Her face brightened for an instant, and then she shook her head, and
said,--
"Ah, you are a child; you are an angel. You do not know." And then she
began to weep again, but more quietly. "I wish you had seen him; then
you would understand better. It was not wrong for me to love him once;
and he was so different from every one else--so true and gentle, and so
brave."
I listened while she continued to speak of him, and, at last, looking
wistfully at me, she said, in a low, timid voice, "I cannot help
trusting you." And she drew from inside a fold of her robe a little
piece of yellow paper, with a few words written on it, in pale, faded
ink, and a lock of brown hair.
"Do you think it is very wrong?" she asked. "I have never told the
confessor, because I am not quite sure if it is a sin to keep it; and I
am quite sure the sisters would take it from me if they knew. Do you
think it is wrong?"
The words were very simple--expressions of unchangeable affection, and a
prayer that God would bless her and keep them for each other until
better times.
I could not speak, I felt so sorry; and she murmured, nervously taking
her poor treasures from my hands, "You do not think it right. But you
will not tell? Perhaps one day I shall be better, and be able to give
them up; but not yet. I have nothing else."
Then I tried to tell her that she _had_ something else;--that God loved
her and had pity on her, and that perhaps He was only answering the
prayer of her betrothed, and guarding them in His blessed keeping until
they should meet in better times. At length she seemed to take comfort;
and I knelt down with her, and we said together the prayers she had been
commanded to recite.
When I rose, she said thoughtfully, "You seem to pray as if some one in
heaven really listened and cared."
"Yes," I said; "God does listen and care."
"Even to me?" she asked; "Even for me? Will he not despise me, like the
holy sisterhood?"
"He scorns no one; and they say the lowest are nearest Him, the
Highest."
"I can certainly never be anything but the lowest," she said. "It is fit
no one here should think much of me, for I have only given the refuse of
my life to God. And besides, I had never much power to think; and the
little I had seems gone since Eberhard died. I had only a little power
to love; and I thought that was dead. But since you came, I begin to
think I might yet love a little."
As I left the cell she called me back.
"What shall I do when my thoughts wander, as they always do in the long
prayers?" she asked.
"Make shorter prayers, I think, oftener," I said. "I think that would
please God as much."
_August_, 1511.
The months pass on very much the same here; but I do not find them
monotonous. I am permitted by the prioress to wait on the sick, and also
often to teach the younger novices. This little world grows larger to me
every week. It is a world of human hearts,--and what a world there is in
every heart!
For instance, Aunt Agnes! I begin now to know her. All the sisterhood
look up to her as almost a saint already. But I do not believe she
thinks so herself. For many months after I entered the cloister she
scarcely seemed to notice me; but last week she brought herself into a
low fever by the additional fasts and severities she has been imposing
on herself lately.
It was my night to watch in the infirmary when she became ill.
At first she seemed to shrink from receiving anything at my hands.
"Can they not send any one else?" she asked sternly.
"It is appointed to me," I said, "in the order of the sisterhood."
She bowed her head, and made no further opposition to my nursing her.
And it was very sweet to me, because in spite of all the settled, grave
impassiveness of her countenance, I could not help seeing something
there which recalled dear Aunt Cotta.
She spoke to me very little; but I felt her large deep eyes following me
as I stirred little concoctions of herbs on the fire, or crept softly
about the room. Towards morning she said, "Child, you are tired--come
and lie down;" and she pointed to a little bed beside her own.
Peremptory as were the words, there was a tone in them different from
the usual metallic firmness in her voice--which froze Else's heart--a
tremulousness which was almost tender. I could not resist the command,
especially as she said she felt much better; and in a few minutes, bad
nurse that I was, I fell asleep.
How long I slept I know not, but I was awakened by a slight movement in
the room, and looking up, I saw Aunt Agnes's bed empty. In my first
moment of bewildered terror I thought of arousing the sisterhood, when I
noticed that the door of the infirmary which opened on the gallery of
the chapel was slightly ajar. Softly I stole towards it, and there, in
the front of the gallery, wrapped in a sheet, knelt Aunt Agnes, looking
more than ever like the picture of death which she always recalled to
Else. Her lips, which were as bloodless as her face, moved with
passionate rapidity; her thin hands feebly counted the black beads of
her rosary; and her eyes were fixed on a picture of the _Mater Dolorosa_
with the seven swords in her heart, over one of the altars. There was no
impassiveness in the poor sharp features and trembling lips then. Her
whole soul seemed going forth in an agonized appeal to that pierced
heart; and I heard her murmur, "In vain! Holy Virgin, plead for me! it
has been all in vain. The flesh is no more dead in me than the first
day. That child's face and voice stir my heart more than all thy
sorrows. This feeble tie of nature has more power in me than all the
relationships of the heavenly city. It has been in vain--all, all in
vain. I cannot quench the fires of earth in my heart."
I scarcely ventured to interrupt her, but as she bowed her head on her
hands, and fell almost prostrate on the floor of the chapel, while her
whole frame heaved with repressed sobs, I went forward and gently lifted
her, saying, "Sister Agnes, I am responsible for the sick to-night. You
must come back."
She did not resist. A shudder passed through her; then the old stony
look came back to her face, more rigid then ever, and she suffered me to
wrap her up in the bed, and give her a warm drink.
I do not know whether she suspects that I heard her. She is more
reserved with me than ever; but to me those resolute, fixed features,
and that hard, firm voice, will never more be what they were before.
No wonder that the admiration of the sisterhood has no power to elate
Aunt Agnes, and that their wish to elect her sub-prioress had no
seduction for her. She is striving in her inmost soul after an ideal,
which, could she reach it, what would she be?
As regards all human feeling and earthly life, _dead_!
And just as she hoped this was attained, a voice--a poor, friendly
child's voice--falls on her ear, and she finds that what she deemed
death was only a dream in an undisturbed slumber, and that the whole
work has to begin again.
It is a fearful combat, this concentrating all the powers of life on
producing death in life.
Can this be what God means?
Thank God, at least, that my vocation is lower. The humbling work in the
infirmary, and the trials of temper in the school of the novices, seem
to teach me more, and to make me feel that I _am_ nothing and have
nothing in myself, more than all my efforts to _feel_ nothing.
My "Theologia" says, indeed, that true self-abnegation is freedom; and
freedom cannot be attained until we are above the fear of punishment or
the hope of reward. Else cannot bear this; and when I spoke of it the
other day to poor Sister Beatrice, she said it bewildered her poor brain
altogether to think of it. But I do not take it in that sense. I think
it must mean that love is its own reward; and grieving Him we love, who
has so loved us, our worst punishment. And that seems to me quite true.