I.

When Sister Dolorosa had reached the summit of a low hill on her way

to the convent she turned and stood for a while looking backward. The

landscape stretched away in a rude, unlovely expanse of gray fields,

shaded in places by brown stubble, and in others lightened by pale,

thin corn--the stunted reward of necessitous husbandry. This way

and that ran wavering lines of low fences, some worm-eaten, others

rotting beneath over-clambering wild rose and blackberry. About the

horizon masses of dense and rugged woods burned with sombre fires as

the westering sun smote them from top to underbrush. Forth from the

edge of one a few long-horned cattle, with lowered heads, wound meekly

homeward to the scant milking. The path they followed led towards

the middle background of the picture, where the weather-stained and

sagging roof of a farm-house rose above the tops of aged cedars. Some

of the branches, broken by the sleet and snow of winters, trailed their

burdens from the thinned and desolated crests--as sometimes the highest

hopes of the mind, after being beaten down by the tempests of the

world, droop around it as memories of once transcendent aspirations.

Where she stood in the dead autumn fields few sounds broke in upon the

pervasive hush of the declining day. Only a cricket, under the warm

clod near by, shrilled sturdily with cheerful forethought of drowsy

hearth-stones; only a lamb, timid of separation from the fold, called

anxiously in the valley beyond the crest of the opposite hill; only

the summoning whistle of a quail came sweet and clear from the depths

of a neighboring thicket. Through all the air floated that spirit of

vast loneliness which at seasons seems to steal like a human mood

over the breast of the great earth and leave her estranged from her

transitory children. At such an hour the heart takes wing for home, if

any home it have; or when, if homeless, it feels the quick stir of that

yearning for the evening fireside with its half-circle of trusted faces

young and old, and its bonds of love and marriage, those deepest, most

enchanting realities to the earthly imagination. The very landscape,

barren and dead, but framing the simple picture of a home, spoke to the

beholder the everlasting poetry of the race.

But Sister Dolorosa, standing on the brow of the hill whence the whole

picture could be seen, yet saw nothing of it. Out of the western sky

there streamed an indescribable splendor of many-hued light, and far

into the depths of this celestial splendor her steadfast eyes were

gazing.

She seemed caught up to some august height of holy meditation. Her

motionless figure was so lightly poised that her feet, just visible

beneath the hem of her heavy black dress, appeared all but rising from

the dust of the path-way; her pure and gentle face was upturned, so

that the dark veil fell away from her neck and shoulders; her lips were

slightly parted; her breath came and went so imperceptibly that her

hands did not appear to rise and fall as they clasped the cross to her

bosom. Exquisite hands they were--most exquisite--gleaming as white as

lilies against the raven blackness of her dress; and with startling

fitness of posture, the longest finger of the right hand pointed like a

marble index straight towards a richly embroidered symbol over her left

breast--the mournful symbol of a crimson heart pierced by a crimson

spear. Whether attracted by the lily-white hands or by the red symbol,

a butterfly, which had been flitting hither and thither in search

of the gay races of the summer gone, now began to hover nearer, and

finally lighted unseen upon the glowing spot. Then, as if disappointed

not to find it the bosom of some rose, or lacking hope and strength for

further quest--there it rested, slowly fanning with its white wings the

tortured emblem of the divine despair.

Lower sank the sun, deeper and more wide-spread the splendor of the

sky, more rapt and radiant the expression of her face. A painter of the

angelic school, seeing her standing thus, might have named the scene

the transfiguration of angelic womanhood. What but heavenly images

should she be gazing on; or where was she in spirit but flown out of

the earthly autumn fields and gone away to sainted vespers in the

cloud-built realm of her own fantasies? Perhaps she was now entering

yon vast cathedral of the skies, whose white spires touched blue

eternity; or toiling devoutly up yon gray mount of Calvary, with its

blackened crucifix falling from the summit.

Standing thus towards the close of the day, Sister Dolorosa had not yet

passed out of that ideal time which is the clear white dawn of life.

She was still within the dim, half-awakened region of womanhood, whose

changing mists are beautiful illusions, whose shadows about the horizon

are the mysteries of poetic feeling, whose purpling east is the palette

of the imagination, and whose upspringing skylark is blithe aspiration

that has not yet felt the weight of the clod it soars within. Before

her still was the full morning of reality and the burden of the mid-day

hours.

But if the history of any human soul could be perfectly known, who

would wish to describe this passage from the dawn of the ideal to

the morning of the real--this transition from life as it is imagined

through hopes and dreams to life as it is known through action and

submission? It is then that within the country of the soul occur events

too vast, melancholy, and irreversible to be compared to anything less

than the downfall of splendid dynasties, or the decay of an august

religion. It is then that there leave us forever bright, aerial spirits

of the fancy, separation from whom is like grief for the death of the

beloved.

The moment of this transition had come in the life of Sister Dolorosa,

and unconsciously she was taking her last look at the gorgeous western

clouds from the hill-tops of her chaste life of dreams.

A flock of frightened doves sped hurtling low over her head, and put

an end to her reverie. Pressing the rosary to her lips, she turned

and walked on towards the convent, not far away. The little foot-path

across the fields was well trodden and familiar, running as it did

between the convent and the farm-house behind her in which lived old

Ezra and Martha Cross; and as she followed its windings, her thoughts,

as is likely to be true of the thoughts of nuns, came home from the

clouds to the humblest concerns of the earth, and she began to recall

certain incidents of the visit from which she was returning.

The aged pair were well known to the Sisters. Their daughters had been

educated at the convent; and, although these were married and scattered

now, the tie then formed had since become more close through their age

and loneliness. Of late word had come to the Mother Superior that old

Martha was especially ailing, and Sister Dolorosa had several times

been sent on visits of sympathy. For reasons better to be understood

later on, these visits had had upon her the effect of an April shower

on a thirsting rose. Her missions of mercy to the aged couple over,

for a while the white taper of ideal consecration to the Church always

burned in her bosom with clearer, steadier lustre, as though lit afresh

from the Light eternal. But to-day she could not escape the conviction

that these visits were becoming a source of disquietude; for the

old couple, forgetting the restrictions which her vows put upon her

very thoughts, had spoken of things which it was trying for her to

hear--love-making, marriage, and children. In vain had she tried to

turn away from the proffered share in such parental confidences. The

old mother had even read aloud a letter from her eldest son, telling

them of his approaching marriage and detailing the hope and despair of

his wooing. With burning cheeks and downcast eyes Sister Dolorosa had

listened till the close and then risen and quickly left the house.

The recollection of this returned to her now as she pursued her way

along the foot-path which descended into the valley; and there came to

her, she knew not whence or why, a piercing sense of her own separation

from all but the divine love. The cold beauty of unfallen spirituality

which had made her august as she stood on the hill-top died away, and

her face assumed a tenderer, more appealing loveliness, as there crept

over it, like a shadow over snow, that shy melancholy under which

those women dwell who have renounced the great drama of the heart. She

resolved to lay her trouble before the Mother Superior to-night, and

ask that some other Sister be sent hereafter in her stead. And yet this

resolution gave her no peace, but a throb of painful renunciation;

and since she was used to the most scrupulous examination of her

conscience, to detect the least presence of evil, she grew so disturbed

by this state of her heart that she quite forgot the windings of the

path-way along the edge of a field of corn, and was painfully startled

when a wounded bird, lying on the ground a few feet in front of her,

flapped its wings in a struggle to rise. Love and sympathy were the

strongest principles of her nature, and with a little outcry she bent

over and took it up; but scarce had she done so, when, with a final

struggle, it died in her hand. A single drop of blood oozed out and

stood on its burnished breast.

She studied it--delicate throat, silken wings, wounded bosom--in the

helpless way of a woman, unwilling to put it down and leave it, yet

more unwilling to take it away. Many a time, perhaps, she had watched

this very one flying to and fro among its fellows in the convent elms.

Strange that any one should be hunting in these fields, and she looked

quickly this way and that. Then, with a surprised movement of the

hands that caused her to drop the bird at her feet, Sister Dolorosa

discovered, standing half hidden in the edge of the pale-yellow corn a

few yards ahead, wearing a hunting-dress, and leaning on the muzzle of

his gun, a young man who was steadfastly regarding her. For an instant

they stood looking each into the other's face, taken so unprepared as

to lose all sense of convention. Their meeting was as unforeseen as

another far overhead, where two white clouds, long shepherded aimlessly

and from opposite directions across the boundless pastures by the

unreasoning winds, touched and melted into one. Then Sister Dolorosa,

the first to regain self-possession, gathered her black veil closely

about her face, and advancing with an easy, rapid step, bowed low with

downcast eyes as she passed him, and hurried on towards the convent.

She had not gone far before she resolved to say nothing about the

gossip to which she had listened. Of late the Mother Superior had

seemed worn with secret care and touched with solicitude regarding

her. Would it be kind to make this greater by complaining like a weak

child of a trivial annoyance? She took her conscience proudly to task

for ever having been disturbed by anything so unworthy. And as for

this meeting in the field, even to mention that would be to give it

a certain significance, whereas it had none whatever. A stranger had

merely crossed her path a moment and then gone his way. She would

forget the occurrence herself as soon as she could recover from her

physical agitation.