There was thus spared him knowledge of the great change that had taken
place regarding her within the counsels of the Order; nor, perhaps, was
he ever to learn of the other changes, more eventful still, that were
now fast closing in upon her destiny.
When the Creator wishes to create a woman, the beauty of whose nature
is to prefigure the types of an immortal world, he endows her more
plenteously with the faculty of innocent love. The contravention
of this faculty has time after time resulted in the most memorable
tragedies that have ever saddened the history of the race. He had given
to the nature of Pauline Cambron two strong, unwearying wings: the
pinion of faith and the pinion of love. It was his will that she should
soar by the use of both. But they had denied her the use of one; and
the vain and bewildered struggles which marked her life thenceforth
were as those of a bird that should try to rise into the air with one
of its wings bound tight against its bosom.
After the illness which followed upon the events of that terrible day,
she took towards her own conduct the penitential attitude enjoined by
her religion. There is little need to lay bare all that followed. She
had passed out of her soft world of heroic dreams into the hard world
of unheroic reality. She had chosen a name to express her sympathy with
the sorrows of the world, and the sorrows of the world had broken in
upon her. Out of the white dawn of the imagination she had stepped into
the heat and burden of the day.
Long after penances and prayers were over, and by others she might have
felt herself forgiven, she was as far as ever from that forgiveness
which comes from within. It is not characteristic of a nature such as
hers to win pardon so easily for such an offence of her being seemed
concentred more and more in one impassioned desire to expiate her sin;
for, as time passed on, despite penances and prayers, she realized that
she still loved him.
As she pondered this she said to herself that peace would never come
unless she should go elsewhere and begin life over in some place that
was free from the memories of her fall, there was so much to remind
her of him. She could not go into the garden without recalling the day
when they had walked through it side by side. She could not cross the
threshold of the church without being reminded that it was the scene of
her unfaithfulness and of her exposure. The graveyard, the foot-path
across the fields, the observatory--all were full of disturbing images.
And therefore she besought the Mother Superior to send her away to some
one of the missions of the Order, thinking that thus she would win
forgetfulness of him and singleness of heart.
But while the plan of doing this was yet being considered by the Mother
Superior, there happened one of those events which seem to fit into the
crises of our lives as though determined by the very laws of fate. The
attention of the civilized world had not yet been fixed upon the heroic
labors of the Belgian priest, Father Damien, among the lepers of the
island of Molokai. But it has been stated that near the convent are
the monks of La Trappe. Among these monks were friends of the American
priest, Brother Joseph, who for years was one of Father Damien's
assistants; and to these friends this priest from time to time wrote
letters, in which he described at great length the life of the leper
settlement and the work of the small band of men and women who had
gone to labor in that remote and awful vineyard. The contents of these
letters were made known to the ecclesiastical superior of the convent;
and one evening he made them the subject of a lecture to the assembled
nuns and novices, dwelling with peculiar eloquence upon the devotion
of the three Franciscan Sisters who had become outcasts from human
society that they might nurse and teach leprous girls, until inevitable
death should overtake them also.
Among that breathless audience of women there was one soul on whom
his words fell with the force of a message from the Eternal. Here,
then, at last, was offered her a path-way by following meekly to the
end of which she might perhaps find blessedness. The real Man of
Sorrows appeared to stand in it and beckon her on to the abodes of
those abandoned creatures whose sufferings he had with peculiar pity
so often stretched forth his hand to heal. When she laid before the
Mother Superior her petition to be allowed to go, it was at first
refused, being regarded as a momentary impulse; but months passed, and
at intervals, always more earnestly, she renewed her request. It was
pointed out to her that when one has gone among the lepers there is no
return; the alternatives are either life-long banishment, or death from
leprosy, usually at the end of a few years. But always her reply was:
"In the name of Christ, Mother, let me go!"
Meantime it had become clear to the Mother Superior that some change
of scene must be made. The days of Sister Dolorosa's usefulness in the
convent were too plainly over.
It had not been possible in that large household of women to conceal
the fact of her unfaithfulness to her vows. As one black veil
whispered to another--as one white veil communed with its attentive
neighbor--little by little events were gathered and pieced together,
until, in different forms of error and rumor, the story became known
to all. Some from behind window lattices had watched her in the garden
with the young stranger on the day of his visiting the convent. Others
had heard of his lying wounded at the farm-house. Still others were
sure that under pretext of visiting old Martha she had often met him in
the fields. And then the scene on the steps of the church, when she had
returned soiled and torn and fainting.
So that from the day on which she arose from her illness and began to
go about the convent, she was singled out as a target for those small
arrows which the feminine eye directs with such faultless skill at
one of its own sex. With scarcely perceptible movements they would
draw aside when passing her, as though to escape corrupting contact.
Certain ones of the younger Sisters, who were jealous of her beauty,
did not fail to drop innuendoes for her to overhear. And upon some of
the novices, whose minds were still wavering between the Church and the
world, it was thought that her example might have a dangerous influence.
It is always wrong to judge motives; but it is possible that the head
of the Order may have thought it best that this ruined life should take
on the halo of martyrdom, from which fresh lustre would be reflected
upon the annals of the Church. However this may be, after about
eighteen months of waiting, during which correspondence was held with
the Sandwich Islands, it was determined that Sister Dolorosa should be
allowed to go thither and join the labors of the Franciscan Sisters.
From the day when consent was given she passed into that peace with
which one ascends the scaffold or awaits the stake. It was this look of
peace that Gordon had seen on her face as she moved hither and thither
about the shrine.
Only a few weeks after he had thus seen her the day came for her to
go. Of those who took part in the scene of farewell she was the most
unmoved. A month later she sailed from San Francisco for Honolulu;
and in due time there came from Honolulu to the Mother Superior the
following letter. It contains all that remains of the earthly history
of Pauline Cambron: