SISTER HELENA.
My progress towards restored health was but slow; and poor I--an
individual who had always regarded with mortal aversion confinement
and monotony in every shape--was forced to undergo the tedium of a
protracted illness and convalescence. Terribly weary did I get of the
long days and nights as they dragged on without bringing anything to
amuse me, and to enliven the dulness of existence. Other patients had
friends and acquaintances who came to see them on visiting days, but
I had not even that mild excitement to look forward to, for I was
utterly solitary and unknown. Unluckily, too, the literary resources
of the place were but limited. For though there was a so-called
library yet its stock of books was lamentably small, and, as it
seemed to me, uninteresting. And though odd numbers of old magazines
and newspapers would drop in upon us at intervals, yet their
appearance was nothing like as regular and frequent as I should have
liked, or as I think it would have been if benevolently disposed
people had realised what a boon it is to many hospital patients to
know something of what goes on in the outside world from which they
are excluded.
My mind, then, having but few distractions, was all the more ready
to occupy itself with whatever person or thing happened to come
prominently before it. And thus I found myself continually engaged
in studying and thinking about the Sister, who, for the time being,
filled a position of conspicuous importance in my life, as a sort of
guardian angel in whom I felt a serene confidence that she would see
I was never seriously wronged or ill-used in any way.
She was the first Sister with whom I had ever come in contact,
and, by my acquaintance with her, the prejudice I had previously
entertained against all sisters was speedily swept away. Sister
Helena, as she was called, must, I think, have been between thirty
and thirty-five years old, and was tall and graceful in figure. She
had handsome features; a high broad forehead; a keen eye that seemed
to notice everything within its range; a square chin, and a firm
mouth; and no one who saw her could doubt that she possessed both
power and intelligence above the average. Her face was pale, and her
expression--except when she smiled--grave to the verge of austerity.
But it was the gravity of thoughtfulness, not of gloom and sadness;
and whatever tendency to austerity she may have had was reserved
exclusively for herself. Most certainly it was never visible in her
behaviour to the sick; for she always showed them the kindliest
sympathy and tenderness, devoting herself to them absolutely, and
treating them with a loving gentleness and tenderness that was enough
to make one suppose they were her dearest friends.
As she was general superintendent of the hospital-nursing and
arrangements for the relief of the sick, she had usually too much
to do with looking after her subordinates and seeing that they did
their duty, to be able to officiate in person as nurse. But she
was thoroughly capable of doing so in case of need, and whenever
circumstances happened to make it necessary for her to bandage, sew
up, or dress wounds, or perform any other services of the kind for
patients, she was sure to do whatever was required as gently,
skilfully, and efficiently as any one--or indeed more so.
One very marked distinction between her and the ordinary professional
nurses was, that she was unmistakably a lady by birth, and possessed
naturally--without effort or thinking about it--the subtle charm of
refinement. I--who had fondly imagined myself to be superior to the
influence of any sentimental vanity of that kind--was astonished and
disappointed to find how quickly I detected this in her, and how
attractive it was to me. I could not disguise from myself that I was
highly susceptible to the charm to which I had believed I was
indifferent; and that it was infinitely preferable to me to have to
do with the person in whom I instinctively recognised an equal than
with those who were inferiors. Refined associates were more congenial
to me than vulgar ones, in spite of all my knocking about; and even
though provoked at my own folly, I sometimes could not repress a sigh
to think that I had left my own rank of life in favour of a lower
one.
Well; the more I observed and thought about Sister Helena, the more
did I wonder what her previous history could have been. Here was a
woman, evidently well born and bred, good-looking, below middle age,
clever, amiable, sensible, capable, and in every way qualified to
make her mark and be popular in society. Why on earth, then, should
she be spending her existence in hard work amongst the painful sights
and scenes of a hospital, instead of enjoying herself in the sphere
to which she belonged naturally? For the fact that she was at the
hospital I was profoundly thankful, because I was myself a gainer by
it; but none the less was it an inexplicable mystery to me, and one
which I was constantly endeavouring to find plausible theories to
account for.
As, therefore, I was intensely curious about her, admired, liked, and
was grateful to her, and through her could enjoy the, to me, pleasant
feeling of association with a cultivated and refined lady, it
followed naturally that I sought eagerly for opportunities of having
to do with her, and never failed to profit by any excuse for making
her occupy herself about me. The pleasure her company gave me was too
evident to escape her quick observation, and when she perceived it
her kindness of heart prompted her to gratify my wishes as far as
might be; for she was one of those to whom nobody ever held out their
hands in vain. Therefore, though her multifarious avocations made it
impossible, as a rule, for her to bestow much individual attention
on any particular person whose case was not so critical and special
as to give it precedence over ordinary business, yet she would
always--unless in a _very_ great hurry--stop and say a kind word to
me in passing through the ward; and sometimes, on the rare occasions
when she had a few minutes to spare, she would even come in on
purpose to chat with me. I do not know whether or not she had the
same intuitive consciousness that I had of our both belonging to the
same social order; but, at all events, there sprung up between us by
degrees an intimacy beyond that which is ordinarily produced by the
relations of nurse and patient.
As it was not in her nature to see any kind of suffering without
trying to relieve it, she tried to hit upon some means of varying
the unchanging sameness of life by which she perceived me to be
oppressed. It was not possible to do much for me in this way whilst I
was tied by the leg in bed, but when at last I was able to get up and
crawl about a little with the help of sticks, she asked me if I
thought I could get as far as her room, which was on the same floor
as the ward, and only a short distance from it. On my replying in
the affirmative, she filled me with delight by inviting me to go and
have tea there with her that afternoon. Oh how impatiently I counted
the minutes till tea-time came! and how welcome and refreshing was
the change to her room from the dreary old ward of which I was so
tired!
From that date our intimacy advanced much more rapidly than before;
for, as she saw how I enjoyed the visit to her room, hardly a day
passed on which I was not invited there at some time or other. It
was not often that she was able to be with me all the time, for she
was almost always called off elsewhere on business. But when this
happened she did not expect me to go back to the ward unless I chose,
and if I preferred--as I invariably did--to stay where I was, and
amuse myself with books, work, or my own thoughts whilst awaiting her
return, I was at liberty to do so. Indeed, if she had not been
willing to trust me in her room without her, it would generally not
have been worth while my going there at all; for the demands upon her
time were perpetual, and she hardly ever had any leisure. It was
Sister here and Sister there from morning till night; and, as far as
I could see, she had not a single minute in the day which she could
call her own, and reckon on as secure from interruption.
I have already said that one object which I had had for desiring to
know her was, that I wanted to learn her past history, wherein I
believed must lie some mysterious reason which had caused her to
adopt her present hard, untempting, self-denying life. But as our
acquaintance progressed and I came to know her more and more, I
perceived with surprise that there was no hidden mystery at all about
the matter, and that instead of any thrilling romance or tragedy such
as I had imagined, the reason for her life was simply the love of
God, and desire to serve Him in the best way she could. That was the
sole motive for every deed, word, and thought of hers--the one
compass by which her course was steered.
The reason why this discovery amazed me as it did was, that I had
never dreamt of its being possible for any one with respectable
mental abilities to take religion thus _au grand sérieux_. I
cannot say I had ever troubled my head much about religion at all;
but still I had a vague idea of it as a thing which people of weak
intellect sometimes made a fuss about, but which the wiser part of
the world treated as a mere unreal conventionality--a sort of outer
garment which was assumed and respected solely out of deference to
Mrs. Grundy.
It was startling to me, therefore, to meet with such a living
contradiction of this idea as Sister Helena. She was no fool, as I
knew, but very much the reverse; and in her management of the
hospital she gave daily proofs of good sense, shrewdness, and sound
judgment, which made it impossible to think she would be led away by
visionary notions, or act lightly and without due consideration. Nor
was she a person who ever bestowed a thought upon Mrs. Grundy, or who
could be suspected of any taint of humbug and unreality in either
word or deed. Yet to this sensible, intelligent, absolutely honest
woman, religion was a fact of such vital importance as to be the
mainspring of her life--the one thing to be put before everything
else! So extraordinary did it seem to me, that I should certainly
have refused to believe in the phenomenon at all if I had not beheld
it with my own eyes.
It appeared evident to me that it must need a very powerful engine
to be the motive force of such steady, self-sacrificing, practical
goodness as hers, and I thought I should like to understand somewhat
of the nature of that engine. With this object in view I directed
constant questions towards the subject that interested me, and
thus it came about that religion was the theme upon which we
conversed more frequently than any other. I do not recapitulate our
conversations, because I consider they would be out of place in a
book of this kind; but this much I will say, that they made a strong
impression on me, and caused me to think of religion very differently
from what I had done hitherto. She was the first person I had ever
met whose deeds really harmonised with her professions, and all that
she said had weight with me, because her life was an unmistakable
proof that she honestly and fully did believe the things she
professed to believe. I began to contemplate the possibility of there
being a real meaning in the creeds and prayers which I had often
heard and joined in when at church without attaching any sense at all
to them. I began, too, to have an idea that perhaps church membership
might be something more than a mere empty form, and that there might
be some real advantage in belonging to that Church of which I had
been a member all my life as a matter of course, and without ever
supposing it could make the slightest difference to me, one way or
other. And, more than all, in proportion as I became inclined to
believe in the truth and reality of religion, so also did the
conviction grow upon me that I myself was not exactly altogether what
I should be, and that it behoved me to set about reforming.
I really did want to amend what was amiss, and to become better than
I was; but still I did not want to be _too_ good. Such goodness as
Sister Helena's, for instance, was, I knew, far beyond my powers; and
besides that, my hearty admiration for it in her did not lead me to
desire it for myself, because I was quite sure that even if it
were possible for me to attain to such a pitch of self-denying
excellence, I should not enjoy it, as I was a deal too fond of
worldly comforts and joys ever to be happy without them.
Certainly it was very singular that there should be so wide a
difference between one person's sense of duty and another's. When
first this difference struck me, I was inclined to be somewhat uneasy
at the comparatively diminutive proportions of my own virtue; but
then there occurred to me a very comfortable and reassuring way of
accounting for it. People's bodies were predisposed towards measles,
whooping cough, and other illnesses in varying degrees, and had them
lightly or severely according to the extent of that predisposition;
and some people even never had these illnesses at all--being
apparently endowed with some constitutional peculiarity which acted
as an antidote to the poison of disease. And from this I argued that
probably people's minds varied in a similar fashion in regard to
virtue--some being more, and some less receptive of it. I supposed
that a person could only be affected by religion and goodness
according to the degree of his mental predisposition towards such
things, and that some people could never be influenced by them at
all. I thought this supposition a perfectly reasonable one, and
highly satisfactory also. For in that case it was obviously absurd to
expect much goodness from a person whose mind was so constituted as
to be antagonistic to virtuous influences; and of course no one could
be blamed for what was merely a natural defect.
I propounded my theory triumphantly to Sister Helena one day when
she was insisting upon the necessity of some virtue or other which I
thought ordinary mortals need not trouble themselves about. But she
refused absolutely to agree with me; declared that goodness was
equally attainable by all who chose; and laughed at the idea of
people having a natural liability towards or against it, like they
might have towards or against a fever.
"All very well for you to talk," answered I; "but I should like to
know how else it's to be accounted for that some people should be so
much better than others as to become sisters, monks, and nuns, and
all that sort of thing? I'm sure it must need a very special and
uncommon predisposition towards goodness to make any one give up
every mortal thing that can make them happy--as they do!"
"Not at all," she replied quickly; "you'll find good and earnest
people in the world, just as much as in convents. It's a question of
vocation--not of superior goodness. Some people have such a natural
inclination for a conventual life that they are happier there than
they would be in the world; and some people, on the other hand, are
happier in the world. Each set seeks happiness in its own way. And
for any one to join a religious community without having a real
vocation for it is a very great mistake, and not a good or desirable
thing at all."
"Well, then," said I, "you believe that people are born monks and
nuns, just as they are born poets, painters, musicians, or sculptors.
_Nascitur non fit_. After all, I don't see that that's so very unlike
my predisposition theory."
"Why, there's this great difference," she said smiling; "according to
_you_, some people would have no chance of goodness at all; and _I_
maintain, on the contrary, that every one has an equal chance.
Goodness certainly _manifests_ itself differently in different
individuals; but you can't argue from that that it _exists_ in them
in different degrees. Remember that it is no great hardship for a
person who doesn't care for society to give it up; and that you
mustn't judge the merit of an action by its effects, but by how much
it costs the doer."
And then a knock at the door, and an urgent request for the Sister
to go and see after something or other immediately, terminated our
conversation abruptly as usual; and I remained alone, musing on the
fresh proof I had just received of the erroneousness of my original
ideas regarding Sisters. Never for an instant had I doubted that they
enjoyed--whether legitimately or not--a profound sense of superiority
to the general run of humanity; and now that my old prejudice against
them was overcome, I had arrived at the conclusion that, as they
really _were_ immeasurably better than the rest of the world (judging
by Sister Helena), they had a perfect right to pique themselves
thereon. Yet, instead of that, Sister Helena had not only refused to
acquiesce in my ascription of honour and glory to them, but had
argued with evident sincerity to prove that there was no special
merit whatever in being a Sister! If _I_ had been one, I should not
have thought anything of the sort, I knew very well.
As the spark latent in flint needs a blow to bring it out, so, I
suppose, whatever capacity I possessed for faith and virtue must have
lain dormant in me till quickened to life by Sister Helena. They are
elements which cannot possibly begin to mix actively in any one's
existence without producing a commotion in that person's previous
ways of going on, and so I soon found myself sorely troubled in
mind respecting my uncompleted project for being revenged upon my
step-mother. Up to the present time I had only disquieted her with
threatening letters, and had not yet arrived at the finishing touch
of making known her humble origin to her husband and her friends.
That had necessarily been deferred by my being laid up in hospital;
but I had not given it up for a moment, and had meant that the
execution of my threats against her should be one of the first things
I would do when I should be able to get about again. In my opinion
she richly deserved punishment for the undutifulness to her mother,
ingratitude to her step-father, absurd vanity, and bad behaviour
in general, of which she had been guilty. And as my own personal
enmity for her gave me an especial willingness to be the instrument
whereby justice was to overtake her, I looked forward with extreme
satisfaction to the completion of my scheme, and regarded it as a
most righteous and proper proceeding.
All of a sudden, however, this pleasant prospect was disturbed by my
newly awakened conscience insisting on taking a very different view
of the matter, and declaring that as forgiveness was a duty and
revenge was wrong, therefore I ought to give up the intention that I
was cherishing. I opposed this conviction--struggled, argued, and
tried to evade the conclusion that was so distasteful to me. But it
was no use; conscience was too strong, and stuck firmly to its point,
till I was forced, at last, reluctantly to abandon my beloved scheme.
So far, therefore, virtue was victorious; but its power did not
extend far enough to prevent my regretting bitterly that I had not
fully accomplished my designs against Lady Trecastle before any new
ideas had come to interfere. Since conscience declared positively
that I ought to overcome the old grudge which I bore her, I should
have to do so; but it would now be a hard matter to accomplish,
whereas I was sure that I could have done it sweetly and with hardly
any effort at all, if only I had had the satisfaction of feeling that
my plan of revenge had been carried out fully. For forgiveness is a
duty whose performance is marvellously facilitated by the knowledge
that the offender has had to suffer in some way or other for his
wrongdoing.
I was quite in earnest about desiring to be true to such light as I
had arrived at, and therefore did not exactly wish to return to my
previous unenlightened condition. Yet I sighed as it dawned upon my
mind that these new ideas might involve new restraints, and that
perhaps henceforth I should be less my own mistress than before.
It would be so much easier to take to religion if it did not seem
likely to deprive me of freedom, thought I, ruefully.