heart had wakened to the wonder and the beauty of the world about her.
At first she saw no farther than the garden, finding joy in the clear
green of the new shoots, pleasure in the sturdy growth of some robust
plant, or a still ecstasy in the dew-crowned freshness of the bean
flowers in the early morning. But soon that morning magic lay before her
marveling eyes upon the near-by fields and the distant hills, and in
time she beheld the wonderful pageant from mystic dawn to dawn, and that
still more wonderful pageant of the changing months.
No one knew or guessed the joy that filled her life from this dumb
intercourse with flying cloud or snow-hung cherry tree, or from the deep
stillness of a green-clad hill in a summer noon. When she was younger,
she used sometimes to speak of these things to her companions; but she
had early learned that they neither understood nor cared to understand
the feelings which she would have shared with them. But this did not
disturb her. She felt for those with whom she lived good-will and a mild
affection, but hers was not a nature to expect or need sympathy. She had
a profound and sincere humility which rendered her incapable of envy.
She felt herself, without bitterness, to be the inferior of all with
whom she came in contact. The fact that they were indifferent to what
were to her the purest sources of happiness never seemed to her a lack
in them, but only an accentuation of the fact that she was less clever
than they. To read, to embroider, to converse, to make long devotions,
were all beyond her powers. She was not 'spiritual-minded.' Prayers were
to her a tedious and difficult task, to be fulfilled conscientiously but
always finished with relief. This indeed came by slow degrees to be a
source of pain and anxiety to her. She felt herself a sinner. In the
laborious and inarticulate processes of her mind there gradually took
form the knowledge that she would rather do any kind of work than pray;
that she would rather, far rather, sit in idleness, looking out upon the
familiar, beloved landscape, than pray. This seemed to her inexplicably
wicked, but it never occurred to her to change, although she sometimes
felt that she would go to hell because of it.
Such thoughts were, however, neither frequent nor enduring with her.
When she made her preparation for confession, she used sometimes to
endeavor to formulate this general sense of wrongdoing; but the matter
was too subtle for her limited powers of expression, and she never got
beyond the specific instance, as when she neglected the kettles so that
she might watch a storm coming up across the hills, or walked five miles
on a singing May morning to get a not indispensable supply of fresh eggs
from a farmhouse. Not for many penances would she have foregone the
clean joy of that walk. Spring came late and slowly to this bit of world
beside the sea, but came none the less surely, none the less with magic
and enchantment in its wings; the new color on field and hill, the
wonderful smell of the earth and of the budding shoots, the divine air,
that now blew chill and austere as from the cave of winter itself and
now touched the cheek with a shyness, a softness, a warmth, like early
love.
Sister Anne had no imagery. She was sixty years old, ignorant, unread,
unimaginative, slow and dull of wit. Yet walking through this
newly-created world, she felt that joy more keen than pain--that
wordless ecstasy whose channel is the senses, but which sends the spirit
groping back toward God who gave it life. Although she felt that this
marvelous universe came from the beneficent hand of some supreme Good,
she never identified it with the Deity to whom she made her difficult
devotions. Deep in her heart there grew a strong sense of gratitude, of
obligation, a wish vague and unformed, yet compelling, that in some way
she might make return for the happiness which life had brought her.
She tried to spend more time in the chapel and to say an extra number of
Aves; but this did not satisfy her, and even her unseeking mind felt
some doubt as to the worth of such mechanical and joyless prayers.
So the placid months and years slipped by, and at last there came to
Sister Anne, as does not come to all of us, her great hour.
It was a cloudless, windless, intolerably hot day in midsummer. Sister
Anne had been on an errand to a fisherman’s hut at some distance from
the convent. As she walked slowly home through the woods, she reached a
place in the path which led near the shore and from which a few steps
brought her out upon a little promontory. Never, it seemed to her, had
the sea looked so blue or the sails of the distant ships so white. She
stood for a long time gazing out toward the horizon before she saw
anything nearer; but when she did see, she hurried down to where she
could get out on the beach. On a tiny rocky islet some two hundred feet
or so from the shore lay the figure of a man in a swimming-suit. It was
evident that he was either dead or unconscious.
Sister Anne considered for a while and then without even removing her
shoes, waded out to him. He was not dead, she found at once, but stunned
by a blow on the head, apparently from one of the sharp rocks on which
he lay. Sister Anne cleansed and bound the wound with her kerchief, and
then sat for a few moments, her face grave and perplexed. Her bit of
human wreckage was only a boy of sixteen or so, tall, slender, with
thick, rough blond hair and skin fair as a child’s. Sister Anne, by
putting forth her whole strength, had been able to move him only a few
inches so that it was manifestly impossible for her to get him to the
shore. The fisherman’s hut from which she had just come was deserted,
its owner off on a cruise; there was not even a boat there. The convent
was a good three quarters of an hour away, make what haste she would,
and it would take as much longer to return with help. In an hour, she
well knew, the islet would be submerged by the rising tide. She knew of
no other fishing-hut and of no farmhouse nearer than the convent.
The water had been nearly to her waist in one place as she came, and she
could see that it had risen a little, even in this short time. She took
off her black robe and did what she could with its aid to put the
helpless lad in a more comfortable position; then, desperately, by every
means at her command, she set about restoring him to consciousness. For
a long time she met no response to her efforts. Indeed, more than once
she anxiously leaned her ear against his chest, to be sure that his
heart still beat. At last, when she had almost given up, discouraged, he
made a slight sound, and a moment later tried to sit up, only to sink
back into coma again. In a few minutes more, however, he opened his eyes
and looked at her with manifest intelligence. Instantly she spoke to him
with all the urgency she could summon.
'You must swim ashore as soon as you can. The tide is coming in and if
you stay here you will be drowned, unless you are able to swim. If you
can start now you will be able to walk part of the way between here and
the beach; but part you must swim, even now.'
Again he struggled to sit up and this time succeeded, although for a
moment he had to lean against Sister Anne’s shoulder.
'As soon as you are able,' she reiterated anxiously, 'you must swim
ashore.'
He shifted himself and gazed at her in considerable perplexity.
'Do you know how I hurt my head?' he asked. 'I must have fallen as I was
climbing up here. And how did you come here?'
'I was passing,' Sister Anne explained, 'and I saw you lying here. I
waded out to you. The water was not as deep then. Now--'
She paused, and a look of fear and anguish grew in her dull eyes.
'You cannot swim?' asked the boy.
'Oh, no, no!' she answered, her head sinking on her breast.
'Yet you stayed here to help me when you might have got safe ashore if
you had left me? Did you know that you would be caught by the tide?'
'I am old,' she answered; 'it must come to me before many years in any
case. But you are so young. I could not leave you. Your mother--'
The boy looked at her a moment with shining eyes and flushing face. Then
he rose cautiously, and tentatively flexed the muscles of his legs and
arms.
'Will you take off your shoes?' he said gently.
She gazed at him in bewilderment, and he explained to her carefully what
he would do and what she must do. It took some time to make her
understand, for her slow mind had not compassed such a possibility; but
when once it was clear to her what was to be done, she was docility
itself. Well for Sister Anne now that the strongest habit of her life
was obedience. But for that, the lad, strong swimmer as he was, could
not have brought her safe to shore.
* * * * *
That night the placid life of the convent throbbed and thrilled with an
excitement unknown in its history. Sister Anne, for the first time in
her existence, was the centre of a storm of solicitude, of attention, of
agitation. She herself was unmoved. She came back from death as
unemotionally as she had gone to meet it. She sat by the window of her
room, wishing that she might be left alone to watch the moon rise above
the quiet hills.
The Mother Superior, the curé himself, had visited her, had said strange
and wonderful things to her which she scarcely understood. The whole
Sisterhood buzzed about her like a hive, for it seemed that the
fair-skinned lad of her adventure was the heir of a house whose name was
famous in many lands, and the father was even now standing at her
threshold.
Sister Anne was not embarrassed by the great presence, fame and wealth
and high birth and all the glories of this world being indeed less than
words to her. Moreover, her visitor brought to this interview with an
old unlettered woman all the charm and suavity and tact of which he was
so well the master. The tale his son had told had seemed to him
incredible and touching, and he felt a desire to understand the impulses
which had made possible so singular an episode. He soon found that she
had indeed faced death in full knowledge of what she did; that she had
wittingly given up her chance of escape that the boy might have his. But
to find the motive was not so simple. Delicately he probed one channel
after another: duty, heroism, religious training, in none of these could
he find the clue. Her life, he reflected, could hardly have been so
full of happiness as to have attached her very strongly to this world,
and deftly he pursued that trail, still unsuccessfully.
Baffled for the moment, he was silent, watching her unrevealing face.
The late summer twilight was darkening into deep shadows on the
hillside, but the eastern sky was still clear yellow from the sunset.
Just beyond that bank of clouds, Sister Anne thought, the moon would
rise before long. The man beside her, still pondering his problem, made
some comment on the clustering trees in the valley below.
She turned to him at once with a changed look.
'They are at their thickest now,' was all she said; but he saw that at
last he had opened the closed door.
In a few moments more, under his skillful touch, were revealed to him
the simple and profound sources of happiness on which her spirit fed. In
sentences so incomplete, in thoughts so inarticulate as to be mere
suggestion, he comprehended her, and at length, with infinite
gentleness, drew forth the thread of explanation which he had sought so
patiently.
She had felt for long, he gathered, that she owed a heavy debt in return
for all the joy in life that had been hers. She felt that her life had
held more happiness than she deserved, happiness for which she had made,
it seemed to her, but inadequate return. When she had found the helpless
lad, she had found also, it seemed, her chance of payment. If she might
save his life or at least give her own in the effort, this debt that she
owed the world would be lessened.
When she had managed in some fashion to convey this much to her
sympathetic listener, she paused and looked at him wistfully.
'A human life,' he said, in instant response, 'is worth more than words
can measure. You gave the greatest gift in your power. Be content. When
you behold the sunlight on the sea to-morrow, say to yourself, "But for
me there is one on whom the sun would not shine to-day."'
She looked at him in silence, and he saw her breast rise and fall in one
slow breath as if of relief.
A little longer he sat, considering, in strange humility, this old and
humble woman toward whom he had had such generous intentions. What of
the many gifts in his power might he offer that could enrich her life?
Nothing! Nothing to give to this poor, lonely, ignorant, toil-worn being
who in her starved existence had found more joy than she could make
return for!
Once more he thanked her in his son’s name and his own, and with as
careful a courtesy as if she had been his sovereign, bade her farewell.
The moon had climbed above the bank of clouds now, and the hillside lay
transfigured in its light. Sister Anne leaned her head against the
window-casing and looked for a while into the still summer night; then
presently, being very weary, she slept, a dreamless sleep.
SETH MILES AND THE SACRED FIRE
BY CORNELIA A. P. COMER
I
'RICHARD,' said my dad about a week after Commencement, 'life is real.
You have had your education and your keep, and you’re a pleasant enough
lad around the house. But the time has come to see what’s in you, and I
want you to begin to show it right away. If you go to the coast with the
family, it will mean three months fooling around with the yacht and the
cars and a bunch of pretty girls. There’s nothing in that for you any
longer.'
Of course, this rubbed me the wrong way.
'Now you’ve got your degree, it’s time we started something else. You
say you want to be a scholar--I suppose that means a college professor.
Of course scholarship doesn’t pay, but if I leave you a few good bonds,
probably you can clip the coupons while you last. I don’t insist that
you make money, but I do insist that you work. My son must be able to
lick his weight in wild-cats, whatever job he’s on. Do you get me?'
I looked out of the window and nodded, somewhat haughtily. Of course I
couldn’t explain to dad the mixture of feelings that led me to choose
scholarship. For, while I am keen on philology, and really do love the
classics so that my spirit seems to swim, if you know what I mean, in
the atmosphere that upheld Horace and the wise Cicero of 'De Senectute,'
I also thought there was money enough in the family already. Wasn’t it a
good thing for the Bonniwells to pay tribute to the humanities in my
person? Didn’t we, somehow, owe it to the world to put back in culture
part of what we took out in cash? But how could I get that across to
dad?
He looked at me as if he, too, were trying to utter something difficult.
'There are passions of the head as well as of the heart,' he said
finally. I opened my eyes, for he didn’t often talk in such fashion.
'The old Greeks knew that. I always supposed a scholar, a teacher, had
to feel that way if he was any good--that it was the mark of his
calling. Perhaps you’ve been called; but, if so, you keep it pretty
dark.'
He stopped and waited for an appropriate response, but I just couldn’t
get it out. So I remarked, 'If I’m not on the boat this summer, you’ll
need another man when you cruise.'
'That’s my affair,' said he, looking disappointed. 'Yours will be to
hold down your job. I’ve got one ready for you. If you don’t like it,
you can get another. We’ll see about a Ph.D. and Germany later on. But
for this season, I had influence enough to get you the summer school in
the Jericho district beyond Garibaldi, and you can board with Seth
Miles.'
When I was a child, before we moved to Chicago, we lived in Oatesville,
at the back of beyond. Garibaldi is an Indiana cross-roads about five
miles farther on the road to nowhere.
'_O dad!_' I said; but I put everything I thought into those two words.
He instantly began to look as much like the heavy father on the stage as
is possible to a spare man with a Roman nose. So I shrugged my
shoulders.
'Oh, very well!' I said. 'If you find me a fossil in the fall, pick out
a comfortable museum to lend me to, won’t you?'
'Richard.' said my dad, 'God only knows how a boy should be dealt with.
I don’t. If I could only tell you the things I know so you would
believe them, I’d set a match to half my fortune this minute. I want you
to _touch life_ somewhere, but I don’t know how to work it in. I’m doing
this in sheer desperation.'
I could see he meant it, too, for his eyes were shiny and the little
drops came out on his forehead.
'I don’t happen to know anybody fitter than old Miles to inspire a
scholar and a gentleman. So, if the summer doesn’t do you any good, it
can’t do you any harm. I shall label your season’s work "Richard
Bonniwell, Jr. on His Own Hook. Exhibit A."--Don’t forget that. Your
mother and I may seem to be in Maine, but I guess in our minds we’ll be
down at Jericho schoolhouse looking on, most of the time.'
You 'd think a man might buck up in response to that, wouldn’t you? But
I didn’t particularly. It made me feel superior toward dad because he
didn’t know any better than to arrange such a summer, thinking it would
teach me anything. I suspected this indulgent attitude of mine might
break down later, and it did.
It was a blazing hot summer for one thing. One of those occasional
summers of the Middle West when the cattle pant in the fields and the
blades of corn get limp on their stalks.
Mr. Miles, who was a benign bachelor, lived in a brick farmhouse with
one long wing, and a furnace of which he was very proud. He put up his
own ice, too, which was more to the point in July. His widowed sister
kept house for him, and, if the meat was usually tough, the cream and
vegetables were beyond praise. He owned the store at Garibaldi as well
as this large farm; so he was a man of means, and important in his own
sphere. To look at, he was rather wonderful. I don’t know how to
describe him. He had keen, kind blue eyes; wavy, white hair; strong,
regular features. There was a kind of graciousness and distinction about
him that didn’t fit his speech and dress. It was as if you always saw
the man he might be in the shadow of the man he was. Put him into
evening clothes and take away his vernacular, and he’d be one of the
loveliest old patriarchs you ever met.
The schoolhouse was brick, too; set back from the road in a field of
hard-trodden clay, decorated with moth-eaten patches of grass. For
further adornment, there was a row of box-alders out in front. As a
temple of learning, it fell short. As its ministrant, I did the same.
There were forty scholars: squirmy, grimy little things that I found it
hard to tell apart at first. I knew this was not the right attitude, but
how could I help it? I had never tried to teach anybody anything before
in my life. The bigger girls blushed and giggled; the little boys made
faces and stuck out their tongues. As it was a summer session, there
were no big boys to speak of.
To go in for scholarship does not at all imply the teacher’s gift or the
desire for it. At Oxford, you know, they are a bit sniffy about the
lecturers who arouse enthusiasm. Such are suspected of being 'popular,'
and that, really, is quite awful. Some of our men have a similar notion,
and, no doubt, it colored my views. Yet, deep down, I knew that if I was
a teacher, it was up to me to teach. I really did try, but it takes time
to get the hang of anything.
I was homesick, too. Mildred and Millicent, my kid sisters, are great
fun, and the house is full of young people all summer long at home. When
I shut my eyes I could see the blue, sparkling waters of the inlet, and
the rocking of our float with its line of gay canoes.
How can I describe the rising tide of sick disgust at my surroundings
that began to flood my spirit? Now that it’s all in the past, I’d like
to think it was purely my liver,--I didn’t get enough exercise, really
I didn’t, for it was too hot to walk much,--but perhaps part of it was
just bad temper.
You see, it takes a good deal of a fellow to stand such a complete
transplanting. I hated the paper shades in my bedroom, tied up with a
cord, and the Nottingham curtains, and the springs that sank in the
middle. I hated the respectable Brussels carpet in the best room, and
the red rocking-chairs on the porch. I hated the hot, sleepless nights
and the blazing, drowsy days.
Oh, I tell you, I had a glorious grouch!
I didn’t exactly hate the squirming children, for some of them began to
show signs of almost human intelligence after they got used to me, and
that did win me; but I hated that little schoolroom where the flies
buzzed loudly all day long on the streaky panes. With deadly hatred I
hated it.
I got to feeling very badly treated. What did my father suppose such
commonplace discomforts were going to do for _me_? What part had a
summer like this in the life and work that were to be mine? I lost that
comfortable little feeling of advantage over life. I mislaid my
consciousness of the silver spoon. In about three weeks it seemed as if
I’d always taught summer-school at Jericho, and might have to keep on.
Oh, well!--I was hot and sore. Everybody has been hot and sore some time
or other, I suppose. The minute description can be omitted. But I don’t
know whether everybody with a grievance gets so badly twisted up in it
as I do.
These emotions reached their climax one muggy, sultry July day as I
plodded, moist and unhappy, back from the schoolhouse. I wiped my
forehead, gritted my teeth, and vowed I would not stand the whole
situation another twenty-four hours. I’d resign my position, wire dad,
and take a train for somewhere out West in the mountains. If I had to
make good on my own hook in three months, I’d at least do it in a cool
place, at work of my selecting. The challenged party ought to have the
choice of weapons.
My room was intolerably stuffy, so I came downstairs reluctantly and sat
on the front steps. There was a wide outlook, for the house stood on a
ridge of land that broke the flat prairie like a great welt. Old Miles
was there, watching a heavy cloud-bank off in the southwest. Those
clouds had been fooling around every evening for a week, but nothing
ever came of it. The longer the drought, the harder it is to break.
I made some caustic remark about the weather as I sat down. Probably I
looked cross enough to bite the poker.
Miles looked at me and then looked away quickly, as if it really was not
decent to be observing a fellow in such a rage. I knew the look, for
I’ve felt that way myself about other men.
'Yes, bad weather,' he said. 'When it gets too hot and dry for corn,
it’s too hot and dry for folks. And then--it always rains. It’ll rain
to-night. You wait and see.'
I mumbled something disparaging to the universe.
'Richard!' said Mr. Miles suddenly and strongly, 'I know what ails you.
It ain’t the weather, it’s your teaching. You’re discouraged because you
can’t make 'em sense things. But it ain’t time yet for you to get
discouraged. I hate to see it, for it ain’t necessary.'
This made me feel a little ashamed of myself.
'Did you ever teach, Mr. Miles?' I asked, for the sake of seeming civil.
'Yes, I did. So I know there’s a secret to teachin' you prob’ly ain’t
got yet. I dunno as I could help you to it. It ain’t likely. An’ yet--'
Unlikely indeed! I thought. Aloud, I said politely, 'I’d be glad to hear
your views.'
'I know what you feel!' he said with extraordinary energy. 'My Lord!
Don’t I know what you feel? You want to make 'em sense things as you
sense 'em. You want to make 'em work as you can work. You won’t be
satisfied until you’ve given 'em the thirst to know and the means of
knowing. Yes, I know what you feel!'
I stared at him, dumbfounded. I knew what I felt, too, but it wasn’t
much like this.
'There are pictures in your brain that you must show 'em. There’s a
universe to cram inside their heads. God has been workin' for a billion
years at doing things--and just one little life to learn about 'em in!
To feel you’re on His trail, a-following fast, and got to pass the
feeling on--I guess there’s no wine on earth so heady, is there, boy?'
I couldn’t pretend I didn’t understand him. I have had it too--that
wonderful sensation we pack away into two dry words and label
'intellectual stimulus.' But it hadn’t come to me that I could, or
should, pass it on. I thought it was an emotion designed for my private
encouragement and delight. And what was old Seth Miles doing with
intellectual stimulus? I would as soon expect to unearth a case of
champagne in his cellar. But, however he got it, undeniably it was the
real thing.
A dozen questions rushed to my tongue, but I held them back, for he was
looking me up and down with a wistful tenderness that seemed to prelude
further revelation.