And each time the woman hastened her pace. The face of the desert
began to change, and in the distance there was something that lay like
the shimmer of light. I watched it as it grew brighter. Colors were
distinguishable. It was a garden! Oh, the yearning in her face! Oh,
the effort with which she summoned strength to reach it! Her eyes grew
black with determination. Her little curls were spotted with moisture.
Sweeter and more penetrating became the breath of melody. It winged
her feet with courage. It put strength into her heart. Yes, yes, there
it lay! A fresh, bright, green garden, where a happy multitude of tiny
blue and white flowers grew. Over it iris-winged insects fluttered. The
sun shone resplendently. Here was the home of the melody. Its sweetness
was that of love and the fullness of life. Now the radiance of the
cross no longer touched the sandy waste. It remained high in the air,
aloof and far, a wan gold shadow of exquisite remoteness, like the
ghost of a vanished joy.
As she drew nearer, more intense became the light that fell upon the
garden. It became a blue and dazzling glory, beneath which the tiny
flowers expanded and expanded until they were lilies of mammoth size
and proportion. Oh, so lustrous, so satin soft, so voluptuously lovely
was their texture! A rare fragrance filtered from them through the
sand-thick air, a languorous, seductive, benumbing fragrance, like the
intangible soul of pleasure. When again the music came, the giant lily
buds burst open, disclosing in place of pistil and stamen the white
glorious bodies of women, whose hair outfloated in bright crinkles like
blown flame, and whose feet trod an amorous measure.
Now I knew whence the music came. It was made by the twining beauty of
seductive arms, the swaying of bright torsos, the interlacing of lithe
limbs, the argent light struck from bared breasts and brows. It was
their white passion, their wanton loveliness, their amorous longing,
their electric, vital, and indomitable youth translated into tone.
Far above the desert now, the wan cross hung in dim remoteness, a faint
frown of light, withdrawing coldly into the depths of space. The garden
glory touched the woman’s face. The sand monsters fell back, no longer
encumbering her. Happiness and courage shone from her eyes. The journey
was nearly over. A step--a dozen steps and she would have gained the
garden. She was all but there. She flung away the convent cloak. The
sweet wind lifted the little curls upon her brow. A blue lily leaned
amorously to meet her, its petals ready to enfold her. The strange
light swathed her about like a robe. The melody touched her heart to
joy. She was ready to grasp a waiting flower; one white hand reached
for it, when a thunder of many wings was heard.
From across the desert, from the sky above, a multitude of blackish
green-winged monsters, darkening the air to a dun midnight, dashed
down. Their black and sullen bodies, outspread wing on wing, shut out
the garden and formed a hideous wall of crawling heads. The great
wings surrounded and engulfed her, beating her back--back--back--with
lightning-like rapidity. Away, away, away they swept her, so swiftly
that the desert was left behind. And still they swept her on and on,
across another land--a land of granite, bleak and sterile and black,
whose darkness was shivered from time to time by the angry glare of
whirling swords that formed the mighty gate of a realm of night. Here
the whirring wings uplifted her. She had no more hold upon the earth.
Below, above, beside, were depth on depth of overlapping wings. Once,
for an instant, the swaying, fluttering band fell back. Sharp sword
light streaked her face. I saw its white horror and the little curls
a-dance with fear. Then more monsters came rushing. The earth and the
air were a-quiver with wings. There was a rush and a roar. There was
a noise as of many waters. Then the monsters swept away into the land
of darkness beyond, where nothing was distinguishable, where there was
no measurement of time or space. Again the granite land was lone and
silent, its gray immovableness disturbed only by the swinging gate of
swords, which streaked the rocks with floating ribbons of light.
SISTER SERAPHINE
We were sitting upon the terrace of Château Châteauroux in the early
evening--the old Comtesse M----, Mischna Stepanoff, and myself. It
was the time of the first soft warmth of spring. Two blossoming fruit
trees beside us were sweet ghosts in the early night. About them white
butterflies fluttered.
In the west there were great piled clouds edged with a pink as rare and
as wonderful as that which Watteau created for his frail creatures of
joy. And this pink was reflected in soft broken ribbons in the gently
moving surface of the Loire.
“What a night for love!” sighed Mischna Stepanoff, in whose life the
passion had played no unimportant part.
“Yes,” I replied, “love and youth and spring; they are earth’s immortal
trinity.”
“That reminds me of a story--a true story--of spring and youth and
love,” sighed reminiscently the old Comtesse, who had been a famous
beauty in her day.
“Tell it to us,” urged Mischna Stepanoff. “Next to being in love
oneself is the pleasure of listening to the stories of other people who
have been in love.”
“But I feel that I cannot do justice to it,” objected the old Comtesse.
“It is a story for the pen of Maupassant, who wrote of the tress of
hair. It might have been included among the pagan and Oriental dreams
of Gautier, or such fragile and dainty reminiscences of youth as De
Nerval occasionally indulged in. What could I do with a fancy like
that?”
“Tell it, anyway,” we insisted.
“Well, what I lack, your own greater imaginative skill must
supply,”--smiling and waving deprecatingly toward us a tiny jeweled
hand.
“It is the strangest, the most interesting story in the world. And it
is true.
“Over there where the hills step aside to make room for the passing of
the Loire, is the ruin of a convent which you have probably noticed.
In my youth it was inhabited by Les Sœurs Blanches, a well-conducted
and aristocratic order of nuns, who educated the daughters of the old
noblesse.
“One day I paid a visit there and for the first time saw Sister
Seraphine. She was about eighteen then, I should judge, although she
had already taken the final vows. I was at once attracted by her face
and her strange beauty. The upper part of the face--the brow, the eyes,
the nose--were those of an ascetic, a dreamer, an intellectual. The
brow was nobly formed and broad; the nose chastely chiseled and modeled
to an artist’s taste; and the eyes were the spiritual gray-blue of the
mystic. The eyes were very beautiful, too--mistily humid, like the
valley of our Loire here on a morning of spring.
“But the mouth! How can I tell you what it was like! There will never
be another in the world like it. In its color alone there were hidden
all the sins of earth. Such a color might have been born from the
conflagration of a world, or in the feverish brain of some sightless
dreamer. In its curves there was all the resistless languor of a
mediæval mondaine, or a voluptuous Roman woman who had idled in the
villas of Baiæ. Imagine, if you will, such a mouth beneath that ascetic
brow! It was the cause of her undoing, too--and her ruin.
“It contradicted the rest of her face so sharply that it was as if
she were two persons in one. It threw the beholder into a sort of
stupefaction. It made him feel as if he had stumbled awkwardly upon
some unguarded secret. It was that rarest of all features--a perfect
mouth! And yet, perchance, I think its perfection was a trifle
over-accented. It was, I think, a shade too red, too alluring, too
sensuous. It was a veritable Cupid’s bow set about with mocking
dimples that changed like light on the mobile surface of the Loire.
“No one could have known less of the world than Sister Seraphine. She
had been placed with Les Sœurs Blanches when she was four years old.
And she had never once left their sheltering care. She was of noble
blood, too, although the bar sinister blackened her birth record. On
her father’s side, it was whispered, she came of that royal blood of
old France that had never known the meaning of fear. And her mother was
the gay Comtesse of Marny.
“Now in all her young life Sister Seraphine had never seen a man except
the village priests and those who sat on Sundays beyond the grating in
the church. Think of it! Can you even imagine such a condition! Every
holiday and fête day before her final vows were taken, plans had been
made to give her an outing in the great world, to introduce her to that
society to which by birth she belonged. But, some way or other, each
time the plans miscarried. Some other person’s welfare and happiness
intervened, had to be considered first. The result was that she had
never left the convent walls.
“Shortly after this first visit of mine, the Duchesse de St. Loisy
presented to the convent two long mirrors for the reception room.
About this same time Sister Seraphine was put in charge of the room
to receive guests and the relatives of the _jeunes demoiselles_ on
visiting days. Callers at the convent were not very frequent in those
days. Traveling facilities were not what they have come to be since, so
Sister Seraphine was left alone for hours in the great room.
“Here she acquired the habit of looking at herself in one of the
mirrors. At first eyes stared blankly back at eyes. She could not see
_herself_. It is difficult, always, to get acquainted with oneself.
That to me, Mischna Stepanoff, has been one of the pleasures of
living--to find within me things that I did not dream were there.
Sister Seraphine after a while discovered her mouth. She was
surprised, as you may imagine. It was as if it were the mouth of
some strange unknown person who dwelled within her. It was--_the
other_--made visible!
“Soon she sensed, rather than reasoned, that it was in harmony with the
fragrant creative spring outside; that she was part of an universal
nature that lived and laughed. It seemed to her that even in repose her
mouth laughed. It was like the pagan sunshine, which always laughed.
She became interested in her mouth. She became fascinated with the many
things that it expressed, with its color, its flexibility, and its
capacity for joyous sensation, if by chance she touched it to a flower.
“One night, just before she closed and left the great room for the
night, she leaned long by the mirror’s edge looking up at the stars
through a near-by window. They were merry that night, the stars. It was
spring, which is youth in the world, and they laughed. They laughed so
gayly, so alluringly, that she turned impulsively and kissed her own
mouth in the mirror.
“For days after this Sister Seraphine was meditative and beyond her
habit thoughtful. She could not look at the mirrors. Her cheeks flushed
with shame. She felt disgraced and dishonored. Every time she was
obliged to pass by the great mirrors, she carefully turned her eyes
away.
“During these days it seemed as if Spring, like a bandit, broke through
the ponderous convent walls. Its murmur and its mystery and its
fragrance and its buoyant life were everywhere. They poured invisibly
through the somber, painted windows. They swept enticingly down the
long bare halls. All night they sang beneath the casements of the
penitential chambers. They awoke with the first penetrating sweetness
of the dawn.
“Each morning, in the opening flower cups, Sister Seraphine found
other mouths that looked like hers. She saw there the same desirous,
satiny lips. The same brilliant color burned upon them, the same dewy
ripeness. One night, unable to sleep, so many and so mighty were the
voices that called her, she got up softly and tiptoed down the long
bare corridors to the reception room. It was not ever really night
anywhere that spring, it seems to me as I recall it. The frail gray
shadows of summer made instead a sort of semi-day.
“She knelt down on the floor in front of one of the mirrors. There she
saw a white face under an aureole of short gold hair, two eyes that
shone like stars, and a mouth that was red as a wound. Again she kissed
it. When she crept back to her room, she found it lonelier than before.
Something, she knew not what, was missing. The world was empty. Some
joy had gone out of life.
“The next day she asked for permission to see Father Richards, the aged
priest of the parish.
“‘Father,’ she began, ‘you know that I have never left the convent
walls, do you not?’
“‘Yes, my daughter.’
“‘You know that I have known no other home.’
“‘Yes, my daughter.’
“‘That I have read only my breviary and the books of the saints. And
yet, Father, I have sinned, sinned grievously--’
“‘How, my daughter?’
“‘I have kissed--’
“‘Kissed?’
“‘Yes, Father. I have kissed a mouth, because I wanted to; because it
was red and sweet, like the flowers outside in the spring.’
“‘What! You say--Explain, my daughter!’ said the aged priest, greatly
puzzled.
“‘I kissed my own mouth, Father. I kissed it in the mirror, not once,
Father, but twice. And I am not sorry. It gave me pleasure, Father.
Were not mouths made to kiss? And the pleasure was not that which I
have felt when I kissed the white feet of the Virgin. And I am not
sorry, Father.’
“‘It is your youth, my daughter; spring, too, in the blood. You must
pray and fast--especially fast. That will subdue evil.’
“‘No, Father. I think differently. I will not. I am going away. The
great mirrors in the drawing-room there have shown me my mouth, Father.
And it has told me of another life--a life to which I belong! Do you
know what made it so red, so wonderful, so faultless, Father, this
mouth of mine? It was the splendid, free, pleasure-loving, tempestuous
lives that they lived who made me. There is not in this mouth of mine
one servile curve, one penitential or humiliating line, one touch of
pleading or regret. Although I have not seen them, I know that it must
have been a great race that bore me. They did not even leave me a name
to which I have a just claim. But right here, on my mouth, Father, they
set the red seal of their pleasures, their aristocratic arrogance,
their fearlessness, and their power.
“‘I can see the life they lived! I can see it all--through the days and
the nights and the years. A regal life it was, in great moat-encircled
castles, amid clash of steel, cries of joy and triumph and music and
the madness of power.
“‘I can see the white glorious faces of the women they loved, framed in
fluttering and triumphant banners.
“‘Think of the kisses given by brave men to the lips of beautiful
women! Think of the banquets and the feasting in great halls, where a
thousand candles flickered over satins and silks and gems and laces and
smooth shoulders and lustrous hair! Think of the wine they drank in
those long, long nights of revelry--wine that had treasured up and kept
the sweetness of a thousand springs; think of the songs, the laughter,
the dance, the jests! Think of the resounding hunt across fields vivid
with spring; the inspiriting call of the horns, the tossing of plumes,
the eyes afire with joy!
“‘Think of their daring and their high-hearted days when they
cheerfully placed life in the balance, to weigh against a kiss! Think
of the strength that took whatsoever it wanted, regardless of results;
that flung defiance in the face of Fate!
“‘This mouth, Father, told all this to me. This mouth is their message
to me.
“‘Do you know what has happened, Father? The strangest, the most
unbelievable, the most preposterous thing in the world! I have been
seduced by my own mouth! A miracle! A miracle of earth, not of heaven,
Father--by my own mouth!
“‘I am going away, too, Father, now.’
“And right there, before the feeble and astonished old man, she tore
off her hood and the bindings of her brow, and went out into the spring
that was waiting for her--across the fields, and away. Think of the
audacity, the power of decision, the strong, quick-working will that
nothing could enfeeble!
“You have both heard of Madame X----, have you not, who had such a
genius for life and luxury, whose sables the Tzaritza envied, who had
at her feet half the desirable men of France? She was Sister Seraphine.”
“Every one has a right to happiness, do you not think so?” exclaimed
Mischna Stepanoff, the joy of her own lost youth leaping to her eyes.
THE SACRED RELICS OF SAINT EUTHYMIUS
About the middle of the sixteenth century there was built, on the
westward-fronting coast of Istria, a pleasure palace. The builder,
Paul, Count of Radknothy, was a Hungarian nobleman of wealth and power,
who had traveled widely and formed his taste upon the best models of
the day.
On his frequent journeys he tarried oftenest in Venice. The rich and
luxurious city held for him the charm it has never failed to hold for
the people of the North.
Here he met La Fiorita, a dancer renowned for her beauty. She was his
senior by a number of years and a woman of unsavory reputation. The
story of her amours, which had been many, sounded like a page from
Masuccio, and had been the talk of Italy. She had been _persona grata_
with the nobles of that licentious age. She had ruled as temporary
mistress of many a summer palace hidden away among the Italian hills.
For Count Radknothy she had the fascination which women of mature years
have had for younger men. He married her and took her away to his
Istrian home.
She was glad of this lucky stroke of fortune. She realized that,
considering the life she had led, her beauty could not last in its
perfection.
In the second year after her marriage, shortly before the time of her
first confinement, she was miraculously saved from death at the hands
of an assassin by a Carthusian nun, whom the blow struck. The assassin,
who paid for the attempt with his life, was a follower of her old days,
in whose heart her beauty had been more than a fancy.
This escape from death back into the luxurious life she had never
ceased to look upon as the kindness of Providence, aroused the
religious fanaticism that slumbers in the Italian soul. In return, she
made a vow that the unborn child should be sacred to the church. Later,
a daughter was born to Count and Countess Radknothy, who was christened
Elsbeth.
Overjoyed at her safe delivery, chastened in mind by the favors of
Heaven, the Countess decided that the child should take the veil in a
convent of the Silent Sisters. Then she felt that she had atoned for
the sins of her youth. Accordingly, when little Elsbeth was twelve
years old, she was sent to the Hungarian Convent of St. Euthymius.
This convent, which had once been the war-castle of a feudal lord, and
which bore witness to its past in its stern and forbidding exterior,
was situated in northwestern Hungary, just south of the Little
Carpathians, and surrounded by their gloomy forests. It stood on an
elevation. On the north a lake lay, whose outlet was the shallow
Ipoly, which to southward joins the Danube. It was a hilly, thinly
populated country of ancient mansions separated from each other by
miles of woodland.
From the convent but one building was visible, the family chapel of
the Ràkoczi, a family of royal lineage whose male members had led the
wars for Hungarian independence. The castle was on the other side of
the chapel and its rear was toward the lake. On the north side of the
convent there was but one window. From this the warlike baron used to
watch his enemies approach. Beneath the window, clinging to the wall,
was a staircase. This was the room which was assigned to Elsbeth.
Notwithstanding her childish immaturity, it was evident that she had
inherited her mother’s blond beauty, which, in her case, was made more
brilliant by the father’s Hungarian blood. During the two years that
had preceded her daughter’s birth, La Fiorita had luxuriated in her
Istrian palace. Here, freed from the efforts of a dancer’s life, and
cherished by a love in the flower of its youth, her beauty had reached
its perfection. In addition, little Elsbeth had inherited her mother’s
abundant vitality and her taste for music and dancing.
Because of the child’s love of music and the noble family to which
she belonged, the rules of St. Euthymius were lifted, and she was
permitted to take her lute with her. La Fiorita consoled herself with
the thought that the lute would take the place of conversation, which
was forbidden. With this solicitude she dismissed the subject. She felt
that she had purchased the forgiveness of Heaven and gave herself over
unrestrainedly to the life of pleasure she loved.
It was autumn when Elsbeth reached St. Euthymius. The repellent
exterior of the convent-fortress was softened by the richness of the
season. Autumn once seen among the mountains of Hungary is something
always to remember. A languid radiance enfolds the landscape. The
stern Carpathians float in a mist of blue, through which white, fragile
birches and fiery maples gleam. The forests and the mountains are
reflected in the water. Along the roads ferns expand into fans of gold.
The woodlands exhale an aromatic perfume.
The witchery of the season dulled the first pain of separation. But
when the rains of November scattered the leaves, and the wind sang
about the lonely towers and echoed down the bare corridors, she cried
like a little child to go home. The sisters’ efforts to comfort her
were vain. Equally vain were their attempts to divert her mind with
lessons and prayer. She still cried to go home.
There was no devotional chord in her nature to respond to the good
sisters’ teachings. They were like a voice calling in a land where no
one lives. When winter came, the entire world was black and white.
Without, the snow and the bare trees--or the blacker pines and firs;
within, white, echoing rooms, where silent, black-clad figures moved.
The sight filled her with grief, and by contrast called to mind her
bright-gowned, beautiful mother.
When spring came, she was so pale and thin that the kind sisters
would have sent word of her condition to her parents, had it not been
expressly stated that no word was to be sent to disturb the peace of
the Istrian home.
When she was seventeen, the sisters decided that she was sufficiently
instructed in the duties of the order to be made a member. Obediently
she took the veil and the vow of silence. This occasioned no fresh
grief, since it could not interfere with her source of happiness--her
dreams.
In the spring of the following year, shortly after vespers, when she
was in her room alone, she heard some one playing upon a lute a melody
of enchanting rhythm. Hastily she unfastened the window square. In the
melody floated, with the breath of the soft spring night. It came from
the lake. She vibrated pleasurably to it. In it were poured out the
longing heart of youth and the soft allurements of love. Instinctively
she threw off the cloak and hood. She unclasped the black mantle at her
throat. In her eyes, upon her face, glowed that look of inspired joy
with which La Fiorita had held her admirers. Snatching the lute from
the wall, she repeated the melody and improvised an answer. The unknown
musician understood and followed her lead. Thus they conversed for an
hour through the medium of music.
The next morning Elsbeth was summoned to the Superior. Some of the
sisters said that they had heard music in the night coming from her
room, and of a kind not suitable for convent walls. Had not years of
silence lamed their tongues and made them incapable of utterance, they
would have been eloquent in their description of the melodies they had
heard. As it was, they insisted vehemently upon their wickedness.
“My daughter,” said the Superior, “since this is the first complaint
against you, you shall go unpunished. We have shown forbearance
because of your youth. Now that you are older, and have become one of
us permanently, it is right that you should obey the rules and uphold
them. In the future play sacred music, or such as befits the vows you
have taken.” With this the Superior dismissed her.
It was later that night when the lute called beneath her window. Her
answer was a sharp note of warning. The unseen musician understood.
When again he touched the strings, it was midnight, and the shy summer
stars had been hours a-twinkle. He played the same alluring cantilena,
but softly, tenderly, as if meant for a loved one’s ears alone.
He swept the strings so delicately it was but a breath of musical
fragrance upon the night.
Elsbeth trembled. The blood coursed pleasurably through her veins. Her
soul expanded with joy. Fear was forgotten. She thought only of the
unseen one upon the lake who called to her.