V.

Sleep gathers up the soft threads of passion that have been spun by

us during the day, and weaves them into a tapestry of dreams on which

we see the history of our own characters. We awake to find our wills

more inextricably caught in the tissues of their own past; we stir, and

discover that we are the heirs to our dead selves of yesterday, with a

larger inheritance of transmitted purpose.

When Gordon awoke the next morning among his first thoughts was the

idea of going on to join his friends that day, and this thought now

caused him unexpected depression. Had he been older, he might have

accepted this unwillingness to go away as the best reason for leaving;

but, young, and habitually self-indulgent towards his desires when

they were not connected with vice, he did not trouble himself with any

forecast of consequences.

"You ought not to go away to-day," the old housewife said to him in the

morning, wishing to detain him through love of his company. "To-morrow

will be Sunday, and you ought to go to vespers and hear Sister Dolorosa

sing. There is not such another voice in any convent in Kentucky."

"I will stay," he replied, quickly; and the next afternoon he was

seated in the rear of the convent church, surrounded by rural Catholic

worshippers who had assembled from the neighborhood. The entire front

of the nave on one side was filled with the black-veiled Sisters

of the order; that on the other with the white-veiled novices--two

far-journeying companies of consecrated souls who reminded him in the

most solemn way how remote, how inaccessible, was that young pilgrim

among them of whom for a long time now he had been solely thinking.

With these two companies of sacrificial souls before him he understood

her character in a new light.

He beheld her much as a brave, beautiful boy volunteer, who, suddenly

waving a bright, last adieu to gay companions in some gay-streeted

town, from motives of the loftiest heroism, takes his place in the rear

of passing soldiery, marching to misguided death; who, from the rear,

glowing with too impetuous ardor, makes his way from rank to rank ever

towards the front; and who, at last, bearing the heavy arms and wearing

the battle-stained uniform of a veteran, steps forward to the van at

the commander's side and sets his fresh, pure face undaunted towards

destruction. As he thought of her thus, deeper forces stirred within

his nature than had ever been aroused by any other woman. In comparison

every one that he had known became for the moment commonplace, human

life as he was used to it gross and uninspiring, and his own ideal

of duty a dwarfish mixture of selfishness and luxurious triviality.

Impulsive in his recognition of nobleness of nature wherever he

perceived it, for this devotedness of purpose he began to feel the

emotion which of all that ever visit the human heart is at once the

most humbling, the most uplifting, and the most enthralling--the

hero-worship of a strong man for a fragile woman.

The service began. As it went on he noticed here and there among those

near him such evidences of restlessness as betray in a seated throng

high-wrought expectancy of some pleasure too long deferred. But at

last these were succeeded by a breathless hush, as, from the concealed

organ-loft above, a low, minor prelude was heard, groping and striving

nearer and nearer towards the concealed motive, as a little wave creeps

farther and farther along a melancholy shore. Suddenly, beautiful and

clear, more tender than love, more sorrowful than death, there floated

out upon the still air of the church the cry of a woman's soul that

has offended, and that, shrinking from every prayer of speech, pours

forth its more intense, inarticulate, and suffering need through the

diviner faculty of song.

At the sound every ear was strained to listen. Hitherto the wont had

been to hear that voice bear aloft the common petition as calmly as

the incense rose past the altar to the roof; but now it quivered

over troubled depths of feeling, it rose freighted with the burden

of self-accusal. Still higher and higher it rose, borne triumphantly

upward by love and aspiration, until the powers of the singer's frame

seemed spending themselves in one superhuman effort of the soul to make

its prayer understood to the divine forgiveness. Then, all at once,

at the highest note, as a bird soaring towards the sun has its wings

broken by a shot from below, it too broke, faltered, and there was a

silence. But only for a moment: another voice, poor and cold, promptly

finished the song; the service ended; the people poured out of the

church.

When Gordon came out there were a few groups standing near the door

talking; others were already moving homeward across the grounds. Not

far off he observed a lusty young countryman, with a frank, winning

face, who appeared to be waiting, while he held a child that had laid

its bright head against his tanned, athletic neck. Gordon approached

him, and said with forced calmness:

"Do you know what was the matter in the church?"

"My wife has gone to see," he replied, warmly. "Wait; she'll be here in

a minute. Here she is now."

The comely, Sunday-dressed young wife came up and took the child, who

held out its arms, fondly smiling.

"She hadn't been well, and they didn't want her to sing to-day; but she

begged to sing, and broke down." Saying this, the young mother kissed

her child, and slipping one hand into the great brown hand of her

husband, which closed upon it, turned away with them across the lawn

homeward.

When Sister Dolorosa, who had passed a sleepless, prayerless night,

stood in the organ-loft and looked across the church at the scene

of the Passion, at the shrine of the Virgin, at the white throng of

novices and the dark throng of the Sisters, the common prayer of whom

was to be borne upward by her voice, there came upon her like a burying

wave a consciousness of how changed she was since she had stood there

last. Thus at the moment when Gordon, sitting below, reverently set

her far above him, as one looks up to a statue whose feet are above

the level of his head, she, thinking of what she had been and had now

become, seemed to herself as though fallen from a white pedestal to

the miry earth. But when, to a nature like hers, absolute loyalty to

a sinless standard of character is the only law of happiness itself,

every lapse into transgression is followed by an act of passionate

self-chastisement and by a more passionate outburst of love for the

wronged ideal; and therefore scarce had she begun to sing, and in

music to lift up the prayer she had denied herself in words, before

the powers of her body succumbed, as the strings of an instrument snap

under too strenuous a touch of the musician.

Gordon walked out of the grounds beside the rustic young husband and

wife, who plainly were lovers still.

"The Sister who sang has a beautiful voice," he said.

"None of them can sing like her," replied the wife. "I love her better

than any of the others."

"I tin sing!" cried the little girl, looking at Gordon, resentfully, as

though he had denied her that accomplishment.

"But you'll never sing in a convent, missy," cried the father,

snatching her from her mother. "You'll sing for some man till he

marries you as your mother did me. I was going to join the Trappist

monks, but my wife said I was too good a sweetheart to spoil, and she

had made up her mind to have me herself," he added, turning to Gordon

with a laugh.

"I'd have been a Sister long ago if you hadn't begged and begged me

not," was the reply, with the coquettish toss of a pretty head.

"I doin' be Tap monk," cried the little girl, looking at Gordon still

more assertively, but joining in the laugh that followed with a scream

of delight at the wisdom of her decision.

Their paths here diverged, and Gordon walked slowly on alone, but not

without turning to watch the retreating figures, his meeting with whom

at such a moment formed an episode in the history of that passion under

the influence of which he was now rapidly passing. For as he had sat in

the church his nature, which was always generous in its responsiveness,

had lent itself wholly to the solicitations of the service; and for

a time the stillness, the paintings portraying the divine sorrow,

the slow procession of nameless women, the tapers, the incense, the

hoary antiquity of the ceremonial, had carried him into a little known

region of his religious feeling. But from this he had been sharply

recalled by the suggestion of a veiled personal tragedy close at hand

in that unfinished song. His mood again became one of vast pity for

her; and issuing from the church with this feeling, there, near the

very entrance, he had come upon a rustic picture of husband, wife, and

child, with a sharpness of transition that had seemed the return of his

spirit to its own world of flesh and blood. There to him was the poetry

and the religion of life--the linked hands of lovers; the twining arms

of childhood; health and joyousness; and a quiet walk over familiar

fields in the evening air from peaceful church to peaceful home. And

so, thinking of this as he walked on alone and thinking also of her,

the two thoughts blended, and her image stood always before him in the

path-way of his ideal future.

The history of the next several days may soon be told. He wrote to his

friends, stating that there was no game in the neighborhood, and that

he had given up the idea of joining them and would return home. He took

the letter to the station, and waited for the train to pass southward,

watching it rush away with a subtle pleasure at being left on the

platform, as though the bridges were now burned behind him. Then he

returned to the farm-house, where Ezra met him with that look of stupid

alarm which was natural to him whenever his few thoughts were agitated

by a new situation of affairs.

Word had come from the convent that he was wanted there to move a fence

and make changes in the garden, and, proud of the charge, he wished to

go; but certain autumnal work in his own orchard and garden claimed his

time, and hence the trouble. But Gordon, who henceforth had no reason

for tarrying with the old couple, threw himself eagerly upon this

opportunity to do so, and offered his aid in despatching the tasks.

So that thus a few days passed, during which he unconsciously made his

way as far as any one had ever done into the tortuous nature of the old

man, who began to regard him with blind trustfulness.

But they were restless, serious days. One after another passed, and he

heard nothing of Sister Dolorosa. He asked himself whether she were

ill, whether her visits to old Martha had been made to cease; and he

shrank from the thought of bearing away into his life the haunting pain

of such uncertainty. But some inner change constrained him no longer

to call her name. As he sat with the old couple at night the housewife

renewed her talks with him, speaking sometimes of the convent and of

Sister Dolorosa, the cessation of whose visits plainly gave her secret

concern; but he listened in silence, preferring the privacy of his

own thoughts. Sometimes, under feint of hunting, he would take his

gun in the afternoon and stroll out over the country; but always the

presence of the convent made itself felt over the landscape, dominating

it, solitary and impregnable, like a fortress. It began to draw his

eyes with a species of fascination. He chafed against its assertion

of barriers, and could have wished that his own will might be brought

into conflict with it. It appeared to watch him; to have an eye at

every window; to see in him a lurking danger. At other times, borne

to him across the darkening fields would come the sweet vesper bell,

and in imagination he would see her entering the church amid the long

procession of novices and nuns, her hands folded across her breast, her

face full of the soft glories of the lights that streamed in through

the pictured windows. Over the fancied details of her life more and

more fondly he lingered.

And thus, although at first he had been interested in her wholly upon

general grounds, believing her secretly unhappy, thus by thinking

always of her, and watching for her, and walking often beside her in

his dreams, with the folly of the young, with the romantic ardor of

his race, and as part of the never-ending blind tragedy of the world,

he came at last to feel for her, among women, that passionate pain of

yearning to know which is to know the sadness of love.

Sleepless one night, he left the house after the old couple were

asleep. The moon was shining, and unconsciously following the bent

of his thoughts, he took the foot-path that led across the fields.

He passed the spot where he had first met her, and absorbed in

recollection of the scene, he walked on until before him the convent

towered high in light and shadow. He had reached the entrance to the

long avenue of elms. He traversed it, turned aside into the garden,

and, following with many pauses around its borders, lived over again

the day when she had led him through it. The mere sense of his greater

physical nearness to her inthralled him. All her words came back:

"These are daffodils. They bloomed in March, long ago.... And here are

violets, which come in April." After awhile, leaving the garden, he

walked across the lawn to the church and sat upon the steps, trying to

look calmly at this whole episode in his life, and to summon resolution

to bring it to an end. He dwelt particularly upon the hopelessness of

his passion; he made himself believe that if he could but learn that

she were not ill and suffering--if he could but see her once more, and

be very sure--he would go away, as every dictate of reason urged.

Across the lawn stood the convent building. There caught his eye the

faint glimmer of a light through a half-opened window, and while he

looked he saw two of the nuns moving about within. Was some one dying?

Was this light the taper of the dead? He tried to throw off a sudden

weight of gloomy apprehension, and resolutely got up and walked away;

but his purpose was formed not to leave until he had intelligence of

her.

One afternoon, a few days days later, happening to come to an elevated

point of the landscape, he saw her figure moving across the fields in

the distance below him. Between the convent and the farm-house, in

one of the fields, there is a circular, basin-like depression; and it

was here, hidden from distant observation, with only the azure of the

heavens above them, that their meeting took place.

On the day when she had been his guide he had told her that he was

going away on the morrow, and as she walked along now it might have

been seen that she thought herself safe from intrusion. Her eyes were

bent on the dust of the path-way. One hand was passing bead by bead

upward along her rosary. Her veil was pushed back, so that between its

black border and the glistening whiteness of her forehead there ran,

like a rippling band of gold, the exposed edges of her shining hair.

In the other hand she bore a large cluster of chrysanthemums, whose

snow-white petals and green leaves formed a strong contrast with the

crimson symbol that they partly framed against her sable bosom.

He had come up close before the noise of his feet in the stubble drew

her attention. Then she turned and saw him. But certain instincts of

self-preservation act in women with lightning quickness. She did not

recognize him, or give him time to recognize her. She merely turned

again and walked onward at the same pace. But the chrysanthemums were

trembling with the beating of her heart, and her eyes had in them that

listening look with which one awaits the oncoming of danger from behind.

But he had stopped. His nature was simple and trustful, and he had

expected to renew his acquaintanceship at the point where it had

ceased. When, therefore, she thus reminded him, as indeed she must,

that there was no acquaintanceship between them, and that she regarded

herself as much alone as though he were nowhere in sight, his feelings

were arrested as if frozen by her coldness. Still, it was for this

chance that he had waited all these days. Another would not come; and

whatever he wished to say to her must be said now. A sensitiveness

wholly novel to his nature held him back, but a moment more and he was

walking beside her.

"I hope I do not intrude so very far," he said, in a tone of apology,

but also of wounded self-respect.

It was a difficult choice thus left to her. She could not say "Yes"

without seeming unpardonably rude; she could not say "No" without

seeming to invite his presence. She walked on for a moment, and then,

pausing, turned towards him.

"Is there anything that you wished to ask me in regard to the convent?"

This she said in the sweetest tone of apologetic courtesy, as though in

having thought only of herself at first she had neglected some larger

duty.

If he had feared that he would see traces of physical suffering on her

face, he was mistaken. She had forgotten to draw her veil close, and

the sunlight fell upon its loveliness. Never had she been to him half

so beautiful. Whatever the expression her eyes had worn before he had

come up, in them now rested only inscrutable calmness.

"There is one thing I have wished very much to know," he answered,

slowly, his eyes resting on hers. "I was at the church of the convent

last Sunday and heard you sing. They said you were not well. I have

hoped every day to hear that you were better. I have not cared to go

away until I knew this."

Scarcely had he begun when a flush dyed her face, her eyes fell, and

she stood betrayed by the self-consciousness of what her own thoughts

had that day been. One hand absently tore to pieces the blooms of the

chrysanthemums, so that the petals fell down over her dark habit like

snowflakes. But when he finished, she lifted her eyes again.

"I am well now, thank you," she said; and the first smile that he had

ever seen came forth from her soul to her face. But what a smile! It

wrung his heart more than the sight of her tears could have done.

"Then I shall hope to hear you sing again to-morrow," he said, quickly,

for she seemed on the point of moving away.

"I shall not sing to-morrow," she replied a little hurriedly, with

averted face, and again she started on. But he walked beside her.

"In that case I have still to thank you for the pleasure I have had.

I imagine that one would never do wrong if he could hear you sing

whenever he is tempted," he said, looking sidewise at her with a

quiet, tentative smile.

"It is not my voice," she replied more hurriedly. "It is the music of

the service. Do not thank me. Thank God."

"I have heard the service before. It was your voice that touched me."

She drew her veil about her face and walked on in silence.

"But I have no wish to say anything against your religion," he

continued, his voice deepening and trembling. "If it has such power

over the natures of women, if it lifts them to such ideals of duty, if

it develops in them such characters, that merely to look into their

faces, to be near them, to hear their voices, is to make a man think of

a better world, I do not know why I should say anything against it."

How often, without meaning it, our words are like a flight of

arrows into another's heart. What he said but reminded her of her

unfaithfulness. And therefore while she revolved how with perfect

gentleness she might ask him to allow her to continue her way alone,

she did what she could: she spoke reverently, though all but inaudibly,

in behalf of her order.

"Our vows are perfect and divine. If they ever seem less, it is the

fault of those of us who dishonor them."

The acute self-reproach in her tone at once changed his mood.

"On the other hand, I have also asked myself this question: Is it the

creed that makes the natures of you women so beautiful, or it is the

nature of woman that gives the beauty to the creed? It is not so with

any other idea that women espouse? with any other cause that they

undertake? Is it not so with anything that they spend their hearts

upon, toil for, and sacrifice themselves for? Do I see any beauty in

your vows except such as your life gives to them? I can believe it.

I can believe that if you had never taken those vows your life would

still be beautiful. I can believe that you could change them for others

and find yourself more nearly the woman that you strive to be--that you

were meant to be!" He spoke in the subdued voice with which one takes

leave of some hope that brightens while it disappears.

"I must ask you," she said, pausing--"I must ask you to allow me to

continue my walk alone;" and her voice quivered.

He paused, too, and stood looking into her eyes in silence with the

thought that he should never see her again. The color had died out of

his face.

"I can never forgive your vows," he said, speaking very slowly and

making an effort to appear unmoved. "I can never forgive your vows that

they make it a sin for me to speak to you. I can never forgive them

that they put between us a gulf that I cannot pass. Remember, I owe you

a great deal. I owe you higher ideas of a woman's nature and clearer

resolutions regarding my own life. Your vows perhaps make it even a

sin that I should tell you this. But by what right? By what right am

I forbidden to say that I shall remember you always, and that I shall

carry away with me into my life--"

"Will you force me to turn back?" she asked in greater agitation; and

though he could not see her face, he saw her tears fall upon her hands.

"No," he answered sadly; "I shall not force you to turn back. I know

that I have intruded. But it seemed that I could not go away without

seeing you again, to be quite sure that you were well. And when I saw

you, it seemed impossible not to speak of other things. Of course this

must seem strange to you--stranger, perhaps, than I may imagine, since

we look at human relationships so differently. My life in this world

can be of no interest to you. You cannot, therefore, understand why

yours should have any interest for me. Still, I hope you can forgive

me," he added abruptly, turning his face away as it flushed and his

voice faltered.

She lifted her eyes quickly, although they were dim. "Do not ask me to

forgive anything. There is nothing to be forgiven. It is I who must

ask--only leave me!"

"Will you say good-bye to me?" And he held out his hand.

She drew back, but, overborne by emotion, he stepped forward, gently

took her hand from the rosary, and held it in both his own.

"Good-bye! But, despite the cruel barriers that they have raised

between us, I shall always--"

She foresaw what was coming. His manner told her that. She had not

withdrawn her hand. But at this point she dropped the flowers that were

in her other hand, laid it on her breast so that the longest finger

pointed towards the symbol of the transfixed heart, and looked quickly

at him with indescribable warning and distress. Then he released her,

and she turned back towards the convent.

"Mother," she said, with a frightened face, when she reached it, "I did

not go to old Martha's. Some one was hunting in the fields, and I came

back. Do not send me again, Mother, unless one of the Sisters goes

with me." And with this half-truth on her lips and full remorse for it

in her heart, she passed into that deepening imperfection of nature

which for the most of us makes up the inner world of reality.

Gordon wrote to her that night. He had not foreseen his confession. It

had been drawn from him under the influences of the moment; but since

it was made, a sense of honor would not have allowed him to stop there,

even had feeling carried him no further. Moreover, some hope had been

born in him at the moment of separation, since she had not rebuked him,

but only reminded him of her vows.

His letter was full of the confidence and enthusiasm of youth, and its

contents may be understood by their likeness to others. He unfolded the

plan of his life--the life which he was asking her to share. He dwelt

upon its possibilities, he pointed out the field of its aspirations.

But he kept his letter for some days, unable to conceive a way by which

it might be sent to its destination. At length the chance came in the

simplest of disguises.

Ezra was starting one morning to the convent. As he was leaving the

room, old Martha called to him. She sat by the hearth-stone, with her

head tied up in red flannel, and her large, watery face flushed with

pain, and pointed towards a basket of apples on the window sill.

"Take them to Sister Dolorosa, Ezra," she said "Mind that you see

_her_, and give them to her with your own hands. And ask her why she

hasn't been to see me, and when she is coming." On this point her mind

seemed more and more troubled. "But what's the use of asking _you_ to

find out for me?" she added, flashing out at him with heroic anger.

The old man stood in the middle of the room, dry and gnarled, his small

eyes kindling into a dull rage at a taunt made in the presence of a

guest whose good opinion he desired. But he took the apples in silence

and left the room.

As Gordon followed him beyond the garden, noting how his mind was

absorbed in petty anger, a simple resolution came to him.

"Ezra," he said, handing him the letter, "when you give the Sister the

apples, deliver this. And we do not talk about business, you know,

Ezra."

The old man took the letter and put it furtively into his pocket, with

a backward shake of his head towards the house.

"Whatever risks I may have to run from other quarters, he will never

tell _her_," Gordon said to himself.

When Ezra returned in the evening he was absorbed, and Gordon noted

with relief that he was also unsuspicious. He walked some distance to

meet the old man the next two days, and his suspense became almost

unendurable, but he asked no questions. The third day Ezra drew from

his pocket a letter, which he delivered, merely saying:

"The Sister told me to give you this."

Gordon, soon turned aside across the fields, and having reached a

point, screened from observation he opened the letter and read as

follows:

"I have received your letter. I have read it. But how could I listen

to your proposal without becoming false to my vows? And if you knew

that I had proved false to what I held most dear and binding, how

could you ever believe that I would be true to anything else? Ah, no!

Should you unite yourself to one who for your sake had been faithless

to the ideal of womanhood which she regarded as supreme, you would

soon withdraw from her the very love that she had sacrificed even her

hopes of Heaven to enjoy.

"But it seems possible that in writing to me you believe my vows no

longer precious to my heart and sacred to my conscience. You are

wrong. They are more dear to me at this moment than ever before,

because at this moment, as never before, they give me a mournful

admonition of my failure to exhibit to the world in my own life the

beauty of their ineffable holiness. For had there not been something

within me to lead you on--had I shown to you the sinless nature which

it is their office to create--you would never have felt towards me as

you do. You would no more have thought of loving me than of loving an

angel of God.

"The least reparation I can make for my offense is to tell you that in

offering me your love you offer me the cup of sacred humiliation, and

that I thank you for reminding me of my duty, while I drain it to the

dregs.

"After long deliberation I have written to tell you this; and if it be

allowed me to make one request, I would entreat that you will never

lay this sin of mine to the charge of my religion and my order.

"We shall never meet again. Although I may not listen to your

proposal, it is allowed me to love you as one of the works of God.

And since there are exalted women in the world who do not consecrate

themselves to the Church, I shall pray that you may find one of these

to walk by your side through life. I shall pray that she may be worthy

of you; and perhaps you will teach her sometimes to pray for one who

will always need her prayers.

"I only know that God orders our lives according to his goodness.

My feet he set in one path of duty, yours in another, and he had

separated us forever long before he allowed us to meet. If, therefore,

having thus separated us, he yet brought us together only that we

should thus know each other and then be parted, I cannot believe that

there was not in it some needed lesson for us both. At least, if he

will deign to hear the ceaseless, fervent petition of one so erring,

he will not leave you unhappy on account of that love for me, which in

this world it will never be allowed me to return. Farewell!"

The first part of this letter awakened in Gordon keen remorse and

a faltering of purpose, but the latter filled him with a joy that

excluded every other feeling.

"She loves me!" he exclaimed; and, as though registering a vow, he

added aloud, "And nothing--God help me!--nothing shall keep us apart."

Walking to a point of the landscape that commanded a view of the

convent, he remained there while the twilight fell, revolving how he

was to surmount the remaining barriers between them, for these now

seemed hardly more than cobwebs to be brushed aside by his hand; and

often, meanwhile, he looked towards the convent, as one might look

longingly towards some forbidden shrine, which the coming night would

enable him to approach.