From Out the Old Life
IISTER GEORGE and Sister Edgar were walking in the convent garden. They had been there less than five minutes, but already, from the little balconies that hung on the gray walls of the old building, wistful eyes watched them. The pupils had always found an inspiration in the fact that the two most popular nuns at St. Mary's were ideal friends and took a daily stroll together in the twilight. May Iverson had written a poem on the subject, and another pupil with artistic tendencies had done the best work of her school life in a sketch which showed the Sisters sitting side by side on the rustic seat in their favorite arbor. Of late this school-girl admiration and interest had been intensified by the foreboding that Sister Edgar could enjoy these evening outings very little longer.
The pupils found the setting for the striking figures as attractive as the young nuns themselves. On three sides spread the wings of the vast building; on the fourth rose a wall of masonry, so high and thick as to be an effective barrier between the quiet cloister and the great public thoroughfare on the other side of it. In the hollow square thus formed nestled the garden, as quaint in its old-time picturesqueness as if it had been lifted out of mediæval Spain and transplanted in another century to the soil of this new country.
Above the garden stretched the blue sky, now slowly fading into the gray of early evening. In the willows that lined the edges of the tiny lake, sleepy birds answered each other, their drowsy calls mingling with the rustle of the leaves and the cool splash of the fountain. The smooth garden paths that radiated from the lake were fringed with old-fashioned flowers: roses, honeysuckle, and mignonette, with here and there a bed of scarlet geranium that flaunted its aggressiveness brazenly in the rich sobriety of surrounding tones. At one end of the garden a chapel, roughly hewn from solid rock, was covered with a luxuriant growth of moss and vines; near it towered a rustic cross, its base a mass of passion flowers, its arms holding aloft the crucified Christ.
There were infinite sweetness and aloofness in the spot, so remote from all suggestion of the outside world. Within a stone's throw was life at its greatest pressure—life with its twentieth-century strain and sin and suffering. Here were quiet and peace. There was repose in the dim chapel, in the long, silent corridors, in the rooms where the inmates worked and prayed, in the vaults below these, where many of their predecessors slept their last sleep. The reflection of this peace was in the serene faces of the nuns who strolled along the walks, their slight figures outlined by their severely simple black habits, and their heads innocently erect under their flowing veils. The night air was full of the murmur of their wonderful voices, as characteristic of the cloister as its atmosphere.
The straining young eyes on the balconies singled out their two favorites from the groups below, and watched them as the light grew dim. No pupil had ever been invited to join them in this evening promenade, but, as May Iverson hopefully remarked, there was always a chance that unselfish devotion would yet have its reward. Miss Iverson was seventeen and sentimental. She expected to be graduated at the end of the year. In the mean time she wrote notes to Sister George concerning the bitterness of existence, and put roses on her desk in the class-room, and laid bare her heart to her whenever that dignified woman could be induced to inspect the view, which was not often.
Perhaps it was appreciation of the vivid interest with which Miss Iverson's eyes were following her that made Sister George draw her friend into the shade of a little arbor which was screened by trees and blossoming trumpet-vines. She watched the other seat herself on the bench, and rest her head wearily against the lattice-work behind her. She noticed with a sudden throb the transparent delicacy of the upturned face, brought out so sharply against the background of the long black veil. Sister Edgar's eyes had an unnatural brightness, and two red spots burned in her cheeks, but her features, outlined in the oval of white linen under the sombre veil, had not yet lost the beauty whose fame had gone beyond the convent walls.
"Who is that nun at St. Mary's who Dr. Fletcher says has the face of an angel, the figure of Diana, and the voice of Calvé?" Miss Iverson had once been asked during an evening reception at her father's home. She had given the information promptly, and then indiscreetly repeated the incident at school, with the result that the eminent specialist, Dr. Edward Fletcher, was no longer called to the convent as a consulting physician in important cases. His last visit had been to Sister Edgar, and he had looked grave after his examination of her lungs. He expressed regret that he was now forbidden the convent and the privilege of helping her.
"It is only the first stage," he remarked to his assistant, more seriously than he usually spoke. "I might have been able to do something to arrest it if the brood hadn't taken fright at the simple admiration of an old man."
"Give her plenty of fresh air," he had said to the convent infirmarian, who stood beside the patient during his examination. "Keep her in the garden as much as possible—and at all events keep her out of the school-room."
Sister Edgar had not been kept out of the school-room, for the reason that she had gently protested against remaining away from it. She found teaching the girls—so many of whom she loved—a distraction from haunting thoughts which were as new as they were terrible. In the shadow of death, life had suddenly grown attractive. She did not analyze this, even to herself, and she gave no outward sign of lack of peace; but Sister George, who had known and loved her in the world as well as in the convent, knew that she was not as indifferent as she seemed.
Sister George stood looking down at her now, an expression of austere affection in her beautiful eyes. For a moment she could not speak, so sudden and complete was her recognition of the stamp of death on the face before her. The invalid had wearily closed her eyes; she would not have made even this concession to fatigue and despondency in the presence of any other but the one who saw it, and the incident, trivial in itself, was full of meaning. Sister George turned her back for a moment, ostensibly to pull a flaunting crimson flower from its stem, but really to control the tell-tale quiver of her lips. The atmosphere of self-restraint in which they lived had so schooled the inmates of the cloister that even these two women, bound by ties of years of affection and common interest, rarely dropped the veil of reserve even for each other. The invalid's first remark showed that she did not intend to drop it now.
"How drowsy this air makes one, Sister," she said, softly "The place and the hour are so restful that I could go to sleep. Sometimes I think of the garden at night when I am wakeful," she added, a little wistfully: "then it seems as if I could sleep if I were within hearing of the fountain and the rustle of the leaves."
"Have your nights been restless ones?" asked the other at once. It was the first knowledge she had of the fact. Her friend hesitated a moment and looked up with a smile which was almost an appeal. She was about to speak when the soft tones of an organ rolled through the open chapel windows, in a few chords, struck by a strong hand. Then a voice, deep, rich, and powerful, floated out to them in the notes of an "Ave Maria" they both knew and loved. The invalid's face paled as she listened, and her drooping form straightened.
"Did you know that?" she asked, suddenly. "Did you know that Sister Raymond is to take my place in the choir?"
"Only for a little while," Sister George said, hastily. "Only until you grow well and strong."
"Until I grow well and strong," the other repeated, slowly. There was something almost bitter in her voice and in the curve of her lips.
"I shall never be well and strong again, my dear." She stumbled a little in this first confidence over the last two words, so seldom used between them.
"I shall never be well," she repeated, quietly. "You know it; they all know it, and I know it, too, although they seem to think I do not. That is why they have put Sister Raymond in my place. My voice is gone. I shall never sing again."
The voice that had been so beautiful broke a little. Sister George did not speak. Sister Edgar waited a moment for the words that failed to come, and understood the feeling under her friend's silence. The sympathy so deep, though unexpressed, wrung her soul to an outburst that startled the repressed woman before her.
"I have known the truth for a long time," she hurried on, speaking, even in these moments of agitation, with the preciseness of the cloister inmates. "I am afraid I have rebelled against it. I am still young, and my work is not done. Life is sweet and peaceful here. I have you and my girls and my music. Perhaps it is because this illness has come upon me so suddenly that I am unprepared. I do not wish to give you up."
"You will have us all beyond," murmured the other, faintly. It was what the Reverend Mother had always said to the young nuns who were starting on their last journey. She had seen so many—so pathetically many of them—go. Sister George, always calm and self-contained, had been with a number at the end. She recalled what it had been to say the simple, the conventional things to them when there had been none of this terrible pulling at the heart-strings. Now her lips refused to shape the words, not through lack of trust, but because the human feeling of coming loss was too strong.
"Yes, I know, but not now," murmured the invalid, drooping dejectedly forward in her place. "Not for a long time, perhaps; and I must make the journey all alone. That thought is constantly with me. I lie awake and think at night—not of the mere going—certainly not of the peace and happiness beyond, in which we all believe so thoroughly. That is the horrible phase of it. I cannot get my imagination past the mere act of dying—the suffocation, and the picture of the lonely little cemetery at Palm Grove. It is all wrong, I know. Do not tell me that; tell me how to bear it better."
The woman's nerves, worn by illness, recoiled at the thought. She trembled violently and caught her friend's hand in both her own.
"Margaret," she cried, brokenly, "how shall I gain strength and courage? I do not want to die."
The use of the worldly name, for the first time in all these years, was like a cry out of the old life. The heart of the other woman, which, perhaps, had come to beat a little mechanically under the black habit of the cloistered nun, responded to it as if it were. She sat down and drew the trembling form into her arms, comforting it as a mother might comfort a child crying out in the night. For a moment they remained so without speaking, clinging silently to each other while the twilight deepened around them and the air throbbed with the rich music of the voice that sang alone in the chapel. Then the training of years prevailed, and the younger sister withdrew quietly from the other's encircling arms.
"You must forgive me," she said. "I have been foolishly nervous, and I am afraid I have depressed you. I must pray for more strength, and you will pray with me, I am sure."
She rose as she spoke, and smiled with almost her old serenity into the other's eyes. She was the calmer of the two, for Sister George, supported by the friendly lattice-work, had let her head droop forward and was shedding the first tears that had fallen from her eyes in years.
"If we could both be called together," she said. "We left the outside world"—she hesitated, the words she would have said beating against her lips. Her friend silenced her gently.
"These problems are too large for you and me," she said. "We must leave them to Him."
She lifted the vines that formed an arch above them, and held them while the tall figure of Sister George passed under. The convent bell was ringing as they walked on, and they saw the shadowy forms of their associates flitting toward the wing of the building occupied by those who had taken their final vows. The two followed the black-garbed procession into the main corridor of the left wing, and, separating from them there, passed slowly to the chapel. Here the voice of the unseen singer, practising softly in the organ-loft, seemed an audible expression of the silent prayer that filled their hearts as they knelt down together.
In the beginning Miss Iverson had remarked prophetically that the coming of Professor Varick to St. Mary's boded no good to that institution.
"Look at all these susceptible girls," said that sophisticated young person, whose life had been hopelessly blighted at sixteen by a love affair which had kept her awake for three successive nights. "It's eminently proper and highly educative to have the dear old priests instruct us, but to inject a young and handsome man into the curriculum is quite another matter. Professor Varick isn't a day over thirty-eight, notwithstanding those lovely gray locks on his temples, and he's very handsome. Did you ever see such eyes? Then that air of gentle melancholy, as if he had a past! Within a month every girl in the institution will be in love with him. Mark my words."
Miss Iverson had made so many reckless predictions with the same air of prophecy that her associates had ceased to regard them as infallible. It was not easy for one to fall in love with a reserved young disciplinarian whom one saw for an hour only twice a week, and who filled that hour with stern exactions in the line of elocutionary drill. Then, too, there always was some girl on the platform with him, being trained in the art of graceful gesture. The spectacle of this suffering young person, whose gestures were usually made at right angles, was sufficiently exhilarating to distract the mind from sentimental reflections. In addition to these excellent reasons, those idols, Sister George and Sister Edgar, were present, sitting primly on opposite sides of the large exhibition hall in which the lessons were given, each in charge of her respective class and each alertly alive to the conduct and manner of every young person under her charge. So the hearts at St. Mary's continued to beat with their accustomed regularity, and the coming of Professor Varick wrought no harm.
If the young man was conscious of the presence of the two sentinels in the background, he showed no recognition of the fact beyond including them in the grave bow made to the assembled class when he entered and departed. To them, however, he was a new type, which they studied with interest and on which they had even commented to one another on several occasions. The grace and ease of manner of this man of the world appealed to the dignified nuns; his magnetism and good looks influenced them also, although perhaps they did not realize this.
Of late neither had spoken of him, Sister George remaining silent from the sense that she had exhausted the possibilities of the subject in those early talks, and Sister Edgar following her example because her interest had become deeper than she cared to express. To the dying woman the magnificent strength of the man had appealed from the first with a force not to be understood except by those who stand on the brink of their graves and watch the vigorous pass before them.
"How well he is," she had thought the first time the athletic figure of the professor had faced his class on the rostrum. The idea and the reflections to which it gave rise banished temporarily another thought of a haunting resemblance which had presented itself so vaguely as to have at first no definite place in her consciousness. By some strange association of ideas she recalled the time, "out in the world" and many years ago, when her brother, Lieutenant Reynolds, of the regular army, had carried her a mile, over rough country roads, and with her broken foot in a hastily improvised sling, to the farm-house nearest the scene of the accident in which she had received the injury.
It had been no easy task, for she was then an athletic young person of sixteen. "Jack," the brother whom she had always loved and from whom she had parted with the one great wrench attendant upon her separation from the world, had been enshrined in her regard as the strongest and manliest as well as the most admirable of men. Why she should now recall him so suddenly and vividly, especially in connection with that distant, almost forgotten mishap, was inexplicable. Perhaps it was because Professor Varick seemed so strong. "He could have done it, too," she thought, looking at the sinewy figure on the platform, "and he would have done it as well and as gently. He looks so kind," her semi-conscious reflections had run on, "and very refined. The expression of his eyes is charming. So is his smile. Surely, surely, somewhere I have seen it before."
Her thoughts recurred to the teasing likeness as the lessons went on, and then drifted away to that former life of hers, sometimes as remote as if it had been lived on another planet and in another age, but now suddenly and vibratingly real again. She and Jack had been happy together in those old days. She was living them over once more one warm spring afternoon while a lesson by Professor Varick was in progress. The murmur of the girls' voices was in her ears, the scent of the convent garden came through the open windows, but all this seemed vague and dream-like. The real things were that pleasant barytone voice, so full of elusive memories, and that face, coming back to her at first dimly, then clearly out of the mist of years.
Sister Edgar suddenly leaned back in her chair. Of course it was Jack's old friend, Arthur Varick, whose very name she had forgotten, but now recalled with a rush of other memories. He was much changed in the fourteen years since they had last met, but he was unmistakably Arthur Varick. His face was older, which was only natural, and very worn and sad, which seemed unnatural when she recalled the blithe youth she had known. She could almost hear again the boyish laughter that had so often come to her ears, in those old days, from the haunts where he and Jack were to be found around her father's home. She fancied that few heard him laugh like that now. She wondered why.
Of course he would not remember her, or, if he did, he would not recognize her in this silent nun, wrapped in the dignified trappings of her order. She had not seen her own face for many years, save in the absurdly tiny mirror before which the sisters arranged their veils; but she knew that she was much changed. He would not see in this delicate woman with the hectic flush on her cheeks the Diana he had known in the old days, and whom he had petted and loved as a younger sister. It was very pleasant to see him again and to get through him this vivid aftermath of life at home. She smiled contentedly as she dwelt on it. That was why she had so suddenly recalled the forgotten incident of Jack's feat. Arthur had been camping with him on that occasion.
The memory banished that night the legion of ghouls that had been haunting her pillow so long. She and Jack and Arthur Varick lived over the past until she fell asleep and went back to the scenes of her childhood in the first untroubled slumber she had had for a longer time than she dared confess even to herself.
In a period of depression she had found a new friend, or, rather, an old friend had come back into her life when she most needed him. His return affected her more than she realized. In the intervals between his lessons she lived on this revivified interest which was daily growing deeper. During the actual lessons she looked at him with dreamy abstraction, in which he was vividly present. It was not that she was so deeply interested in him personally, she told herself. It was merely that he was a link between the then and now—his presence was almost a message from her brother. If he had been any other, she thought, it would have been the same.
And then, suddenly, the atmosphere of the convent seemed to stifle her, and her heart cried out for freedom—for a day, at least, away from those brick walls and under the blue sky. Sometimes, in such a mood, she saw her old friend, unconscious of her very existence, pass her chair on his way "back to the world," as she told herself whimsically. Once or twice a half-wish came to her to know more of his interests and his life there. She wondered if that explained her longing to return to her home and her own people—but she did not admit that it did. She listened to the artless prattle of May Iverson, hoping that talkative young person would bring up the subject of the professor of elocution and belles-lettres. Miss Iverson, she knew, had several times met him socially. But the girl did not mention him, and the nun reproached herself, with a deepening of the color in her cheeks, for having hoped that she might do so. The incident had in it a warning which she would have heeded had she been stronger or happier. As it was, she asked herself a little vaguely if she were drifting from the letter or the spirit of her vows, if this interest in the outer world was too deep, if she were losing the religious faith that had been strong enough to bring her where she was. She told herself that she was not. She taught and prayed and did the work allotted to her, and waited for the end. Her thoughts and memories were her own. If she chose to retire into the past during these last months of life, who could question her right to do so?
The change that had come upon her had not been unobserved. The Mother Superior noticed and commented upon her added brightness.
"Do you think that Sister Edgar is improving?" she had asked Sister George, with kindly interest. "Perhaps, after all, she may not be as ill as we feared. Possibly we may even hope to keep her with us, if our Father wills. I have had some thought," she went on, "of sending her to the convent at Adola, among the pines. Please speak to her about this, and tell me if it would please her."
When the subject of the removal to the pines was broached to Sister Edgar she was so evidently unwilling to go that the idea was at once abandoned. Sister George was not surprised. She had not loved this friend for years without knowing her almost as well as she knew herself. There was something in the other's heart from which she was now shut out. She did not know what it was, but she knew that it existed, and she was content to accept silently and patiently Sister Edgar's reserve.
June came, and the invalid was obliged to abandon her class work. For weeks she had dragged herself from her cell to the class-room and from the class-room back to the cell at the close of the day, with no strength for further effort. Then she had been absent a day, a few days, and again a week, coming back each time with the cheerful assurance that she was "better," given in a voice whose sweetness was almost gone. The pupils followed it all with comprehending eyes. Even the younger ones had seen it many times before.
"They all go that way," said May Iverson, resentfully, to a classmate. "That awful cemetery is full of women under thirty." The tears filled her sharp eyes as she spoke.
Sister Edgar was saying much the same thing at the same moment to Sister George, who sat beside the bed in the infirmary, to which she had at last been moved.
"I am not the first," she said, "and I shall not be the last. I am quite resigned—but we will not talk about it. Tell me of to-day's lesson. Did Miss Iverson improve in her recitation?" And Sister George outlined the incidents of the afternoon, wondering a little at the invalid's interest and her many questions.
"Sister Raymond admires Professor Varick's appearance very much," she added, smilingly. "You know she is taking your place, in charge of the second division. She thinks he has a noble face."
"He has, indeed," breathed the other, unconsciously putting so much of her soul into the words that her friend looked at her with a question in her eyes. The sick woman saw and answered it.
"I have not told you that he was brother John's old friend," she said, simply, "and that I knew him well many years ago. The summer you were in Europe we camped in the Adirondacks. He was there with our family as Jack's guest. When I broke my ankle, and Jack carried me to Mr. Walton's, he came, too, so full of sympathy and so anxious to help—though there was nothing he could do. He was always so kind. I remember now a thousand things that he did which did not impress me then, for I was only sixteen."
She stopped, for breathing was growing difficult. The other looked at her with a growing comprehension. Much was suddenly explained—so much more than was told in the halting words.
"Then, when he came here," Sister Edgar continued, resolutely, "at first I did not know him, and he has never recognized me. When I remembered him all the past came back, and the old friendship with it, and somehow his being here has helped me through these last hard months. He is so strong and so good! I know he would do anything for me that he could if he knew, but I am glad he does not. He used to call me his little sister, and pretend to tell me all his secrets and ask my advice. I was so proud of it, and I felt so grown up! I believe I advised him freely." She stopped and laughed a little. "And he is unhappy, too. I do not know why, but I feel it. Perhaps that is what has drawn me to him—the thought of his trouble. It seemed as if he ought to tell me about it, as he used to do when he really had no cares and pretended to have them. And now there is real need of sympathy, I am sure. I have felt—oh, I have felt as if he were a little child that I longed to comfort."
Her voice broke in a paroxysm of coughing, but she went on steadily as soon as it had ceased.
"Now that I am no longer in the class-room, I want you to tell me about him—what he says and how he looks. At times he seems brighter than at others, and smiles the boyish smile I remember so well. I never forgot that, even though I did not care for him." She went on almost fiercely. "Now I wish to know as much of him as I can. That is why I am asking you to tell me of him. And you will do it, Margaret—you will do this for me, whatever you may think." She sat up with sudden strength, and pulled the other's hands away from the face which was hidden in them.
"You are so good," she said, softly. "You wish to say so much, and you say nothing. It is better. Let me talk now, for I cannot talk much longer."
She held her friend's hand against her heart, stroking it absently as she went on.
"It will all be over very soon, and I am reconciled. Do you remember our talk in the arbor that day? How afraid I was to die! That has passed. Afterwards I had other moods, almost as hard to bear. I longed to get away from here. I wanted to die out in the world, with my own people around me. I wanted to be where I was a part of life—as he is. And then I remembered that even if I were in the world I should have to leave it, and that here I am apart from it, and in either case there could be no real life for me. The end that is approaching is the best solution of the problem, of course, for it is our Lord's solution. Do not think I have lost my faith; it was never stronger than now. What would life mean to me—a nun whose final vows have been taken and who had let anything come between them and her? This tragedy is not of my own making; I did not seek it. It came when I was weakest, and I had not the strength to fight against it. I did try to fight when I knew what it was," she added, wearily, "but I could not. Everything came together—my illness, my despair, my sudden longing to go back to the outside, natural life. And then he came. And I remembered him. And the old friendly feeling returned—unconsciously at first—"
The words, which had for some moments been almost inaudible, died on her lips. She was so weak she could hardly swallow the draught her friend hastened to give her. Then she lay quiet for a long time, and finally seemed to fall asleep.
Sister George was not obliged to decide the difficult question that lay in this last request. Three days later, when Professor Varick was giving his next lesson, she sat in her place with a stricken face that awed even the liveliest members of her class and carried consternation to the hearts of the more emotional pupils.
"Sister Edgar is worse, I know she is," wrote May Iverson in a pencilled note to a friend near her. "If she were not, Sister George would never look like that."
The message went the length of the great hall, carrying in its wake a settled gloom of which only Professor Varick remained unconscious. He was in an unusually light-hearted mood. Half a dozen times the nun who sat looking at him and thinking of her friend dying without her in the distant infirmary, saw on his lips the brilliant smile Sister Edgar had mentioned during their last long talk together.
May Iverson was going half-heartedly through a recitation, when the slow tolling of the convent bell filled the hall. It was the ominous bell whose deep notes spoke of the passing of another soul. Sister George started to her feet as if the sound had been a blow, and then sank heavily upon her knees. For the first time the pupils saw the serene nun swept out of her dignified calm. They knew she had forgotten where she was, for she counted the strokes, with her face turned towards the convent chapel, and tears falling unchecked on the white linen on her bosom.
A thrill passed over the assembly. Several of the girls began to cry softly. May Iverson turned an appealing face to the professor. He was listening with surprise to the unusual interruption which had so strangely affected his class.
"I am going to ask you to dismiss us for to-day, Professor Varick," she said, brokenly. "That bell is telling us that our dearest, our very dearest teacher, Sister Edgar, has just died. You know her," she added, "the nun with the lovely face, who always sat down there at the left, where Sister Raymond is sitting now."
Professor Varick showed no annoyance over the abrupt ending of the lesson. His face was grave and his manner very gentle and sympathetic, as he looked down at the wet eyes upturned to his.
"Certainly, I will dismiss the class," he said, kindly. "I think I remember having seen the sister at her post. She sat at the right side, did she not—or was that the one you call Sister George? Yes? Then I am afraid I do not recall her, after all."
He paused a moment as he was passing Sister George. She had regarded him with a singular look in her wet eyes.
"I am sorry to hear of the loss to the convent," he said, a little formally. "Yet I am Catholic enough to know how you all regard this. In fact, perhaps it is an odd sense of sympathy that makes me feel for the sister. We poor worldlings have to lean on human love for our support. Sister Edgar was spared any of the pain which comes from that being deferred or in jeopardy. It is her spiritual marriage, this death. That is why I feel such a singular sympathy—almost felicitation," he added, with a slow smile of very winning sweetness.
If he had meant Sister George to ask the reason for such enigmatic words, she did not. She marked the sparkle in his eye and the unconscious way in which he straightened himself. Inexperienced as she was, there was no mistaking his meaning nor the buoyant content of the man to whom the Only Woman had at last said "yes."
She lowered her eyes and bowed gravely. He accepted her dismissal of him with equal gravity, bowed, and went his happy way.