-----
The one man of all men who could have told this tale and lived has long
since gone to his place; and there is no apology for those that would
follow in the footsteps of Lawrence Sterne.
In a nameless city of a land that shall be nameless, a rich man lived
alone. His wealth had bought him a luxurious flat on the fifth floor of
a red-brick mansion, whose grilles were of hammered iron, and whose
halls were of inlaid marble. When he needed attendance, coals, his
letters, a meal, a messenger or a carriage, he pressed an electric
button and his wants were satisfied almost as swiftly as even petulant
wealth could expect. An exceedingly swift lift bore him to and from his
rooms, and in his rooms he had gathered about him all that his eye
desired--books in rich cases with felted hinges, ivories from all the
world, rugs, lamps, cushions, couches, engravings and rings with
engravings upon them, miniatures of pretty women, scientific toys and
china from Persia. He had friends and acquaintances as many as he could
befriend or know; and some said that more than one woman had given him
her whole love. Therefore, he could have lacked nothing whatever.
One day a hot sickness touched him with its finger, and he became no
more than a sick man alone among his possessions, the sport of dreams
and devils and shadows, sometimes a log and sometimes a lunatic crying
in delirium. Before his friends forsook him altogether, as healthy
brutes will forsake the wounded, they saw that he was efficiently
doctored, and the expensive physician who called upon him at first three
times a day, and later only once, caused him to be nursed by a nun.
"Science is good," said the physician, "but for steady, continuous
nursing, with no science in it, Religion is better--and I know Sister
Ursula."
So this sick man was nursed by a nun, young and fairly pretty, but,
above all, skilful. When he got better he would give the convent, and
not Sister Ursula, a thankoffering which would be spent among the poor
whom Sister Ursula chiefly attended. At first the man knew nothing of
the nun's existence--he was in the country beyond all creeds--but later
a white coifed face came and went across his visions, and at last, spent
and broken, he woke to see a very quiet young woman in black moving
about his room. He was too weak to speak: too weak almost to cling to
life any more. In his despair he thought that it was not worth clinging
to; but the woman was at least a woman and alive. The touch of her
fingers in his as she gave him the medicine was warm. She testified to
the existence of a world full of women also alive--the world he was
beginning to disbelieve in. He watched her sitting in the sunshine by
the window, and counted the light creeping down from bead to bead of the
rosary at her waist. They then moved his bed to the window that he might
look down upon the stately avenue that ran by the flat-house, and watch
the people going to and fro about their business. But the change,
instead of cheering, cast him into a deeper melancholy. It was nearly a
hundred feet, sheer drop, to those healthy people walking so fast, and
the mere distance depressed him unutterably. He played with the scores
of visiting-cards that his friends had left for him, and he tried to
play with the knobs of the desk close to the head of his bed, and he was
very, very wretched.
[Illustration: "A HOT SICKNESS TOUCHED HIM WITH ITS FINGER."]
One morning he turned his face away from the sunlight and took no
interest in anything, while the hand turned back upon the dial so
swiftly that it almost alarmed the doctor. He said to himself: "Bored,
eh? Yes. You're just the kind of over-educated, over-refined man that
would drop his hold on life through sheer boredom. You've been a most
interesting case so far, and I won't lose you." He said to Sister Ursula
that he would send an entirely fresh prescription by his boy, and that
Sister Ursula must give it to the invalid every twenty minutes without
fail. Also, if the man responded, it might be well to talk to him a
little. "He needs cheering up. There is nothing the matter with him now;
but he won't pick up."
[Illustration: "SISTER URSULA."]
There can be few points of sympathy between a man born, bred, trained,
and sold for and to the world and a good nun made for the service of
other things. Sister Ursula's voice was very sweet, but the matter of
her speech did not interest. The invalid lay still, looking out of the
window upon the street all dressed in its Sunday afternoon emptiness.
Then he shut his eyes. The doctor's boy rang at the door. Sister Ursula
stepped out into the hall, not to disturb the sleeper, and took the
medicine from the boy's hand. Then the lift shot down again, and even as
she turned the wind of its descent puffed up and blew to the spring-lock
door of the rooms with a click only a little more loud than the leap of
her terrified heart.
Sister Ursula tried the door softly, but rich men with many hundred
pounds worth of _bric-a-brac_ buy themselves very well made doors that
fasten with singularly cunning locks. Then the lift returned with the
boy in charge, and, so soon as his Sunday and rather distracted
attention was drawn to the state of affairs, he suggested that Sister
Ursula should go down to the basement and speak to the caretaker, who
doubtless had a duplicate key. To the basement, therefore, Sister Ursula
went with the medicine-bottle clasped to her breast, and there, among
mops and brooms and sinks and heating pipes, and the termini of all the
electric communications of that many-storied warren, she found, not the
caretaker, but his wife, reading a paper, with her feet on a box of
soap. The caretaker's wife was Irish, and a Catholic, reverencing the
Church in all its manifestations. She was not only sympathetic, but
polite. Her husband had gone out, and, being a prudent guardian of the
interests confided to him, had locked up all the duplicate keys.
[Illustration: "READING A PAPER, WITH HER FEET ON A BOX OF SOAP."]
"An' the saints only know whin Mike'll be back av a Sunday," she
concluded cheerfully, after a history of Mike's peculiarities. "He'll be
afther havin' supper wid friends."
"The medicine!" said Sister Ursula, looking at the inscription on the
bottle. "It must begin at twenty minutes past five. There are only ten
minutes now. There _must_--oh! there must be a way!"
"Give him a double dose next time. The docthor won't know the differ."
The convent of Sister Ursula is not modelled after Irish ideals, and the
present duty before its nun was to return to the locked room with the
medicine. Meantime the minutes flew bridleless, and Sister Ursula's eyes
were full of tears.
"I must get to the room," she insisted. "Oh, surely, there is a way, any
way!"
"There's wan way," said the caretaker's wife, stung to profitable
thought by the other's distress. "And that's the way the tenants would
go in case av fire. To be sure now I might send the lift boy."
"It would frighten him to death. He must not see strangers. What is the
way?"
"If we wint into the cellar an' out into the area, we'll find the ground
ends av the fire-eshcapes that take to all the rooms. Go aisy, dear."
Sister Ursula had gone down the basement steps through the cellar into
the area, and with clenched teeth was looking up the monstrous sheer of
red-brick wall cut into long strips by the lessening perspective of
perpendicular iron ladders. Under each window each ladder opened out
into a little, a very little, balcony. The rest was straighter than a
ship's mast.
The caretaker's wife followed, panting; came out into the sunshine, and,
shading her eyes, took stock of the ground.
"He'll be No. 42 on the Fifth. Thin this ladder goes up to it. Bad luck
to thim, they've the eshcapes front an' back, spoilin' the look av a
fine house: but it's all paid for in the rint. Glory be to God, the
avenue's empty--all but. But it should ha' been the back--it should ha'
been the back!"
Two children were playing in the gutter. But for these the avenue was
deserted, and the hush of a Sabbath afternoon hung over it all. Sister
Ursula put the medicine-bottle carefully into the pocket of her gown.
Her face was as white as her coif.
"'Tis not for me," said the caretaker's wife, shaking her head sadly.
"I'm so's to be round, or I'd go wid ye. Those ladders do be runnin'
powerful straight up an' down. 'Tis scandalous to think--but in a fire,
an' runnin' wid their night clothes, they'd not stop to think. Go away,
ye two little imps, there! The bottle's in your pocket? You'll not lose
good hold av the irons. What is ut?--oh!"
Sister Ursula retreated into the cellar, dropped on her knees, and was
praying--praying as Lady Godiva prayed before she mounted her palfrey.
The caretaker's wife had barely time to cross herself, and follow her
example, when she was on her feet again, and her feet were on the lowest
rungs of the ladder.
"Hould tight," said the caretaker's wife. "Oh, darlint, wait till Mike
comes! Come down, now!--the good angels be wid you. There should have
been a way at the back. Walk tinderly an' hould tight. Heaven above sind
there'll be no wind! Oh, why wasn't his ugly rooms at the back, where
'tis only yards an' bedroom windows!"
The voice grew fainter and stopped. Sister Ursula was at the level of
the first floor windows when the two children caught sight of her,
raising together a shrill shout. The devil that delights in torturing
good nuns inspired them next to separate and run the one up and the
other down the avenue, yelling, "O--oh! There's a nun up the
fire-escape! A nun on the fire-escape!" and, since one word at least was
familiar, a score of heads came to windows in the avenue, and were much
interested.
In spite of her prayers, Sister Ursula was not happy. The
medicine-bottle banged and bumped in her pocket as she gripped the iron
bars hand over hand and toiled aloft. "It is for the sake of a life,"
she panted to herself. "It is a good work. He might die if I did not
come. Ah! it is terrible." A flake of rust from the long disused irons
had fallen on her nose. The rungs were chafing her hands, and the
minutes were flying. The round, red face of the caretaker's wife grew
smaller and smaller below her, and there was a rumbling of wheels in the
avenue. An idle coachman, drawn by the shouts of the children, had
turned the corner to see what was to be seen. And Sister Ursula climbed
in agony of spirit, the heelless black cloth shoes that nuns wear
slipping on the rungs of the ladder, and all earth reeling a hundred
thousand feet below.
She passed one set of apartments, and they were empty of people, but the
fire, the books on the table, and the child's toy cast on the hearthrug
showed it was deserted only for a minute. Sister Ursula drew breath on
the balcony, and then hurried upwards. There was iron rust red on both
her hands, the front of her gown was speckled with it, and a reflection
in the stately double window showed a stainless stiff fold of her
head-gear battered down over her eye. Her shoe, yes, the mended one, had
burst at the side near the toe in a generous bulge of white stocking.
She climbed on wearily, for the bottle was swinging again, and in her
ears there came unbidden the nursery refrain that she used to sing to
the little sick children in the hospital at Quebec:
"This is the cow with the crumpled horn."
Between earth and heaven, it is said, the soul on its upward journey
must pass the buffeting of many evil spirits. There flashed into Sister
Ursula's mind the remembrance of a picture of a man gazing from the
leads down the side of a house--a wonderful piece of foreshortening
that made one dizzy to see. Where had she seen that picture? Memory,
that works indifferently on earth or in vacuo, told her of a book read
by stealth in her novitiate, such a book as perils body and soul, and
Sister Ursula blushed redder than the brickwork a foot before her nose.
Everything that she had read in or thought about that book raced through
her mind as all his past life does not race through the soul of a
drowning man. It was horrible, most horrible. Then rose a fierce wave
of rage and indignation that she, a sister of irreproachable life and
demeanour (the book had been an indiscretion, long since bitterly
repented of), should be singled out for these humiliating exercises.
There were other nuns of her acquaintance, proud, haughty and
overbearing (her foot slipped here as a reminder against the sin of
hasty judgments, and she felt that it was a small and niggling Justice
that counted offences at such a crisis), and--and thinking too much of
their holiness, to whom this mortification, with all the rust flakes in
bosom and kerchief, would have been salutary and wholesome. But that
she, Sister Ursula, who only desired a quiet life, should climb
fire-escapes in the face of the shameless sun and a watching population!
It was too terrible. None the less she did not come down.
[Illustration: "SISTER URSULA LOOKED DOWN."]
Praying to be delivered from evil thoughts, praying that the swinging
bottle would not smash itself against the iron ladders, she toiled on.
The second and third flats were empty, and she heard a murmur in the
street; a hum of encouraging tumult, cheerful outcries bidding her go
up higher, and crisp enquiries as to whether this were the end of the
performance. Her Saint--she that had not prevailed against the
Nuns--would not help Sister Ursula, and it came over her, as cold water
slides down the spine, that at her journey's end she would have
to--go--through--the window. There is no vestibule, portico, or
robing-room at the upper end of a fire-escape. It is designed for such
as move in a hurry, unstudious of the graces, being for the most part
not over-dressed, and yet seeking publicity--that publicity which came
to Sister Ursula unsought. She must go through that window in order to
give her invalid his medicine. Her head must go first, and her feet, and
the bursten shoe, must go last. It was the very breaking point in the
strain, and here her saint, mistaking the needs of the case, sent her a
companion. Her head was level with the window of the fourth story, and
she was rejoicing to find that that also was empty when the door opened,
and there entered a man something elderly, of prominent figure, and
dressed according to the most rigid canons laid down for afternoon
visits. He was millions of leagues removed from Sister Ursula's
world--this person with the tall silk hat, the long frock-coat, the
light grey trousers, the tiny yellow buttonhole rose, and the marvellous
puffed cravat anchored about with black pearl-headed pins--but an
imperative need for justification was upon her. Her own mission, the
absolute rightness of her own mission, were so clear to herself that she
never doubted anyone might misunderstand when she pointed upwards to the
skies, and the flat above.
[Illustration: "SANK PANTING AT THE FOOT OF THE BED."]
The man, who was in the act of laying his tall hat absently upon the
table, looked up as the shadow took the light, saw the gesture, and
stared. Then his jaw dropped, and his face became ashy-grey. Sister
Ursula had never seen Terror in the flesh, well-dressed and fresh from a
round of calls. She gathered herself up to climb on, but the man within
uttered a cry that even the double windows could not altogether stifle,
and ran round the room in circles as a dog runs seeking a lost glove.
"He is mad," thought Sister Ursula. "Oh, heavens, and _that_ is what has
driven him mad."
He was stooping fondly over something that seemed like the coffin of a
little child. Then he rushed directly at the window open-mouthed. Sister
Ursula went upwards and onwards, none the less swiftly because she
heard a muffled oath, the crash of broken glass, and the tinkling of the
broken splinters on the pavestones below. For the second time only in
her career, she looked down--down between the ladder and the wall. A
silk hat was bobbing wildly, as a fishing-float on a troubled stream,
not a dozen rungs beneath, and a voice--the voice of fear--cried
hoarsely, "Where is it? Where is it?" Then went up to the roofs the
roaring and the laughter of a great crowd; yells, cat-calls, ki-yis and
hootings many times multiplied. Her Saint had heard her at last, and
caused Sister Ursula to disregard the pains of going through the window.
Her one desire now was to reach that haven, to jump, dive, leap-frog
through it if necessary, and shut out the unfortunate maniac. It was a
short race, but swift, and Saint Ursula took care of the bottle. A long
course of afternoon calls, with refreshments at clubs in the intervals,
is not such good training as the care of the sick in all weathers for
sprinting over a course laid at ninety degrees. Nor again can the best
of athletes go swiftly up a ladder if he carries a priceless violin in
one hand and its equally priceless bow in his teeth, and handicaps
himself with varnished leather buttoned boots. They climbed, the one
below the other.
[Illustration: "'OPEN THE WINDOW!' ROARED COTT."]
The window at the foot of the invalid's bed was open. At the next window
was the white face of the invalid. Sister Ursula reached the sash, threw
it up, went through--let no man ask how--shut it gently but with amazing
quickness, and sank panting at the foot of the bed, one hand on the
bottle.
"There was no other way," she panted. "The door was locked. I could not
help. Oh! He is here!"
The face of Terror in the top hat rose to the window-level inch by inch.
The violin-bow was between his teeth, and his hat hung over one eye in
the fashion of early dawn.
"It's Cott van Cott," said the invalid, slowly and critically. "He looks
quite an old man. Cott and his Strad. How very bad for the Strad!"
"Open the window. Where is it? Is there a way? Open the window!" roared
Cott, without removing the violin-bow.
Sister Ursula held up one hand warningly as she stooped over the
invalid.
For the second time did Cott van Cott misinterpret the gesture and
heaved himself upward, the violin and the bow clicking and rattling at
every stride. He was fleeing to the leads to save his life and his
violin from death by fire--fire in the basement--and the crowd in the
street roared below him with the roar of a full-fed conflagration.
The invalid fell back on the pillows and wiped his eyes. The hands of
the clock were on the hour appointed for the medicine, lacking only the
thirty seconds necessary for pouring it into a wine-glass. He took it
from Sister Ursula's hand, still shaking with helpless laughter.
[Illustration: "TOOK ONE LITTLE BRASS THIMBLE-LIKE THING FROM ITS
INSIDE."]
"God bless you, Sister Ursula," he said. "You've saved my life."
"The medicine was to be given," she answered simply. "I--I could not
help coming that way."
"If you only knew," said the invalid. "If you only knew! I saw it from
out of the windows. Good heavens! the dear old world is just the same as
ever. I must get back to it. I must positively get well and get back.
And, Sister Ursula, do you mind telling me when you're quite composed
everything that happened between the time the door shut and--and you
came in that way?"
After a little Sister Ursula told, and the invalid laughed himself faint
once more. When Sister Ursula re-settled the pillows, her hand fell on
the butt of a revolver that had come from the desk by the head of the
bed. She did not understand what it was, but the sight pained her.
"Wait a minute," said the invalid, and he took one little brass
thimble-like thing from its inside. "I--I wanted to use it for something
before you went out, but I saw you come up, and I don't want it any
more. I must certainly get back to the world again. Dear old world! Nice
old world! And Mrs. Cassidy prayed with you in the cellar, did she? And
Van Cott thought it was a fire? Do you know, Sister Ursula, that all
those things would have been impossible on any other planet? I'm going
to get well, Sister Ursula."
In the long night, Sister Ursula, blushing all over under the eyes of
the night-light, heard him laughing softly in his sleep.
[Illustration: EMILE ZOLA.]
_"Lions in Their Dens."_