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+Project Gutenberg's Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame, by James Lane Allen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame
+
+Author: James Lane Allen
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2010 [EBook #34109]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTER DOLOROSA, POSTHUMOUS FAME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Heather Clark and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)
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+
+                             SISTER DOLOROSA
+                                  AND
+                             POSTHUMOUS FAME
+
+                                   BY
+                            JAMES LANE ALLEN
+
+
+                           _Copyright Edition_
+
+
+                               EDINBURGH
+                      DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET
+                                  1892
+
+
+
+               EDINBURGH: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE for
+                              DAVID DOUGLAS
+
+                     LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL AND CO.
+
+
+
+
+                                 TO HER
+
+
+               FROM WHOSE FRAIL BODY HE DREW LIFE IN THE
+                BEGINNING, FROM WHOSE STRONG SPIRIT HE
+                WILL DRAW LIFE UNTIL THE CLOSE, THESE
+                TALES, WITH ALL OTHERS HAPLY HEREAFTER
+                     TO BE WRITTEN, ARE DEDICATED
+                       AS A PERISHABLE MONUMENT
+                             OF INEFFABLE
+                             REMEMBRANCE
+
+
+
+
+                      PREFACE TO BRITISH EDITION.
+
+
+The Author is glad to know that a British Edition of his Kentucky Tales
+is to be brought out by Mr. David Douglas of Edinburgh.
+
+Generations ago his mother's ancestors came from Scotland and Ireland;
+generations ago his father's came from England. Toward the three
+countries his attention was fondly turned in early life; and the
+interest then begotten has been but fostered since.
+
+It is with peculiar pleasure, therefore, that he now avails himself of
+the chance to ride hither and thither through these lands in his own
+conveyance--albeit the vehicle, a little book, may turn out a slow
+coach.
+
+                                                     JAMES LANE ALLEN.
+
+      CHRISTMAS EVE,
+  LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, 1891.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                PAGE
+  SISTER DOLOROSA,                13
+  POSTHUMOUS FAME,               163
+
+
+
+
+SISTER DOLOROSA.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+When Sister Dolorosa had reached the summit of a low hill on her way to
+the convent, she turned and stood for a while looking backward. The
+landscape stretched away in a rude, unlovely expanse of grey fields,
+shaded in places by brown stubble, and in others lightened by pale, thin
+corn--the stunted reward of necessitous husbandry. This way and that ran
+wavering lines of low fences, some worm-eaten, others rotting beneath
+over-clambering wild-rose and blackberry. About the horizon masses of
+dense and rugged woods burned with sombre fires as the westering sun
+smote them from top to underbrush. Forth from the edge of one a few
+long-horned cattle, with lowered heads, wound meekly homeward to the
+scant milking. The path they followed led towards the middle background
+of the picture, where the weather-stained and sagging roof of a
+farmhouse rose above the tops of aged cedars. Some of the branches,
+broken by the sleet and snow of winters, trailed their burdens from the
+thinned and desolated crests--as sometimes the highest hopes of the
+mind, after being beaten down by the tempests of the world, droop around
+it as memories of once transcendent aspirations.
+
+Where she stood in the dead autumn fields few sounds broke in upon the
+pervasive hush of the declining day. Only a cricket, under the warm clod
+near by, shrilled sturdily with cheerful forethought of drowsy
+hearthstones; only a lamb, timid of separation from the fold, called
+anxiously in the valley beyond the crest of the opposite hill; only the
+summoning whistle of a quail came sweet and clear from the depths of a
+neighbouring thicket. Through all the air floated that spirit of vast
+loneliness which at seasons seems to steal like a human mood over the
+breast of the great earth and leave her estranged from her transitory
+children. At such an hour the heart takes wing for home, if any home it
+have; or when, if homeless, it feels the quick stir of that yearning for
+the evening fireside with its half-circle of trusted faces, young and
+old, and its bonds of love and marriage, those deepest, most enchanting
+realities to the earthly imagination. The very landscape, barren and
+dead, but framing the simple picture of a home, spoke to the beholder
+the everlasting poetry of the race.
+
+But Sister Dolorosa, standing on the brow of the hill whence the whole
+picture could be seen, yet saw nothing of it. Out of the western sky
+there streamed an indescribable splendour of many-hued light, and far
+into the depths of this celestial splendour her steadfast eyes were
+gazing.
+
+She seemed caught up to some august height of holy meditation. Her
+motionless figure was so lightly poised that her feet, just visible
+beneath the hem of her heavy black dress, appeared all but rising from
+the dust of the pathway; her pure and gentle face was upturned, so that
+the dark veil fell away from her neck and shoulders; her lips were
+slightly parted; her breath came and went so imperceptibly that her
+hands did not appear to rise and fall as they clasped the cross to her
+bosom. Exquisite hands they were--most exquisite--gleaming as white as
+lilies against the raven blackness of her dress; and with startling
+fitness of posture, the longest finger of the right hand pointed like a
+marble index straight towards a richly-embroidered symbol over her left
+breast--the mournful symbol of a crimson heart pierced by a crimson
+spear. Whether attracted by the lily-white hands or by the red symbol, a
+butterfly, which had been flitting hither and thither in search of the
+gay races of the summer gone, now began to hover nearer, and finally
+lighted unseen upon the glowing spot. Then, as if disappointed not to
+find it the bosom of some rose, or lacking hope and strength for further
+quest--there it rested, slowly fanning with its white wings the tortured
+emblem of the divine despair.
+
+Lower sank the sun, deeper and more wide-spread the splendour of the
+sky, more rapt and radiant the expression of her face. A painter of the
+angelic school, seeing her standing thus, might have named the scene the
+transfiguration of angelic womanhood. What but heavenly images should
+she be gazing on; or where was she in spirit but flown out of the
+earthly autumn fields and gone away to sainted vespers in the
+cloud-built realm of her own fantasies? Perhaps she was now entering
+yon vast cathedral of the skies, whose white spires touched the blue
+eternity; or toiling devoutly up yon grey mount of Calvary, with its
+blackened crucifix falling from the summit.
+
+Standing thus towards the close of the day, Sister Dolorosa had not yet
+passed out of that ideal time which is the clear white dawn of life. She
+was still within the dim, half-awakened region of womanhood, whose
+changing mists are beautiful illusions, whose shadows about the horizon
+are the mysteries of poetic feeling, whose purpling east is the palette
+of the imagination, and whose up-springing skylark is blithe aspiration
+that has not yet felt the weight of the clod it soars within. Before her
+still was the full morning of reality and the burden of the mid-day
+hours.
+
+But if the history of any human soul could be perfectly known, who would
+wish to describe this passage from the dawn of the ideal to the morning
+of the real--this transition from life as it is imagined through hopes
+and dreams to life as it is known through action and submission? It is
+then that within the country of the soul occur events too vast,
+melancholy, and irreversible to be compared to anything less than the
+downfall of splendid dynasties, or the decay of an august religion. It
+is then that there leave us for ever bright, aerial spirits of the
+fancy, separation from whom is like grief for the death of the beloved.
+
+The moment of this transition had come in the life of Sister Dolorosa,
+and unconsciously she was taking her last look at the gorgeous western
+clouds from the hill-tops of her chaste life of dreams.
+
+A flock of frightened doves sped hurtling low over her head, and put an
+end to her reverie. Pressing the rosary to her lips, she turned and
+walked on towards the convent, not far away. The little footpath across
+the fields was well trodden and familiar, running as it did between the
+convent and the farmhouse behind her, in which lived old Ezra and Martha
+Cross; and as she followed its windings, her thoughts, as is likely to
+be true of the thoughts of nuns, came home from the clouds to the
+humblest concerns of the earth, and she began to recall certain
+incidents of the visit from which she was returning.
+
+The aged pair were well known to the Sisters. Their daughters had been
+educated at the convent; and, although these were married and scattered
+now, the tie then formed had since become more close through their age
+and loneliness. Of late word had come to the Mother Superior that old
+Martha was especially ailing, and Sister Dolorosa had several times been
+sent on visits of sympathy. For reasons better to be understood later
+on, these visits had had upon her the effect of an April shower on a
+thirsting rose. Her missions of mercy to the aged couple over, for a
+while the white taper of ideal consecration to the Church always burned
+in her bosom with clearer, steadier lustre, as though lit afresh from
+the Light eternal. But to-day she could not escape the conviction that
+these visits were becoming a source of disquietude; for the old couple,
+forgetting the restrictions which her vows put upon her very thoughts,
+had spoken of things which it was trying for her to hear--love-making,
+marriage, and children. In vain had she tried to turn away from the
+proffered share in such parental confidences. The old mother had even
+read aloud a letter from her eldest son, telling them of his approaching
+marriage, and detailing the hope and despair of his wooing. With burning
+cheeks and downcast eyes Sister Dolorosa had listened till the close and
+then risen and quickly left the house.
+
+The recollection of this returned to her now as she pursued her way
+along the footpath which descended into the valley; and there came to
+her, she knew not whence or why, a piercing sense of her own separation
+from all but the Divine love. The cold beauty of unfallen spirituality
+which had made her august as she stood on the hill-top died away, and
+her face assumed a tenderer, more appealing loveliness, as there crept
+over it, like a shadow over snow, that shy melancholy under which those
+women dwell who have renounced the great drama of the heart. She
+resolved to lay her trouble before the Mother Superior to-night, and ask
+that some other Sister be sent hereafter in her stead. And yet this
+resolution gave her no peace, but a throb of painful renunciation; and
+since she was used to the most scrupulous examination of her
+conscience, to detect the least presence of evil, she grew so disturbed
+by this state of her heart that she quite forgot the windings of the
+pathway along the edge of a field of corn, and was painfully startled
+when a wounded bird, lying on the ground a few feet in front of her,
+flapped its wings in a struggle to rise. Love and sympathy were the
+strongest principles of her nature, and with a little outcry she bent
+over and took it up; but scarce had she done so, when, with a final
+struggle, it died in her hand. A single drop of blood oozed out and
+stood on its burnished breast.
+
+She studied it--delicate throat, silken wings, wounded bosom--in the
+helpless way of a woman, unwilling to put it down and leave it, yet more
+unwilling to take it away. Many a time, perhaps, she had watched this
+very one flying to and fro among its fellows in the convent elms.
+Strange that any one should be hunting in these fields, and she looked
+quickly this way and that. Then, with a surprised movement of the hands
+that caused her to drop the bird at her feet, Sister Dolorosa
+discovered, standing half hidden in the edge of the pale yellow corn a
+few yards ahead, wearing a hunting-dress, and leaning on the muzzle of
+his gun, a young man who was steadfastly regarding her. For an instant
+they stood looking each into the other's face, taken so unprepared as to
+lose all sense of convention. Their meeting was as unforeseen as another
+far overhead, where two white clouds, long shepherded aimlessly and from
+opposite directions across the boundless pastures by the unreasoning
+winds, touched and melted into one. Then Sister Dolorosa, the first to
+regain self-possession, gathered her black veil closely about her face,
+and advancing with an easy, rapid step, bowed low with downcast eyes as
+she passed him, and hurried on towards the convent.
+
+She had not gone far before she resolved to say nothing about the
+gossip to which she had listened. Of late the Mother Superior had seemed
+worn with secret care and touched with solicitude regarding her. Would
+it be kind to make this greater by complaining like a weak child of a
+trivial annoyance? She took her conscience proudly to task for ever
+having been disturbed by anything so unworthy. And as for this meeting
+in the field, even to mention that would be to give it a certain
+significance, whereas it had none whatever. A stranger had merely
+crossed her path a moment and then gone his way. She would forget the
+occurrence herself as soon as she could recover from her physical
+agitation.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The Convent of the Stricken Heart is situated in that region of Kentucky
+which early became the great field of Catholic immigration. It was
+established in the first years of the present century, when mild
+Dominicans, starving Trappists, and fiery Jesuits hastened into the
+green wildernesses of the West with the hope of turning them into
+religious vineyards. Then, accordingly, derived from such sources as the
+impassioned fervour of Italy, the cold, monotonous endurance of
+Flanders, and the dying sorrows of ecclesiastical France, there sprang
+up this new flower of faith, unlike any that ever bloomed in pious
+Christendom. From the meagrest beginning, the order has slowly grown
+rich and powerful, so that it now has branches in many States, as far as
+the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
+
+The convent is situated in a retired region of country, remote from any
+village or rural highway. The very peace of the blue skies seems to
+descend upon it. Around the walls great elms stand like tranquil
+sentinels, or at a greater distance drop their shadows on the velvet
+verdure of the artificial lawns. Here, when the sun is hot, some
+white-veiled novice may be seen pacing soft-footed and slow, while she
+fixes her sad eyes upon pictures drawn from the literature of the Dark
+Ages, or fights the first battle with her young heart, which would
+beguile her to heaven by more jocund pathways. Drawn by the tranquillity
+of this retreat--its trees and flowers and dews--all singing-birds of
+the region come here to build and brood. No other sounds than their pure
+cadencies disturb the echoless air except the simple hymns around the
+altar, the vesper bell, the roll of the organ, the deep chords of the
+piano, or the thrum of the harp. It may happen, indeed, that some one of
+the Sisters, climbing to the observatory to scan the horizon of her
+secluded world, will catch the faint echoes of a young ploughman in a
+distant field lustily singing of the honest passion in his heart, or
+hear the shouts of happy harvesters as they move across the yellow
+plains. The population scattered around the convent domain are largely
+of the Catholic faith, and from all directions the country is threaded
+by footpaths that lead to the church as a common shrine. It was along
+one of these that Sister Dolorosa, as has been said, hastened homeward
+through the falling twilight.
+
+When she reached the convent, instead of seeking the Mother Superior as
+heretofore with news from old Martha, she stole into the shadowy church
+and knelt for a long time in wordless prayer--wordless, because no
+petition that she could frame appeared inborn and quieting. An
+unaccountable remorse gnawed the heart out of language. Her spirit
+seemed parched, her will was deadened as by a blow. Trained to the most
+rigorous introspection, she entered within herself and penetrated to the
+deepest recesses of her mind to ascertain the cause. The bright flame of
+her conscience thus employed was like the turning of a sunbeam into a
+darkened chamber to reveal the presence of a floating grain of dust.
+But nothing could be discovered. It was the undiscovered that rebuked
+her as it often rebukes us all--the undiscovered evil that has not yet
+linked itself to conscious transgression. At last she rose with a sigh,
+and, dejected, left the church.
+
+Later, the Mother Superior, noiselessly entering her room, found her
+sitting at the open window, her hands crossed on the sill, her eyes
+turned outward into the darkness.
+
+"Child, child," she said hurriedly, "how uneasy you have made me! Why
+are you so late returning?"
+
+"I went to the church when I came back, Mother," replied Sister
+Dolorosa, in a voice singularly low and composed. "I must have returned
+nearly an hour ago."
+
+"But even then it was late."
+
+"Yes, Mother; I stopped on the way back to look at the sunset. The
+clouds looked like cathedrals. And then old Martha kept me. You know it
+is difficult to get away from old Martha."
+
+The Mother Superior laughed slightly, as though her anxiety had been
+removed. She was a woman of commanding presence, with a face full of
+dignity and sweetness, but furrowed by lines of difficult resignation.
+
+"Yes; I know," she answered. "Old Martha's tongue is like a terrestrial
+globe; the whole world is mapped out on it, and a little movement of it
+will show you a continent. How is her rheumatism?"
+
+"She said it was no worse," replied Sister Dolorosa absently.
+
+The Mother Superior laughed again. "Then it must be better. Rheumatism
+is always either better or worse."
+
+"Yes, Mother."
+
+This time the tone caught the Mother Superior's ear. "You seem tired.
+Was the walk too long?"
+
+"I enjoyed the walk, Mother. I do not feel tired."
+
+They had been sitting on opposite sides of the room. The Mother Superior
+now crossed, and, laying her hand softly on Sister Dolorosa's head,
+pressed it backward and looked fondly down into the upturned eyes.
+
+"Something troubles you. What has happened?"
+
+There is a tone that goes straight to the heart of women in trouble. If
+there are tears hidden, they gather in the eyes. If there is any
+confidence to give, it is given then.
+
+A tremor, like that of a child with an unspent sob, passed across Sister
+Dolorosa's lips, but her eyes were tearless.
+
+"Nothing has happened, Mother. I do not know why, but I feel disturbed
+and unhappy." This was the only confidence that she had to give.
+
+The Mother Superior passed her hand slowly across the brow, white and
+smooth like satin. Then she sat down, and as Sister Dolorosa slipped to
+the floor beside her she drew the young head to her lap and folded her
+aged hands upon it. What passionate, barren loves haunt the hearts of
+women in convents! Between these two there existed a tenderness more
+touching than the natural love of mother and child.
+
+"You must not expect to know at all times," she said, with grave
+gentleness. "To be troubled without any visible cause is one of the
+mysteries of our nature. As you grow older you will understand this
+better. We are forced to live in conscious possession of all faculties,
+all feelings, whether or not there are outward events to match them.
+Therefore you must expect to have anxiety within when your life is
+really at peace without; to have moments of despair when no failure
+threatens; to have your heart wrung with sympathy when no object of
+sorrow is nigh; to be spent with the need of loving when there is no
+earthly thing to receive your love. This is part of woman's life, and of
+all women, especially those who, like you, must live, not to stifle the
+tender, beautiful forces of nature, but to ennoble and unite them into
+one divine passion. Do not think, therefore, to escape these hours of
+heaviness and pain. No saint ever walked this earth without them.
+Perhaps the lesson to be gained is this: that we may feel things before
+they happen, so that if they do happen we shall be disciplined to bear
+them."
+
+The voice of the Mother Superior had become low and meditative; and,
+though resting on the bowed head, her eyes seemed fixed on events long
+past. After the silence of a few moments she continued in a brighter
+tone--
+
+"But, my child, I know the reason of _your_ unhappiness. I have warned
+you that excessive ardour would leave you overwrought and nervous; that
+you were being carried too far by your ideals. You live too much in your
+sympathies and your imagination. Patience, my little St. Theresa! No
+saint was ever made in a day, and it has taken all the centuries of the
+Church to produce its martyrs. Only think that your life is but begun;
+there will be time enough to accomplish everything. I have been watching,
+and I know. This is why I send _you_ to old Martha. I want you to have
+the rest, the exercise, the air of the fields. Go again to-morrow, and take
+her the ointment. I found it while you were gone to-day. It has been in the
+Church for centuries, and you know this bottle came from blessed Loretto in
+Italy. It may do her some good. And, for the next few days, less reading
+and study."
+
+"Mother!" Sister Dolorosa spoke as though she had not been listening.
+"What would become of me if I should ever--if any evil should ever
+befall me?"
+
+The Mother Superior stretched her hands out over the head on her knees
+as some great, fierce, old, grey eagle, scarred and strong with the
+storms of life, might make a movement to shield its imperilled young.
+The tone in which Sister Dolorosa had spoken startled her as the
+discovered edge of a precipice. It was so quiet, so abrupt, so terrifying
+with its suggestion of an abyss. For a moment she prayed silently and
+intensely.
+
+"Heaven mercifully shield you from harm!" she then said, in an
+awestricken whisper. "But, timid lamb, what harm can come to you?"
+
+Sister Dolorosa suddenly rose and stood before the Mother Superior.
+
+"I mean," she said, with her eyes on the floor and her voice scarcely
+audible--"I mean--if I should ever fail, would you cast me out?"
+
+"My child!--Sister!--Sister Dolorosa!--Cast you out!"
+
+The Mother Superior started up and folded her arms about the slight dark
+figure, which at once seemed to be standing aloof with infinite
+loneliness. For some time she sought to overcome this difficult,
+singular mood.
+
+"And now, my daughter," she murmured at last, "go to sleep and forget
+these foolish fears. I am near you!" There seemed to be a fortress of
+sacred protection and defiance in these words; but the next instant her
+head was bowed, her upward-pointing finger raised in the air, and in a
+tone of humble self-correction she added: "Nay, not I; the Sleepless
+guards you! Good-night."
+
+Sister Dolorosa lifted her head from the strong shoulder and turned her
+eyes, now luminous, upon the troubled face.
+
+"Forgive me, Mother!" she said, in a voice of scornful resolution.
+"Never--never again will I disturb you with such weakness as I have
+shown to-night. I _know_ that no evil can befall me! Forgive me, Mother.
+Good-night."
+
+While she sleeps learn her history. Pauline Cambron was descended from
+one of those sixty Catholic families of Maryland that formed a league in
+1785 for the purpose of emigrating to Kentucky without the rending of
+social ties or separation from the rites of their ancestral faith. Since
+then the Kentucky branch of the Cambrons has always maintained friendly
+relations with the Maryland branch, which is now represented by one of
+the wealthy and cultivated families of Baltimore. On one side the
+descent is French; and, as far back as this can be traced, there runs a
+tradition that some of the most beautiful of its women became barefoot
+Carmelite nuns in the various monasteries of France or on some
+storm-swept island of the Mediterranean Sea.
+
+The first of the Kentucky Cambrons settled in that part of the State in
+which, nearly a hundred years later, lived the last generation of
+them--the parents of Pauline. Of these she was the only child, so that
+upon her marriage depended the perpetuation of the Kentucky family. It
+gives to the Protestant mind a startling insight into the possibilities
+of a woman's life and destiny in Kentucky to learn the nature of the
+literature by which her sensitive and imaginative character was from the
+first impressed. This literature covers a field wholly unknown to the
+ordinary student of Kentucky history. It is not to be found in
+well-known works, but in the letters, reminiscences, and lives of
+foreign priests, and in the kindling and heroic accounts of the
+establishment of Catholic missions. It abounds in such stories as those
+of a black friar fatally thrown from a wild horse in the pathless
+wilderness; of a grey friar torn to pieces by a saw-mill; of a starving
+white friar stretched out to die under the green canopy of an oak; of
+priests swimming half-frozen rivers with the sacred vestments in their
+teeth; of priests hewing logs for a hut in which to celebrate the mass;
+of priests crossing and recrossing the Atlantic and traversing Italy and
+Belgium and France for money and pictures and books; of devoted women
+laying the foundation of powerful convents in half-ruined log-cabins,
+shivering on beds of straw sprinkled on the ground, driven by poverty to
+search in the wild woods for dyes with which to give to their motley
+worldly apparel the hue of the cloister, and dying at last, to be laid
+away in pitiless burial without coffin or shroud.
+
+Such incidents were to her the more impressive since happening in part
+in the region where lay the Cambron estate; and while very young she was
+herself repeatedly taken to visit the scenes of early religious
+tragedies. Often, too, around the fireside there was proud reference to
+the convent life of old France and to the saintly zeal of the
+Carmelites; and once she went with her parents to Baltimore and
+witnessed the taking of the veil by a cousin of hers--a scene that
+afterwards burned before her conscience as a lamp before a shrine.
+
+Is it strange if under such influences, living in a country place with
+few associates, reading in her father's library books that were to be
+had on the legends of the monastic orders and the lives of the
+saints--is it strange if to the young Pauline Cambron this world before
+long seemed little else than the battle-field of the Church, the ideal
+man in it a monk, the ideal woman a nun, the human heart a solemn
+sacrifice to Heaven, and human life a vast, sad pilgrimage to the shrine
+eternal?
+
+Among the places which had always appealed to her imagination as one of
+the heroic sites of Kentucky history was the Convent of the Stricken
+Heart, not far away. Whenever she came hither she seemed to be treading
+on sacred ground. Happening to visit it one summer day before her
+education was completed, she asked to be sent hither for the years that
+remained. When these were past, here, with the difficult consent of her
+parents, who saw thus perish the last hope of the perpetuation of the
+family, she took the white veil. Here at last she hid herself beneath
+the black. Her whole character at this stage of its unfolding may be
+understood from the name she assumed--Sister Dolorosa. With this name
+she wished not merely to extinguish her worldly personality, but to
+clothe herself with a lifelong expression of her sympathy with the
+sorrows of the world. By this act she believed that she would attain a
+change of nature so complete that the black veil of Sister Dolorosa
+would cover as in a funeral urn the ashes which had once been the heart
+of Pauline Cambron. And thus her conventual life began.
+
+But for those beings to whom the span on the summer-evening cloud is as
+nothing compared with that fond arch of beauty which it is a necessity
+of their nature to hang as a bow of promise above every beloved
+hope--for such dreamers the sadness of life lies in the dissipation of
+mystery and the disillusion of truth. When she had been a member of the
+order long enough to see things as they were, Sister Dolorosa found
+herself living in a large, plain, comfortable brick convent, situated in
+a retired and homely region of Southern Kentucky. Around her were plain
+nuns with the invincible contrariety of feminine temperament. Before her
+were plain duties. Built up around her were plain restrictions. She had
+rushed with outstretched arms towards poetic mysteries, and clasped
+prosaic reality.
+
+As soon as the lambent flame of her spirit had burned over this new
+life, as a fire before a strong wind rushes across a plain, she one day
+surveyed it with that sense of reality which sometimes visits the
+imaginative with such appalling vividness. Was it upon this dreary waste
+that her soul was to play out its drama of ideal womanhood?
+
+She answered the question in the only way possible to such a nature as
+hers. She divided her life in twain. Half, with perfect loyalty, she
+gave out to duty; the other, with equal loyalty, she stifled within. But
+perhaps this is no uncommon lot--this unmating of the forces of the
+mind, as though one of two singing-birds should be released to fly forth
+under the sky, while the other--the nobler singer--is kept voiceless in
+a darkened chamber.
+
+But the Sisters of the Stricken Heart are not cloistered nuns. Their
+chief vow is to go forth into the world to teach. Scarcely had Sister
+Dolorosa been intrusted with work of this kind before she conceived an
+aspiration to become a great teacher of history or literature, and
+obtained permission to spend extra hours in the convent library on a
+wider range of sacred reading. Here began a second era in her life.
+Books became the avenues along which she escaped from her present into
+an illimitable world. Her imagination, beginning to pine, now took wing
+and soared back to the remote, the splendid, the imperial, the august.
+Her sympathies, finding nothing around her to fix upon, were borne afar
+like winged seed and rooted on the colossal ruins of the centuries. Her
+passion for beauty fed on holy art. She lived at the full flood of life
+again.
+
+If in time revulsion came, she would live a shy, exquisite, hidden life
+of poetry in which she herself played the historic rôles. Now she would
+become a powerful abbess of old, ruling over a hundred nuns in an
+impregnable cloister. To the gates, stretched on a litter, wounded to
+death, they bore a young knight of the Cross. She had the gates opened.
+She went forth and bent over him; heard his dying message; at his
+request drew the plighted ring from his finger to send to another land.
+How beautiful he was! How many masses--how many, many masses--she had
+celebrated for the peace of his soul! Now she was St. Agatha, tortured
+by the proconsul; now she lay faint and cold in an underground cell, and
+was visited by Thomas à Kempis, who read to her long passages from the
+_Imitation_. Or she would tire of the past, and making herself an actor
+in her own future, in a brief hour live out the fancied drama of all her
+crowded years.
+
+But whatever part she took in this dream existence and beautiful
+passion-play of the soul, nothing attracted her but the perfect. For the
+commonplace she felt a guileless scorn.
+
+Thus for some time these unmated lives went on--the fixed outward life
+of duty, and the ever-wandering inner life of love. In mid-winter,
+walking across the shining fields, you have come to some little
+frost-locked stream. How mute and motionless! You set foot upon it, the
+ice is broken, and beneath is musical running water. Thus under the
+chaste rigid numbness of convent existence the heart of Sister Dolorosa
+murmured unheard and hurried away unseen to plains made warm and green
+by her imagination. But the old may survive upon memories; the young
+cannot thrive upon hope. Love, long reaching outward in vain, returns to
+the heart as self-pity. Sympathies, if not supported by close realities,
+fall in upon themselves like the walls of a ruined house. At last,
+therefore, even the hidden life of Sister Dolorosa grew weary of the
+future and the past, and came home to the present.
+
+The ardour of her studies and the rigour of her duties combined--but
+more than either that wearing away of the body by a restless mind--had
+begun to affect her health. Both were relaxed, and she was required to
+spend as much time as possible in the garden of the convent. It was like
+lifting a child that has become worn out with artificial playthings to
+an open window to see the flowers. With inexpressible relief she turned
+from mediæval books to living nature; and her beautiful imagination,
+that last of all faculties to fail a human being in an unhappy lot, now
+began to bind nature to her with fellowships which quieted the need of
+human association. She had long been used to feign correspondences with
+the fathers of the Church; she now established intimacies with dumb
+companions, and poured out her heart to them in confidence.
+
+The distant woods slowly clothing themselves in green; the faint perfume
+of the wild rose, running riot over some rotting fence; the majestical
+clouds about the sunset; the moon dying in the spectral skies; the
+silken rustling of doves' wings parting the soft foliage of the
+sentinel elms; landscapes of frost on her window-pane; crumbs in winter
+for the sparrows on the sill; violets under the leaves in the convent
+garden; myrtle on the graves of the nuns--such objects as these became
+the means by which her imprisoned life was released. On the sensuous
+beauty of the world she spent the chaste ravishments of her virginal
+heart. Her love descended on all things as in the night the dew fills
+and bends down the cups of the flowers.
+
+A few of these confidences--written on slips of paper, and no sooner
+written than cast aside--are given here. They are addressed severally to
+a white violet, an English sparrow, and a butterfly.
+
+"I have taken the black veil, but thou wearest the white, and thou
+dwellest in dim cloisters of green leaves--in the domed and
+many-pillared little shrines that line the dusty roadside, or seem more
+fitly built in the depths of holy woodlands. How often have I drawn near
+with timid steps, and, opening the doors of thy tiny oratories, found
+thee bending at thy silent prayers--bending so low that thy lips touched
+the earth, while the slow wind rang thine Angelus! Wast thou blooming
+anywhere near when He came into the wood of the thorn and the olive?
+Didst thou press thy cool face against His bruised feet? Had I been
+thou, I would have bloomed at the foot of the Cross, and fed His failing
+lungs with my last breath. Time never destroys thee, little sister, or
+stains thy whiteness; and thou wilt be bending at thy prayers among the
+green graves on the twilight hillside ages after I who lie below have
+finished mine. Pray for me then, pray for thine erring sister, thou
+pure-souled violet!"
+
+"How cold thou art! Shall I take thee in and warm thee on my bosom? Ah,
+no! For I know who thou art! Not a bird, but a little brown mendicant
+friar, begging barefoot in the snow. And thou livest in a cell under the
+convent eaves opposite my window. What ugly feet thou hast, little
+Father! And the thorns are on thy toes instead of about thy brow. That
+is a bad sign for a saint. I saw thee in a brawl the other day with a
+mendicant brother of thine order, and thou drovest him from roof to roof
+and from icy twig to twig, screaming and wrangling in a way to bring
+reproach upon the Church. Thou shouldst learn to defend a thesis more
+gently. Who is it that visits thy cell so often? A penitent to confess?
+And dost thou shrive her freely? I'd never confess to thee, thou cross
+little Father! Thou'dst have no mercy on me if I sinned, as sin I must
+since human I am. The good God is very good to thee that He keeps thee
+from sinning while He leaves me to do wrong. Ah, if it were but natural
+for me to be perfect! But that, little Father, is my idea of heaven. In
+heaven it will be natural for me to be perfect. I'll feed thee no longer
+than the winter lasts, for then thou'lt be a monk no longer, but a bird
+again. And canst thou tell me why? Because, when the winter is gone,
+thou'lt find a mate, and wert thou a monk thou'dst have none. For thou
+knowest perfectly well, little Father, that monks do not wed."
+
+"No fitting emblem of my soul art thou, fragile Psyche, mute and
+perishable lover of the gorgeous earth. For my soul has no summer, and
+there is no earthly object of beauty that it may fly to and rest upon as
+thou upon the beckoning buds. It is winter where I live. All things are
+cold and white, and my soul flies only above fresh fields of flowerless
+snow. But no blast can chill its wings, no mire bedraggle, or rude touch
+fray. I often wonder whether thou art mute, or the divine framework of
+winged melodies. Thy very wings are shaped like harps for the winds to
+play upon. So, too, my soul is silent never, though none can hear its
+music. Dost thou know that I am held in exile in this world that I
+inhabit? And dost thou know the flower that I fly ever towards and
+cannot reach? It is the white flower of eternal perfection that blooms
+and waits for the soul in Paradise. Upon that flower I shall some day
+rest my wings as thou foldest thine on a faultless rose."
+
+Harmonising with this growing passion for the beauty of the world--a
+passion that marked her approach to riper womanhood--was the care she
+took of her person. The coarse, flowing habit of the order gave no hint
+of the curves and symmetry of the snow-white figure throbbing with eager
+life within; but it could not conceal an air of refinement and movements
+of the most delicate grace. There was likewise a suggestion of artistic
+study in the arrangement of her veil, and the sacred symbol on her bosom
+was embroidered with touches of elaboration.
+
+It was when she had grown weary of books, of the imaginary drama of her
+life, and the loveliness of Nature, that Sister Dolorosa was sent by the
+Mother Superior on those visits of sympathy to old Martha Cross; and it
+was during her return from one of them that there befell her that
+adventure which she had deemed too slight to mention.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Her outward history was that night made known to Gordon Helm by old
+Martha Cross. When Sister Dolorosa passed him he followed her at a
+distance until she entered the convent gates. It caused him subtle pain
+to think what harm might be lurking to ensnare her innocence. But
+subtler pain shot through him as he turned away, leaving her housed
+within that inaccessible fold.
+
+Who was she, and from what mission returning alone at such an hour
+across those darkening fields? He had just come to the edge of the corn
+and started to follow up the path in quest of shelter for the night,
+when he had caught sight of her on the near hill-top, outlined with
+startling distinctness against the jasper sky and bathed in a tremulous
+sea of lovely light. He had held his breath as she advanced towards
+him. He had watched the play of emotions in her face as she paused a few
+yards off, and her surprise at the discovery of him--the timid start;
+the rounding of the fawn-like eyes; the vermeil tint overspreading the
+transparent purity of her skin: her whole nature disturbed like a
+wind-shaken anemone. All this he now remembered as he returned along the
+footpath. It brought him to the door of the farm-house, where he
+arranged to pass the night.
+
+"You are a stranger in this part of the country," said the old housewife
+an hour later.
+
+When he came in she had excused herself from rising from her chair by
+the chimney-side; but from that moment her eyes had followed him--those
+eyes of the old which follow the forms of the young with such despairing
+memories. By the chimney-side sat old Ezra, powerful, stupid, tired,
+silently smoking, and taking little notice of the others. Hardly a chill
+was in the air, but for her sake a log blazed in the cavernous fireplace
+and threw its flickering light over the guest who sat in front.
+
+He possessed unusual physical beauty--of the type sometimes found in the
+men of those Kentucky families that have descended with little admixture
+from English stock; body and limbs less than athletic, but formed for
+strength and symmetry; hair brown, thick, and slightly curling over the
+forehead and above the ears; complexion blond, but mellowed into rich
+tints from sun and open air; eyes of dark grey-blue, beneath brows low
+and firm; a moustache golden-brown, thick, and curling above lips red
+and sensuous; a neck round and full, and bearing aloft a head well
+poised and moulded. The irresistible effect of his appearance was an
+impression of simple joyousness in life. There seemed to be stored up in
+him the warmth of the sunshine of his land; the gentleness of its
+fields; the kindness of its landscapes. And he was young--so young! To
+study him was to see that he was ripe to throw himself heedless into
+tragedy; and that for him, not once, but nightly, Endymion fell asleep
+to be kissed in his dreams by encircling love.
+
+"You are a stranger in this part of the country," said the old
+housewife, observing the elegance of his hunting-dress and his manner of
+high breeding.
+
+"Yes; I have never been in this part of Kentucky before." He paused; but
+seeing that some account of himself was silently waited for, and as
+though wishing at once to despatch the subject, he added: "I am from the
+blue-grass region, about a hundred miles northward of here. A party of
+us were on our way further south to hunt. On the train we fell in with a
+gentleman who told us he thought there were a good many birds around
+here, and I was chosen to stop over to ascertain. We might like to try
+this neighbourhood as we return, so I left my things at the station and
+struck out across the country this afternoon. I have heard birds in
+several directions, but had no dog. However, I shot a few hoves in a
+cornfield."
+
+"There are plenty of birds close around here, but most of them stay on
+the land that is owned by the Sisters, and they don't like to have it
+hunted over. All the land between here and the convent belongs to them
+except the little that's mine." This was said somewhat dryly by the old
+man, who knocked the ashes off his pipe without looking up.
+
+"I am sorry to have trespassed; but I was not expecting to find a
+convent out in the country, although I believe I have heard that there
+is an abbey of Trappist monks somewhere down here."
+
+"Yes; the abbey is not far from here."
+
+"It seems strange to me. I can hardly believe I am in Kentucky," he said
+musingly, and a solemn look came over his face as his thoughts went back
+to the sunset scene.
+
+The old housewife's keen eyes pierced to his secret mood.
+
+"You ought to go there."
+
+"Do they receive visitors at the convent?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Certainly; the Sisters are very glad to have strangers visit the place.
+It's a pity you hadn't come sooner. One of the Sisters was here this
+afternoon, and you might have spoken to her about it."
+
+This intelligence threw him into silence, and again her eyes fed upon
+his firelit face with inappeasable hunger. She was one of those women,
+to be met with the world over and in any station, who are remarkable for
+a love of youth and the world, which age, sickness, and isolation but
+deepen rather than subdue; and his sudden presence at her fireside was
+more than grateful. Not satisfied with what he had told, she led the
+talk back to the blue-grass country, and got from him other facts of his
+life, asking questions in regard to the features of that more fertile
+and beautiful land. In return she sketched the history of her own
+region, and dwelt upon its differences of soil, people, and
+religion--chiefly the last. It was while she spoke of the Order of the
+Stricken Heart that he asked a question he had long reserved.
+
+"Do you know the history of any of these Sisters?"
+
+"I know the history of all of them who are from Kentucky. I have known
+Sister Dolorosa since she was a child."
+
+"Sister Dolorosa!" The name pierced him like a spear.
+
+"The nun who was here to-day is called Sister Dolorosa. Her real name
+was Pauline Cambron."
+
+The fire died away. The old man left the room on some pretext and did
+not return. The story that followed was told with many details not given
+here--traced up from parentage and childhood with that fine tracery of
+the feminine mind which is like intricate embroidery, and which leaves
+the finished story wrought out on the mind like a complete design, with
+every point fastened to the sympathies.
+
+As soon as she had finished he rose quickly from a desire to be alone.
+So well had the story been knit to his mind that he felt it an
+irritation, a binding pain. He was bidding her good-night when she
+caught his hand. Something in his mere temperament drew women towards
+him.
+
+"Are you married?" she asked, looking into his eyes in the way with
+which those who are married sometimes exchange confidences.
+
+He looked quickly away, and his face flushed a little fiercely.
+
+"I am not married," he replied, withdrawing his hand.
+
+She threw it from her with a gesture of mock, pleased impatience; and
+when he had left the room, she sat for a while over the ashes.
+
+"If she were not a nun----" then she laughed and made her difficult way
+to her bed. But in the room above he sat down to think.
+
+Was this, then, not romance, but life in his own State? Vaguely he had
+always known that further south in Kentucky a different element of
+population had settled, and extended into the New World that mighty cord
+of ecclesiastical influence which of old had braided every European
+civilisation into an iron tissue of faith. But this knowledge had never
+touched his imagination. In his own land there were no rural Catholic
+churches, much less convents, and even among the Catholic congregations
+of the neighbouring towns he had not many acquaintances and fewer
+friends.
+
+To descend as a gay bird of passage, therefore, upon these secluded,
+sombre fields, and find himself in the neighbourhood of a powerful
+Order--to learn that a girl, beautiful, accomplished, of wealth and high
+social position, had of her own choice buried herself for life within
+its bosom--gave him a startling insight into Kentucky history as it was
+forming in his own time. Moreover--and this touched him especially--it
+gave him a deeper insight into the possibilities of woman's nature; for
+a certain narrowness of view regarding the true mission of woman in the
+world belonged to him as a result of education. In the conservative
+Kentucky society by which he had been largely moulded the opinion
+prevailed that woman fulfilled her destiny when she married well and
+adorned a home. All beauty, all accomplishments, all virtues and graces,
+were but means for attaining this end.
+
+As for himself, he came of a stock which throughout the generations of
+Kentucky life, and back of these along the English ancestry, had stood
+for the home; a race of men with the fireside traits: sweet-tempered,
+patient, and brave; well-formed and handsome; cherishing towards women a
+sense of chivalry; protecting them fiercely and tenderly; loving them
+romantically and quickly for the sake of beauty; marrying early, and
+sometimes at least holding towards their wives such faith, that these
+had no more to fear from all other women in the world than from all
+other men.
+
+Descended from such a stock and moulded by the social ideals of his
+region, Helm naturally stood for the home himself. And yet there was a
+difference. In a sense he was a product of the new Kentucky. His infancy
+had been rocked on the chasm of the Civil War; his childhood spent amid
+its ruins; his youth ruled by two contending spirits--discord and peace:
+and earliest manhood had come to him only in the morning of the new era.
+It was because the path of his life had thus run between light and shade
+that his nature was joyous and grave; only joy claimed him entirely as
+yet, while gravity asserted itself merely in the form of sympathy with
+anything that suffered, and a certain seriousness touching his own
+responsibility in life.
+
+Reflecting on this responsibility while his manhood was yet forming, he
+felt the need of his becoming a better, broader type of man, matching
+the better, broader age. His father was about his model of a gentleman;
+but he should be false to the admitted progress of the times were he not
+an improvement on his father. And since his father had, as judged by the
+ideals of the old social order, been a blameless gentleman of the rural
+blue-grass kind, with farm, spacious homestead, slaves, leisure, and a
+library,--to all of which, except the slaves, he would himself succeed
+upon his father's death--his dream of duty took the form of becoming a
+rural blue-grass gentleman of the newer type, reviving the best
+traditions of the past, but putting into his relations with his
+fellow-creatures an added sense of helpfulness, a broader sense of
+justice, and a certain energy of leadership in all things that made for
+a purer, higher human life. It will thus be seen that he took seriously
+not only himself, but the reputation of his State; for he loved it,
+people and land, with broad, sensitive tenderness, and never sought or
+planned for his future apart from civil and social ends.
+
+It was perhaps a characteristic of him as a product of the period that
+he had a mind for looking at his life somewhat abstractedly and with a
+certain thought-out plan; for this disposition of mind naturally belongs
+to an era when society is trembling upon the brink of new activities and
+forced to the discovery of new ideals. But he cherished no religious
+passion, being committed by inheritance to a mild, unquestioning,
+undeviating Protestantism. His religion was more in his conduct than in
+his prayers, and he tried to live its precepts instead of following them
+from afar. Still, his make was far from heroic. He had many faults; but
+it is less important to learn what these were than to know that, as far
+as he was aware of their existence, he was ashamed of them, and tried to
+overcome them.
+
+Such, in brief, were Pauline Cambron and Gordon Helm: coming from
+separate regions of Kentucky, descended from unlike pasts, moulded by
+different influences, striving towards ends in life far apart and
+hostile. And being thus, at last they slept that night.
+
+When she had been left alone, and had begun to prepare herself for bed,
+across her mind passed and repassed certain words of the Mother
+Superior, stilling her spirit like the waving of a wand of peace: "To be
+troubled without any visible cause is one of the mysteries of our
+nature." True, before she fell asleep there rose all at once a
+singularly clear recollection of that silent meeting in the fields; but
+her prayers fell thick and fast upon it like flakes of snow, until it
+was chastely buried from the eye of conscience; and when she slept, two
+tears, slowly loosened from her brain by some repentant dream, could
+alone have told that there had been trouble behind her peaceful eyes.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Sister Dolorosa was returning from her visit to old Martha on the
+following afternoon. When she awoke that morning she resolutely put away
+all thought of what had happened the evening before. She prayed oftener
+than usual that day. She went about all duties with unwonted fervour.
+When she set out in the afternoon, and reached the spot in the fields
+where the meeting had taken place, it was inevitable that a nature
+sensitive and secluded like hers should be visited by some question
+touching who he was and whither he had gone; for it did not even occur
+to her that he would ever cross her path again. Soon she reached old
+Martha's; and then--a crippled toad with a subtle tongue had squatted
+for an hour at the ear of Eve, and Eve, beguiled, had listened. And now
+she was again returning across the fields homeward. Homeward?
+
+Early that afternoon Helm had walked across the country to the station,
+some two miles off, to change his dress, with the view of going to the
+convent the next day. As he came back he followed the course which he
+had taken the day before, and this brought him into the same footpath
+across the fields.
+
+Thus they met the second time. When she saw him, had she been a bird,
+with one sudden bound she would have beaten the air down beneath her
+frightened wings and darted high over his head straight to the convent.
+But his step grew slower and his look expectant. When they were a few
+yards apart he stepped out of the path into the low, grey weeds of the
+field, and seemed ready to pause; but she had instinctively drawn her
+veil close, and was passing on. Then he spoke quickly.
+
+"I beg your pardon, but are strangers allowed to visit the convent?"
+
+There was no mistaking the courtesy of the tone. But she did not lift
+her face towards him. She merely paused, though seeming to shrink away.
+He saw the fingers of one hand lace themselves around the cross. Then a
+moment later, in a voice very low and gentle, she replied, "The Mother
+Superior is glad to receive visitors at the convent," and, bowing, moved
+away.
+
+He stood watching her with a quick flush of disappointment. Her voice,
+even more than her garb, had at once waved off approach. In his mind he
+had crossed the distance from himself to her so often that he had
+forgotten the actual abyss of sacred separation. Very thoughtfully he
+turned at last and took his way along the footpath.
+
+As he was leaving the farm-house the next day to go to the convent, Ezra
+joined him, merely saying that he was going also. The old man had few
+thoughts; but with that shrewd secretiveness which is sometimes found in
+the dull mind he kept his counsels to himself. Their walk was finished
+in silence, and soon the convent stood before them.
+
+Through a clear sky the wan light fell upon it as lifeless as though
+sent from a dead sun. The air hung motionless. The birds were gone. Not
+a sound fell upon the strained ear. Not a living thing relieved the eye.
+And yet within what tragedies and conflicts, what wounds and thorns of
+womanhood! Here, then, she lived and struggled and soared. An unearthly
+quietude came over him as he walked up the long avenue of elms,
+painfully jarred on by the noise of Ezra's shuffling feet among the dry
+leaves. Joyous life had retired to infinite remoteness; and over him,
+like a preternatural chill in the faint sunlight, crept the horror of
+this death in life. Strangely enough he felt at one and the same time a
+repugnance to his own nature of flesh and a triumphant delight in the
+possession of bodily health, liberty--the liberty of the world--and a
+mind unfettered by tradition.
+
+A few feet from the entrance an aged nun stepped from behind a hedgerow
+of shrubbery and confronted them.
+
+"Will you state your business?" she said coldly, glancing at Helm and
+fixing her eyes on Ezra, who for reply merely nodded to Helm.
+
+"I am a stranger in this part of the country, and heard that I would be
+allowed to visit the convent."
+
+"Are you a Catholic?"
+
+"No; I am a Protestant."
+
+"Are you acquainted with any of the young ladies in the convent?"
+
+"I am not."
+
+She looked him through and through. He met her scrutiny with frank
+unconsciousness.
+
+"Will you come in? I will take your name to the Mother Superior."
+
+They followed her into a small reception-room, and sat for a long time
+waiting. Then an inner door opened, and another aged nun, sweet-faced
+and gentle, entered and greeted them pleasantly, recognising Ezra as an
+acquaintance.
+
+"Another Sister will be sent to accompany us," she said, and sat down to
+wait, talking naturally the while to the old man. Then the door opened
+again, and the heart of Helm beat violently; there was no mistaking the
+form, the grace. She crossed to the Sister, and spoke in an undertone.
+
+"Sister Generose is engaged. Mother sent me in her place, Sister." Then
+she greeted Ezra and bowed to Helm, lifting to him an instant, but
+without recognition, her tremulous eyes. Her face had the whiteness of
+alabaster.
+
+"We will go to the church first," said the Sister, addressing Helm, who
+placed himself beside her, the others following.
+
+When they entered the church he moved slowly around the walls, trying to
+listen to his guide and to fix his thoughts upon the pictures and the
+architecture. Presently he became aware that Ezra had joined them, and
+as soon as pretext offered he looked back. In a pew near the door
+through which they had entered he could just see the kneeling form and
+bowed head of Sister Dolorosa. There she remained while they made the
+circuit of the building, and not until they were quitting it did she
+rise and again place herself by the side of Ezra. Was it her last prayer
+before her temptation?
+
+They walked across the grounds towards the old-fashioned flower-garden
+of the convent. The Sister opened the little latticed gate, and the
+others passed in. The temptation was to begin in the very spot where
+Love had long been wandering amid dumb companions.
+
+"Ezra!" called the aged Sister, pausing just inside the gate and looking
+down at some recently dug bulbs, "has Martha taken up her tender bulbs?
+The frost will soon be falling." The old man sometimes helped at the
+convent in garden work.
+
+"Who is this young man?" she inquired carelessly a few moments later.
+
+But Ezra was one of those persons who cherish a faint dislike of all
+present company. Moreover, he knew the good Sister's love of news. So he
+began to resist her with the more pleasure that he could at least evade
+her questions.
+
+"I don't know," he replied, with a mysterious shake of the head.
+
+"Come this way," she said beguilingly, turning aside into another walk,
+"and look at the chrysanthemums. How did you happen to meet him?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Sister Dolorosa and Helm found themselves walking slowly side by
+side down the garden-path--this being what he most had hoped for and she
+most had feared--there fell upon each a momentary silence of
+preparation. Speak she must; if only in speaking she might not err.
+Speak he could; if only in speaking he might draw from her more
+knowledge of her life, and in some becoming way cause her to perceive
+his interest in it.
+
+Then she, as his guide, keeping her face turned towards the border of
+flowers, but sometimes lifting it shyly to his, began with great
+sweetness and a little hurriedly, as if fearing to pause--
+
+"The garden is not pretty now. It is full of flowers, but only a few are
+blooming. These are daffodils. They bloomed in March, long ago. And here
+were spring beauties. They grow wild, and do not last long. The Mother
+Superior wished some cultivated in the garden, but they are better if
+let alone to grow wild. And here are violets, which come in April. And
+here is Adam and Eve, and tulips. They are gay flowers, and bloom
+together for company. You can see Adam and Eve a long way off, and they
+look better at a distance. These were the white lilies, but one of the
+Sisters died, and we made a cross. That was in June. Jump-up-Johnnies
+were planted in this bed, but they did not do well. It has been a bad
+year. A storm blew the hollyhocks down, and there were canker-worms in
+the roses. That is the way with the flowers: they fail one year, and
+they succeed the next. They would never fail if they were let alone. It
+is pleasant to see them starting out in the Spring to be perfect each in
+its own way. It is pleasant to water them and to help. But some will be
+perfect, and some will be imperfect, and no one can alter that. They are
+like the children in the school; only the flowers would all be perfect
+if they had their way, and the children would all be wrong if they had
+theirs--the poor, good children! This is touch-me-not. Perhaps you have
+never heard of any such flower. And there, next to it, is
+love-lies-bleeding. We have not much of that; only this one little
+plant." And she bent over and stroked it.
+
+His whole heart melted under the white radiance of her innocence. He had
+thought her older; now his feeling took the form of the purest delight
+in some exquisite child nature. And therefore, feeling thus towards her,
+and seeing the poor, dead garden with only common flowers, which
+nevertheless she separately loved, oblivious of their commonness, he
+said with sudden warmth, holding her eyes with his--
+
+"I wish you could see my mother's garden and the flowers that bloom in
+it." And as he spoke there came to him a vision of her as she might look
+in a certain secluded corner of it, where ran a trellised walk;
+over-clambering roses, pale golden, full blown or budding, and bent with
+dew; the May sun golden in the heavens; far and near birds singing and
+soaring in ecstasy; the air lulling the sense with perfume, quickening
+the blood with freshness; and there, within that frame of roses, her
+head bare and shining, her funereal garb for ever laid aside for one
+that matched the loveliest hue of living nature around, a flower at her
+throat, flowers in her hand, sadness gone from her face, there the pure
+and radiant incarnation of a too-happy world, this exquisite
+child-nature, advancing towards him with eyes of love.
+
+Having formed this picture, he could not afterwards destroy it; and as
+they resumed their walk he began very simply to describe his mother's
+garden, she listening closely because of her love for flowers, which had
+become companions to her, and merely saying dreamily, half to herself
+and with guarded courtesy half to him, "It must be beautiful."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The Mother Superior intends to make the garden larger next year, and to
+have fine flowers in it, Ezra. It has been a prosperous year in the
+school, and there will be money to spare. This row of lilacs is to be
+dug up, and the fence set back so as to take in the onion patch over
+there. When does he expect to go away?" The aged Sister had not made
+rapid progress.
+
+"I haven't heard him say," replied the old man.
+
+"Perhaps Martha has heard him say."
+
+Ezra only struck the toe of his stout boot with his staff.
+
+"The Mother Superior will want _you_ to dig up the lilacs, Ezra. You
+can do it better than any one else."
+
+The old man shook his head threateningly at the bushes. "I can settle
+them," he said.
+
+"Better than any one else. Has Martha heard him say when he is going
+away?"
+
+"To-morrow," he replied, conceding something in return for the lilacs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"These are the chrysanthemums. They are white, but some are perfect and
+some are imperfect, you see. Those that are perfect are the ones to feel
+proud of, but the others are the ones to love."
+
+"If all were perfect would you no longer love them?" he said gently,
+thinking how perfect she was and how easy it would be to love her.
+
+"If all were perfect, I could love all alike, because none would need to
+be loved more than others."
+
+"And when the flowers in the garden are dead, what do you find to love
+then?" he asked, laughing a little and trying to follow her mood.
+
+"It would not be fair to forget them because they are dead. But they are
+not dead; they go away for a season, and it would not be fair to forget
+them because they have gone away." This she said simply and seriously as
+though her conscience were dealing with human virtues and duties.
+
+"And are you satisfied to love things that are not present?" he asked,
+looking at her with sudden earnestness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The Mother Superior will wish him to take away a favourable impression
+of the convent," said the Sister. "Young ladies are sometimes sent to us
+from that region." And now, having gotten from Ezra the information she
+desired and turned their steps towards the others, she looked at Helm
+with greater interest.
+
+"Should you like to go upon the observatory?" she meekly asked, pointing
+to the top of the adjacent building. "From there you can see how far the
+convent lands extend. Besides, it is the only point that commands a view
+of the whole country."
+
+The scene of the temptation was to be transferred to the pinnacle of the
+temple.
+
+"It is not asking too much of you to climb so far for my pleasure?"
+
+"It is our mission to climb," she replied wearily; "and if our strength
+fails, we rest by the way."
+
+Of herself she spoke literally; for when they came to the topmost story
+of the building, from which the observatory was reached by a short
+flight of steps, she sank into a seat placed near as a resting-place.
+
+"Will you go above, Sister?" she said feebly. "I will wait here."
+
+On the way up, also, the old man had been shaking his head with a stupid
+look of alarm and muttering his disapproval.
+
+"There is a high railing, Ezra," she now said to him, "You could not
+fall." But he refused to go further; he suffered from vertigo.
+
+The young pair went up alone.
+
+For miles in all directions the landscape lay shimmering in the autumnal
+sunlight--a poor, rough, homely land, with a few farmhouses of the
+plainest kind. Briefly she traced for him the boundary of the convent
+domain. And then he, thinking proudly of his own region, now lying heavy
+in varied autumnal ripeness and teeming with noble, gentle animal life;
+with rolling pastures as green as May under great trees of crimson and
+gold; with flashing streams and placid sheets of water, and great
+secluded homesteads--he, in turn, briefly described it; and she, loving
+the sensuous beauty of the world, listened more dreamily, merely
+repeating over and over, half to herself, and with more guarded courtesy
+half to him, "It must be very beautiful."
+
+But whether she suddenly felt that she had yielded herself too far to
+the influence of his words and wished to counteract this, or whether she
+was aroused to offset his description by another of unlike interest,
+scarcely had he finished when she pointed towards a long stretch of
+woodland that lay like a mere wavering band of brown upon the western
+horizon.
+
+"It was through those woods," she said, her voice trembling slightly,
+"that the procession of Trappists marched behind the cross when they
+fled to this country from France. Beyond that range of hills is the home
+of the Silent Brotherhood. In this direction," she continued, pointing
+southward, "is the creek which used to be so deep in winter that the
+priests had to swim it as they walked from one distant mission to
+another in the wilderness, holding above the waves the crucifix and the
+sacrament. Under that tree down there the Father who founded this
+convent built with his own hands the cabin that was the first church,
+and hewed out of logs the first altar. It was from those trees that the
+first nuns got the dyes for their vestments. On the floor of that cabin
+they sometimes slept in mid-winter with no other covering than an armful
+of straw. Those were heroic days."
+
+If she had indeed felt some secret need to recover herself by reciting
+the heroisms of local history, she seemed to have succeeded. Her face
+kindled with emotion; and as he watched it he forgot even her creed in
+this revelation of her nature, which touched in him also something
+serious and exalted. But as she ceased he asked, with peculiar
+interest--
+
+"Are there any Kentuckians among the Trappist Fathers?"
+
+"No," she replied, after a momentary silence, and in a voice lowered to
+great sadness. "There was one a few years ago. His death was a great
+blow to the Fathers. They had hoped that he might some day become the
+head of the order in Kentucky. He was called Father Palemon."
+
+For another moment nothing was said. They were standing side by side,
+looking towards that quarter of the horizon which she had pointed out as
+the site of the abbey. Then he spoke meditatively, as though his mind
+had gone back unawares to some idea that was very dear to him--
+
+"No, this does not seem much like Kentucky; but, after all, every
+landscape is essentially the same to me if there are homes on it. Poor
+as this country is, still it is history; it is human life. Here are the
+eternal ties and relations. Here are the eternal needs and duties;
+everything that keeps the world young and the heart at peace. Here is
+the unchanging expression of our common destiny, as creatures who must
+share all things, and bear all things, and be bound together in life and
+death."
+
+"Sister!" called up the nun waiting below, "is not the wind blowing?
+Will you not take cold?"
+
+"The wind is not blowing, Sister, but I am coming."
+
+They turned their faces outward upon the landscape once more. Across it
+wound the little footpath towards the farm-house in the distance. By a
+common impulse their eyes rested upon the place of their first meeting.
+He pointed to it.
+
+"I shall never forget that spot," he said impulsively.
+
+"Nor I!"
+
+Her words were not spoken. They were not uttered within. As unexpectedly
+and silently as in the remotest profound of the heavens at midnight some
+palest little star is loosened from its orbit, shoots a brief span, and
+disappears, this confession of hers traced its course across the depths
+of her secret consciousness; but, having made it to herself, she kept
+her eyes veiled, and did not look at him again that day.
+
+"I think you have now seen everything that could be of any interest,"
+the aged Sister said doubtfully, when they stood in the yard below.
+
+"The place is very interesting to me," he answered, looking around that
+he might discover some way of prolonging his visit.
+
+"The graveyard, Sister. We might go there." The barely audible words
+were Sister Dolorosa's. The scene of the temptation was to be
+transferred for the third time.
+
+They walked some distance down a sloping hillside, and stepped softly
+within the sacred enclosure. A graveyard of nuns! O Mother Earth,
+all-bearing, passion-hearted mother! Thou that sendest love one for
+another into thy children, from the least to the greatest, as thou
+givest them life! Thou that livest by their loves and their myriad
+plightings of troth and myriad marriages! With what inconsolable sorrow
+must thou receive back upon thy bosom, the chaste dust of lorn virgins,
+whose bosoms thou didst mould for a lover's arms and a babe's slumbers!
+As marble vestals of the ancient world, buried and lost, they lie,
+chiselled into a fixed attitude of prayer through the silent centuries.
+
+The aspect and spirit of the place: the simple graves placed side by
+side like those of the nameless poor, or of soldiers fallen in an
+unfriendly land: the rude wooden cross at the head of each, bearing the
+sacred name of her who was dust below; the once chirruping nests of
+birds here and there in the grass above the songless lips; the sad
+desolation of this unfinished end--all were the last thing needed to
+wring the heart of Helm with dumb pity and an ungovernable anguish of
+rebellion. This, then, was to be her portion. His whole nature cried
+aloud against it. His ideas of human life, civilisation, his age, his
+country, his State, rose up in protest. He did not heed the words of the
+Sister beside him. His thoughts were with Sister Dolorosa, who followed
+with Ezra in a silence which she had but once broken since her last
+words to him. He could have caught her up and escaped back with her into
+the liberty of life, into the happiness of the world.
+
+Unable to endure the place longer, he himself led the way out. At the
+gate the Sister fell behind with Ezra.
+
+"He seems deeply impressed by his visit," she said in an undertone, "and
+should bear with him a good account of the convent. Note what he says,
+Ezra. The order wants friends in Kentucky, where it was born and has
+flourished;" and looking at Sister Dolorosa and Helm, who were a short
+distance in front, she added to herself--
+
+"In her, more than in any other one of us, he will behold the perfect
+spiritual type of the convent. By her he will be made to feel the power
+of the order to consecrate women, in America, in Kentucky, to the
+service of the everlasting Church."
+
+Meantime, Sister Dolorosa and Helm walked side by side in a silence
+that neither could break. He was thinking of her as a woman of
+Kentucky--of his own generation--and trying to understand the motive
+that had led her to consecrate herself to such a life. His own ideal of
+duty was so different.
+
+"I have never thought," he said at length, in a voice lowered so as to
+reach her ear alone--"I have never thought that my life would not be
+full of happiness. I have never supposed I could help being happy if I
+did my duty."
+
+She made no reply, and again they walked on in silence and drew near the
+convent building. There was so much that he wished to say, but scarcely
+one of his thoughts that he dared utter. At length he said, with
+irrepressible feeling--
+
+"I wish your life did not seem to me so sad. I wish, when I go away
+to-morrow, that I could carry away, with my thoughts of this place, the
+thought that you are happy. As long as I remember it I wish I could
+remember you as being happy."
+
+"You have no right to remember me at all," she said quickly, speaking
+for the nun and betraying the woman.
+
+"But I cannot help it," he said.
+
+"Remember me, then, not as desiring to be happy, but as living to
+become blessed."
+
+This she said, breaking the long silence which had followed upon his too
+eager exclamation. Her voice had become hushed into unison with her meek
+and patient words. And then she paused, and, turning, waited for the
+Sister to come up beside them. Nor did she even speak to him again,
+merely bowing without lifting her eyes when, a little later, he thanked
+them and took his leave.
+
+In silence he and the old man returned to the farm-house, for his
+thoughts were with her. In the garden she had seemed to him almost as a
+child, talking artlessly of her sympathies and ties with mute
+playthings; then on the heights she had suddenly revealed herself as the
+youthful transcendent devotee; and finally, amid the scenes of death,
+she had appeared a woman too quickly aged and too early touched with
+resignation. He did not know that the effect of convent life is to force
+certain faculties into maturity while others are repressed into
+unalterable unripeness; so that in such instances as Sister Dolorosa's
+the whole nature resembles some long, sloping mountain-side, with an
+upper zone of ever-lingering snow for childhood, below this a green
+vernal belt for maidenhood, and near the foot fierce summer heats and
+summer storms for womanhood. Gradually his plan of joining his friends
+the next day wavered for reasons that he could hardly have named.
+
+And Sister Dolorosa--what of her when the day was over? Standing that
+night in a whitewashed, cell-like room, she took off the heavy black
+veil and hood which shrouded her head from all human vision, and then
+unfastening at waist and throat the heavier black vestment of the order,
+allowed it to slip to the floor, revealing a white under-habit of the
+utmost simplicity of design. It was like the magical transformation of a
+sorrow-shrouded woman back into the shape of her own earliest
+maidenhood.
+
+Her hair, of the palest gold, would, if unshorn, have covered her figure
+in a soft, thick golden cloud; but shorn, it lay about her neck and ears
+in large, lustrous waves that left defined the contour of her beautiful
+head, and gave to it the aerial charm that belongs to the joyousness of
+youth. Her whole figure was relaxed into a posture slightly drooping;
+her bare arms, white as the necks of swans, hung in forgotten grace at
+her sides; her eyes, large, dark, poetic, and spiritual, were bent upon
+the floor, so that the lashes left their shadows on her cheeks, while
+the delicate, overcircling brows were arched high with melancholy. As
+the nun's funereal robes had slipped from her person had her mind
+slipped back into the past, that she stood thus, all the pure oval of
+her sensitive face stilled to an expression of brooding pensiveness? On
+the urn which held the ashes of her heart had some legend of happy
+shapes summoned her fondly to return?--some garden? some radiant
+play-fellow of childhood summers, already dim but never to grow dimmer?
+
+Sighing deeply, she stepped across the dark circle on the floor which
+was the boundary of her womanhood. As she did so her eyes rested on a
+small table where lay a rich veil of white that she had long been
+embroidering for a shrine of the Virgin. Slowly, still absently, she
+walked to it, and, taking it up, threw it over her head, so that the
+soft fabric enveloped her head and neck and fell in misty folds about
+her person; she thinking the while only of the shrine; she looking down
+on this side and on that, and wishing only to judge how well this design
+and that design, patiently and prayerfully wrought out, might adorn the
+image of the Divine Mother in the church of the convent.
+
+But happening to be standing quite close to the white wall of the room
+with the lamp behind her, when she raised her eyes she caught sight of
+her shadow, and with a low cry clasped her hands, and for an instant,
+breathless, surveyed it. No mirrors are allowed in the convent. Since
+entering it Sister Dolorosa had not seen a reflection of herself, except
+perhaps her shadow in the sun or her face in a troubled basin of water.
+Now, with one overwhelming flood of womanly self-consciousness, she bent
+forward, noting the outline of her uncovered head, of her bared neck and
+shoulders and arms. Did this accidental adorning of herself in the veil
+of a bride, after she had laid aside the veil of the Church, typify her
+complete relapse of nature? And was this the lonely marriage-moment of
+her betrayed heart?
+
+For a moment, trembling, not before the image on the wall, but before
+that vivid mirror which memory and fancy set before every woman when no
+real mirror is nigh, she indulged her self-surrender to thoughts that
+covered her, on face and neck, with a rosy cloud more maidenly than the
+white mist of the veil. Then, as if recalled by some lightning stroke of
+conscience, with fearful fingers she lifted off the veil, extinguished
+the lamp, and, groping her way on tiptoe to the bedside, stood beside
+it, afraid to lie down, afraid to pray, her eyes wide open in the
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+Sleep gathers up the soft threads of passion that have been spun by us
+during the day, and weaves them into a tapestry of dreams on which we
+see the history of our own characters. We awake to find our wills more
+inextricably caught in the tissues of their own past; we stir, and
+discover that we are the heirs to our dead selves of yesterday, with a
+larger inheritance of transmitted purpose.
+
+When Gordon awoke the next morning, among his first thoughts was the
+idea of going on to join his friends that day, and this thought now
+caused him unexpected depression. Had he been older, he might have
+accepted this unwillingness to go away as the best reason for leaving;
+but, young, and habitually self-indulgent towards his desires when they
+were not connected with vice, he did not trouble himself with any
+forecast of consequences.
+
+"You ought not to go away to-day," the old housewife said to him in the
+morning, wishing to detain him through love of his company. "To-morrow
+will be Sunday, and you ought to go to vespers and hear Sister Dolorosa
+sing. There is not such another voice in any convent in Kentucky."
+
+"I will stay," he replied quickly; and the next afternoon he was seated
+in the rear of the convent church, surrounded by rural Catholic
+worshippers who had assembled from the neighbourhood. The entire front
+of the nave on one side was filled with the black-veiled Sisters of the
+order; that on the other with the white-veiled novices--two
+far-journeying companies of consecrated souls who reminded him in the
+most solemn way how remote, how inaccessible, was that young pilgrim
+among them of whom for a long time now he had been solely thinking. With
+these two companies of sacrificial souls before him he understood her
+character in a new light.
+
+He beheld her much as a brave, beautiful boy volunteer, who, suddenly
+waving a bright, last adieu to gay companions in some gay-streeted town,
+from motives of the loftiest heroism, takes his place in the rear of
+passing soldiery, marching to misguided death: who, from the rear,
+glowing with too impetuous ardour, makes his way from rank to rank ever
+towards the front; and who, at last, bearing the heavy arms and wearing
+the battle-stained uniform of a veteran, steps forward to the van at
+the commander's side, and sets his fresh, pure face undaunted towards
+destruction. As he thought of her thus, deeper forces stirred within his
+nature than had ever been aroused by any other woman. In comparison
+every one that he had known became for the moment commonplace, human
+life as he was used to it gross and uninspiring, and his own ideal of
+duty a dwarfish mixture of selfishness and luxurious triviality.
+Impulsive in his recognition of nobleness of nature wherever he
+perceived it, for this devotedness of purpose he began to feel the
+emotion which of all that ever visit the human heart is at once the most
+humbling, the most uplifting, and the most enthralling--the hero-worship
+of a strong man for a fragile woman.
+
+The service began. As it went on he noticed here and there among those
+near him such evidences of restlessness as betray in a seated throng
+high-wrought expectancy of some pleasure too long deferred. But at last
+these were succeeded by a breathless hush, as, from the concealed
+organ-loft above, a low, minor prelude was heard, groping and striving
+nearer and nearer towards the concealed motive, as a little wave creeps
+further and further along a melancholy shore. Suddenly, beautiful and
+clear, more tender than love, more sorrowful than death, there floated
+out upon the still air of the church the cry of a woman's soul that has
+offended, and that, shrinking from every prayer of speech, pours forth
+its more intense, inarticulate, and suffering need through the diviner
+faculty of song.
+
+At the sound every ear was strained to listen. Hitherto the wont had
+been to hear that voice bear aloft the common petition as calmly as the
+incense rose past the altar to the roof; but now it quivered over
+troubled depths of feeling, it rose freighted with the burden of
+self-accusal. Still higher and higher it rose, borne triumphantly upward
+by love and aspiration, until the powers of the singer's frame seemed
+spending themselves in one superhuman effort of the soul to make its
+prayer understood to the divine forgiveness. Then, all at once, at the
+highest note, as a bird soaring towards the sun has its wings broken by
+a shot from below, it too broke, faltered, and there was a silence. But
+only for a moment: another voice, poor and cold, promptly finished the
+song; the service ended; the people poured out of the church.
+
+When Gordon came out there were a few groups standing near the door
+talking; others were already moving homeward across the grounds. Not
+far off he observed a lusty young countryman, with a frank, winning
+face, who appeared to be waiting, while he held a child that had laid
+its bright head against his tanned, athletic neck. Gordon approached
+him, and said with forced calmness--
+
+"Do you know what was the matter in the church?"
+
+"My wife has gone to see," he replied warmly. "Wait; she'll be here in a
+minute. Here she is now."
+
+The comely, Sunday-dressed young wife came up and took the child, who
+held out its arms, fondly smiling.
+
+"She hadn't been well, and they didn't want her to sing to-day; but she
+begged to sing, and broke down." Saying this, the young mother kissed
+her child, and slipping one hand into the great brown hand of her
+husband, which closed upon it, turned away with them across the lawn
+homeward.
+
+When Sister Dolorosa, who had passed a sleepless, prayerless night,
+stood in the organ-loft and looked across the church at the scene of
+the Passion, at the shrine of the Virgin, at the white throng of novices
+and the dark throng of the Sisters, the common prayer of whom was to be
+borne upward by her voice, there came upon her like a burying wave a
+consciousness of how changed she was since she had stood there last.
+Thus at the moment when Gordon, sitting below, reverently set her far
+above him, as one looks up to a statue whose feet are above the level of
+his head, she, thinking of what she had been and had now become, seemed
+to herself as though fallen from a white pedestal to the miry earth. But
+when, to a nature like hers, absolute loyalty to a sinless standard of
+character is the only law of happiness itself, every lapse into
+transgression is followed by an act of passionate self-chastisement and
+by a more passionate outburst of love for the wronged ideal; and
+therefore scarce had she begun to sing, and in music to lift up the
+prayer she had denied herself in words, before the powers of her body
+succumbed, as the strings of an instrument snap under too strenuous a
+touch of the musician.
+
+Gordon walked out of the grounds beside the rustic young husband and
+wife, who plainly were lovers still.
+
+"The Sister who sang has a beautiful voice," he said.
+
+"None of them can sing like her," replied the wife. "I love her better
+than any of the others."
+
+"I tin sing!" cried the little girl, looking at Gordon resentfully, as
+though he had denied her that accomplishment.
+
+"But you'll never sing in a convent, missy," cried the father, snatching
+her from her mother. "You'll sing for some man till he marries you as
+your mother did me. I was going to join the Trappist monks, but my wife
+said I was too good a sweetheart to spoil, and she had made up her mind
+to have me herself," he added, turning to Gordon with a laugh.
+
+"I'd have been a Sister long ago if you hadn't begged and begged me
+not," was the reply, with the coquettish toss of a pretty head.
+
+"I doin' be Tap monk," cried the little girl, looking at Gordon still
+more assertively, but joining in the laugh that followed with a scream
+of delight at the wisdom of her decision.
+
+Their paths here diverged, and Gordon walked slowly on alone, but not
+without turning to watch the retreating figures, his meeting with whom
+at such a moment formed an episode in the history of that passion under
+the influence of which he was now rapidly passing. For as he had sat in
+the church his nature, which was always generous in its responsiveness,
+had lent itself wholly to the solicitations of the service; and for a
+time the stillness, the paintings portraying the divine sorrow, the slow
+procession of nameless women, the tapers, the incense, the hoary
+antiquity of the ceremonial, had carried him into a little-known region
+of his religious feeling. But from this he had been sharply recalled by
+the suggestion of a veiled personal tragedy close at hand in that
+unfinished song. His mood again became one of vast pity for her; and
+issuing from the church with this feeling, there, near the very
+entrance, he had come upon a rustic picture of husband, wife, and child,
+with a sharpness of transition that had seemed the return of his spirit
+to its own world of flesh and blood. There to him was the poetry and the
+religion of life--the linked hands of lovers; the twining arms of
+childhood; health and joyousness; and a quiet walk over familiar fields
+in the evening air from peaceful church to peaceful home. And so,
+thinking of this as he walked on alone, and thinking also of her, the
+two thoughts blended, and her image stood always before him in the
+pathway of his ideal future.
+
+The history of the next several days may soon be told. He wrote to his
+friends, stating that there was no game in the neighbourhood, and that
+he had given up the idea of joining them and would return home. He took
+the letter to the station, and waited for the train to pass southward,
+watching it rush away with a subtle pleasure at being left on the
+platform, as though the bridges were now burned behind him. Then he
+returned to the farm-house, where Ezra met him with that look of stupid
+alarm which was natural to him whenever his few thoughts were agitated
+by a new situation of affairs.
+
+Word had come from the convent that he was wanted there to move a fence
+and make changes in the garden, and, proud of the charge, he wished to
+go; but certain autumnal work in his own orchard and garden claimed his
+time, and hence the trouble. But Gordon, who henceforth had no reason
+for tarrying with the old couple, threw himself eagerly upon this
+opportunity to do so, and offered his aid in despatching the tasks. So
+that thus a few days passed, during which he unconsciously made his way
+as far as any one had ever done into the tortuous nature of the old man,
+who began to regard him with blind trustfulness.
+
+But they were restless, serious days. One after another passed, and he
+heard nothing of Sister Dolorosa. He asked himself whether she were ill,
+whether her visits to old Martha had been made to cease; and he shrank
+from the thought of bearing away into his life the haunting pain of such
+uncertainty. But some inner change constrained him no longer to call her
+name. As he sat with the old couple at night the housewife renewed her
+talks with him, speaking sometimes of the convent and of Sister
+Dolorosa, the cessation of whose visits plainly gave her secret concern;
+but he listened in silence, preferring the privacy of his own thoughts.
+Sometimes, under feint of hunting, he would take his gun in the
+afternoon and stroll out over the country; but always the presence of
+the convent made itself felt over the landscape, dominating it, solitary
+and impregnable, like a fortress. It began to draw his eyes with a
+species of fascination. He chafed against its assertion of barriers, and
+could have wished that his own will might be brought into conflict with
+it. It appeared to watch him; to have an eye at every window; to see in
+him a lurking danger. At other times, borne to him across the darkening
+fields would come the sweet vesper bell, and in imagination he would see
+her entering the church amid the long procession of novices and nuns,
+her hands folded across her breast, her face full of the soft glories of
+the lights that streamed in through the pictured windows. Over the
+fancied details of her life more and more fondly he lingered.
+
+And thus, although at first he had been interested in her wholly upon
+general grounds, believing her secretly unhappy, thus by thinking always
+of her, and watching for her, and walking often beside her in his
+dreams, with the folly of the young, with the romantic ardour of his
+race, and as part of the never-ending blind tragedy of the world, he
+came at last to feel for her, among women, that passionate pain of
+yearning to know which is to know the sadness of love.
+
+Sleepless one night, he left the house after the old couple were asleep.
+The moon was shining, and unconsciously following the bent of his
+thoughts, he took the footpath that led across the fields. He passed the
+spot where he had first met her, and, absorbed in recollection of the
+scene, he walked on until before him the convent towered high in light
+and shadow. He had reached the entrance to the long avenue of elms. He
+traversed it, turned aside into the garden, and, following with many
+pauses around its borders, lived over again the day when she had led him
+through it. The mere sense of his greater physical nearness to her
+enthralled him. All her words came back: "These are daffodils. They
+bloomed in March, long ago.... And here are violets, which come in
+April." After awhile, leaving the garden, he walked across the lawn to
+the church and sat upon the steps, trying to look calmly at this whole
+episode in his life, and to summon resolution to bring it to an end. He
+dwelt particularly upon the hopelessness of his passion; he made himself
+believe that if he could but learn that she were not ill and
+suffering--if he could but see her once more, and be very sure--he would
+go away, as every dictate of reason urged.
+
+Across the lawn stood the convent building. There caught his eye the
+faint glimmer of a light through a half-opened window, and while he
+looked he saw two of the nuns moving about within. Was some one dying?
+Was this light the taper of the dead? He tried to throw off a sudden
+weight of gloomy apprehension, and resolutely got up and walked away;
+but his purpose was formed not to leave until he had intelligence of
+her.
+
+One afternoon, a few days later, happening to come to an elevated point
+of the landscape, he saw her figure moving across the fields in the
+distance below him. Between the convent and the farm-house, in one of
+the fields, there is a circular, basin-like depression; and it was here,
+hidden from distant observation, with only the azure of the heavens
+above them, that their meeting took place.
+
+On the day when she had been his guide he had told her that he was going
+away on the morrow, and as she walked along now it might have been seen
+that she thought herself safe from intrusion. Her eyes were bent on the
+dust of the pathway. One hand was passing bead by bead upward along her
+rosary. Her veil was pushed back, so that between its black border and
+the glistening whiteness of her forehead there ran, like a rippling band
+of gold, the exposed edges of her shining hair. In the other hand she
+bore a large cluster of chrysanthemums, whose snow-white petals and
+green leaves formed a strong contrast with the crimson symbol that they
+partly framed against her sable bosom.
+
+He had come up close before the noise of his feet in the stubble drew
+her attention. Then she turned and saw him. But certain instincts of
+self-preservation act in women with lightning quickness. She did not
+recognise him, or give him time to recognise her. She merely turned
+again and walked onward at the same pace. But the chrysanthemums were
+trembling with the beating of her heart, and her eyes had in them that
+listening look with which one awaits the on-coming of danger from
+behind.
+
+But he had stopped. His nature was simple and trustful, and he had
+expected to renew his acquaintanceship at the point where it had ceased.
+When, therefore, she thus reminded him, as indeed she must, that there
+was no acquaintanceship between them, and that she regarded herself as
+much alone as though he were nowhere in sight, his feelings were
+arrested as if frozen by her coldness. Still, it was for this chance
+that he had waited all these days. Another would not come; and whatever
+he wished to say to her must be said now. A sensitiveness wholly novel
+to his nature held him back, but a moment more and he was walking
+beside her.
+
+"I hope I do not intrude so very far," he said, in a tone of apology,
+but also of wounded self-respect.
+
+It was a difficult choice thus left to her. She could not say "Yes"
+without seeming unpardonably rude; she could not say "No" without
+seeming to invite his presence. She walked on for a moment, and then,
+pausing, turned towards him.
+
+"Is there anything that you wished to ask me in regard to the convent?"
+This she said in the sweetest tone of apologetic courtesy, as though in
+having thought only of herself at first she had neglected some larger
+duty.
+
+If he had feared that he would see traces of physical suffering on her
+face, he was mistaken. She had forgotten to draw her veil close, and the
+sunlight fell upon its loveliness. Never had she been to him half so
+beautiful. Whatever the expression her eyes had worn before he had come
+up, in them now rested only inscrutable calmness.
+
+"There is one thing I have wished very much to know," he answered
+slowly, his eyes resting on hers. "I was at the church of the convent
+last Sunday and heard you sing. They said you were not well. I have
+hoped every day to hear that you were better. I have not cared to go
+away until I knew this."
+
+Scarcely had he begun when a flush dyed her face, her eyes fell, and she
+stood betrayed by the self-consciousness of what her own thoughts had
+that day been. One hand absently tore to pieces the blooms of the
+chrysanthemums, so that the petals fell down over her dark habit like
+snowflakes. But when he finished, she lifted her eyes again.
+
+"I am well now, thank you," she said; and the first smile that he had
+ever seen came forth from her soul to her face. But what a smile! It
+wrung his heart more than the sight of her tears could have done.
+
+"Then I shall hope to hear you sing again to-morrow," he said quickly,
+for she seemed on the point of moving away.
+
+"I shall not sing to-morrow," she replied a little hurriedly, with
+averted face, and again she started on. But he walked beside her.
+
+"In that case I have still to thank you for the pleasure I have had. I
+imagine that one would never do wrong if he could hear you sing whenever
+he is tempted," he said, looking sidewise at her with a quiet, tentative
+smile.
+
+"It is not my voice," she replied more hurriedly. "It is the music of
+the service. Do not thank me. Thank God."
+
+"I have heard the service before. It was your voice that touched me."
+
+She drew her veil about her face, and walked on in silence.
+
+"But I have no wish to say anything against your religion," he
+continued, his voice deepening and trembling. "If it has such power over
+the natures of women, if it lifts them to such ideals of duty, if it
+develops in them such characters, that merely to look into their faces,
+to be near them, to hear their voices, is to make a man think of a
+better world, I do not know why I should say anything against it."
+
+How often, without meaning it, our words are like a flight of arrows
+into another's heart. What he said but reminded her of her
+unfaithfulness. And therefore while she revolved how with perfect
+gentleness she might ask him to allow her to continue her way alone, she
+did what she could: she spoke reverently, though all but inaudibly, in
+behalf of her order.
+
+"Our vows are perfect and divine. If they ever seem less, it is the
+fault of those of us who dishonour them."
+
+The acute self-reproach in her tone at once changed his mood.
+
+"On the other hand, I have also asked myself this question: Is it the
+creed that makes the natures of you women so beautiful, or is it the
+nature of woman that gives the beauty to the creed? Is it not so with
+any other idea that women espouse? with any other cause that they
+undertake? Is it not so with anything that they spend their hearts upon,
+toil for, and sacrifice themselves for? Do I see any beauty in your vows
+except such as your life gives to them? I can believe it. I can believe
+that if you had never taken those vows your life would still be
+beautiful. I can believe that you could change them for others and find
+yourself more nearly the woman that you strive to be--that you were
+meant to be!" He spoke in the subdued voice with which one takes leave
+of some hope that brightens while it disappears.
+
+"I must ask you," she said, pausing--"I must ask you to allow me to
+continue my walk alone," and her voice quivered.
+
+He paused, too, and stood looking into her eyes in silence with the
+thought that he should never see her again. The colour had died out of
+his face.
+
+"I can never forgive your vows," he said, speaking very slowly and
+making an effort to appear unmoved. "I can never forgive your vows that
+they make it a sin for me to speak to you. I can never forgive them that
+they put between us a gulf that I cannot pass. Remember, I owe you a
+great deal. I owe you higher ideas of a woman's nature and clearer
+resolutions regarding my own life. Your vows perhaps make it even a sin
+that I should tell you this. But by what right? By what right am I
+forbidden to say that I shall remember you always, and that I shall
+carry away with me into my life----"
+
+"Will you force me to turn back?" she asked in greater agitation; and
+though he could not see her face, he saw her tears fall upon her hands.
+
+"No," he answered sadly; "I shall not force you to turn back. I know
+that I have intruded. But it seemed that I could not go away without
+seeing you again, to be quite sure that you were well. And when I saw
+you, it seemed impossible not to speak of other things. Of course this
+must seem strange to you--stranger, perhaps, than I may imagine, since
+we look at human relationships so differently. My life in this world can
+be of no interest to you. You cannot, therefore, understand why yours
+should have any interest for me. Still, I hope you can forgive me," he
+added abruptly, turning his face away as it flushed and his voice
+faltered.
+
+She lifted her eyes quickly, although they were dim. "Do not ask me to
+forgive anything. There is nothing to be forgiven. It is I who must
+ask--only leave me!"
+
+"Will you say good-bye to me?" And he held out his hand.
+
+She drew back, but, overborne by emotion he stepped forward, gently took
+her hand from the rosary, and held it in both his own.
+
+"Good-bye! But, despite the cruel barriers that they have raised between
+us, I shall always----"
+
+She foresaw what was coming. His manner told her that. She had not
+withdrawn her hand. But at this point she dropped the flowers that were
+in her other hand, laid it on her breast so that the longest finger
+pointed towards the symbol of the transfixed heart, and looked quickly
+at him with indescribable warning and distress. Then he released her,
+and she turned back towards the convent.
+
+"Mother," she said, with a frightened face, when she reached it, "I did
+not go to old Martha's. Some one was hunting in the fields, and I came
+back. Do not send me again, Mother, unless one of the Sisters goes with
+me." And with this half-truth on her lips and full remorse for it in her
+heart, she passed into that deepening imperfection of nature which for
+the most of us makes up the inner world of reality.
+
+Gordon wrote to her that night. He had not foreseen his confession. It
+had been drawn from him under the influences of the moment; but since it
+was made, a sense of honour would not have allowed him to stop there,
+even had feeling carried him no further. Moreover, some hope had been
+born in him at the moment of separation, since she had not rebuked him,
+but only reminded him of her vows.
+
+His letter was full of the confidence and enthusiasm of youth, and its
+contents may be understood by their likeness to others. He unfolded the
+plan of his life--the life which he was asking her to share. He dwelt
+upon its possibilities, he pointed out the field of its aspirations. But
+he kept his letter for some days, unable to conceive a way by which it
+might be sent to its destination. At length the chance came in the
+simplest of disguises.
+
+Ezra was starting one morning to the convent. As he was leaving the
+room, old Martha called to him. She sat by the hearthstone, with her
+head tied up in red flannel, and her large, watery face flushed with
+pain, and pointed towards a basket of apples on the window-sill.
+
+"Take them to Sister Dolorosa, Ezra," she said. "Mind that you see
+_her_, and give them to her with your own hands. And ask her why she
+hasn't been to see me, and when she is coming." On this point her mind
+seemed more and more troubled. "But what's the use of asking _you_ to
+find out for me?" she added, flashing out at him with heroic anger.
+
+The old man stood in the middle of the room, dry and gnarled, his small
+eyes kindling into a dull rage at a taunt made in the presence of a
+guest whose good opinion he desired. But he took the apples in silence
+and left the room.
+
+As Gordon followed him beyond the garden, noting how his mind was
+absorbed in petty anger, a simple resolution came to him.
+
+"Ezra," he said, handing him the letter, "when you give the Sister the
+apples, deliver this. And we do not talk about business, you know,
+Ezra."
+
+The old man took the letter and put it furtively into his pocket, with a
+backward shake of his head towards the house.
+
+"Whatever risks I may have to run from other quarters, he will never
+tell _her_," Gordon said to himself.
+
+When Ezra returned in the evening he was absorbed, and Gordon noted with
+relief that he was also unsuspicious. He walked some distance to meet
+the old man the next two days, and his suspense became almost
+unendurable, but he asked no questions. The third day Ezra drew from his
+pocket a letter, which he delivered, merely saying--
+
+"The Sister told me to give you this."
+
+Gordon soon turned aside across the fields, and having reached a point
+screened from observation, he opened the letter and read as follows:--
+
+     "I have received your letter. I have read it. But how could I
+     listen to your proposal without becoming false to my vows? And if
+     you knew that I had proved false to what I held most dear and
+     binding, how could you ever believe that I would be true to
+     anything else? Ah, no! Should you unite yourself to one who for
+     your sake had been faithless to the ideal of womanhood which she
+     regarded as supreme, you would soon withdraw from her the very love
+     that she had sacrificed even her hopes of Heaven to enjoy.
+
+     "But it seems possible that in writing to me you believe my vows no
+     longer precious to my heart and sacred to my conscience. You are
+     wrong. They are more dear to me at this moment than ever before,
+     because at this moment, as never before, they give me a mournful
+     admonition of my failure to exhibit to the world in my own life the
+     beauty of their ineffable holiness. For had there not been
+     something within me to lead you on--had I shown to you the sinless
+     nature which it is their office to create--you would never have
+     felt towards me as you do. You would no more have thought of loving
+     me than of loving an angel of God.
+
+     "The least reparation I can make for my offence is to tell you that
+     in offering me your love you offer me the cup of sacred
+     humiliation, and that I thank you for reminding me of my duty,
+     while I drain it to the dregs.
+
+     "After long deliberation I have written to tell you this; and if it
+     be allowed me to make one request, I would entreat that you will
+     never lay this sin of mine to the charge of my religion and my
+     order.
+
+     "We shall never meet again. Although I may not listen to your
+     proposal, it is allowed me to love you as one of the works of God.
+     And since there are exalted women in the world who do not
+     consecrate themselves to the church, I shall pray that you may find
+     one of these to walk by your side through life. I shall pray that
+     she may be worthy of you; and perhaps you will teach her sometimes
+     to pray for one who will always need her prayers.
+
+     "I only know that God orders our lives according to His goodness.
+     My feet He set in one path of duty, yours in another, and He had
+     separated us for ever long before He allowed us to meet. If,
+     therefore, having thus separated us, He yet brought us together
+     only that we should thus know each other and then be parted, I
+     cannot believe that there was not in it some needed lesson for us
+     both. At least, if He will deign to hear the ceaseless, fervent
+     petition of one so erring, He will not leave you unhappy on account
+     of that love for me, which in this world it will never be allowed
+     me to return. Farewell!"
+
+The first part of this letter awakened in Gordon keen remorse and a
+faltering of purpose, but the latter filled him with a joy that excluded
+every other feeling.
+
+"She loves me!" he exclaimed; and, as though registering a vow, he added
+aloud, "And nothing--God help me!--nothing shall keep us apart."
+
+Walking to a point of the landscape that commanded a view of the
+convent, he remained there while the twilight fell, revolving how he was
+to surmount the remaining barriers between them, for these now seemed
+hardly more than cobwebs to be brushed aside by his hand; and often,
+meanwhile, he looked towards the convent, as one might look longingly
+towards some forbidden shrine, which the coming night would enable him
+to approach.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+A night for love it was. The great sun at setting had looked with
+steadfast eye at the convent standing lonely on its wide landscape, and
+had then thrown his final glance across the world towards the east; and
+the moon had quickly risen and hung about it the long silvery twilight
+of her heavenly watchfulness. The summer, too, which had been moving
+southward, now came slowly back, borne on warm airs that fanned the
+convent walls and sighed to its chaste lattices with the poetry of dead
+flowers and vanished songsters. But sighed in vain. With many a prayer,
+with many a cross on pure brow and shoulder and breast, with many a
+pious kiss of crucifix, the convent slept. Only some little novice,
+lying like a flushed figure of Sleep on a couch of snow, may have
+stirred to draw one sigh, as those zephyrs, toying with her warm hair,
+broke some earthly dream of too much tenderness. Or they may merely have
+cooled the feverish feet of a withered nun, who clasped her dry hands in
+ecstasy, as on her cavernous eyes there dawned a vision of the glories
+and rewards of Paradise. But no, not all slept. At an open window on the
+eastern side of the convent stood the sleepless one looking out into the
+largeness of the night like one who is lost in the largeness of her
+sorrow.
+
+Across the lawn, a little distance off, stood the church of the convent.
+The moonlight rested on it like a smile of peace, the elms blessed it
+with tireless arms, and from the zenith of the sky down to the horizon
+there rested on outstretched wings, rank above rank and pinion brushing
+pinion, a host of white, angelic cloud-shapes, as though guarding the
+sacred portal.
+
+But she looked at it with timid yearning. Greater and greater had become
+the need to pour into some ear a confession and a prayer for pardon. Her
+peace was gone. She had been concealing her heart from the Mother
+Superior. She had sinned against her vows. She had impiously offended
+the Divine Mother. And to-day, after answering his letter in order that
+she might defend her religion, she had acknowledged to her heart that
+she loved him. But they would never meet again. To-morrow she would make
+a full confession of what had taken place. Beyond that miserable ordeal
+she dared not gaze into her own future.
+
+Lost in the fears and sorrows of such thoughts, long she stood looking
+out into the night, stricken with a sense of alienation from human
+sympathy. She felt that she stood henceforth estranged from the entire
+convent--Mother Superior, novice, and nun--as an object of reproach, and
+of suffering into which no one of them could enter.
+
+Sorer yet grew her need, and a little way across the lawn stood the
+church, peaceful in the moonlight. Ah, the divine pity! If only she
+might steal first alone to the shrine of her whom most she had offended,
+and to an ear gracious to sorrow make confession of her frailty. At
+length, overcome with this desire and gliding noiselessly out of the
+room, she passed down the moonlit hall, on each side of which the nuns
+were sleeping. She descended the stairway, took from the wall the key of
+the church, and then softly opening the door, stepped out into the
+night. For a moment she paused, icy and faint with physical fear; then,
+passing like a swift shadow across the silvered lawn, she went round to
+the side entrance of the church, unlocked the door, and, entering
+quickly, locked herself inside. There she stood for some time with hands
+pressed tightly to her fluttering heart, until bodily agitation died
+away before the recollection of her mission; and there came upon her
+that calmness with which the soul enacts great tragedies. Then slowly,
+very slowly, hidden now, and now visible where the moonlight entered the
+long, Gothic windows, she passed across the chancel towards the shrine
+of one whom ancestral faith had taught her to believe divine; and before
+the image of a Jewish woman--who herself in full humanity loved and
+married a carpenter nearly two thousand years ago, living beside him as
+blameless wife and becoming blameless mother to his children--this poor
+child, whose nature was unstained as snow on the mountain peaks, poured
+out her prayer to be forgiven the sin of her love.
+
+To the woman of the world, the approaches of whose nature are defended
+by the intricacies of wilfulness and the barriers of deliberate reserve;
+to the woman of the world, who curbs and conceals that feeling to which
+she intends to yield herself in the end, it may seem incredible that
+there should have rooted itself so easily in the breast of one of her
+sex this flower of a fatal passion. But it should be remembered how
+unbefriended that bosom had been by any outpost of feminine
+self-consciousness; how exposed it was through very belief in its
+unearthly consecration; how, like some unwatched vase that had long been
+collecting the sweet dews and rains of heaven, it had been silently
+filling with those unbidden intimations that are shed from above as the
+best gifts of womanhood. Moreover, her life was unspeakably isolate. In
+the monotony of its routine a trifling event became an epoch; a fresh
+impression stirred within the mind material for a chapter of history.
+Lifted far above commonplace psychology of the passions, however, was
+the planting and the growth of an emotion in a heart like hers.
+
+Her prayer began. It began with the scene of her first meeting with him
+in the fields, for from that moment she fixed the origin of her
+unfaithfulness. Of the entire hidden life of poetic reverie and
+unsatisfied desires which she had been living before, her innocent soul
+took no account. Therefore, beginning with that afternoon, she passed in
+review the history of her thoughts and feelings. The moon outside,
+flooding the heavens with its beams, was not so intense a lamp as
+memory, now turned upon the recesses of her mind. Nothing escaped
+detection. His words, the scenes with him in the garden, in the
+field--his voice, looks, gestures--his anxiety and sympathy--his
+passionate letter--all were now vividly recalled, that they might be
+forgotten; and their influence confessed, that it might for ever be
+renounced. Her conscience stood beside her love as though it were some
+great fast-growing deadly plant in her heart, with deep-twisted roots
+and strangling tendrils, each of which to the smallest fibre must be
+uptorn so that not a germ should be left.
+
+But who can describe the prayer of such a soul? It is easy to ask to be
+rid of ignoble passions. They come upon us as momentary temptations and
+are abhorrent to our better selves; but of all tragedies enacted within
+the theatre of the human mind what one is so pitiable as that in which a
+pure being prays to be forgiven the one feeling of nature that is the
+revelation of beauty, the secret of perfection, the solace of the world,
+and the condition of immortality?
+
+The passing of such a tragedy scars the nature of the penitent like the
+passing of an age across a mountain rock. If there had lingered thus
+long on Sister Dolorosa's nature any upland of childhood snows, these
+vanished in that hour; if any vernal belt of maidenhood, it felt the hot
+breath of that experience of the world and of the human destiny which
+quickly ages whatever it does not destroy. So that while she prayed
+there seemed to rise from within her and take flight for ever that
+spotless image of herself as she once had been, and in its place to
+stand the form of a woman, older, altered, and set apart by sorrow.
+
+At length her prayer ended and she rose. It had not brought her the
+peace that prayer brings to women; for the confession of her love before
+the very altar--the mere coming into audience with the Eternal to
+renounce it--had set upon it the seal of irrevocable truth. It is when
+the victim is led to the altar of sacrifice that it turns its piteous
+eyes upon the sacrificing hand and utters its poor dumb cry for life;
+and it was when Sister Dolorosa bared the breast of her humanity that it
+might be stabbed by the hand of her religion, that she, too, though
+attempting to bless the stroke, felt the last pangs of that deep thrust.
+
+With such a wound she turned from the altar, walked with bowed head once
+more across the church, unlocked the door, stepped forth and locked it.
+The night had grown more tender. The host of seraphic cloud-forms had
+fled across the sky; and as she turned her eyes upward to the heavens,
+there looked down upon her from their serene, untroubled heights only
+the stars, that never falter or digress from their fore-written courses.
+The thought came to her that never henceforth should she look up to them
+without being reminded of how her own will had wandered from its orbit.
+The moon rained its steady beams upon the symbol of the sacred heart on
+her bosom, until it seemed to throb again with the agony of the
+crucifixion. Never again should she see it without the remembrance that
+_her_ sin also had pierced it afresh.
+
+With what loneliness that sin had surrounded her! As she had issued from
+the damp, chill atmosphere of the church, the warm airs of the south
+quickened within her long-sleeping memories; and with the yearning of
+stricken childhood she thought of her mother, to whom she had turned of
+yore for sympathy; but that mother's bosom was now a mound of dust. She
+looked across the lawn towards the convent where the Mother Superior and
+the nuns were sleeping. To-morrow she would stand among them a greater
+alien than any stranger. No; she was alone; among the millions of human
+beings on the earth of God there was not one on whose heart she could
+have rested her own. Not one save him--him--whose love had broken down
+all barriers that it might reach and infold her. And him she had
+repelled. A joy, new and indescribable, leaped within her that for him,
+and not for another she suffered and was bound in this tragedy of her
+fall.
+
+Slowly she took her way along the side of the church towards the front
+entrance, from which a paved walk led to the convent building. She
+reached the corner, she turned, and then she paused as one might pause
+who had come upon the beloved dead, returned to life.
+
+For he was sitting on the steps of the church, leaning against one of
+the pillars, his face lifted upward so that the moonlight fell upon it.
+She had no time to turn back before he saw her. With a low cry of
+surprise and joy he sprang up and followed along the side of the church;
+for she had begun to retrace her steps to the door, to lock herself
+inside. When he came up beside her, she paused. Both were trembling; but
+when he saw the look of suffering on her face, acting upon the impulse
+which had always impelled him to stand between her and unhappiness, he
+now took both of her hands.
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+He spoke with all the pleading love, all the depth of nature, that was
+in him.
+
+She had attempted to withdraw her hands; but at the sound of that once
+familiar name, she suddenly bowed her head as the wave of memories and
+emotions passed over her; then he quickly put his arms around her, drew
+her to him, and bent down and kissed her.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+For hours there lasted an interview, during which he, with the delirium
+of hope, she with the delirium of despair, drained at their young lips
+that cup of life which is full of the first confession of love.
+
+In recollections so overwhelming did this meeting leave Gordon on the
+next morning, that he was unmindful of everything beside; and among the
+consequences of absentmindedness was the wound that he gave himself by
+the careless handling of his gun.
+
+When Ezra had set out for the convent that morning he had walked with
+him, saying that he would go to the station for a daily paper, but
+chiefly wishing to escape the house and be alone. They had reached in
+the fields a rotting fence, on each side of which grew briers and
+underwood. He had expected to climb this fence, and as he stood beside
+it speaking a few parting words to Ezra he absently thrust his gun
+between two of the lower rails, not noticing that the lock was sprung.
+Caught in the brush on the other side, it was discharged, making a wound
+in his left leg a little below the thigh. He turned to a deadly
+paleness, looked at Ezra with that stunned, bewildered expression seen
+in the faces of those who receive a wound, and fell.
+
+By main strength the old man lifted and bore him to the house and
+hurried off to the station, near which the neighbourhood physician and
+surgeon lived. But the latter was away from home; several hours passed
+before he came; the means taken to stop the hæmorrhage had been
+ineffectual; the loss of blood had been very great; certain foreign
+matter had been carried into the wound; the professional treatment was
+unskilful; and septic fever followed, so that for many days his life
+hung upon a little chance. But convalescence came at last, and with it
+days of clear, calm thinking. For he had not allowed news of his
+accident to be sent home or to his friends; and except the old couple,
+the doctor, and the nurse whom the latter had secured, he had no company
+but his thoughts.
+
+No tidings had come to him of Sister Dolorosa since his accident; and
+nothing had intervened to remove that sad image of her which had haunted
+him through fever and phantasy and dream since the night of their final
+interview. For it was then that he had first realised in how pitiless a
+tragedy her life had become entangled, and how conscience may fail to
+govern a woman's heart in denying her the right to love, but may still
+govern her actions in forbidding her to marry. To plead with her had
+been to wound only the more deeply a nature that accepted even this
+pleading as a further proof of its own disloyalty, and was forced by it
+into a state of more poignant humiliation. What wonder, therefore, if
+there had been opened in his mind from that hour a certain wound which
+grew deeper and deeper, until, by comparison, his real wound seemed
+painless and insignificant.
+
+Nevertheless, it is true that during this interview he had not been able
+to accept her decision as irreversible. The spell of her presence over
+him was too complete; even his wish to rescue her from a lot, henceforth
+unhappier still, too urgent; so that in parting he had clung to the
+secret hope that little by little he might change her conscience, which
+now interposed the only obstacle between them.
+
+Even the next day, when he had been wounded and life was rapidly flowing
+from him, and earthly ties seemed soon to be snapped, he had thought
+only of this tie, new and sacred, and had written to her. Poor boy!--he
+had written, as with his heart's blood, his brief, pathetic appeal that
+she would come and be united to him before he died. In all ages of the
+world there have been persons, simple in nature and simple in their
+faith in another life, who have forgotten everything else in the last
+hour but the supreme wish to grapple to them those they love, for
+eternity, and at whatever cost. Such simplicity of nature and faith
+belonged to him; for although in Kentucky the unrest of the century
+touching belief in the supernatural, and the many phases by which this
+expresses itself, are not unknown, they had never affected him. He
+believed as his fathers had believed, that to be united in this world in
+any relation is to be united in that relation, mysteriously changed yet
+mysteriously the same, in another.
+
+But this letter had never been sent. There had been no one to take it at
+the time; and when Ezra returned with the physician he had fainted away
+from loss of blood.
+
+Then had followed the dressing of the wound, days of fever and
+unconsciousness, and then the assurance that he would get well. Thus,
+nearly a month had passed, and for him a great change had come over the
+face of nature and the light of the world. With that preternatural calm
+of mind which only an invalid or a passionless philosopher ever obtains,
+he now looked back upon an episode which thus acquired fictitious
+remoteness. So weak that he could scarcely lift his head from his
+pillow, there left his heart the keen, joyous sense of human ties and
+pursuits. He lost the key to the motives and forces of his own
+character. But it is often the natural result of such illness that while
+the springs of feeling seem to dry up, the conscience remains sensitive,
+or even burns more brightly, as a star through a rarer atmosphere. So
+that, lying thus in the poor farm-house during dreary days, with his
+life half-gone out of him, and with only the sad image of her always
+before his eyes, he could think of nothing but his cruel folly in having
+broken in upon her peace; for perfect peace of some sort she must have
+had in comparison with what was now left her.
+
+Beneath his pillow he kept her letter, and as he often read it over he
+asked himself how he could ever have hoped to change the conscience
+which had inspired such a letter as that. If her heart belonged to him,
+did not her soul belong to her religion; and if one or the other must
+give way, could it be doubtful with such, a nature as hers which would
+come out victorious? Thus he said to himself that any further attempt to
+see her could but result in greater suffering to them both, and that
+nothing was left him but what she herself had urged--to go away and
+resign her to a life from which he had too late found out that she could
+never be divorced.
+
+As soon as he had come to this decision, he began to think of her as
+belonging only to his past. The entire episode became a thing of memory
+and irreparable incompleteness; and with the conviction that she was
+lost to him her image passed into that serene, reverential sanctuary of
+our common nature, where all the highest that we have grasped at and
+missed, and all the beauty that we have loved and lost, take the forms
+of statues around dim walls and look down upon us in mournful,
+never-changing perfection.
+
+As he lay one morning revolving his altered purpose, Ezra came quietly
+into the room and took from a table near the foot of the bed a waiter on
+which were a jelly-glass and a napkin.
+
+"_She_ said I'd better take these back this morning," he observed,
+looking at Gordon for his approval, and motioning with his head towards
+that quarter of the house where Martha was supposed to be.
+
+"Wait awhile, will you, Ezra?" he replied, looking at the old man with
+the dark, quiet eye of an invalid. "I think I ought to write a few lines
+this morning to thank them for their kindness. Come back in an hour,
+will you?"
+
+The things had been sent from the convent; for, from the time that news
+had reached the Mother Superior of the accident of the young stranger
+who had visited the convent some days before, there had regularly come
+to him delicate attentions which could not have been supplied at the
+farmhouse. He often asked himself whether they were not inspired by
+_her_; and he thought that when the time came for him to write his
+thanks, he would put into the expression of them something that would
+be understood by her alone--something that would stand for gratitude and
+a farewell.
+
+When Ezra left the room, with the thought of now doing this another
+thought came unexpectedly to him. By the side of the bed there stood a
+small table on which were writing materials and a few books that had
+been taken from his valise. He stretched out his hand, and opening one
+of them took from it a letter which bore the address, "Sister Dolorosa."
+It contained those appealing lines that he had written her on the day of
+his accident; and with calm, curious sadness he now read them over and
+over, as though they had never come from him. From the mere monotony of
+this exercise sleep overtook him, and he had scarcely restored the
+letter to the envelope and laid it back on the table before his eyelids
+closed.
+
+While he still lay asleep, Ezra came quietly into the room again, and
+took up the waiter with the jelly-glass and the napkin. Then he looked
+around for the letter that he was to take. He was accustomed to carry
+Gordon's letters to the station, and his eye now rested on the table
+where they were always to be found. Seeing one on it, he walked across,
+took it up and read the address, "Sister Dolorosa," hesitated, glanced
+at Gordon's closed eyes, and then, with an intelligent nod to signify
+that he could understand without further instruction, he left the room
+and set out briskly for the convent.
+
+Sister Dolorosa was at the cistern filling a bucket with water when he
+came up and, handing her the letter, passed on to the convent kitchen.
+She looked at it with indifference; then she opened and read it; and
+then in an instant everything whirled before her eyes, and in her ears
+the water sounded loud as it dropped from the chain back into the
+cistern. And then she was gone--gone with a light, rapid step, down, the
+avenue of elms, through the gate, across the meadows, out into the
+fields--bucket and cistern, Mother Superior and sisterhood, vows and
+martyrs, zeal of Carmelite, passion of Christ, all forgotten.
+
+When, nearly a month before, news had reached the Mother Superior of the
+young stranger's accident, in accordance with the rule which excludes
+from the convent worldly affairs, she had not made it known except to
+those who were to aid in carrying out her kindly plans for him. To
+Sister Dolorosa, therefore, the accident had just occurred, and
+now--now as she hastened to him--he was dying.
+
+During the intervening weeks she had undergone by insensible degrees a
+deterioration of nature. Prayer had not passed her lips. She believed
+that she had no right to pray. Nor had she confessed. From such, a
+confession as she had now to make, certain new-born instincts of
+womanhood bade her shrink more deeply into the privacy of her own being.
+And therefore she had become more scrupulous, if possible, of outward
+duties, that no one might be led to discover the paralysis of her
+spiritual life. But there was that change in her which soon drew
+attention; and thenceforth, in order to hide her heart, she began to
+practise with the Mother Superior little acts of self-concealment and
+evasion, and by-and-by other little acts of pretence and feigning,
+until--God pity her!--being most sorely pressed by questions, when
+sometimes she would be found in tears or sitting listless with her hands
+in her lap like one who is under the spell of mournful phantasies, these
+became other little acts of positive deception. But for each of them
+remorse preyed upon her the more ruthlessly, so that she grew thin and
+faded, with a shadow of fear darkening always her evasive eyes.
+
+What most held her apart, and most she deemed put upon her the angry ban
+of Heaven, was the consciousness that she still loved him, and that she
+was even bound to him the more inseparably since the night of their last
+meeting. For it was then that emotions had been awakened which drew her
+to him in ways that love alone could not have done. These emotions had
+their source in the belief that she owed him reparation for the
+disappointment which she had brought upon his life. The recollection of
+his face when she had denied him hope rose in constant reproach before
+her; and since she held herself blamable that he had loved her, she took
+the whole responsibility of his unhappiness.
+
+It was this sense of having wronged him that cleft even conscience in
+her and left her struggling. But how to undo the wrong--this she vainly
+pondered; for he was gone, bearing away into his life the burden of
+enticed and baffled hope.
+
+On the morning when she was at the cistern--for the Sisters of the Order
+have among them such interchange of manual offices--if, as she read the
+letter that Ezra gave her, any one motive stood out clear in the stress
+of that terrible moment, it was, that having been false to other duties
+she might at least be true to this. She felt but one desire--to atone to
+him by any sacrifice of herself that would make his death more peaceful.
+Beyond this everything was void and dark within her as she hurried on,
+except the consciousness that by this act she separated herself from her
+Order and terminated her religious life in utter failure and disgrace.
+
+The light, rapid step with which she had started soon brought her across
+the fields. As she drew near the house, Martha, who had caught sight of
+her figure through the window, made haste to the door and stood awaiting
+her. Sister Dolorosa merely approached and said--
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+For a moment the old woman did not answer. Then she pointed to a door at
+the opposite end of the porch, and with a sparkle of peculiar pleasure
+in her eyes she saw Sister Dolorosa cross and enter it. A little while
+longer she stood, watching the keyhole furtively, but then went back to
+the fireside, where she sat upright and motionless with the red flannel
+pushed back from her listening ears.
+
+The room was dimly lighted through half-closed shutters. Gordon lay
+asleep near the edge of the bed, with his face turned towards the door.
+It might well have been thought the face of one dying. Her eyes rested
+on it a moment, and then with a stifled sob and moan she glided across
+the room and sank on her knees at the bedside. In the utter
+self-forgetfulness of her remorse, pity, and love, she put one arm
+around his neck, she buried her face close beside his.
+
+He had awaked, bewildered, as he saw her coming towards him. He now took
+her arm from around his neck, pressed her hand again and again to his
+lips, and then laying it on his heart crossed his arms over it, letting
+one of his hands rest on her head. For a little while he could not trust
+himself to speak; his love threatened to overmaster his
+self-renunciation. But then, not knowing why she had come unless from
+some great sympathy for his sufferings, or perhaps to see him once more
+since he was now soon to go away, and not understanding any cause for
+her distress but the tragedy in which he had entangled her life--feeling
+only sorrow for her sorrow and wishing only by means of his last words
+to help her back to such peace as she still might win, he said to her
+with immeasurable gentleness--
+
+"I thought you would never come! I thought I should have to go away
+without seeing you again! They tell me it is not yet a month since the
+accident, but it seems to me so _long_--a lifetime! I have lain here
+day after day thinking it over, and I see things differently now--so
+differently! That is why I wanted to see you once more. I wanted you to
+understand that I felt you had done right in refusing--in refusing to
+marry me. I wanted to ask you never to blame yourself for what has
+happened--never to let any thought of having made _me_ unhappy add
+to the sorrow of your life. It is my fault, not yours. But I meant it--God
+_knows_, I meant it!--for the happiness of us both? I believed that
+your life was not suited to you. I meant to make you happy! But since you
+_cannot_ give up your life, I have only been unkind. And since you
+think it wrong to give it up, I am glad that you are so true to it! If you
+_must_ live it, Heaven only knows how glad I am that you will live it
+heroically. And Heaven keep me equally true to the duty in mine, that I
+also shall not fail in it! If we never meet again, we can always think
+of each other as living true to ourselves and to one another. Don't deny
+me this! Let me believe that your thoughts and prayers will always follow
+me. Even your vows will not deny me this! It will always keep us near each
+other, and it will bring us together where they cannot separate us."
+
+He had spoken with entire repression of himself, in the slow voice of an
+invalid, and on the stillness of the room each word had fallen with hard
+distinctness. But now, with the thought of losing her, by a painful
+effort he moved closer to the edge of the bed, put his arms around her
+neck, drew her face against his own, and continued--
+
+"But do not think it is easy to tell you this! Do not think it is easy
+to give you up! Do not think that I do not love you! O Pauline--not in
+_another_ life, but in _this_--_in this_!" He could say no
+more; and out of his physical weakness tears rose to his eyes and fell
+drop by drop upon her veil.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+Sister Dolorosa had been missed from the convent. There had been inquiry
+growing ever more anxious, and search growing ever more hurried. They
+found her bucket overturned at the cistern, and near it the print of her
+feet in the moist earth. But she was gone. They sought her in every
+hidden closet, they climbed to the observatory and scanned the
+surrounding fields. Work was left unfinished, prayer unended, as the
+news spread through the vast building; and as time went by and nothing
+was heard of her, uneasiness became alarm, and alarm became a vague,
+immeasurable foreboding of ill. Each now remembered how strange of late
+had been Sister Dolorosa's life and actions, and no one had the heart to
+name her own particular fears to any other or to read them in any
+other's eyes. Time passed on and discipline in the convent was
+forgotten. They began to pour out into the long corridors, and in
+tumultuous groups passed this, way and that, seeking the Mother
+Superior. But the Mother Superior had gone to the church with the same
+impulse that in all ages has brought the human heart to the altar of God
+when stricken by peril or disaster; and into the church they also
+gathered. Into the church likewise came the white flock of the novices,
+who had burst from their isolated quarter of the convent with a sudden
+contagion of fear. When, therefore, the Mother Superior rose from where
+she had been kneeling, turned, and in the dark church saw them assembled
+close around her, pallid, anxious, disordered, and looking with helpless
+dependence to her for that assurance for which she had herself in
+helpless dependence looked to God, so unnerved was she by the spectacle
+that strength failed her and she sank upon the steps of the altar,
+stretching out her arms once more in voiceless supplication towards the
+altar of the Infinite helpfulness.
+
+But at that moment a little novice, whom Sister Dolorosa loved and whom
+she had taught the music of the harp, came running into the church,
+wringing her hands and crying. When she was half-way down the aisle, in
+a voice that rang through the building she called out--
+
+"O Mother, she is coming! Something has happened to her! Her veil is
+gone!" and, turning again, she ran out of the church.
+
+They were hurrying after her when a note of command, inarticulate but
+imperious, from the Mother Superior arrested every foot and drew every
+eye in that direction. Voice had failed her, but with a gesture full of
+dignity and reproach she waved them back, and supporting her great form
+between two of the nuns, she advanced slowly down the aisle of the
+church and passed out by the front entrance. But they forgot to obey her
+and followed; and when she descended the steps to the bottom and made a
+sign that she would wait there, on the steps behind they stood grouped
+and crowded back to the sacred doors.
+
+Yes, she was coming--coming up the avenue of elms--coming slowly, as
+though her strength were almost gone. As she passed under the trees on
+one side of the avenue she touched their trunks one by one for support.
+She walked with her eyes on the ground and with the abstraction of one
+who has lost the purpose of walking. When she was perhaps half-way up
+the avenue, as she paused by one of the trees and supported herself
+against it, she raised her eyes and saw them all waiting to receive her
+on the steps of the church. For a little while she stood and surveyed
+the scene; the Mother Superior standing in front, her sinking form
+supported between two Sisters, her hands clasping the crucifix to her
+bosom; behind her the others, step above step, back to the doors; some
+looking at her with frightened faces; others with their heads buried on
+each other's shoulders; and hiding somewhere in the throng, the little
+novice, only the sound of whose sobbing revealed her presence. Then she
+took her hand from the tree, walked on quite steadily until she was
+several yards away, and paused again.
+
+She had torn off her veil and her head was bare and shining. She had
+torn the sacred symbol from her bosom, and through the black rent they
+could see the glistening whiteness of her naked breast. Comprehending
+them in one glance, as though she wished them all to listen, she looked
+into the face of the Mother Superior, and began to speak in a voice
+utterly forlorn, as of one who has passed the limits of suffering.
+
+"Mother!----"
+
+"Mother!----"
+
+She passed one hand slowly across her forehead, to brush away some cloud
+from her brain, and for the third time she began to speak--
+
+"Mother!----"
+
+Then she paused, pressed both palms quickly to her temples, and turned
+her eyes in bewildered appeal towards the Mother Superior. But she did
+not fall. With a cry that might have come from the heart of the
+boundless pity the Mother Superior broke away from the restraining arms
+of the nuns and rushed forward and caught her to her bosom.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+The day had come when Gordon was well enough to go home. As he sat
+giving directions to Ezra, who was awkwardly packing his valise, he
+looked over the books, papers, and letters that lay on the table near
+the bed.
+
+"There is one letter missing," he said, with a troubled expression, as
+he finished his search. Then he added quickly, in a tone of helpless
+entreaty--
+
+"You couldn't have taken it to the station and mailed it with the
+others, could you, Ezra? It was not to go to the station. It was to
+have gone to the convent."
+
+The last sentence he uttered rather to his own thought than for the ear
+of his listener.
+
+"I _took_ it to the convent," said Ezra, stoutly raising himself from
+over the valise in the middle of the floor. "I didn't _take_ it to the
+station!"
+
+Gordon wheeled on him, giving a wrench to his wound which may have
+caused the groan that burst from him, and left him white and trembling.
+
+"You took it _to the convent_! Great God, Ezra! When?"
+
+"The day you _told_ me to take it," replied Ezra simply. "The day the
+Sister came to see you."
+
+"O _Ezra_!" he cried piteously, looking into the rugged, faithful
+countenance of the old man, and feeling that he had not the right to
+censure him.
+
+Now for the first time he comprehended the whole significance of what
+had happened. He had never certainly known what motive had brought her
+to him that day. He had never been able to understand why, having come,
+she had gone away with such abruptness. Scarcely had he begun to speak
+to her when she had strangely shrunk from him; and scarcely had he
+ceased speaking when she had left the room without a word, and without
+his having so much as seen her face.
+
+Slowly now the sad truth forced itself upon his mind that she had come
+in answer to his entreaty. She must have thought his letter just
+written, himself just wounded and dying. It was as if he had betrayed
+her into the utmost expression of her love for him and in that moment
+had coldly admonished her of her duty. For him she had broken what was
+the most sacred obligation of her life, and in return he had given her
+an exhortation to be faithful to her vows.
+
+He went home to one of the older secluded country-places of the
+Blue-grass Region not far from Lexington. His illness served to account
+for a strange gravity and sadness of nature in him. When the winter had
+passed and spring had come, bringing perfect health again, this sadness
+only deepened. For health had brought back the ardour of life. The
+glowing colours of the world returned; and with these there flowed back
+into his heart, as waters flow back into a well that has gone dry, the
+perfect love of youth and strength with which he had loved her and tried
+to win her at first. And with this love of her came back the first
+complete realisation that he had lost her; and with this pain, that
+keenest pain of having been most unkind to her when he had striven to be
+kindest.
+
+He now looked back upon his illness, as one who has gained some clear
+headland looks down upon a valley so dark and overhung with mist that he
+cannot trace his own course across it. He was no longer in sympathy with
+that mood of self-renunciation which had influenced him in their last
+interview. He charged himself with having given up too easily; for might
+he not, after all, have won her? Might he not, little by little, have
+changed her conscience, as little by little he had gained her love?
+Would it have been possible, he asked himself again and again, for her
+ever to have come to him as she had done that day, had not her
+conscience approved? Of all his torturing thoughts, none cost him
+greater suffering than living over in imagination what must have
+happened to her since then--the humiliation, perhaps public exposure;
+followed by penalties and sorrows of which he durst not think, and
+certainly a life more unrelieved in gloom and desolation.
+
+In the summer his father's health began to fail and in the autumn he
+died. The winter was passed in settling the business of the estate, and
+before the spring passed again Gordon found himself at the head of
+affairs, and stretching out before him, calm and clear, the complete
+independence of his new-found manhood. His life was his own to make it
+what he would. As fortunes go in Kentucky he was wealthy, his farm being
+among the most beautiful of the beautiful ones which make up that land,
+and his homestead being dear through family ties and those intimations
+of fireside peace which lay closest the heart of his ideal life. But
+amid all his happiness, that one lack which made the rest appear
+lacking--that vacancy within which nothing would fill! The beauty of the
+rich land henceforth brought him the dream-like recollection of a rough,
+poor country a hundred miles away. Its quiet homesteads, with the
+impression they create of sweet and simple lives, reminded him only of a
+convent standing lonely and forbidding on its wide landscape. The calm
+liberty of woods and fields, the bounding liberty of life, the
+enlightened liberty of conscience and religion, which were to him the
+best gifts of his State, his country, and his time, forced on him
+perpetual contrast with the ancient confinement in which she languished.
+
+Still he threw himself resolutely into his duties. In all that he did or
+planned he felt a certain sacred, uplifting force added to his life by
+that high bond through which he had sought to link their sundered
+pathways. But, on the other hand, the haunting thought of what might
+have befallen her since became a corrosive care, and began to eat out
+the heart of his resolute purposes.
+
+So that when the long, calm summer had passed and autumn had come,
+bringing him lonelier days in the brown fields, lonelier rides on
+horseback through the gorgeous woods, and lonelier evenings beside his
+rekindled hearth-stones, he could bear the suspense no longer, and made
+up his mind to go back, if but to hear tidings whether she yet were
+living in the convent. He realised, of course, that under no
+circumstances could he ever again speak to her of his love. He had put
+himself on the side of her conscience against his own cause; but he felt
+that he owed it to himself to dissipate uncertainty regarding her fate.
+This done, he could return, however sadly, and take up the duties of his
+life with better heart.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+One Sunday afternoon he got off at the little station. From one of the
+rustic loungers on the platform he learned that old Ezra and Martha had
+gone the year before to live with a son in a distant State, and that
+their scant acres had been absorbed in the convent domain.
+
+Slowly he took his way across the sombre fields. Once more he reached
+the brown footpath and the edge of the pale, thin corn. Once more the
+summoning whistle of the quail came sweet and clear from the depths of a
+neighbouring thicket. Silently in the reddening west were rising the
+white cathedrals of the sky. It was on yonder hill-top he had first seen
+her, standing as though transfigured in the evening light. Overwhelmed
+by the memories which the place evoked, he passed on towards the
+convent. The first sight of it in the distance smote him with a pain so
+sharp that a groan escaped his lips as from a reopened wound.
+
+It was the hour of the vesper service. Entering the church he sat where
+he had sat before. How still it was, how faint the autumnal sunlight
+stealing in through the sainted windows, how motionless the dark company
+of nuns seated on one side of the nave, how rigid the white rows of
+novices on the other!
+
+With sad fascination of search his eyes roved among the black-shrouded
+devotees. She was not there. In the organ-loft above, a voice, poor and
+thin, began to pour out its wavering little tide of song. She was not
+there, then. Was her soul already gone home to Heaven?
+
+Noiselessly from behind the altar the sacristine had come forth and
+begun to light the candles. With eyes strained and the heart gone out of
+him he hung upon the movements of her figure. A slight, youthful figure
+it was--slighter, as though worn and wasted; and the hands which so
+firmly bore the long taper looked too white and fragile to have upheld
+aught heavier than the stalk of a lily.
+
+With infinite meekness and reverence she moved hither and thither about
+the shrine, as though each footfall were a step nearer the glorious
+Presence, each breath a prayer. One by one there sprang into being,
+beneath her touch of love, the silvery spires of sacred flame. No angel
+of the night ever more softly lit the stars of heaven. And it was thus
+that he saw her for the last time--folded back to the bosom of that
+faith from which it was left him to believe that he had all but rescued
+her to love and happiness, and set, as a chastening admonition, to tend
+the mortal fires on the altar of eternal service.
+
+Looking at her across the vast estranging gulf of destiny, heart-broken,
+he asked himself in his poor yearning way whether she longer had any
+thought of him or longer loved him. For answer he had only the assurance
+given in her words, which now rose as a benediction in his memory--
+
+"If He will deign to hear the ceaseless, fervent petition of one so
+erring, He will not leave you unhappy on account of that love for me
+which in this world it will never be allowed me to return."
+
+One highest star of adoration she kindled last, and then turned and
+advanced down the aisle. He was sitting close to it, and as she came
+towards him, with irresistible impulse he bent forward to meet her, his
+lips parted as though to speak, his eyes implored her for recognition,
+his hands were instinctively moved to attract her notice. But she passed
+him with unuplifted eyes. The hem of her dress swept across his foot. In
+that intense moment, which compressed within itself the joy of another
+meeting and the despair of an eternal farewell--in that moment he may
+have tried to read through her face and beyond it in her very soul the
+story of what she must have suffered. To any one else, on her face
+rested only that beauty, transcending all description, which is born of
+the sorrow of earth and the peace of God.
+
+Mournful as was this last sight of her, and touched with remorse, he
+could yet bear it away in his heart for long remembrance not untempered
+by consolation. He saw her well; he saw her faithful; he saw her bearing
+the sorrows of her lot with angelic sweetness. Through years to come the
+beauty of this scene might abide with him, lifted above the realm of
+mortal changes by the serenitude of her immovable devotion.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+There was thus spared him knowledge of the great change that had taken
+place regarding her within the counsels of the Order; nor, perhaps, was
+he ever to learn of the other changes, more eventful still, that were
+now fast closing in upon her destiny.
+
+When the Creator wishes to create a woman, the beauty of whose nature is
+to prefigure the types of an immortal world, He endows her more
+plenteously with the faculty of innocent love. The contravention of this
+faculty has time after time resulted in the most memorable tragedies
+that have ever saddened the history of the race. He had given to the
+nature of Pauline Cambron two strong, unwearying wings: the pinion of
+faith and the pinion of love. It was His will that she should soar by
+the use of both. But they had denied her the use of one; and the vain
+and bewildered struggles which marked her life thenceforth were as those
+of a bird that should try to rise into the air with one of its wings
+bound tight against its bosom.
+
+After the illness which followed upon the events of that terrible day,
+she took towards her own conduct the penitential attitude enjoined by
+her religion. There is little need to lay bare all that followed. She
+had passed out of her soft world of heroic dreams into the hard world of
+unheroic reality. She had chosen a name to express her sympathy with the
+sorrows of the world, and the sorrows of the world had broken in upon
+her. Out of the white dawn of the imagination she had stepped into the
+heat and burden of the day.
+
+Long after penances and prayers were over, and by others she might have
+felt herself forgiven, she was as far as ever from that forgiveness
+which comes from within. It is not characteristic of a nature such as
+hers to win pardon so easily for such an offence as she considered hers.
+Indeed, as time passed on, the powers of her being seemed concentrated
+more and more in one impassioned desire to expiate her sin; for, as time
+passed on, despite penances and prayers, she realised that she still
+loved him.
+
+As she pondered this she said to herself that peace would never come
+unless she should go elsewhere and begin life over in some place that
+was free from the memories of her fall, there was so much to remind her
+of him. She could not go into the garden without recalling the day when
+they had walked through it side by side. She could not cross the
+threshold of the church without being reminded that it was the scene of
+her unfaithfulness and of her exposure. The graveyard, the footpath,
+across the fields, the observatory--all were full of disturbing images.
+And therefore she besought the Mother Superior to send her away to some
+one of the missions of the Order, thinking that thus she would win
+forgetfulness of him and singleness of heart.
+
+But while the plan of doing this was yet being considered by the Mother
+Superior, there happened one of those events which seem to fit into the
+crises of our lives as though determined by the very laws of fate. The
+attention of the civilised world had not yet been fixed upon the heroic
+labours of the Belgian priest, Father Damien, among the lepers of the
+island of Molokai. But it has been stated that near the convent are the
+monks of La Trappe. Among these monks were friends of the American
+priest, Brother Joseph, who for years was one of Father Damien's
+assistants; and to these friends this priest from time to time wrote
+letters, in which he described at great length the life of the leper
+settlement and the work of the small band of men and women who had gone
+to labour in that remote and awful vineyard. The contents of these
+letters were made known to the ecclesiastical superior of the convent;
+and one evening he made them the subject of a lecture to the assembled
+nuns and novices, dwelling with peculiar eloquence upon the devotion of
+the three Franciscan Sisters who had become outcasts from human society
+that they might nurse and teach leprous girls, until inevitable death
+should overtake them also.
+
+Among that breathless audience of women there was one soul on whom his
+words fell with the force of a message from the Eternal. Here, then, at
+last, was offered her a pathway by following meekly to the end of which
+she might perhaps find blessedness. The real Man of Sorrows appeared to
+stand in it and beckon her on to the abodes of those abandoned creatures
+whose sufferings He had with peculiar pity so often stretched forth His
+hand to heal. When she laid before the Mother Superior her petition to
+be allowed to go, it was at first refused, being regarded as a momentary
+impulse; but months passed, and at intervals, always more earnestly, she
+renewed her request. It was pointed out to her that when one has gone
+among the lepers there is no return; the alternatives are either
+lifelong banishment, or death from leprosy, usually at the end of a few
+years. But always her reply was--
+
+"In the name of Christ, Mother, let me go!"
+
+Meantime it had become clear to the Mother Superior that some change of
+scene must be made. The days of Sister Dolorosa's usefulness in the
+convent were too plainly over.
+
+It had not been possible in that large household of women to conceal the
+fact of her unfaithfulness to her vows. As one black veil whispered to
+another--as one white veil communed with its attentive neighbour--little
+by little events were gathered and pieced together, until, in different
+forms of error and rumour, the story became known to all. Some from
+behind window lattices had watched her in the garden with the young
+stranger on the day of his visiting the convent. Others had heard of his
+lying wounded at the farm-house. Still others were sure that under
+pretext of visiting old Martha she had often met him in the fields. And
+then the scene on the steps of the church, when she had returned soiled
+and torn and fainting.
+
+So that from the day on which she arose from her illness and began to go
+about the convent, she was singled out as a target for those small
+arrows which the feminine eye directs with such faultless skill at one
+of its own sex. With scarcely perceptible movements they would draw
+aside when passing her, as though to escape corrupting contact. Certain
+ones of the younger Sisters, who were jealous of her beauty, did not
+fail to drop inuendoes for her to overhear. And upon some of the
+novices, whose minds were still wavering between the church and the
+world, it was thought that her example might have a dangerous influence.
+
+It is always wrong to judge motives; but it is possible that the head of
+the Order may have thought it best that this ruined life should take on
+the halo of martyrdom, from which fresh lustre would be reflected upon
+the annals of the church. However this may be, after about eighteen
+months of waiting, during which correspondence was held with the
+Sandwich Islands, it was determined that Sister Dolorosa should be
+allowed to go thither and join the labours of the Franciscan Sisters.
+
+From the day when consent was given she passed into that peace with
+which one ascends the scaffold or awaits the stake. It was this look of
+peace that Gordon had seen on her face as she moved hither and thither
+about the shrine.
+
+Only a few weeks after he had thus seen her the day came for her to go.
+Of those who took part in the scene of farewell she was the most
+unmoved. A month later she sailed from San Francisco for Honolulu; and
+in due time there came from Honolulu to the Mother Superior the
+following letter. It contains all that remains of the earthly history of
+Pauline Cambron--
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+                                  "KALAWAO, MOLOKAI, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS,
+                                                  "_January 1, 188--_.
+
+"DEAR MOTHER,--I entreat you not to let the sight of this strange
+handwriting, instead of one that must be so familiar, fill you with too
+much alarm. I hasten to assure you that before my letter closes you will
+understand why Sister Dolorosa has not written herself.
+
+"Since the hour when the vessel sailed from the American port, bearing
+to us that young life as a consecrated helper in our work among these
+suffering outcasts of the human race, I know that your thoughts and
+prayers have followed her with unceasing anxiety; so that first I should
+give you tidings that the vessel reached Honolulu in safety. I should
+tell you also that she had a prosperous voyage, and that she is now
+happy--far happier than when she left you. I know, likewise, that your
+imagination has constantly hovered about this island, and that you have
+pictured it to yourself as the gloomiest of all spots in the universe of
+God; so that in the next place I should try to remove this impression by
+giving you some description of the island itself, which has now become
+her unchanging home.
+
+"The island of Molokai, then, on which the leper settlement has been
+located by the Government, is long, and shaped much like the leaf of the
+willow-tree. The Sandwich Islands, as you well know, are a group of
+volcanoes out of which the fires have for the most part long since died.
+Molokai, therefore, is really but a mountain of cooled lava, half of
+which perhaps is beneath the level of the sea. The two leper villages
+are actually situated in the cup of an ancient crater. The island is
+very low along the southern coast, and slopes gradually to its greatest
+altitude on the northern ridge, from which the descent to the sea is in
+places all but perpendicular. It is between the bases of these northern
+cliffs and the sea that the villages are built. In the rear of them is a
+long succession of towering precipices and wild ravines, that are solemn
+and terrible to behold; and in front of them there is a coast-line so
+rough with pointed rocks that as the waves rush in upon them spray is
+often thrown to the height of fifty or a hundred feet. It is this that
+makes the landing at times so dangerous; and at other times, when a
+storm has burst, so fatal. So that shipwrecks are not unknown, dear
+Mother, and sometimes add to the sadness of life in this place.
+
+"But from this description you would get only a mistaken idea of the
+aspect of the island. It is sunny and full of tropical loveliness. The
+lapse of centuries has in places covered the lava with exquisite
+verdure. Soft breezes blow here, about the dark cliffs hang purple
+atmospheres, and above them drift pink and white clouds. Sometimes the
+whole island is veiled in golden mist. Beautiful streams fall down its
+green precipices into the sea, and the sea itself is of the most
+brilliant blue. In its depths are growths of pure white corals, which
+are the homes of fishes of gorgeous colours.
+
+"If I should speak no longer of the island, but of the people, I could
+perhaps do something further still to dissipate the dread with which you
+and other strangers must regard us. The inhabitants are a simple,
+generous, happy race; and there are many spots in this world--many in
+Europe and Asia, perhaps some in your own land--where the scenes of
+suffering and death are more poignant and appalling. The lepers live for
+the most part in decent white cottages. Many are the happy faces that
+are seen among them; so that, strange as it may seem, healthy people
+would sometimes come here to live if the laws did not forbid. So much
+has Christianity done that one may now be buried in consecrated ground.
+
+"If all this appears worldly and frivolous, dear Mother, forgive me! If
+I have chosen to withhold from you news of her, of whom alone I know you
+are thinking, it is because I have wished to give you as bright a
+picture as possible. Perhaps you will thus become the better prepared
+for what is to follow.
+
+"So that before I go further, I shall pause again to describe to you one
+spot which is the loveliest on the island. About a mile and a half from
+the village of Kalawao there is a rocky point which is used as an
+irregular landing-place when the sea is wild. Just beyond this point
+there is an inward curve of the coast, making an inlet of the sea; and
+from the water's edge there slopes backward into the bosom of the island
+a deep ravine. Down this ravine there falls and winds a gleaming white
+cataract, and here the tropical vegetation grows most beautiful. The
+trees are wreathed with moist creepers; the edges and crevices of the
+lava blocks are fringed with ferns and moss. Here the wild ginger blooms
+and the crimson lehua. Here grow trees of orange and palm and punhala
+groves. Here one sees the rare honey-bird with its plumage of scarlet
+velvet, the golden plover, and the beautiful white bos'un-bird, wheeling
+about the black cliff heights. The spot is as beautiful as a scene in
+some fairy tale. When storms roll in from the sea the surf flows far
+back into this ravine, and sometimes--after the waters have subsided--a
+piece of wreckage from the ocean is left behind.
+
+"Forgive me once more, O dear Mother! if again I seem to you so idle and
+unmeaning in my words. But I have found it almost impossible to go on;
+and, besides, I think you will thank me, after you have read my letter
+through, for telling you first of this place.
+
+"From the day of our first learning that there was a young spirit among
+you who had elected, for Christ's sake, to come here and labour with us,
+we had counted the days till she should arrive. The news had spread
+throughout the leper settlement. Father Damien had made it known to the
+lepers in Kalawao, Father Wendolen had likewise told it among the lepers
+in Kalapaupa, and the Protestant ministers spoke of it to their flocks.
+Thus her name had already become familiar to hundreds of them, and many
+a prayer had been offered up for her safety.
+
+"Once a week there comes to Molokai from Honolulu a little steamer
+called _Mokolii_. When it reached here last Saturday morning it brought
+the news that just before it sailed from Honolulu the vessel bearing
+Sister Dolorosa had come into port. She had been taken in charge by the
+Sisters until the _Mokolii_ should return and make the next trip. I
+should add that the steamer leaves at about five o'clock in the
+afternoon, and that it usually reaches here at about dawn of the
+following morning in ordinary weather.
+
+"And now, dear Mother, I beseech you to lay my letter aside! Do not read
+further now. Lay it aside, and do not take it up again until you have
+sought in prayer the consolation of our divine religion for the sorrows
+of our lives.
+
+"I shall believe that you have done this, and that, as you now go on
+with the reading of my letter, you have gained the fortitude to hear
+what I have scarcely the power to write. Heaven knows that in my poor
+way I have sought to prepare you!
+
+"As it was expected that the steamer would reach the island about dawn
+on Saturday morning, as usual, it had been arranged that many of us
+should be at the landing-place to give her welcome. But about midnight
+one of the terrific storms which visit this region suddenly descended,
+enveloping the heavens, that had been full of the light of the stars, in
+impenetrable darkness. We were sleepless with apprehension that the
+vessel would be driven upon the rocks--such was the direction of the
+storm--long before it could come opposite the villages: and a few hours
+before day Father Damien, accompanied by Father Conradi, Brother James,
+and Brother Joseph, went down to the coast. Through the remaining hours
+of the night they watched and waited, now at one point, and now at
+another, knowing that the vessel could never land in such a storm. As
+the dawn broke they followed up the coast until they came opposite that
+rocky point of which I have already spoken as being an irregular
+landing-place.
+
+"Here they were met by two or three men who were drenched with the sea,
+and just starting towards the villages, and from them they learned that,
+an hour or two before, the steamer had been driven upon the hidden rocks
+of the point. It had been feared that it would soon be sunk or dashed to
+pieces, and as quickly as possible a boat had been put off, in which
+were the leper girls that were being brought from Honolulu. There was
+little hope that it would ever reach the shore, but it was the last
+chance of life. In this boat, dear Mother, Sister Dolorosa also was
+placed. Immediately afterwards a second boat was put off, containing the
+others that were on board.
+
+"Of the fate of the first boat they had learned nothing. Their own had
+been almost immediately capsized, and, so far as they knew, they were
+the sole survivors. The Hawaiians are the most expert of swimmers, being
+almost native to the sea; and since the distance was short, and only
+these survived, you will realise how little chance there was for any
+other.
+
+"During the early hours of the morning, which broke dark and
+inexpressibly sad for us, a few bodies were found washed ashore, among
+them those of two leper girls of Honolulu. But our search for her long
+proved unavailing. At length Father Damien suggested that we follow up
+the ravine which I have described, and it was thither that he and
+Brother Joseph and I accordingly went. Father Damien thought it well
+that I should go with them.
+
+"It was far inland, dear Mother, that at last we found her. She lay
+outstretched on a bare, black rock of lava, which sloped upward from the
+sea. Her naked white feet rested on the green moss that fringed its
+lower edge, and her head was sheltered from the burning sun by branches
+of ferns. Almost over her eyes--the lids of which were stiff with the
+salt of the ocean--there hung a spray of white poppies. It was as though
+nature would be kind to her in death.
+
+"At the sight of her face, so young, and having in it the purity and the
+peace of Heaven, we knelt down around her without a word, and for a
+while we could do nothing but weep. Surely nothing so spotless was ever
+washed ashore on this polluted island! If I sinned, I pray to be
+forgiven; but I found a strange joy in thinking that the corruption of
+this terrible disease had never been laid upon her. Heaven had accepted
+in advance her faithful spirit, and had spared her the long years of
+bodily suffering.
+
+"At Father Damien's direction Brother Joseph returned to the village for
+a bier and for four lepers who should be strong enough to bear it. When
+they came we laid her on it, and bore her back to the village, where
+Mother Marianne took the body in charge and prepared it for burial.
+
+"How shall I describe her funeral? The lepers were her pall-bearers. The
+news of the shipwreck had quickly spread throughout the settlement, and
+these simple, generous people yield themselves so readily to the emotion
+of the hour. When the time arrived, it seemed that all who could walk
+had come to follow her to the churchyard. It was a moving sight--the
+long, wavering train of that death-stricken throng, whose sufferings had
+so touched the pity of our Lord when He was on earth, and the desolation
+of whose fate she had come to lessen. There were the young and the old
+alike, Protestants and Catholics without distinction, children with
+their faces so strangely aged with ravages of the leprosy, those
+advanced in years with theirs so mutilated and marred. Others, upon whom
+the leprosy had made such advances that they were too weak to walk, sat
+in their cottage doors and lifted their husky voices in singing that
+wailing native hymn in which they bemoan their hopeless fate. Some of
+the women, after a fashion of their own, wore large wreaths of blue
+blossoms and green leaves about their withered faces.
+
+"And it was thus that we lepers--I say we lepers because I am one of
+them, since I cannot expect long to escape the disease--it was thus that
+we lepers followed her to the graveyard in the rock by the blue sea,
+where Father Damien with his own hands had helped to dig her grave. And
+there, dear Mother, all that is mortal of her now rests. But we know
+that ere this she has heard the words: 'I was sick, and ye visited me.'
+
+"Mother Marianne would herself have written, but she was called away to
+the Leproserie.
+
+                                                      "SISTER AGATHA."
+
+
+
+
+POSTHUMOUS FAME; OR, A LEGEND OF THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+There once lived in a great city, where the dead were all but
+innumerable, a young man by the name of Nicholas Vane, who possessed a
+singular genius for the making of tombstones. So beautiful they were,
+and so fitly designed to express the shadowy pain of mortal memory or
+the bright forecasting of eternal hope, that all persons were held
+fortunate who could secure them for the calm resting-places of their
+beloved sleepers. Indeed, the curious tale was whispered round that the
+bereft were not his only patrons, but that certain personages who were
+peculiarly ambitious of posthumous fame--seeing they had not long to
+live, and unwilling to intrust others with the grave responsibility of
+having them commemorated--had gone to his shop and secretly advised with
+him respecting such monuments as might preserve their memories from too
+swift oblivion.
+
+However this may fall out, certain it is that his calling had its
+secrets; and once he was known to observe that no man could ever
+understand the human heart until he had become a maker of tombstones.
+Whether the knowledge thus derived should make of one a laughing or a
+weeping philosopher, Nicholas himself remained a joyous type of youthful
+manhood--so joyous, in fact, that a friend of his who wrought in colour,
+strolling one day into the workshop where Nicholas stood surrounded by
+the exquisite shapes of memorial marbles, had asked to paint the scene
+as a representation of Life chiselling to its beautiful purposes the
+rugged symbols of Death, and smiling as it wove the words of love and
+faith across the stony proofs of the universal tragedy. Afterwards, it
+is true, a great change was wrought in the young artisan.
+
+He had just come in one morning and paused to look around at the
+various finished and unfinished mortuary designs.
+
+"Truly," he said to himself all at once, "if I were a wise man, I'd
+begin this day's business by chiselling my own head-stone. For who knows
+but that before sunset my brother the gravedigger may be told to build
+me one of the houses that last till doomsday! And what man could then
+make the monument to stop the door of _my_ house with. But why should I
+have a monument? If I lie beneath it, I shall not know I lie there. If I
+lie not there, then it will not stand over me. So, whether I lie there,
+or lie not there, what will it matter to me then? Ay; but what if, being
+dead only to this world and living in another, I should yet look on the
+monument erected to my memory and therefore be the happier? I know not;
+nor to what end we are vexed with this desire to be remembered after
+death. The prospect of vanishing from a poor, toilsome life fills us
+with such consternation and pain! It is therefore we strive to impress
+ourselves ineffaceably on the race, so that, after we have gone hence,
+or ceased to be, we may still have incorporeal habitation among all
+coming generations."
+
+Here he was interrupted by a low knock at the door. Bidden to come in,
+there entered a man of delicate physiognomy, who threw a hurried glance
+around and inquired in an anxious tone--
+
+"Sir, are you alone?"
+
+"I am never alone," replied Nicholas in a ringing voice; "for I dwell
+hard by the gate-way of life and death, through which a multitude is
+always passing."
+
+"Not so loud, I beseech you," said the visitor, stretching forth his
+thin, white hands with eager deprecation. "I would not, for the world,
+have any one discover that I have been here."
+
+"Are you, then, a personage of such importance to the world?" said
+Nicholas, smiling, for the stranger's appearance argued no worldly
+consideration whatsoever. The suit of black, which his frail figure
+seemed to shrink away from with very sensitiveness, was glossy and
+pathetic with more than one covert patch. His shoes were dust-covered
+and worn. His long hair went round his head in a swirl, and he bore
+himself with an air of damaged, apologetic, self-appreciation.
+
+"I am a poet," he murmured with a flush of pain, dropping his large
+mournful eyes beneath the scrutiny of one who might be an unsympathetic
+listener. "I am a poet, and I have come to speak with you privately of
+my--of the--of a monument. I am afraid I shall be forgotten. It is a
+terrible thought."
+
+"Can you not trust your poems to keep you remembered?" asked Nicholas,
+with more kindliness.
+
+"I could if they were as widely read as they should be." He appeared
+emboldened by his hearer's gentleness. "But, to confess the truth, I
+have not been accepted by my age. That, indeed, should give me no pain,
+since I have not written for it, but for the great future to which alone
+I look for my fame."
+
+"Then why not look to it for your monument also?"
+
+"Ah, sir!" he cried, "there are so many poets in the world that I might
+be entirely overlooked by posterity, did there not descend to it some
+sign that I was held in honour by my own generation."
+
+"Have you never noticed," he continued, with more earnestness, "that
+when strangers visit a cemetery they pay no attention to the thousands
+of little head-stones that lie scattered close to the ground, but hunt
+out the highest monuments, to learn in whose honour they were erected?
+Have you never heard them exclaim: 'Yonder is a great monument! A great
+man must be buried there. Let us go and find out who he was and what he
+did to be so celebrated.' O sir, you and I know that this is a poor way
+of reasoning, since the greatest monuments are not always set over the
+greatest men. Still the custom has wrought its good effects, and
+splendid memorials do serve to make known in years to come those whom
+they commemorate, by inciting posterity to search for their actions or
+revive their thoughts. I warrant you the mere bust of Homer----"
+
+"You are not mentioning yourself in the same breath with Homer, I hope,"
+said Nicholas, with great good-humour.
+
+"My poems are as dear to me as Homer's were to him," replied the poet,
+his eyes filling.
+
+"What if you _are_ forgotten? Is it not enough for the poet to have
+lived for the sake of beauty?"
+
+"No!" he cried passionately. "What you say is a miserable error. For the
+very proof of the poet's vocation is in creating the beautiful. But how
+know he has created it? By his own mind? Alas, the poet's mind tells him
+only what is beautiful to _him_! It is by fame that he knows it--fame,
+the gratitude of men for the beauty he has revealed to them! What is so
+sweet, then, as the knowledge that fame has come to him already, or
+surely awaits him after he is dead?"
+
+"We labour under some confusion of ideas, I fear," said Nicholas, "and,
+besides, are losing time. What kind of mon----"
+
+"That I leave to you," interrupted the poet. "Only, I should like my
+monument to be beautiful. Ah, if you but knew how all through this poor
+life of mine I have loved the beautiful! Never, never have I drawn near
+it in any visible form without almost holding my breath as though I were
+looking deep, deep into God's opened eyes. But it was of the epitaph I
+wished to speak."
+
+Hereupon, with a deeper flush, he drew from a large inside
+breast-pocket, that seemed to have been made for the purpose, a worn
+duodecimo volume, and fell to turning the much-fingered pages.
+
+"This," he murmured fondly, without looking up, "is the complete
+collection of my poems."
+
+"Indeed!" exclaimed Nicholas, with deep compassion.
+
+"Yes, my complete collection. I have written a great deal more, and
+should have liked to publish all that I have written. But it was
+necessary to select, and I have included here only what it was
+intolerable to see wasted. There is nothing I value more than a group of
+elegiac poems, which every single member of my large family--who are
+fine critics--and all my friends, pronounce very beautiful. I think it
+would be a good idea to inscribe a selection from one on my monument,
+since those who read the selection would wish to read the entire poem,
+and those who read the entire poem would wish to read the entire
+collection. I shall now favour you with these elegies."
+
+"I should be happy to hear them; but my time!" said Nicholas
+courteously. "The living are too impatient to wait on me; the dead too
+patient to be defrauded."
+
+"Surely you would not refuse to hear one of them," exclaimed the poet,
+his eyes flashing.
+
+"Read _one_, by all means." Nicholas seated himself on a monumental
+lamb.
+
+The poet passed one hand gently across his forehead, as though to brush
+away the stroke of rudeness; then, fixing upon Nicholas a look of
+infinite remoteness, he read as follows:--
+
+    "He suffered, but he murmured not;
+      To every storm he bared his breast;
+    He asked but for the common lot--
+      To be a man among the rest.
+
+    "Here lies he now----"
+
+"If you ask but for the common lot," interrupted Nicholas, "you should
+rest content to be forgotten."
+
+But before the poet could reply, a loud knock caused him to flap the
+leaves of the "Complete Collection" together with one hand, while with
+the other he gathered the tails of his long coat about him, as though
+preparing to pass through some difficult aperture. The exaltation of his
+mood, however, still showed itself in the look and tone of proud
+condescension with which he said to Nicholas--
+
+"Permit me to retire at once by some private passway."
+
+Nicholas led him to a door in the rear of the shop, and there, with a
+smile and a tear, stood for a moment watching the precipitate figure of
+the retreating bard, who suddenly paused when disappearing and tore open
+the breast of his coat to assure himself that his beloved elegies were
+resting safe across his heart.
+
+The second visitor was of another sort. He hobbled on a cork leg, but
+inexorably disciplined the fleshly one into old-time firmness and
+precision. A faded military cloak draped his stalwart figure. Part of
+one bushy grey eyebrow had been chipped away by the same sword-cut that
+left its scar across his battle-beaten face.
+
+"I have come to speak with you about my monument," he said, in a gruff
+voice that seemed to issue from the mouth of a rusty cannon. "Those of
+my old comrades that did not fall at my side are dead. My wife died long
+ago, and my little children. I am old and forgotten. It is a time of
+peace. There's not a boy who will now listen to me while I tell of my
+campaigns. I live alone. Were I to die to-morrow my grave might not have
+so much as a head-stone. It might be taken for that of a coward. Make me
+a monument for a true soldier."
+
+"Your grateful country will do that," said Nicholas.
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed the veteran, whom the shock of battle had made deaf long
+ago.
+
+"Your country," shouted Nicholas, close to his ear, "your country--will
+erect a monument--to your memory."
+
+"My country!" The words were shot out with a reverberating, melancholy
+boom. "My country will do no such a thing. How many millions of soldiers
+have fallen on her battle-fields! Where are their monuments? They would
+make her one vast cemetery."
+
+"But is it not enough for you to have been a true soldier? Why wish to
+be known and remembered for it?"
+
+"I know I do not wish to be forgotten," he replied simply. "I know I
+take pleasure in the thought that long after I am forgotten there will
+be a tongue in my monument to cry out to every passing stranger, 'Here
+lies the body of a true soldier.' It is a great thing to be brave!"
+
+"Is, then, this monument to be erected in honour of bravery, or of
+yourself?"
+
+"There is no difference," said the veteran bluntly. "Bravery _is_
+myself."
+
+"It is bravery," he continued, in husky tones, and with, a mist
+gathering in his eyes that made him wink as though he were trying to see
+through the smoke of battle--"it is bravery that I see most clearly in
+the character of God. What would become of us if He were a coward? I
+serve Him as my brave Commander; and though I am stationed far from Him
+and may be faint and sorely wounded, I know that He is somewhere on the
+battle-field, and that I shall see Him at last, approaching me as He
+moves up and down among the ranks."
+
+"But you say that your country does not notice you--that you have no
+friends; do you, then, feel no resentment?"
+
+"None, none," he answered quickly, though his head dropped on his bosom.
+
+"And you wish to be remembered by a world that is willing to forget
+you?"
+
+He lifted his head proudly. "There are many true men in the world," he
+said, "and it has much to think of. I owe it all I can give, all I can
+bequeath; and I can bequeath it nothing but the memory of a true man."
+
+One day, not long after this, there came into the workshop of Nicholas a
+venerable man of the gravest, sweetest, and most scholarly aspect, who
+spoke not a word until he had led Nicholas to the front window and
+pointed a trembling finger at a distant church spire.
+
+"You see yon spire?" he said. "It almost pierces the clouds. In the
+church beneath I have preached to men and women for nearly fifty years.
+Many that I have christened at the font I have married at the altar;
+many of these I have sprinkled with dust. What have I not done for them
+in sorrow and want! How have I not toiled to set them in the way of
+purer pleasures and to anchor their tempest-tossed hopes! And yet how
+soon they will forget me! Already many say I am too old to preach. Too
+old! I preach better than I ever did in my life. Yet it may be my lot to
+wander down into the deep valley, an idle shepherd with an idle crook. I
+have just come from the writing of my next sermon, in which I exhort my
+people to strive that their names be not written on earthly monuments
+or human hearts, but in the Book of Life. It is my sublimest theme. If I
+am ever eloquent, if I am ever persuasive, if I ever for one moment draw
+aside to spiritual eyes the veil that discloses the calm, enrapturing
+vistas of eternity, it is when I measure my finite strength against this
+mighty task. But why? Because they are the sermons of my own aspiration.
+I preach them to my own soul. Face to face with that naked soul I pen
+those sermons--pen them when all are asleep save the sleepless Eye that
+is upon me. Even in the light of that Eye do I recoil from the thought
+of being forgotten. How clearly I foresee it! Ashes to ashes, dust to
+dust! Where then will be my doctrines, my prayers, my sermons?"
+
+"Is it not enough for you to have scattered your handful of good
+broadcast, to ripen as endlessly as the grass? What if they that gather
+know naught of him that sowed?"
+
+"It is not enough. I should like the memory of _me_ to live on and
+on in the world, inseparable from the good I may have done. What am I but
+the good that is in me? 'Tis this that links me to the infinite and the
+perfect. Does not the Perfect One wish His goodness to be associated
+with His name? No! No! I do not wish to be forgotten!"
+
+"It is mere vanity."
+
+"Not vanity," said the aged servitor meekly. "Wait until you are old,
+till the grave is at your helpless feet: it is the love of life."
+
+But some years later there befell Nicholas an event that transcended all
+past experiences, and left its impress on his whole subsequent life.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The hour had passed when any one was likely to enter his shop. A few
+rays of pale sunlight, straggling in through crevices of the door,
+rested like a dying halo on the heads of the monumental figures grouped
+around. Shadows, creeping upward from the ground, shrouded all else in
+thin, penetrable half-gloom, through which the stark grey emblems of
+mortality sent forth more solemn suggestions. A sudden sense of the
+earthly tragedy overwhelmed him. The chisel and the hammer dropped from
+his hands, and, resting his head on the block he had been carving, he
+gave himself up to that mood of dim, distant reverie in which the soul
+seems to soar and float far above the shock and din of the world's
+disturbing nearness. On his all but oblivious ear, like the faint
+washings of some remote sea, beat the waves of the city's tide-driven
+life in the streets outside. The room itself seemed hushed to the awful
+stillness of the high aerial spaces. Then all at once this stillness was
+broken by a voice, low, clear, and tremulous, saying close to his ear--
+
+"Are you the maker of gravestones?"
+
+"That is my sad calling," he cried bitterly, starting up with
+instinctive forebodings.
+
+He saw before him a veiled figure. To support herself, she rested one
+hand on the block he had been carving, while she pressed the other
+against her heart, as though to stifle pain.
+
+"Whose monument is this?"
+
+"A neglected poet's who died not long ago. Soon, perhaps, I shall be
+making one for an old soldier, and one for a holy man, whose soul, I
+hear, is about to be dismissed."
+
+"Are not some monuments sadder to make than others?"
+
+"Ay, truly."
+
+"What is the saddest you ever made?"
+
+"The saddest monument I ever made was one for a poor mother who had lost
+her only son. One day a woman came in who had no sooner entered than she
+sat down and gave way to a passionate outburst of grief.
+
+"'My good woman,' I said, 'why do you weep so bitterly?'
+
+"'Do not call me good,' she moaned, and hid her face.
+
+"I then perceived her fallen character. When she recovered self-control
+she drew from her sinful bosom an old purse filled with coins of
+different values.
+
+"'Why do you give me this?' I asked.
+
+"'It is to pay for a monument for my son,' she said, and the storm of
+her grief swept over her again.
+
+"I learned that for years she had toiled and starved to hoard up a sum
+with which to build a monument to his memory, for he had never failed of
+his duty to her after all others had cast her out. Certainly he had his
+reward, not in the monument, but in the repentance which came to her
+after his death. I have never seen such sorrow for evil as the memory of
+his love wrought in her. For herself she desired only that the spot
+where she should be buried might be unknown. This longing to be
+forgotten has led me to believe that none desire to be remembered for
+the evil that is in them, but only for some truth, or beauty, or
+goodness by which they have linked their individual lives to the general
+life of the race. Even the lying epitaphs in cemeteries prove how we
+would fain have the dead arrayed on the side of right in the thoughts of
+their survivors. This wretched mother and human outcast, believing
+herself to have lost everything that makes it well to be remembered,
+craved only the mercy of forgetfulness."
+
+"And yet I think she died a Christian soul."
+
+"You knew her, then?"
+
+"I was with her in the last hours. She told me her story. She told me
+also of you, and that you would accept nothing for the monument you were
+at such care to make. It is perhaps for this reason that I have felt
+some desire to see you, and that I am here now to speak with you of----"
+
+A shudder passed over her.
+
+"After all, that was not a sad, but a joyous monument to fashion," she
+added abruptly.
+
+"Ay, it was joyous. But to me the joyous and the sad are much allied in
+the things of this life."
+
+"And yet there might be one monument wholly sad, might there not?"
+
+"There might be, but I know not whose it would be."
+
+"If she you love should die, would not hers be so?"
+
+"Until I love, and she I love is dead, I cannot know," said Nicholas,
+smiling.
+
+"What builds the most monuments?" she asked quickly, as though to
+retreat from her levity.
+
+"Pride builds many--splendid ones. Gratitude builds some, forgiveness
+some, and pity some. But faith builds more than these, though often
+poor, humble ones; and love!--love builds more than all things else
+together."
+
+"And what, of all things that monuments are built in memory of, is most
+loved and soonest forgotten?" she asked, with intensity.
+
+"Nay, I cannot tell that."
+
+"Is it not a beautiful woman? This, you say, is the monument of a poet.
+After the poet grows old, men love him for the songs he sang; they love
+the old soldier for the battles he fought, and the preacher for his
+remembered prayers. But a woman! Who loves her for the beauty she once
+possessed, or rather regards her not with the more distaste? Is there in
+history a figure so lonely and despised as that of the woman, who, once
+the most beautiful in the world, crept back into her native land a
+withered hag? Or, if a woman die while she is yet beautiful, how long is
+she remembered? Her beauty is like heat and light--powerful only for
+those who feel and see it."
+
+But Nicholas had scarcely heard her. His eyes had become riveted upon
+her hand, which rested on the marble, as white as though grown out of it
+under the labours of his chisel.
+
+"My lady," he said, with the deepest respect, "will you permit me to
+look at your hand? I have carved many a one in marble, and studied many
+a one in life; but never have I seen anything so beautiful as yours."
+
+He took it with an artist's impetuosity and bent over it, laying its
+palm against one of his own and stroking it softly with the other. The
+blood leaped through his heart, and he suddenly lifted it to his lips.
+
+"God only can make the hand beautiful," he said.
+
+Displaced by her arm which he had upraised, the light fabric that had
+concealed her figure parted on her bosom and slipped to the ground. His
+eyes swept over the perfect shape that stood revealed. The veil still
+concealed her face. The strangely mingled emotions that had been
+deepening within him all this time now blended themselves in one
+irrepressible wish.
+
+"Will you permit me to see your face?"
+
+She drew quickly back. A subtle pain was in his voice as he cried--
+
+"O my lady! I ask it as one who has pure eyes for the beautiful."
+
+"My face belongs to my past. It has been my sorrow; it is nothing now."
+
+"Only permit me to see it!"
+
+"Is there no other face you would rather see?"
+
+Who can fathom the motive of a woman's questions?
+
+"None, none!"
+
+She drew aside her veil, and her eyes rested quietly on his like a
+revelation. So young she was as hardly yet to be a woman, and her beauty
+had in it that seraphic purity and mysterious pathos which is never seen
+in a woman's face until the touch of another world has chastened her
+spirit into the resignation of a saint. The heart of Nicholas was wrung
+by the sight of it with a sudden sense of inconsolable loss and longing.
+
+"O my lady!" he cried, sinking on one knee and touching his lips to her
+hand with greater gentleness. "Do you indeed think the beauty of a woman
+so soon forgotten? As long as I live, yours will be as fresh in my
+memory as it was the moment after I first saw it in its perfection and
+felt its power."
+
+"Do not recall to me the sorrow of such thoughts." She touched her
+heart. "My heart is a tired hour-glass. Already the sands are wellnigh
+run through. Any hour it may stop, and then--out like a light! Shapeless
+ashes! I have loved life well, but not so well that I have not been able
+to prepare to leave it."
+
+She spoke with the utmost simplicity and calmness, yet her eyes were
+turned with unspeakable sadness towards the shadowy recesses of the
+room, where from their pedestals the monumental figures looked down upon
+her as though they would have opened their marble lips and said, "Poor
+child! Poor child!"
+
+"I have had my wish to see you and to see this place. Before long some
+one will come here to have you carve a monument to the most perishable
+of all things. Like the poor mother who had no wish to be
+remembered----"
+
+Nicholas was moved to the deepest.
+
+"I have but little skill," he said. "The great God did not bestow on me
+the genius of His favourite children of sculpture. But if so sad and
+sacred a charge should ever become mine, with His help I will rear such
+a monument to your memory that as long as it stands none who see it will
+ever be able to forget you. Year after year your memory shall grow as a
+legend of the beautiful."
+
+When she was gone he sat self-forgetful until the darkness grew
+impenetrable. As he groped his way out at last along the thick
+guide-posts of death, her voice seemed to float towards him from every
+head-stone, her name to be written in every epitaph.
+
+The next day a shadow brooded over the place. Day by day it deepened. He
+went out to seek intelligence of her. In the quarter of the city where
+she lived he discovered that her name had already become a nucleus
+around which were beginning to cluster many little legends of the
+beautiful. He had but to hear recitals of her deeds of kindness and
+mercy. For the chance of seeing her again he began to haunt the
+neighbourhood; then, having seen her, he would return to his shop the
+victim of more unavailing desire. All things combined to awake in him
+that passion of love whose roots are nourished in the soul's finest soil
+of pity and hopelessness. Once or twice, under some pretext, he made
+bold to accost her; and once, under the stress of his passion, he mutely
+lifted his eyes, confessing his love; but hers were turned aside.
+
+Meantime he began to dream of the monument he chose to consider she had
+committed to his making. It should be the triumph of his art; but more,
+it would represent in stone the indissoluble union of his love with her
+memory. Through him alone would she enter upon her long after-life of
+saint-like reminiscence.
+
+When the tidings of her death came, he soon sprang up from the
+prostration of his grief with a burning desire to consummate his
+beloved work.
+
+"Year after year your memory shall grow as a legend of the beautiful."
+
+These words now became the inspiration of his masterpiece. Day and night
+it took shape in the rolling chaos of his sorrow. What sculptor in the
+world ever espoused the execution of a work that lured more irresistibly
+from their hiding-places the shy and tender ministers of his genius?
+What one ever explored with greater boldness the utmost limits of
+artistic expression, or wrought in sterner defiance of the laws of our
+common forgetfulness?
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+One afternoon, when people thronged the great cemetery of the city, a
+strolling group were held fascinated by the unique loveliness of a newly
+created monument.
+
+"Never," they exclaimed, "have we seen so exquisite a masterpiece. In
+whose honour is it erected?"
+
+But when they drew nearer, they found carved on it simply a woman's
+name.
+
+"Who was she?" they asked, puzzled and disappointed. "Is there no
+epitaph?"
+
+"Ay," spoke up a young man lying on the grass and eagerly watching the
+spectators. "Ay, a very fitting epitaph."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"Carved on the heart of the monument!" he cried, in a tone of triumph.
+
+"On the heart of the monument? Then we cannot see it."
+
+"It is not meant to be seen."
+
+"How do _you_ know of it?"
+
+"I made the monument."
+
+"Then tell us what it is."
+
+"It cannot be told. It is there only because it is unknown."
+
+"Out on you! You play your pranks with the living and the dead."
+
+"You will live to regret this day," said a thoughtful bystander. "You
+have tampered with the memory of the dead."
+
+"Why, look you, good people," cried Nicholas, springing up and
+approaching his beautiful master-work. He rested one hand lovingly
+against it and glanced around him pale with repressed excitement, as
+though a long-looked-for moment had at length arrived. "I play no pranks
+with the living or the dead. Young as I am, I have fashioned many
+monuments, as this cemetery will testify. But I make no more. This is my
+last; and as it is the last, so it is the greatest. For I have fashioned
+it in such love and sorrow for her who lies beneath it as you can never
+know. If it is beautiful, it is yet an unworthy emblem of that brief and
+transporting beauty which was hers; and I have planted it here beside
+her grave, that as a delicate white flower it may exhale the perfume of
+her memory for centuries to come.
+
+"Tell me," he went on, his lips trembling, his voice faltering with the
+burden of oppressive hope--"tell me, you who behold it now, do you not
+wed her memory deathlessly to it? To its fair shape, its native and
+unchanging purity?"
+
+"Ay," they interrupted impatiently. "But the epitaph?"
+
+"Ah!" he cried, with tenderer feeling, "beautiful as the monument is to
+the eye, it would be no fit emblem of her had it not something sacred
+hidden within. For she was not lovely to the sense alone, but had a
+perfect heart. So I have placed within the monument that which is its
+heart, and typifies hers. And, mark you!" he cried, in a voice of such
+awful warning that those standing nearest him instinctively shrank back,
+"the one is as inviolable as the other. No more could you rend the heart
+from the human bosom than this epitaph from the monument. My deep and
+lasting curse on him who attempts it! For I have so fitted the parts of
+the work together, that to disunite would be to break them in pieces;
+and the inscription is so fragile and delicately poised within, that so
+much as rudely to jar the monument would shiver it to atoms. It is put
+there to be inviolable. Seek to know it, you destroy it. This I but
+create after the plan of the Great Artist, who shows you only the fair
+outside of His masterpieces. What human eye ever looked into the
+mysterious heart of His beautiful--that heart which holds the secret of
+inexhaustible freshness and eternal power? Could this epitaph have been
+carved on the outside, you would have read it and forgotten it with
+natural satiety. But uncomprehended, what a spell I mark it exercises!
+You will--nay, you _must_--remember it for ever! You will speak of it
+to others. They will come. And thus in ever-widening circle will be
+borne afar the memory of her whose name is on it, the emblem of whose
+heart is hidden within. And what more fitting memorial could a man rear
+to a woman, the pure shell of whose beauty all can see, the secret of
+whose beautiful being no one ever comprehends?"
+
+He walked rapidly away, then, some distance off, turned and looked back.
+More spectators had come up. Some were earnestly talking, pointing now
+to the monument, now towards him. Others stood in rapt contemplation of
+his master-work.
+
+Tears rose to his eyes. A look of ineffable joy overspread his face.
+
+"O my love!" he murmured, "I have triumphed. Death has claimed your
+body, heaven your spirit; but the earth claims the saintly memory of
+each. This day about your name begins to grow the Legend of the
+Beautiful."
+
+The sun had just set. The ethereal white shape of the monument stood
+outlined against a soft background of rose-coloured sky. To his
+transfiguring imagination it seemed lifted far into the cloud-based
+heavens, and the evening star, resting above its apex, was a celestial
+lamp lowered to guide the eye to it through the darkness of the
+descending night.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Mysterious complexity of our mortal nature and estate that we should so
+desire to be remembered after death, though born to be forgotten! Our
+words and deeds, the influences of our silent personalities, do indeed
+pass from us into the long history of the race and abide for the rest of
+time: so that an earthly immortality is the heritage, nay, the
+inalienable necessity, of even the commonest lives; only it is an
+immortality not of self, but of its good and evil. For Nature sows us
+and reaps us, that she may gather a harvest, not of us, but from us. It
+is God alone that gathers the harvest of us. And well for us that our
+destiny should be that general forgetfulness we so strangely shrink
+from. For no sooner are we gone hence than, even for such brief times as
+our memories may endure, we are apt to grow by processes of accumulative
+transformation into what we never were. Thou kind, kind fate,
+therefore--never enough named and celebrated--that biddest the sun of
+memory rise on our finished but imperfect lives, and then lengthenest or
+shortenest the little day of posthumous reminiscence, according as thou
+seest there is need of early twilight or of deeper shadows!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Years passed. City and cemetery were each grown vaster. It was again an
+afternoon when the people strolled among the graves and monuments. An
+old man had courteously attached himself to a group that stood around a
+crumbling memorial. He had reached a great age; but his figure was
+erect, his face animated by strong emotions, and his eyes burned beneath
+his brows.
+
+"Sirs," said he, interposing in the conversation, which turned wholly on
+the monument, "you say nothing of him in whose honour it was erected."
+
+"We say nothing because we know nothing."
+
+"Is he then wholly forgotten?"
+
+"We are not aware that he is at all remembered."
+
+"The inscription reads: 'He was a poet.' Know you none of his poems?"
+
+"We have never so much as heard of his poems."
+
+"My eyes are dim; is there nothing carved beneath his name?"
+
+One of the bystanders went up and knelt down close to the base.
+
+"There _was_ something here, but it is effaced by time--Wait!" And
+tracing his finger slowly along, he read like a child--
+
+    "He--asked--but--for--the--common--lot.
+
+"That is all," he cried, springing lightly up. "Oh, the dust on my
+knees!" he added with vexation.
+
+"He may have sung very sweetly," pursued the old man.
+
+"He may, indeed!" they answered carelessly.
+
+"But, sirs," continued he, with a sad smile, "perhaps you are the very
+generation that he looked to for the fame which his own denied him;
+perhaps he died believing that _you_ would fully appreciate his poems."
+
+"If so, it was a comfortable faith to die in," they said, laughing, in
+return. "He will never know that we did not. A few great poets have
+posthumous fame: we know _them_ well enough." And they passed on.
+
+"This," said the old man, as they paused elsewhere, "seems to be the
+monument of a true soldier; know you aught of the victories he helped to
+win?"
+
+"He may not have helped to win any victories. He may have been a coward.
+How should _we_ know? Epitaphs often lie. The dust is peopled with
+soldiers." And again they moved on.
+
+"Does any one read his sermons now, know you?" asked the old man as they
+paused before a third monument.
+
+"Read his sermons!" they exclaimed, laughing more heartily. "Are sermons
+so much read in the country you come from? See how long he has been
+dead! What should the world be thinking of, to be reading his musty
+sermons?"
+
+"At least does it give you no pleasure to read 'He was a good man'?"
+inquired he plaintively.
+
+"Ay; but if he was good, was not his goodness its own reward?"
+
+"He may have also wished long to be remembered for it."
+
+"Naturally; but we have not heard that his wish was gratified."
+
+"Is it not sad that the memory of so much beauty and truth and goodness
+in our common human life should perish? But, sirs,"--and here the old
+man spoke with sudden energy--"if there should be one who combined
+perfect beauty and truth and goodness in one form and character, do you
+not think such a rare being would escape the common fate and be long and
+widely remembered?"
+
+"Doubtless."
+
+"Sirs," said he, quickly stepping in front of them with flashing eyes,
+"is there in all this vast cemetery not a single monument that has kept
+green the memory of the being in whose honour it was erected?"
+
+"Ay, ay," they answered readily. "Have you not heard of it?"
+
+"I am but come from distant countries. Many years ago I was here, and
+have journeyed hither with much desire to see the place once more. Would
+you kindly show me this monument?"
+
+"Come!" they answered eagerly, starting off. "It is the best known of
+all the thousands in the cemetery. None who see it can ever forget it."
+
+"Yes, yes!" murmured the old man. "That is why I have--I foresaw---- Is
+it not a beautiful monument? Does it not lie--in what direction does it
+lie?"
+
+A feverish eagerness seized him. He walked now beside, now before, his
+companions. Once he wheeled on them.
+
+"Sirs, did you not say it perpetuates the memory of her--of the one--who
+lies beneath it?"
+
+"Both are famous. The story of this woman and her monument will never be
+forgotten. It is impossible to forget it."
+
+"Year after year----" muttered he, brushing his hand across his eyes.
+
+They soon came to a spot where the aged branches of memorial evergreens
+interwove a sunless canopy, and spread far around a drapery of gloom
+through which the wind passed with an unending sigh. Brushing aside the
+lowest boughs, they stepped in awestricken silence within the dank,
+chill cone of shade. Before them rose the shape of a grey monument, at
+sight of which the aged traveller, who had fallen behind, dropped his
+staff and held out his arms as though he would have embraced it. But,
+controlling himself, he stepped forward, and said, in tones of thrilling
+sweetness--
+
+"Sirs, you have not told me what story is connected with this monument
+that it should be so famous. I conceive it must be some very touching
+one of her whose name I read--some beautiful legend----"
+
+"Judge you of that!" interrupted one of the group, with a voice of stern
+sadness and not without a certain look of mysterious horror. "They say
+this monument was reared to a woman by the man who once loved her. She
+was very beautiful, and so he made her a very beautiful monument. But
+she had a heart so hideous in its falsity that he carved in stone an
+enduring curse on her evil memory, and hung it in the heart of the
+monument because it was too awful for any eye to see. But others tell
+the story differently. They say the woman not only had a heart false
+beyond description, but was in person the ugliest of her sex. So that
+while the hidden curse is a lasting execration of her nature, the
+beautiful exterior is a masterpiece of mockery which her nature, and not
+her ugliness, maddened his sensitive genius to perpetrate. There can be
+no doubt that this is the true story, as hundreds tell it now, and that
+the woman will be remembered so long as the monument stands--ay, and
+longer--not only for her loathsome---- Help the old man!"
+
+He had fallen backward to the ground. They tried in vain to set him on
+his feet. Stunned, speechless, he could only raise himself on one elbow
+and turn his eyes towards the monument with a look of preternatural
+horror, as though the lie had issued from its treacherous shape. At
+length he looked up to them, as they bent kindly over him, and spoke
+with much difficulty--
+
+"Sirs, I am an old man--a very old man, and very feeble. Forgive this
+weakness. And I have come a long way, and must be faint. While you were
+speaking my strength failed me. You were telling me a story--were you
+not?--the story--the legend of a most beautiful woman, when all at once
+my senses grew confused and I failed to hear you rightly. Then my ears
+played me such a trick! O sirs! if you but knew what a damnable trick my
+ears played me, you would pity me greatly, very, very greatly. This
+story touches me. It is much like one I seemed to have heard for many
+years, and that I have been repeating over and over to myself until I
+love it better than my life. If you would but go over it
+again--carefully--very carefully."
+
+"My God, sirs!" he exclaimed, springing up with the energy of youth when
+he had heard the recital a second time, "tell me _who_ started this
+story! Tell me _how_ and _where_ it began!"
+
+"We cannot. We have heard many tell it, and not all alike."
+
+"And do they--do you--believe--it is--true?" he asked helplessly.
+
+"We all _know_ it is true; do not _you_ believe it?"
+
+"I can never forget it!" he said, in tones quickly grown harsh and
+husky. "Let us go away from so pitiful a place."
+
+It was near nightfall when he returned, unobserved, and sat down beside
+the monument as one who had ended a pilgrimage.
+
+"They all tell me the same story," he murmured wearily. "Ah, it was the
+hidden epitaph that wrought the error! But for it, the sun of her memory
+would have had its brief, befitting day and tender setting. Presumptuous
+folly, to suppose they would understand my masterpiece, when they so
+often misconceive the hidden heart of His beautiful works, and convert
+uncomprehended good and true into a curse of evil!"
+
+The night fell. He was awaiting it. Nearer and nearer rolled the dark,
+suffering heart of a storm; nearer towards the calm, white breasts of
+the dead. Over the billowy graves the many-footed winds suddenly fled
+away in a wild, tumultuous cohort. Overhead, great black bulks swung
+heavily at one another across the tremulous stars.
+
+Of all earthly spots, where does the awful discord of the elements seem
+so futile and theatric as in a vast cemetery? Blow, then, winds, till
+you uproot the trees! Pour, floods, pour, till the water trickles down
+into the face of the pale sleeper below! Rumble and flash, ye clouds,
+till the earth trembles and seems to be aflame! But not a lock of hair,
+so carefully put back over the brows, is tossed or disordered. The
+sleeper has not stretched forth an arm and drawn the shroud closer
+about his face, to keep out the wet. Not an ear has heard the riving
+thunderbolt, nor so much as an eyelid trembled on the still eyes for all
+the lightning's fury.
+
+But had there been another human presence on the midnight scene, some
+lightning flash would have revealed the old man, a grand, a terrible
+figure, in sympathy with its wild, sad violence. He stood beside his
+masterpiece, towering to his utmost height in a posture of all but
+superhuman majesty and strength. His long white hair and longer white
+beard streamed outward on the roaring winds. His arms, bared to the
+shoulder, swung aloft a ponderous hammer. His face, ashen-grey as the
+marble before him, was set with an expression of stern despair. Then, as
+the thunder crashed, his hammer fell on the monument. Bolt after bolt,
+blow after blow. Once more he might have been seen kneeling beside the
+ruin, his eyes strained close to its heart, awaiting another flash to
+tell him that the inviolable epitaph had shared in the destruction.
+
+For days following many curious eyes came to peer into the opened heart
+of the shattered structure, but in vain.
+
+Thus the masterpiece of Nicholas failed of its end, though it served
+another. For no one could have heard the story of it, before it was
+destroyed, without being made to realise how melancholy that a man
+should rear a monument of execration to the false heart of the woman he
+once had loved; and how terrible for mankind to celebrate the dead for
+the evil that was in them instead of the good.
+
+                                THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame, by 
+James Lane Allen
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame, by James Lane Allen.
+    </title>
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+Project Gutenberg's Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame, by James Lane Allen
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+Title: Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame
+
+Author: James Lane Allen
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2010 [EBook #34109]
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTER DOLOROSA, POSTHUMOUS FAME ***
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+Produced by David Garcia, Heather Clark and the Online
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+
+
+<h1>SISTER DOLOROSA</h1>
+<h3>AND</h3>
+<h2>POSTHUMOUS FAME<br /></h2>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h2>JAMES LANE ALLEN<br /><br /><br /></h2>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image.jpg" alt="Title Page Image" /></div>
+<h4><i>Copyright Edition</i><br /><br /></h4>
+
+<h3>EDINBURGH<br />
+DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET<br />
+1892</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Edinburgh</span>: Printed by T. and A. <span class="smcap">Constable</span> for<br />
+<span class="smcap">David Douglas</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co.</span></h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TO HER</h2>
+
+<table border="0" class="dedication">
+<tr><td>
+        FROM WHOSE FRAIL BODY HE DREW LIFE IN THE<br />
+         BEGINNING, FROM WHOSE STRONG SPIRIT HE<br />
+         WILL DRAW LIFE UNTIL THE CLOSE, THESE<br />
+         TALES, WITH ALL OTHERS HAPLY HEREAFTER<br />
+              TO BE WRITTEN, ARE DEDICATED<br />
+                AS A PERISHABLE MONUMENT<br />
+                      OF INEFFABLE<br />
+                      REMEMBRANCE<br />
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE TO BRITISH EDITION.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Author is glad to know that a British Edition of his Kentucky Tales
+is to be brought out by Mr. David Douglas of Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<p>Generations ago his mother's ancestors came from Scotland and Ireland;
+generations ago his father's came from England. Toward the three
+countries his attention was fondly turned in early life; and the
+interest then begotten has been but fostered since.</p>
+
+<p>It is with peculiar pleasure, therefore, that he now avails himself of
+the chance to ride hither and thither through these lands in his own
+conveyance&mdash;albeit the vehicle, a little book, may turn out a slow
+coach.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;"><span class="smcap">James Lane Allen.</span></p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Christmas Eve</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Lexington, Kentucky, 1891.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<h5>Expanded Contents generated for HTML.</h5>
+
+<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="3">
+<tr><td></td><td style="text-align:right"><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sister Dolorosa,</td><td style="text-align:right">&nbsp; <a href="#SISTER_DOLOROSA">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align:right"><a href="#I">I</a>. <a href="#II">II</a>. <a href="#III">III</a>. <a href="#IV">IV</a>.
+<a href="#V">V</a>. <a href="#VI">VI</a>.
+<a href="#VII">VII</a>. <a href="#VIII">VIII</a>.
+<a href="#IX">IX</a>. <a href="#X">X</a>.
+<a href="#XI">XI</a>. <a href="#XII">XII</a>.</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Posthumous Fame; or A Legend of the Beautiful,</td><td style="text-align:right">&nbsp; <a href="#Posthumous_Fame_or_A_Legend_of_the_Beautiful">163</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="text-align:right"><a href="#Posthumous_Fame_or_A_Legend_of_the_Beautiful">I</a>. <a href="#II2">II</a>.
+<a href="#III2">III</a>. <a href="#IV2">IV</a>.</td><td></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1><a name="SISTER_DOLOROSA" id="SISTER_DOLOROSA"></a>SISTER DOLOROSA.</h1>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Sister Dolorosa had reached the summit of a low hill on her way to
+the convent, she turned and stood for a while looking backward. The
+landscape stretched away in a rude, unlovely expanse of grey fields,
+shaded in places by brown stubble, and in others lightened by pale, thin
+corn&mdash;the stunted reward of necessitous husbandry. This way and that ran
+wavering lines of low fences, some worm-eaten, others rotting beneath
+over-clambering wild-rose and blackberry. About the horizon masses of
+dense and rugged woods burned with sombre fires as the westering sun
+smote them from top to underbrush. Forth from the edge of one a few
+long-horned cattle, with lowered heads, wound meekly homeward to the
+scant milking. The path they followed led towards the middle background
+of the picture, where the weather-stained and sagging roof of a
+farmhouse rose above the tops of aged cedars. Some of the branches,
+broken by the sleet and snow of winters, trailed their burdens from the
+thinned and desolated crests&mdash;as sometimes the highest hopes of the
+mind, after being beaten down by the tempests of the world, droop around
+it as memories of once transcendent aspirations.</p>
+
+<p>Where she stood in the dead autumn fields few sounds broke in upon the
+pervasive hush of the declining day. Only a cricket, under the warm clod
+near by, shrilled sturdily with cheerful forethought of drowsy
+hearthstones; only a lamb, timid of separation from the fold, called
+anxiously in the valley beyond the crest of the opposite hill; only the
+summoning whistle of a quail came sweet and clear from the depths of a
+neighbouring thicket. Through all the air floated that spirit of vast
+loneliness which at seasons seems to steal like a human mood over the
+breast of the great earth and leave her estranged from her transitory
+children. At such an hour the heart takes wing for home, if any home it
+have; or when, if homeless, it feels the quick stir of that yearning for
+the evening fireside with its half-circle of trusted faces, young and
+old, and its bonds of love and marriage, those deepest, most enchanting
+realities to the earthly imagination. The very landscape, barren and
+dead, but framing the simple picture of a home, spoke to the beholder
+the everlasting poetry of the race.</p>
+
+<p>But Sister Dolorosa, standing on the brow of the hill whence the whole
+picture could be seen, yet saw nothing of it. Out of the western sky
+there streamed an indescribable splendour of many-hued light, and far
+into the depths of this celestial splendour her steadfast eyes were
+gazing.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed caught up to some august height of holy meditation. Her
+motionless figure was so lightly poised that her feet, just visible
+beneath the hem of her heavy black dress, appeared all but rising from
+the dust of the pathway; her pure and gentle face was upturned, so that
+the dark veil fell away from her neck and shoulders; her lips were
+slightly parted; her breath came and went so imperceptibly that her
+hands did not appear to rise and fall as they clasped the cross to her
+bosom. Exquisite hands they were&mdash;most exquisite&mdash;gleaming as white as
+lilies against the raven blackness of her dress; and with startling
+fitness of posture, the longest finger of the right hand pointed like a
+marble index straight towards a richly-embroidered symbol over her left
+breast&mdash;the mournful symbol of a crimson heart pierced by a crimson
+spear. Whether attracted by the lily-white hands or by the red symbol, a
+butterfly, which had been flitting hither and thither in search of the
+gay races of the summer gone, now began to hover nearer, and finally
+lighted unseen upon the glowing spot. Then, as if disappointed not to
+find it the bosom of some rose, or lacking hope and strength for further
+quest&mdash;there it rested, slowly fanning with its white wings the tortured
+emblem of the divine despair.</p>
+
+<p>Lower sank the sun, deeper and more wide-spread the splendour of the
+sky, more rapt and radiant the expression of her face. A painter of the
+angelic school, seeing her standing thus, might have named the scene the
+transfiguration of angelic womanhood. What but heavenly images should
+she be gazing on; or where was she in spirit but flown out of the
+earthly autumn fields and gone away to sainted vespers in the
+cloud-built realm of her own fantasies? Perhaps she was now entering yon
+vast cathedral of the skies, whose white spires touched the blue
+eternity; or toiling devoutly up yon grey mount of Calvary, with its
+blackened crucifix falling from the summit.</p>
+
+<p>Standing thus towards the close of the day, Sister Dolorosa had not yet
+passed out of that ideal time which is the clear white dawn of life. She
+was still within the dim, half-awakened region of womanhood, whose
+changing mists are beautiful illusions, whose shadows about the horizon
+are the mysteries of poetic feeling, whose purpling east is the palette
+of the imagination, and whose up-springing skylark is blithe aspiration
+that has not yet felt the weight of the clod it soars within. Before her
+still was the full morning of reality and the burden of the mid-day
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>But if the history of any human soul could be perfectly known, who would
+wish to describe this passage from the dawn of the ideal to the morning
+of the real&mdash;this transition from life as it is imagined through hopes
+and dreams to life as it is known through action and submission? It is
+then that within the country of the soul occur events too vast,
+melancholy, and irreversible to be compared to anything less than the
+downfall of splendid dynasties, or the decay of an august religion. It
+is then that there leave us for ever bright, aerial spirits of the
+fancy, separation from whom is like grief for the death of the beloved.</p>
+
+<p>The moment of this transition had come in the life of Sister Dolorosa,
+and unconsciously she was taking her last look at the gorgeous western
+clouds from the hill-tops of her chaste life of dreams.</p>
+
+<p>A flock of frightened doves sped hurtling low over her head, and put an
+end to her reverie. Pressing the rosary to her lips, she turned and
+walked on towards the convent, not far away. The little footpath across
+the fields was well trodden and familiar, running as it did between the
+convent and the farmhouse behind her, in which lived old Ezra and Martha
+Cross; and as she followed its windings, her thoughts, as is likely to
+be true of the thoughts of nuns, came home from the clouds to the
+humblest concerns of the earth, and she began to recall certain
+incidents of the visit from which she was returning.</p>
+
+<p>The aged pair were well known to the Sisters. Their daughters had been
+educated at the convent; and, although these were married and scattered
+now, the tie then formed had since become more close through their age
+and loneliness. Of late word had come to the Mother Superior that old
+Martha was especially ailing, and Sister Dolorosa had several times been
+sent on visits of sympathy. For reasons better to be understood later
+on, these visits had had upon her the effect of an April shower on a
+thirsting rose. Her missions of mercy to the aged couple over, for a
+while the white taper of ideal consecration to the Church always burned
+in her bosom with clearer, steadier lustre, as though lit afresh from
+the Light eternal. But to-day she could not escape the conviction that
+these visits were becoming a source of disquietude; for the old couple,
+forgetting the restrictions which her vows put upon her very thoughts,
+had spoken of things which it was trying for her to hear&mdash;love-making,
+marriage, and children. In vain had she tried to turn away from the
+proffered share in such parental confidences. The old mother had even
+read aloud a letter from her eldest son, telling them of his approaching
+marriage, and detailing the hope and despair of his wooing. With burning
+cheeks and downcast eyes Sister Dolorosa had listened till the close and
+then risen and quickly left the house.</p>
+
+<p>The recollection of this returned to her now as she pursued her way
+along the footpath which descended into the valley; and there came to
+her, she knew not whence or why, a piercing sense of her own separation
+from all but the Divine love. The cold beauty of unfallen spirituality
+which had made her august as she stood on the hill-top died away, and
+her face assumed a tenderer, more appealing loveliness, as there crept
+over it, like a shadow over snow, that shy melancholy under which those
+women dwell who have renounced the great drama of the heart. She
+resolved to lay her trouble before the Mother Superior to-night, and ask
+that some other Sister be sent hereafter in her stead. And yet this
+resolution gave her no peace, but a throb of painful renunciation; and
+since she was used to the most scrupulous examination of her
+conscience, to detect the least presence of evil, she grew so disturbed
+by this state of her heart that she quite forgot the windings of the
+pathway along the edge of a field of corn, and was painfully startled
+when a wounded bird, lying on the ground a few feet in front of her,
+flapped its wings in a struggle to rise. Love and sympathy were the
+strongest principles of her nature, and with a little outcry she bent
+over and took it up; but scarce had she done so, when, with a final
+struggle, it died in her hand. A single drop of blood oozed out and
+stood on its burnished breast.</p>
+
+<p>She studied it&mdash;delicate throat, silken wings, wounded bosom&mdash;in the
+helpless way of a woman, unwilling to put it down and leave it, yet more
+unwilling to take it away. Many a time, perhaps, she had watched this
+very one flying to and fro among its fellows in the convent elms.
+Strange that any one should be hunting in these fields, and she looked
+quickly this way and that. Then, with a surprised movement of the hands
+that caused her to drop the bird at her feet, Sister Dolorosa
+discovered, standing half hidden in the edge of the pale yellow corn a
+few yards ahead, wearing a hunting-dress, and leaning on the muzzle of
+his gun, a young man who was steadfastly regarding her. For an instant
+they stood looking each into the other's face, taken so unprepared as to
+lose all sense of convention. Their meeting was as unforeseen as another
+far overhead, where two white clouds, long shepherded aimlessly and from
+opposite directions across the boundless pastures by the unreasoning
+winds, touched and melted into one. Then Sister Dolorosa, the first to
+regain self-possession, gathered her black veil closely about her face,
+and advancing with an easy, rapid step, bowed low with downcast eyes as
+she passed him, and hurried on towards the convent.</p>
+
+<p>She had not gone far before she resolved to say nothing about the
+gossip to which she had listened. Of late the Mother Superior had seemed
+worn with secret care and touched with solicitude regarding her. Would
+it be kind to make this greater by complaining like a weak child of a
+trivial annoyance? She took her conscience proudly to task for ever
+having been disturbed by anything so unworthy. And as for this meeting
+in the field, even to mention that would be to give it a certain
+significance, whereas it had none whatever. A stranger had merely
+crossed her path a moment and then gone his way. She would forget the
+occurrence herself as soon as she could recover from her physical
+agitation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Convent of the Stricken Heart is situated in that region of Kentucky
+which early became the great field of Catholic immigration. It was
+established in the first years of the present century, when mild
+Dominicans, starving Trappists, and fiery Jesuits hastened into the
+green wildernesses of the West with the hope of turning them into
+religious vineyards. Then, accordingly, derived from such sources as the
+impassioned fervour of Italy, the cold, monotonous endurance of
+Flanders, and the dying sorrows of ecclesiastical France, there sprang
+up this new flower of faith, unlike any that ever bloomed in pious
+Christendom. From the meagrest beginning, the order has slowly grown
+rich and powerful, so that it now has branches in many States, as far as
+the shores of the Pacific Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>The convent is situated in a retired region of country, remote from any
+village or rural highway. The very peace of the blue skies seems to
+descend upon it. Around the walls great elms stand like tranquil
+sentinels, or at a greater distance drop their shadows on the velvet
+verdure of the artificial lawns. Here, when the sun is hot, some
+white-veiled novice may be seen pacing soft-footed and slow, while she
+fixes her sad eyes upon pictures drawn from the literature of the Dark
+Ages, or fights the first battle with her young heart, which would
+beguile her to heaven by more jocund pathways. Drawn by the tranquillity
+of this retreat&mdash;its trees and flowers and dews&mdash;all singing-birds of
+the region come here to build and brood. No other sounds than their pure
+cadencies disturb the echoless air except the simple hymns around the
+altar, the vesper bell, the roll of the organ, the deep chords of the
+piano, or the thrum of the harp. It may happen, indeed, that some one of
+the Sisters, climbing to the observatory to scan the horizon of her
+secluded world, will catch the faint echoes of a young ploughman in a
+distant field lustily singing of the honest passion in his heart, or
+hear the shouts of happy harvesters as they move across the yellow
+plains. The population scattered around the convent domain are largely
+of the Catholic faith, and from all directions the country is threaded
+by footpaths that lead to the church as a common shrine. It was along
+one of these that Sister Dolorosa, as has been said, hastened homeward
+through the falling twilight.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached the convent, instead of seeking the Mother Superior as
+heretofore with news from old Martha, she stole into the shadowy church
+and knelt for a long time in wordless prayer&mdash;wordless, because no
+petition that she could frame appeared inborn and quieting. An
+unaccountable remorse gnawed the heart out of language. Her spirit
+seemed parched, her will was deadened as by a blow. Trained to the most
+rigorous introspection, she entered within herself and penetrated to the
+deepest recesses of her mind to ascertain the cause. The bright flame of
+her conscience thus employed was like the turning of a sunbeam into a
+darkened chamber to reveal the presence of a floating grain of dust.
+But nothing could be discovered. It was the undiscovered that rebuked
+her as it often rebukes us all&mdash;the undiscovered evil that has not yet
+linked itself to conscious transgression. At last she rose with a sigh,
+and, dejected, left the church.</p>
+
+<p>Later, the Mother Superior, noiselessly entering her room, found her
+sitting at the open window, her hands crossed on the sill, her eyes
+turned outward into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Child, child," she said hurriedly, "how uneasy you have made me! Why
+are you so late returning?"</p>
+
+<p>"I went to the church when I came back, Mother," replied Sister
+Dolorosa, in a voice singularly low and composed. "I must have returned
+nearly an hour ago."</p>
+
+<p>"But even then it was late."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mother; I stopped on the way back to look at the sunset. The
+clouds looked like cathedrals. And then old Martha kept me. You know it
+is difficult to get away from old Martha."</p>
+
+<p>The Mother Superior laughed slightly, as though her anxiety had been
+removed. She was a woman of commanding presence, with a face full of
+dignity and sweetness, but furrowed by lines of difficult resignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I know," she answered. "Old Martha's tongue is like a terrestrial
+globe; the whole world is mapped out on it, and a little movement of it
+will show you a continent. How is her rheumatism?"</p>
+
+<p>"She said it was no worse," replied Sister Dolorosa absently.</p>
+
+<p>The Mother Superior laughed again. "Then it must be better. Rheumatism
+is always either better or worse."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mother."</p>
+
+<p>This time the tone caught the Mother Superior's ear. "You seem tired.
+Was the walk too long?"</p>
+
+<p>"I enjoyed the walk, Mother. I do not feel tired."</p>
+
+<p>They had been sitting on opposite sides of the room. The Mother Superior
+now crossed, and, laying her hand softly on Sister Dolorosa's head,
+pressed it backward and looked fondly down into the upturned eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Something troubles you. What has happened?"</p>
+
+<p>There is a tone that goes straight to the heart of women in trouble. If
+there are tears hidden, they gather in the eyes. If there is any
+confidence to give, it is given then.</p>
+
+<p>A tremor, like that of a child with an unspent sob, passed across Sister
+Dolorosa's lips, but her eyes were tearless.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing has happened, Mother. I do not know why, but I feel disturbed
+and unhappy." This was the only confidence that she had to give.</p>
+
+<p>The Mother Superior passed her hand slowly across the brow, white and
+smooth like satin. Then she sat down, and as Sister Dolorosa slipped to
+the floor beside her she drew the young head to her lap and folded her
+aged hands upon it. What passionate, barren loves haunt the hearts of
+women in convents! Between these two there existed a tenderness more
+touching than the natural love of mother and child.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not expect to know at all times," she said, with grave
+gentleness. "To be troubled without any visible cause is one of the
+mysteries of our nature. As you grow older you will understand this
+better. We are forced to live in conscious possession of all faculties,
+all feelings, whether or not there are outward events to match them.
+Therefore you must expect to have anxiety within when your life is
+really at peace without; to have moments of despair when no failure
+threatens; to have your heart wrung with sympathy when no object of
+sorrow is nigh; to be spent with the need of loving when there is no
+earthly thing to receive your love. This is part of woman's life, and of
+all women, especially those who, like you, must live, not to stifle the
+tender, beautiful forces of nature, but to ennoble and unite them into
+one divine passion. Do not think, therefore, to escape these hours of
+heaviness and pain. No saint ever walked this earth without them.
+Perhaps the lesson to be gained is this: that we may feel things before
+they happen, so that if they do happen we shall be disciplined to bear
+them."</p>
+
+<p>The voice of the Mother Superior had become low and meditative; and,
+though resting on the bowed head, her eyes seemed fixed on events long
+past. After the silence of a few moments she continued in a brighter
+tone&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But, my child, I know the reason of <i>your</i> unhappiness. I have warned
+you that excessive ardour would leave you overwrought and nervous; that
+you were being carried too far by your ideals. You live too much in your
+sympathies and your imagination. Patience, my little St. Theresa! No
+saint was ever made in a day, and it has taken all the centuries of the
+Church to produce its martyrs. Only think that your life is but begun;
+there will be time enough to accomplish everything. I have been watching,
+and I know. This is why I send <i>you</i> to old Martha. I want you to have
+the rest, the exercise, the air of the fields. Go again to-morrow, and take
+her the ointment. I found it while you were gone to-day. It has been in the
+Church for centuries, and you know this bottle came from blessed Loretto in
+Italy. It may do her some good. And, for the next few days, less reading
+and study."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" Sister Dolorosa spoke as though she had not been listening.
+"What would become of me if I should ever&mdash;if any evil should ever
+befall me?"</p>
+
+<p>The Mother Superior stretched her hands out over the head on her knees
+as some great, fierce, old, grey eagle, scarred and strong with the
+storms of life, might make a movement to shield its imperilled young.
+The tone in which Sister Dolorosa had spoken startled her as the
+discovered edge of a precipice. It was so quiet, so abrupt, so terrifying
+with its suggestion of an abyss. For a moment she prayed silently and
+intensely.</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven mercifully shield you from harm!" she then said, in an
+awestricken whisper. "But, timid lamb, what harm can come to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Sister Dolorosa suddenly rose and stood before the Mother Superior.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean," she said, with her eyes on the floor and her voice scarcely
+audible&mdash;"I mean&mdash;if I should ever fail, would you cast me out?"</p>
+
+<p>"My child!&mdash;Sister!&mdash;Sister Dolorosa!&mdash;Cast you out!"</p>
+
+<p>The Mother Superior started up and folded her arms about the slight dark
+figure, which at once seemed to be standing aloof with infinite
+loneliness. For some time she sought to overcome this difficult,
+singular mood.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, my daughter," she murmured at last, "go to sleep and forget
+these foolish fears. I am near you!" There seemed to be a fortress of
+sacred protection and defiance in these words; but the next instant her
+head was bowed, her upward-pointing finger raised in the air, and in a
+tone of humble self-correction she added: "Nay, not I; the Sleepless
+guards you! Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>Sister Dolorosa lifted her head from the strong shoulder and turned her
+eyes, now luminous, upon the troubled face.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, Mother!" she said, in a voice of scornful resolution.
+"Never&mdash;never again will I disturb you with such weakness as I have
+shown to-night. I <i>know</i> that no evil can befall me! Forgive me, Mother.
+Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>While she sleeps learn her history. Pauline Cambron was descended from
+one of those sixty Catholic families of Maryland that formed a league in
+1785 for the purpose of emigrating to Kentucky without the rending of
+social ties or separation from the rites of their ancestral faith. Since
+then the Kentucky branch of the Cambrons has always maintained friendly
+relations with the Maryland branch, which is now represented by one of
+the wealthy and cultivated families of Baltimore. On one side the
+descent is French; and, as far back as this can be traced, there runs a
+tradition that some of the most beautiful of its women became barefoot
+Carmelite nuns in the various monasteries of France or on some
+storm-swept island of the Mediterranean Sea.</p>
+
+<p>The first of the Kentucky Cambrons settled in that part of the State in
+which, nearly a hundred years later, lived the last generation of
+them&mdash;the parents of Pauline. Of these she was the only child, so that
+upon her marriage depended the perpetuation of the Kentucky family. It
+gives to the Protestant mind a startling insight into the possibilities
+of a woman's life and destiny in Kentucky to learn the nature of the
+literature by which her sensitive and imaginative character was from the
+first impressed. This literature covers a field wholly unknown to the
+ordinary student of Kentucky history. It is not to be found in
+well-known works, but in the letters, reminiscences, and lives of
+foreign priests, and in the kindling and heroic accounts of the
+establishment of Catholic missions. It abounds in such stories as those
+of a black friar fatally thrown from a wild horse in the pathless
+wilderness; of a grey friar torn to pieces by a saw-mill; of a starving
+white friar stretched out to die under the green canopy of an oak; of
+priests swimming half-frozen rivers with the sacred vestments in their
+teeth; of priests hewing logs for a hut in which to celebrate the mass;
+of priests crossing and recrossing the Atlantic and traversing Italy and
+Belgium and France for money and pictures and books; of devoted women
+laying the foundation of powerful convents in half-ruined log-cabins,
+shivering on beds of straw sprinkled on the ground, driven by poverty to
+search in the wild woods for dyes with which to give to their motley
+worldly apparel the hue of the cloister, and dying at last, to be laid
+away in pitiless burial without coffin or shroud.</p>
+
+<p>Such incidents were to her the more impressive since happening in part
+in the region where lay the Cambron estate; and while very young she was
+herself repeatedly taken to visit the scenes of early religious
+tragedies. Often, too, around the fireside there was proud reference to
+the convent life of old France and to the saintly zeal of the
+Carmelites; and once she went with her parents to Baltimore and
+witnessed the taking of the veil by a cousin of hers&mdash;a scene that
+afterwards burned before her conscience as a lamp before a shrine.</p>
+
+<p>Is it strange if under such influences, living in a country place with
+few associates, reading in her father's library books that were to be
+had on the legends of the monastic orders and the lives of the
+saints&mdash;is it strange if to the young Pauline Cambron this world before
+long seemed little else than the battle-field of the Church, the ideal
+man in it a monk, the ideal woman a nun, the human heart a solemn
+sacrifice to Heaven, and human life a vast, sad pilgrimage to the shrine
+eternal?</p>
+
+<p>Among the places which had always appealed to her imagination as one of
+the heroic sites of Kentucky history was the Convent of the Stricken
+Heart, not far away. Whenever she came hither she seemed to be treading
+on sacred ground. Happening to visit it one summer day before her
+education was completed, she asked to be sent hither for the years that
+remained. When these were past, here, with the difficult consent of her
+parents, who saw thus perish the last hope of the perpetuation of the
+family, she took the white veil. Here at last she hid herself beneath
+the black. Her whole character at this stage of its unfolding may be
+understood from the name she assumed&mdash;Sister Dolorosa. With this name
+she wished not merely to extinguish her worldly personality, but to
+clothe herself with a lifelong expression of her sympathy with the
+sorrows of the world. By this act she believed that she would attain a
+change of nature so complete that the black veil of Sister Dolorosa
+would cover as in a funeral urn the ashes which had once been the heart
+of Pauline Cambron. And thus her conventual life began.</p>
+
+<p>But for those beings to whom the span on the summer-evening cloud is as
+nothing compared with that fond arch of beauty which it is a necessity
+of their nature to hang as a bow of promise above every beloved
+hope&mdash;for such dreamers the sadness of life lies in the dissipation of
+mystery and the disillusion of truth. When she had been a member of the
+order long enough to see things as they were, Sister Dolorosa found
+herself living in a large, plain, comfortable brick convent, situated in
+a retired and homely region of Southern Kentucky. Around her were plain
+nuns with the invincible contrariety of feminine temperament. Before her
+were plain duties. Built up around her were plain restrictions. She had
+rushed with outstretched arms towards poetic mysteries, and clasped
+prosaic reality.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the lambent flame of her spirit had burned over this new
+life, as a fire before a strong wind rushes across a plain, she one day
+surveyed it with that sense of reality which sometimes visits the
+imaginative with such appalling vividness. Was it upon this dreary waste
+that her soul was to play out its drama of ideal womanhood?</p>
+
+<p>She answered the question in the only way possible to such a nature as
+hers. She divided her life in twain. Half, with perfect loyalty, she
+gave out to duty; the other, with equal loyalty, she stifled within. But
+perhaps this is no uncommon lot&mdash;this unmating of the forces of the
+mind, as though one of two singing-birds should be released to fly forth
+under the sky, while the other&mdash;the nobler singer&mdash;is kept voiceless in
+a darkened chamber.</p>
+
+<p>But the Sisters of the Stricken Heart are not cloistered nuns. Their
+chief vow is to go forth into the world to teach. Scarcely had Sister
+Dolorosa been intrusted with work of this kind before she conceived an
+aspiration to become a great teacher of history or literature, and
+obtained permission to spend extra hours in the convent library on a
+wider range of sacred reading. Here began a second era in her life.
+Books became the avenues along which she escaped from her present into
+an illimitable world. Her imagination, beginning to pine, now took wing
+and soared back to the remote, the splendid, the imperial, the august.
+Her sympathies, finding nothing around her to fix upon, were borne afar
+like winged seed and rooted on the colossal ruins of the centuries. Her
+passion for beauty fed on holy art. She lived at the full flood of life
+again.</p>
+
+<p>If in time revulsion came, she would live a shy, exquisite, hidden life
+of poetry in which she herself played the historic rôles. Now she would
+become a powerful abbess of old, ruling over a hundred nuns in an
+impregnable cloister. To the gates, stretched on a litter, wounded to
+death, they bore a young knight of the Cross. She had the gates opened.
+She went forth and bent over him; heard his dying message; at his
+request drew the plighted ring from his finger to send to another land.
+How beautiful he was! How many masses&mdash;how many, many masses&mdash;she had
+celebrated for the peace of his soul! Now she was St. Agatha, tortured
+by the proconsul; now she lay faint and cold in an underground cell, and
+was visited by Thomas à Kempis, who read to her long passages from the
+<i>Imitation</i>. Or she would tire of the past, and making herself an actor
+in her own future, in a brief hour live out the fancied drama of all her
+crowded years.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever part she took in this dream existence and beautiful
+passion-play of the soul, nothing attracted her but the perfect. For the
+commonplace she felt a guileless scorn.</p>
+
+<p>Thus for some time these unmated lives went on&mdash;the fixed outward life
+of duty, and the ever-wandering inner life of love. In mid-winter,
+walking across the shining fields, you have come to some little
+frost-locked stream. How mute and motionless! You set foot upon it, the
+ice is broken, and beneath is musical running water. Thus under the
+chaste rigid numbness of convent existence the heart of Sister Dolorosa
+murmured unheard and hurried away unseen to plains made warm and green
+by her imagination. But the old may survive upon memories; the young
+cannot thrive upon hope. Love, long reaching outward in vain, returns to
+the heart as self-pity. Sympathies, if not supported by close realities,
+fall in upon themselves like the walls of a ruined house. At last,
+therefore, even the hidden life of Sister Dolorosa grew weary of the
+future and the past, and came home to the present.</p>
+
+<p>The ardour of her studies and the rigour of her duties combined&mdash;but
+more than either that wearing away of the body by a restless mind&mdash;had
+begun to affect her health. Both were relaxed, and she was required to
+spend as much time as possible in the garden of the convent. It was like
+lifting a child that has become worn out with artificial playthings to
+an open window to see the flowers. With inexpressible relief she turned
+from mediæval books to living nature; and her beautiful imagination,
+that last of all faculties to fail a human being in an unhappy lot, now
+began to bind nature to her with fellowships which quieted the need of
+human association. She had long been used to feign correspondences with
+the fathers of the Church; she now established intimacies with dumb
+companions, and poured out her heart to them in confidence.</p>
+
+<p>The distant woods slowly clothing themselves in green; the faint perfume
+of the wild rose, running riot over some rotting fence; the majestical
+clouds about the sunset; the moon dying in the spectral skies; the
+silken rustling of doves' wings parting the soft foliage of the
+sentinel elms; landscapes of frost on her window-pane; crumbs in winter
+for the sparrows on the sill; violets under the leaves in the convent
+garden; myrtle on the graves of the nuns&mdash;such objects as these became
+the means by which her imprisoned life was released. On the sensuous
+beauty of the world she spent the chaste ravishments of her virginal
+heart. Her love descended on all things as in the night the dew fills
+and bends down the cups of the flowers.</p>
+
+<p>A few of these confidences&mdash;written on slips of paper, and no sooner
+written than cast aside&mdash;are given here. They are addressed severally to
+a white violet, an English sparrow, and a butterfly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have taken the black veil, but thou wearest the white, and thou
+dwellest in dim cloisters of green leaves&mdash;in the domed and
+many-pillared little shrines that line the dusty roadside, or seem more
+fitly built in the depths of holy woodlands. How often have I drawn near
+with timid steps, and, opening the doors of thy tiny oratories, found
+thee bending at thy silent prayers&mdash;bending so low that thy lips touched
+the earth, while the slow wind rang thine Angelus! Wast thou blooming
+anywhere near when He came into the wood of the thorn and the olive?
+Didst thou press thy cool face against His bruised feet? Had I been
+thou, I would have bloomed at the foot of the Cross, and fed His failing
+lungs with my last breath. Time never destroys thee, little sister, or
+stains thy whiteness; and thou wilt be bending at thy prayers among the
+green graves on the twilight hillside ages after I who lie below have
+finished mine. Pray for me then, pray for thine erring sister, thou
+pure-souled violet!"</p>
+
+<p>"How cold thou art! Shall I take thee in and warm thee on my bosom? Ah,
+no! For I know who thou art! Not a bird, but a little brown mendicant
+friar, begging barefoot in the snow. And thou livest in a cell under the
+convent eaves opposite my window. What ugly feet thou hast, little
+Father! And the thorns are on thy toes instead of about thy brow. That
+is a bad sign for a saint. I saw thee in a brawl the other day with a
+mendicant brother of thine order, and thou drovest him from roof to roof
+and from icy twig to twig, screaming and wrangling in a way to bring
+reproach upon the Church. Thou shouldst learn to defend a thesis more
+gently. Who is it that visits thy cell so often? A penitent to confess?
+And dost thou shrive her freely? I'd never confess to thee, thou cross
+little Father! Thou'dst have no mercy on me if I sinned, as sin I must
+since human I am. The good God is very good to thee that He keeps thee
+from sinning while He leaves me to do wrong. Ah, if it were but natural
+for me to be perfect! But that, little Father, is my idea of heaven. In
+heaven it will be natural for me to be perfect. I'll feed thee no longer
+than the winter lasts, for then thou'lt be a monk no longer, but a bird
+again. And canst thou tell me why? Because, when the winter is gone,
+thou'lt find a mate, and wert thou a monk thou'dst have none. For thou
+knowest perfectly well, little Father, that monks do not wed."</p>
+
+<p>"No fitting emblem of my soul art thou, fragile Psyche, mute and
+perishable lover of the gorgeous earth. For my soul has no summer, and
+there is no earthly object of beauty that it may fly to and rest upon as
+thou upon the beckoning buds. It is winter where I live. All things are
+cold and white, and my soul flies only above fresh fields of flowerless
+snow. But no blast can chill its wings, no mire bedraggle, or rude touch
+fray. I often wonder whether thou art mute, or the divine framework of
+winged melodies. Thy very wings are shaped like harps for the winds to
+play upon. So, too, my soul is silent never, though none can hear its
+music. Dost thou know that I am held in exile in this world that I
+inhabit? And dost thou know the flower that I fly ever towards and
+cannot reach? It is the white flower of eternal perfection that blooms
+and waits for the soul in Paradise. Upon that flower I shall some day
+rest my wings as thou foldest thine on a faultless rose."</p>
+
+<p>Harmonising with this growing passion for the beauty of the world&mdash;a
+passion that marked her approach to riper womanhood&mdash;was the care she
+took of her person. The coarse, flowing habit of the order gave no hint
+of the curves and symmetry of the snow-white figure throbbing with eager
+life within; but it could not conceal an air of refinement and movements
+of the most delicate grace. There was likewise a suggestion of artistic
+study in the arrangement of her veil, and the sacred symbol on her bosom
+was embroidered with touches of elaboration.</p>
+
+<p>It was when she had grown weary of books, of the imaginary drama of her
+life, and the loveliness of Nature, that Sister Dolorosa was sent by the
+Mother Superior on those visits of sympathy to old Martha Cross; and it
+was during her return from one of them that there befell her that
+adventure which she had deemed too slight to mention.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Her outward history was that night made known to Gordon Helm by old
+Martha Cross. When Sister Dolorosa passed him he followed her at a
+distance until she entered the convent gates. It caused him subtle pain
+to think what harm might be lurking to ensnare her innocence. But
+subtler pain shot through him as he turned away, leaving her housed
+within that inaccessible fold.</p>
+
+<p>Who was she, and from what mission returning alone at such an hour
+across those darkening fields? He had just come to the edge of the corn
+and started to follow up the path in quest of shelter for the night,
+when he had caught sight of her on the near hill-top, outlined with
+startling distinctness against the jasper sky and bathed in a tremulous
+sea of lovely light. He had held his breath as she advanced towards
+him. He had watched the play of emotions in her face as she paused a few
+yards off, and her surprise at the discovery of him&mdash;the timid start;
+the rounding of the fawn-like eyes; the vermeil tint overspreading the
+transparent purity of her skin: her whole nature disturbed like a
+wind-shaken anemone. All this he now remembered as he returned along the
+footpath. It brought him to the door of the farm-house, where he
+arranged to pass the night.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a stranger in this part of the country," said the old housewife
+an hour later.</p>
+
+<p>When he came in she had excused herself from rising from her chair by
+the chimney-side; but from that moment her eyes had followed him&mdash;those
+eyes of the old which follow the forms of the young with such despairing
+memories. By the chimney-side sat old Ezra, powerful, stupid, tired,
+silently smoking, and taking little notice of the others. Hardly a chill
+was in the air, but for her sake a log blazed in the cavernous fireplace
+and threw its flickering light over the guest who sat in front.</p>
+
+<p>He possessed unusual physical beauty&mdash;of the type sometimes found in the
+men of those Kentucky families that have descended with little admixture
+from English stock; body and limbs less than athletic, but formed for
+strength and symmetry; hair brown, thick, and slightly curling over the
+forehead and above the ears; complexion blond, but mellowed into rich
+tints from sun and open air; eyes of dark grey-blue, beneath brows low
+and firm; a moustache golden-brown, thick, and curling above lips red
+and sensuous; a neck round and full, and bearing aloft a head well
+poised and moulded. The irresistible effect of his appearance was an
+impression of simple joyousness in life. There seemed to be stored up in
+him the warmth of the sunshine of his land; the gentleness of its
+fields; the kindness of its landscapes. And he was young&mdash;so young! To
+study him was to see that he was ripe to throw himself heedless into
+tragedy; and that for him, not once, but nightly, Endymion fell asleep
+to be kissed in his dreams by encircling love.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a stranger in this part of the country," said the old
+housewife, observing the elegance of his hunting-dress and his manner of
+high breeding.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I have never been in this part of Kentucky before." He paused; but
+seeing that some account of himself was silently waited for, and as
+though wishing at once to despatch the subject, he added: "I am from the
+blue-grass region, about a hundred miles northward of here. A party of
+us were on our way further south to hunt. On the train we fell in with a
+gentleman who told us he thought there were a good many birds around
+here, and I was chosen to stop over to ascertain. We might like to try
+this neighbourhood as we return, so I left my things at the station and
+struck out across the country this afternoon. I have heard birds in
+several directions, but had no dog. However, I shot a few hoves in a
+cornfield."</p>
+
+<p>"There are plenty of birds close around here, but most of them stay on
+the land that is owned by the Sisters, and they don't like to have it
+hunted over. All the land between here and the convent belongs to them
+except the little that's mine." This was said somewhat dryly by the old
+man, who knocked the ashes off his pipe without looking up.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to have trespassed; but I was not expecting to find a
+convent out in the country, although I believe I have heard that there
+is an abbey of Trappist monks somewhere down here."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; the abbey is not far from here."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems strange to me. I can hardly believe I am in Kentucky," he said
+musingly, and a solemn look came over his face as his thoughts went back
+to the sunset scene.</p>
+
+<p>The old housewife's keen eyes pierced to his secret mood.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to go there."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they receive visitors at the convent?" he asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly; the Sisters are very glad to have strangers visit the place.
+It's a pity you hadn't come sooner. One of the Sisters was here this
+afternoon, and you might have spoken to her about it."</p>
+
+<p>This intelligence threw him into silence, and again her eyes fed upon
+his firelit face with inappeasable hunger. She was one of those women,
+to be met with the world over and in any station, who are remarkable for
+a love of youth and the world, which age, sickness, and isolation but
+deepen rather than subdue; and his sudden presence at her fireside was
+more than grateful. Not satisfied with what he had told, she led the
+talk back to the blue-grass country, and got from him other facts of his
+life, asking questions in regard to the features of that more fertile
+and beautiful land. In return she sketched the history of her own
+region, and dwelt upon its differences of soil, people, and
+religion&mdash;chiefly the last. It was while she spoke of the Order of the
+Stricken Heart that he asked a question he had long reserved.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know the history of any of these Sisters?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know the history of all of them who are from Kentucky. I have known
+Sister Dolorosa since she was a child."</p>
+
+<p>"Sister Dolorosa!" The name pierced him like a spear.</p>
+
+<p>"The nun who was here to-day is called Sister Dolorosa. Her real name
+was Pauline Cambron."</p>
+
+<p>The fire died away. The old man left the room on some pretext and did
+not return. The story that followed was told with many details not given
+here&mdash;traced up from parentage and childhood with that fine tracery of
+the feminine mind which is like intricate embroidery, and which leaves
+the finished story wrought out on the mind like a complete design, with
+every point fastened to the sympathies.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as she had finished he rose quickly from a desire to be alone.
+So well had the story been knit to his mind that he felt it an
+irritation, a binding pain. He was bidding her good-night when she
+caught his hand. Something in his mere temperament drew women towards
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you married?" she asked, looking into his eyes in the way with
+which those who are married sometimes exchange confidences.</p>
+
+<p>He looked quickly away, and his face flushed a little fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not married," he replied, withdrawing his hand.</p>
+
+<p>She threw it from her with a gesture of mock, pleased impatience; and
+when he had left the room, she sat for a while over the ashes.</p>
+
+<p>"If she were not a nun&mdash;&mdash;" then she laughed and made her difficult way
+to her bed. But in the room above he sat down to think.</p>
+
+<p>Was this, then, not romance, but life in his own State? Vaguely he had
+always known that further south in Kentucky a different element of
+population had settled, and extended into the New World that mighty cord
+of ecclesiastical influence which of old had braided every European
+civilisation into an iron tissue of faith. But this knowledge had never
+touched his imagination. In his own land there were no rural Catholic
+churches, much less convents, and even among the Catholic congregations
+of the neighbouring towns he had not many acquaintances and fewer
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>To descend as a gay bird of passage, therefore, upon these secluded,
+sombre fields, and find himself in the neighbourhood of a powerful
+Order&mdash;to learn that a girl, beautiful, accomplished, of wealth and high
+social position, had of her own choice buried herself for life within
+its bosom&mdash;gave him a startling insight into Kentucky history as it was
+forming in his own time. Moreover&mdash;and this touched him especially&mdash;it
+gave him a deeper insight into the possibilities of woman's nature; for
+a certain narrowness of view regarding the true mission of woman in the
+world belonged to him as a result of education. In the conservative
+Kentucky society by which he had been largely moulded the opinion
+prevailed that woman fulfilled her destiny when she married well and
+adorned a home. All beauty, all accomplishments, all virtues and graces,
+were but means for attaining this end.</p>
+
+<p>As for himself, he came of a stock which throughout the generations of
+Kentucky life, and back of these along the English ancestry, had stood
+for the home; a race of men with the fireside traits: sweet-tempered,
+patient, and brave; well-formed and handsome; cherishing towards women a
+sense of chivalry; protecting them fiercely and tenderly; loving them
+romantically and quickly for the sake of beauty; marrying early, and
+sometimes at least holding towards their wives such faith, that these
+had no more to fear from all other women in the world than from all
+other men.</p>
+
+<p>Descended from such a stock and moulded by the social ideals of his
+region, Helm naturally stood for the home himself. And yet there was a
+difference. In a sense he was a product of the new Kentucky. His infancy
+had been rocked on the chasm of the Civil War; his childhood spent amid
+its ruins; his youth ruled by two contending spirits&mdash;discord and peace:
+and earliest manhood had come to him only in the morning of the new era.
+It was because the path of his life had thus run between light and shade
+that his nature was joyous and grave; only joy claimed him entirely as
+yet, while gravity asserted itself merely in the form of sympathy with
+anything that suffered, and a certain seriousness touching his own
+responsibility in life.</p>
+
+<p>Reflecting on this responsibility while his manhood was yet forming, he
+felt the need of his becoming a better, broader type of man, matching
+the better, broader age. His father was about his model of a gentleman;
+but he should be false to the admitted progress of the times were he not
+an improvement on his father. And since his father had, as judged by the
+ideals of the old social order, been a blameless gentleman of the rural
+blue-grass kind, with farm, spacious homestead, slaves, leisure, and a
+library,&mdash;to all of which, except the slaves, he would himself succeed
+upon his father's death&mdash;his dream of duty took the form of becoming a
+rural blue-grass gentleman of the newer type, reviving the best
+traditions of the past, but putting into his relations with his
+fellow-creatures an added sense of helpfulness, a broader sense of
+justice, and a certain energy of leadership in all things that made for
+a purer, higher human life. It will thus be seen that he took seriously
+not only himself, but the reputation of his State; for he loved it,
+people and land, with broad, sensitive tenderness, and never sought or
+planned for his future apart from civil and social ends.</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps a characteristic of him as a product of the period that
+he had a mind for looking at his life somewhat abstractedly and with a
+certain thought-out plan; for this disposition of mind naturally belongs
+to an era when society is trembling upon the brink of new activities and
+forced to the discovery of new ideals. But he cherished no religious
+passion, being committed by inheritance to a mild, unquestioning,
+undeviating Protestantism. His religion was more in his conduct than in
+his prayers, and he tried to live its precepts instead of following them
+from afar. Still, his make was far from heroic. He had many faults; but
+it is less important to learn what these were than to know that, as far
+as he was aware of their existence, he was ashamed of them, and tried to
+overcome them.</p>
+
+<p>Such, in brief, were Pauline Cambron and Gordon Helm: coming from
+separate regions of Kentucky, descended from unlike pasts, moulded by
+different influences, striving towards ends in life far apart and
+hostile. And being thus, at last they slept that night.</p>
+
+<p>When she had been left alone, and had begun to prepare herself for bed,
+across her mind passed and repassed certain words of the Mother
+Superior, stilling her spirit like the waving of a wand of peace: "To be
+troubled without any visible cause is one of the mysteries of our
+nature." True, before she fell asleep there rose all at once a
+singularly clear recollection of that silent meeting in the fields; but
+her prayers fell thick and fast upon it like flakes of snow, until it
+was chastely buried from the eye of conscience; and when she slept, two
+tears, slowly loosened from her brain by some repentant dream, could
+alone have told that there had been trouble behind her peaceful eyes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Sister Dolorosa was returning from her visit to old Martha on the
+following afternoon. When she awoke that morning she resolutely put away
+all thought of what had happened the evening before. She prayed oftener
+than usual that day. She went about all duties with unwonted fervour.
+When she set out in the afternoon, and reached the spot in the fields
+where the meeting had taken place, it was inevitable that a nature
+sensitive and secluded like hers should be visited by some question
+touching who he was and whither he had gone; for it did not even occur
+to her that he would ever cross her path again. Soon she reached old
+Martha's; and then&mdash;a crippled toad with a subtle tongue had squatted
+for an hour at the ear of Eve, and Eve, beguiled, had listened. And now
+she was again returning across the fields homeward. Homeward?</p>
+
+<p>Early that afternoon Helm had walked across the country to the station,
+some two miles off, to change his dress, with the view of going to the
+convent the next day. As he came back he followed the course which he
+had taken the day before, and this brought him into the same footpath
+across the fields.</p>
+
+<p>Thus they met the second time. When she saw him, had she been a bird,
+with one sudden bound she would have beaten the air down beneath her
+frightened wings and darted high over his head straight to the convent.
+But his step grew slower and his look expectant. When they were a few
+yards apart he stepped out of the path into the low, grey weeds of the
+field, and seemed ready to pause; but she had instinctively drawn her
+veil close, and was passing on. Then he spoke quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, but are strangers allowed to visit the convent?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no mistaking the courtesy of the tone. But she did not lift
+her face towards him. She merely paused, though seeming to shrink away.
+He saw the fingers of one hand lace themselves around the cross. Then a
+moment later, in a voice very low and gentle, she replied, "The Mother
+Superior is glad to receive visitors at the convent," and, bowing, moved
+away.</p>
+
+<p>He stood watching her with a quick flush of disappointment. Her voice,
+even more than her garb, had at once waved off approach. In his mind he
+had crossed the distance from himself to her so often that he had
+forgotten the actual abyss of sacred separation. Very thoughtfully he
+turned at last and took his way along the footpath.</p>
+
+<p>As he was leaving the farm-house the next day to go to the convent, Ezra
+joined him, merely saying that he was going also. The old man had few
+thoughts; but with that shrewd secretiveness which is sometimes found in
+the dull mind he kept his counsels to himself. Their walk was finished
+in silence, and soon the convent stood before them.</p>
+
+<p>Through a clear sky the wan light fell upon it as lifeless as though
+sent from a dead sun. The air hung motionless. The birds were gone. Not
+a sound fell upon the strained ear. Not a living thing relieved the eye.
+And yet within what tragedies and conflicts, what wounds and thorns of
+womanhood! Here, then, she lived and struggled and soared. An unearthly
+quietude came over him as he walked up the long avenue of elms,
+painfully jarred on by the noise of Ezra's shuffling feet among the dry
+leaves. Joyous life had retired to infinite remoteness; and over him,
+like a preternatural chill in the faint sunlight, crept the horror of
+this death in life. Strangely enough he felt at one and the same time a
+repugnance to his own nature of flesh and a triumphant delight in the
+possession of bodily health, liberty&mdash;the liberty of the world&mdash;and a
+mind unfettered by tradition.</p>
+
+<p>A few feet from the entrance an aged nun stepped from behind a hedgerow
+of shrubbery and confronted them.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you state your business?" she said coldly, glancing at Helm and
+fixing her eyes on Ezra, who for reply merely nodded to Helm.</p>
+
+<p>"I am a stranger in this part of the country, and heard that I would be
+allowed to visit the convent."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a Catholic?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I am a Protestant."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you acquainted with any of the young ladies in the convent?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not."</p>
+
+<p>She looked him through and through. He met her scrutiny with frank
+unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come in? I will take your name to the Mother Superior."</p>
+
+<p>They followed her into a small reception-room, and sat for a long time
+waiting. Then an inner door opened, and another aged nun, sweet-faced
+and gentle, entered and greeted them pleasantly, recognising Ezra as an
+acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>"Another Sister will be sent to accompany us," she said, and sat down to
+wait, talking naturally the while to the old man. Then the door opened
+again, and the heart of Helm beat violently; there was no mistaking the
+form, the grace. She crossed to the Sister, and spoke in an undertone.</p>
+
+<p>"Sister Generose is engaged. Mother sent me in her place, Sister." Then
+she greeted Ezra and bowed to Helm, lifting to him an instant, but
+without recognition, her tremulous eyes. Her face had the whiteness of
+alabaster.</p>
+
+<p>"We will go to the church first," said the Sister, addressing Helm, who
+placed himself beside her, the others following.</p>
+
+<p>When they entered the church he moved slowly around the walls, trying to
+listen to his guide and to fix his thoughts upon the pictures and the
+architecture. Presently he became aware that Ezra had joined them, and
+as soon as pretext offered he looked back. In a pew near the door
+through which they had entered he could just see the kneeling form and
+bowed head of Sister Dolorosa. There she remained while they made the
+circuit of the building, and not until they were quitting it did she
+rise and again place herself by the side of Ezra. Was it her last prayer
+before her temptation?</p>
+
+<p>They walked across the grounds towards the old-fashioned flower-garden
+of the convent. The Sister opened the little latticed gate, and the
+others passed in. The temptation was to begin in the very spot where
+Love had long been wandering amid dumb companions.</p>
+
+<p>"Ezra!" called the aged Sister, pausing just inside the gate and looking
+down at some recently dug bulbs, "has Martha taken up her tender bulbs?
+The frost will soon be falling." The old man sometimes helped at the
+convent in garden work.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is this young man?" she inquired carelessly a few moments later.</p>
+
+<p>But Ezra was one of those persons who cherish a faint dislike of all
+present company. Moreover, he knew the good Sister's love of news. So he
+began to resist her with the more pleasure that he could at least evade
+her questions.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he replied, with a mysterious shake of the head.</p>
+
+<p>"Come this way," she said beguilingly, turning aside into another walk,
+"and look at the chrysanthemums. How did you happen to meet him?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When Sister Dolorosa and Helm found themselves walking slowly side by
+side down the garden-path&mdash;this being what he most had hoped for and she
+most had feared&mdash;there fell upon each a momentary silence of
+preparation. Speak she must; if only in speaking she might not err.
+Speak he could; if only in speaking he might draw from her more
+knowledge of her life, and in some becoming way cause her to perceive
+his interest in it.</p>
+
+<p>Then she, as his guide, keeping her face turned towards the border of
+flowers, but sometimes lifting it shyly to his, began with great
+sweetness and a little hurriedly, as if fearing to pause&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The garden is not pretty now. It is full of flowers, but only a few are
+blooming. These are daffodils. They bloomed in March, long ago. And here
+were spring beauties. They grow wild, and do not last long. The Mother
+Superior wished some cultivated in the garden, but they are better if
+let alone to grow wild. And here are violets, which come in April. And
+here is Adam and Eve, and tulips. They are gay flowers, and bloom
+together for company. You can see Adam and Eve a long way off, and they
+look better at a distance. These were the white lilies, but one of the
+Sisters died, and we made a cross. That was in June. Jump-up-Johnnies
+were planted in this bed, but they did not do well. It has been a bad
+year. A storm blew the hollyhocks down, and there were canker-worms in
+the roses. That is the way with the flowers: they fail one year, and
+they succeed the next. They would never fail if they were let alone. It
+is pleasant to see them starting out in the Spring to be perfect each in
+its own way. It is pleasant to water them and to help. But some will be
+perfect, and some will be imperfect, and no one can alter that. They are
+like the children in the school; only the flowers would all be perfect
+if they had their way, and the children would all be wrong if they had
+theirs&mdash;the poor, good children! This is touch-me-not. Perhaps you have
+never heard of any such flower. And there, next to it, is
+love-lies-bleeding. We have not much of that; only this one little
+plant." And she bent over and stroked it.</p>
+
+<p>His whole heart melted under the white radiance of her innocence. He had
+thought her older; now his feeling took the form of the purest delight
+in some exquisite child nature. And therefore, feeling thus towards her,
+and seeing the poor, dead garden with only common flowers, which
+nevertheless she separately loved, oblivious of their commonness, he
+said with sudden warmth, holding her eyes with his&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you could see my mother's garden and the flowers that bloom in
+it." And as he spoke there came to him a vision of her as she might look
+in a certain secluded corner of it, where ran a trellised walk;
+over-clambering roses, pale golden, full blown or budding, and bent with
+dew; the May sun golden in the heavens; far and near birds singing and
+soaring in ecstasy; the air lulling the sense with perfume, quickening
+the blood with freshness; and there, within that frame of roses, her
+head bare and shining, her funereal garb for ever laid aside for one
+that matched the loveliest hue of living nature around, a flower at her
+throat, flowers in her hand, sadness gone from her face, there the pure
+and radiant incarnation of a too-happy world, this exquisite
+child-nature, advancing towards him with eyes of love.</p>
+
+<p>Having formed this picture, he could not afterwards destroy it; and as
+they resumed their walk he began very simply to describe his mother's
+garden, she listening closely because of her love for flowers, which had
+become companions to her, and merely saying dreamily, half to herself
+and with guarded courtesy half to him, "It must be beautiful."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"The Mother Superior intends to make the garden larger next year, and to
+have fine flowers in it, Ezra. It has been a prosperous year in the
+school, and there will be money to spare. This row of lilacs is to be
+dug up, and the fence set back so as to take in the onion patch over
+there. When does he expect to go away?" The aged Sister had not made
+rapid progress.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't heard him say," replied the old man.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps Martha has heard him say."</p>
+
+<p>Ezra only struck the toe of his stout boot with his staff.</p>
+
+<p>"The Mother Superior will want <i>you</i> to dig up the lilacs, Ezra. You
+can do it better than any one else."</p>
+
+<p>The old man shook his head threateningly at the bushes. "I can settle
+them," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Better than any one else. Has Martha heard him say when he is going
+away?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow," he replied, conceding something in return for the lilacs.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"These are the chrysanthemums. They are white, but some are perfect and
+some are imperfect, you see. Those that are perfect are the ones to feel
+proud of, but the others are the ones to love."</p>
+
+<p>"If all were perfect would you no longer love them?" he said gently,
+thinking how perfect she was and how easy it would be to love her.</p>
+
+<p>"If all were perfect, I could love all alike, because none would need to
+be loved more than others."</p>
+
+<p>"And when the flowers in the garden are dead, what do you find to love
+then?" he asked, laughing a little and trying to follow her mood.</p>
+
+<p>"It would not be fair to forget them because they are dead. But they are
+not dead; they go away for a season, and it would not be fair to forget
+them because they have gone away." This she said simply and seriously as
+though her conscience were dealing with human virtues and duties.</p>
+
+<p>"And are you satisfied to love things that are not present?" he asked,
+looking at her with sudden earnestness.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"The Mother Superior will wish him to take away a favourable impression
+of the convent," said the Sister. "Young ladies are sometimes sent to us
+from that region." And now, having gotten from Ezra the information she
+desired and turned their steps towards the others, she looked at Helm
+with greater interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Should you like to go upon the observatory?" she meekly asked, pointing
+to the top of the adjacent building. "From there you can see how far the
+convent lands extend. Besides, it is the only point that commands a view
+of the whole country."</p>
+
+<p>The scene of the temptation was to be transferred to the pinnacle of the
+temple.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not asking too much of you to climb so far for my pleasure?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is our mission to climb," she replied wearily; "and if our strength
+fails, we rest by the way."</p>
+
+<p>Of herself she spoke literally; for when they came to the topmost story
+of the building, from which the observatory was reached by a short
+flight of steps, she sank into a seat placed near as a resting-place.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you go above, Sister?" she said feebly. "I will wait here."</p>
+
+<p>On the way up, also, the old man had been shaking his head with a stupid
+look of alarm and muttering his disapproval.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a high railing, Ezra," she now said to him, "You could not
+fall." But he refused to go further; he suffered from vertigo.</p>
+
+<p>The young pair went up alone.</p>
+
+<p>For miles in all directions the landscape lay shimmering in the autumnal
+sunlight&mdash;a poor, rough, homely land, with a few farmhouses of the
+plainest kind. Briefly she traced for him the boundary of the convent
+domain. And then he, thinking proudly of his own region, now lying heavy
+in varied autumnal ripeness and teeming with noble, gentle animal life;
+with rolling pastures as green as May under great trees of crimson and
+gold; with flashing streams and placid sheets of water, and great
+secluded homesteads&mdash;he, in turn, briefly described it; and she, loving
+the sensuous beauty of the world, listened more dreamily, merely
+repeating over and over, half to herself, and with more guarded courtesy
+half to him, "It must be very beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>But whether she suddenly felt that she had yielded herself too far to
+the influence of his words and wished to counteract this, or whether she
+was aroused to offset his description by another of unlike interest,
+scarcely had he finished when she pointed towards a long stretch of
+woodland that lay like a mere wavering band of brown upon the western
+horizon.</p>
+
+<p>"It was through those woods," she said, her voice trembling slightly,
+"that the procession of Trappists marched behind the cross when they
+fled to this country from France. Beyond that range of hills is the home
+of the Silent Brotherhood. In this direction," she continued, pointing
+southward, "is the creek which used to be so deep in winter that the
+priests had to swim it as they walked from one distant mission to
+another in the wilderness, holding above the waves the crucifix and the
+sacrament. Under that tree down there the Father who founded this
+convent built with his own hands the cabin that was the first church,
+and hewed out of logs the first altar. It was from those trees that the
+first nuns got the dyes for their vestments. On the floor of that cabin
+they sometimes slept in mid-winter with no other covering than an armful
+of straw. Those were heroic days."</p>
+
+<p>If she had indeed felt some secret need to recover herself by reciting
+the heroisms of local history, she seemed to have succeeded. Her face
+kindled with emotion; and as he watched it he forgot even her creed in
+this revelation of her nature, which touched in him also something
+serious and exalted. But as she ceased he asked, with peculiar
+interest&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Are there any Kentuckians among the Trappist Fathers?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," she replied, after a momentary silence, and in a voice lowered to
+great sadness. "There was one a few years ago. His death was a great
+blow to the Fathers. They had hoped that he might some day become the
+head of the order in Kentucky. He was called Father Palemon."</p>
+
+<p>For another moment nothing was said. They were standing side by side,
+looking towards that quarter of the horizon which she had pointed out as
+the site of the abbey. Then he spoke meditatively, as though his mind
+had gone back unawares to some idea that was very dear to him&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"No, this does not seem much like Kentucky; but, after all, every
+landscape is essentially the same to me if there are homes on it. Poor
+as this country is, still it is history; it is human life. Here are the
+eternal ties and relations. Here are the eternal needs and duties;
+everything that keeps the world young and the heart at peace. Here is
+the unchanging expression of our common destiny, as creatures who must
+share all things, and bear all things, and be bound together in life and
+death."</p>
+
+<p>"Sister!" called up the nun waiting below, "is not the wind blowing?
+Will you not take cold?"</p>
+
+<p>"The wind is not blowing, Sister, but I am coming."</p>
+
+<p>They turned their faces outward upon the landscape once more. Across it
+wound the little footpath towards the farm-house in the distance. By a
+common impulse their eyes rested upon the place of their first meeting.
+He pointed to it.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never forget that spot," he said impulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I!"</p>
+
+<p>Her words were not spoken. They were not uttered within. As unexpectedly
+and silently as in the remotest profound of the heavens at midnight some
+palest little star is loosened from its orbit, shoots a brief span, and
+disappears, this confession of hers traced its course across the depths
+of her secret consciousness; but, having made it to herself, she kept
+her eyes veiled, and did not look at him again that day.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you have now seen everything that could be of any interest,"
+the aged Sister said doubtfully, when they stood in the yard below.</p>
+
+<p>"The place is very interesting to me," he answered, looking around that
+he might discover some way of prolonging his visit.</p>
+
+<p>"The graveyard, Sister. We might go there." The barely audible words
+were Sister Dolorosa's. The scene of the temptation was to be
+transferred for the third time.</p>
+
+<p>They walked some distance down a sloping hillside, and stepped softly
+within the sacred enclosure. A graveyard of nuns! O Mother Earth,
+all-bearing, passion-hearted mother! Thou that sendest love one for
+another into thy children, from the least to the greatest, as thou
+givest them life! Thou that livest by their loves and their myriad
+plightings of troth and myriad marriages! With what inconsolable sorrow
+must thou receive back upon thy bosom, the chaste dust of lorn virgins,
+whose bosoms thou didst mould for a lover's arms and a babe's slumbers!
+As marble vestals of the ancient world, buried and lost, they lie,
+chiselled into a fixed attitude of prayer through the silent centuries.</p>
+
+<p>The aspect and spirit of the place: the simple graves placed side by
+side like those of the nameless poor, or of soldiers fallen in an
+unfriendly land: the rude wooden cross at the head of each, bearing the
+sacred name of her who was dust below; the once chirruping nests of
+birds here and there in the grass above the songless lips; the sad
+desolation of this unfinished end&mdash;all were the last thing needed to
+wring the heart of Helm with dumb pity and an ungovernable anguish of
+rebellion. This, then, was to be her portion. His whole nature cried
+aloud against it. His ideas of human life, civilisation, his age, his
+country, his State, rose up in protest. He did not heed the words of the
+Sister beside him. His thoughts were with Sister Dolorosa, who followed
+with Ezra in a silence which she had but once broken since her last
+words to him. He could have caught her up and escaped back with her into
+the liberty of life, into the happiness of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Unable to endure the place longer, he himself led the way out. At the
+gate the Sister fell behind with Ezra.</p>
+
+<p>"He seems deeply impressed by his visit," she said in an undertone, "and
+should bear with him a good account of the convent. Note what he says,
+Ezra. The order wants friends in Kentucky, where it was born and has
+flourished;" and looking at Sister Dolorosa and Helm, who were a short
+distance in front, she added to herself&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In her, more than in any other one of us, he will behold the perfect
+spiritual type of the convent. By her he will be made to feel the power
+of the order to consecrate women, in America, in Kentucky, to the
+service of the everlasting Church."</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, Sister Dolorosa and Helm walked side by side in a silence
+that neither could break. He was thinking of her as a woman of
+Kentucky&mdash;of his own generation&mdash;and trying to understand the motive
+that had led her to consecrate herself to such a life. His own ideal of
+duty was so different.</p>
+
+<p>"I have never thought," he said at length, in a voice lowered so as to
+reach her ear alone&mdash;"I have never thought that my life would not be
+full of happiness. I have never supposed I could help being happy if I
+did my duty."</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply, and again they walked on in silence and drew near the
+convent building. There was so much that he wished to say, but scarcely
+one of his thoughts that he dared utter. At length he said, with
+irrepressible feeling&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I wish your life did not seem to me so sad. I wish, when I go away
+to-morrow, that I could carry away, with my thoughts of this place, the
+thought that you are happy. As long as I remember it I wish I could
+remember you as being happy."</p>
+
+<p>"You have no right to remember me at all," she said quickly, speaking
+for the nun and betraying the woman.</p>
+
+<p>"But I cannot help it," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember me, then, not as desiring to be happy, but as living to
+become blessed."</p>
+
+<p>This she said, breaking the long silence which had followed upon his too
+eager exclamation. Her voice had become hushed into unison with her meek
+and patient words. And then she paused, and, turning, waited for the
+Sister to come up beside them. Nor did she even speak to him again,
+merely bowing without lifting her eyes when, a little later, he thanked
+them and took his leave.</p>
+
+<p>In silence he and the old man returned to the farm-house, for his
+thoughts were with her. In the garden she had seemed to him almost as a
+child, talking artlessly of her sympathies and ties with mute
+playthings; then on the heights she had suddenly revealed herself as the
+youthful transcendent devotee; and finally, amid the scenes of death,
+she had appeared a woman too quickly aged and too early touched with
+resignation. He did not know that the effect of convent life is to force
+certain faculties into maturity while others are repressed into
+unalterable unripeness; so that in such instances as Sister Dolorosa's
+the whole nature resembles some long, sloping mountain-side, with an
+upper zone of ever-lingering snow for childhood, below this a green
+vernal belt for maidenhood, and near the foot fierce summer heats and
+summer storms for womanhood. Gradually his plan of joining his friends
+the next day wavered for reasons that he could hardly have named.</p>
+
+<p>And Sister Dolorosa&mdash;what of her when the day was over? Standing that
+night in a whitewashed, cell-like room, she took off the heavy black
+veil and hood which shrouded her head from all human vision, and then
+unfastening at waist and throat the heavier black vestment of the order,
+allowed it to slip to the floor, revealing a white under-habit of the
+utmost simplicity of design. It was like the magical transformation of a
+sorrow-shrouded woman back into the shape of her own earliest
+maidenhood.</p>
+
+<p>Her hair, of the palest gold, would, if unshorn, have covered her figure
+in a soft, thick golden cloud; but shorn, it lay about her neck and ears
+in large, lustrous waves that left defined the contour of her beautiful
+head, and gave to it the aerial charm that belongs to the joyousness of
+youth. Her whole figure was relaxed into a posture slightly drooping;
+her bare arms, white as the necks of swans, hung in forgotten grace at
+her sides; her eyes, large, dark, poetic, and spiritual, were bent upon
+the floor, so that the lashes left their shadows on her cheeks, while
+the delicate, overcircling brows were arched high with melancholy. As
+the nun's funereal robes had slipped from her person had her mind
+slipped back into the past, that she stood thus, all the pure oval of
+her sensitive face stilled to an expression of brooding pensiveness? On
+the urn which held the ashes of her heart had some legend of happy
+shapes summoned her fondly to return?&mdash;some garden? some radiant
+play-fellow of childhood summers, already dim but never to grow dimmer?</p>
+
+<p>Sighing deeply, she stepped across the dark circle on the floor which
+was the boundary of her womanhood. As she did so her eyes rested on a
+small table where lay a rich veil of white that she had long been
+embroidering for a shrine of the Virgin. Slowly, still absently, she
+walked to it, and, taking it up, threw it over her head, so that the
+soft fabric enveloped her head and neck and fell in misty folds about
+her person; she thinking the while only of the shrine; she looking down
+on this side and on that, and wishing only to judge how well this design
+and that design, patiently and prayerfully wrought out, might adorn the
+image of the Divine Mother in the church of the convent.</p>
+
+<p>But happening to be standing quite close to the white wall of the room
+with the lamp behind her, when she raised her eyes she caught sight of
+her shadow, and with a low cry clasped her hands, and for an instant,
+breathless, surveyed it. No mirrors are allowed in the convent. Since
+entering it Sister Dolorosa had not seen a reflection of herself, except
+perhaps her shadow in the sun or her face in a troubled basin of water.
+Now, with one overwhelming flood of womanly self-consciousness, she bent
+forward, noting the outline of her uncovered head, of her bared neck and
+shoulders and arms. Did this accidental adorning of herself in the veil
+of a bride, after she had laid aside the veil of the Church, typify her
+complete relapse of nature? And was this the lonely marriage-moment of
+her betrayed heart?</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, trembling, not before the image on the wall, but before
+that vivid mirror which memory and fancy set before every woman when no
+real mirror is nigh, she indulged her self-surrender to thoughts that
+covered her, on face and neck, with a rosy cloud more maidenly than the
+white mist of the veil. Then, as if recalled by some lightning stroke of
+conscience, with fearful fingers she lifted off the veil, extinguished
+the lamp, and, groping her way on tiptoe to the bedside, stood beside
+it, afraid to lie down, afraid to pray, her eyes wide open in the
+darkness.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Sleep gathers up the soft threads of passion that have been spun by us
+during the day, and weaves them into a tapestry of dreams on which we
+see the history of our own characters. We awake to find our wills more
+inextricably caught in the tissues of their own past; we stir, and
+discover that we are the heirs to our dead selves of yesterday, with a
+larger inheritance of transmitted purpose.</p>
+
+<p>When Gordon awoke the next morning, among his first thoughts was the
+idea of going on to join his friends that day, and this thought now
+caused him unexpected depression. Had he been older, he might have
+accepted this unwillingness to go away as the best reason for leaving;
+but, young, and habitually self-indulgent towards his desires when they
+were not connected with vice, he did not trouble himself with any
+forecast of consequences.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought not to go away to-day," the old housewife said to him in the
+morning, wishing to detain him through love of his company. "To-morrow
+will be Sunday, and you ought to go to vespers and hear Sister Dolorosa
+sing. There is not such another voice in any convent in Kentucky."</p>
+
+<p>"I will stay," he replied quickly; and the next afternoon he was seated
+in the rear of the convent church, surrounded by rural Catholic
+worshippers who had assembled from the neighbourhood. The entire front
+of the nave on one side was filled with the black-veiled Sisters of the
+order; that on the other with the white-veiled novices&mdash;two
+far-journeying companies of consecrated souls who reminded him in the
+most solemn way how remote, how inaccessible, was that young pilgrim
+among them of whom for a long time now he had been solely thinking. With
+these two companies of sacrificial souls before him he understood her
+character in a new light.</p>
+
+<p>He beheld her much as a brave, beautiful boy volunteer, who, suddenly
+waving a bright, last adieu to gay companions in some gay-streeted town,
+from motives of the loftiest heroism, takes his place in the rear of
+passing soldiery, marching to misguided death: who, from the rear,
+glowing with too impetuous ardour, makes his way from rank to rank ever
+towards the front; and who, at last, bearing the heavy arms and wearing
+the battle-stained uniform of a veteran, steps forward to the van at
+the commander's side, and sets his fresh, pure face undaunted towards
+destruction. As he thought of her thus, deeper forces stirred within his
+nature than had ever been aroused by any other woman. In comparison
+every one that he had known became for the moment commonplace, human
+life as he was used to it gross and uninspiring, and his own ideal of
+duty a dwarfish mixture of selfishness and luxurious triviality.
+Impulsive in his recognition of nobleness of nature wherever he
+perceived it, for this devotedness of purpose he began to feel the
+emotion which of all that ever visit the human heart is at once the most
+humbling, the most uplifting, and the most enthralling&mdash;the hero-worship
+of a strong man for a fragile woman.</p>
+
+<p>The service began. As it went on he noticed here and there among those
+near him such evidences of restlessness as betray in a seated throng
+high-wrought expectancy of some pleasure too long deferred. But at last
+these were succeeded by a breathless hush, as, from the concealed
+organ-loft above, a low, minor prelude was heard, groping and striving
+nearer and nearer towards the concealed motive, as a little wave creeps
+further and further along a melancholy shore. Suddenly, beautiful and
+clear, more tender than love, more sorrowful than death, there floated
+out upon the still air of the church the cry of a woman's soul that has
+offended, and that, shrinking from every prayer of speech, pours forth
+its more intense, inarticulate, and suffering need through the diviner
+faculty of song.</p>
+
+<p>At the sound every ear was strained to listen. Hitherto the wont had
+been to hear that voice bear aloft the common petition as calmly as the
+incense rose past the altar to the roof; but now it quivered over
+troubled depths of feeling, it rose freighted with the burden of
+self-accusal. Still higher and higher it rose, borne triumphantly upward
+by love and aspiration, until the powers of the singer's frame seemed
+spending themselves in one superhuman effort of the soul to make its
+prayer understood to the divine forgiveness. Then, all at once, at the
+highest note, as a bird soaring towards the sun has its wings broken by
+a shot from below, it too broke, faltered, and there was a silence. But
+only for a moment: another voice, poor and cold, promptly finished the
+song; the service ended; the people poured out of the church.</p>
+
+<p>When Gordon came out there were a few groups standing near the door
+talking; others were already moving homeward across the grounds. Not
+far off he observed a lusty young countryman, with a frank, winning
+face, who appeared to be waiting, while he held a child that had laid
+its bright head against his tanned, athletic neck. Gordon approached
+him, and said with forced calmness&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what was the matter in the church?"</p>
+
+<p>"My wife has gone to see," he replied warmly. "Wait; she'll be here in a
+minute. Here she is now."</p>
+
+<p>The comely, Sunday-dressed young wife came up and took the child, who
+held out its arms, fondly smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"She hadn't been well, and they didn't want her to sing to-day; but she
+begged to sing, and broke down." Saying this, the young mother kissed
+her child, and slipping one hand into the great brown hand of her
+husband, which closed upon it, turned away with them across the lawn
+homeward.</p>
+
+<p>When Sister Dolorosa, who had passed a sleepless, prayerless night,
+stood in the organ-loft and looked across the church at the scene of
+the Passion, at the shrine of the Virgin, at the white throng of novices
+and the dark throng of the Sisters, the common prayer of whom was to be
+borne upward by her voice, there came upon her like a burying wave a
+consciousness of how changed she was since she had stood there last.
+Thus at the moment when Gordon, sitting below, reverently set her far
+above him, as one looks up to a statue whose feet are above the level of
+his head, she, thinking of what she had been and had now become, seemed
+to herself as though fallen from a white pedestal to the miry earth. But
+when, to a nature like hers, absolute loyalty to a sinless standard of
+character is the only law of happiness itself, every lapse into
+transgression is followed by an act of passionate self-chastisement and
+by a more passionate outburst of love for the wronged ideal; and
+therefore scarce had she begun to sing, and in music to lift up the
+prayer she had denied herself in words, before the powers of her body
+succumbed, as the strings of an instrument snap under too strenuous a
+touch of the musician.</p>
+
+<p>Gordon walked out of the grounds beside the rustic young husband and
+wife, who plainly were lovers still.</p>
+
+<p>"The Sister who sang has a beautiful voice," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"None of them can sing like her," replied the wife. "I love her better
+than any of the others."</p>
+
+<p>"I tin sing!" cried the little girl, looking at Gordon resentfully, as
+though he had denied her that accomplishment.</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll never sing in a convent, missy," cried the father, snatching
+her from her mother. "You'll sing for some man till he marries you as
+your mother did me. I was going to join the Trappist monks, but my wife
+said I was too good a sweetheart to spoil, and she had made up her mind
+to have me herself," he added, turning to Gordon with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd have been a Sister long ago if you hadn't begged and begged me
+not," was the reply, with the coquettish toss of a pretty head.</p>
+
+<p>"I doin' be Tap monk," cried the little girl, looking at Gordon still
+more assertively, but joining in the laugh that followed with a scream
+of delight at the wisdom of her decision.</p>
+
+<p>Their paths here diverged, and Gordon walked slowly on alone, but not
+without turning to watch the retreating figures, his meeting with whom
+at such a moment formed an episode in the history of that passion under
+the influence of which he was now rapidly passing. For as he had sat in
+the church his nature, which was always generous in its responsiveness,
+had lent itself wholly to the solicitations of the service; and for a
+time the stillness, the paintings portraying the divine sorrow, the slow
+procession of nameless women, the tapers, the incense, the hoary
+antiquity of the ceremonial, had carried him into a little-known region
+of his religious feeling. But from this he had been sharply recalled by
+the suggestion of a veiled personal tragedy close at hand in that
+unfinished song. His mood again became one of vast pity for her; and
+issuing from the church with this feeling, there, near the very
+entrance, he had come upon a rustic picture of husband, wife, and child,
+with a sharpness of transition that had seemed the return of his spirit
+to its own world of flesh and blood. There to him was the poetry and the
+religion of life&mdash;the linked hands of lovers; the twining arms of
+childhood; health and joyousness; and a quiet walk over familiar fields
+in the evening air from peaceful church to peaceful home. And so,
+thinking of this as he walked on alone, and thinking also of her, the
+two thoughts blended, and her image stood always before him in the
+pathway of his ideal future.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the next several days may soon be told. He wrote to his
+friends, stating that there was no game in the neighbourhood, and that
+he had given up the idea of joining them and would return home. He took
+the letter to the station, and waited for the train to pass southward,
+watching it rush away with a subtle pleasure at being left on the
+platform, as though the bridges were now burned behind him. Then he
+returned to the farm-house, where Ezra met him with that look of stupid
+alarm which was natural to him whenever his few thoughts were agitated
+by a new situation of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Word had come from the convent that he was wanted there to move a fence
+and make changes in the garden, and, proud of the charge, he wished to
+go; but certain autumnal work in his own orchard and garden claimed his
+time, and hence the trouble. But Gordon, who henceforth had no reason
+for tarrying with the old couple, threw himself eagerly upon this
+opportunity to do so, and offered his aid in despatching the tasks. So
+that thus a few days passed, during which he unconsciously made his way
+as far as any one had ever done into the tortuous nature of the old man,
+who began to regard him with blind trustfulness.</p>
+
+<p>But they were restless, serious days. One after another passed, and he
+heard nothing of Sister Dolorosa. He asked himself whether she were ill,
+whether her visits to old Martha had been made to cease; and he shrank
+from the thought of bearing away into his life the haunting pain of such
+uncertainty. But some inner change constrained him no longer to call her
+name. As he sat with the old couple at night the housewife renewed her
+talks with him, speaking sometimes of the convent and of Sister
+Dolorosa, the cessation of whose visits plainly gave her secret concern;
+but he listened in silence, preferring the privacy of his own thoughts.
+Sometimes, under feint of hunting, he would take his gun in the
+afternoon and stroll out over the country; but always the presence of
+the convent made itself felt over the landscape, dominating it, solitary
+and impregnable, like a fortress. It began to draw his eyes with a
+species of fascination. He chafed against its assertion of barriers, and
+could have wished that his own will might be brought into conflict with
+it. It appeared to watch him; to have an eye at every window; to see in
+him a lurking danger. At other times, borne to him across the darkening
+fields would come the sweet vesper bell, and in imagination he would see
+her entering the church amid the long procession of novices and nuns,
+her hands folded across her breast, her face full of the soft glories of
+the lights that streamed in through the pictured windows. Over the
+fancied details of her life more and more fondly he lingered.</p>
+
+<p>And thus, although at first he had been interested in her wholly upon
+general grounds, believing her secretly unhappy, thus by thinking always
+of her, and watching for her, and walking often beside her in his
+dreams, with the folly of the young, with the romantic ardour of his
+race, and as part of the never-ending blind tragedy of the world, he
+came at last to feel for her, among women, that passionate pain of
+yearning to know which is to know the sadness of love.</p>
+
+<p>Sleepless one night, he left the house after the old couple were asleep.
+The moon was shining, and unconsciously following the bent of his
+thoughts, he took the footpath that led across the fields. He passed the
+spot where he had first met her, and, absorbed in recollection of the
+scene, he walked on until before him the convent towered high in light
+and shadow. He had reached the entrance to the long avenue of elms. He
+traversed it, turned aside into the garden, and, following with many
+pauses around its borders, lived over again the day when she had led him
+through it. The mere sense of his greater physical nearness to her
+enthralled him. All her words came back: "These are daffodils. They
+bloomed in March, long ago.... And here are violets, which come in
+April." After awhile, leaving the garden, he walked across the lawn to
+the church and sat upon the steps, trying to look calmly at this whole
+episode in his life, and to summon resolution to bring it to an end. He
+dwelt particularly upon the hopelessness of his passion; he made himself
+believe that if he could but learn that she were not ill and
+suffering&mdash;if he could but see her once more, and be very sure&mdash;he would
+go away, as every dictate of reason urged.</p>
+
+<p>Across the lawn stood the convent building. There caught his eye the
+faint glimmer of a light through a half-opened window, and while he
+looked he saw two of the nuns moving about within. Was some one dying?
+Was this light the taper of the dead? He tried to throw off a sudden
+weight of gloomy apprehension, and resolutely got up and walked away;
+but his purpose was formed not to leave until he had intelligence of
+her.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, a few days later, happening to come to an elevated point
+of the landscape, he saw her figure moving across the fields in the
+distance below him. Between the convent and the farm-house, in one of
+the fields, there is a circular, basin-like depression; and it was here,
+hidden from distant observation, with only the azure of the heavens
+above them, that their meeting took place.</p>
+
+<p>On the day when she had been his guide he had told her that he was going
+away on the morrow, and as she walked along now it might have been seen
+that she thought herself safe from intrusion. Her eyes were bent on the
+dust of the pathway. One hand was passing bead by bead upward along her
+rosary. Her veil was pushed back, so that between its black border and
+the glistening whiteness of her forehead there ran, like a rippling band
+of gold, the exposed edges of her shining hair. In the other hand she
+bore a large cluster of chrysanthemums, whose snow-white petals and
+green leaves formed a strong contrast with the crimson symbol that they
+partly framed against her sable bosom.</p>
+
+<p>He had come up close before the noise of his feet in the stubble drew
+her attention. Then she turned and saw him. But certain instincts of
+self-preservation act in women with lightning quickness. She did not
+recognise him, or give him time to recognise her. She merely turned
+again and walked onward at the same pace. But the chrysanthemums were
+trembling with the beating of her heart, and her eyes had in them that
+listening look with which one awaits the on-coming of danger from
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>But he had stopped. His nature was simple and trustful, and he had
+expected to renew his acquaintanceship at the point where it had ceased.
+When, therefore, she thus reminded him, as indeed she must, that there
+was no acquaintanceship between them, and that she regarded herself as
+much alone as though he were nowhere in sight, his feelings were
+arrested as if frozen by her coldness. Still, it was for this chance
+that he had waited all these days. Another would not come; and whatever
+he wished to say to her must be said now. A sensitiveness wholly novel
+to his nature held him back, but a moment more and he was walking
+beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I do not intrude so very far," he said, in a tone of apology,
+but also of wounded self-respect.</p>
+
+<p>It was a difficult choice thus left to her. She could not say "Yes"
+without seeming unpardonably rude; she could not say "No" without
+seeming to invite his presence. She walked on for a moment, and then,
+pausing, turned towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything that you wished to ask me in regard to the convent?"
+This she said in the sweetest tone of apologetic courtesy, as though in
+having thought only of herself at first she had neglected some larger
+duty.</p>
+
+<p>If he had feared that he would see traces of physical suffering on her
+face, he was mistaken. She had forgotten to draw her veil close, and the
+sunlight fell upon its loveliness. Never had she been to him half so
+beautiful. Whatever the expression her eyes had worn before he had come
+up, in them now rested only inscrutable calmness.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one thing I have wished very much to know," he answered
+slowly, his eyes resting on hers. "I was at the church of the convent
+last Sunday and heard you sing. They said you were not well. I have
+hoped every day to hear that you were better. I have not cared to go
+away until I knew this."</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had he begun when a flush dyed her face, her eyes fell, and she
+stood betrayed by the self-consciousness of what her own thoughts had
+that day been. One hand absently tore to pieces the blooms of the
+chrysanthemums, so that the petals fell down over her dark habit like
+snowflakes. But when he finished, she lifted her eyes again.</p>
+
+<p>"I am well now, thank you," she said; and the first smile that he had
+ever seen came forth from her soul to her face. But what a smile! It
+wrung his heart more than the sight of her tears could have done.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall hope to hear you sing again to-morrow," he said quickly,
+for she seemed on the point of moving away.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not sing to-morrow," she replied a little hurriedly, with
+averted face, and again she started on. But he walked beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"In that case I have still to thank you for the pleasure I have had. I
+imagine that one would never do wrong if he could hear you sing whenever
+he is tempted," he said, looking sidewise at her with a quiet, tentative
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not my voice," she replied more hurriedly. "It is the music of
+the service. Do not thank me. Thank God."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard the service before. It was your voice that touched me."</p>
+
+<p>She drew her veil about her face, and walked on in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"But I have no wish to say anything against your religion," he
+continued, his voice deepening and trembling. "If it has such power over
+the natures of women, if it lifts them to such ideals of duty, if it
+develops in them such characters, that merely to look into their faces,
+to be near them, to hear their voices, is to make a man think of a
+better world, I do not know why I should say anything against it."</p>
+
+<p>How often, without meaning it, our words are like a flight of arrows
+into another's heart. What he said but reminded her of her
+unfaithfulness. And therefore while she revolved how with perfect
+gentleness she might ask him to allow her to continue her way alone, she
+did what she could: she spoke reverently, though all but inaudibly, in
+behalf of her order.</p>
+
+<p>"Our vows are perfect and divine. If they ever seem less, it is the
+fault of those of us who dishonour them."</p>
+
+<p>The acute self-reproach in her tone at once changed his mood.</p>
+
+<p>"On the other hand, I have also asked myself this question: Is it the
+creed that makes the natures of you women so beautiful, or is it the
+nature of woman that gives the beauty to the creed? Is it not so with
+any other idea that women espouse? with any other cause that they
+undertake? Is it not so with anything that they spend their hearts upon,
+toil for, and sacrifice themselves for? Do I see any beauty in your vows
+except such as your life gives to them? I can believe it. I can believe
+that if you had never taken those vows your life would still be
+beautiful. I can believe that you could change them for others and find
+yourself more nearly the woman that you strive to be&mdash;that you were
+meant to be!" He spoke in the subdued voice with which one takes leave
+of some hope that brightens while it disappears.</p>
+
+<p>"I must ask you," she said, pausing&mdash;"I must ask you to allow me to
+continue my walk alone," and her voice quivered.</p>
+
+<p>He paused, too, and stood looking into her eyes in silence with the
+thought that he should never see her again. The colour had died out of
+his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I can never forgive your vows," he said, speaking very slowly and
+making an effort to appear unmoved. "I can never forgive your vows that
+they make it a sin for me to speak to you. I can never forgive them that
+they put between us a gulf that I cannot pass. Remember, I owe you a
+great deal. I owe you higher ideas of a woman's nature and clearer
+resolutions regarding my own life. Your vows perhaps make it even a sin
+that I should tell you this. But by what right? By what right am I
+forbidden to say that I shall remember you always, and that I shall
+carry away with me into my life&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you force me to turn back?" she asked in greater agitation; and
+though he could not see her face, he saw her tears fall upon her hands.</p>
+
+
+<p>"No," he answered sadly; "I shall not force you to turn back. I know
+that I have intruded. But it seemed that I could not go away without
+seeing you again, to be quite sure that you were well. And when I saw
+you, it seemed impossible not to speak of other things. Of course this
+must seem strange to you&mdash;stranger, perhaps, than I may imagine, since
+we look at human relationships so differently. My life in this world can
+be of no interest to you. You cannot, therefore, understand why yours
+should have any interest for me. Still, I hope you can forgive me," he
+added abruptly, turning his face away as it flushed and his voice
+faltered.</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her eyes quickly, although they were dim. "Do not ask me to
+forgive anything. There is nothing to be forgiven. It is I who must
+ask&mdash;only leave me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you say good-bye to me?" And he held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>She drew back, but, overborne by emotion he stepped forward, gently took
+her hand from the rosary, and held it in both his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye! But, despite the cruel barriers that they have raised between
+us, I shall always&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She foresaw what was coming. His manner told her that. She had not
+withdrawn her hand. But at this point she dropped the flowers that were
+in her other hand, laid it on her breast so that the longest finger
+pointed towards the symbol of the transfixed heart, and looked quickly
+at him with indescribable warning and distress. Then he released her,
+and she turned back towards the convent.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," she said, with a frightened face, when she reached it, "I did
+not go to old Martha's. Some one was hunting in the fields, and I came
+back. Do not send me again, Mother, unless one of the Sisters goes with
+me." And with this half-truth on her lips and full remorse for it in her
+heart, she passed into that deepening imperfection of nature which for
+the most of us makes up the inner world of reality.</p>
+
+<p>Gordon wrote to her that night. He had not foreseen his confession. It
+had been drawn from him under the influences of the moment; but since it
+was made, a sense of honour would not have allowed him to stop there,
+even had feeling carried him no further. Moreover, some hope had been
+born in him at the moment of separation, since she had not rebuked him,
+but only reminded him of her vows.</p>
+
+<p>His letter was full of the confidence and enthusiasm of youth, and its
+contents may be understood by their likeness to others. He unfolded the
+plan of his life&mdash;the life which he was asking her to share. He dwelt
+upon its possibilities, he pointed out the field of its aspirations. But
+he kept his letter for some days, unable to conceive a way by which it
+might be sent to its destination. At length the chance came in the
+simplest of disguises.</p>
+
+<p>Ezra was starting one morning to the convent. As he was leaving the
+room, old Martha called to him. She sat by the hearthstone, with her
+head tied up in red flannel, and her large, watery face flushed with
+pain, and pointed towards a basket of apples on the window-sill.</p>
+
+<p>"Take them to Sister Dolorosa, Ezra," she said. "Mind that you see
+<i>her</i>, and give them to her with your own hands. And ask her why she
+hasn't been to see me, and when she is coming." On this point her mind
+seemed more and more troubled. "But what's the use of asking <i>you</i> to
+find out for me?" she added, flashing out at him with heroic anger.</p>
+
+<p>The old man stood in the middle of the room, dry and gnarled, his small
+eyes kindling into a dull rage at a taunt made in the presence of a
+guest whose good opinion he desired. But he took the apples in silence
+and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>As Gordon followed him beyond the garden, noting how his mind was
+absorbed in petty anger, a simple resolution came to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ezra," he said, handing him the letter, "when you give the Sister the
+apples, deliver this. And we do not talk about business, you know,
+Ezra."</p>
+
+<p>The old man took the letter and put it furtively into his pocket, with a
+backward shake of his head towards the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever risks I may have to run from other quarters, he will never
+tell <i>her</i>," Gordon said to himself.</p>
+
+<p>When Ezra returned in the evening he was absorbed, and Gordon noted with
+relief that he was also unsuspicious. He walked some distance to meet
+the old man the next two days, and his suspense became almost
+unendurable, but he asked no questions. The third day Ezra drew from his
+pocket a letter, which he delivered, merely saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The Sister told me to give you this."</p>
+
+<p>Gordon soon turned aside across the fields, and having reached a point
+screened from observation, he opened the letter and read as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have received your letter. I have read it. But how could I
+listen to your proposal without becoming false to my vows? And if
+you knew that I had proved false to what I held most dear and
+binding, how could you ever believe that I would be true to
+anything else? Ah, no! Should you unite yourself to one who for
+your sake had been faithless to the ideal of womanhood which she
+regarded as supreme, you would soon withdraw from her the very love
+that she had sacrificed even her hopes of Heaven to enjoy.</p>
+
+<p>"But it seems possible that in writing to me you believe my vows no
+longer precious to my heart and sacred to my conscience. You are
+wrong. They are more dear to me at this moment than ever before,
+because at this moment, as never before, they give me a mournful
+admonition of my failure to exhibit to the world in my own life the
+beauty of their ineffable holiness. For had there not been
+something within me to lead you on&mdash;had I shown to you the sinless
+nature which it is their office to create&mdash;you would never have
+felt towards me as you do. You would no more have thought of loving
+me than of loving an angel of God.</p>
+
+<p>"The least reparation I can make for my offence is to tell you that
+in offering me your love you offer me the cup of sacred
+humiliation, and that I thank you for reminding me of my duty,
+while I drain it to the dregs.</p>
+
+<p>"After long deliberation I have written to tell you this; and if it
+be allowed me to make one request, I would entreat that you will
+never lay this sin of mine to the charge of my religion and my
+order.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall never meet again. Although I may not listen to your
+proposal, it is allowed me to love you as one of the works of God.
+And since there are exalted women in the world who do not
+consecrate themselves to the church, I shall pray that you may find
+one of these to walk by your side through life. I shall pray that
+she may be worthy of you; and perhaps you will teach her sometimes
+to pray for one who will always need her prayers.</p>
+
+<p>"I only know that God orders our lives according to His goodness.
+My feet He set in one path of duty, yours in another, and He had
+separated us for ever long before He allowed us to meet. If,
+therefore, having thus separated us, He yet brought us together
+only that we should thus know each other and then be parted, I
+cannot believe that there was not in it some needed lesson for us
+both. At least, if He will deign to hear the ceaseless, fervent
+petition of one so erring, He will not leave you unhappy on account
+of that love for me, which in this world it will never be allowed
+me to return. Farewell!"</p></div>
+
+<p>The first part of this letter awakened in Gordon keen remorse and a
+faltering of purpose, but the latter filled him with a joy that excluded
+every other feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"She loves me!" he exclaimed; and, as though registering a vow, he added
+aloud, "And nothing&mdash;God help me!&mdash;nothing shall keep us apart."</p>
+
+<p>Walking to a point of the landscape that commanded a view of the
+convent, he remained there while the twilight fell, revolving how he was
+to surmount the remaining barriers between them, for these now seemed
+hardly more than cobwebs to be brushed aside by his hand; and often,
+meanwhile, he looked towards the convent, as one might look longingly
+towards some forbidden shrine, which the coming night would enable him
+to approach.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>A night for love it was. The great sun at setting had looked with
+steadfast eye at the convent standing lonely on its wide landscape, and
+had then thrown his final glance across the world towards the east; and
+the moon had quickly risen and hung about it the long silvery twilight
+of her heavenly watchfulness. The summer, too, which had been moving
+southward, now came slowly back, borne on warm airs that fanned the
+convent walls and sighed to its chaste lattices with the poetry of dead
+flowers and vanished songsters. But sighed in vain. With many a prayer,
+with many a cross on pure brow and shoulder and breast, with many a
+pious kiss of crucifix, the convent slept. Only some little novice,
+lying like a flushed figure of Sleep on a couch of snow, may have
+stirred to draw one sigh, as those zephyrs, toying with her warm hair,
+broke some earthly dream of too much tenderness. Or they may merely have
+cooled the feverish feet of a withered nun, who clasped her dry hands in
+ecstasy, as on her cavernous eyes there dawned a vision of the glories
+and rewards of Paradise. But no, not all slept. At an open window on the
+eastern side of the convent stood the sleepless one looking out into the
+largeness of the night like one who is lost in the largeness of her
+sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Across the lawn, a little distance off, stood the church of the convent.
+The moonlight rested on it like a smile of peace, the elms blessed it
+with tireless arms, and from the zenith of the sky down to the horizon
+there rested on outstretched wings, rank above rank and pinion brushing
+pinion, a host of white, angelic cloud-shapes, as though guarding the
+sacred portal.</p>
+
+<p>But she looked at it with timid yearning. Greater and greater had become
+the need to pour into some ear a confession and a prayer for pardon. Her
+peace was gone. She had been concealing her heart from the Mother
+Superior. She had sinned against her vows. She had impiously offended
+the Divine Mother. And to-day, after answering his letter in order that
+she might defend her religion, she had acknowledged to her heart that
+she loved him. But they would never meet again. To-morrow she would make
+a full confession of what had taken place. Beyond that miserable ordeal
+she dared not gaze into her own future.</p>
+
+<p>Lost in the fears and sorrows of such thoughts, long she stood looking
+out into the night, stricken with a sense of alienation from human
+sympathy. She felt that she stood henceforth estranged from the entire
+convent&mdash;Mother Superior, novice, and nun&mdash;as an object of reproach, and
+of suffering into which no one of them could enter.</p>
+
+<p>Sorer yet grew her need, and a little way across the lawn stood the
+church, peaceful in the moonlight. Ah, the divine pity! If only she
+might steal first alone to the shrine of her whom most she had offended,
+and to an ear gracious to sorrow make confession of her frailty. At
+length, overcome with this desire and gliding noiselessly out of the
+room, she passed down the moonlit hall, on each side of which the nuns
+were sleeping. She descended the stairway, took from the wall the key of
+the church, and then softly opening the door, stepped out into the
+night. For a moment she paused, icy and faint with physical fear; then,
+passing like a swift shadow across the silvered lawn, she went round to
+the side entrance of the church, unlocked the door, and, entering
+quickly, locked herself inside. There she stood for some time with hands
+pressed tightly to her fluttering heart, until bodily agitation died
+away before the recollection of her mission; and there came upon her
+that calmness with which the soul enacts great tragedies. Then slowly,
+very slowly, hidden now, and now visible where the moonlight entered the
+long, Gothic windows, she passed across the chancel towards the shrine
+of one whom ancestral faith had taught her to believe divine; and before
+the image of a Jewish woman&mdash;who herself in full humanity loved and
+married a carpenter nearly two thousand years ago, living beside him as
+blameless wife and becoming blameless mother to his children&mdash;this poor
+child, whose nature was unstained as snow on the mountain peaks, poured
+out her prayer to be forgiven the sin of her love.</p>
+
+<p>To the woman of the world, the approaches of whose nature are defended
+by the intricacies of wilfulness and the barriers of deliberate reserve;
+to the woman of the world, who curbs and conceals that feeling to which
+she intends to yield herself in the end, it may seem incredible that
+there should have rooted itself so easily in the breast of one of her
+sex this flower of a fatal passion. But it should be remembered how
+unbefriended that bosom had been by any outpost of feminine
+self-consciousness; how exposed it was through very belief in its
+unearthly consecration; how, like some unwatched vase that had long been
+collecting the sweet dews and rains of heaven, it had been silently
+filling with those unbidden intimations that are shed from above as the
+best gifts of womanhood. Moreover, her life was unspeakably isolate. In
+the monotony of its routine a trifling event became an epoch; a fresh
+impression stirred within the mind material for a chapter of history.
+Lifted far above commonplace psychology of the passions, however, was
+the planting and the growth of an emotion in a heart like hers.</p>
+
+<p>Her prayer began. It began with the scene of her first meeting with him
+in the fields, for from that moment she fixed the origin of her
+unfaithfulness. Of the entire hidden life of poetic reverie and
+unsatisfied desires which she had been living before, her innocent soul
+took no account. Therefore, beginning with that afternoon, she passed in
+review the history of her thoughts and feelings. The moon outside,
+flooding the heavens with its beams, was not so intense a lamp as
+memory, now turned upon the recesses of her mind. Nothing escaped
+detection. His words, the scenes with him in the garden, in the
+field&mdash;his voice, looks, gestures&mdash;his anxiety and sympathy&mdash;his
+passionate letter&mdash;all were now vividly recalled, that they might be
+forgotten; and their influence confessed, that it might for ever be
+renounced. Her conscience stood beside her love as though it were some
+great fast-growing deadly plant in her heart, with deep-twisted roots
+and strangling tendrils, each of which to the smallest fibre must be
+uptorn so that not a germ should be left.</p>
+
+<p>But who can describe the prayer of such a soul? It is easy to ask to be
+rid of ignoble passions. They come upon us as momentary temptations and
+are abhorrent to our better selves; but of all tragedies enacted within
+the theatre of the human mind what one is so pitiable as that in which a
+pure being prays to be forgiven the one feeling of nature that is the
+revelation of beauty, the secret of perfection, the solace of the world,
+and the condition of immortality?</p>
+
+<p>The passing of such a tragedy scars the nature of the penitent like the
+passing of an age across a mountain rock. If there had lingered thus
+long on Sister Dolorosa's nature any upland of childhood snows, these
+vanished in that hour; if any vernal belt of maidenhood, it felt the hot
+breath of that experience of the world and of the human destiny which
+quickly ages whatever it does not destroy. So that while she prayed
+there seemed to rise from within her and take flight for ever that
+spotless image of herself as she once had been, and in its place to
+stand the form of a woman, older, altered, and set apart by sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>At length her prayer ended and she rose. It had not brought her the
+peace that prayer brings to women; for the confession of her love before
+the very altar&mdash;the mere coming into audience with the Eternal to
+renounce it&mdash;had set upon it the seal of irrevocable truth. It is when
+the victim is led to the altar of sacrifice that it turns its piteous
+eyes upon the sacrificing hand and utters its poor dumb cry for life;
+and it was when Sister Dolorosa bared the breast of her humanity that it
+might be stabbed by the hand of her religion, that she, too, though
+attempting to bless the stroke, felt the last pangs of that deep thrust.</p>
+
+<p>With such a wound she turned from the altar, walked with bowed head once
+more across the church, unlocked the door, stepped forth and locked it.
+The night had grown more tender. The host of seraphic cloud-forms had
+fled across the sky; and as she turned her eyes upward to the heavens,
+there looked down upon her from their serene, untroubled heights only
+the stars, that never falter or digress from their fore-written courses.
+The thought came to her that never henceforth should she look up to them
+without being reminded of how her own will had wandered from its orbit.
+The moon rained its steady beams upon the symbol of the sacred heart on
+her bosom, until it seemed to throb again with the agony of the
+crucifixion. Never again should she see it without the remembrance that
+<i>her</i> sin also had pierced it afresh.</p>
+
+<p>With what loneliness that sin had surrounded her! As she had issued from
+the damp, chill atmosphere of the church, the warm airs of the south
+quickened within her long-sleeping memories; and with the yearning of
+stricken childhood she thought of her mother, to whom she had turned of
+yore for sympathy; but that mother's bosom was now a mound of dust. She
+looked across the lawn towards the convent where the Mother Superior and
+the nuns were sleeping. To-morrow she would stand among them a greater
+alien than any stranger. No; she was alone; among the millions of human
+beings on the earth of God there was not one on whose heart she could
+have rested her own. Not one save him&mdash;him&mdash;whose love had broken down
+all barriers that it might reach and infold her. And him she had
+repelled. A joy, new and indescribable, leaped within her that for him,
+and not for another she suffered and was bound in this tragedy of her
+fall.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly she took her way along the side of the church towards the front
+entrance, from which a paved walk led to the convent building. She
+reached the corner, she turned, and then she paused as one might pause
+who had come upon the beloved dead, returned to life.</p>
+
+<p>For he was sitting on the steps of the church, leaning against one of
+the pillars, his face lifted upward so that the moonlight fell upon it.
+She had no time to turn back before he saw her. With a low cry of
+surprise and joy he sprang up and followed along the side of the church;
+for she had begun to retrace her steps to the door, to lock herself
+inside. When he came up beside her, she paused. Both were trembling; but
+when he saw the look of suffering on her face, acting upon the impulse
+which had always impelled him to stand between her and unhappiness, he
+now took both of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with all the pleading love, all the depth of nature, that was
+in him.</p>
+
+<p>She had attempted to withdraw her hands; but at the sound of that once
+familiar name, she suddenly bowed her head as the wave of memories and
+emotions passed over her; then he quickly put his arms around her, drew
+her to him, and bent down and kissed her.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>For hours there lasted an interview, during which he, with the delirium
+of hope, she with the delirium of despair, drained at their young lips
+that cup of life which is full of the first confession of love.</p>
+
+<p>In recollections so overwhelming did this meeting leave Gordon on the
+next morning, that he was unmindful of everything beside; and among the
+consequences of absentmindedness was the wound that he gave himself by
+the careless handling of his gun.</p>
+
+<p>When Ezra had set out for the convent that morning he had walked with
+him, saying that he would go to the station for a daily paper, but
+chiefly wishing to escape the house and be alone. They had reached in
+the fields a rotting fence, on each side of which grew briers and
+underwood. He had expected to climb this fence, and as he stood beside
+it speaking a few parting words to Ezra he absently thrust his gun
+between two of the lower rails, not noticing that the lock was sprung.
+Caught in the brush on the other side, it was discharged, making a wound
+in his left leg a little below the thigh. He turned to a deadly
+paleness, looked at Ezra with that stunned, bewildered expression seen
+in the faces of those who receive a wound, and fell.</p>
+
+<p>By main strength the old man lifted and bore him to the house and
+hurried off to the station, near which the neighbourhood physician and
+surgeon lived. But the latter was away from home; several hours passed
+before he came; the means taken to stop the hæmorrhage had been
+ineffectual; the loss of blood had been very great; certain foreign
+matter had been carried into the wound; the professional treatment was
+unskilful; and septic fever followed, so that for many days his life
+hung upon a little chance. But convalescence came at last, and with it
+days of clear, calm thinking. For he had not allowed news of his
+accident to be sent home or to his friends; and except the old couple,
+the doctor, and the nurse whom the latter had secured, he had no company
+but his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>No tidings had come to him of Sister Dolorosa since his accident; and
+nothing had intervened to remove that sad image of her which had haunted
+him through fever and phantasy and dream since the night of their final
+interview. For it was then that he had first realised in how pitiless a
+tragedy her life had become entangled, and how conscience may fail to
+govern a woman's heart in denying her the right to love, but may still
+govern her actions in forbidding her to marry. To plead with her had
+been to wound only the more deeply a nature that accepted even this
+pleading as a further proof of its own disloyalty, and was forced by it
+into a state of more poignant humiliation. What wonder, therefore, if
+there had been opened in his mind from that hour a certain wound which
+grew deeper and deeper, until, by comparison, his real wound seemed
+painless and insignificant.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, it is true that during this interview he had not been able
+to accept her decision as irreversible. The spell of her presence over
+him was too complete; even his wish to rescue her from a lot, henceforth
+unhappier still, too urgent; so that in parting he had clung to the
+secret hope that little by little he might change her conscience, which
+now interposed the only obstacle between them.</p>
+
+<p>Even the next day, when he had been wounded and life was rapidly flowing
+from him, and earthly ties seemed soon to be snapped, he had thought
+only of this tie, new and sacred, and had written to her. Poor boy!&mdash;he
+had written, as with his heart's blood, his brief, pathetic appeal that
+she would come and be united to him before he died. In all ages of the
+world there have been persons, simple in nature and simple in their
+faith in another life, who have forgotten everything else in the last
+hour but the supreme wish to grapple to them those they love, for
+eternity, and at whatever cost. Such simplicity of nature and faith
+belonged to him; for although in Kentucky the unrest of the century
+touching belief in the supernatural, and the many phases by which this
+expresses itself, are not unknown, they had never affected him. He
+believed as his fathers had believed, that to be united in this world in
+any relation is to be united in that relation, mysteriously changed yet
+mysteriously the same, in another.</p>
+
+<p>But this letter had never been sent. There had been no one to take it at
+the time; and when Ezra returned with the physician he had fainted away
+from loss of blood.</p>
+
+<p>Then had followed the dressing of the wound, days of fever and
+unconsciousness, and then the assurance that he would get well. Thus,
+nearly a month had passed, and for him a great change had come over the
+face of nature and the light of the world. With that preternatural calm
+of mind which only an invalid or a passionless philosopher ever obtains,
+he now looked back upon an episode which thus acquired fictitious
+remoteness. So weak that he could scarcely lift his head from his
+pillow, there left his heart the keen, joyous sense of human ties and
+pursuits. He lost the key to the motives and forces of his own
+character. But it is often the natural result of such illness that while
+the springs of feeling seem to dry up, the conscience remains sensitive,
+or even burns more brightly, as a star through a rarer atmosphere. So
+that, lying thus in the poor farm-house during dreary days, with his
+life half-gone out of him, and with only the sad image of her always
+before his eyes, he could think of nothing but his cruel folly in having
+broken in upon her peace; for perfect peace of some sort she must have
+had in comparison with what was now left her.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath his pillow he kept her letter, and as he often read it over he
+asked himself how he could ever have hoped to change the conscience
+which had inspired such a letter as that. If her heart belonged to him,
+did not her soul belong to her religion; and if one or the other must
+give way, could it be doubtful with such, a nature as hers which would
+come out victorious? Thus he said to himself that any further attempt to
+see her could but result in greater suffering to them both, and that
+nothing was left him but what she herself had urged&mdash;to go away and
+resign her to a life from which he had too late found out that she could
+never be divorced.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he had come to this decision, he began to think of her as
+belonging only to his past. The entire episode became a thing of memory
+and irreparable incompleteness; and with the conviction that she was
+lost to him her image passed into that serene, reverential sanctuary of
+our common nature, where all the highest that we have grasped at and
+missed, and all the beauty that we have loved and lost, take the forms
+of statues around dim walls and look down upon us in mournful,
+never-changing perfection.</p>
+
+<p>As he lay one morning revolving his altered purpose, Ezra came quietly
+into the room and took from a table near the foot of the bed a waiter on
+which were a jelly-glass and a napkin.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>She</i> said I'd better take these back this morning," he observed,
+looking at Gordon for his approval, and motioning with his head towards
+that quarter of the house where Martha was supposed to be.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait awhile, will you, Ezra?" he replied, looking at the old man with
+the dark, quiet eye of an invalid. "I think I ought to write a few lines
+this morning to thank them for their kindness. Come back in an hour,
+will you?"</p>
+
+<p>The things had been sent from the convent; for, from the time that news
+had reached the Mother Superior of the accident of the young stranger
+who had visited the convent some days before, there had regularly come
+to him delicate attentions which could not have been supplied at the
+farmhouse. He often asked himself whether they were not inspired by
+<i>her</i>; and he thought that when the time came for him to write his
+thanks, he would put into the expression of them something that would
+be understood by her alone&mdash;something that would stand for gratitude and
+a farewell.</p>
+
+<p>When Ezra left the room, with the thought of now doing this another
+thought came unexpectedly to him. By the side of the bed there stood a
+small table on which were writing materials and a few books that had
+been taken from his valise. He stretched out his hand, and opening one
+of them took from it a letter which bore the address, "Sister Dolorosa."
+It contained those appealing lines that he had written her on the day of
+his accident; and with calm, curious sadness he now read them over and
+over, as though they had never come from him. From the mere monotony of
+this exercise sleep overtook him, and he had scarcely restored the
+letter to the envelope and laid it back on the table before his eyelids
+closed.</p>
+
+<p>While he still lay asleep, Ezra came quietly into the room again, and
+took up the waiter with the jelly-glass and the napkin. Then he looked
+around for the letter that he was to take. He was accustomed to carry
+Gordon's letters to the station, and his eye now rested on the table
+where they were always to be found. Seeing one on it, he walked across,
+took it up and read the address, "Sister Dolorosa," hesitated, glanced
+at Gordon's closed eyes, and then, with an intelligent nod to signify
+that he could understand without further instruction, he left the room
+and set out briskly for the convent.</p>
+
+<p>Sister Dolorosa was at the cistern filling a bucket with water when he
+came up and, handing her the letter, passed on to the convent kitchen.
+She looked at it with indifference; then she opened and read it; and
+then in an instant everything whirled before her eyes, and in her ears
+the water sounded loud as it dropped from the chain back into the
+cistern. And then she was gone&mdash;gone with a light, rapid step, down, the
+avenue of elms, through the gate, across the meadows, out into the
+fields&mdash;bucket and cistern, Mother Superior and sisterhood, vows and
+martyrs, zeal of Carmelite, passion of Christ, all forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>When, nearly a month before, news had reached the Mother Superior of the
+young stranger's accident, in accordance with the rule which excludes
+from the convent worldly affairs, she had not made it known except to
+those who were to aid in carrying out her kindly plans for him. To
+Sister Dolorosa, therefore, the accident had just occurred, and
+now&mdash;now as she hastened to him&mdash;he was dying.</p>
+
+<p>During the intervening weeks she had undergone by insensible degrees a
+deterioration of nature. Prayer had not passed her lips. She believed
+that she had no right to pray. Nor had she confessed. From such, a
+confession as she had now to make, certain new-born instincts of
+womanhood bade her shrink more deeply into the privacy of her own being.
+And therefore she had become more scrupulous, if possible, of outward
+duties, that no one might be led to discover the paralysis of her
+spiritual life. But there was that change in her which soon drew
+attention; and thenceforth, in order to hide her heart, she began to
+practise with the Mother Superior little acts of self-concealment and
+evasion, and by-and-by other little acts of pretence and feigning,
+until&mdash;God pity her!&mdash;being most sorely pressed by questions, when
+sometimes she would be found in tears or sitting listless with her hands
+in her lap like one who is under the spell of mournful phantasies, these
+became other little acts of positive deception. But for each of them
+remorse preyed upon her the more ruthlessly, so that she grew thin and
+faded, with a shadow of fear darkening always her evasive eyes.</p>
+
+<p>What most held her apart, and most she deemed put upon her the angry ban
+of Heaven, was the consciousness that she still loved him, and that she
+was even bound to him the more inseparably since the night of their last
+meeting. For it was then that emotions had been awakened which drew her
+to him in ways that love alone could not have done. These emotions had
+their source in the belief that she owed him reparation for the
+disappointment which she had brought upon his life. The recollection of
+his face when she had denied him hope rose in constant reproach before
+her; and since she held herself blamable that he had loved her, she took
+the whole responsibility of his unhappiness.</p>
+
+<p>It was this sense of having wronged him that cleft even conscience in
+her and left her struggling. But how to undo the wrong&mdash;this she vainly
+pondered; for he was gone, bearing away into his life the burden of
+enticed and baffled hope.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning when she was at the cistern&mdash;for the Sisters of the Order
+have among them such interchange of manual offices&mdash;if, as she read the
+letter that Ezra gave her, any one motive stood out clear in the stress
+of that terrible moment, it was, that having been false to other duties
+she might at least be true to this. She felt but one desire&mdash;to atone to
+him by any sacrifice of herself that would make his death more peaceful.
+Beyond this everything was void and dark within her as she hurried on,
+except the consciousness that by this act she separated herself from her
+Order and terminated her religious life in utter failure and disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>The light, rapid step with which she had started soon brought her across
+the fields. As she drew near the house, Martha, who had caught sight of
+her figure through the window, made haste to the door and stood awaiting
+her. Sister Dolorosa merely approached and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment the old woman did not answer. Then she pointed to a door at
+the opposite end of the porch, and with a sparkle of peculiar pleasure
+in her eyes she saw Sister Dolorosa cross and enter it. A little while
+longer she stood, watching the keyhole furtively, but then went back to
+the fireside, where she sat upright and motionless with the red flannel
+pushed back from her listening ears.</p>
+
+<p>The room was dimly lighted through half-closed shutters. Gordon lay
+asleep near the edge of the bed, with his face turned towards the door.
+It might well have been thought the face of one dying. Her eyes rested
+on it a moment, and then with a stifled sob and moan she glided across
+the room and sank on her knees at the bedside. In the utter
+self-forgetfulness of her remorse, pity, and love, she put one arm
+around his neck, she buried her face close beside his.</p>
+
+<p>He had awaked, bewildered, as he saw her coming towards him. He now took
+her arm from around his neck, pressed her hand again and again to his
+lips, and then laying it on his heart crossed his arms over it, letting
+one of his hands rest on her head. For a little while he could not trust
+himself to speak; his love threatened to overmaster his
+self-renunciation. But then, not knowing why she had come unless from
+some great sympathy for his sufferings, or perhaps to see him once more
+since he was now soon to go away, and not understanding any cause for
+her distress but the tragedy in which he had entangled her life&mdash;feeling
+only sorrow for her sorrow and wishing only by means of his last words
+to help her back to such peace as she still might win, he said to her
+with immeasurable gentleness&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would never come! I thought I should have to go away
+without seeing you again! They tell me it is not yet a month since the
+accident, but it seems to me so <i>long</i>&mdash;a lifetime! I have lain here
+day after day thinking it over, and I see things differently now&mdash;so
+differently! That is why I wanted to see you once more. I wanted you to
+understand that I felt you had done right in refusing&mdash;in refusing to
+marry me. I wanted to ask you never to blame yourself for what has
+happened&mdash;never to let any thought of having made <i>me</i> unhappy add
+to the sorrow of your life. It is my fault, not yours. But I meant it&mdash;God
+<i>knows</i>, I meant it!&mdash;for the happiness of us both? I believed that
+your life was not suited to you. I meant to make you happy! But since you
+<i>cannot</i> give up your life, I have only been unkind. And since you
+think it wrong to give it up, I am glad that you are so true to it! If you
+<i>must</i> live it, Heaven only knows how glad I am that you will live it
+heroically. And Heaven keep me equally true to the duty in mine, that I
+also shall not fail in it! If we never meet again, we can always think
+of each other as living true to ourselves and to one another. Don't deny
+me this! Let me believe that your thoughts and prayers will always follow
+me. Even your vows will not deny me this! It will always keep us near each
+other, and it will bring us together where they cannot separate us."</p>
+
+<p>He had spoken with entire repression of himself, in the slow voice of an
+invalid, and on the stillness of the room each word had fallen with hard
+distinctness. But now, with the thought of losing her, by a painful
+effort he moved closer to the edge of the bed, put his arms around her
+neck, drew her face against his own, and continued&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But do not think it is easy to tell you this! Do not think it is easy
+to give you up! Do not think that I do not love you! O Pauline&mdash;not in
+<i>another</i> life, but in <i>this</i>&mdash;<i>in this</i>!" He could say no
+more; and out of his physical weakness tears rose to his eyes and fell
+drop by drop upon her veil.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Sister Dolorosa had been missed from the convent. There had been inquiry
+growing ever more anxious, and search growing ever more hurried. They
+found her bucket overturned at the cistern, and near it the print of her
+feet in the moist earth. But she was gone. They sought her in every
+hidden closet, they climbed to the observatory and scanned the
+surrounding fields. Work was left unfinished, prayer unended, as the
+news spread through the vast building; and as time went by and nothing
+was heard of her, uneasiness became alarm, and alarm became a vague,
+immeasurable foreboding of ill. Each now remembered how strange of late
+had been Sister Dolorosa's life and actions, and no one had the heart to
+name her own particular fears to any other or to read them in any
+other's eyes. Time passed on and discipline in the convent was
+forgotten. They began to pour out into the long corridors, and in
+tumultuous groups passed this, way and that, seeking the Mother
+Superior. But the Mother Superior had gone to the church with the same
+impulse that in all ages has brought the human heart to the altar of God
+when stricken by peril or disaster; and into the church they also
+gathered. Into the church likewise came the white flock of the novices,
+who had burst from their isolated quarter of the convent with a sudden
+contagion of fear. When, therefore, the Mother Superior rose from where
+she had been kneeling, turned, and in the dark church saw them assembled
+close around her, pallid, anxious, disordered, and looking with helpless
+dependence to her for that assurance for which she had herself in
+helpless dependence looked to God, so unnerved was she by the spectacle
+that strength failed her and she sank upon the steps of the altar,
+stretching out her arms once more in voiceless supplication towards the
+altar of the Infinite helpfulness.</p>
+
+<p>But at that moment a little novice, whom Sister Dolorosa loved and whom
+she had taught the music of the harp, came running into the church,
+wringing her hands and crying. When she was half-way down the aisle, in
+a voice that rang through the building she called out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"O Mother, she is coming! Something has happened to her! Her veil is
+gone!" and, turning again, she ran out of the church.</p>
+
+<p>They were hurrying after her when a note of command, inarticulate but
+imperious, from the Mother Superior arrested every foot and drew every
+eye in that direction. Voice had failed her, but with a gesture full of
+dignity and reproach she waved them back, and supporting her great form
+between two of the nuns, she advanced slowly down the aisle of the
+church and passed out by the front entrance. But they forgot to obey her
+and followed; and when she descended the steps to the bottom and made a
+sign that she would wait there, on the steps behind they stood grouped
+and crowded back to the sacred doors.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she was coming&mdash;coming up the avenue of elms&mdash;coming slowly, as
+though her strength were almost gone. As she passed under the trees on
+one side of the avenue she touched their trunks one by one for support.
+She walked with her eyes on the ground and with the abstraction of one
+who has lost the purpose of walking. When she was perhaps half-way up
+the avenue, as she paused by one of the trees and supported herself
+against it, she raised her eyes and saw them all waiting to receive her
+on the steps of the church. For a little while she stood and surveyed
+the scene; the Mother Superior standing in front, her sinking form
+supported between two Sisters, her hands clasping the crucifix to her
+bosom; behind her the others, step above step, back to the doors; some
+looking at her with frightened faces; others with their heads buried on
+each other's shoulders; and hiding somewhere in the throng, the little
+novice, only the sound of whose sobbing revealed her presence. Then she
+took her hand from the tree, walked on quite steadily until she was
+several yards away, and paused again.</p>
+
+<p>She had torn off her veil and her head was bare and shining. She had
+torn the sacred symbol from her bosom, and through the black rent they
+could see the glistening whiteness of her naked breast. Comprehending
+them in one glance, as though she wished them all to listen, she looked
+into the face of the Mother Superior, and began to speak in a voice
+utterly forlorn, as of one who has passed the limits of suffering.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!&mdash;--"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!&mdash;--"</p>
+
+<p>She passed one hand slowly across her forehead, to brush away some cloud
+from her brain, and for the third time she began to speak&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!&mdash;--"</p>
+
+<p>Then she paused, pressed both palms quickly to her temples, and turned
+her eyes in bewildered appeal towards the Mother Superior. But she did
+not fall. With a cry that might have come from the heart of the
+boundless pity the Mother Superior broke away from the restraining arms
+of the nuns and rushed forward and caught her to her bosom.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The day had come when Gordon was well enough to go home. As he sat
+giving directions to Ezra, who was awkwardly packing his valise, he
+looked over the books, papers, and letters that lay on the table near
+the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one letter missing," he said, with a troubled expression, as
+he finished his search. Then he added quickly, in a tone of helpless
+entreaty&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't have taken it to the station and mailed it with the
+others, could you, Ezra? It was not to go to the station. It was to
+have gone to the convent."</p>
+
+<p>The last sentence he uttered rather to his own thought than for the ear
+of his listener.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>took</i> it to the convent," said Ezra, stoutly raising himself from
+over the valise in the middle of the floor. "I didn't <i>take</i> it to the
+station!"</p>
+
+<p>Gordon wheeled on him, giving a wrench to his wound which may have
+caused the groan that burst from him, and left him white and trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"You took it <i>to the convent</i>! Great God, Ezra! When?"</p>
+
+<p>"The day you <i>told</i> me to take it," replied Ezra simply. "The day the
+Sister came to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"O <i>Ezra</i>!" he cried piteously, looking into the rugged, faithful
+countenance of the old man, and feeling that he had not the right to
+censure him.</p>
+
+<p>Now for the first time he comprehended the whole significance of what
+had happened. He had never certainly known what motive had brought her
+to him that day. He had never been able to understand why, having come,
+she had gone away with such abruptness. Scarcely had he begun to speak
+to her when she had strangely shrunk from him; and scarcely had he
+ceased speaking when she had left the room without a word, and without
+his having so much as seen her face.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly now the sad truth forced itself upon his mind that she had come
+in answer to his entreaty. She must have thought his letter just
+written, himself just wounded and dying. It was as if he had betrayed
+her into the utmost expression of her love for him and in that moment
+had coldly admonished her of her duty. For him she had broken what was
+the most sacred obligation of her life, and in return he had given her
+an exhortation to be faithful to her vows.</p>
+
+<p>He went home to one of the older secluded country-places of the
+Blue-grass Region not far from Lexington. His illness served to account
+for a strange gravity and sadness of nature in him. When the winter had
+passed and spring had come, bringing perfect health again, this sadness
+only deepened. For health had brought back the ardour of life. The
+glowing colours of the world returned; and with these there flowed back
+into his heart, as waters flow back into a well that has gone dry, the
+perfect love of youth and strength with which he had loved her and tried
+to win her at first. And with this love of her came back the first
+complete realisation that he had lost her; and with this pain, that
+keenest pain of having been most unkind to her when he had striven to be
+kindest.</p>
+
+<p>He now looked back upon his illness, as one who has gained some clear
+headland looks down upon a valley so dark and overhung with mist that he
+cannot trace his own course across it. He was no longer in sympathy with
+that mood of self-renunciation which had influenced him in their last
+interview. He charged himself with having given up too easily; for might
+he not, after all, have won her? Might he not, little by little, have
+changed her conscience, as little by little he had gained her love?
+Would it have been possible, he asked himself again and again, for her
+ever to have come to him as she had done that day, had not her
+conscience approved? Of all his torturing thoughts, none cost him
+greater suffering than living over in imagination what must have
+happened to her since then&mdash;the humiliation, perhaps public exposure;
+followed by penalties and sorrows of which he durst not think, and
+certainly a life more unrelieved in gloom and desolation.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer his father's health began to fail and in the autumn he
+died. The winter was passed in settling the business of the estate, and
+before the spring passed again Gordon found himself at the head of
+affairs, and stretching out before him, calm and clear, the complete
+independence of his new-found manhood. His life was his own to make it
+what he would. As fortunes go in Kentucky he was wealthy, his farm being
+among the most beautiful of the beautiful ones which make up that land,
+and his homestead being dear through family ties and those intimations
+of fireside peace which lay closest the heart of his ideal life. But
+amid all his happiness, that one lack which made the rest appear
+lacking&mdash;that vacancy within which nothing would fill! The beauty of the
+rich land henceforth brought him the dream-like recollection of a rough,
+poor country a hundred miles away. Its quiet homesteads, with the
+impression they create of sweet and simple lives, reminded him only of a
+convent standing lonely and forbidding on its wide landscape. The calm
+liberty of woods and fields, the bounding liberty of life, the
+enlightened liberty of conscience and religion, which were to him the
+best gifts of his State, his country, and his time, forced on him
+perpetual contrast with the ancient confinement in which she languished.</p>
+
+<p>Still he threw himself resolutely into his duties. In all that he did or
+planned he felt a certain sacred, uplifting force added to his life by
+that high bond through which he had sought to link their sundered
+pathways. But, on the other hand, the haunting thought of what might
+have befallen her since became a corrosive care, and began to eat out
+the heart of his resolute purposes.</p>
+
+<p>So that when the long, calm summer had passed and autumn had come,
+bringing him lonelier days in the brown fields, lonelier rides on
+horseback through the gorgeous woods, and lonelier evenings beside his
+rekindled hearth-stones, he could bear the suspense no longer, and made
+up his mind to go back, if but to hear tidings whether she yet were
+living in the convent. He realised, of course, that under no
+circumstances could he ever again speak to her of his love. He had put
+himself on the side of her conscience against his own cause; but he felt
+that he owed it to himself to dissipate uncertainty regarding her fate.
+This done, he could return, however sadly, and take up the duties of his
+life with better heart.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>One Sunday afternoon he got off at the little station. From one of the
+rustic loungers on the platform he learned that old Ezra and Martha had
+gone the year before to live with a son in a distant State, and that
+their scant acres had been absorbed in the convent domain.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly he took his way across the sombre fields. Once more he reached
+the brown footpath and the edge of the pale, thin corn. Once more the
+summoning whistle of the quail came sweet and clear from the depths of a
+neighbouring thicket. Silently in the reddening west were rising the
+white cathedrals of the sky. It was on yonder hill-top he had first seen
+her, standing as though transfigured in the evening light. Overwhelmed
+by the memories which the place evoked, he passed on towards the
+convent. The first sight of it in the distance smote him with a pain so
+sharp that a groan escaped his lips as from a reopened wound.</p>
+
+<p>It was the hour of the vesper service. Entering the church he sat where
+he had sat before. How still it was, how faint the autumnal sunlight
+stealing in through the sainted windows, how motionless the dark company
+of nuns seated on one side of the nave, how rigid the white rows of
+novices on the other!</p>
+
+<p>With sad fascination of search his eyes roved among the black-shrouded
+devotees. She was not there. In the organ-loft above, a voice, poor and
+thin, began to pour out its wavering little tide of song. She was not
+there, then. Was her soul already gone home to Heaven?</p>
+
+<p>Noiselessly from behind the altar the sacristine had come forth and
+begun to light the candles. With eyes strained and the heart gone out of
+him he hung upon the movements of her figure. A slight, youthful figure
+it was&mdash;slighter, as though worn and wasted; and the hands which so
+firmly bore the long taper looked too white and fragile to have upheld
+aught heavier than the stalk of a lily.</p>
+
+<p>With infinite meekness and reverence she moved hither and thither about
+the shrine, as though each footfall were a step nearer the glorious
+Presence, each breath a prayer. One by one there sprang into being,
+beneath her touch of love, the silvery spires of sacred flame. No angel
+of the night ever more softly lit the stars of heaven. And it was thus
+that he saw her for the last time&mdash;folded back to the bosom of that
+faith from which it was left him to believe that he had all but rescued
+her to love and happiness, and set, as a chastening admonition, to tend
+the mortal fires on the altar of eternal service.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at her across the vast estranging gulf of destiny, heart-broken,
+he asked himself in his poor yearning way whether she longer had any
+thought of him or longer loved him. For answer he had only the assurance
+given in her words, which now rose as a benediction in his memory&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If He will deign to hear the ceaseless, fervent petition of one so
+erring, He will not leave you unhappy on account of that love for me
+which in this world it will never be allowed me to return."</p>
+
+<p>One highest star of adoration she kindled last, and then turned and
+advanced down the aisle. He was sitting close to it, and as she came
+towards him, with irresistible impulse he bent forward to meet her, his
+lips parted as though to speak, his eyes implored her for recognition,
+his hands were instinctively moved to attract her notice. But she passed
+him with unuplifted eyes. The hem of her dress swept across his foot. In
+that intense moment, which compressed within itself the joy of another
+meeting and the despair of an eternal farewell&mdash;in that moment he may
+have tried to read through her face and beyond it in her very soul the
+story of what she must have suffered. To any one else, on her face
+rested only that beauty, transcending all description, which is born of
+the sorrow of earth and the peace of God.</p>
+
+<p>Mournful as was this last sight of her, and touched with remorse, he
+could yet bear it away in his heart for long remembrance not untempered
+by consolation. He saw her well; he saw her faithful; he saw her bearing
+the sorrows of her lot with angelic sweetness. Through years to come the
+beauty of this scene might abide with him, lifted above the realm of
+mortal changes by the serenitude of her immovable devotion.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was thus spared him knowledge of the great change that had taken
+place regarding her within the counsels of the Order; nor, perhaps, was
+he ever to learn of the other changes, more eventful still, that were
+now fast closing in upon her destiny.</p>
+
+<p>When the Creator wishes to create a woman, the beauty of whose nature is
+to prefigure the types of an immortal world, He endows her more
+plenteously with the faculty of innocent love. The contravention of this
+faculty has time after time resulted in the most memorable tragedies
+that have ever saddened the history of the race. He had given to the
+nature of Pauline Cambron two strong, unwearying wings: the pinion of
+faith and the pinion of love. It was His will that she should soar by
+the use of both. But they had denied her the use of one; and the vain
+and bewildered struggles which marked her life thenceforth were as those
+of a bird that should try to rise into the air with one of its wings
+bound tight against its bosom.</p>
+
+<p>After the illness which followed upon the events of that terrible day,
+she took towards her own conduct the penitential attitude enjoined by
+her religion. There is little need to lay bare all that followed. She
+had passed out of her soft world of heroic dreams into the hard world of
+unheroic reality. She had chosen a name to express her sympathy with the
+sorrows of the world, and the sorrows of the world had broken in upon
+her. Out of the white dawn of the imagination she had stepped into the
+heat and burden of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Long after penances and prayers were over, and by others she might have
+felt herself forgiven, she was as far as ever from that forgiveness
+which comes from within. It is not characteristic of a nature such as
+hers to win pardon so easily for such an offence as she considered hers.
+Indeed, as time passed on, the powers of her being seemed concentrated
+more and more in one impassioned desire to expiate her sin; for, as time
+passed on, despite penances and prayers, she realised that she still
+loved him.</p>
+
+<p>As she pondered this she said to herself that peace would never come
+unless she should go elsewhere and begin life over in some place that
+was free from the memories of her fall, there was so much to remind her
+of him. She could not go into the garden without recalling the day when
+they had walked through it side by side. She could not cross the
+threshold of the church without being reminded that it was the scene of
+her unfaithfulness and of her exposure. The graveyard, the footpath,
+across the fields, the observatory&mdash;all were full of disturbing images.
+And therefore she besought the Mother Superior to send her away to some
+one of the missions of the Order, thinking that thus she would win
+forgetfulness of him and singleness of heart.</p>
+
+<p>But while the plan of doing this was yet being considered by the Mother
+Superior, there happened one of those events which seem to fit into the
+crises of our lives as though determined by the very laws of fate. The
+attention of the civilised world had not yet been fixed upon the heroic
+labours of the Belgian priest, Father Damien, among the lepers of the
+island of Molokai. But it has been stated that near the convent are the
+monks of La Trappe. Among these monks were friends of the American
+priest, Brother Joseph, who for years was one of Father Damien's
+assistants; and to these friends this priest from time to time wrote
+letters, in which he described at great length the life of the leper
+settlement and the work of the small band of men and women who had gone
+to labour in that remote and awful vineyard. The contents of these
+letters were made known to the ecclesiastical superior of the convent;
+and one evening he made them the subject of a lecture to the assembled
+nuns and novices, dwelling with peculiar eloquence upon the devotion of
+the three Franciscan Sisters who had become outcasts from human society
+that they might nurse and teach leprous girls, until inevitable death
+should overtake them also.</p>
+
+<p>Among that breathless audience of women there was one soul on whom his
+words fell with the force of a message from the Eternal. Here, then, at
+last, was offered her a pathway by following meekly to the end of which
+she might perhaps find blessedness. The real Man of Sorrows appeared to
+stand in it and beckon her on to the abodes of those abandoned creatures
+whose sufferings He had with peculiar pity so often stretched forth His
+hand to heal. When she laid before the Mother Superior her petition to
+be allowed to go, it was at first refused, being regarded as a momentary
+impulse; but months passed, and at intervals, always more earnestly, she
+renewed her request. It was pointed out to her that when one has gone
+among the lepers there is no return; the alternatives are either
+lifelong banishment, or death from leprosy, usually at the end of a few
+years. But always her reply was&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of Christ, Mother, let me go!"</p>
+
+<p>Meantime it had become clear to the Mother Superior that some change of
+scene must be made. The days of Sister Dolorosa's usefulness in the
+convent were too plainly over.</p>
+
+<p>It had not been possible in that large household of women to conceal the
+fact of her unfaithfulness to her vows. As one black veil whispered to
+another&mdash;as one white veil communed with its attentive neighbour&mdash;little
+by little events were gathered and pieced together, until, in different
+forms of error and rumour, the story became known to all. Some from
+behind window lattices had watched her in the garden with the young
+stranger on the day of his visiting the convent. Others had heard of his
+lying wounded at the farm-house. Still others were sure that under
+pretext of visiting old Martha she had often met him in the fields. And
+then the scene on the steps of the church, when she had returned soiled
+and torn and fainting.</p>
+
+<p>So that from the day on which she arose from her illness and began to go
+about the convent, she was singled out as a target for those small
+arrows which the feminine eye directs with such faultless skill at one
+of its own sex. With scarcely perceptible movements they would draw
+aside when passing her, as though to escape corrupting contact. Certain
+ones of the younger Sisters, who were jealous of her beauty, did not
+fail to drop inuendoes for her to overhear. And upon some of the
+novices, whose minds were still wavering between the church and the
+world, it was thought that her example might have a dangerous influence.</p>
+
+<p>It is always wrong to judge motives; but it is possible that the head of
+the Order may have thought it best that this ruined life should take on
+the halo of martyrdom, from which fresh lustre would be reflected upon
+the annals of the church. However this may be, after about eighteen
+months of waiting, during which correspondence was held with the
+Sandwich Islands, it was determined that Sister Dolorosa should be
+allowed to go thither and join the labours of the Franciscan Sisters.</p>
+
+<p>From the day when consent was given she passed into that peace with
+which one ascends the scaffold or awaits the stake. It was this look of
+peace that Gordon had seen on her face as she moved hither and thither
+about the shrine.</p>
+
+<p>Only a few weeks after he had thus seen her the day came for her to go.
+Of those who took part in the scene of farewell she was the most
+unmoved. A month later she sailed from San Francisco for Honolulu; and
+in due time there came from Honolulu to the Mother Superior the
+following letter. It contains all that remains of the earthly history of
+Pauline Cambron&mdash;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">
+"<span class="smcap">Kalawao, Molokai, Hawaiian Islands</span>,<br />
+"<i>January 1, 188&mdash;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Mother</span>,&mdash;I entreat you not to let the sight of this
+strange handwriting, instead of one that must be so familiar, fill
+you with too much alarm. I hasten to assure you that before my letter
+closes you will understand why Sister Dolorosa has not written
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Since the hour when the vessel sailed from the American port,
+bearing to us that young life as a consecrated helper in our work
+among these suffering outcasts of the human race, I know that your
+thoughts and prayers have followed her with unceasing anxiety; so
+that first I should give you tidings that the vessel reached
+Honolulu in safety. I should tell you also that she had a
+prosperous voyage, and that she is now happy&mdash;far happier than when
+she left you. I know, likewise, that your imagination has
+constantly hovered about this island, and that you have pictured it
+to yourself as the gloomiest of all spots in the universe of God;
+so that in the next place I should try to remove this impression by
+giving you some description of the island itself, which has now
+become her unchanging home.</p>
+
+<p>"The island of Molokai, then, on which the leper settlement has
+been located by the Government, is long, and shaped much like the
+leaf of the willow-tree. The Sandwich Islands, as you well know,
+are a group of volcanoes out of which the fires have for the most
+part long since died. Molokai, therefore, is really but a mountain
+of cooled lava, half of which perhaps is beneath the level of the
+sea. The two leper villages are actually situated in the cup of an
+ancient crater. The island is very low along the southern coast,
+and slopes gradually to its greatest altitude on the northern
+ridge, from which the descent to the sea is in places all but
+perpendicular. It is between the bases of these northern cliffs and
+the sea that the villages are built. In the rear of them is a long
+succession of towering precipices and wild ravines, that are solemn
+and terrible to behold; and in front of them there is a coast-line
+so rough with pointed rocks that as the waves rush in upon them
+spray is often thrown to the height of fifty or a hundred feet. It
+is this that makes the landing at times so dangerous; and at other
+times, when a storm has burst, so fatal. So that shipwrecks are not
+unknown, dear Mother, and sometimes add to the sadness of life in
+this place.</p>
+
+<p>"But from this description you would get only a mistaken idea of
+the aspect of the island. It is sunny and full of tropical
+loveliness. The lapse of centuries has in places covered the lava
+with exquisite verdure. Soft breezes blow here, about the dark
+cliffs hang purple atmospheres, and above them drift pink and white
+clouds. Sometimes the whole island is veiled in golden mist.
+Beautiful streams fall down its green precipices into the sea, and
+the sea itself is of the most brilliant blue. In its depths are
+growths of pure white corals, which are the homes of fishes of
+gorgeous colours.</p>
+
+<p>"If I should speak no longer of the island, but of the people, I
+could perhaps do something further still to dissipate the dread
+with which you and other strangers must regard us. The inhabitants
+are a simple, generous, happy race; and there are many spots in
+this world&mdash;many in Europe and Asia, perhaps some in your own
+land&mdash;where the scenes of suffering and death are more poignant and
+appalling. The lepers live for the most part in decent white
+cottages. Many are the happy faces that are seen among them; so
+that, strange as it may seem, healthy people would sometimes come
+here to live if the laws did not forbid. So much has Christianity
+done that one may now be buried in consecrated ground.</p>
+
+<p>"If all this appears worldly and frivolous, dear Mother, forgive
+me! If I have chosen to withhold from you news of her, of whom
+alone I know you are thinking, it is because I have wished to give
+you as bright a picture as possible. Perhaps you will thus become
+the better prepared for what is to follow.</p>
+
+<p>"So that before I go further, I shall pause again to describe to
+you one spot which is the loveliest on the island. About a mile and
+a half from the village of Kalawao there is a rocky point which is
+used as an irregular landing-place when the sea is wild. Just
+beyond this point there is an inward curve of the coast, making an
+inlet of the sea; and from the water's edge there slopes backward
+into the bosom of the island a deep ravine. Down this ravine there
+falls and winds a gleaming white cataract, and here the tropical
+vegetation grows most beautiful. The trees are wreathed with moist
+creepers; the edges and crevices of the lava blocks are fringed
+with ferns and moss. Here the wild ginger blooms and the crimson
+lehua. Here grow trees of orange and palm and punhala groves. Here
+one sees the rare honey-bird with its plumage of scarlet velvet,
+the golden plover, and the beautiful white bos'un-bird, wheeling
+about the black cliff heights. The spot is as beautiful as a scene
+in some fairy tale. When storms roll in from the sea the surf flows
+far back into this ravine, and sometimes&mdash;after the waters have
+subsided&mdash;a piece of wreckage from the ocean is left behind.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me once more, O dear Mother! if again I seem to you so
+idle and unmeaning in my words. But I have found it almost
+impossible to go on; and, besides, I think you will thank me, after
+you have read my letter through, for telling you first of this
+place.</p>
+
+<p>"From the day of our first learning that there was a young spirit
+among you who had elected, for Christ's sake, to come here and
+labour with us, we had counted the days till she should arrive. The
+news had spread throughout the leper settlement. Father Damien had
+made it known to the lepers in Kalawao, Father Wendolen had
+likewise told it among the lepers in Kalapaupa, and the Protestant
+ministers spoke of it to their flocks. Thus her name had already
+become familiar to hundreds of them, and many a prayer had been
+offered up for her safety.</p>
+
+<p>"Once a week there comes to Molokai from Honolulu a little steamer
+called <i>Mokolii</i>. When it reached here last Saturday morning it
+brought the news that just before it sailed from Honolulu the
+vessel bearing Sister Dolorosa had come into port. She had been
+taken in charge by the Sisters until the <i>Mokolii</i> should return
+and make the next trip. I should add that the steamer leaves at
+about five o'clock in the afternoon, and that it usually reaches
+here at about dawn of the following morning in ordinary weather.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, dear Mother, I beseech you to lay my letter aside! Do not
+read further now. Lay it aside, and do not take it up again until
+you have sought in prayer the consolation of our divine religion
+for the sorrows of our lives.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall believe that you have done this, and that, as you now go
+on with the reading of my letter, you have gained the fortitude to
+hear what I have scarcely the power to write. Heaven knows that in
+my poor way I have sought to prepare you!</p>
+
+<p>"As it was expected that the steamer would reach the island about
+dawn on Saturday morning, as usual, it had been arranged that many
+of us should be at the landing-place to give her welcome. But about
+midnight one of the terrific storms which visit this region
+suddenly descended, enveloping the heavens, that had been full of
+the light of the stars, in impenetrable darkness. We were sleepless
+with apprehension that the vessel would be driven upon the
+rocks&mdash;such was the direction of the storm&mdash;long before it could
+come opposite the villages: and a few hours before day Father
+Damien, accompanied by Father Conradi, Brother James, and Brother
+Joseph, went down to the coast. Through the remaining hours of the
+night they watched and waited, now at one point, and now at
+another, knowing that the vessel could never land in such a storm.
+As the dawn broke they followed up the coast until they came
+opposite that rocky point of which I have already spoken as being
+an irregular landing-place.</p>
+
+<p>"Here they were met by two or three men who were drenched with the
+sea, and just starting towards the villages, and from them they
+learned that, an hour or two before, the steamer had been driven
+upon the hidden rocks of the point. It had been feared that it
+would soon be sunk or dashed to pieces, and as quickly as possible
+a boat had been put off, in which were the leper girls that were
+being brought from Honolulu. There was little hope that it would
+ever reach the shore, but it was the last chance of life. In this
+boat, dear Mother, Sister Dolorosa also was placed. Immediately
+afterwards a second boat was put off, containing the others that
+were on board.</p>
+
+<p>"Of the fate of the first boat they had learned nothing. Their own
+had been almost immediately capsized, and, so far as they knew,
+they were the sole survivors. The Hawaiians are the most expert of
+swimmers, being almost native to the sea; and since the distance
+was short, and only these survived, you will realise how little
+chance there was for any other.</p>
+
+<p>"During the early hours of the morning, which broke dark and
+inexpressibly sad for us, a few bodies were found washed ashore,
+among them those of two leper girls of Honolulu. But our search for
+her long proved unavailing. At length Father Damien suggested that
+we follow up the ravine which I have described, and it was thither
+that he and Brother Joseph and I accordingly went. Father Damien
+thought it well that I should go with them.</p>
+
+<p>"It was far inland, dear Mother, that at last we found her. She lay
+outstretched on a bare, black rock of lava, which sloped upward
+from the sea. Her naked white feet rested on the green moss that
+fringed its lower edge, and her head was sheltered from the burning
+sun by branches of ferns. Almost over her eyes&mdash;the lids of which
+were stiff with the salt of the ocean&mdash;there hung a spray of white
+poppies. It was as though nature would be kind to her in death.</p>
+
+<p>"At the sight of her face, so young, and having in it the purity
+and the peace of Heaven, we knelt down around her without a word,
+and for a while we could do nothing but weep. Surely nothing so
+spotless was ever washed ashore on this polluted island! If I
+sinned, I pray to be forgiven; but I found a strange joy in
+thinking that the corruption of this terrible disease had never
+been laid upon her. Heaven had accepted in advance her faithful
+spirit, and had spared her the long years of bodily suffering.</p>
+
+<p>"At Father Damien's direction Brother Joseph returned to the
+village for a bier and for four lepers who should be strong enough
+to bear it. When they came we laid her on it, and bore her back to
+the village, where Mother Marianne took the body in charge and
+prepared it for burial.</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I describe her funeral? The lepers were her
+pall-bearers. The news of the shipwreck had quickly spread
+throughout the settlement, and these simple, generous people yield
+themselves so readily to the emotion of the hour. When the time
+arrived, it seemed that all who could walk had come to follow her
+to the churchyard. It was a moving sight&mdash;the long, wavering train
+of that death-stricken throng, whose sufferings had so touched the
+pity of our Lord when He was on earth, and the desolation of whose
+fate she had come to lessen. There were the young and the old
+alike, Protestants and Catholics without distinction, children
+with their faces so strangely aged with ravages of the leprosy,
+those advanced in years with theirs so mutilated and marred.
+Others, upon whom the leprosy had made such advances that they were
+too weak to walk, sat in their cottage doors and lifted their husky
+voices in singing that wailing native hymn in which they bemoan
+their hopeless fate. Some of the women, after a fashion of their
+own, wore large wreaths of blue blossoms and green leaves about
+their withered faces.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was thus that we lepers&mdash;I say we lepers because I am one
+of them, since I cannot expect long to escape the disease&mdash;it was
+thus that we lepers followed her to the graveyard in the rock by
+the blue sea, where Father Damien with his own hands had helped to
+dig her grave. And there, dear Mother, all that is mortal of her
+now rests. But we know that ere this she has heard the words: 'I
+was sick, and ye visited me.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mother Marianne would herself have written, but she was called
+away to the Leproserie.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">"<span class="smcap">Sister Agatha</span>."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1><a name="Posthumous_Fame_or_A_Legend_of_the_Beautiful" id="Posthumous_Fame_or_A_Legend_of_the_Beautiful"></a><span class="smcap">Posthumous Fame; or, A Legend of the Beautiful</span></h1>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+<h2>I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There once lived in a great city, where the dead were all but
+innumerable, a young man by the name of Nicholas Vane, who possessed a
+singular genius for the making of tombstones. So beautiful they were,
+and so fitly designed to express the shadowy pain of mortal memory or
+the bright forecasting of eternal hope, that all persons were held
+fortunate who could secure them for the calm resting-places of their
+beloved sleepers. Indeed, the curious tale was whispered round that the
+bereft were not his only patrons, but that certain personages who were
+peculiarly ambitious of posthumous fame&mdash;seeing they had not long to
+live, and unwilling to intrust others with the grave responsibility of
+having them commemorated&mdash;had gone to his shop and secretly advised with
+him respecting such monuments as might preserve their memories from too
+swift oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>However this may fall out, certain it is that his calling had its
+secrets; and once he was known to observe that no man could ever
+understand the human heart until he had become a maker of tombstones.
+Whether the knowledge thus derived should make of one a laughing or a
+weeping philosopher, Nicholas himself remained a joyous type of youthful
+manhood&mdash;so joyous, in fact, that a friend of his who wrought in colour,
+strolling one day into the workshop where Nicholas stood surrounded by
+the exquisite shapes of memorial marbles, had asked to paint the scene
+as a representation of Life chiselling to its beautiful purposes the
+rugged symbols of Death, and smiling as it wove the words of love and
+faith across the stony proofs of the universal tragedy. Afterwards, it
+is true, a great change was wrought in the young artisan.</p>
+
+<p>He had just come in one morning and paused to look around at the
+various finished and unfinished mortuary designs.</p>
+
+<p>"Truly," he said to himself all at once, "if I were a wise man, I'd
+begin this day's business by chiselling my own head-stone. For who knows
+but that before sunset my brother the gravedigger may be told to build
+me one of the houses that last till doomsday! And what man could then
+make the monument to stop the door of <i>my</i> house with. But why should I
+have a monument? If I lie beneath it, I shall not know I lie there. If I
+lie not there, then it will not stand over me. So, whether I lie there,
+or lie not there, what will it matter to me then? Ay; but what if, being
+dead only to this world and living in another, I should yet look on the
+monument erected to my memory and therefore be the happier? I know not;
+nor to what end we are vexed with this desire to be remembered after
+death. The prospect of vanishing from a poor, toilsome life fills us
+with such consternation and pain! It is therefore we strive to impress
+ourselves ineffaceably on the race, so that, after we have gone hence,
+or ceased to be, we may still have incorporeal habitation among all
+coming generations."</p>
+
+<p>Here he was interrupted by a low knock at the door. Bidden to come in,
+there entered a man of delicate physiognomy, who threw a hurried glance
+around and inquired in an anxious tone&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sir, are you alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am never alone," replied Nicholas in a ringing voice; "for I dwell
+hard by the gate-way of life and death, through which a multitude is
+always passing."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so loud, I beseech you," said the visitor, stretching forth his
+thin, white hands with eager deprecation. "I would not, for the world,
+have any one discover that I have been here."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you, then, a personage of such importance to the world?" said
+Nicholas, smiling, for the stranger's appearance argued no worldly
+consideration whatsoever. The suit of black, which his frail figure
+seemed to shrink away from with very sensitiveness, was glossy and
+pathetic with more than one covert patch. His shoes were dust-covered
+and worn. His long hair went round his head in a swirl, and he bore
+himself with an air of damaged, apologetic, self-appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>"I am a poet," he murmured with a flush of pain, dropping his large
+mournful eyes beneath the scrutiny of one who might be an unsympathetic
+listener. "I am a poet, and I have come to speak with you privately of
+my&mdash;of the&mdash;of a monument. I am afraid I shall be forgotten. It is a
+terrible thought."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you not trust your poems to keep you remembered?" asked Nicholas,
+with more kindliness.</p>
+
+<p>"I could if they were as widely read as they should be." He appeared
+emboldened by his hearer's gentleness. "But, to confess the truth, I
+have not been accepted by my age. That, indeed, should give me no pain,
+since I have not written for it, but for the great future to which alone
+I look for my fame."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why not look to it for your monument also?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, sir!" he cried, "there are so many poets in the world that I might
+be entirely overlooked by posterity, did there not descend to it some
+sign that I was held in honour by my own generation."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you never noticed," he continued, with more earnestness, "that
+when strangers visit a cemetery they pay no attention to the thousands
+of little head-stones that lie scattered close to the ground, but hunt
+out the highest monuments, to learn in whose honour they were erected?
+Have you never heard them exclaim: 'Yonder is a great monument! A great
+man must be buried there. Let us go and find out who he was and what he
+did to be so celebrated.' O sir, you and I know that this is a poor way
+of reasoning, since the greatest monuments are not always set over the
+greatest men. Still the custom has wrought its good effects, and
+splendid memorials do serve to make known in years to come those whom
+they commemorate, by inciting posterity to search for their actions or
+revive their thoughts. I warrant you the mere bust of Homer&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are not mentioning yourself in the same breath with Homer, I hope,"
+said Nicholas, with great good-humour.</p>
+
+<p>"My poems are as dear to me as Homer's were to him," replied the poet,
+his eyes filling.</p>
+
+<p>"What if you <i>are</i> forgotten? Is it not enough for the poet to have
+lived for the sake of beauty?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" he cried passionately. "What you say is a miserable error. For the
+very proof of the poet's vocation is in creating the beautiful. But how
+know he has created it? By his own mind? Alas, the poet's mind tells him
+only what is beautiful to <i>him</i>! It is by fame that he knows it&mdash;fame,
+the gratitude of men for the beauty he has revealed to them! What is so
+sweet, then, as the knowledge that fame has come to him already, or
+surely awaits him after he is dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"We labour under some confusion of ideas, I fear," said Nicholas, "and,
+besides, are losing time. What kind of mon&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That I leave to you," interrupted the poet. "Only, I should like my
+monument to be beautiful. Ah, if you but knew how all through this poor
+life of mine I have loved the beautiful! Never, never have I drawn near
+it in any visible form without almost holding my breath as though I were
+looking deep, deep into God's opened eyes. But it was of the epitaph I
+wished to speak."</p>
+
+<p>Hereupon, with a deeper flush, he drew from a large inside
+breast-pocket, that seemed to have been made for the purpose, a worn
+duodecimo volume, and fell to turning the much-fingered pages.</p>
+
+<p>"This," he murmured fondly, without looking up, "is the complete
+collection of my poems."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" exclaimed Nicholas, with deep compassion.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my complete collection. I have written a great deal more, and
+should have liked to publish all that I have written. But it was
+necessary to select, and I have included here only what it was
+intolerable to see wasted. There is nothing I value more than a group of
+elegiac poems, which every single member of my large family&mdash;who are
+fine critics&mdash;and all my friends, pronounce very beautiful. I think it
+would be a good idea to inscribe a selection from one on my monument,
+since those who read the selection would wish to read the entire poem,
+and those who read the entire poem would wish to read the entire
+collection. I shall now favour you with these elegies."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be happy to hear them; but my time!" said Nicholas
+courteously. "The living are too impatient to wait on me; the dead too
+patient to be defrauded."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you would not refuse to hear one of them," exclaimed the poet,
+his eyes flashing.</p>
+
+<p>"Read <i>one</i>, by all means." Nicholas seated himself on a monumental
+lamb.</p>
+
+<p>The poet passed one hand gently across his forehead, as though to brush
+away the stroke of rudeness; then, fixing upon Nicholas a look of
+infinite remoteness, he read as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He suffered, but he murmured not;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To every storm he bared his breast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He asked but for the common lot&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To be a man among the rest.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Here lies he now&mdash;&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"If you ask but for the common lot," interrupted Nicholas, "you should
+rest content to be forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>But before the poet could reply, a loud knock caused him to flap the
+leaves of the "Complete Collection" together with one hand, while with
+the other he gathered the tails of his long coat about him, as though
+preparing to pass through some difficult aperture. The exaltation of his
+mood, however, still showed itself in the look and tone of proud
+condescension with which he said to Nicholas&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me to retire at once by some private passway."</p>
+
+<p>Nicholas led him to a door in the rear of the shop, and there, with a
+smile and a tear, stood for a moment watching the precipitate figure of
+the retreating bard, who suddenly paused when disappearing and tore open
+the breast of his coat to assure himself that his beloved elegies were
+resting safe across his heart.</p>
+
+<p>The second visitor was of another sort. He hobbled on a cork leg, but
+inexorably disciplined the fleshly one into old-time firmness and
+precision. A faded military cloak draped his stalwart figure. Part of
+one bushy grey eyebrow had been chipped away by the same sword-cut that
+left its scar across his battle-beaten face.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to speak with you about my monument," he said, in a gruff
+voice that seemed to issue from the mouth of a rusty cannon. "Those of
+my old comrades that did not fall at my side are dead. My wife died long
+ago, and my little children. I am old and forgotten. It is a time of
+peace. There's not a boy who will now listen to me while I tell of my
+campaigns. I live alone. Were I to die to-morrow my grave might not have
+so much as a head-stone. It might be taken for that of a coward. Make me
+a monument for a true soldier."</p>
+
+<p>"Your grateful country will do that," said Nicholas.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!" exclaimed the veteran, whom the shock of battle had made deaf long
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>"Your country," shouted Nicholas, close to his ear, "your country&mdash;will
+erect a monument&mdash;to your memory."</p>
+
+<p>"My country!" The words were shot out with a reverberating, melancholy
+boom. "My country will do no such a thing. How many millions of soldiers
+have fallen on her battle-fields! Where are their monuments? They would
+make her one vast cemetery."</p>
+
+<p>"But is it not enough for you to have been a true soldier? Why wish to
+be known and remembered for it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know I do not wish to be forgotten," he replied simply. "I know I
+take pleasure in the thought that long after I am forgotten there will
+be a tongue in my monument to cry out to every passing stranger, 'Here
+lies the body of a true soldier.' It is a great thing to be brave!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is, then, this monument to be erected in honour of bravery, or of
+yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no difference," said the veteran bluntly. "Bravery <i>is</i>
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>"It is bravery," he continued, in husky tones, and with, a mist
+gathering in his eyes that made him wink as though he were trying to see
+through the smoke of battle&mdash;"it is bravery that I see most clearly in
+the character of God. What would become of us if He were a coward? I
+serve Him as my brave Commander; and though I am stationed far from Him
+and may be faint and sorely wounded, I know that He is somewhere on the
+battle-field, and that I shall see Him at last, approaching me as He
+moves up and down among the ranks."</p>
+
+<p>"But you say that your country does not notice you&mdash;that you have no
+friends; do you, then, feel no resentment?"</p>
+
+<p>"None, none," he answered quickly, though his head dropped on his bosom.</p>
+
+<p>"And you wish to be remembered by a world that is willing to forget
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his head proudly. "There are many true men in the world," he
+said, "and it has much to think of. I owe it all I can give, all I can
+bequeath; and I can bequeath it nothing but the memory of a true man."</p>
+
+<p>One day, not long after this, there came into the workshop of Nicholas a
+venerable man of the gravest, sweetest, and most scholarly aspect, who
+spoke not a word until he had led Nicholas to the front window and
+pointed a trembling finger at a distant church spire.</p>
+
+<p>"You see yon spire?" he said. "It almost pierces the clouds. In the
+church beneath I have preached to men and women for nearly fifty years.
+Many that I have christened at the font I have married at the altar;
+many of these I have sprinkled with dust. What have I not done for them
+in sorrow and want! How have I not toiled to set them in the way of
+purer pleasures and to anchor their tempest-tossed hopes! And yet how
+soon they will forget me! Already many say I am too old to preach. Too
+old! I preach better than I ever did in my life. Yet it may be my lot to
+wander down into the deep valley, an idle shepherd with an idle crook. I
+have just come from the writing of my next sermon, in which I exhort my
+people to strive that their names be not written on earthly monuments
+or human hearts, but in the Book of Life. It is my sublimest theme. If I
+am ever eloquent, if I am ever persuasive, if I ever for one moment draw
+aside to spiritual eyes the veil that discloses the calm, enrapturing
+vistas of eternity, it is when I measure my finite strength against this
+mighty task. But why? Because they are the sermons of my own aspiration.
+I preach them to my own soul. Face to face with that naked soul I pen
+those sermons&mdash;pen them when all are asleep save the sleepless Eye that
+is upon me. Even in the light of that Eye do I recoil from the thought
+of being forgotten. How clearly I foresee it! Ashes to ashes, dust to
+dust! Where then will be my doctrines, my prayers, my sermons?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not enough for you to have scattered your handful of good
+broadcast, to ripen as endlessly as the grass? What if they that gather
+know naught of him that sowed?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not enough. I should like the memory of <i>me</i> to live on and
+on in the world, inseparable from the good I may have done. What am I but
+the good that is in me? 'Tis this that links me to the infinite and the
+perfect. Does not the Perfect One wish His goodness to be associated
+with His name? No! No! I do not wish to be forgotten!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is mere vanity."</p>
+
+<p>"Not vanity," said the aged servitor meekly. "Wait until you are old,
+till the grave is at your helpless feet: it is the love of life."</p>
+
+<p>But some years later there befell Nicholas an event that transcended all
+past experiences, and left its impress on his whole subsequent life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II2" id="II2"></a>II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The hour had passed when any one was likely to enter his shop. A few
+rays of pale sunlight, straggling in through crevices of the door,
+rested like a dying halo on the heads of the monumental figures grouped
+around. Shadows, creeping upward from the ground, shrouded all else in
+thin, penetrable half-gloom, through which the stark grey emblems of
+mortality sent forth more solemn suggestions. A sudden sense of the
+earthly tragedy overwhelmed him. The chisel and the hammer dropped from
+his hands, and, resting his head on the block he had been carving, he
+gave himself up to that mood of dim, distant reverie in which the soul
+seems to soar and float far above the shock and din of the world's
+disturbing nearness. On his all but oblivious ear, like the faint
+washings of some remote sea, beat the waves of the city's tide-driven
+life in the streets outside. The room itself seemed hushed to the awful
+stillness of the high aerial spaces. Then all at once this stillness was
+broken by a voice, low, clear, and tremulous, saying close to his ear&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the maker of gravestones?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is my sad calling," he cried bitterly, starting up with
+instinctive forebodings.</p>
+
+<p>He saw before him a veiled figure. To support herself, she rested one
+hand on the block he had been carving, while she pressed the other
+against her heart, as though to stifle pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose monument is this?"</p>
+
+<p>"A neglected poet's who died not long ago. Soon, perhaps, I shall be
+making one for an old soldier, and one for a holy man, whose soul, I
+hear, is about to be dismissed."</p>
+
+<p>"Are not some monuments sadder to make than others?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, truly."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the saddest you ever made?"</p>
+
+<p>"The saddest monument I ever made was one for a poor mother who had lost
+her only son. One day a woman came in who had no sooner entered than she
+sat down and gave way to a passionate outburst of grief.</p>
+
+<p>"'My good woman,' I said, 'why do you weep so bitterly?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do not call me good,' she moaned, and hid her face.</p>
+
+<p>"I then perceived her fallen character. When she recovered self-control
+she drew from her sinful bosom an old purse filled with coins of
+different values.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why do you give me this?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is to pay for a monument for my son,' she said, and the storm of
+her grief swept over her again.</p>
+
+<p>"I learned that for years she had toiled and starved to hoard up a sum
+with which to build a monument to his memory, for he had never failed of
+his duty to her after all others had cast her out. Certainly he had his
+reward, not in the monument, but in the repentance which came to her
+after his death. I have never seen such sorrow for evil as the memory of
+his love wrought in her. For herself she desired only that the spot
+where she should be buried might be unknown. This longing to be
+forgotten has led me to believe that none desire to be remembered for
+the evil that is in them, but only for some truth, or beauty, or
+goodness by which they have linked their individual lives to the general
+life of the race. Even the lying epitaphs in cemeteries prove how we
+would fain have the dead arrayed on the side of right in the thoughts of
+their survivors. This wretched mother and human outcast, believing
+herself to have lost everything that makes it well to be remembered,
+craved only the mercy of forgetfulness."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet I think she died a Christian soul."</p>
+
+<p>"You knew her, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was with her in the last hours. She told me her story. She told me
+also of you, and that you would accept nothing for the monument you were
+at such care to make. It is perhaps for this reason that I have felt
+some desire to see you, and that I am here now to speak with you of&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A shudder passed over her.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, that was not a sad, but a joyous monument to fashion," she
+added abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, it was joyous. But to me the joyous and the sad are much allied in
+the things of this life."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet there might be one monument wholly sad, might there not?"</p>
+
+<p>"There might be, but I know not whose it would be."</p>
+
+<p>"If she you love should die, would not hers be so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Until I love, and she I love is dead, I cannot know," said Nicholas,
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"What builds the most monuments?" she asked quickly, as though to
+retreat from her levity.</p>
+
+<p>"Pride builds many&mdash;splendid ones. Gratitude builds some, forgiveness
+some, and pity some. But faith builds more than these, though often
+poor, humble ones; and love!&mdash;love builds more than all things else
+together."</p>
+
+<p>"And what, of all things that monuments are built in memory of, is most
+loved and soonest forgotten?" she asked, with intensity.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, I cannot tell that."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not a beautiful woman? This, you say, is the monument of a poet.
+After the poet grows old, men love him for the songs he sang; they love
+the old soldier for the battles he fought, and the preacher for his
+remembered prayers. But a woman! Who loves her for the beauty she once
+possessed, or rather regards her not with the more distaste? Is there in
+history a figure so lonely and despised as that of the woman, who, once
+the most beautiful in the world, crept back into her native land a
+withered hag? Or, if a woman die while she is yet beautiful, how long is
+she remembered? Her beauty is like heat and light&mdash;powerful only for
+those who feel and see it."</p>
+
+<p>But Nicholas had scarcely heard her. His eyes had become riveted upon
+her hand, which rested on the marble, as white as though grown out of it
+under the labours of his chisel.</p>
+
+<p>"My lady," he said, with the deepest respect, "will you permit me to
+look at your hand? I have carved many a one in marble, and studied many
+a one in life; but never have I seen anything so beautiful as yours."</p>
+
+<p>He took it with an artist's impetuosity and bent over it, laying its
+palm against one of his own and stroking it softly with the other. The
+blood leaped through his heart, and he suddenly lifted it to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"God only can make the hand beautiful," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Displaced by her arm which he had upraised, the light fabric that had
+concealed her figure parted on her bosom and slipped to the ground. His
+eyes swept over the perfect shape that stood revealed. The veil still
+concealed her face. The strangely mingled emotions that had been
+deepening within him all this time now blended themselves in one
+irrepressible wish.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you permit me to see your face?"</p>
+
+<p>She drew quickly back. A subtle pain was in his voice as he cried&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"O my lady! I ask it as one who has pure eyes for the beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"My face belongs to my past. It has been my sorrow; it is nothing now."</p>
+
+<p>"Only permit me to see it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no other face you would rather see?"</p>
+
+<p>Who can fathom the motive of a woman's questions?</p>
+
+<p>"None, none!"</p>
+
+<p>She drew aside her veil, and her eyes rested quietly on his like a
+revelation. So young she was as hardly yet to be a woman, and her beauty
+had in it that seraphic purity and mysterious pathos which is never seen
+in a woman's face until the touch of another world has chastened her
+spirit into the resignation of a saint. The heart of Nicholas was wrung
+by the sight of it with a sudden sense of inconsolable loss and longing.</p>
+
+<p>"O my lady!" he cried, sinking on one knee and touching his lips to her
+hand with greater gentleness. "Do you indeed think the beauty of a woman
+so soon forgotten? As long as I live, yours will be as fresh in my
+memory as it was the moment after I first saw it in its perfection and
+felt its power."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not recall to me the sorrow of such thoughts." She touched her
+heart. "My heart is a tired hour-glass. Already the sands are wellnigh
+run through. Any hour it may stop, and then&mdash;out like a light! Shapeless
+ashes! I have loved life well, but not so well that I have not been able
+to prepare to leave it."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with the utmost simplicity and calmness, yet her eyes were
+turned with unspeakable sadness towards the shadowy recesses of the
+room, where from their pedestals the monumental figures looked down upon
+her as though they would have opened their marble lips and said, "Poor
+child! Poor child!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have had my wish to see you and to see this place. Before long some
+one will come here to have you carve a monument to the most perishable
+of all things. Like the poor mother who had no wish to be
+remembered&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Nicholas was moved to the deepest.</p>
+
+<p>"I have but little skill," he said. "The great God did not bestow on me
+the genius of His favourite children of sculpture. But if so sad and
+sacred a charge should ever become mine, with His help I will rear such
+a monument to your memory that as long as it stands none who see it will
+ever be able to forget you. Year after year your memory shall grow as a
+legend of the beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>When she was gone he sat self-forgetful until the darkness grew
+impenetrable. As he groped his way out at last along the thick
+guide-posts of death, her voice seemed to float towards him from every
+head-stone, her name to be written in every epitaph.</p>
+
+<p>The next day a shadow brooded over the place. Day by day it deepened. He
+went out to seek intelligence of her. In the quarter of the city where
+she lived he discovered that her name had already become a nucleus
+around which were beginning to cluster many little legends of the
+beautiful. He had but to hear recitals of her deeds of kindness and
+mercy. For the chance of seeing her again he began to haunt the
+neighbourhood; then, having seen her, he would return to his shop the
+victim of more unavailing desire. All things combined to awake in him
+that passion of love whose roots are nourished in the soul's finest soil
+of pity and hopelessness. Once or twice, under some pretext, he made
+bold to accost her; and once, under the stress of his passion, he mutely
+lifted his eyes, confessing his love; but hers were turned aside.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime he began to dream of the monument he chose to consider she had
+committed to his making. It should be the triumph of his art; but more,
+it would represent in stone the indissoluble union of his love with her
+memory. Through him alone would she enter upon her long after-life of
+saint-like reminiscence.</p>
+
+<p>When the tidings of her death came, he soon sprang up from the
+prostration of his grief with a burning desire to consummate his
+beloved work.</p>
+
+<p>"Year after year your memory shall grow as a legend of the beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>These words now became the inspiration of his masterpiece. Day and night
+it took shape in the rolling chaos of his sorrow. What sculptor in the
+world ever espoused the execution of a work that lured more irresistibly
+from their hiding-places the shy and tender ministers of his genius?
+What one ever explored with greater boldness the utmost limits of
+artistic expression, or wrought in sterner defiance of the laws of our
+common forgetfulness?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III2" id="III2"></a>III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>One afternoon, when people thronged the great cemetery of the city, a
+strolling group were held fascinated by the unique loveliness of a newly
+created monument.</p>
+
+<p>"Never," they exclaimed, "have we seen so exquisite a masterpiece. In
+whose honour is it erected?"</p>
+
+<p>But when they drew nearer, they found carved on it simply a woman's
+name.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was she?" they asked, puzzled and disappointed. "Is there no
+epitaph?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," spoke up a young man lying on the grass and eagerly watching the
+spectators. "Ay, a very fitting epitaph."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Carved on the heart of the monument!" he cried, in a tone of triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"On the heart of the monument? Then we cannot see it."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not meant to be seen."</p>
+
+<p>"How do <i>you</i> know of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I made the monument."</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell us what it is."</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot be told. It is there only because it is unknown."</p>
+
+<p>"Out on you! You play your pranks with the living and the dead."</p>
+
+<p>"You will live to regret this day," said a thoughtful bystander. "You
+have tampered with the memory of the dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, look you, good people," cried Nicholas, springing up and
+approaching his beautiful master-work. He rested one hand lovingly
+against it and glanced around him pale with repressed excitement, as
+though a long-looked-for moment had at length arrived. "I play no pranks
+with the living or the dead. Young as I am, I have fashioned many
+monuments, as this cemetery will testify. But I make no more. This is my
+last; and as it is the last, so it is the greatest. For I have fashioned
+it in such love and sorrow for her who lies beneath it as you can never
+know. If it is beautiful, it is yet an unworthy emblem of that brief and
+transporting beauty which was hers; and I have planted it here beside
+her grave, that as a delicate white flower it may exhale the perfume of
+her memory for centuries to come.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," he went on, his lips trembling, his voice faltering with the
+burden of oppressive hope&mdash;"tell me, you who behold it now, do you not
+wed her memory deathlessly to it? To its fair shape, its native and
+unchanging purity?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," they interrupted impatiently. "But the epitaph?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he cried, with tenderer feeling, "beautiful as the monument is to
+the eye, it would be no fit emblem of her had it not something sacred
+hidden within. For she was not lovely to the sense alone, but had a
+perfect heart. So I have placed within the monument that which is its
+heart, and typifies hers. And, mark you!" he cried, in a voice of such
+awful warning that those standing nearest him instinctively shrank back,
+"the one is as inviolable as the other. No more could you rend the heart
+from the human bosom than this epitaph from the monument. My deep and
+lasting curse on him who attempts it! For I have so fitted the parts of
+the work together, that to disunite would be to break them in pieces;
+and the inscription is so fragile and delicately poised within, that so
+much as rudely to jar the monument would shiver it to atoms. It is put
+there to be inviolable. Seek to know it, you destroy it. This I but
+create after the plan of the Great Artist, who shows you only the fair
+outside of His masterpieces. What human eye ever looked into the
+mysterious heart of His beautiful&mdash;that heart which holds the secret of
+inexhaustible freshness and eternal power? Could this epitaph have been
+carved on the outside, you would have read it and forgotten it with
+natural satiety. But uncomprehended, what a spell I mark it exercises!
+You will&mdash;nay, you <i>must</i>&mdash;remember it for ever! You will speak of it
+to others. They will come. And thus in ever-widening circle will be
+borne afar the memory of her whose name is on it, the emblem of whose
+heart is hidden within. And what more fitting memorial could a man rear
+to a woman, the pure shell of whose beauty all can see, the secret of
+whose beautiful being no one ever comprehends?"</p>
+
+<p>He walked rapidly away, then, some distance off, turned and looked back.
+More spectators had come up. Some were earnestly talking, pointing now
+to the monument, now towards him. Others stood in rapt contemplation of
+his master-work.</p>
+
+<p>Tears rose to his eyes. A look of ineffable joy overspread his face.</p>
+
+<p>"O my love!" he murmured, "I have triumphed. Death has claimed your
+body, heaven your spirit; but the earth claims the saintly memory of
+each. This day about your name begins to grow the Legend of the
+Beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>The sun had just set. The ethereal white shape of the monument stood
+outlined against a soft background of rose-coloured sky. To his
+transfiguring imagination it seemed lifted far into the cloud-based
+heavens, and the evening star, resting above its apex, was a celestial
+lamp lowered to guide the eye to it through the darkness of the
+descending night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV2" id="IV2"></a>IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mysterious complexity of our mortal nature and estate that we should so
+desire to be remembered after death, though born to be forgotten! Our
+words and deeds, the influences of our silent personalities, do indeed
+pass from us into the long history of the race and abide for the rest of
+time: so that an earthly immortality is the heritage, nay, the
+inalienable necessity, of even the commonest lives; only it is an
+immortality not of self, but of its good and evil. For Nature sows us
+and reaps us, that she may gather a harvest, not of us, but from us. It
+is God alone that gathers the harvest of us. And well for us that our
+destiny should be that general forgetfulness we so strangely shrink
+from. For no sooner are we gone hence than, even for such brief times as
+our memories may endure, we are apt to grow by processes of accumulative
+transformation into what we never were. Thou kind, kind fate,
+therefore&mdash;never enough named and celebrated&mdash;that biddest the sun of
+memory rise on our finished but imperfect lives, and then lengthenest or
+shortenest the little day of posthumous reminiscence, according as thou
+seest there is need of early twilight or of deeper shadows!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Years passed. City and cemetery were each grown vaster. It was again an
+afternoon when the people strolled among the graves and monuments. An
+old man had courteously attached himself to a group that stood around a
+crumbling memorial. He had reached a great age; but his figure was
+erect, his face animated by strong emotions, and his eyes burned beneath
+his brows.</p>
+
+<p>"Sirs," said he, interposing in the conversation, which turned wholly on
+the monument, "you say nothing of him in whose honour it was erected."</p>
+
+<p>"We say nothing because we know nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he then wholly forgotten?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are not aware that he is at all remembered."</p>
+
+<p>"The inscription reads: 'He was a poet.' Know you none of his poems?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have never so much as heard of his poems."</p>
+
+<p>"My eyes are dim; is there nothing carved beneath his name?"</p>
+
+<p>One of the bystanders went up and knelt down close to the base.</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>was</i> something here, but it is effaced by time&mdash;Wait!" And
+tracing his finger slowly along, he read like a child&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+"He&mdash;asked&mdash;but&mdash;for&mdash;the&mdash;common&mdash;lot.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"That is all," he cried, springing lightly up. "Oh, the dust on my
+knees!" he added with vexation.</p>
+
+<p>"He may have sung very sweetly," pursued the old man.</p>
+
+<p>"He may, indeed!" they answered carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"But, sirs," continued he, with a sad smile, "perhaps you are the very
+generation that he looked to for the fame which his own denied him;
+perhaps he died believing that <i>you</i> would fully appreciate his poems."</p>
+
+<p>"If so, it was a comfortable faith to die in," they said, laughing, in
+return. "He will never know that we did not. A few great poets have
+posthumous fame: we know <i>them</i> well enough." And they passed on.</p>
+
+<p>"This," said the old man, as they paused elsewhere, "seems to be the
+monument of a true soldier; know you aught of the victories he helped to
+win?"</p>
+
+<p>"He may not have helped to win any victories. He may have been a coward.
+How should <i>we</i> know? Epitaphs often lie. The dust is peopled with
+soldiers." And again they moved on.</p>
+
+<p>"Does any one read his sermons now, know you?" asked the old man as they
+paused before a third monument.</p>
+
+<p>"Read his sermons!" they exclaimed, laughing more heartily. "Are sermons
+so much read in the country you come from? See how long he has been
+dead! What should the world be thinking of, to be reading his musty
+sermons?"</p>
+
+<p>"At least does it give you no pleasure to read 'He was a good man'?"
+inquired he plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay; but if he was good, was not his goodness its own reward?"</p>
+
+<p>"He may have also wished long to be remembered for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally; but we have not heard that his wish was gratified."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not sad that the memory of so much beauty and truth and goodness
+in our common human life should perish? But, sirs,"&mdash;and here the old
+man spoke with sudden energy&mdash;"if there should be one who combined
+perfect beauty and truth and goodness in one form and character, do you
+not think such a rare being would escape the common fate and be long and
+widely remembered?"</p>
+
+<p>"Doubtless."</p>
+
+<p>"Sirs," said he, quickly stepping in front of them with flashing eyes,
+"is there in all this vast cemetery not a single monument that has kept
+green the memory of the being in whose honour it was erected?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay," they answered readily. "Have you not heard of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am but come from distant countries. Many years ago I was here, and
+have journeyed hither with much desire to see the place once more. Would
+you kindly show me this monument?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come!" they answered eagerly, starting off. "It is the best known of
+all the thousands in the cemetery. None who see it can ever forget it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes!" murmured the old man. "That is why I have&mdash;I foresaw&mdash;&mdash; Is
+it not a beautiful monument? Does it not lie&mdash;in what direction does it
+lie?"</p>
+
+<p>A feverish eagerness seized him. He walked now beside, now before, his
+companions. Once he wheeled on them.</p>
+
+<p>"Sirs, did you not say it perpetuates the memory of her&mdash;of the one&mdash;who
+lies beneath it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Both are famous. The story of this woman and her monument will never be
+forgotten. It is impossible to forget it."</p>
+
+<p>"Year after year&mdash;&mdash;" muttered he, brushing his hand across his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>They soon came to a spot where the aged branches of memorial evergreens
+interwove a sunless canopy, and spread far around a drapery of gloom
+through which the wind passed with an unending sigh. Brushing aside the
+lowest boughs, they stepped in awestricken silence within the dank,
+chill cone of shade. Before them rose the shape of a grey monument, at
+sight of which the aged traveller, who had fallen behind, dropped his
+staff and held out his arms as though he would have embraced it. But,
+controlling himself, he stepped forward, and said, in tones of thrilling
+sweetness&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sirs, you have not told me what story is connected with this monument
+that it should be so famous. I conceive it must be some very touching
+one of her whose name I read&mdash;some beautiful legend&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Judge you of that!" interrupted one of the group, with a voice of stern
+sadness and not without a certain look of mysterious horror. "They say
+this monument was reared to a woman by the man who once loved her. She
+was very beautiful, and so he made her a very beautiful monument. But
+she had a heart so hideous in its falsity that he carved in stone an
+enduring curse on her evil memory, and hung it in the heart of the
+monument because it was too awful for any eye to see. But others tell
+the story differently. They say the woman not only had a heart false
+beyond description, but was in person the ugliest of her sex. So that
+while the hidden curse is a lasting execration of her nature, the
+beautiful exterior is a masterpiece of mockery which her nature, and not
+her ugliness, maddened his sensitive genius to perpetrate. There can be
+no doubt that this is the true story, as hundreds tell it now, and that
+the woman will be remembered so long as the monument stands&mdash;ay, and
+longer&mdash;not only for her loathsome&mdash;&mdash; Help the old man!"</p>
+
+<p>He had fallen backward to the ground. They tried in vain to set him on
+his feet. Stunned, speechless, he could only raise himself on one elbow
+and turn his eyes towards the monument with a look of preternatural
+horror, as though the lie had issued from its treacherous shape. At
+length he looked up to them, as they bent kindly over him, and spoke
+with much difficulty&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sirs, I am an old man&mdash;a very old man, and very feeble. Forgive this
+weakness. And I have come a long way, and must be faint. While you were
+speaking my strength failed me. You were telling me a story&mdash;were you
+not?&mdash;the story&mdash;the legend of a most beautiful woman, when all at once
+my senses grew confused and I failed to hear you rightly. Then my ears
+played me such a trick! O sirs! if you but knew what a damnable trick my
+ears played me, you would pity me greatly, very, very greatly. This
+story touches me. It is much like one I seemed to have heard for many
+years, and that I have been repeating over and over to myself until I
+love it better than my life. If you would but go over it
+again&mdash;carefully&mdash;very carefully."</p>
+
+<p>"My God, sirs!" he exclaimed, springing up with the energy of youth when
+he had heard the recital a second time, "tell me <i>who</i> started this
+story! Tell me <i>how</i> and <i>where</i> it began!"</p>
+
+<p>"We cannot. We have heard many tell it, and not all alike."</p>
+
+<p>"And do they&mdash;do you&mdash;believe&mdash;it is&mdash;true?" he asked helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"We all <i>know</i> it is true; do not <i>you</i> believe it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can never forget it!" he said, in tones quickly grown harsh and
+husky. "Let us go away from so pitiful a place."</p>
+
+<p>It was near nightfall when he returned, unobserved, and sat down beside
+the monument as one who had ended a pilgrimage.</p>
+
+<p>"They all tell me the same story," he murmured wearily. "Ah, it was the
+hidden epitaph that wrought the error! But for it, the sun of her memory
+would have had its brief, befitting day and tender setting. Presumptuous
+folly, to suppose they would understand my masterpiece, when they so
+often misconceive the hidden heart of His beautiful works, and convert
+uncomprehended good and true into a curse of evil!"</p>
+
+<p>The night fell. He was awaiting it. Nearer and nearer rolled the dark,
+suffering heart of a storm; nearer towards the calm, white breasts of
+the dead. Over the billowy graves the many-footed winds suddenly fled
+away in a wild, tumultuous cohort. Overhead, great black bulks swung
+heavily at one another across the tremulous stars.</p>
+
+<p>Of all earthly spots, where does the awful discord of the elements seem
+so futile and theatric as in a vast cemetery? Blow, then, winds, till
+you uproot the trees! Pour, floods, pour, till the water trickles down
+into the face of the pale sleeper below! Rumble and flash, ye clouds,
+till the earth trembles and seems to be aflame! But not a lock of hair,
+so carefully put back over the brows, is tossed or disordered. The
+sleeper has not stretched forth an arm and drawn the shroud closer
+about his face, to keep out the wet. Not an ear has heard the riving
+thunderbolt, nor so much as an eyelid trembled on the still eyes for all
+the lightning's fury.</p>
+
+<p>But had there been another human presence on the midnight scene, some
+lightning flash would have revealed the old man, a grand, a terrible
+figure, in sympathy with its wild, sad violence. He stood beside his
+masterpiece, towering to his utmost height in a posture of all but
+superhuman majesty and strength. His long white hair and longer white
+beard streamed outward on the roaring winds. His arms, bared to the
+shoulder, swung aloft a ponderous hammer. His face, ashen-grey as the
+marble before him, was set with an expression of stern despair. Then, as
+the thunder crashed, his hammer fell on the monument. Bolt after bolt,
+blow after blow. Once more he might have been seen kneeling beside the
+ruin, his eyes strained close to its heart, awaiting another flash to
+tell him that the inviolable epitaph had shared in the destruction.</p>
+
+<p>For days following many curious eyes came to peer into the opened heart
+of the shattered structure, but in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the masterpiece of Nicholas failed of its end, though it served
+another. For no one could have heard the story of it, before it was
+destroyed, without being made to realise how melancholy that a man
+should rear a monument of execration to the false heart of the woman he
+once had loved; and how terrible for mankind to celebrate the dead for
+the evil that was in them instead of the good.</p>
+
+<h4>THE END.</h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame, by 
+James Lane Allen
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+Project Gutenberg's Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame, by James Lane Allen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame
+
+Author: James Lane Allen
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2010 [EBook #34109]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTER DOLOROSA, POSTHUMOUS FAME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Heather Clark and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
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+
+                             SISTER DOLOROSA
+                                  AND
+                             POSTHUMOUS FAME
+
+                                   BY
+                            JAMES LANE ALLEN
+
+
+                           _Copyright Edition_
+
+
+                               EDINBURGH
+                      DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET
+                                  1892
+
+
+
+               EDINBURGH: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE for
+                              DAVID DOUGLAS
+
+                     LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL AND CO.
+
+
+
+
+                                 TO HER
+
+
+               FROM WHOSE FRAIL BODY HE DREW LIFE IN THE
+                BEGINNING, FROM WHOSE STRONG SPIRIT HE
+                WILL DRAW LIFE UNTIL THE CLOSE, THESE
+                TALES, WITH ALL OTHERS HAPLY HEREAFTER
+                     TO BE WRITTEN, ARE DEDICATED
+                       AS A PERISHABLE MONUMENT
+                             OF INEFFABLE
+                             REMEMBRANCE
+
+
+
+
+                      PREFACE TO BRITISH EDITION.
+
+
+The Author is glad to know that a British Edition of his Kentucky Tales
+is to be brought out by Mr. David Douglas of Edinburgh.
+
+Generations ago his mother's ancestors came from Scotland and Ireland;
+generations ago his father's came from England. Toward the three
+countries his attention was fondly turned in early life; and the
+interest then begotten has been but fostered since.
+
+It is with peculiar pleasure, therefore, that he now avails himself of
+the chance to ride hither and thither through these lands in his own
+conveyance--albeit the vehicle, a little book, may turn out a slow
+coach.
+
+                                                     JAMES LANE ALLEN.
+
+      CHRISTMAS EVE,
+  LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, 1891.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                PAGE
+  SISTER DOLOROSA,                13
+  POSTHUMOUS FAME,               163
+
+
+
+
+SISTER DOLOROSA.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+When Sister Dolorosa had reached the summit of a low hill on her way to
+the convent, she turned and stood for a while looking backward. The
+landscape stretched away in a rude, unlovely expanse of grey fields,
+shaded in places by brown stubble, and in others lightened by pale, thin
+corn--the stunted reward of necessitous husbandry. This way and that ran
+wavering lines of low fences, some worm-eaten, others rotting beneath
+over-clambering wild-rose and blackberry. About the horizon masses of
+dense and rugged woods burned with sombre fires as the westering sun
+smote them from top to underbrush. Forth from the edge of one a few
+long-horned cattle, with lowered heads, wound meekly homeward to the
+scant milking. The path they followed led towards the middle background
+of the picture, where the weather-stained and sagging roof of a
+farmhouse rose above the tops of aged cedars. Some of the branches,
+broken by the sleet and snow of winters, trailed their burdens from the
+thinned and desolated crests--as sometimes the highest hopes of the
+mind, after being beaten down by the tempests of the world, droop around
+it as memories of once transcendent aspirations.
+
+Where she stood in the dead autumn fields few sounds broke in upon the
+pervasive hush of the declining day. Only a cricket, under the warm clod
+near by, shrilled sturdily with cheerful forethought of drowsy
+hearthstones; only a lamb, timid of separation from the fold, called
+anxiously in the valley beyond the crest of the opposite hill; only the
+summoning whistle of a quail came sweet and clear from the depths of a
+neighbouring thicket. Through all the air floated that spirit of vast
+loneliness which at seasons seems to steal like a human mood over the
+breast of the great earth and leave her estranged from her transitory
+children. At such an hour the heart takes wing for home, if any home it
+have; or when, if homeless, it feels the quick stir of that yearning for
+the evening fireside with its half-circle of trusted faces, young and
+old, and its bonds of love and marriage, those deepest, most enchanting
+realities to the earthly imagination. The very landscape, barren and
+dead, but framing the simple picture of a home, spoke to the beholder
+the everlasting poetry of the race.
+
+But Sister Dolorosa, standing on the brow of the hill whence the whole
+picture could be seen, yet saw nothing of it. Out of the western sky
+there streamed an indescribable splendour of many-hued light, and far
+into the depths of this celestial splendour her steadfast eyes were
+gazing.
+
+She seemed caught up to some august height of holy meditation. Her
+motionless figure was so lightly poised that her feet, just visible
+beneath the hem of her heavy black dress, appeared all but rising from
+the dust of the pathway; her pure and gentle face was upturned, so that
+the dark veil fell away from her neck and shoulders; her lips were
+slightly parted; her breath came and went so imperceptibly that her
+hands did not appear to rise and fall as they clasped the cross to her
+bosom. Exquisite hands they were--most exquisite--gleaming as white as
+lilies against the raven blackness of her dress; and with startling
+fitness of posture, the longest finger of the right hand pointed like a
+marble index straight towards a richly-embroidered symbol over her left
+breast--the mournful symbol of a crimson heart pierced by a crimson
+spear. Whether attracted by the lily-white hands or by the red symbol, a
+butterfly, which had been flitting hither and thither in search of the
+gay races of the summer gone, now began to hover nearer, and finally
+lighted unseen upon the glowing spot. Then, as if disappointed not to
+find it the bosom of some rose, or lacking hope and strength for further
+quest--there it rested, slowly fanning with its white wings the tortured
+emblem of the divine despair.
+
+Lower sank the sun, deeper and more wide-spread the splendour of the
+sky, more rapt and radiant the expression of her face. A painter of the
+angelic school, seeing her standing thus, might have named the scene the
+transfiguration of angelic womanhood. What but heavenly images should
+she be gazing on; or where was she in spirit but flown out of the
+earthly autumn fields and gone away to sainted vespers in the
+cloud-built realm of her own fantasies? Perhaps she was now entering
+yon vast cathedral of the skies, whose white spires touched the blue
+eternity; or toiling devoutly up yon grey mount of Calvary, with its
+blackened crucifix falling from the summit.
+
+Standing thus towards the close of the day, Sister Dolorosa had not yet
+passed out of that ideal time which is the clear white dawn of life. She
+was still within the dim, half-awakened region of womanhood, whose
+changing mists are beautiful illusions, whose shadows about the horizon
+are the mysteries of poetic feeling, whose purpling east is the palette
+of the imagination, and whose up-springing skylark is blithe aspiration
+that has not yet felt the weight of the clod it soars within. Before her
+still was the full morning of reality and the burden of the mid-day
+hours.
+
+But if the history of any human soul could be perfectly known, who would
+wish to describe this passage from the dawn of the ideal to the morning
+of the real--this transition from life as it is imagined through hopes
+and dreams to life as it is known through action and submission? It is
+then that within the country of the soul occur events too vast,
+melancholy, and irreversible to be compared to anything less than the
+downfall of splendid dynasties, or the decay of an august religion. It
+is then that there leave us for ever bright, aerial spirits of the
+fancy, separation from whom is like grief for the death of the beloved.
+
+The moment of this transition had come in the life of Sister Dolorosa,
+and unconsciously she was taking her last look at the gorgeous western
+clouds from the hill-tops of her chaste life of dreams.
+
+A flock of frightened doves sped hurtling low over her head, and put an
+end to her reverie. Pressing the rosary to her lips, she turned and
+walked on towards the convent, not far away. The little footpath across
+the fields was well trodden and familiar, running as it did between the
+convent and the farmhouse behind her, in which lived old Ezra and Martha
+Cross; and as she followed its windings, her thoughts, as is likely to
+be true of the thoughts of nuns, came home from the clouds to the
+humblest concerns of the earth, and she began to recall certain
+incidents of the visit from which she was returning.
+
+The aged pair were well known to the Sisters. Their daughters had been
+educated at the convent; and, although these were married and scattered
+now, the tie then formed had since become more close through their age
+and loneliness. Of late word had come to the Mother Superior that old
+Martha was especially ailing, and Sister Dolorosa had several times been
+sent on visits of sympathy. For reasons better to be understood later
+on, these visits had had upon her the effect of an April shower on a
+thirsting rose. Her missions of mercy to the aged couple over, for a
+while the white taper of ideal consecration to the Church always burned
+in her bosom with clearer, steadier lustre, as though lit afresh from
+the Light eternal. But to-day she could not escape the conviction that
+these visits were becoming a source of disquietude; for the old couple,
+forgetting the restrictions which her vows put upon her very thoughts,
+had spoken of things which it was trying for her to hear--love-making,
+marriage, and children. In vain had she tried to turn away from the
+proffered share in such parental confidences. The old mother had even
+read aloud a letter from her eldest son, telling them of his approaching
+marriage, and detailing the hope and despair of his wooing. With burning
+cheeks and downcast eyes Sister Dolorosa had listened till the close and
+then risen and quickly left the house.
+
+The recollection of this returned to her now as she pursued her way
+along the footpath which descended into the valley; and there came to
+her, she knew not whence or why, a piercing sense of her own separation
+from all but the Divine love. The cold beauty of unfallen spirituality
+which had made her august as she stood on the hill-top died away, and
+her face assumed a tenderer, more appealing loveliness, as there crept
+over it, like a shadow over snow, that shy melancholy under which those
+women dwell who have renounced the great drama of the heart. She
+resolved to lay her trouble before the Mother Superior to-night, and ask
+that some other Sister be sent hereafter in her stead. And yet this
+resolution gave her no peace, but a throb of painful renunciation; and
+since she was used to the most scrupulous examination of her
+conscience, to detect the least presence of evil, she grew so disturbed
+by this state of her heart that she quite forgot the windings of the
+pathway along the edge of a field of corn, and was painfully startled
+when a wounded bird, lying on the ground a few feet in front of her,
+flapped its wings in a struggle to rise. Love and sympathy were the
+strongest principles of her nature, and with a little outcry she bent
+over and took it up; but scarce had she done so, when, with a final
+struggle, it died in her hand. A single drop of blood oozed out and
+stood on its burnished breast.
+
+She studied it--delicate throat, silken wings, wounded bosom--in the
+helpless way of a woman, unwilling to put it down and leave it, yet more
+unwilling to take it away. Many a time, perhaps, she had watched this
+very one flying to and fro among its fellows in the convent elms.
+Strange that any one should be hunting in these fields, and she looked
+quickly this way and that. Then, with a surprised movement of the hands
+that caused her to drop the bird at her feet, Sister Dolorosa
+discovered, standing half hidden in the edge of the pale yellow corn a
+few yards ahead, wearing a hunting-dress, and leaning on the muzzle of
+his gun, a young man who was steadfastly regarding her. For an instant
+they stood looking each into the other's face, taken so unprepared as to
+lose all sense of convention. Their meeting was as unforeseen as another
+far overhead, where two white clouds, long shepherded aimlessly and from
+opposite directions across the boundless pastures by the unreasoning
+winds, touched and melted into one. Then Sister Dolorosa, the first to
+regain self-possession, gathered her black veil closely about her face,
+and advancing with an easy, rapid step, bowed low with downcast eyes as
+she passed him, and hurried on towards the convent.
+
+She had not gone far before she resolved to say nothing about the
+gossip to which she had listened. Of late the Mother Superior had seemed
+worn with secret care and touched with solicitude regarding her. Would
+it be kind to make this greater by complaining like a weak child of a
+trivial annoyance? She took her conscience proudly to task for ever
+having been disturbed by anything so unworthy. And as for this meeting
+in the field, even to mention that would be to give it a certain
+significance, whereas it had none whatever. A stranger had merely
+crossed her path a moment and then gone his way. She would forget the
+occurrence herself as soon as she could recover from her physical
+agitation.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The Convent of the Stricken Heart is situated in that region of Kentucky
+which early became the great field of Catholic immigration. It was
+established in the first years of the present century, when mild
+Dominicans, starving Trappists, and fiery Jesuits hastened into the
+green wildernesses of the West with the hope of turning them into
+religious vineyards. Then, accordingly, derived from such sources as the
+impassioned fervour of Italy, the cold, monotonous endurance of
+Flanders, and the dying sorrows of ecclesiastical France, there sprang
+up this new flower of faith, unlike any that ever bloomed in pious
+Christendom. From the meagrest beginning, the order has slowly grown
+rich and powerful, so that it now has branches in many States, as far as
+the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
+
+The convent is situated in a retired region of country, remote from any
+village or rural highway. The very peace of the blue skies seems to
+descend upon it. Around the walls great elms stand like tranquil
+sentinels, or at a greater distance drop their shadows on the velvet
+verdure of the artificial lawns. Here, when the sun is hot, some
+white-veiled novice may be seen pacing soft-footed and slow, while she
+fixes her sad eyes upon pictures drawn from the literature of the Dark
+Ages, or fights the first battle with her young heart, which would
+beguile her to heaven by more jocund pathways. Drawn by the tranquillity
+of this retreat--its trees and flowers and dews--all singing-birds of
+the region come here to build and brood. No other sounds than their pure
+cadencies disturb the echoless air except the simple hymns around the
+altar, the vesper bell, the roll of the organ, the deep chords of the
+piano, or the thrum of the harp. It may happen, indeed, that some one of
+the Sisters, climbing to the observatory to scan the horizon of her
+secluded world, will catch the faint echoes of a young ploughman in a
+distant field lustily singing of the honest passion in his heart, or
+hear the shouts of happy harvesters as they move across the yellow
+plains. The population scattered around the convent domain are largely
+of the Catholic faith, and from all directions the country is threaded
+by footpaths that lead to the church as a common shrine. It was along
+one of these that Sister Dolorosa, as has been said, hastened homeward
+through the falling twilight.
+
+When she reached the convent, instead of seeking the Mother Superior as
+heretofore with news from old Martha, she stole into the shadowy church
+and knelt for a long time in wordless prayer--wordless, because no
+petition that she could frame appeared inborn and quieting. An
+unaccountable remorse gnawed the heart out of language. Her spirit
+seemed parched, her will was deadened as by a blow. Trained to the most
+rigorous introspection, she entered within herself and penetrated to the
+deepest recesses of her mind to ascertain the cause. The bright flame of
+her conscience thus employed was like the turning of a sunbeam into a
+darkened chamber to reveal the presence of a floating grain of dust.
+But nothing could be discovered. It was the undiscovered that rebuked
+her as it often rebukes us all--the undiscovered evil that has not yet
+linked itself to conscious transgression. At last she rose with a sigh,
+and, dejected, left the church.
+
+Later, the Mother Superior, noiselessly entering her room, found her
+sitting at the open window, her hands crossed on the sill, her eyes
+turned outward into the darkness.
+
+"Child, child," she said hurriedly, "how uneasy you have made me! Why
+are you so late returning?"
+
+"I went to the church when I came back, Mother," replied Sister
+Dolorosa, in a voice singularly low and composed. "I must have returned
+nearly an hour ago."
+
+"But even then it was late."
+
+"Yes, Mother; I stopped on the way back to look at the sunset. The
+clouds looked like cathedrals. And then old Martha kept me. You know it
+is difficult to get away from old Martha."
+
+The Mother Superior laughed slightly, as though her anxiety had been
+removed. She was a woman of commanding presence, with a face full of
+dignity and sweetness, but furrowed by lines of difficult resignation.
+
+"Yes; I know," she answered. "Old Martha's tongue is like a terrestrial
+globe; the whole world is mapped out on it, and a little movement of it
+will show you a continent. How is her rheumatism?"
+
+"She said it was no worse," replied Sister Dolorosa absently.
+
+The Mother Superior laughed again. "Then it must be better. Rheumatism
+is always either better or worse."
+
+"Yes, Mother."
+
+This time the tone caught the Mother Superior's ear. "You seem tired.
+Was the walk too long?"
+
+"I enjoyed the walk, Mother. I do not feel tired."
+
+They had been sitting on opposite sides of the room. The Mother Superior
+now crossed, and, laying her hand softly on Sister Dolorosa's head,
+pressed it backward and looked fondly down into the upturned eyes.
+
+"Something troubles you. What has happened?"
+
+There is a tone that goes straight to the heart of women in trouble. If
+there are tears hidden, they gather in the eyes. If there is any
+confidence to give, it is given then.
+
+A tremor, like that of a child with an unspent sob, passed across Sister
+Dolorosa's lips, but her eyes were tearless.
+
+"Nothing has happened, Mother. I do not know why, but I feel disturbed
+and unhappy." This was the only confidence that she had to give.
+
+The Mother Superior passed her hand slowly across the brow, white and
+smooth like satin. Then she sat down, and as Sister Dolorosa slipped to
+the floor beside her she drew the young head to her lap and folded her
+aged hands upon it. What passionate, barren loves haunt the hearts of
+women in convents! Between these two there existed a tenderness more
+touching than the natural love of mother and child.
+
+"You must not expect to know at all times," she said, with grave
+gentleness. "To be troubled without any visible cause is one of the
+mysteries of our nature. As you grow older you will understand this
+better. We are forced to live in conscious possession of all faculties,
+all feelings, whether or not there are outward events to match them.
+Therefore you must expect to have anxiety within when your life is
+really at peace without; to have moments of despair when no failure
+threatens; to have your heart wrung with sympathy when no object of
+sorrow is nigh; to be spent with the need of loving when there is no
+earthly thing to receive your love. This is part of woman's life, and of
+all women, especially those who, like you, must live, not to stifle the
+tender, beautiful forces of nature, but to ennoble and unite them into
+one divine passion. Do not think, therefore, to escape these hours of
+heaviness and pain. No saint ever walked this earth without them.
+Perhaps the lesson to be gained is this: that we may feel things before
+they happen, so that if they do happen we shall be disciplined to bear
+them."
+
+The voice of the Mother Superior had become low and meditative; and,
+though resting on the bowed head, her eyes seemed fixed on events long
+past. After the silence of a few moments she continued in a brighter
+tone--
+
+"But, my child, I know the reason of _your_ unhappiness. I have warned
+you that excessive ardour would leave you overwrought and nervous; that
+you were being carried too far by your ideals. You live too much in your
+sympathies and your imagination. Patience, my little St. Theresa! No
+saint was ever made in a day, and it has taken all the centuries of the
+Church to produce its martyrs. Only think that your life is but begun;
+there will be time enough to accomplish everything. I have been watching,
+and I know. This is why I send _you_ to old Martha. I want you to have
+the rest, the exercise, the air of the fields. Go again to-morrow, and take
+her the ointment. I found it while you were gone to-day. It has been in the
+Church for centuries, and you know this bottle came from blessed Loretto in
+Italy. It may do her some good. And, for the next few days, less reading
+and study."
+
+"Mother!" Sister Dolorosa spoke as though she had not been listening.
+"What would become of me if I should ever--if any evil should ever
+befall me?"
+
+The Mother Superior stretched her hands out over the head on her knees
+as some great, fierce, old, grey eagle, scarred and strong with the
+storms of life, might make a movement to shield its imperilled young.
+The tone in which Sister Dolorosa had spoken startled her as the
+discovered edge of a precipice. It was so quiet, so abrupt, so terrifying
+with its suggestion of an abyss. For a moment she prayed silently and
+intensely.
+
+"Heaven mercifully shield you from harm!" she then said, in an
+awestricken whisper. "But, timid lamb, what harm can come to you?"
+
+Sister Dolorosa suddenly rose and stood before the Mother Superior.
+
+"I mean," she said, with her eyes on the floor and her voice scarcely
+audible--"I mean--if I should ever fail, would you cast me out?"
+
+"My child!--Sister!--Sister Dolorosa!--Cast you out!"
+
+The Mother Superior started up and folded her arms about the slight dark
+figure, which at once seemed to be standing aloof with infinite
+loneliness. For some time she sought to overcome this difficult,
+singular mood.
+
+"And now, my daughter," she murmured at last, "go to sleep and forget
+these foolish fears. I am near you!" There seemed to be a fortress of
+sacred protection and defiance in these words; but the next instant her
+head was bowed, her upward-pointing finger raised in the air, and in a
+tone of humble self-correction she added: "Nay, not I; the Sleepless
+guards you! Good-night."
+
+Sister Dolorosa lifted her head from the strong shoulder and turned her
+eyes, now luminous, upon the troubled face.
+
+"Forgive me, Mother!" she said, in a voice of scornful resolution.
+"Never--never again will I disturb you with such weakness as I have
+shown to-night. I _know_ that no evil can befall me! Forgive me, Mother.
+Good-night."
+
+While she sleeps learn her history. Pauline Cambron was descended from
+one of those sixty Catholic families of Maryland that formed a league in
+1785 for the purpose of emigrating to Kentucky without the rending of
+social ties or separation from the rites of their ancestral faith. Since
+then the Kentucky branch of the Cambrons has always maintained friendly
+relations with the Maryland branch, which is now represented by one of
+the wealthy and cultivated families of Baltimore. On one side the
+descent is French; and, as far back as this can be traced, there runs a
+tradition that some of the most beautiful of its women became barefoot
+Carmelite nuns in the various monasteries of France or on some
+storm-swept island of the Mediterranean Sea.
+
+The first of the Kentucky Cambrons settled in that part of the State in
+which, nearly a hundred years later, lived the last generation of
+them--the parents of Pauline. Of these she was the only child, so that
+upon her marriage depended the perpetuation of the Kentucky family. It
+gives to the Protestant mind a startling insight into the possibilities
+of a woman's life and destiny in Kentucky to learn the nature of the
+literature by which her sensitive and imaginative character was from the
+first impressed. This literature covers a field wholly unknown to the
+ordinary student of Kentucky history. It is not to be found in
+well-known works, but in the letters, reminiscences, and lives of
+foreign priests, and in the kindling and heroic accounts of the
+establishment of Catholic missions. It abounds in such stories as those
+of a black friar fatally thrown from a wild horse in the pathless
+wilderness; of a grey friar torn to pieces by a saw-mill; of a starving
+white friar stretched out to die under the green canopy of an oak; of
+priests swimming half-frozen rivers with the sacred vestments in their
+teeth; of priests hewing logs for a hut in which to celebrate the mass;
+of priests crossing and recrossing the Atlantic and traversing Italy and
+Belgium and France for money and pictures and books; of devoted women
+laying the foundation of powerful convents in half-ruined log-cabins,
+shivering on beds of straw sprinkled on the ground, driven by poverty to
+search in the wild woods for dyes with which to give to their motley
+worldly apparel the hue of the cloister, and dying at last, to be laid
+away in pitiless burial without coffin or shroud.
+
+Such incidents were to her the more impressive since happening in part
+in the region where lay the Cambron estate; and while very young she was
+herself repeatedly taken to visit the scenes of early religious
+tragedies. Often, too, around the fireside there was proud reference to
+the convent life of old France and to the saintly zeal of the
+Carmelites; and once she went with her parents to Baltimore and
+witnessed the taking of the veil by a cousin of hers--a scene that
+afterwards burned before her conscience as a lamp before a shrine.
+
+Is it strange if under such influences, living in a country place with
+few associates, reading in her father's library books that were to be
+had on the legends of the monastic orders and the lives of the
+saints--is it strange if to the young Pauline Cambron this world before
+long seemed little else than the battle-field of the Church, the ideal
+man in it a monk, the ideal woman a nun, the human heart a solemn
+sacrifice to Heaven, and human life a vast, sad pilgrimage to the shrine
+eternal?
+
+Among the places which had always appealed to her imagination as one of
+the heroic sites of Kentucky history was the Convent of the Stricken
+Heart, not far away. Whenever she came hither she seemed to be treading
+on sacred ground. Happening to visit it one summer day before her
+education was completed, she asked to be sent hither for the years that
+remained. When these were past, here, with the difficult consent of her
+parents, who saw thus perish the last hope of the perpetuation of the
+family, she took the white veil. Here at last she hid herself beneath
+the black. Her whole character at this stage of its unfolding may be
+understood from the name she assumed--Sister Dolorosa. With this name
+she wished not merely to extinguish her worldly personality, but to
+clothe herself with a lifelong expression of her sympathy with the
+sorrows of the world. By this act she believed that she would attain a
+change of nature so complete that the black veil of Sister Dolorosa
+would cover as in a funeral urn the ashes which had once been the heart
+of Pauline Cambron. And thus her conventual life began.
+
+But for those beings to whom the span on the summer-evening cloud is as
+nothing compared with that fond arch of beauty which it is a necessity
+of their nature to hang as a bow of promise above every beloved
+hope--for such dreamers the sadness of life lies in the dissipation of
+mystery and the disillusion of truth. When she had been a member of the
+order long enough to see things as they were, Sister Dolorosa found
+herself living in a large, plain, comfortable brick convent, situated in
+a retired and homely region of Southern Kentucky. Around her were plain
+nuns with the invincible contrariety of feminine temperament. Before her
+were plain duties. Built up around her were plain restrictions. She had
+rushed with outstretched arms towards poetic mysteries, and clasped
+prosaic reality.
+
+As soon as the lambent flame of her spirit had burned over this new
+life, as a fire before a strong wind rushes across a plain, she one day
+surveyed it with that sense of reality which sometimes visits the
+imaginative with such appalling vividness. Was it upon this dreary waste
+that her soul was to play out its drama of ideal womanhood?
+
+She answered the question in the only way possible to such a nature as
+hers. She divided her life in twain. Half, with perfect loyalty, she
+gave out to duty; the other, with equal loyalty, she stifled within. But
+perhaps this is no uncommon lot--this unmating of the forces of the
+mind, as though one of two singing-birds should be released to fly forth
+under the sky, while the other--the nobler singer--is kept voiceless in
+a darkened chamber.
+
+But the Sisters of the Stricken Heart are not cloistered nuns. Their
+chief vow is to go forth into the world to teach. Scarcely had Sister
+Dolorosa been intrusted with work of this kind before she conceived an
+aspiration to become a great teacher of history or literature, and
+obtained permission to spend extra hours in the convent library on a
+wider range of sacred reading. Here began a second era in her life.
+Books became the avenues along which she escaped from her present into
+an illimitable world. Her imagination, beginning to pine, now took wing
+and soared back to the remote, the splendid, the imperial, the august.
+Her sympathies, finding nothing around her to fix upon, were borne afar
+like winged seed and rooted on the colossal ruins of the centuries. Her
+passion for beauty fed on holy art. She lived at the full flood of life
+again.
+
+If in time revulsion came, she would live a shy, exquisite, hidden life
+of poetry in which she herself played the historic roles. Now she would
+become a powerful abbess of old, ruling over a hundred nuns in an
+impregnable cloister. To the gates, stretched on a litter, wounded to
+death, they bore a young knight of the Cross. She had the gates opened.
+She went forth and bent over him; heard his dying message; at his
+request drew the plighted ring from his finger to send to another land.
+How beautiful he was! How many masses--how many, many masses--she had
+celebrated for the peace of his soul! Now she was St. Agatha, tortured
+by the proconsul; now she lay faint and cold in an underground cell, and
+was visited by Thomas a Kempis, who read to her long passages from the
+_Imitation_. Or she would tire of the past, and making herself an actor
+in her own future, in a brief hour live out the fancied drama of all her
+crowded years.
+
+But whatever part she took in this dream existence and beautiful
+passion-play of the soul, nothing attracted her but the perfect. For the
+commonplace she felt a guileless scorn.
+
+Thus for some time these unmated lives went on--the fixed outward life
+of duty, and the ever-wandering inner life of love. In mid-winter,
+walking across the shining fields, you have come to some little
+frost-locked stream. How mute and motionless! You set foot upon it, the
+ice is broken, and beneath is musical running water. Thus under the
+chaste rigid numbness of convent existence the heart of Sister Dolorosa
+murmured unheard and hurried away unseen to plains made warm and green
+by her imagination. But the old may survive upon memories; the young
+cannot thrive upon hope. Love, long reaching outward in vain, returns to
+the heart as self-pity. Sympathies, if not supported by close realities,
+fall in upon themselves like the walls of a ruined house. At last,
+therefore, even the hidden life of Sister Dolorosa grew weary of the
+future and the past, and came home to the present.
+
+The ardour of her studies and the rigour of her duties combined--but
+more than either that wearing away of the body by a restless mind--had
+begun to affect her health. Both were relaxed, and she was required to
+spend as much time as possible in the garden of the convent. It was like
+lifting a child that has become worn out with artificial playthings to
+an open window to see the flowers. With inexpressible relief she turned
+from mediaeval books to living nature; and her beautiful imagination,
+that last of all faculties to fail a human being in an unhappy lot, now
+began to bind nature to her with fellowships which quieted the need of
+human association. She had long been used to feign correspondences with
+the fathers of the Church; she now established intimacies with dumb
+companions, and poured out her heart to them in confidence.
+
+The distant woods slowly clothing themselves in green; the faint perfume
+of the wild rose, running riot over some rotting fence; the majestical
+clouds about the sunset; the moon dying in the spectral skies; the
+silken rustling of doves' wings parting the soft foliage of the
+sentinel elms; landscapes of frost on her window-pane; crumbs in winter
+for the sparrows on the sill; violets under the leaves in the convent
+garden; myrtle on the graves of the nuns--such objects as these became
+the means by which her imprisoned life was released. On the sensuous
+beauty of the world she spent the chaste ravishments of her virginal
+heart. Her love descended on all things as in the night the dew fills
+and bends down the cups of the flowers.
+
+A few of these confidences--written on slips of paper, and no sooner
+written than cast aside--are given here. They are addressed severally to
+a white violet, an English sparrow, and a butterfly.
+
+"I have taken the black veil, but thou wearest the white, and thou
+dwellest in dim cloisters of green leaves--in the domed and
+many-pillared little shrines that line the dusty roadside, or seem more
+fitly built in the depths of holy woodlands. How often have I drawn near
+with timid steps, and, opening the doors of thy tiny oratories, found
+thee bending at thy silent prayers--bending so low that thy lips touched
+the earth, while the slow wind rang thine Angelus! Wast thou blooming
+anywhere near when He came into the wood of the thorn and the olive?
+Didst thou press thy cool face against His bruised feet? Had I been
+thou, I would have bloomed at the foot of the Cross, and fed His failing
+lungs with my last breath. Time never destroys thee, little sister, or
+stains thy whiteness; and thou wilt be bending at thy prayers among the
+green graves on the twilight hillside ages after I who lie below have
+finished mine. Pray for me then, pray for thine erring sister, thou
+pure-souled violet!"
+
+"How cold thou art! Shall I take thee in and warm thee on my bosom? Ah,
+no! For I know who thou art! Not a bird, but a little brown mendicant
+friar, begging barefoot in the snow. And thou livest in a cell under the
+convent eaves opposite my window. What ugly feet thou hast, little
+Father! And the thorns are on thy toes instead of about thy brow. That
+is a bad sign for a saint. I saw thee in a brawl the other day with a
+mendicant brother of thine order, and thou drovest him from roof to roof
+and from icy twig to twig, screaming and wrangling in a way to bring
+reproach upon the Church. Thou shouldst learn to defend a thesis more
+gently. Who is it that visits thy cell so often? A penitent to confess?
+And dost thou shrive her freely? I'd never confess to thee, thou cross
+little Father! Thou'dst have no mercy on me if I sinned, as sin I must
+since human I am. The good God is very good to thee that He keeps thee
+from sinning while He leaves me to do wrong. Ah, if it were but natural
+for me to be perfect! But that, little Father, is my idea of heaven. In
+heaven it will be natural for me to be perfect. I'll feed thee no longer
+than the winter lasts, for then thou'lt be a monk no longer, but a bird
+again. And canst thou tell me why? Because, when the winter is gone,
+thou'lt find a mate, and wert thou a monk thou'dst have none. For thou
+knowest perfectly well, little Father, that monks do not wed."
+
+"No fitting emblem of my soul art thou, fragile Psyche, mute and
+perishable lover of the gorgeous earth. For my soul has no summer, and
+there is no earthly object of beauty that it may fly to and rest upon as
+thou upon the beckoning buds. It is winter where I live. All things are
+cold and white, and my soul flies only above fresh fields of flowerless
+snow. But no blast can chill its wings, no mire bedraggle, or rude touch
+fray. I often wonder whether thou art mute, or the divine framework of
+winged melodies. Thy very wings are shaped like harps for the winds to
+play upon. So, too, my soul is silent never, though none can hear its
+music. Dost thou know that I am held in exile in this world that I
+inhabit? And dost thou know the flower that I fly ever towards and
+cannot reach? It is the white flower of eternal perfection that blooms
+and waits for the soul in Paradise. Upon that flower I shall some day
+rest my wings as thou foldest thine on a faultless rose."
+
+Harmonising with this growing passion for the beauty of the world--a
+passion that marked her approach to riper womanhood--was the care she
+took of her person. The coarse, flowing habit of the order gave no hint
+of the curves and symmetry of the snow-white figure throbbing with eager
+life within; but it could not conceal an air of refinement and movements
+of the most delicate grace. There was likewise a suggestion of artistic
+study in the arrangement of her veil, and the sacred symbol on her bosom
+was embroidered with touches of elaboration.
+
+It was when she had grown weary of books, of the imaginary drama of her
+life, and the loveliness of Nature, that Sister Dolorosa was sent by the
+Mother Superior on those visits of sympathy to old Martha Cross; and it
+was during her return from one of them that there befell her that
+adventure which she had deemed too slight to mention.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Her outward history was that night made known to Gordon Helm by old
+Martha Cross. When Sister Dolorosa passed him he followed her at a
+distance until she entered the convent gates. It caused him subtle pain
+to think what harm might be lurking to ensnare her innocence. But
+subtler pain shot through him as he turned away, leaving her housed
+within that inaccessible fold.
+
+Who was she, and from what mission returning alone at such an hour
+across those darkening fields? He had just come to the edge of the corn
+and started to follow up the path in quest of shelter for the night,
+when he had caught sight of her on the near hill-top, outlined with
+startling distinctness against the jasper sky and bathed in a tremulous
+sea of lovely light. He had held his breath as she advanced towards
+him. He had watched the play of emotions in her face as she paused a few
+yards off, and her surprise at the discovery of him--the timid start;
+the rounding of the fawn-like eyes; the vermeil tint overspreading the
+transparent purity of her skin: her whole nature disturbed like a
+wind-shaken anemone. All this he now remembered as he returned along the
+footpath. It brought him to the door of the farm-house, where he
+arranged to pass the night.
+
+"You are a stranger in this part of the country," said the old housewife
+an hour later.
+
+When he came in she had excused herself from rising from her chair by
+the chimney-side; but from that moment her eyes had followed him--those
+eyes of the old which follow the forms of the young with such despairing
+memories. By the chimney-side sat old Ezra, powerful, stupid, tired,
+silently smoking, and taking little notice of the others. Hardly a chill
+was in the air, but for her sake a log blazed in the cavernous fireplace
+and threw its flickering light over the guest who sat in front.
+
+He possessed unusual physical beauty--of the type sometimes found in the
+men of those Kentucky families that have descended with little admixture
+from English stock; body and limbs less than athletic, but formed for
+strength and symmetry; hair brown, thick, and slightly curling over the
+forehead and above the ears; complexion blond, but mellowed into rich
+tints from sun and open air; eyes of dark grey-blue, beneath brows low
+and firm; a moustache golden-brown, thick, and curling above lips red
+and sensuous; a neck round and full, and bearing aloft a head well
+poised and moulded. The irresistible effect of his appearance was an
+impression of simple joyousness in life. There seemed to be stored up in
+him the warmth of the sunshine of his land; the gentleness of its
+fields; the kindness of its landscapes. And he was young--so young! To
+study him was to see that he was ripe to throw himself heedless into
+tragedy; and that for him, not once, but nightly, Endymion fell asleep
+to be kissed in his dreams by encircling love.
+
+"You are a stranger in this part of the country," said the old
+housewife, observing the elegance of his hunting-dress and his manner of
+high breeding.
+
+"Yes; I have never been in this part of Kentucky before." He paused; but
+seeing that some account of himself was silently waited for, and as
+though wishing at once to despatch the subject, he added: "I am from the
+blue-grass region, about a hundred miles northward of here. A party of
+us were on our way further south to hunt. On the train we fell in with a
+gentleman who told us he thought there were a good many birds around
+here, and I was chosen to stop over to ascertain. We might like to try
+this neighbourhood as we return, so I left my things at the station and
+struck out across the country this afternoon. I have heard birds in
+several directions, but had no dog. However, I shot a few hoves in a
+cornfield."
+
+"There are plenty of birds close around here, but most of them stay on
+the land that is owned by the Sisters, and they don't like to have it
+hunted over. All the land between here and the convent belongs to them
+except the little that's mine." This was said somewhat dryly by the old
+man, who knocked the ashes off his pipe without looking up.
+
+"I am sorry to have trespassed; but I was not expecting to find a
+convent out in the country, although I believe I have heard that there
+is an abbey of Trappist monks somewhere down here."
+
+"Yes; the abbey is not far from here."
+
+"It seems strange to me. I can hardly believe I am in Kentucky," he said
+musingly, and a solemn look came over his face as his thoughts went back
+to the sunset scene.
+
+The old housewife's keen eyes pierced to his secret mood.
+
+"You ought to go there."
+
+"Do they receive visitors at the convent?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Certainly; the Sisters are very glad to have strangers visit the place.
+It's a pity you hadn't come sooner. One of the Sisters was here this
+afternoon, and you might have spoken to her about it."
+
+This intelligence threw him into silence, and again her eyes fed upon
+his firelit face with inappeasable hunger. She was one of those women,
+to be met with the world over and in any station, who are remarkable for
+a love of youth and the world, which age, sickness, and isolation but
+deepen rather than subdue; and his sudden presence at her fireside was
+more than grateful. Not satisfied with what he had told, she led the
+talk back to the blue-grass country, and got from him other facts of his
+life, asking questions in regard to the features of that more fertile
+and beautiful land. In return she sketched the history of her own
+region, and dwelt upon its differences of soil, people, and
+religion--chiefly the last. It was while she spoke of the Order of the
+Stricken Heart that he asked a question he had long reserved.
+
+"Do you know the history of any of these Sisters?"
+
+"I know the history of all of them who are from Kentucky. I have known
+Sister Dolorosa since she was a child."
+
+"Sister Dolorosa!" The name pierced him like a spear.
+
+"The nun who was here to-day is called Sister Dolorosa. Her real name
+was Pauline Cambron."
+
+The fire died away. The old man left the room on some pretext and did
+not return. The story that followed was told with many details not given
+here--traced up from parentage and childhood with that fine tracery of
+the feminine mind which is like intricate embroidery, and which leaves
+the finished story wrought out on the mind like a complete design, with
+every point fastened to the sympathies.
+
+As soon as she had finished he rose quickly from a desire to be alone.
+So well had the story been knit to his mind that he felt it an
+irritation, a binding pain. He was bidding her good-night when she
+caught his hand. Something in his mere temperament drew women towards
+him.
+
+"Are you married?" she asked, looking into his eyes in the way with
+which those who are married sometimes exchange confidences.
+
+He looked quickly away, and his face flushed a little fiercely.
+
+"I am not married," he replied, withdrawing his hand.
+
+She threw it from her with a gesture of mock, pleased impatience; and
+when he had left the room, she sat for a while over the ashes.
+
+"If she were not a nun----" then she laughed and made her difficult way
+to her bed. But in the room above he sat down to think.
+
+Was this, then, not romance, but life in his own State? Vaguely he had
+always known that further south in Kentucky a different element of
+population had settled, and extended into the New World that mighty cord
+of ecclesiastical influence which of old had braided every European
+civilisation into an iron tissue of faith. But this knowledge had never
+touched his imagination. In his own land there were no rural Catholic
+churches, much less convents, and even among the Catholic congregations
+of the neighbouring towns he had not many acquaintances and fewer
+friends.
+
+To descend as a gay bird of passage, therefore, upon these secluded,
+sombre fields, and find himself in the neighbourhood of a powerful
+Order--to learn that a girl, beautiful, accomplished, of wealth and high
+social position, had of her own choice buried herself for life within
+its bosom--gave him a startling insight into Kentucky history as it was
+forming in his own time. Moreover--and this touched him especially--it
+gave him a deeper insight into the possibilities of woman's nature; for
+a certain narrowness of view regarding the true mission of woman in the
+world belonged to him as a result of education. In the conservative
+Kentucky society by which he had been largely moulded the opinion
+prevailed that woman fulfilled her destiny when she married well and
+adorned a home. All beauty, all accomplishments, all virtues and graces,
+were but means for attaining this end.
+
+As for himself, he came of a stock which throughout the generations of
+Kentucky life, and back of these along the English ancestry, had stood
+for the home; a race of men with the fireside traits: sweet-tempered,
+patient, and brave; well-formed and handsome; cherishing towards women a
+sense of chivalry; protecting them fiercely and tenderly; loving them
+romantically and quickly for the sake of beauty; marrying early, and
+sometimes at least holding towards their wives such faith, that these
+had no more to fear from all other women in the world than from all
+other men.
+
+Descended from such a stock and moulded by the social ideals of his
+region, Helm naturally stood for the home himself. And yet there was a
+difference. In a sense he was a product of the new Kentucky. His infancy
+had been rocked on the chasm of the Civil War; his childhood spent amid
+its ruins; his youth ruled by two contending spirits--discord and peace:
+and earliest manhood had come to him only in the morning of the new era.
+It was because the path of his life had thus run between light and shade
+that his nature was joyous and grave; only joy claimed him entirely as
+yet, while gravity asserted itself merely in the form of sympathy with
+anything that suffered, and a certain seriousness touching his own
+responsibility in life.
+
+Reflecting on this responsibility while his manhood was yet forming, he
+felt the need of his becoming a better, broader type of man, matching
+the better, broader age. His father was about his model of a gentleman;
+but he should be false to the admitted progress of the times were he not
+an improvement on his father. And since his father had, as judged by the
+ideals of the old social order, been a blameless gentleman of the rural
+blue-grass kind, with farm, spacious homestead, slaves, leisure, and a
+library,--to all of which, except the slaves, he would himself succeed
+upon his father's death--his dream of duty took the form of becoming a
+rural blue-grass gentleman of the newer type, reviving the best
+traditions of the past, but putting into his relations with his
+fellow-creatures an added sense of helpfulness, a broader sense of
+justice, and a certain energy of leadership in all things that made for
+a purer, higher human life. It will thus be seen that he took seriously
+not only himself, but the reputation of his State; for he loved it,
+people and land, with broad, sensitive tenderness, and never sought or
+planned for his future apart from civil and social ends.
+
+It was perhaps a characteristic of him as a product of the period that
+he had a mind for looking at his life somewhat abstractedly and with a
+certain thought-out plan; for this disposition of mind naturally belongs
+to an era when society is trembling upon the brink of new activities and
+forced to the discovery of new ideals. But he cherished no religious
+passion, being committed by inheritance to a mild, unquestioning,
+undeviating Protestantism. His religion was more in his conduct than in
+his prayers, and he tried to live its precepts instead of following them
+from afar. Still, his make was far from heroic. He had many faults; but
+it is less important to learn what these were than to know that, as far
+as he was aware of their existence, he was ashamed of them, and tried to
+overcome them.
+
+Such, in brief, were Pauline Cambron and Gordon Helm: coming from
+separate regions of Kentucky, descended from unlike pasts, moulded by
+different influences, striving towards ends in life far apart and
+hostile. And being thus, at last they slept that night.
+
+When she had been left alone, and had begun to prepare herself for bed,
+across her mind passed and repassed certain words of the Mother
+Superior, stilling her spirit like the waving of a wand of peace: "To be
+troubled without any visible cause is one of the mysteries of our
+nature." True, before she fell asleep there rose all at once a
+singularly clear recollection of that silent meeting in the fields; but
+her prayers fell thick and fast upon it like flakes of snow, until it
+was chastely buried from the eye of conscience; and when she slept, two
+tears, slowly loosened from her brain by some repentant dream, could
+alone have told that there had been trouble behind her peaceful eyes.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Sister Dolorosa was returning from her visit to old Martha on the
+following afternoon. When she awoke that morning she resolutely put away
+all thought of what had happened the evening before. She prayed oftener
+than usual that day. She went about all duties with unwonted fervour.
+When she set out in the afternoon, and reached the spot in the fields
+where the meeting had taken place, it was inevitable that a nature
+sensitive and secluded like hers should be visited by some question
+touching who he was and whither he had gone; for it did not even occur
+to her that he would ever cross her path again. Soon she reached old
+Martha's; and then--a crippled toad with a subtle tongue had squatted
+for an hour at the ear of Eve, and Eve, beguiled, had listened. And now
+she was again returning across the fields homeward. Homeward?
+
+Early that afternoon Helm had walked across the country to the station,
+some two miles off, to change his dress, with the view of going to the
+convent the next day. As he came back he followed the course which he
+had taken the day before, and this brought him into the same footpath
+across the fields.
+
+Thus they met the second time. When she saw him, had she been a bird,
+with one sudden bound she would have beaten the air down beneath her
+frightened wings and darted high over his head straight to the convent.
+But his step grew slower and his look expectant. When they were a few
+yards apart he stepped out of the path into the low, grey weeds of the
+field, and seemed ready to pause; but she had instinctively drawn her
+veil close, and was passing on. Then he spoke quickly.
+
+"I beg your pardon, but are strangers allowed to visit the convent?"
+
+There was no mistaking the courtesy of the tone. But she did not lift
+her face towards him. She merely paused, though seeming to shrink away.
+He saw the fingers of one hand lace themselves around the cross. Then a
+moment later, in a voice very low and gentle, she replied, "The Mother
+Superior is glad to receive visitors at the convent," and, bowing, moved
+away.
+
+He stood watching her with a quick flush of disappointment. Her voice,
+even more than her garb, had at once waved off approach. In his mind he
+had crossed the distance from himself to her so often that he had
+forgotten the actual abyss of sacred separation. Very thoughtfully he
+turned at last and took his way along the footpath.
+
+As he was leaving the farm-house the next day to go to the convent, Ezra
+joined him, merely saying that he was going also. The old man had few
+thoughts; but with that shrewd secretiveness which is sometimes found in
+the dull mind he kept his counsels to himself. Their walk was finished
+in silence, and soon the convent stood before them.
+
+Through a clear sky the wan light fell upon it as lifeless as though
+sent from a dead sun. The air hung motionless. The birds were gone. Not
+a sound fell upon the strained ear. Not a living thing relieved the eye.
+And yet within what tragedies and conflicts, what wounds and thorns of
+womanhood! Here, then, she lived and struggled and soared. An unearthly
+quietude came over him as he walked up the long avenue of elms,
+painfully jarred on by the noise of Ezra's shuffling feet among the dry
+leaves. Joyous life had retired to infinite remoteness; and over him,
+like a preternatural chill in the faint sunlight, crept the horror of
+this death in life. Strangely enough he felt at one and the same time a
+repugnance to his own nature of flesh and a triumphant delight in the
+possession of bodily health, liberty--the liberty of the world--and a
+mind unfettered by tradition.
+
+A few feet from the entrance an aged nun stepped from behind a hedgerow
+of shrubbery and confronted them.
+
+"Will you state your business?" she said coldly, glancing at Helm and
+fixing her eyes on Ezra, who for reply merely nodded to Helm.
+
+"I am a stranger in this part of the country, and heard that I would be
+allowed to visit the convent."
+
+"Are you a Catholic?"
+
+"No; I am a Protestant."
+
+"Are you acquainted with any of the young ladies in the convent?"
+
+"I am not."
+
+She looked him through and through. He met her scrutiny with frank
+unconsciousness.
+
+"Will you come in? I will take your name to the Mother Superior."
+
+They followed her into a small reception-room, and sat for a long time
+waiting. Then an inner door opened, and another aged nun, sweet-faced
+and gentle, entered and greeted them pleasantly, recognising Ezra as an
+acquaintance.
+
+"Another Sister will be sent to accompany us," she said, and sat down to
+wait, talking naturally the while to the old man. Then the door opened
+again, and the heart of Helm beat violently; there was no mistaking the
+form, the grace. She crossed to the Sister, and spoke in an undertone.
+
+"Sister Generose is engaged. Mother sent me in her place, Sister." Then
+she greeted Ezra and bowed to Helm, lifting to him an instant, but
+without recognition, her tremulous eyes. Her face had the whiteness of
+alabaster.
+
+"We will go to the church first," said the Sister, addressing Helm, who
+placed himself beside her, the others following.
+
+When they entered the church he moved slowly around the walls, trying to
+listen to his guide and to fix his thoughts upon the pictures and the
+architecture. Presently he became aware that Ezra had joined them, and
+as soon as pretext offered he looked back. In a pew near the door
+through which they had entered he could just see the kneeling form and
+bowed head of Sister Dolorosa. There she remained while they made the
+circuit of the building, and not until they were quitting it did she
+rise and again place herself by the side of Ezra. Was it her last prayer
+before her temptation?
+
+They walked across the grounds towards the old-fashioned flower-garden
+of the convent. The Sister opened the little latticed gate, and the
+others passed in. The temptation was to begin in the very spot where
+Love had long been wandering amid dumb companions.
+
+"Ezra!" called the aged Sister, pausing just inside the gate and looking
+down at some recently dug bulbs, "has Martha taken up her tender bulbs?
+The frost will soon be falling." The old man sometimes helped at the
+convent in garden work.
+
+"Who is this young man?" she inquired carelessly a few moments later.
+
+But Ezra was one of those persons who cherish a faint dislike of all
+present company. Moreover, he knew the good Sister's love of news. So he
+began to resist her with the more pleasure that he could at least evade
+her questions.
+
+"I don't know," he replied, with a mysterious shake of the head.
+
+"Come this way," she said beguilingly, turning aside into another walk,
+"and look at the chrysanthemums. How did you happen to meet him?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Sister Dolorosa and Helm found themselves walking slowly side by
+side down the garden-path--this being what he most had hoped for and she
+most had feared--there fell upon each a momentary silence of
+preparation. Speak she must; if only in speaking she might not err.
+Speak he could; if only in speaking he might draw from her more
+knowledge of her life, and in some becoming way cause her to perceive
+his interest in it.
+
+Then she, as his guide, keeping her face turned towards the border of
+flowers, but sometimes lifting it shyly to his, began with great
+sweetness and a little hurriedly, as if fearing to pause--
+
+"The garden is not pretty now. It is full of flowers, but only a few are
+blooming. These are daffodils. They bloomed in March, long ago. And here
+were spring beauties. They grow wild, and do not last long. The Mother
+Superior wished some cultivated in the garden, but they are better if
+let alone to grow wild. And here are violets, which come in April. And
+here is Adam and Eve, and tulips. They are gay flowers, and bloom
+together for company. You can see Adam and Eve a long way off, and they
+look better at a distance. These were the white lilies, but one of the
+Sisters died, and we made a cross. That was in June. Jump-up-Johnnies
+were planted in this bed, but they did not do well. It has been a bad
+year. A storm blew the hollyhocks down, and there were canker-worms in
+the roses. That is the way with the flowers: they fail one year, and
+they succeed the next. They would never fail if they were let alone. It
+is pleasant to see them starting out in the Spring to be perfect each in
+its own way. It is pleasant to water them and to help. But some will be
+perfect, and some will be imperfect, and no one can alter that. They are
+like the children in the school; only the flowers would all be perfect
+if they had their way, and the children would all be wrong if they had
+theirs--the poor, good children! This is touch-me-not. Perhaps you have
+never heard of any such flower. And there, next to it, is
+love-lies-bleeding. We have not much of that; only this one little
+plant." And she bent over and stroked it.
+
+His whole heart melted under the white radiance of her innocence. He had
+thought her older; now his feeling took the form of the purest delight
+in some exquisite child nature. And therefore, feeling thus towards her,
+and seeing the poor, dead garden with only common flowers, which
+nevertheless she separately loved, oblivious of their commonness, he
+said with sudden warmth, holding her eyes with his--
+
+"I wish you could see my mother's garden and the flowers that bloom in
+it." And as he spoke there came to him a vision of her as she might look
+in a certain secluded corner of it, where ran a trellised walk;
+over-clambering roses, pale golden, full blown or budding, and bent with
+dew; the May sun golden in the heavens; far and near birds singing and
+soaring in ecstasy; the air lulling the sense with perfume, quickening
+the blood with freshness; and there, within that frame of roses, her
+head bare and shining, her funereal garb for ever laid aside for one
+that matched the loveliest hue of living nature around, a flower at her
+throat, flowers in her hand, sadness gone from her face, there the pure
+and radiant incarnation of a too-happy world, this exquisite
+child-nature, advancing towards him with eyes of love.
+
+Having formed this picture, he could not afterwards destroy it; and as
+they resumed their walk he began very simply to describe his mother's
+garden, she listening closely because of her love for flowers, which had
+become companions to her, and merely saying dreamily, half to herself
+and with guarded courtesy half to him, "It must be beautiful."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The Mother Superior intends to make the garden larger next year, and to
+have fine flowers in it, Ezra. It has been a prosperous year in the
+school, and there will be money to spare. This row of lilacs is to be
+dug up, and the fence set back so as to take in the onion patch over
+there. When does he expect to go away?" The aged Sister had not made
+rapid progress.
+
+"I haven't heard him say," replied the old man.
+
+"Perhaps Martha has heard him say."
+
+Ezra only struck the toe of his stout boot with his staff.
+
+"The Mother Superior will want _you_ to dig up the lilacs, Ezra. You
+can do it better than any one else."
+
+The old man shook his head threateningly at the bushes. "I can settle
+them," he said.
+
+"Better than any one else. Has Martha heard him say when he is going
+away?"
+
+"To-morrow," he replied, conceding something in return for the lilacs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"These are the chrysanthemums. They are white, but some are perfect and
+some are imperfect, you see. Those that are perfect are the ones to feel
+proud of, but the others are the ones to love."
+
+"If all were perfect would you no longer love them?" he said gently,
+thinking how perfect she was and how easy it would be to love her.
+
+"If all were perfect, I could love all alike, because none would need to
+be loved more than others."
+
+"And when the flowers in the garden are dead, what do you find to love
+then?" he asked, laughing a little and trying to follow her mood.
+
+"It would not be fair to forget them because they are dead. But they are
+not dead; they go away for a season, and it would not be fair to forget
+them because they have gone away." This she said simply and seriously as
+though her conscience were dealing with human virtues and duties.
+
+"And are you satisfied to love things that are not present?" he asked,
+looking at her with sudden earnestness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The Mother Superior will wish him to take away a favourable impression
+of the convent," said the Sister. "Young ladies are sometimes sent to us
+from that region." And now, having gotten from Ezra the information she
+desired and turned their steps towards the others, she looked at Helm
+with greater interest.
+
+"Should you like to go upon the observatory?" she meekly asked, pointing
+to the top of the adjacent building. "From there you can see how far the
+convent lands extend. Besides, it is the only point that commands a view
+of the whole country."
+
+The scene of the temptation was to be transferred to the pinnacle of the
+temple.
+
+"It is not asking too much of you to climb so far for my pleasure?"
+
+"It is our mission to climb," she replied wearily; "and if our strength
+fails, we rest by the way."
+
+Of herself she spoke literally; for when they came to the topmost story
+of the building, from which the observatory was reached by a short
+flight of steps, she sank into a seat placed near as a resting-place.
+
+"Will you go above, Sister?" she said feebly. "I will wait here."
+
+On the way up, also, the old man had been shaking his head with a stupid
+look of alarm and muttering his disapproval.
+
+"There is a high railing, Ezra," she now said to him, "You could not
+fall." But he refused to go further; he suffered from vertigo.
+
+The young pair went up alone.
+
+For miles in all directions the landscape lay shimmering in the autumnal
+sunlight--a poor, rough, homely land, with a few farmhouses of the
+plainest kind. Briefly she traced for him the boundary of the convent
+domain. And then he, thinking proudly of his own region, now lying heavy
+in varied autumnal ripeness and teeming with noble, gentle animal life;
+with rolling pastures as green as May under great trees of crimson and
+gold; with flashing streams and placid sheets of water, and great
+secluded homesteads--he, in turn, briefly described it; and she, loving
+the sensuous beauty of the world, listened more dreamily, merely
+repeating over and over, half to herself, and with more guarded courtesy
+half to him, "It must be very beautiful."
+
+But whether she suddenly felt that she had yielded herself too far to
+the influence of his words and wished to counteract this, or whether she
+was aroused to offset his description by another of unlike interest,
+scarcely had he finished when she pointed towards a long stretch of
+woodland that lay like a mere wavering band of brown upon the western
+horizon.
+
+"It was through those woods," she said, her voice trembling slightly,
+"that the procession of Trappists marched behind the cross when they
+fled to this country from France. Beyond that range of hills is the home
+of the Silent Brotherhood. In this direction," she continued, pointing
+southward, "is the creek which used to be so deep in winter that the
+priests had to swim it as they walked from one distant mission to
+another in the wilderness, holding above the waves the crucifix and the
+sacrament. Under that tree down there the Father who founded this
+convent built with his own hands the cabin that was the first church,
+and hewed out of logs the first altar. It was from those trees that the
+first nuns got the dyes for their vestments. On the floor of that cabin
+they sometimes slept in mid-winter with no other covering than an armful
+of straw. Those were heroic days."
+
+If she had indeed felt some secret need to recover herself by reciting
+the heroisms of local history, she seemed to have succeeded. Her face
+kindled with emotion; and as he watched it he forgot even her creed in
+this revelation of her nature, which touched in him also something
+serious and exalted. But as she ceased he asked, with peculiar
+interest--
+
+"Are there any Kentuckians among the Trappist Fathers?"
+
+"No," she replied, after a momentary silence, and in a voice lowered to
+great sadness. "There was one a few years ago. His death was a great
+blow to the Fathers. They had hoped that he might some day become the
+head of the order in Kentucky. He was called Father Palemon."
+
+For another moment nothing was said. They were standing side by side,
+looking towards that quarter of the horizon which she had pointed out as
+the site of the abbey. Then he spoke meditatively, as though his mind
+had gone back unawares to some idea that was very dear to him--
+
+"No, this does not seem much like Kentucky; but, after all, every
+landscape is essentially the same to me if there are homes on it. Poor
+as this country is, still it is history; it is human life. Here are the
+eternal ties and relations. Here are the eternal needs and duties;
+everything that keeps the world young and the heart at peace. Here is
+the unchanging expression of our common destiny, as creatures who must
+share all things, and bear all things, and be bound together in life and
+death."
+
+"Sister!" called up the nun waiting below, "is not the wind blowing?
+Will you not take cold?"
+
+"The wind is not blowing, Sister, but I am coming."
+
+They turned their faces outward upon the landscape once more. Across it
+wound the little footpath towards the farm-house in the distance. By a
+common impulse their eyes rested upon the place of their first meeting.
+He pointed to it.
+
+"I shall never forget that spot," he said impulsively.
+
+"Nor I!"
+
+Her words were not spoken. They were not uttered within. As unexpectedly
+and silently as in the remotest profound of the heavens at midnight some
+palest little star is loosened from its orbit, shoots a brief span, and
+disappears, this confession of hers traced its course across the depths
+of her secret consciousness; but, having made it to herself, she kept
+her eyes veiled, and did not look at him again that day.
+
+"I think you have now seen everything that could be of any interest,"
+the aged Sister said doubtfully, when they stood in the yard below.
+
+"The place is very interesting to me," he answered, looking around that
+he might discover some way of prolonging his visit.
+
+"The graveyard, Sister. We might go there." The barely audible words
+were Sister Dolorosa's. The scene of the temptation was to be
+transferred for the third time.
+
+They walked some distance down a sloping hillside, and stepped softly
+within the sacred enclosure. A graveyard of nuns! O Mother Earth,
+all-bearing, passion-hearted mother! Thou that sendest love one for
+another into thy children, from the least to the greatest, as thou
+givest them life! Thou that livest by their loves and their myriad
+plightings of troth and myriad marriages! With what inconsolable sorrow
+must thou receive back upon thy bosom, the chaste dust of lorn virgins,
+whose bosoms thou didst mould for a lover's arms and a babe's slumbers!
+As marble vestals of the ancient world, buried and lost, they lie,
+chiselled into a fixed attitude of prayer through the silent centuries.
+
+The aspect and spirit of the place: the simple graves placed side by
+side like those of the nameless poor, or of soldiers fallen in an
+unfriendly land: the rude wooden cross at the head of each, bearing the
+sacred name of her who was dust below; the once chirruping nests of
+birds here and there in the grass above the songless lips; the sad
+desolation of this unfinished end--all were the last thing needed to
+wring the heart of Helm with dumb pity and an ungovernable anguish of
+rebellion. This, then, was to be her portion. His whole nature cried
+aloud against it. His ideas of human life, civilisation, his age, his
+country, his State, rose up in protest. He did not heed the words of the
+Sister beside him. His thoughts were with Sister Dolorosa, who followed
+with Ezra in a silence which she had but once broken since her last
+words to him. He could have caught her up and escaped back with her into
+the liberty of life, into the happiness of the world.
+
+Unable to endure the place longer, he himself led the way out. At the
+gate the Sister fell behind with Ezra.
+
+"He seems deeply impressed by his visit," she said in an undertone, "and
+should bear with him a good account of the convent. Note what he says,
+Ezra. The order wants friends in Kentucky, where it was born and has
+flourished;" and looking at Sister Dolorosa and Helm, who were a short
+distance in front, she added to herself--
+
+"In her, more than in any other one of us, he will behold the perfect
+spiritual type of the convent. By her he will be made to feel the power
+of the order to consecrate women, in America, in Kentucky, to the
+service of the everlasting Church."
+
+Meantime, Sister Dolorosa and Helm walked side by side in a silence
+that neither could break. He was thinking of her as a woman of
+Kentucky--of his own generation--and trying to understand the motive
+that had led her to consecrate herself to such a life. His own ideal of
+duty was so different.
+
+"I have never thought," he said at length, in a voice lowered so as to
+reach her ear alone--"I have never thought that my life would not be
+full of happiness. I have never supposed I could help being happy if I
+did my duty."
+
+She made no reply, and again they walked on in silence and drew near the
+convent building. There was so much that he wished to say, but scarcely
+one of his thoughts that he dared utter. At length he said, with
+irrepressible feeling--
+
+"I wish your life did not seem to me so sad. I wish, when I go away
+to-morrow, that I could carry away, with my thoughts of this place, the
+thought that you are happy. As long as I remember it I wish I could
+remember you as being happy."
+
+"You have no right to remember me at all," she said quickly, speaking
+for the nun and betraying the woman.
+
+"But I cannot help it," he said.
+
+"Remember me, then, not as desiring to be happy, but as living to
+become blessed."
+
+This she said, breaking the long silence which had followed upon his too
+eager exclamation. Her voice had become hushed into unison with her meek
+and patient words. And then she paused, and, turning, waited for the
+Sister to come up beside them. Nor did she even speak to him again,
+merely bowing without lifting her eyes when, a little later, he thanked
+them and took his leave.
+
+In silence he and the old man returned to the farm-house, for his
+thoughts were with her. In the garden she had seemed to him almost as a
+child, talking artlessly of her sympathies and ties with mute
+playthings; then on the heights she had suddenly revealed herself as the
+youthful transcendent devotee; and finally, amid the scenes of death,
+she had appeared a woman too quickly aged and too early touched with
+resignation. He did not know that the effect of convent life is to force
+certain faculties into maturity while others are repressed into
+unalterable unripeness; so that in such instances as Sister Dolorosa's
+the whole nature resembles some long, sloping mountain-side, with an
+upper zone of ever-lingering snow for childhood, below this a green
+vernal belt for maidenhood, and near the foot fierce summer heats and
+summer storms for womanhood. Gradually his plan of joining his friends
+the next day wavered for reasons that he could hardly have named.
+
+And Sister Dolorosa--what of her when the day was over? Standing that
+night in a whitewashed, cell-like room, she took off the heavy black
+veil and hood which shrouded her head from all human vision, and then
+unfastening at waist and throat the heavier black vestment of the order,
+allowed it to slip to the floor, revealing a white under-habit of the
+utmost simplicity of design. It was like the magical transformation of a
+sorrow-shrouded woman back into the shape of her own earliest
+maidenhood.
+
+Her hair, of the palest gold, would, if unshorn, have covered her figure
+in a soft, thick golden cloud; but shorn, it lay about her neck and ears
+in large, lustrous waves that left defined the contour of her beautiful
+head, and gave to it the aerial charm that belongs to the joyousness of
+youth. Her whole figure was relaxed into a posture slightly drooping;
+her bare arms, white as the necks of swans, hung in forgotten grace at
+her sides; her eyes, large, dark, poetic, and spiritual, were bent upon
+the floor, so that the lashes left their shadows on her cheeks, while
+the delicate, overcircling brows were arched high with melancholy. As
+the nun's funereal robes had slipped from her person had her mind
+slipped back into the past, that she stood thus, all the pure oval of
+her sensitive face stilled to an expression of brooding pensiveness? On
+the urn which held the ashes of her heart had some legend of happy
+shapes summoned her fondly to return?--some garden? some radiant
+play-fellow of childhood summers, already dim but never to grow dimmer?
+
+Sighing deeply, she stepped across the dark circle on the floor which
+was the boundary of her womanhood. As she did so her eyes rested on a
+small table where lay a rich veil of white that she had long been
+embroidering for a shrine of the Virgin. Slowly, still absently, she
+walked to it, and, taking it up, threw it over her head, so that the
+soft fabric enveloped her head and neck and fell in misty folds about
+her person; she thinking the while only of the shrine; she looking down
+on this side and on that, and wishing only to judge how well this design
+and that design, patiently and prayerfully wrought out, might adorn the
+image of the Divine Mother in the church of the convent.
+
+But happening to be standing quite close to the white wall of the room
+with the lamp behind her, when she raised her eyes she caught sight of
+her shadow, and with a low cry clasped her hands, and for an instant,
+breathless, surveyed it. No mirrors are allowed in the convent. Since
+entering it Sister Dolorosa had not seen a reflection of herself, except
+perhaps her shadow in the sun or her face in a troubled basin of water.
+Now, with one overwhelming flood of womanly self-consciousness, she bent
+forward, noting the outline of her uncovered head, of her bared neck and
+shoulders and arms. Did this accidental adorning of herself in the veil
+of a bride, after she had laid aside the veil of the Church, typify her
+complete relapse of nature? And was this the lonely marriage-moment of
+her betrayed heart?
+
+For a moment, trembling, not before the image on the wall, but before
+that vivid mirror which memory and fancy set before every woman when no
+real mirror is nigh, she indulged her self-surrender to thoughts that
+covered her, on face and neck, with a rosy cloud more maidenly than the
+white mist of the veil. Then, as if recalled by some lightning stroke of
+conscience, with fearful fingers she lifted off the veil, extinguished
+the lamp, and, groping her way on tiptoe to the bedside, stood beside
+it, afraid to lie down, afraid to pray, her eyes wide open in the
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+Sleep gathers up the soft threads of passion that have been spun by us
+during the day, and weaves them into a tapestry of dreams on which we
+see the history of our own characters. We awake to find our wills more
+inextricably caught in the tissues of their own past; we stir, and
+discover that we are the heirs to our dead selves of yesterday, with a
+larger inheritance of transmitted purpose.
+
+When Gordon awoke the next morning, among his first thoughts was the
+idea of going on to join his friends that day, and this thought now
+caused him unexpected depression. Had he been older, he might have
+accepted this unwillingness to go away as the best reason for leaving;
+but, young, and habitually self-indulgent towards his desires when they
+were not connected with vice, he did not trouble himself with any
+forecast of consequences.
+
+"You ought not to go away to-day," the old housewife said to him in the
+morning, wishing to detain him through love of his company. "To-morrow
+will be Sunday, and you ought to go to vespers and hear Sister Dolorosa
+sing. There is not such another voice in any convent in Kentucky."
+
+"I will stay," he replied quickly; and the next afternoon he was seated
+in the rear of the convent church, surrounded by rural Catholic
+worshippers who had assembled from the neighbourhood. The entire front
+of the nave on one side was filled with the black-veiled Sisters of the
+order; that on the other with the white-veiled novices--two
+far-journeying companies of consecrated souls who reminded him in the
+most solemn way how remote, how inaccessible, was that young pilgrim
+among them of whom for a long time now he had been solely thinking. With
+these two companies of sacrificial souls before him he understood her
+character in a new light.
+
+He beheld her much as a brave, beautiful boy volunteer, who, suddenly
+waving a bright, last adieu to gay companions in some gay-streeted town,
+from motives of the loftiest heroism, takes his place in the rear of
+passing soldiery, marching to misguided death: who, from the rear,
+glowing with too impetuous ardour, makes his way from rank to rank ever
+towards the front; and who, at last, bearing the heavy arms and wearing
+the battle-stained uniform of a veteran, steps forward to the van at
+the commander's side, and sets his fresh, pure face undaunted towards
+destruction. As he thought of her thus, deeper forces stirred within his
+nature than had ever been aroused by any other woman. In comparison
+every one that he had known became for the moment commonplace, human
+life as he was used to it gross and uninspiring, and his own ideal of
+duty a dwarfish mixture of selfishness and luxurious triviality.
+Impulsive in his recognition of nobleness of nature wherever he
+perceived it, for this devotedness of purpose he began to feel the
+emotion which of all that ever visit the human heart is at once the most
+humbling, the most uplifting, and the most enthralling--the hero-worship
+of a strong man for a fragile woman.
+
+The service began. As it went on he noticed here and there among those
+near him such evidences of restlessness as betray in a seated throng
+high-wrought expectancy of some pleasure too long deferred. But at last
+these were succeeded by a breathless hush, as, from the concealed
+organ-loft above, a low, minor prelude was heard, groping and striving
+nearer and nearer towards the concealed motive, as a little wave creeps
+further and further along a melancholy shore. Suddenly, beautiful and
+clear, more tender than love, more sorrowful than death, there floated
+out upon the still air of the church the cry of a woman's soul that has
+offended, and that, shrinking from every prayer of speech, pours forth
+its more intense, inarticulate, and suffering need through the diviner
+faculty of song.
+
+At the sound every ear was strained to listen. Hitherto the wont had
+been to hear that voice bear aloft the common petition as calmly as the
+incense rose past the altar to the roof; but now it quivered over
+troubled depths of feeling, it rose freighted with the burden of
+self-accusal. Still higher and higher it rose, borne triumphantly upward
+by love and aspiration, until the powers of the singer's frame seemed
+spending themselves in one superhuman effort of the soul to make its
+prayer understood to the divine forgiveness. Then, all at once, at the
+highest note, as a bird soaring towards the sun has its wings broken by
+a shot from below, it too broke, faltered, and there was a silence. But
+only for a moment: another voice, poor and cold, promptly finished the
+song; the service ended; the people poured out of the church.
+
+When Gordon came out there were a few groups standing near the door
+talking; others were already moving homeward across the grounds. Not
+far off he observed a lusty young countryman, with a frank, winning
+face, who appeared to be waiting, while he held a child that had laid
+its bright head against his tanned, athletic neck. Gordon approached
+him, and said with forced calmness--
+
+"Do you know what was the matter in the church?"
+
+"My wife has gone to see," he replied warmly. "Wait; she'll be here in a
+minute. Here she is now."
+
+The comely, Sunday-dressed young wife came up and took the child, who
+held out its arms, fondly smiling.
+
+"She hadn't been well, and they didn't want her to sing to-day; but she
+begged to sing, and broke down." Saying this, the young mother kissed
+her child, and slipping one hand into the great brown hand of her
+husband, which closed upon it, turned away with them across the lawn
+homeward.
+
+When Sister Dolorosa, who had passed a sleepless, prayerless night,
+stood in the organ-loft and looked across the church at the scene of
+the Passion, at the shrine of the Virgin, at the white throng of novices
+and the dark throng of the Sisters, the common prayer of whom was to be
+borne upward by her voice, there came upon her like a burying wave a
+consciousness of how changed she was since she had stood there last.
+Thus at the moment when Gordon, sitting below, reverently set her far
+above him, as one looks up to a statue whose feet are above the level of
+his head, she, thinking of what she had been and had now become, seemed
+to herself as though fallen from a white pedestal to the miry earth. But
+when, to a nature like hers, absolute loyalty to a sinless standard of
+character is the only law of happiness itself, every lapse into
+transgression is followed by an act of passionate self-chastisement and
+by a more passionate outburst of love for the wronged ideal; and
+therefore scarce had she begun to sing, and in music to lift up the
+prayer she had denied herself in words, before the powers of her body
+succumbed, as the strings of an instrument snap under too strenuous a
+touch of the musician.
+
+Gordon walked out of the grounds beside the rustic young husband and
+wife, who plainly were lovers still.
+
+"The Sister who sang has a beautiful voice," he said.
+
+"None of them can sing like her," replied the wife. "I love her better
+than any of the others."
+
+"I tin sing!" cried the little girl, looking at Gordon resentfully, as
+though he had denied her that accomplishment.
+
+"But you'll never sing in a convent, missy," cried the father, snatching
+her from her mother. "You'll sing for some man till he marries you as
+your mother did me. I was going to join the Trappist monks, but my wife
+said I was too good a sweetheart to spoil, and she had made up her mind
+to have me herself," he added, turning to Gordon with a laugh.
+
+"I'd have been a Sister long ago if you hadn't begged and begged me
+not," was the reply, with the coquettish toss of a pretty head.
+
+"I doin' be Tap monk," cried the little girl, looking at Gordon still
+more assertively, but joining in the laugh that followed with a scream
+of delight at the wisdom of her decision.
+
+Their paths here diverged, and Gordon walked slowly on alone, but not
+without turning to watch the retreating figures, his meeting with whom
+at such a moment formed an episode in the history of that passion under
+the influence of which he was now rapidly passing. For as he had sat in
+the church his nature, which was always generous in its responsiveness,
+had lent itself wholly to the solicitations of the service; and for a
+time the stillness, the paintings portraying the divine sorrow, the slow
+procession of nameless women, the tapers, the incense, the hoary
+antiquity of the ceremonial, had carried him into a little-known region
+of his religious feeling. But from this he had been sharply recalled by
+the suggestion of a veiled personal tragedy close at hand in that
+unfinished song. His mood again became one of vast pity for her; and
+issuing from the church with this feeling, there, near the very
+entrance, he had come upon a rustic picture of husband, wife, and child,
+with a sharpness of transition that had seemed the return of his spirit
+to its own world of flesh and blood. There to him was the poetry and the
+religion of life--the linked hands of lovers; the twining arms of
+childhood; health and joyousness; and a quiet walk over familiar fields
+in the evening air from peaceful church to peaceful home. And so,
+thinking of this as he walked on alone, and thinking also of her, the
+two thoughts blended, and her image stood always before him in the
+pathway of his ideal future.
+
+The history of the next several days may soon be told. He wrote to his
+friends, stating that there was no game in the neighbourhood, and that
+he had given up the idea of joining them and would return home. He took
+the letter to the station, and waited for the train to pass southward,
+watching it rush away with a subtle pleasure at being left on the
+platform, as though the bridges were now burned behind him. Then he
+returned to the farm-house, where Ezra met him with that look of stupid
+alarm which was natural to him whenever his few thoughts were agitated
+by a new situation of affairs.
+
+Word had come from the convent that he was wanted there to move a fence
+and make changes in the garden, and, proud of the charge, he wished to
+go; but certain autumnal work in his own orchard and garden claimed his
+time, and hence the trouble. But Gordon, who henceforth had no reason
+for tarrying with the old couple, threw himself eagerly upon this
+opportunity to do so, and offered his aid in despatching the tasks. So
+that thus a few days passed, during which he unconsciously made his way
+as far as any one had ever done into the tortuous nature of the old man,
+who began to regard him with blind trustfulness.
+
+But they were restless, serious days. One after another passed, and he
+heard nothing of Sister Dolorosa. He asked himself whether she were ill,
+whether her visits to old Martha had been made to cease; and he shrank
+from the thought of bearing away into his life the haunting pain of such
+uncertainty. But some inner change constrained him no longer to call her
+name. As he sat with the old couple at night the housewife renewed her
+talks with him, speaking sometimes of the convent and of Sister
+Dolorosa, the cessation of whose visits plainly gave her secret concern;
+but he listened in silence, preferring the privacy of his own thoughts.
+Sometimes, under feint of hunting, he would take his gun in the
+afternoon and stroll out over the country; but always the presence of
+the convent made itself felt over the landscape, dominating it, solitary
+and impregnable, like a fortress. It began to draw his eyes with a
+species of fascination. He chafed against its assertion of barriers, and
+could have wished that his own will might be brought into conflict with
+it. It appeared to watch him; to have an eye at every window; to see in
+him a lurking danger. At other times, borne to him across the darkening
+fields would come the sweet vesper bell, and in imagination he would see
+her entering the church amid the long procession of novices and nuns,
+her hands folded across her breast, her face full of the soft glories of
+the lights that streamed in through the pictured windows. Over the
+fancied details of her life more and more fondly he lingered.
+
+And thus, although at first he had been interested in her wholly upon
+general grounds, believing her secretly unhappy, thus by thinking always
+of her, and watching for her, and walking often beside her in his
+dreams, with the folly of the young, with the romantic ardour of his
+race, and as part of the never-ending blind tragedy of the world, he
+came at last to feel for her, among women, that passionate pain of
+yearning to know which is to know the sadness of love.
+
+Sleepless one night, he left the house after the old couple were asleep.
+The moon was shining, and unconsciously following the bent of his
+thoughts, he took the footpath that led across the fields. He passed the
+spot where he had first met her, and, absorbed in recollection of the
+scene, he walked on until before him the convent towered high in light
+and shadow. He had reached the entrance to the long avenue of elms. He
+traversed it, turned aside into the garden, and, following with many
+pauses around its borders, lived over again the day when she had led him
+through it. The mere sense of his greater physical nearness to her
+enthralled him. All her words came back: "These are daffodils. They
+bloomed in March, long ago.... And here are violets, which come in
+April." After awhile, leaving the garden, he walked across the lawn to
+the church and sat upon the steps, trying to look calmly at this whole
+episode in his life, and to summon resolution to bring it to an end. He
+dwelt particularly upon the hopelessness of his passion; he made himself
+believe that if he could but learn that she were not ill and
+suffering--if he could but see her once more, and be very sure--he would
+go away, as every dictate of reason urged.
+
+Across the lawn stood the convent building. There caught his eye the
+faint glimmer of a light through a half-opened window, and while he
+looked he saw two of the nuns moving about within. Was some one dying?
+Was this light the taper of the dead? He tried to throw off a sudden
+weight of gloomy apprehension, and resolutely got up and walked away;
+but his purpose was formed not to leave until he had intelligence of
+her.
+
+One afternoon, a few days later, happening to come to an elevated point
+of the landscape, he saw her figure moving across the fields in the
+distance below him. Between the convent and the farm-house, in one of
+the fields, there is a circular, basin-like depression; and it was here,
+hidden from distant observation, with only the azure of the heavens
+above them, that their meeting took place.
+
+On the day when she had been his guide he had told her that he was going
+away on the morrow, and as she walked along now it might have been seen
+that she thought herself safe from intrusion. Her eyes were bent on the
+dust of the pathway. One hand was passing bead by bead upward along her
+rosary. Her veil was pushed back, so that between its black border and
+the glistening whiteness of her forehead there ran, like a rippling band
+of gold, the exposed edges of her shining hair. In the other hand she
+bore a large cluster of chrysanthemums, whose snow-white petals and
+green leaves formed a strong contrast with the crimson symbol that they
+partly framed against her sable bosom.
+
+He had come up close before the noise of his feet in the stubble drew
+her attention. Then she turned and saw him. But certain instincts of
+self-preservation act in women with lightning quickness. She did not
+recognise him, or give him time to recognise her. She merely turned
+again and walked onward at the same pace. But the chrysanthemums were
+trembling with the beating of her heart, and her eyes had in them that
+listening look with which one awaits the on-coming of danger from
+behind.
+
+But he had stopped. His nature was simple and trustful, and he had
+expected to renew his acquaintanceship at the point where it had ceased.
+When, therefore, she thus reminded him, as indeed she must, that there
+was no acquaintanceship between them, and that she regarded herself as
+much alone as though he were nowhere in sight, his feelings were
+arrested as if frozen by her coldness. Still, it was for this chance
+that he had waited all these days. Another would not come; and whatever
+he wished to say to her must be said now. A sensitiveness wholly novel
+to his nature held him back, but a moment more and he was walking
+beside her.
+
+"I hope I do not intrude so very far," he said, in a tone of apology,
+but also of wounded self-respect.
+
+It was a difficult choice thus left to her. She could not say "Yes"
+without seeming unpardonably rude; she could not say "No" without
+seeming to invite his presence. She walked on for a moment, and then,
+pausing, turned towards him.
+
+"Is there anything that you wished to ask me in regard to the convent?"
+This she said in the sweetest tone of apologetic courtesy, as though in
+having thought only of herself at first she had neglected some larger
+duty.
+
+If he had feared that he would see traces of physical suffering on her
+face, he was mistaken. She had forgotten to draw her veil close, and the
+sunlight fell upon its loveliness. Never had she been to him half so
+beautiful. Whatever the expression her eyes had worn before he had come
+up, in them now rested only inscrutable calmness.
+
+"There is one thing I have wished very much to know," he answered
+slowly, his eyes resting on hers. "I was at the church of the convent
+last Sunday and heard you sing. They said you were not well. I have
+hoped every day to hear that you were better. I have not cared to go
+away until I knew this."
+
+Scarcely had he begun when a flush dyed her face, her eyes fell, and she
+stood betrayed by the self-consciousness of what her own thoughts had
+that day been. One hand absently tore to pieces the blooms of the
+chrysanthemums, so that the petals fell down over her dark habit like
+snowflakes. But when he finished, she lifted her eyes again.
+
+"I am well now, thank you," she said; and the first smile that he had
+ever seen came forth from her soul to her face. But what a smile! It
+wrung his heart more than the sight of her tears could have done.
+
+"Then I shall hope to hear you sing again to-morrow," he said quickly,
+for she seemed on the point of moving away.
+
+"I shall not sing to-morrow," she replied a little hurriedly, with
+averted face, and again she started on. But he walked beside her.
+
+"In that case I have still to thank you for the pleasure I have had. I
+imagine that one would never do wrong if he could hear you sing whenever
+he is tempted," he said, looking sidewise at her with a quiet, tentative
+smile.
+
+"It is not my voice," she replied more hurriedly. "It is the music of
+the service. Do not thank me. Thank God."
+
+"I have heard the service before. It was your voice that touched me."
+
+She drew her veil about her face, and walked on in silence.
+
+"But I have no wish to say anything against your religion," he
+continued, his voice deepening and trembling. "If it has such power over
+the natures of women, if it lifts them to such ideals of duty, if it
+develops in them such characters, that merely to look into their faces,
+to be near them, to hear their voices, is to make a man think of a
+better world, I do not know why I should say anything against it."
+
+How often, without meaning it, our words are like a flight of arrows
+into another's heart. What he said but reminded her of her
+unfaithfulness. And therefore while she revolved how with perfect
+gentleness she might ask him to allow her to continue her way alone, she
+did what she could: she spoke reverently, though all but inaudibly, in
+behalf of her order.
+
+"Our vows are perfect and divine. If they ever seem less, it is the
+fault of those of us who dishonour them."
+
+The acute self-reproach in her tone at once changed his mood.
+
+"On the other hand, I have also asked myself this question: Is it the
+creed that makes the natures of you women so beautiful, or is it the
+nature of woman that gives the beauty to the creed? Is it not so with
+any other idea that women espouse? with any other cause that they
+undertake? Is it not so with anything that they spend their hearts upon,
+toil for, and sacrifice themselves for? Do I see any beauty in your vows
+except such as your life gives to them? I can believe it. I can believe
+that if you had never taken those vows your life would still be
+beautiful. I can believe that you could change them for others and find
+yourself more nearly the woman that you strive to be--that you were
+meant to be!" He spoke in the subdued voice with which one takes leave
+of some hope that brightens while it disappears.
+
+"I must ask you," she said, pausing--"I must ask you to allow me to
+continue my walk alone," and her voice quivered.
+
+He paused, too, and stood looking into her eyes in silence with the
+thought that he should never see her again. The colour had died out of
+his face.
+
+"I can never forgive your vows," he said, speaking very slowly and
+making an effort to appear unmoved. "I can never forgive your vows that
+they make it a sin for me to speak to you. I can never forgive them that
+they put between us a gulf that I cannot pass. Remember, I owe you a
+great deal. I owe you higher ideas of a woman's nature and clearer
+resolutions regarding my own life. Your vows perhaps make it even a sin
+that I should tell you this. But by what right? By what right am I
+forbidden to say that I shall remember you always, and that I shall
+carry away with me into my life----"
+
+"Will you force me to turn back?" she asked in greater agitation; and
+though he could not see her face, he saw her tears fall upon her hands.
+
+"No," he answered sadly; "I shall not force you to turn back. I know
+that I have intruded. But it seemed that I could not go away without
+seeing you again, to be quite sure that you were well. And when I saw
+you, it seemed impossible not to speak of other things. Of course this
+must seem strange to you--stranger, perhaps, than I may imagine, since
+we look at human relationships so differently. My life in this world can
+be of no interest to you. You cannot, therefore, understand why yours
+should have any interest for me. Still, I hope you can forgive me," he
+added abruptly, turning his face away as it flushed and his voice
+faltered.
+
+She lifted her eyes quickly, although they were dim. "Do not ask me to
+forgive anything. There is nothing to be forgiven. It is I who must
+ask--only leave me!"
+
+"Will you say good-bye to me?" And he held out his hand.
+
+She drew back, but, overborne by emotion he stepped forward, gently took
+her hand from the rosary, and held it in both his own.
+
+"Good-bye! But, despite the cruel barriers that they have raised between
+us, I shall always----"
+
+She foresaw what was coming. His manner told her that. She had not
+withdrawn her hand. But at this point she dropped the flowers that were
+in her other hand, laid it on her breast so that the longest finger
+pointed towards the symbol of the transfixed heart, and looked quickly
+at him with indescribable warning and distress. Then he released her,
+and she turned back towards the convent.
+
+"Mother," she said, with a frightened face, when she reached it, "I did
+not go to old Martha's. Some one was hunting in the fields, and I came
+back. Do not send me again, Mother, unless one of the Sisters goes with
+me." And with this half-truth on her lips and full remorse for it in her
+heart, she passed into that deepening imperfection of nature which for
+the most of us makes up the inner world of reality.
+
+Gordon wrote to her that night. He had not foreseen his confession. It
+had been drawn from him under the influences of the moment; but since it
+was made, a sense of honour would not have allowed him to stop there,
+even had feeling carried him no further. Moreover, some hope had been
+born in him at the moment of separation, since she had not rebuked him,
+but only reminded him of her vows.
+
+His letter was full of the confidence and enthusiasm of youth, and its
+contents may be understood by their likeness to others. He unfolded the
+plan of his life--the life which he was asking her to share. He dwelt
+upon its possibilities, he pointed out the field of its aspirations. But
+he kept his letter for some days, unable to conceive a way by which it
+might be sent to its destination. At length the chance came in the
+simplest of disguises.
+
+Ezra was starting one morning to the convent. As he was leaving the
+room, old Martha called to him. She sat by the hearthstone, with her
+head tied up in red flannel, and her large, watery face flushed with
+pain, and pointed towards a basket of apples on the window-sill.
+
+"Take them to Sister Dolorosa, Ezra," she said. "Mind that you see
+_her_, and give them to her with your own hands. And ask her why she
+hasn't been to see me, and when she is coming." On this point her mind
+seemed more and more troubled. "But what's the use of asking _you_ to
+find out for me?" she added, flashing out at him with heroic anger.
+
+The old man stood in the middle of the room, dry and gnarled, his small
+eyes kindling into a dull rage at a taunt made in the presence of a
+guest whose good opinion he desired. But he took the apples in silence
+and left the room.
+
+As Gordon followed him beyond the garden, noting how his mind was
+absorbed in petty anger, a simple resolution came to him.
+
+"Ezra," he said, handing him the letter, "when you give the Sister the
+apples, deliver this. And we do not talk about business, you know,
+Ezra."
+
+The old man took the letter and put it furtively into his pocket, with a
+backward shake of his head towards the house.
+
+"Whatever risks I may have to run from other quarters, he will never
+tell _her_," Gordon said to himself.
+
+When Ezra returned in the evening he was absorbed, and Gordon noted with
+relief that he was also unsuspicious. He walked some distance to meet
+the old man the next two days, and his suspense became almost
+unendurable, but he asked no questions. The third day Ezra drew from his
+pocket a letter, which he delivered, merely saying--
+
+"The Sister told me to give you this."
+
+Gordon soon turned aside across the fields, and having reached a point
+screened from observation, he opened the letter and read as follows:--
+
+     "I have received your letter. I have read it. But how could I
+     listen to your proposal without becoming false to my vows? And if
+     you knew that I had proved false to what I held most dear and
+     binding, how could you ever believe that I would be true to
+     anything else? Ah, no! Should you unite yourself to one who for
+     your sake had been faithless to the ideal of womanhood which she
+     regarded as supreme, you would soon withdraw from her the very love
+     that she had sacrificed even her hopes of Heaven to enjoy.
+
+     "But it seems possible that in writing to me you believe my vows no
+     longer precious to my heart and sacred to my conscience. You are
+     wrong. They are more dear to me at this moment than ever before,
+     because at this moment, as never before, they give me a mournful
+     admonition of my failure to exhibit to the world in my own life the
+     beauty of their ineffable holiness. For had there not been
+     something within me to lead you on--had I shown to you the sinless
+     nature which it is their office to create--you would never have
+     felt towards me as you do. You would no more have thought of loving
+     me than of loving an angel of God.
+
+     "The least reparation I can make for my offence is to tell you that
+     in offering me your love you offer me the cup of sacred
+     humiliation, and that I thank you for reminding me of my duty,
+     while I drain it to the dregs.
+
+     "After long deliberation I have written to tell you this; and if it
+     be allowed me to make one request, I would entreat that you will
+     never lay this sin of mine to the charge of my religion and my
+     order.
+
+     "We shall never meet again. Although I may not listen to your
+     proposal, it is allowed me to love you as one of the works of God.
+     And since there are exalted women in the world who do not
+     consecrate themselves to the church, I shall pray that you may find
+     one of these to walk by your side through life. I shall pray that
+     she may be worthy of you; and perhaps you will teach her sometimes
+     to pray for one who will always need her prayers.
+
+     "I only know that God orders our lives according to His goodness.
+     My feet He set in one path of duty, yours in another, and He had
+     separated us for ever long before He allowed us to meet. If,
+     therefore, having thus separated us, He yet brought us together
+     only that we should thus know each other and then be parted, I
+     cannot believe that there was not in it some needed lesson for us
+     both. At least, if He will deign to hear the ceaseless, fervent
+     petition of one so erring, He will not leave you unhappy on account
+     of that love for me, which in this world it will never be allowed
+     me to return. Farewell!"
+
+The first part of this letter awakened in Gordon keen remorse and a
+faltering of purpose, but the latter filled him with a joy that excluded
+every other feeling.
+
+"She loves me!" he exclaimed; and, as though registering a vow, he added
+aloud, "And nothing--God help me!--nothing shall keep us apart."
+
+Walking to a point of the landscape that commanded a view of the
+convent, he remained there while the twilight fell, revolving how he was
+to surmount the remaining barriers between them, for these now seemed
+hardly more than cobwebs to be brushed aside by his hand; and often,
+meanwhile, he looked towards the convent, as one might look longingly
+towards some forbidden shrine, which the coming night would enable him
+to approach.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+A night for love it was. The great sun at setting had looked with
+steadfast eye at the convent standing lonely on its wide landscape, and
+had then thrown his final glance across the world towards the east; and
+the moon had quickly risen and hung about it the long silvery twilight
+of her heavenly watchfulness. The summer, too, which had been moving
+southward, now came slowly back, borne on warm airs that fanned the
+convent walls and sighed to its chaste lattices with the poetry of dead
+flowers and vanished songsters. But sighed in vain. With many a prayer,
+with many a cross on pure brow and shoulder and breast, with many a
+pious kiss of crucifix, the convent slept. Only some little novice,
+lying like a flushed figure of Sleep on a couch of snow, may have
+stirred to draw one sigh, as those zephyrs, toying with her warm hair,
+broke some earthly dream of too much tenderness. Or they may merely have
+cooled the feverish feet of a withered nun, who clasped her dry hands in
+ecstasy, as on her cavernous eyes there dawned a vision of the glories
+and rewards of Paradise. But no, not all slept. At an open window on the
+eastern side of the convent stood the sleepless one looking out into the
+largeness of the night like one who is lost in the largeness of her
+sorrow.
+
+Across the lawn, a little distance off, stood the church of the convent.
+The moonlight rested on it like a smile of peace, the elms blessed it
+with tireless arms, and from the zenith of the sky down to the horizon
+there rested on outstretched wings, rank above rank and pinion brushing
+pinion, a host of white, angelic cloud-shapes, as though guarding the
+sacred portal.
+
+But she looked at it with timid yearning. Greater and greater had become
+the need to pour into some ear a confession and a prayer for pardon. Her
+peace was gone. She had been concealing her heart from the Mother
+Superior. She had sinned against her vows. She had impiously offended
+the Divine Mother. And to-day, after answering his letter in order that
+she might defend her religion, she had acknowledged to her heart that
+she loved him. But they would never meet again. To-morrow she would make
+a full confession of what had taken place. Beyond that miserable ordeal
+she dared not gaze into her own future.
+
+Lost in the fears and sorrows of such thoughts, long she stood looking
+out into the night, stricken with a sense of alienation from human
+sympathy. She felt that she stood henceforth estranged from the entire
+convent--Mother Superior, novice, and nun--as an object of reproach, and
+of suffering into which no one of them could enter.
+
+Sorer yet grew her need, and a little way across the lawn stood the
+church, peaceful in the moonlight. Ah, the divine pity! If only she
+might steal first alone to the shrine of her whom most she had offended,
+and to an ear gracious to sorrow make confession of her frailty. At
+length, overcome with this desire and gliding noiselessly out of the
+room, she passed down the moonlit hall, on each side of which the nuns
+were sleeping. She descended the stairway, took from the wall the key of
+the church, and then softly opening the door, stepped out into the
+night. For a moment she paused, icy and faint with physical fear; then,
+passing like a swift shadow across the silvered lawn, she went round to
+the side entrance of the church, unlocked the door, and, entering
+quickly, locked herself inside. There she stood for some time with hands
+pressed tightly to her fluttering heart, until bodily agitation died
+away before the recollection of her mission; and there came upon her
+that calmness with which the soul enacts great tragedies. Then slowly,
+very slowly, hidden now, and now visible where the moonlight entered the
+long, Gothic windows, she passed across the chancel towards the shrine
+of one whom ancestral faith had taught her to believe divine; and before
+the image of a Jewish woman--who herself in full humanity loved and
+married a carpenter nearly two thousand years ago, living beside him as
+blameless wife and becoming blameless mother to his children--this poor
+child, whose nature was unstained as snow on the mountain peaks, poured
+out her prayer to be forgiven the sin of her love.
+
+To the woman of the world, the approaches of whose nature are defended
+by the intricacies of wilfulness and the barriers of deliberate reserve;
+to the woman of the world, who curbs and conceals that feeling to which
+she intends to yield herself in the end, it may seem incredible that
+there should have rooted itself so easily in the breast of one of her
+sex this flower of a fatal passion. But it should be remembered how
+unbefriended that bosom had been by any outpost of feminine
+self-consciousness; how exposed it was through very belief in its
+unearthly consecration; how, like some unwatched vase that had long been
+collecting the sweet dews and rains of heaven, it had been silently
+filling with those unbidden intimations that are shed from above as the
+best gifts of womanhood. Moreover, her life was unspeakably isolate. In
+the monotony of its routine a trifling event became an epoch; a fresh
+impression stirred within the mind material for a chapter of history.
+Lifted far above commonplace psychology of the passions, however, was
+the planting and the growth of an emotion in a heart like hers.
+
+Her prayer began. It began with the scene of her first meeting with him
+in the fields, for from that moment she fixed the origin of her
+unfaithfulness. Of the entire hidden life of poetic reverie and
+unsatisfied desires which she had been living before, her innocent soul
+took no account. Therefore, beginning with that afternoon, she passed in
+review the history of her thoughts and feelings. The moon outside,
+flooding the heavens with its beams, was not so intense a lamp as
+memory, now turned upon the recesses of her mind. Nothing escaped
+detection. His words, the scenes with him in the garden, in the
+field--his voice, looks, gestures--his anxiety and sympathy--his
+passionate letter--all were now vividly recalled, that they might be
+forgotten; and their influence confessed, that it might for ever be
+renounced. Her conscience stood beside her love as though it were some
+great fast-growing deadly plant in her heart, with deep-twisted roots
+and strangling tendrils, each of which to the smallest fibre must be
+uptorn so that not a germ should be left.
+
+But who can describe the prayer of such a soul? It is easy to ask to be
+rid of ignoble passions. They come upon us as momentary temptations and
+are abhorrent to our better selves; but of all tragedies enacted within
+the theatre of the human mind what one is so pitiable as that in which a
+pure being prays to be forgiven the one feeling of nature that is the
+revelation of beauty, the secret of perfection, the solace of the world,
+and the condition of immortality?
+
+The passing of such a tragedy scars the nature of the penitent like the
+passing of an age across a mountain rock. If there had lingered thus
+long on Sister Dolorosa's nature any upland of childhood snows, these
+vanished in that hour; if any vernal belt of maidenhood, it felt the hot
+breath of that experience of the world and of the human destiny which
+quickly ages whatever it does not destroy. So that while she prayed
+there seemed to rise from within her and take flight for ever that
+spotless image of herself as she once had been, and in its place to
+stand the form of a woman, older, altered, and set apart by sorrow.
+
+At length her prayer ended and she rose. It had not brought her the
+peace that prayer brings to women; for the confession of her love before
+the very altar--the mere coming into audience with the Eternal to
+renounce it--had set upon it the seal of irrevocable truth. It is when
+the victim is led to the altar of sacrifice that it turns its piteous
+eyes upon the sacrificing hand and utters its poor dumb cry for life;
+and it was when Sister Dolorosa bared the breast of her humanity that it
+might be stabbed by the hand of her religion, that she, too, though
+attempting to bless the stroke, felt the last pangs of that deep thrust.
+
+With such a wound she turned from the altar, walked with bowed head once
+more across the church, unlocked the door, stepped forth and locked it.
+The night had grown more tender. The host of seraphic cloud-forms had
+fled across the sky; and as she turned her eyes upward to the heavens,
+there looked down upon her from their serene, untroubled heights only
+the stars, that never falter or digress from their fore-written courses.
+The thought came to her that never henceforth should she look up to them
+without being reminded of how her own will had wandered from its orbit.
+The moon rained its steady beams upon the symbol of the sacred heart on
+her bosom, until it seemed to throb again with the agony of the
+crucifixion. Never again should she see it without the remembrance that
+_her_ sin also had pierced it afresh.
+
+With what loneliness that sin had surrounded her! As she had issued from
+the damp, chill atmosphere of the church, the warm airs of the south
+quickened within her long-sleeping memories; and with the yearning of
+stricken childhood she thought of her mother, to whom she had turned of
+yore for sympathy; but that mother's bosom was now a mound of dust. She
+looked across the lawn towards the convent where the Mother Superior and
+the nuns were sleeping. To-morrow she would stand among them a greater
+alien than any stranger. No; she was alone; among the millions of human
+beings on the earth of God there was not one on whose heart she could
+have rested her own. Not one save him--him--whose love had broken down
+all barriers that it might reach and infold her. And him she had
+repelled. A joy, new and indescribable, leaped within her that for him,
+and not for another she suffered and was bound in this tragedy of her
+fall.
+
+Slowly she took her way along the side of the church towards the front
+entrance, from which a paved walk led to the convent building. She
+reached the corner, she turned, and then she paused as one might pause
+who had come upon the beloved dead, returned to life.
+
+For he was sitting on the steps of the church, leaning against one of
+the pillars, his face lifted upward so that the moonlight fell upon it.
+She had no time to turn back before he saw her. With a low cry of
+surprise and joy he sprang up and followed along the side of the church;
+for she had begun to retrace her steps to the door, to lock herself
+inside. When he came up beside her, she paused. Both were trembling; but
+when he saw the look of suffering on her face, acting upon the impulse
+which had always impelled him to stand between her and unhappiness, he
+now took both of her hands.
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+He spoke with all the pleading love, all the depth of nature, that was
+in him.
+
+She had attempted to withdraw her hands; but at the sound of that once
+familiar name, she suddenly bowed her head as the wave of memories and
+emotions passed over her; then he quickly put his arms around her, drew
+her to him, and bent down and kissed her.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+For hours there lasted an interview, during which he, with the delirium
+of hope, she with the delirium of despair, drained at their young lips
+that cup of life which is full of the first confession of love.
+
+In recollections so overwhelming did this meeting leave Gordon on the
+next morning, that he was unmindful of everything beside; and among the
+consequences of absentmindedness was the wound that he gave himself by
+the careless handling of his gun.
+
+When Ezra had set out for the convent that morning he had walked with
+him, saying that he would go to the station for a daily paper, but
+chiefly wishing to escape the house and be alone. They had reached in
+the fields a rotting fence, on each side of which grew briers and
+underwood. He had expected to climb this fence, and as he stood beside
+it speaking a few parting words to Ezra he absently thrust his gun
+between two of the lower rails, not noticing that the lock was sprung.
+Caught in the brush on the other side, it was discharged, making a wound
+in his left leg a little below the thigh. He turned to a deadly
+paleness, looked at Ezra with that stunned, bewildered expression seen
+in the faces of those who receive a wound, and fell.
+
+By main strength the old man lifted and bore him to the house and
+hurried off to the station, near which the neighbourhood physician and
+surgeon lived. But the latter was away from home; several hours passed
+before he came; the means taken to stop the haemorrhage had been
+ineffectual; the loss of blood had been very great; certain foreign
+matter had been carried into the wound; the professional treatment was
+unskilful; and septic fever followed, so that for many days his life
+hung upon a little chance. But convalescence came at last, and with it
+days of clear, calm thinking. For he had not allowed news of his
+accident to be sent home or to his friends; and except the old couple,
+the doctor, and the nurse whom the latter had secured, he had no company
+but his thoughts.
+
+No tidings had come to him of Sister Dolorosa since his accident; and
+nothing had intervened to remove that sad image of her which had haunted
+him through fever and phantasy and dream since the night of their final
+interview. For it was then that he had first realised in how pitiless a
+tragedy her life had become entangled, and how conscience may fail to
+govern a woman's heart in denying her the right to love, but may still
+govern her actions in forbidding her to marry. To plead with her had
+been to wound only the more deeply a nature that accepted even this
+pleading as a further proof of its own disloyalty, and was forced by it
+into a state of more poignant humiliation. What wonder, therefore, if
+there had been opened in his mind from that hour a certain wound which
+grew deeper and deeper, until, by comparison, his real wound seemed
+painless and insignificant.
+
+Nevertheless, it is true that during this interview he had not been able
+to accept her decision as irreversible. The spell of her presence over
+him was too complete; even his wish to rescue her from a lot, henceforth
+unhappier still, too urgent; so that in parting he had clung to the
+secret hope that little by little he might change her conscience, which
+now interposed the only obstacle between them.
+
+Even the next day, when he had been wounded and life was rapidly flowing
+from him, and earthly ties seemed soon to be snapped, he had thought
+only of this tie, new and sacred, and had written to her. Poor boy!--he
+had written, as with his heart's blood, his brief, pathetic appeal that
+she would come and be united to him before he died. In all ages of the
+world there have been persons, simple in nature and simple in their
+faith in another life, who have forgotten everything else in the last
+hour but the supreme wish to grapple to them those they love, for
+eternity, and at whatever cost. Such simplicity of nature and faith
+belonged to him; for although in Kentucky the unrest of the century
+touching belief in the supernatural, and the many phases by which this
+expresses itself, are not unknown, they had never affected him. He
+believed as his fathers had believed, that to be united in this world in
+any relation is to be united in that relation, mysteriously changed yet
+mysteriously the same, in another.
+
+But this letter had never been sent. There had been no one to take it at
+the time; and when Ezra returned with the physician he had fainted away
+from loss of blood.
+
+Then had followed the dressing of the wound, days of fever and
+unconsciousness, and then the assurance that he would get well. Thus,
+nearly a month had passed, and for him a great change had come over the
+face of nature and the light of the world. With that preternatural calm
+of mind which only an invalid or a passionless philosopher ever obtains,
+he now looked back upon an episode which thus acquired fictitious
+remoteness. So weak that he could scarcely lift his head from his
+pillow, there left his heart the keen, joyous sense of human ties and
+pursuits. He lost the key to the motives and forces of his own
+character. But it is often the natural result of such illness that while
+the springs of feeling seem to dry up, the conscience remains sensitive,
+or even burns more brightly, as a star through a rarer atmosphere. So
+that, lying thus in the poor farm-house during dreary days, with his
+life half-gone out of him, and with only the sad image of her always
+before his eyes, he could think of nothing but his cruel folly in having
+broken in upon her peace; for perfect peace of some sort she must have
+had in comparison with what was now left her.
+
+Beneath his pillow he kept her letter, and as he often read it over he
+asked himself how he could ever have hoped to change the conscience
+which had inspired such a letter as that. If her heart belonged to him,
+did not her soul belong to her religion; and if one or the other must
+give way, could it be doubtful with such, a nature as hers which would
+come out victorious? Thus he said to himself that any further attempt to
+see her could but result in greater suffering to them both, and that
+nothing was left him but what she herself had urged--to go away and
+resign her to a life from which he had too late found out that she could
+never be divorced.
+
+As soon as he had come to this decision, he began to think of her as
+belonging only to his past. The entire episode became a thing of memory
+and irreparable incompleteness; and with the conviction that she was
+lost to him her image passed into that serene, reverential sanctuary of
+our common nature, where all the highest that we have grasped at and
+missed, and all the beauty that we have loved and lost, take the forms
+of statues around dim walls and look down upon us in mournful,
+never-changing perfection.
+
+As he lay one morning revolving his altered purpose, Ezra came quietly
+into the room and took from a table near the foot of the bed a waiter on
+which were a jelly-glass and a napkin.
+
+"_She_ said I'd better take these back this morning," he observed,
+looking at Gordon for his approval, and motioning with his head towards
+that quarter of the house where Martha was supposed to be.
+
+"Wait awhile, will you, Ezra?" he replied, looking at the old man with
+the dark, quiet eye of an invalid. "I think I ought to write a few lines
+this morning to thank them for their kindness. Come back in an hour,
+will you?"
+
+The things had been sent from the convent; for, from the time that news
+had reached the Mother Superior of the accident of the young stranger
+who had visited the convent some days before, there had regularly come
+to him delicate attentions which could not have been supplied at the
+farmhouse. He often asked himself whether they were not inspired by
+_her_; and he thought that when the time came for him to write his
+thanks, he would put into the expression of them something that would
+be understood by her alone--something that would stand for gratitude and
+a farewell.
+
+When Ezra left the room, with the thought of now doing this another
+thought came unexpectedly to him. By the side of the bed there stood a
+small table on which were writing materials and a few books that had
+been taken from his valise. He stretched out his hand, and opening one
+of them took from it a letter which bore the address, "Sister Dolorosa."
+It contained those appealing lines that he had written her on the day of
+his accident; and with calm, curious sadness he now read them over and
+over, as though they had never come from him. From the mere monotony of
+this exercise sleep overtook him, and he had scarcely restored the
+letter to the envelope and laid it back on the table before his eyelids
+closed.
+
+While he still lay asleep, Ezra came quietly into the room again, and
+took up the waiter with the jelly-glass and the napkin. Then he looked
+around for the letter that he was to take. He was accustomed to carry
+Gordon's letters to the station, and his eye now rested on the table
+where they were always to be found. Seeing one on it, he walked across,
+took it up and read the address, "Sister Dolorosa," hesitated, glanced
+at Gordon's closed eyes, and then, with an intelligent nod to signify
+that he could understand without further instruction, he left the room
+and set out briskly for the convent.
+
+Sister Dolorosa was at the cistern filling a bucket with water when he
+came up and, handing her the letter, passed on to the convent kitchen.
+She looked at it with indifference; then she opened and read it; and
+then in an instant everything whirled before her eyes, and in her ears
+the water sounded loud as it dropped from the chain back into the
+cistern. And then she was gone--gone with a light, rapid step, down, the
+avenue of elms, through the gate, across the meadows, out into the
+fields--bucket and cistern, Mother Superior and sisterhood, vows and
+martyrs, zeal of Carmelite, passion of Christ, all forgotten.
+
+When, nearly a month before, news had reached the Mother Superior of the
+young stranger's accident, in accordance with the rule which excludes
+from the convent worldly affairs, she had not made it known except to
+those who were to aid in carrying out her kindly plans for him. To
+Sister Dolorosa, therefore, the accident had just occurred, and
+now--now as she hastened to him--he was dying.
+
+During the intervening weeks she had undergone by insensible degrees a
+deterioration of nature. Prayer had not passed her lips. She believed
+that she had no right to pray. Nor had she confessed. From such, a
+confession as she had now to make, certain new-born instincts of
+womanhood bade her shrink more deeply into the privacy of her own being.
+And therefore she had become more scrupulous, if possible, of outward
+duties, that no one might be led to discover the paralysis of her
+spiritual life. But there was that change in her which soon drew
+attention; and thenceforth, in order to hide her heart, she began to
+practise with the Mother Superior little acts of self-concealment and
+evasion, and by-and-by other little acts of pretence and feigning,
+until--God pity her!--being most sorely pressed by questions, when
+sometimes she would be found in tears or sitting listless with her hands
+in her lap like one who is under the spell of mournful phantasies, these
+became other little acts of positive deception. But for each of them
+remorse preyed upon her the more ruthlessly, so that she grew thin and
+faded, with a shadow of fear darkening always her evasive eyes.
+
+What most held her apart, and most she deemed put upon her the angry ban
+of Heaven, was the consciousness that she still loved him, and that she
+was even bound to him the more inseparably since the night of their last
+meeting. For it was then that emotions had been awakened which drew her
+to him in ways that love alone could not have done. These emotions had
+their source in the belief that she owed him reparation for the
+disappointment which she had brought upon his life. The recollection of
+his face when she had denied him hope rose in constant reproach before
+her; and since she held herself blamable that he had loved her, she took
+the whole responsibility of his unhappiness.
+
+It was this sense of having wronged him that cleft even conscience in
+her and left her struggling. But how to undo the wrong--this she vainly
+pondered; for he was gone, bearing away into his life the burden of
+enticed and baffled hope.
+
+On the morning when she was at the cistern--for the Sisters of the Order
+have among them such interchange of manual offices--if, as she read the
+letter that Ezra gave her, any one motive stood out clear in the stress
+of that terrible moment, it was, that having been false to other duties
+she might at least be true to this. She felt but one desire--to atone to
+him by any sacrifice of herself that would make his death more peaceful.
+Beyond this everything was void and dark within her as she hurried on,
+except the consciousness that by this act she separated herself from her
+Order and terminated her religious life in utter failure and disgrace.
+
+The light, rapid step with which she had started soon brought her across
+the fields. As she drew near the house, Martha, who had caught sight of
+her figure through the window, made haste to the door and stood awaiting
+her. Sister Dolorosa merely approached and said--
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+For a moment the old woman did not answer. Then she pointed to a door at
+the opposite end of the porch, and with a sparkle of peculiar pleasure
+in her eyes she saw Sister Dolorosa cross and enter it. A little while
+longer she stood, watching the keyhole furtively, but then went back to
+the fireside, where she sat upright and motionless with the red flannel
+pushed back from her listening ears.
+
+The room was dimly lighted through half-closed shutters. Gordon lay
+asleep near the edge of the bed, with his face turned towards the door.
+It might well have been thought the face of one dying. Her eyes rested
+on it a moment, and then with a stifled sob and moan she glided across
+the room and sank on her knees at the bedside. In the utter
+self-forgetfulness of her remorse, pity, and love, she put one arm
+around his neck, she buried her face close beside his.
+
+He had awaked, bewildered, as he saw her coming towards him. He now took
+her arm from around his neck, pressed her hand again and again to his
+lips, and then laying it on his heart crossed his arms over it, letting
+one of his hands rest on her head. For a little while he could not trust
+himself to speak; his love threatened to overmaster his
+self-renunciation. But then, not knowing why she had come unless from
+some great sympathy for his sufferings, or perhaps to see him once more
+since he was now soon to go away, and not understanding any cause for
+her distress but the tragedy in which he had entangled her life--feeling
+only sorrow for her sorrow and wishing only by means of his last words
+to help her back to such peace as she still might win, he said to her
+with immeasurable gentleness--
+
+"I thought you would never come! I thought I should have to go away
+without seeing you again! They tell me it is not yet a month since the
+accident, but it seems to me so _long_--a lifetime! I have lain here
+day after day thinking it over, and I see things differently now--so
+differently! That is why I wanted to see you once more. I wanted you to
+understand that I felt you had done right in refusing--in refusing to
+marry me. I wanted to ask you never to blame yourself for what has
+happened--never to let any thought of having made _me_ unhappy add
+to the sorrow of your life. It is my fault, not yours. But I meant it--God
+_knows_, I meant it!--for the happiness of us both? I believed that
+your life was not suited to you. I meant to make you happy! But since you
+_cannot_ give up your life, I have only been unkind. And since you
+think it wrong to give it up, I am glad that you are so true to it! If you
+_must_ live it, Heaven only knows how glad I am that you will live it
+heroically. And Heaven keep me equally true to the duty in mine, that I
+also shall not fail in it! If we never meet again, we can always think
+of each other as living true to ourselves and to one another. Don't deny
+me this! Let me believe that your thoughts and prayers will always follow
+me. Even your vows will not deny me this! It will always keep us near each
+other, and it will bring us together where they cannot separate us."
+
+He had spoken with entire repression of himself, in the slow voice of an
+invalid, and on the stillness of the room each word had fallen with hard
+distinctness. But now, with the thought of losing her, by a painful
+effort he moved closer to the edge of the bed, put his arms around her
+neck, drew her face against his own, and continued--
+
+"But do not think it is easy to tell you this! Do not think it is easy
+to give you up! Do not think that I do not love you! O Pauline--not in
+_another_ life, but in _this_--_in this_!" He could say no
+more; and out of his physical weakness tears rose to his eyes and fell
+drop by drop upon her veil.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+Sister Dolorosa had been missed from the convent. There had been inquiry
+growing ever more anxious, and search growing ever more hurried. They
+found her bucket overturned at the cistern, and near it the print of her
+feet in the moist earth. But she was gone. They sought her in every
+hidden closet, they climbed to the observatory and scanned the
+surrounding fields. Work was left unfinished, prayer unended, as the
+news spread through the vast building; and as time went by and nothing
+was heard of her, uneasiness became alarm, and alarm became a vague,
+immeasurable foreboding of ill. Each now remembered how strange of late
+had been Sister Dolorosa's life and actions, and no one had the heart to
+name her own particular fears to any other or to read them in any
+other's eyes. Time passed on and discipline in the convent was
+forgotten. They began to pour out into the long corridors, and in
+tumultuous groups passed this, way and that, seeking the Mother
+Superior. But the Mother Superior had gone to the church with the same
+impulse that in all ages has brought the human heart to the altar of God
+when stricken by peril or disaster; and into the church they also
+gathered. Into the church likewise came the white flock of the novices,
+who had burst from their isolated quarter of the convent with a sudden
+contagion of fear. When, therefore, the Mother Superior rose from where
+she had been kneeling, turned, and in the dark church saw them assembled
+close around her, pallid, anxious, disordered, and looking with helpless
+dependence to her for that assurance for which she had herself in
+helpless dependence looked to God, so unnerved was she by the spectacle
+that strength failed her and she sank upon the steps of the altar,
+stretching out her arms once more in voiceless supplication towards the
+altar of the Infinite helpfulness.
+
+But at that moment a little novice, whom Sister Dolorosa loved and whom
+she had taught the music of the harp, came running into the church,
+wringing her hands and crying. When she was half-way down the aisle, in
+a voice that rang through the building she called out--
+
+"O Mother, she is coming! Something has happened to her! Her veil is
+gone!" and, turning again, she ran out of the church.
+
+They were hurrying after her when a note of command, inarticulate but
+imperious, from the Mother Superior arrested every foot and drew every
+eye in that direction. Voice had failed her, but with a gesture full of
+dignity and reproach she waved them back, and supporting her great form
+between two of the nuns, she advanced slowly down the aisle of the
+church and passed out by the front entrance. But they forgot to obey her
+and followed; and when she descended the steps to the bottom and made a
+sign that she would wait there, on the steps behind they stood grouped
+and crowded back to the sacred doors.
+
+Yes, she was coming--coming up the avenue of elms--coming slowly, as
+though her strength were almost gone. As she passed under the trees on
+one side of the avenue she touched their trunks one by one for support.
+She walked with her eyes on the ground and with the abstraction of one
+who has lost the purpose of walking. When she was perhaps half-way up
+the avenue, as she paused by one of the trees and supported herself
+against it, she raised her eyes and saw them all waiting to receive her
+on the steps of the church. For a little while she stood and surveyed
+the scene; the Mother Superior standing in front, her sinking form
+supported between two Sisters, her hands clasping the crucifix to her
+bosom; behind her the others, step above step, back to the doors; some
+looking at her with frightened faces; others with their heads buried on
+each other's shoulders; and hiding somewhere in the throng, the little
+novice, only the sound of whose sobbing revealed her presence. Then she
+took her hand from the tree, walked on quite steadily until she was
+several yards away, and paused again.
+
+She had torn off her veil and her head was bare and shining. She had
+torn the sacred symbol from her bosom, and through the black rent they
+could see the glistening whiteness of her naked breast. Comprehending
+them in one glance, as though she wished them all to listen, she looked
+into the face of the Mother Superior, and began to speak in a voice
+utterly forlorn, as of one who has passed the limits of suffering.
+
+"Mother!----"
+
+"Mother!----"
+
+She passed one hand slowly across her forehead, to brush away some cloud
+from her brain, and for the third time she began to speak--
+
+"Mother!----"
+
+Then she paused, pressed both palms quickly to her temples, and turned
+her eyes in bewildered appeal towards the Mother Superior. But she did
+not fall. With a cry that might have come from the heart of the
+boundless pity the Mother Superior broke away from the restraining arms
+of the nuns and rushed forward and caught her to her bosom.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+The day had come when Gordon was well enough to go home. As he sat
+giving directions to Ezra, who was awkwardly packing his valise, he
+looked over the books, papers, and letters that lay on the table near
+the bed.
+
+"There is one letter missing," he said, with a troubled expression, as
+he finished his search. Then he added quickly, in a tone of helpless
+entreaty--
+
+"You couldn't have taken it to the station and mailed it with the
+others, could you, Ezra? It was not to go to the station. It was to
+have gone to the convent."
+
+The last sentence he uttered rather to his own thought than for the ear
+of his listener.
+
+"I _took_ it to the convent," said Ezra, stoutly raising himself from
+over the valise in the middle of the floor. "I didn't _take_ it to the
+station!"
+
+Gordon wheeled on him, giving a wrench to his wound which may have
+caused the groan that burst from him, and left him white and trembling.
+
+"You took it _to the convent_! Great God, Ezra! When?"
+
+"The day you _told_ me to take it," replied Ezra simply. "The day the
+Sister came to see you."
+
+"O _Ezra_!" he cried piteously, looking into the rugged, faithful
+countenance of the old man, and feeling that he had not the right to
+censure him.
+
+Now for the first time he comprehended the whole significance of what
+had happened. He had never certainly known what motive had brought her
+to him that day. He had never been able to understand why, having come,
+she had gone away with such abruptness. Scarcely had he begun to speak
+to her when she had strangely shrunk from him; and scarcely had he
+ceased speaking when she had left the room without a word, and without
+his having so much as seen her face.
+
+Slowly now the sad truth forced itself upon his mind that she had come
+in answer to his entreaty. She must have thought his letter just
+written, himself just wounded and dying. It was as if he had betrayed
+her into the utmost expression of her love for him and in that moment
+had coldly admonished her of her duty. For him she had broken what was
+the most sacred obligation of her life, and in return he had given her
+an exhortation to be faithful to her vows.
+
+He went home to one of the older secluded country-places of the
+Blue-grass Region not far from Lexington. His illness served to account
+for a strange gravity and sadness of nature in him. When the winter had
+passed and spring had come, bringing perfect health again, this sadness
+only deepened. For health had brought back the ardour of life. The
+glowing colours of the world returned; and with these there flowed back
+into his heart, as waters flow back into a well that has gone dry, the
+perfect love of youth and strength with which he had loved her and tried
+to win her at first. And with this love of her came back the first
+complete realisation that he had lost her; and with this pain, that
+keenest pain of having been most unkind to her when he had striven to be
+kindest.
+
+He now looked back upon his illness, as one who has gained some clear
+headland looks down upon a valley so dark and overhung with mist that he
+cannot trace his own course across it. He was no longer in sympathy with
+that mood of self-renunciation which had influenced him in their last
+interview. He charged himself with having given up too easily; for might
+he not, after all, have won her? Might he not, little by little, have
+changed her conscience, as little by little he had gained her love?
+Would it have been possible, he asked himself again and again, for her
+ever to have come to him as she had done that day, had not her
+conscience approved? Of all his torturing thoughts, none cost him
+greater suffering than living over in imagination what must have
+happened to her since then--the humiliation, perhaps public exposure;
+followed by penalties and sorrows of which he durst not think, and
+certainly a life more unrelieved in gloom and desolation.
+
+In the summer his father's health began to fail and in the autumn he
+died. The winter was passed in settling the business of the estate, and
+before the spring passed again Gordon found himself at the head of
+affairs, and stretching out before him, calm and clear, the complete
+independence of his new-found manhood. His life was his own to make it
+what he would. As fortunes go in Kentucky he was wealthy, his farm being
+among the most beautiful of the beautiful ones which make up that land,
+and his homestead being dear through family ties and those intimations
+of fireside peace which lay closest the heart of his ideal life. But
+amid all his happiness, that one lack which made the rest appear
+lacking--that vacancy within which nothing would fill! The beauty of the
+rich land henceforth brought him the dream-like recollection of a rough,
+poor country a hundred miles away. Its quiet homesteads, with the
+impression they create of sweet and simple lives, reminded him only of a
+convent standing lonely and forbidding on its wide landscape. The calm
+liberty of woods and fields, the bounding liberty of life, the
+enlightened liberty of conscience and religion, which were to him the
+best gifts of his State, his country, and his time, forced on him
+perpetual contrast with the ancient confinement in which she languished.
+
+Still he threw himself resolutely into his duties. In all that he did or
+planned he felt a certain sacred, uplifting force added to his life by
+that high bond through which he had sought to link their sundered
+pathways. But, on the other hand, the haunting thought of what might
+have befallen her since became a corrosive care, and began to eat out
+the heart of his resolute purposes.
+
+So that when the long, calm summer had passed and autumn had come,
+bringing him lonelier days in the brown fields, lonelier rides on
+horseback through the gorgeous woods, and lonelier evenings beside his
+rekindled hearth-stones, he could bear the suspense no longer, and made
+up his mind to go back, if but to hear tidings whether she yet were
+living in the convent. He realised, of course, that under no
+circumstances could he ever again speak to her of his love. He had put
+himself on the side of her conscience against his own cause; but he felt
+that he owed it to himself to dissipate uncertainty regarding her fate.
+This done, he could return, however sadly, and take up the duties of his
+life with better heart.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+One Sunday afternoon he got off at the little station. From one of the
+rustic loungers on the platform he learned that old Ezra and Martha had
+gone the year before to live with a son in a distant State, and that
+their scant acres had been absorbed in the convent domain.
+
+Slowly he took his way across the sombre fields. Once more he reached
+the brown footpath and the edge of the pale, thin corn. Once more the
+summoning whistle of the quail came sweet and clear from the depths of a
+neighbouring thicket. Silently in the reddening west were rising the
+white cathedrals of the sky. It was on yonder hill-top he had first seen
+her, standing as though transfigured in the evening light. Overwhelmed
+by the memories which the place evoked, he passed on towards the
+convent. The first sight of it in the distance smote him with a pain so
+sharp that a groan escaped his lips as from a reopened wound.
+
+It was the hour of the vesper service. Entering the church he sat where
+he had sat before. How still it was, how faint the autumnal sunlight
+stealing in through the sainted windows, how motionless the dark company
+of nuns seated on one side of the nave, how rigid the white rows of
+novices on the other!
+
+With sad fascination of search his eyes roved among the black-shrouded
+devotees. She was not there. In the organ-loft above, a voice, poor and
+thin, began to pour out its wavering little tide of song. She was not
+there, then. Was her soul already gone home to Heaven?
+
+Noiselessly from behind the altar the sacristine had come forth and
+begun to light the candles. With eyes strained and the heart gone out of
+him he hung upon the movements of her figure. A slight, youthful figure
+it was--slighter, as though worn and wasted; and the hands which so
+firmly bore the long taper looked too white and fragile to have upheld
+aught heavier than the stalk of a lily.
+
+With infinite meekness and reverence she moved hither and thither about
+the shrine, as though each footfall were a step nearer the glorious
+Presence, each breath a prayer. One by one there sprang into being,
+beneath her touch of love, the silvery spires of sacred flame. No angel
+of the night ever more softly lit the stars of heaven. And it was thus
+that he saw her for the last time--folded back to the bosom of that
+faith from which it was left him to believe that he had all but rescued
+her to love and happiness, and set, as a chastening admonition, to tend
+the mortal fires on the altar of eternal service.
+
+Looking at her across the vast estranging gulf of destiny, heart-broken,
+he asked himself in his poor yearning way whether she longer had any
+thought of him or longer loved him. For answer he had only the assurance
+given in her words, which now rose as a benediction in his memory--
+
+"If He will deign to hear the ceaseless, fervent petition of one so
+erring, He will not leave you unhappy on account of that love for me
+which in this world it will never be allowed me to return."
+
+One highest star of adoration she kindled last, and then turned and
+advanced down the aisle. He was sitting close to it, and as she came
+towards him, with irresistible impulse he bent forward to meet her, his
+lips parted as though to speak, his eyes implored her for recognition,
+his hands were instinctively moved to attract her notice. But she passed
+him with unuplifted eyes. The hem of her dress swept across his foot. In
+that intense moment, which compressed within itself the joy of another
+meeting and the despair of an eternal farewell--in that moment he may
+have tried to read through her face and beyond it in her very soul the
+story of what she must have suffered. To any one else, on her face
+rested only that beauty, transcending all description, which is born of
+the sorrow of earth and the peace of God.
+
+Mournful as was this last sight of her, and touched with remorse, he
+could yet bear it away in his heart for long remembrance not untempered
+by consolation. He saw her well; he saw her faithful; he saw her bearing
+the sorrows of her lot with angelic sweetness. Through years to come the
+beauty of this scene might abide with him, lifted above the realm of
+mortal changes by the serenitude of her immovable devotion.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+There was thus spared him knowledge of the great change that had taken
+place regarding her within the counsels of the Order; nor, perhaps, was
+he ever to learn of the other changes, more eventful still, that were
+now fast closing in upon her destiny.
+
+When the Creator wishes to create a woman, the beauty of whose nature is
+to prefigure the types of an immortal world, He endows her more
+plenteously with the faculty of innocent love. The contravention of this
+faculty has time after time resulted in the most memorable tragedies
+that have ever saddened the history of the race. He had given to the
+nature of Pauline Cambron two strong, unwearying wings: the pinion of
+faith and the pinion of love. It was His will that she should soar by
+the use of both. But they had denied her the use of one; and the vain
+and bewildered struggles which marked her life thenceforth were as those
+of a bird that should try to rise into the air with one of its wings
+bound tight against its bosom.
+
+After the illness which followed upon the events of that terrible day,
+she took towards her own conduct the penitential attitude enjoined by
+her religion. There is little need to lay bare all that followed. She
+had passed out of her soft world of heroic dreams into the hard world of
+unheroic reality. She had chosen a name to express her sympathy with the
+sorrows of the world, and the sorrows of the world had broken in upon
+her. Out of the white dawn of the imagination she had stepped into the
+heat and burden of the day.
+
+Long after penances and prayers were over, and by others she might have
+felt herself forgiven, she was as far as ever from that forgiveness
+which comes from within. It is not characteristic of a nature such as
+hers to win pardon so easily for such an offence as she considered hers.
+Indeed, as time passed on, the powers of her being seemed concentrated
+more and more in one impassioned desire to expiate her sin; for, as time
+passed on, despite penances and prayers, she realised that she still
+loved him.
+
+As she pondered this she said to herself that peace would never come
+unless she should go elsewhere and begin life over in some place that
+was free from the memories of her fall, there was so much to remind her
+of him. She could not go into the garden without recalling the day when
+they had walked through it side by side. She could not cross the
+threshold of the church without being reminded that it was the scene of
+her unfaithfulness and of her exposure. The graveyard, the footpath,
+across the fields, the observatory--all were full of disturbing images.
+And therefore she besought the Mother Superior to send her away to some
+one of the missions of the Order, thinking that thus she would win
+forgetfulness of him and singleness of heart.
+
+But while the plan of doing this was yet being considered by the Mother
+Superior, there happened one of those events which seem to fit into the
+crises of our lives as though determined by the very laws of fate. The
+attention of the civilised world had not yet been fixed upon the heroic
+labours of the Belgian priest, Father Damien, among the lepers of the
+island of Molokai. But it has been stated that near the convent are the
+monks of La Trappe. Among these monks were friends of the American
+priest, Brother Joseph, who for years was one of Father Damien's
+assistants; and to these friends this priest from time to time wrote
+letters, in which he described at great length the life of the leper
+settlement and the work of the small band of men and women who had gone
+to labour in that remote and awful vineyard. The contents of these
+letters were made known to the ecclesiastical superior of the convent;
+and one evening he made them the subject of a lecture to the assembled
+nuns and novices, dwelling with peculiar eloquence upon the devotion of
+the three Franciscan Sisters who had become outcasts from human society
+that they might nurse and teach leprous girls, until inevitable death
+should overtake them also.
+
+Among that breathless audience of women there was one soul on whom his
+words fell with the force of a message from the Eternal. Here, then, at
+last, was offered her a pathway by following meekly to the end of which
+she might perhaps find blessedness. The real Man of Sorrows appeared to
+stand in it and beckon her on to the abodes of those abandoned creatures
+whose sufferings He had with peculiar pity so often stretched forth His
+hand to heal. When she laid before the Mother Superior her petition to
+be allowed to go, it was at first refused, being regarded as a momentary
+impulse; but months passed, and at intervals, always more earnestly, she
+renewed her request. It was pointed out to her that when one has gone
+among the lepers there is no return; the alternatives are either
+lifelong banishment, or death from leprosy, usually at the end of a few
+years. But always her reply was--
+
+"In the name of Christ, Mother, let me go!"
+
+Meantime it had become clear to the Mother Superior that some change of
+scene must be made. The days of Sister Dolorosa's usefulness in the
+convent were too plainly over.
+
+It had not been possible in that large household of women to conceal the
+fact of her unfaithfulness to her vows. As one black veil whispered to
+another--as one white veil communed with its attentive neighbour--little
+by little events were gathered and pieced together, until, in different
+forms of error and rumour, the story became known to all. Some from
+behind window lattices had watched her in the garden with the young
+stranger on the day of his visiting the convent. Others had heard of his
+lying wounded at the farm-house. Still others were sure that under
+pretext of visiting old Martha she had often met him in the fields. And
+then the scene on the steps of the church, when she had returned soiled
+and torn and fainting.
+
+So that from the day on which she arose from her illness and began to go
+about the convent, she was singled out as a target for those small
+arrows which the feminine eye directs with such faultless skill at one
+of its own sex. With scarcely perceptible movements they would draw
+aside when passing her, as though to escape corrupting contact. Certain
+ones of the younger Sisters, who were jealous of her beauty, did not
+fail to drop inuendoes for her to overhear. And upon some of the
+novices, whose minds were still wavering between the church and the
+world, it was thought that her example might have a dangerous influence.
+
+It is always wrong to judge motives; but it is possible that the head of
+the Order may have thought it best that this ruined life should take on
+the halo of martyrdom, from which fresh lustre would be reflected upon
+the annals of the church. However this may be, after about eighteen
+months of waiting, during which correspondence was held with the
+Sandwich Islands, it was determined that Sister Dolorosa should be
+allowed to go thither and join the labours of the Franciscan Sisters.
+
+From the day when consent was given she passed into that peace with
+which one ascends the scaffold or awaits the stake. It was this look of
+peace that Gordon had seen on her face as she moved hither and thither
+about the shrine.
+
+Only a few weeks after he had thus seen her the day came for her to go.
+Of those who took part in the scene of farewell she was the most
+unmoved. A month later she sailed from San Francisco for Honolulu; and
+in due time there came from Honolulu to the Mother Superior the
+following letter. It contains all that remains of the earthly history of
+Pauline Cambron--
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+                                  "KALAWAO, MOLOKAI, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS,
+                                                  "_January 1, 188--_.
+
+"DEAR MOTHER,--I entreat you not to let the sight of this strange
+handwriting, instead of one that must be so familiar, fill you with too
+much alarm. I hasten to assure you that before my letter closes you will
+understand why Sister Dolorosa has not written herself.
+
+"Since the hour when the vessel sailed from the American port, bearing
+to us that young life as a consecrated helper in our work among these
+suffering outcasts of the human race, I know that your thoughts and
+prayers have followed her with unceasing anxiety; so that first I should
+give you tidings that the vessel reached Honolulu in safety. I should
+tell you also that she had a prosperous voyage, and that she is now
+happy--far happier than when she left you. I know, likewise, that your
+imagination has constantly hovered about this island, and that you have
+pictured it to yourself as the gloomiest of all spots in the universe of
+God; so that in the next place I should try to remove this impression by
+giving you some description of the island itself, which has now become
+her unchanging home.
+
+"The island of Molokai, then, on which the leper settlement has been
+located by the Government, is long, and shaped much like the leaf of the
+willow-tree. The Sandwich Islands, as you well know, are a group of
+volcanoes out of which the fires have for the most part long since died.
+Molokai, therefore, is really but a mountain of cooled lava, half of
+which perhaps is beneath the level of the sea. The two leper villages
+are actually situated in the cup of an ancient crater. The island is
+very low along the southern coast, and slopes gradually to its greatest
+altitude on the northern ridge, from which the descent to the sea is in
+places all but perpendicular. It is between the bases of these northern
+cliffs and the sea that the villages are built. In the rear of them is a
+long succession of towering precipices and wild ravines, that are solemn
+and terrible to behold; and in front of them there is a coast-line so
+rough with pointed rocks that as the waves rush in upon them spray is
+often thrown to the height of fifty or a hundred feet. It is this that
+makes the landing at times so dangerous; and at other times, when a
+storm has burst, so fatal. So that shipwrecks are not unknown, dear
+Mother, and sometimes add to the sadness of life in this place.
+
+"But from this description you would get only a mistaken idea of the
+aspect of the island. It is sunny and full of tropical loveliness. The
+lapse of centuries has in places covered the lava with exquisite
+verdure. Soft breezes blow here, about the dark cliffs hang purple
+atmospheres, and above them drift pink and white clouds. Sometimes the
+whole island is veiled in golden mist. Beautiful streams fall down its
+green precipices into the sea, and the sea itself is of the most
+brilliant blue. In its depths are growths of pure white corals, which
+are the homes of fishes of gorgeous colours.
+
+"If I should speak no longer of the island, but of the people, I could
+perhaps do something further still to dissipate the dread with which you
+and other strangers must regard us. The inhabitants are a simple,
+generous, happy race; and there are many spots in this world--many in
+Europe and Asia, perhaps some in your own land--where the scenes of
+suffering and death are more poignant and appalling. The lepers live for
+the most part in decent white cottages. Many are the happy faces that
+are seen among them; so that, strange as it may seem, healthy people
+would sometimes come here to live if the laws did not forbid. So much
+has Christianity done that one may now be buried in consecrated ground.
+
+"If all this appears worldly and frivolous, dear Mother, forgive me! If
+I have chosen to withhold from you news of her, of whom alone I know you
+are thinking, it is because I have wished to give you as bright a
+picture as possible. Perhaps you will thus become the better prepared
+for what is to follow.
+
+"So that before I go further, I shall pause again to describe to you one
+spot which is the loveliest on the island. About a mile and a half from
+the village of Kalawao there is a rocky point which is used as an
+irregular landing-place when the sea is wild. Just beyond this point
+there is an inward curve of the coast, making an inlet of the sea; and
+from the water's edge there slopes backward into the bosom of the island
+a deep ravine. Down this ravine there falls and winds a gleaming white
+cataract, and here the tropical vegetation grows most beautiful. The
+trees are wreathed with moist creepers; the edges and crevices of the
+lava blocks are fringed with ferns and moss. Here the wild ginger blooms
+and the crimson lehua. Here grow trees of orange and palm and punhala
+groves. Here one sees the rare honey-bird with its plumage of scarlet
+velvet, the golden plover, and the beautiful white bos'un-bird, wheeling
+about the black cliff heights. The spot is as beautiful as a scene in
+some fairy tale. When storms roll in from the sea the surf flows far
+back into this ravine, and sometimes--after the waters have subsided--a
+piece of wreckage from the ocean is left behind.
+
+"Forgive me once more, O dear Mother! if again I seem to you so idle and
+unmeaning in my words. But I have found it almost impossible to go on;
+and, besides, I think you will thank me, after you have read my letter
+through, for telling you first of this place.
+
+"From the day of our first learning that there was a young spirit among
+you who had elected, for Christ's sake, to come here and labour with us,
+we had counted the days till she should arrive. The news had spread
+throughout the leper settlement. Father Damien had made it known to the
+lepers in Kalawao, Father Wendolen had likewise told it among the lepers
+in Kalapaupa, and the Protestant ministers spoke of it to their flocks.
+Thus her name had already become familiar to hundreds of them, and many
+a prayer had been offered up for her safety.
+
+"Once a week there comes to Molokai from Honolulu a little steamer
+called _Mokolii_. When it reached here last Saturday morning it brought
+the news that just before it sailed from Honolulu the vessel bearing
+Sister Dolorosa had come into port. She had been taken in charge by the
+Sisters until the _Mokolii_ should return and make the next trip. I
+should add that the steamer leaves at about five o'clock in the
+afternoon, and that it usually reaches here at about dawn of the
+following morning in ordinary weather.
+
+"And now, dear Mother, I beseech you to lay my letter aside! Do not read
+further now. Lay it aside, and do not take it up again until you have
+sought in prayer the consolation of our divine religion for the sorrows
+of our lives.
+
+"I shall believe that you have done this, and that, as you now go on
+with the reading of my letter, you have gained the fortitude to hear
+what I have scarcely the power to write. Heaven knows that in my poor
+way I have sought to prepare you!
+
+"As it was expected that the steamer would reach the island about dawn
+on Saturday morning, as usual, it had been arranged that many of us
+should be at the landing-place to give her welcome. But about midnight
+one of the terrific storms which visit this region suddenly descended,
+enveloping the heavens, that had been full of the light of the stars, in
+impenetrable darkness. We were sleepless with apprehension that the
+vessel would be driven upon the rocks--such was the direction of the
+storm--long before it could come opposite the villages: and a few hours
+before day Father Damien, accompanied by Father Conradi, Brother James,
+and Brother Joseph, went down to the coast. Through the remaining hours
+of the night they watched and waited, now at one point, and now at
+another, knowing that the vessel could never land in such a storm. As
+the dawn broke they followed up the coast until they came opposite that
+rocky point of which I have already spoken as being an irregular
+landing-place.
+
+"Here they were met by two or three men who were drenched with the sea,
+and just starting towards the villages, and from them they learned that,
+an hour or two before, the steamer had been driven upon the hidden rocks
+of the point. It had been feared that it would soon be sunk or dashed to
+pieces, and as quickly as possible a boat had been put off, in which
+were the leper girls that were being brought from Honolulu. There was
+little hope that it would ever reach the shore, but it was the last
+chance of life. In this boat, dear Mother, Sister Dolorosa also was
+placed. Immediately afterwards a second boat was put off, containing the
+others that were on board.
+
+"Of the fate of the first boat they had learned nothing. Their own had
+been almost immediately capsized, and, so far as they knew, they were
+the sole survivors. The Hawaiians are the most expert of swimmers, being
+almost native to the sea; and since the distance was short, and only
+these survived, you will realise how little chance there was for any
+other.
+
+"During the early hours of the morning, which broke dark and
+inexpressibly sad for us, a few bodies were found washed ashore, among
+them those of two leper girls of Honolulu. But our search for her long
+proved unavailing. At length Father Damien suggested that we follow up
+the ravine which I have described, and it was thither that he and
+Brother Joseph and I accordingly went. Father Damien thought it well
+that I should go with them.
+
+"It was far inland, dear Mother, that at last we found her. She lay
+outstretched on a bare, black rock of lava, which sloped upward from the
+sea. Her naked white feet rested on the green moss that fringed its
+lower edge, and her head was sheltered from the burning sun by branches
+of ferns. Almost over her eyes--the lids of which were stiff with the
+salt of the ocean--there hung a spray of white poppies. It was as though
+nature would be kind to her in death.
+
+"At the sight of her face, so young, and having in it the purity and the
+peace of Heaven, we knelt down around her without a word, and for a
+while we could do nothing but weep. Surely nothing so spotless was ever
+washed ashore on this polluted island! If I sinned, I pray to be
+forgiven; but I found a strange joy in thinking that the corruption of
+this terrible disease had never been laid upon her. Heaven had accepted
+in advance her faithful spirit, and had spared her the long years of
+bodily suffering.
+
+"At Father Damien's direction Brother Joseph returned to the village for
+a bier and for four lepers who should be strong enough to bear it. When
+they came we laid her on it, and bore her back to the village, where
+Mother Marianne took the body in charge and prepared it for burial.
+
+"How shall I describe her funeral? The lepers were her pall-bearers. The
+news of the shipwreck had quickly spread throughout the settlement, and
+these simple, generous people yield themselves so readily to the emotion
+of the hour. When the time arrived, it seemed that all who could walk
+had come to follow her to the churchyard. It was a moving sight--the
+long, wavering train of that death-stricken throng, whose sufferings had
+so touched the pity of our Lord when He was on earth, and the desolation
+of whose fate she had come to lessen. There were the young and the old
+alike, Protestants and Catholics without distinction, children with
+their faces so strangely aged with ravages of the leprosy, those
+advanced in years with theirs so mutilated and marred. Others, upon whom
+the leprosy had made such advances that they were too weak to walk, sat
+in their cottage doors and lifted their husky voices in singing that
+wailing native hymn in which they bemoan their hopeless fate. Some of
+the women, after a fashion of their own, wore large wreaths of blue
+blossoms and green leaves about their withered faces.
+
+"And it was thus that we lepers--I say we lepers because I am one of
+them, since I cannot expect long to escape the disease--it was thus that
+we lepers followed her to the graveyard in the rock by the blue sea,
+where Father Damien with his own hands had helped to dig her grave. And
+there, dear Mother, all that is mortal of her now rests. But we know
+that ere this she has heard the words: 'I was sick, and ye visited me.'
+
+"Mother Marianne would herself have written, but she was called away to
+the Leproserie.
+
+                                                      "SISTER AGATHA."
+
+
+
+
+POSTHUMOUS FAME; OR, A LEGEND OF THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+There once lived in a great city, where the dead were all but
+innumerable, a young man by the name of Nicholas Vane, who possessed a
+singular genius for the making of tombstones. So beautiful they were,
+and so fitly designed to express the shadowy pain of mortal memory or
+the bright forecasting of eternal hope, that all persons were held
+fortunate who could secure them for the calm resting-places of their
+beloved sleepers. Indeed, the curious tale was whispered round that the
+bereft were not his only patrons, but that certain personages who were
+peculiarly ambitious of posthumous fame--seeing they had not long to
+live, and unwilling to intrust others with the grave responsibility of
+having them commemorated--had gone to his shop and secretly advised with
+him respecting such monuments as might preserve their memories from too
+swift oblivion.
+
+However this may fall out, certain it is that his calling had its
+secrets; and once he was known to observe that no man could ever
+understand the human heart until he had become a maker of tombstones.
+Whether the knowledge thus derived should make of one a laughing or a
+weeping philosopher, Nicholas himself remained a joyous type of youthful
+manhood--so joyous, in fact, that a friend of his who wrought in colour,
+strolling one day into the workshop where Nicholas stood surrounded by
+the exquisite shapes of memorial marbles, had asked to paint the scene
+as a representation of Life chiselling to its beautiful purposes the
+rugged symbols of Death, and smiling as it wove the words of love and
+faith across the stony proofs of the universal tragedy. Afterwards, it
+is true, a great change was wrought in the young artisan.
+
+He had just come in one morning and paused to look around at the
+various finished and unfinished mortuary designs.
+
+"Truly," he said to himself all at once, "if I were a wise man, I'd
+begin this day's business by chiselling my own head-stone. For who knows
+but that before sunset my brother the gravedigger may be told to build
+me one of the houses that last till doomsday! And what man could then
+make the monument to stop the door of _my_ house with. But why should I
+have a monument? If I lie beneath it, I shall not know I lie there. If I
+lie not there, then it will not stand over me. So, whether I lie there,
+or lie not there, what will it matter to me then? Ay; but what if, being
+dead only to this world and living in another, I should yet look on the
+monument erected to my memory and therefore be the happier? I know not;
+nor to what end we are vexed with this desire to be remembered after
+death. The prospect of vanishing from a poor, toilsome life fills us
+with such consternation and pain! It is therefore we strive to impress
+ourselves ineffaceably on the race, so that, after we have gone hence,
+or ceased to be, we may still have incorporeal habitation among all
+coming generations."
+
+Here he was interrupted by a low knock at the door. Bidden to come in,
+there entered a man of delicate physiognomy, who threw a hurried glance
+around and inquired in an anxious tone--
+
+"Sir, are you alone?"
+
+"I am never alone," replied Nicholas in a ringing voice; "for I dwell
+hard by the gate-way of life and death, through which a multitude is
+always passing."
+
+"Not so loud, I beseech you," said the visitor, stretching forth his
+thin, white hands with eager deprecation. "I would not, for the world,
+have any one discover that I have been here."
+
+"Are you, then, a personage of such importance to the world?" said
+Nicholas, smiling, for the stranger's appearance argued no worldly
+consideration whatsoever. The suit of black, which his frail figure
+seemed to shrink away from with very sensitiveness, was glossy and
+pathetic with more than one covert patch. His shoes were dust-covered
+and worn. His long hair went round his head in a swirl, and he bore
+himself with an air of damaged, apologetic, self-appreciation.
+
+"I am a poet," he murmured with a flush of pain, dropping his large
+mournful eyes beneath the scrutiny of one who might be an unsympathetic
+listener. "I am a poet, and I have come to speak with you privately of
+my--of the--of a monument. I am afraid I shall be forgotten. It is a
+terrible thought."
+
+"Can you not trust your poems to keep you remembered?" asked Nicholas,
+with more kindliness.
+
+"I could if they were as widely read as they should be." He appeared
+emboldened by his hearer's gentleness. "But, to confess the truth, I
+have not been accepted by my age. That, indeed, should give me no pain,
+since I have not written for it, but for the great future to which alone
+I look for my fame."
+
+"Then why not look to it for your monument also?"
+
+"Ah, sir!" he cried, "there are so many poets in the world that I might
+be entirely overlooked by posterity, did there not descend to it some
+sign that I was held in honour by my own generation."
+
+"Have you never noticed," he continued, with more earnestness, "that
+when strangers visit a cemetery they pay no attention to the thousands
+of little head-stones that lie scattered close to the ground, but hunt
+out the highest monuments, to learn in whose honour they were erected?
+Have you never heard them exclaim: 'Yonder is a great monument! A great
+man must be buried there. Let us go and find out who he was and what he
+did to be so celebrated.' O sir, you and I know that this is a poor way
+of reasoning, since the greatest monuments are not always set over the
+greatest men. Still the custom has wrought its good effects, and
+splendid memorials do serve to make known in years to come those whom
+they commemorate, by inciting posterity to search for their actions or
+revive their thoughts. I warrant you the mere bust of Homer----"
+
+"You are not mentioning yourself in the same breath with Homer, I hope,"
+said Nicholas, with great good-humour.
+
+"My poems are as dear to me as Homer's were to him," replied the poet,
+his eyes filling.
+
+"What if you _are_ forgotten? Is it not enough for the poet to have
+lived for the sake of beauty?"
+
+"No!" he cried passionately. "What you say is a miserable error. For the
+very proof of the poet's vocation is in creating the beautiful. But how
+know he has created it? By his own mind? Alas, the poet's mind tells him
+only what is beautiful to _him_! It is by fame that he knows it--fame,
+the gratitude of men for the beauty he has revealed to them! What is so
+sweet, then, as the knowledge that fame has come to him already, or
+surely awaits him after he is dead?"
+
+"We labour under some confusion of ideas, I fear," said Nicholas, "and,
+besides, are losing time. What kind of mon----"
+
+"That I leave to you," interrupted the poet. "Only, I should like my
+monument to be beautiful. Ah, if you but knew how all through this poor
+life of mine I have loved the beautiful! Never, never have I drawn near
+it in any visible form without almost holding my breath as though I were
+looking deep, deep into God's opened eyes. But it was of the epitaph I
+wished to speak."
+
+Hereupon, with a deeper flush, he drew from a large inside
+breast-pocket, that seemed to have been made for the purpose, a worn
+duodecimo volume, and fell to turning the much-fingered pages.
+
+"This," he murmured fondly, without looking up, "is the complete
+collection of my poems."
+
+"Indeed!" exclaimed Nicholas, with deep compassion.
+
+"Yes, my complete collection. I have written a great deal more, and
+should have liked to publish all that I have written. But it was
+necessary to select, and I have included here only what it was
+intolerable to see wasted. There is nothing I value more than a group of
+elegiac poems, which every single member of my large family--who are
+fine critics--and all my friends, pronounce very beautiful. I think it
+would be a good idea to inscribe a selection from one on my monument,
+since those who read the selection would wish to read the entire poem,
+and those who read the entire poem would wish to read the entire
+collection. I shall now favour you with these elegies."
+
+"I should be happy to hear them; but my time!" said Nicholas
+courteously. "The living are too impatient to wait on me; the dead too
+patient to be defrauded."
+
+"Surely you would not refuse to hear one of them," exclaimed the poet,
+his eyes flashing.
+
+"Read _one_, by all means." Nicholas seated himself on a monumental
+lamb.
+
+The poet passed one hand gently across his forehead, as though to brush
+away the stroke of rudeness; then, fixing upon Nicholas a look of
+infinite remoteness, he read as follows:--
+
+    "He suffered, but he murmured not;
+      To every storm he bared his breast;
+    He asked but for the common lot--
+      To be a man among the rest.
+
+    "Here lies he now----"
+
+"If you ask but for the common lot," interrupted Nicholas, "you should
+rest content to be forgotten."
+
+But before the poet could reply, a loud knock caused him to flap the
+leaves of the "Complete Collection" together with one hand, while with
+the other he gathered the tails of his long coat about him, as though
+preparing to pass through some difficult aperture. The exaltation of his
+mood, however, still showed itself in the look and tone of proud
+condescension with which he said to Nicholas--
+
+"Permit me to retire at once by some private passway."
+
+Nicholas led him to a door in the rear of the shop, and there, with a
+smile and a tear, stood for a moment watching the precipitate figure of
+the retreating bard, who suddenly paused when disappearing and tore open
+the breast of his coat to assure himself that his beloved elegies were
+resting safe across his heart.
+
+The second visitor was of another sort. He hobbled on a cork leg, but
+inexorably disciplined the fleshly one into old-time firmness and
+precision. A faded military cloak draped his stalwart figure. Part of
+one bushy grey eyebrow had been chipped away by the same sword-cut that
+left its scar across his battle-beaten face.
+
+"I have come to speak with you about my monument," he said, in a gruff
+voice that seemed to issue from the mouth of a rusty cannon. "Those of
+my old comrades that did not fall at my side are dead. My wife died long
+ago, and my little children. I am old and forgotten. It is a time of
+peace. There's not a boy who will now listen to me while I tell of my
+campaigns. I live alone. Were I to die to-morrow my grave might not have
+so much as a head-stone. It might be taken for that of a coward. Make me
+a monument for a true soldier."
+
+"Your grateful country will do that," said Nicholas.
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed the veteran, whom the shock of battle had made deaf long
+ago.
+
+"Your country," shouted Nicholas, close to his ear, "your country--will
+erect a monument--to your memory."
+
+"My country!" The words were shot out with a reverberating, melancholy
+boom. "My country will do no such a thing. How many millions of soldiers
+have fallen on her battle-fields! Where are their monuments? They would
+make her one vast cemetery."
+
+"But is it not enough for you to have been a true soldier? Why wish to
+be known and remembered for it?"
+
+"I know I do not wish to be forgotten," he replied simply. "I know I
+take pleasure in the thought that long after I am forgotten there will
+be a tongue in my monument to cry out to every passing stranger, 'Here
+lies the body of a true soldier.' It is a great thing to be brave!"
+
+"Is, then, this monument to be erected in honour of bravery, or of
+yourself?"
+
+"There is no difference," said the veteran bluntly. "Bravery _is_
+myself."
+
+"It is bravery," he continued, in husky tones, and with, a mist
+gathering in his eyes that made him wink as though he were trying to see
+through the smoke of battle--"it is bravery that I see most clearly in
+the character of God. What would become of us if He were a coward? I
+serve Him as my brave Commander; and though I am stationed far from Him
+and may be faint and sorely wounded, I know that He is somewhere on the
+battle-field, and that I shall see Him at last, approaching me as He
+moves up and down among the ranks."
+
+"But you say that your country does not notice you--that you have no
+friends; do you, then, feel no resentment?"
+
+"None, none," he answered quickly, though his head dropped on his bosom.
+
+"And you wish to be remembered by a world that is willing to forget
+you?"
+
+He lifted his head proudly. "There are many true men in the world," he
+said, "and it has much to think of. I owe it all I can give, all I can
+bequeath; and I can bequeath it nothing but the memory of a true man."
+
+One day, not long after this, there came into the workshop of Nicholas a
+venerable man of the gravest, sweetest, and most scholarly aspect, who
+spoke not a word until he had led Nicholas to the front window and
+pointed a trembling finger at a distant church spire.
+
+"You see yon spire?" he said. "It almost pierces the clouds. In the
+church beneath I have preached to men and women for nearly fifty years.
+Many that I have christened at the font I have married at the altar;
+many of these I have sprinkled with dust. What have I not done for them
+in sorrow and want! How have I not toiled to set them in the way of
+purer pleasures and to anchor their tempest-tossed hopes! And yet how
+soon they will forget me! Already many say I am too old to preach. Too
+old! I preach better than I ever did in my life. Yet it may be my lot to
+wander down into the deep valley, an idle shepherd with an idle crook. I
+have just come from the writing of my next sermon, in which I exhort my
+people to strive that their names be not written on earthly monuments
+or human hearts, but in the Book of Life. It is my sublimest theme. If I
+am ever eloquent, if I am ever persuasive, if I ever for one moment draw
+aside to spiritual eyes the veil that discloses the calm, enrapturing
+vistas of eternity, it is when I measure my finite strength against this
+mighty task. But why? Because they are the sermons of my own aspiration.
+I preach them to my own soul. Face to face with that naked soul I pen
+those sermons--pen them when all are asleep save the sleepless Eye that
+is upon me. Even in the light of that Eye do I recoil from the thought
+of being forgotten. How clearly I foresee it! Ashes to ashes, dust to
+dust! Where then will be my doctrines, my prayers, my sermons?"
+
+"Is it not enough for you to have scattered your handful of good
+broadcast, to ripen as endlessly as the grass? What if they that gather
+know naught of him that sowed?"
+
+"It is not enough. I should like the memory of _me_ to live on and
+on in the world, inseparable from the good I may have done. What am I but
+the good that is in me? 'Tis this that links me to the infinite and the
+perfect. Does not the Perfect One wish His goodness to be associated
+with His name? No! No! I do not wish to be forgotten!"
+
+"It is mere vanity."
+
+"Not vanity," said the aged servitor meekly. "Wait until you are old,
+till the grave is at your helpless feet: it is the love of life."
+
+But some years later there befell Nicholas an event that transcended all
+past experiences, and left its impress on his whole subsequent life.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The hour had passed when any one was likely to enter his shop. A few
+rays of pale sunlight, straggling in through crevices of the door,
+rested like a dying halo on the heads of the monumental figures grouped
+around. Shadows, creeping upward from the ground, shrouded all else in
+thin, penetrable half-gloom, through which the stark grey emblems of
+mortality sent forth more solemn suggestions. A sudden sense of the
+earthly tragedy overwhelmed him. The chisel and the hammer dropped from
+his hands, and, resting his head on the block he had been carving, he
+gave himself up to that mood of dim, distant reverie in which the soul
+seems to soar and float far above the shock and din of the world's
+disturbing nearness. On his all but oblivious ear, like the faint
+washings of some remote sea, beat the waves of the city's tide-driven
+life in the streets outside. The room itself seemed hushed to the awful
+stillness of the high aerial spaces. Then all at once this stillness was
+broken by a voice, low, clear, and tremulous, saying close to his ear--
+
+"Are you the maker of gravestones?"
+
+"That is my sad calling," he cried bitterly, starting up with
+instinctive forebodings.
+
+He saw before him a veiled figure. To support herself, she rested one
+hand on the block he had been carving, while she pressed the other
+against her heart, as though to stifle pain.
+
+"Whose monument is this?"
+
+"A neglected poet's who died not long ago. Soon, perhaps, I shall be
+making one for an old soldier, and one for a holy man, whose soul, I
+hear, is about to be dismissed."
+
+"Are not some monuments sadder to make than others?"
+
+"Ay, truly."
+
+"What is the saddest you ever made?"
+
+"The saddest monument I ever made was one for a poor mother who had lost
+her only son. One day a woman came in who had no sooner entered than she
+sat down and gave way to a passionate outburst of grief.
+
+"'My good woman,' I said, 'why do you weep so bitterly?'
+
+"'Do not call me good,' she moaned, and hid her face.
+
+"I then perceived her fallen character. When she recovered self-control
+she drew from her sinful bosom an old purse filled with coins of
+different values.
+
+"'Why do you give me this?' I asked.
+
+"'It is to pay for a monument for my son,' she said, and the storm of
+her grief swept over her again.
+
+"I learned that for years she had toiled and starved to hoard up a sum
+with which to build a monument to his memory, for he had never failed of
+his duty to her after all others had cast her out. Certainly he had his
+reward, not in the monument, but in the repentance which came to her
+after his death. I have never seen such sorrow for evil as the memory of
+his love wrought in her. For herself she desired only that the spot
+where she should be buried might be unknown. This longing to be
+forgotten has led me to believe that none desire to be remembered for
+the evil that is in them, but only for some truth, or beauty, or
+goodness by which they have linked their individual lives to the general
+life of the race. Even the lying epitaphs in cemeteries prove how we
+would fain have the dead arrayed on the side of right in the thoughts of
+their survivors. This wretched mother and human outcast, believing
+herself to have lost everything that makes it well to be remembered,
+craved only the mercy of forgetfulness."
+
+"And yet I think she died a Christian soul."
+
+"You knew her, then?"
+
+"I was with her in the last hours. She told me her story. She told me
+also of you, and that you would accept nothing for the monument you were
+at such care to make. It is perhaps for this reason that I have felt
+some desire to see you, and that I am here now to speak with you of----"
+
+A shudder passed over her.
+
+"After all, that was not a sad, but a joyous monument to fashion," she
+added abruptly.
+
+"Ay, it was joyous. But to me the joyous and the sad are much allied in
+the things of this life."
+
+"And yet there might be one monument wholly sad, might there not?"
+
+"There might be, but I know not whose it would be."
+
+"If she you love should die, would not hers be so?"
+
+"Until I love, and she I love is dead, I cannot know," said Nicholas,
+smiling.
+
+"What builds the most monuments?" she asked quickly, as though to
+retreat from her levity.
+
+"Pride builds many--splendid ones. Gratitude builds some, forgiveness
+some, and pity some. But faith builds more than these, though often
+poor, humble ones; and love!--love builds more than all things else
+together."
+
+"And what, of all things that monuments are built in memory of, is most
+loved and soonest forgotten?" she asked, with intensity.
+
+"Nay, I cannot tell that."
+
+"Is it not a beautiful woman? This, you say, is the monument of a poet.
+After the poet grows old, men love him for the songs he sang; they love
+the old soldier for the battles he fought, and the preacher for his
+remembered prayers. But a woman! Who loves her for the beauty she once
+possessed, or rather regards her not with the more distaste? Is there in
+history a figure so lonely and despised as that of the woman, who, once
+the most beautiful in the world, crept back into her native land a
+withered hag? Or, if a woman die while she is yet beautiful, how long is
+she remembered? Her beauty is like heat and light--powerful only for
+those who feel and see it."
+
+But Nicholas had scarcely heard her. His eyes had become riveted upon
+her hand, which rested on the marble, as white as though grown out of it
+under the labours of his chisel.
+
+"My lady," he said, with the deepest respect, "will you permit me to
+look at your hand? I have carved many a one in marble, and studied many
+a one in life; but never have I seen anything so beautiful as yours."
+
+He took it with an artist's impetuosity and bent over it, laying its
+palm against one of his own and stroking it softly with the other. The
+blood leaped through his heart, and he suddenly lifted it to his lips.
+
+"God only can make the hand beautiful," he said.
+
+Displaced by her arm which he had upraised, the light fabric that had
+concealed her figure parted on her bosom and slipped to the ground. His
+eyes swept over the perfect shape that stood revealed. The veil still
+concealed her face. The strangely mingled emotions that had been
+deepening within him all this time now blended themselves in one
+irrepressible wish.
+
+"Will you permit me to see your face?"
+
+She drew quickly back. A subtle pain was in his voice as he cried--
+
+"O my lady! I ask it as one who has pure eyes for the beautiful."
+
+"My face belongs to my past. It has been my sorrow; it is nothing now."
+
+"Only permit me to see it!"
+
+"Is there no other face you would rather see?"
+
+Who can fathom the motive of a woman's questions?
+
+"None, none!"
+
+She drew aside her veil, and her eyes rested quietly on his like a
+revelation. So young she was as hardly yet to be a woman, and her beauty
+had in it that seraphic purity and mysterious pathos which is never seen
+in a woman's face until the touch of another world has chastened her
+spirit into the resignation of a saint. The heart of Nicholas was wrung
+by the sight of it with a sudden sense of inconsolable loss and longing.
+
+"O my lady!" he cried, sinking on one knee and touching his lips to her
+hand with greater gentleness. "Do you indeed think the beauty of a woman
+so soon forgotten? As long as I live, yours will be as fresh in my
+memory as it was the moment after I first saw it in its perfection and
+felt its power."
+
+"Do not recall to me the sorrow of such thoughts." She touched her
+heart. "My heart is a tired hour-glass. Already the sands are wellnigh
+run through. Any hour it may stop, and then--out like a light! Shapeless
+ashes! I have loved life well, but not so well that I have not been able
+to prepare to leave it."
+
+She spoke with the utmost simplicity and calmness, yet her eyes were
+turned with unspeakable sadness towards the shadowy recesses of the
+room, where from their pedestals the monumental figures looked down upon
+her as though they would have opened their marble lips and said, "Poor
+child! Poor child!"
+
+"I have had my wish to see you and to see this place. Before long some
+one will come here to have you carve a monument to the most perishable
+of all things. Like the poor mother who had no wish to be
+remembered----"
+
+Nicholas was moved to the deepest.
+
+"I have but little skill," he said. "The great God did not bestow on me
+the genius of His favourite children of sculpture. But if so sad and
+sacred a charge should ever become mine, with His help I will rear such
+a monument to your memory that as long as it stands none who see it will
+ever be able to forget you. Year after year your memory shall grow as a
+legend of the beautiful."
+
+When she was gone he sat self-forgetful until the darkness grew
+impenetrable. As he groped his way out at last along the thick
+guide-posts of death, her voice seemed to float towards him from every
+head-stone, her name to be written in every epitaph.
+
+The next day a shadow brooded over the place. Day by day it deepened. He
+went out to seek intelligence of her. In the quarter of the city where
+she lived he discovered that her name had already become a nucleus
+around which were beginning to cluster many little legends of the
+beautiful. He had but to hear recitals of her deeds of kindness and
+mercy. For the chance of seeing her again he began to haunt the
+neighbourhood; then, having seen her, he would return to his shop the
+victim of more unavailing desire. All things combined to awake in him
+that passion of love whose roots are nourished in the soul's finest soil
+of pity and hopelessness. Once or twice, under some pretext, he made
+bold to accost her; and once, under the stress of his passion, he mutely
+lifted his eyes, confessing his love; but hers were turned aside.
+
+Meantime he began to dream of the monument he chose to consider she had
+committed to his making. It should be the triumph of his art; but more,
+it would represent in stone the indissoluble union of his love with her
+memory. Through him alone would she enter upon her long after-life of
+saint-like reminiscence.
+
+When the tidings of her death came, he soon sprang up from the
+prostration of his grief with a burning desire to consummate his
+beloved work.
+
+"Year after year your memory shall grow as a legend of the beautiful."
+
+These words now became the inspiration of his masterpiece. Day and night
+it took shape in the rolling chaos of his sorrow. What sculptor in the
+world ever espoused the execution of a work that lured more irresistibly
+from their hiding-places the shy and tender ministers of his genius?
+What one ever explored with greater boldness the utmost limits of
+artistic expression, or wrought in sterner defiance of the laws of our
+common forgetfulness?
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+One afternoon, when people thronged the great cemetery of the city, a
+strolling group were held fascinated by the unique loveliness of a newly
+created monument.
+
+"Never," they exclaimed, "have we seen so exquisite a masterpiece. In
+whose honour is it erected?"
+
+But when they drew nearer, they found carved on it simply a woman's
+name.
+
+"Who was she?" they asked, puzzled and disappointed. "Is there no
+epitaph?"
+
+"Ay," spoke up a young man lying on the grass and eagerly watching the
+spectators. "Ay, a very fitting epitaph."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"Carved on the heart of the monument!" he cried, in a tone of triumph.
+
+"On the heart of the monument? Then we cannot see it."
+
+"It is not meant to be seen."
+
+"How do _you_ know of it?"
+
+"I made the monument."
+
+"Then tell us what it is."
+
+"It cannot be told. It is there only because it is unknown."
+
+"Out on you! You play your pranks with the living and the dead."
+
+"You will live to regret this day," said a thoughtful bystander. "You
+have tampered with the memory of the dead."
+
+"Why, look you, good people," cried Nicholas, springing up and
+approaching his beautiful master-work. He rested one hand lovingly
+against it and glanced around him pale with repressed excitement, as
+though a long-looked-for moment had at length arrived. "I play no pranks
+with the living or the dead. Young as I am, I have fashioned many
+monuments, as this cemetery will testify. But I make no more. This is my
+last; and as it is the last, so it is the greatest. For I have fashioned
+it in such love and sorrow for her who lies beneath it as you can never
+know. If it is beautiful, it is yet an unworthy emblem of that brief and
+transporting beauty which was hers; and I have planted it here beside
+her grave, that as a delicate white flower it may exhale the perfume of
+her memory for centuries to come.
+
+"Tell me," he went on, his lips trembling, his voice faltering with the
+burden of oppressive hope--"tell me, you who behold it now, do you not
+wed her memory deathlessly to it? To its fair shape, its native and
+unchanging purity?"
+
+"Ay," they interrupted impatiently. "But the epitaph?"
+
+"Ah!" he cried, with tenderer feeling, "beautiful as the monument is to
+the eye, it would be no fit emblem of her had it not something sacred
+hidden within. For she was not lovely to the sense alone, but had a
+perfect heart. So I have placed within the monument that which is its
+heart, and typifies hers. And, mark you!" he cried, in a voice of such
+awful warning that those standing nearest him instinctively shrank back,
+"the one is as inviolable as the other. No more could you rend the heart
+from the human bosom than this epitaph from the monument. My deep and
+lasting curse on him who attempts it! For I have so fitted the parts of
+the work together, that to disunite would be to break them in pieces;
+and the inscription is so fragile and delicately poised within, that so
+much as rudely to jar the monument would shiver it to atoms. It is put
+there to be inviolable. Seek to know it, you destroy it. This I but
+create after the plan of the Great Artist, who shows you only the fair
+outside of His masterpieces. What human eye ever looked into the
+mysterious heart of His beautiful--that heart which holds the secret of
+inexhaustible freshness and eternal power? Could this epitaph have been
+carved on the outside, you would have read it and forgotten it with
+natural satiety. But uncomprehended, what a spell I mark it exercises!
+You will--nay, you _must_--remember it for ever! You will speak of it
+to others. They will come. And thus in ever-widening circle will be
+borne afar the memory of her whose name is on it, the emblem of whose
+heart is hidden within. And what more fitting memorial could a man rear
+to a woman, the pure shell of whose beauty all can see, the secret of
+whose beautiful being no one ever comprehends?"
+
+He walked rapidly away, then, some distance off, turned and looked back.
+More spectators had come up. Some were earnestly talking, pointing now
+to the monument, now towards him. Others stood in rapt contemplation of
+his master-work.
+
+Tears rose to his eyes. A look of ineffable joy overspread his face.
+
+"O my love!" he murmured, "I have triumphed. Death has claimed your
+body, heaven your spirit; but the earth claims the saintly memory of
+each. This day about your name begins to grow the Legend of the
+Beautiful."
+
+The sun had just set. The ethereal white shape of the monument stood
+outlined against a soft background of rose-coloured sky. To his
+transfiguring imagination it seemed lifted far into the cloud-based
+heavens, and the evening star, resting above its apex, was a celestial
+lamp lowered to guide the eye to it through the darkness of the
+descending night.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Mysterious complexity of our mortal nature and estate that we should so
+desire to be remembered after death, though born to be forgotten! Our
+words and deeds, the influences of our silent personalities, do indeed
+pass from us into the long history of the race and abide for the rest of
+time: so that an earthly immortality is the heritage, nay, the
+inalienable necessity, of even the commonest lives; only it is an
+immortality not of self, but of its good and evil. For Nature sows us
+and reaps us, that she may gather a harvest, not of us, but from us. It
+is God alone that gathers the harvest of us. And well for us that our
+destiny should be that general forgetfulness we so strangely shrink
+from. For no sooner are we gone hence than, even for such brief times as
+our memories may endure, we are apt to grow by processes of accumulative
+transformation into what we never were. Thou kind, kind fate,
+therefore--never enough named and celebrated--that biddest the sun of
+memory rise on our finished but imperfect lives, and then lengthenest or
+shortenest the little day of posthumous reminiscence, according as thou
+seest there is need of early twilight or of deeper shadows!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Years passed. City and cemetery were each grown vaster. It was again an
+afternoon when the people strolled among the graves and monuments. An
+old man had courteously attached himself to a group that stood around a
+crumbling memorial. He had reached a great age; but his figure was
+erect, his face animated by strong emotions, and his eyes burned beneath
+his brows.
+
+"Sirs," said he, interposing in the conversation, which turned wholly on
+the monument, "you say nothing of him in whose honour it was erected."
+
+"We say nothing because we know nothing."
+
+"Is he then wholly forgotten?"
+
+"We are not aware that he is at all remembered."
+
+"The inscription reads: 'He was a poet.' Know you none of his poems?"
+
+"We have never so much as heard of his poems."
+
+"My eyes are dim; is there nothing carved beneath his name?"
+
+One of the bystanders went up and knelt down close to the base.
+
+"There _was_ something here, but it is effaced by time--Wait!" And
+tracing his finger slowly along, he read like a child--
+
+    "He--asked--but--for--the--common--lot.
+
+"That is all," he cried, springing lightly up. "Oh, the dust on my
+knees!" he added with vexation.
+
+"He may have sung very sweetly," pursued the old man.
+
+"He may, indeed!" they answered carelessly.
+
+"But, sirs," continued he, with a sad smile, "perhaps you are the very
+generation that he looked to for the fame which his own denied him;
+perhaps he died believing that _you_ would fully appreciate his poems."
+
+"If so, it was a comfortable faith to die in," they said, laughing, in
+return. "He will never know that we did not. A few great poets have
+posthumous fame: we know _them_ well enough." And they passed on.
+
+"This," said the old man, as they paused elsewhere, "seems to be the
+monument of a true soldier; know you aught of the victories he helped to
+win?"
+
+"He may not have helped to win any victories. He may have been a coward.
+How should _we_ know? Epitaphs often lie. The dust is peopled with
+soldiers." And again they moved on.
+
+"Does any one read his sermons now, know you?" asked the old man as they
+paused before a third monument.
+
+"Read his sermons!" they exclaimed, laughing more heartily. "Are sermons
+so much read in the country you come from? See how long he has been
+dead! What should the world be thinking of, to be reading his musty
+sermons?"
+
+"At least does it give you no pleasure to read 'He was a good man'?"
+inquired he plaintively.
+
+"Ay; but if he was good, was not his goodness its own reward?"
+
+"He may have also wished long to be remembered for it."
+
+"Naturally; but we have not heard that his wish was gratified."
+
+"Is it not sad that the memory of so much beauty and truth and goodness
+in our common human life should perish? But, sirs,"--and here the old
+man spoke with sudden energy--"if there should be one who combined
+perfect beauty and truth and goodness in one form and character, do you
+not think such a rare being would escape the common fate and be long and
+widely remembered?"
+
+"Doubtless."
+
+"Sirs," said he, quickly stepping in front of them with flashing eyes,
+"is there in all this vast cemetery not a single monument that has kept
+green the memory of the being in whose honour it was erected?"
+
+"Ay, ay," they answered readily. "Have you not heard of it?"
+
+"I am but come from distant countries. Many years ago I was here, and
+have journeyed hither with much desire to see the place once more. Would
+you kindly show me this monument?"
+
+"Come!" they answered eagerly, starting off. "It is the best known of
+all the thousands in the cemetery. None who see it can ever forget it."
+
+"Yes, yes!" murmured the old man. "That is why I have--I foresaw---- Is
+it not a beautiful monument? Does it not lie--in what direction does it
+lie?"
+
+A feverish eagerness seized him. He walked now beside, now before, his
+companions. Once he wheeled on them.
+
+"Sirs, did you not say it perpetuates the memory of her--of the one--who
+lies beneath it?"
+
+"Both are famous. The story of this woman and her monument will never be
+forgotten. It is impossible to forget it."
+
+"Year after year----" muttered he, brushing his hand across his eyes.
+
+They soon came to a spot where the aged branches of memorial evergreens
+interwove a sunless canopy, and spread far around a drapery of gloom
+through which the wind passed with an unending sigh. Brushing aside the
+lowest boughs, they stepped in awestricken silence within the dank,
+chill cone of shade. Before them rose the shape of a grey monument, at
+sight of which the aged traveller, who had fallen behind, dropped his
+staff and held out his arms as though he would have embraced it. But,
+controlling himself, he stepped forward, and said, in tones of thrilling
+sweetness--
+
+"Sirs, you have not told me what story is connected with this monument
+that it should be so famous. I conceive it must be some very touching
+one of her whose name I read--some beautiful legend----"
+
+"Judge you of that!" interrupted one of the group, with a voice of stern
+sadness and not without a certain look of mysterious horror. "They say
+this monument was reared to a woman by the man who once loved her. She
+was very beautiful, and so he made her a very beautiful monument. But
+she had a heart so hideous in its falsity that he carved in stone an
+enduring curse on her evil memory, and hung it in the heart of the
+monument because it was too awful for any eye to see. But others tell
+the story differently. They say the woman not only had a heart false
+beyond description, but was in person the ugliest of her sex. So that
+while the hidden curse is a lasting execration of her nature, the
+beautiful exterior is a masterpiece of mockery which her nature, and not
+her ugliness, maddened his sensitive genius to perpetrate. There can be
+no doubt that this is the true story, as hundreds tell it now, and that
+the woman will be remembered so long as the monument stands--ay, and
+longer--not only for her loathsome---- Help the old man!"
+
+He had fallen backward to the ground. They tried in vain to set him on
+his feet. Stunned, speechless, he could only raise himself on one elbow
+and turn his eyes towards the monument with a look of preternatural
+horror, as though the lie had issued from its treacherous shape. At
+length he looked up to them, as they bent kindly over him, and spoke
+with much difficulty--
+
+"Sirs, I am an old man--a very old man, and very feeble. Forgive this
+weakness. And I have come a long way, and must be faint. While you were
+speaking my strength failed me. You were telling me a story--were you
+not?--the story--the legend of a most beautiful woman, when all at once
+my senses grew confused and I failed to hear you rightly. Then my ears
+played me such a trick! O sirs! if you but knew what a damnable trick my
+ears played me, you would pity me greatly, very, very greatly. This
+story touches me. It is much like one I seemed to have heard for many
+years, and that I have been repeating over and over to myself until I
+love it better than my life. If you would but go over it
+again--carefully--very carefully."
+
+"My God, sirs!" he exclaimed, springing up with the energy of youth when
+he had heard the recital a second time, "tell me _who_ started this
+story! Tell me _how_ and _where_ it began!"
+
+"We cannot. We have heard many tell it, and not all alike."
+
+"And do they--do you--believe--it is--true?" he asked helplessly.
+
+"We all _know_ it is true; do not _you_ believe it?"
+
+"I can never forget it!" he said, in tones quickly grown harsh and
+husky. "Let us go away from so pitiful a place."
+
+It was near nightfall when he returned, unobserved, and sat down beside
+the monument as one who had ended a pilgrimage.
+
+"They all tell me the same story," he murmured wearily. "Ah, it was the
+hidden epitaph that wrought the error! But for it, the sun of her memory
+would have had its brief, befitting day and tender setting. Presumptuous
+folly, to suppose they would understand my masterpiece, when they so
+often misconceive the hidden heart of His beautiful works, and convert
+uncomprehended good and true into a curse of evil!"
+
+The night fell. He was awaiting it. Nearer and nearer rolled the dark,
+suffering heart of a storm; nearer towards the calm, white breasts of
+the dead. Over the billowy graves the many-footed winds suddenly fled
+away in a wild, tumultuous cohort. Overhead, great black bulks swung
+heavily at one another across the tremulous stars.
+
+Of all earthly spots, where does the awful discord of the elements seem
+so futile and theatric as in a vast cemetery? Blow, then, winds, till
+you uproot the trees! Pour, floods, pour, till the water trickles down
+into the face of the pale sleeper below! Rumble and flash, ye clouds,
+till the earth trembles and seems to be aflame! But not a lock of hair,
+so carefully put back over the brows, is tossed or disordered. The
+sleeper has not stretched forth an arm and drawn the shroud closer
+about his face, to keep out the wet. Not an ear has heard the riving
+thunderbolt, nor so much as an eyelid trembled on the still eyes for all
+the lightning's fury.
+
+But had there been another human presence on the midnight scene, some
+lightning flash would have revealed the old man, a grand, a terrible
+figure, in sympathy with its wild, sad violence. He stood beside his
+masterpiece, towering to his utmost height in a posture of all but
+superhuman majesty and strength. His long white hair and longer white
+beard streamed outward on the roaring winds. His arms, bared to the
+shoulder, swung aloft a ponderous hammer. His face, ashen-grey as the
+marble before him, was set with an expression of stern despair. Then, as
+the thunder crashed, his hammer fell on the monument. Bolt after bolt,
+blow after blow. Once more he might have been seen kneeling beside the
+ruin, his eyes strained close to its heart, awaiting another flash to
+tell him that the inviolable epitaph had shared in the destruction.
+
+For days following many curious eyes came to peer into the opened heart
+of the shattered structure, but in vain.
+
+Thus the masterpiece of Nicholas failed of its end, though it served
+another. For no one could have heard the story of it, before it was
+destroyed, without being made to realise how melancholy that a man
+should rear a monument of execration to the false heart of the woman he
+once had loved; and how terrible for mankind to celebrate the dead for
+the evil that was in them instead of the good.
+
+                                THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame, by
+James Lane Allen
+
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