief may bring;
At most our grief will soon be past;
But, darling, should it not be so,
Write” (he whispered a fictitious name),
“And I will by your letter know
That in your eyes I bear no shame.”
The rain fell from a dark’ning sky,
[13]The apple blossoms scattered
[14] lay,
The chill wind moaned, and night drew nigh,
As with a sigh he turned away
[15]—
I watched
[16] his form till lost in gloom,
And, save the dripping of the rain,
[17]There fell a stillness
[18] of the tomb—
A lull that seemed to daze my brain.
[19]
The morning after that sad night
The guilty one was found; and I,
With woman’s haste, sat down to write,
And wrote in joyous ecstasy;
The letter mailed, each moment seemed
An age; but days and weeks passed by—
With visions dread my fancy teemed—
But came he not, nor made reply.
One day, when hope had almost fled,
The post-man thrust it in my hand:
“This is from Washington,”
[20] he said,
“Dead-letter office, understand?”
With throbbing heart I broke the seal,
My face grew whiter than a sheet,
The dreadful blunder made me reel
And drop
[21] the letter at my feet.
Instead of the fictitious name
He gave, it bore his own,
Which knowing not, he could not claim—
To him my lines were never known—
In loneliness he died: and here
I nurse the sick; but I have done—
And, sir
[22] no longer have a fear
To trust me, though I’m but a nun.
You’ve heard a portion of my tale
Before? From whom? Oh, tell
[23] me quick!
From my lost love? You both set sail
In the same ship? My heart
[24] grows sick—
What? Still alive?
[25] Oh, God be praised!
Oh, joy!
[26] Oh, joy! And I will write?
Now that my dead to life is raised—
Will I? Yes, now—this very night.