DONNA MARIA DE LOS DOLORES.
The weeks and the months gliding along with their exasperating
illustration of the _festina lente_ principle brought a morning of
early spring, chill but bright, with a merry sun contending in the sky
against some unseen adversary who continually pelted him with great
white snowballs of cloud, which he either evaded or melted with the
fervor of his breath. In the farmhouse built by the Elder for himself
and Love, but not passing into the possession of Love and Love’s wife,
a great fire of cedar logs burned fragrantly upon the hearth of the
sitting-room, and flashed its light upon the silver tankard and cup
burnished to their utmost brightness, and modestly boasting themselves
upon the little mahogany elbow-table in the nook beside the fire,
conveniently at hand to the leathern easy-chair, so inharmonious with
our ideas of ease, which with a footstool in front was the Elder’s seat
of an evening, or in the brief repose he in these latter days allowed
himself after dinner, or when in the short and stormy winter days he
could do nothing but sit beside the fire and delight his soul with
study.
In this blithe March morning, however, the old man was out with his son
and the oxen breaking up fallow ground, and chanting half aloud brave
verses of Holy Writ as he guided the team while Love’s mighty arms held
down the ploughshare.
“‘O let the earth bless the Lord; yea, let it praise Him, and magnify
Him forever!
“‘O all ye green things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord; praise Him,
and magnify Him forever!
“‘O ye seas and floods, bless ye the Lord; praise Him, and magnify Him
forever!
“‘O ye children of men, bless ye the Lord; praise Him, and magnify Him
forever!
“‘O let Israel bless the Lord; praise Him, and magnify Him forever!’”
“Wow! but this new colter is heavy; let us rest a minute, father,”
cried Love, feigning to pant and wipe his brow, but really appalled at
the look of his father’s face, and fearing to see him rapt out of his
sight as was Elijah from that of Elisha.
“Rest? Ay, ay, I should have sooner remembered you, my boy. Yes, yes,
rest if you need it, lad, rest and don’t strain your young muscles till
they’re seasoned like mine.”
But reverent son though he was, Love, as he turned to lift the yoke
and pat his oxen a bit, did not deny himself a slow smile of sober
amusement.
In the sunny sitting-room, Gillian, with the firelight in her ruddy
hair, moved around, dusting and arranging the place, and especially
ordering the chair and footstool dedicated to her best friend. But why,
when she had wiped away the last grain of dust, and placed the stool
at just the best angle, and even drawn the wolfskin mat a trifle out
of the centre that it might reach the front legs of the chair, why did
she all at once cross her arms upon the high back, and, bowing her head
upon them, sob as though her heart would break, and suffer a few great
tears like the first drops of a tropic thunder-shower to roll down the
leathern back and under the comfortless cushion? Lora Standish, coming
noiselessly through the door from the kitchen, stood a moment wondering
in the doorway, then half timidly exclaimed,--
“Why, Gillian, what’s the matter?”
“Oh! It’s you, is it, or is’t a ghost that it looks like? Let’s try
it!” And with a sudden gliding motion, too much like that of a snake
for beauty, Gillian seized her visitor by the arm, inflicting such a
nip with her cruel slender fingers as left its mark for many a day.
The blood flew for a moment to Lora’s cheek, but it was the blood of
warriors, and she only said as she drew back a step,--
“I am looking for Mistress Brewster. Do you know where she is?”
“Yes, gone over to John Alden’s to help Priscilla in some mystery of
housecraft; but come you in and sit down for a minute or so, or I’ll
think, you proud peat, that you mean to slight me.”
“Why should I want to slight you, Gillian?” replied Lora with the
angelic smile that distinguished her, as, throwing aside the little
white scarf around her head and shoulders, she came forward to the
fire, and leaning against the high mantelpiece put a foot upon the
fender, looking frankly the while into the sombre face of the other
girl.
“Oh, well,--oh, well!” muttered Gillian after a moment. “’Tis well
you’re angel-like, since so soon you’ll see them.”
“What say you, Gillian? ’Tis well I’m what, said you?”
“Nay, sit you down, maiden,--sit you here in the Elder’s chair and put
your feet to the fire, upon his footstool. There, now, be biddable and
meek, as fits your face.”
“Why, Jill, ’twas but yesterday that you almost smote Betty Alden to
the ground because she would have sat in that chair; and after all,
’tis not half so comfortable as mother’s splint chair.”
“Oh, ay,” replied Gillian, as she turned toward the bookcase
and began brushing the books with a wild turkey’s wing, “that’s
different,--that’s different. I wouldn’t have let you sit there but for
what I saw a minute gone by.”
“What you saw!” echoed Lora, not overmuch moved, for Gillian’s vagaries
had long since been voted insoluble by the simple folk of The Nook.
“And what was’t you saw?”
“Now, now! Can you read, Lora?”
“Yes. Father taught me when I was but a little trot. I learned as fast
as the boys, he said.”
“Well, a priest taught me just as a man of the outside world would
have taught a parrot or an ape. All the people who have done me any
good have done it for their pleasure or their pride, and I’m naught
beholden to them. But these books!--I often spell out their titles when
I’m dull, and tired of laughing at men and women. Now hark you, Lora,
here’s some of ’em:
A Toyle for 2 legged Foxes.
A Cordiall for Comfort.
Burton wearing His Spur.
Memorable Conceits.
Jacob’s Ladder.
The Review of Rome.
Troubles of y^e Church of Amsterdam.
A Garland of Vertuous Dames.
Romances of Brittannia.
“There, heard you ever the like? It ever seems to me as if these writer
folk hetcheled their brains to find some title for their books that
will prick curiosity to the quick and force a man to buy, that he may
certify himself what ‘A Toyle for 2 Legged Foxes’ may truly mean. Is’t
not so?”
“Haply. I’ll get father to beg the Elder to lend him that ‘Romance of
Brittannia,’ for it sounds right relishing in mine ears.”
“And you love to read?”
“Dearly well.”
“Then you should have been a nun. They made much of me at Los Dolores,
because I could, when I would, read the ‘Life of Teresa de Jesus’ to
them.”
“And when you would not, could you not?” asked Lora mischievously.
“Indeed I couldn’t. I miscalled the words, I gabbled, I lost my place,
I dropped the book, I doubled the corners and broke the parchment,--oh,
they were glad enough to let me off, the poor nuns, the poor nuns!”
“And did you like the convent, Gillian?” asked Lora, so wistfully that
the other paused a moment as if struck with a new idea; then throwing
down her turkey’s wing she crouched upon the wolfskin, and nursing a
knee between her clasped hands looked up into the pale face clearly
defined against the dark leather of the chair-back, as she slowly
said,--
“Why, what a nun you’d make, Lora Standish! Passing strange I never
thought of it before.”
“Methinks ’twould be a happy life,” replied Lora, stifling a sigh.
“Happy! Well, for you it may be. Your father is of the old religion, is
he not?”
“I do not know, for he says naught and will hear naught about it. You
know he will not join the church here, although mother belongs to it,
and when we all were christened he said lay baptism was better than
none; but he goes to meeting as we all do, and gives as much as any man
to the support of the minister. He knows best, doubtless, and mother
and I do not much care to know all his mind.”
“Oh, ay!” replied Gillian, who had listened attentively, and now shook
her head as if discarding some plan. Then lowering her gaze from Lora’s
face to the fire, now crumbling into caverns, and vistas, and toppling
turrets, and fantastic feathery piles of ashes, she slowly said,--
“’Tis out of possibility, but I would well have liked to see you a
sister of Donna Maria de los Dolores. It would have been a heaven on
earth to you, and the guimpe and coif and barb ought to suit you as
jewels do me.
“Oh ’twas so fair there betimes!” continued she with sudden passion.
“I mind me of one even just before my father fetched me away to see my
mother die, one even in deep midsummer, and after vespers we walked in
the garden, the sisters and another girl and I. Such a garden, Lora,
oh, such a garden as you never dreamed of in these hateful northern
solitudes! Closed all round with a high gray stone wall covered with
passion flowers and jessamine and gay trumpet flowers, a bank of
bloom and greenery that seemed to us the end of the world, for the
banana-trees no more than reached the top of it, and inside, smooth
green walks bordered with every flower that grows, and more especially
all that are sweet and bewildering of perfume; for, Lora, when a woman
puts on a nun’s robes she does not cease to be a woman, and while with
the one hand she flings her flask of essences and her pomander box into
the fire, with the other she plants a bed of pinks, to flaunt their
color and send up their spicy odors for her delight.”
“Who cared for the garden at Los Dolores?” asked Lora, vaguely uneasy
at the other’s tone.
“Oh, the sisters one and another. ’Twas rare recreation for them, and
never permitted to those in penitence. They even mowed the lawns, and
shaved the paths, and rolled the gravel, for it was a great and wide
garden, with room in it for one to get away alone and entertain the
blue devils in solitude.”
“Nay, Gillian, but could devils, blue or black, ever overpass that high
wall you told of?”
“Could they? Oh, well--at least they never would have found you when
they searched for prey, so much I believe, maid Lora.”
“But tell me more of the garden.”
“Well, as I say, ’twas wide and fair and perfectly ordered, and there
was a fountain where a poor ball still was tossed up and down, up and
down upon the current, till I used by times to snatch it off in very
pity and toss it into a posy-bed to rest awhile, but Sister Marina
always found it and put it back. Then there were bosquets, where the
sun never came; and there were bordered walks, and benches under some
great cork-trees at the foot of the garden; and there were, in their
time, Annunciation lilies as fair and sweet as that Señor Don Gabriel
laid at the feet of Madonna Mary, and roses like those among which she
laid her little Jesu to sleep; and there were incense trees where the
berries and gums and bark grew that the sisters gathered so solemnly,
and dried and brayed in a special mortar, and that smelt so sweet when
the sister thurifer swung her censer up and down, and this way and
that, to keep it alight till the priest who said mass on the great days
was ready to take it from her.
“And there were goldfish in the fountain and birds in the trees,--oh,
such glorious birds, and some of them so sweet of song! and there was
a pond where the nuns fattened great fishes for Friday dinners, and
feasted better on them than on the flesh of other days.
“But I was going to tell you of a time, one of the last times I ever
walked in that garden or slept in my little whitewashed cell at
Dolores. Ah, now, mayhap I had been a better girl had they left me
there. Well, we walked up and down the wide grassy middle alley, the
sisters, and Inez de Soza and I, and all of us were merry, for the
Mother Superior was in a good temper and the prioress had got on her
talking-cap, and we girls and the novices asked no better than to laugh
at all our elders’ jests and cry Oh, marvelous! to all their stories,
when all at once the sister portress came down the old mossy steps
from the house, and kneeling to the Superior, who bade her rise, for
it was recreation time and all rules were relaxed, she told her that a
Dominican friar was at the gate with a comrade and asked lodging in the
priest’s chamber outside the wall.
“‘But surely! When did we refuse hospitality to a holy man, Sister
Juana?’ replied the mother. ‘Have him in with his comrade and give him
supper in the sacristy; when he has refreshed himself I will see him
there.’
“‘But he also begs permission to preach to the sisters,’ persisted old
Juana, who was as obstinate as a mule; and as the Mother paused upon
her reply, Inez and I who held her hands cried,--
“‘Oh, do, reverend Mother, oh, do let us hear a sermon!’ and she
laughing said:--
“‘Well, yes, perhaps ’twill turn your hearts from the world to religion
as I have not been able to do.’
“So we walked another turn or so and then went into the chapel, which
was full of that soft purple shadow that fills such places as the
night falls without. The wide door to the garden stood open, and I
placed myself at the end of the bench so that I could well look out and
see and smell and listen to the world while the friar should talk of
religion.
“Oh, maiden, ’twas as strange an hour and as sweet as ever I knew or
shall know! Outside was that fair garden, with the last rays of the sun
touching the crests of the trees, the palms and cork-trees and acacias,
and the fountain vainly leaping up to reach the sunlight, and the birds
at their vespers, and the blinding sweets of the posy-beds, and just
outside the door a great banana-tree that swayed and rustled in the
breeze, and threw its long green leaves like wooing arms in at the
door as if to drag me out, wooed me so strangely that if I looked and
listened too long I must have yielded and leaped out to its embrace.
And inside there was the dusky chapel with the pictures of the saints
glimmering from the walls, and the white Christ upon his cross with his
eyes downbent to mine, and such a passion of pleading in them as seemed
to drag the heart from my breast, and the sisters in their white robes
and rosaries, tinkling beads, and the blue cross sewed upon the breast
of each fading into the white, and their pure profiles downcast as
they listened; and there above us all in the dim obscurity of the place
the pulpit, of some black wood, and rising out of it that gaunt gray
figure of the friar, his face pale and worn, his eyes ablaze with the
fervor of his thought, his emaciated hands upraised, and his air now
that of an angel of mercy, now a minister of vengeance and wrath.
“Oh, how he preached, that man! How his words poured out like a river
in spring and carried all before them like that river in a freshet!
Long ere he was done I was on my knees crying my heart out, and bowing
myself to God in a life of sanctity and religion,--had he given me the
chance, I would have dedicated myself as a novice that very night; and
before he was done I had whispered to Inez,--
“‘Take your vows with me to-morrow,’ but she replied,--
“‘Yon comrade of the friar is no monk!’ And looking where she looked
I saw close by the door where the Dominican had placed him a man in a
friar’s robe and cowl to be sure, but with bold black eyes that gazed
like those of a caged bird at all around, resting most often upon Inez
and me, who were the only ones who wore not the sisters’ livery, but
our own white school frocks and little caps. Somehow the sight of that
face and the regard of those bold eyes scattered all my holy mood as
the sun scorches up the dew and-- But there, there, I’ll say naught to
shock you, pale saint. ’Twas a fair picture, though, was’t not?”
“Yes, passing fair,” replied Lora dreamily, “and I were well content to
spend my life in such a blessed retreat.”
“Your life, maiden! Nay, you have faith in God?”
“Why surely, Gillian! Who has not?” And Lora’s clear gray eyes rested
in a sort of alarm upon the sombre face of the girl at her feet, who
only shook her head, murmuring,--
“And God will care for his own.”