The Authors' Dinner had reached that peak of success which rises
serenely between the serving of the dessert and the opening words of
the first postprandial speech. Relaxed, content, at peace with
themselves and their publisher-host, the great assemblage of men and
women writers sipped their coffee and liqueurs, and beamed benignly
upon one another as they waited for the further entertainment the
speeches were expected to afford. Here and there, at the numerous
small tables which flowered in the great dining-room, a distinguished
author, strangely modest for the moment, stealthily consulted some
penciled notes tucked under his napkin, or with absent eyes on space
mentally rehearsed the opening sentences of his address. Even the
least of these men was accustomed to public speaking; but what they
had said to Chautauqua gatherings or tossed off casually at school
commencements in their home towns was not quite what they would care
to offer to an audience which included three hundred men and women
representing every stage of literary success, and gifted, beyond
doubt, with a highly developed sense of humor. A close observer could
discover the speakers of the evening by running an eye over the
brilliantly decorated tables and selecting those faces which alone in
that care-free assemblage wore expressions of nervous apprehension.
At my table, well toward the center of the room, I felt again a thrill
of delight at being a part of this unique composite picture. My first
book, still an infant in the literary cradle, had won me my
invitation; and nothing except the actual handling of the volume, hot
from the press, had given me so strong a sense of having at last made
a beginning in the work I loved. Save myself, every man and woman of
the eight at our table stood on the brow of the long hill each had
climbed. Three of them--a woman playwright, a man novelist, and a
famous diplomat--were among my close friends. The others I had met
to-night for the first time. The Playwright sat opposite me, and over
the tall vase of Spanish iris which stood between us I caught the
expression of her brown eyes, thoughtful and introspective. For the
moment at least she was very far away from the little group around
her. Beside her sat the Author, his white locks caressing a suddenly
troubled brow. He was one of the speakers of the evening, and he had
just confided to his companions that he had already forgotten his
carefully prepared extemporaneous address. At my right the grand old
man of American diplomacy smiled in calm content. He rarely graced
such festive scenes as this; he was over ninety, and, he admitted
cheerfully, "growing a little tired." But his Reminiscences, recently
published, was among the most widely read literature of the day, and
the mind which had won him distinction fifty years ago was still as
brilliant as during his days at foreign courts.
Over our group a sudden stillness had fallen, and with an obvious
effort to break this, one of my new acquaintances addressed me, her
cold blue eyes reflecting none of the sudden warmth of her manner.
"Do you know, Miss Iverson," she began, "I envy you. You have had five
years of New York newspaper experience--the best of all possible
training. Besides, you must have accumulated more material in those
five years than the average writer finds in twenty."
I had no opportunity to reply. As if the remark had been a gauntlet
tossed on the table in challenge, my companions fell upon it. Every
one talked at once, the Best Seller and the Author upholding the
opinion of the woman with the blue eyes, the rest disputing it, until
the Playwright checked the discussion with a remark that caught the
attention of all.
"There's nothing new in this world," she said, "and therefore there's
nothing interesting. We all know too much. The only interesting things
are those we can't understand, because they happen--elsewhere."
The Author looked at her and smiled, his white eyebrows moving upward
ever so slightly. "For example?" he murmured.
Almost imperceptibly the Playwright shrugged her shoulders.
"For example?" she repeated, lightly. "Oh, I wasn't contemplating an
example. Not that I couldn't give one if I chose." She stopped. Then,
stirred by the skeptical look in the Author's eyes, her face took on a
sudden look of decision. "And I might," she added, quietly, "if
urged."
The Best Seller leaned across the table and laid a small coin on her
plate. "I'll urge you," he said. "I'll take a story. We want the thing
in fiction form."
The Playwright smiled at him. "Very well," she said, indifferently;
"call it what you please--an instance, a story."
"And mind," interrupted the Best Seller, "it's something that didn't
happen on this earth."
The Playwright sat silent an instant, intent and thoughtful, as if
mentally marshaling her characters before her. "Part of it happened on
this earth," she said. "It began two years ago, when a friend of mine,
a woman editor, received a letter from a stranger, who was also a
woman. The stranger asked for a personal interview. She wished, she
said, for the editor's advice. The need had suddenly come to her to
make her living. She had had no special training; would the editor
talk to her and give her any suggestions she could? The editor
consented, naming a day and an hour for the interview, and at the time
appointed the stranger called at the other's office.
"She proved to be a beautiful woman, a little over forty, dressed
quietly but exquisitely in black, and with the walk and manner of an
empress. The editor was immensely impressed by her, but she soon
discovered that the stranger was wrapped in mystery. She could learn
nothing about her past, her friends, or herself. She was merely a
human package dropped from space and labeled 'Miss Driscoll'--the name
engraved on her card. Who 'Miss Driscoll' was, where she had come
from, what she had done, remained as much of a problem after half an
hour of conversation as at the moment she had entered the editor's
room. She wanted work; how could she get it? That was her question,
but she had no answers for any questions asked by the editor. When
they were put to her she hedged and fenced with exquisite skill. She
had a charming air of intimacy, of confidence in the editor's
judgment, yet nothing came from her that threw any light on her
experience or her qualifications.
"All the time they talked the editor studied her. Then suddenly,
without warning, she leaned forward and shot out the question that had
been slowly forming in her mind.
"'When did you leave your Order?' she asked.
"The stranger stiffened like one who had received an electric shock.
The next moment she sagged forward in her chair as if something in her
had given way. 'How did you know?' she breathed, at last.
"The editor shook her head. 'I did not know,' she admitted. 'I merely
suspected. You have one or two habits which suggest a nun, especially
the trick of crossing your hands as if you expected to slip them into
flowing sleeves. They look like a nun's hands, too; and your
complexion has the convent pallor. Now tell me all you can. I cannot
help you until I know more about you.'"
Around us there was the scrape of chairs on the polished floor. Some
of the dinner-guests were rising and crossing the room to chat with
friends at other tables. But the little group at our table sat in
motionless attention, every eye on the Playwright's charming face.
"Good beginning," remarked the Best Seller, helpfully. "And, by Jove,
the orchestra is giving you the 'Rosary' as an obbligato. There's a
coincidence for you."
"Then the story came out," resumed the Playwright, ignoring the
interruption. "At least part of it came out. The stranger had been the
Mother General of a large conventual Order, which she herself had
founded twenty years ago. She had built it up from one convent to
thirty. She had established schools and hospitals all over America, as
well as in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. She was a brilliant
organizer, a human dynamo. Whatever she touched succeeded. She did
not need to explain this; the extraordinary growth of her Community
spoke for her. But a few months before she came to the editor, she
said, a cabal had been established against her in her Mother House.
She had returned from a visit to one of her Philippine convents to
find that an election had been held in her absence, that she had been
superseded, that the local superior of the Mother House had been
elected Mother General in her place; in short, that she herself was
deposed by her Community.
"She said that she never knew why. There was much talk of
extravagance, of too rapid growth; her broadening plans, and the big
financial risks she took, alarmed the more conservative nuns. She took
their breath away. Possibly they were tired of the pace she set, and
ready to rest on the Community's achievements. All that is not
important. Mother General Elise was deposed. She could not remain as a
subordinate in the Community she had ruled so long. Neither could she,
she said, risk destroying the work of her life by making a fight for
her rights and causing a newspaper sensation. So she left the Order,
taking with her her only living relative, her old mother, eighty-one
years of age, to whom for the previous year or two she had given a
home in her Mother House."
"I am afraid," murmured the Best Seller, sadly, "that this story is
going to depress me."
The Playwright nodded. "At first," she admitted. "But it ends with
what we will call 'an uplift.'"
The Best Seller emptied his glass. "Oh, all right," he murmured.
"Here's to the uplift!"
"The editor listened to the story," continued the Playwright. "Then
she advised Miss Driscoll to go to Rome and have her case taken up at
the Vatican. Surely what seemed such injustice would be righted there,
and without undesirable notoriety for the Community. She introduced
the former Mother General to several prominent New York men and women
who could help her and give her letters she needed. There were various
meetings at the houses of these people, who were all impressed by the
force, the magnetism, and the charm of the convent queen who had been
exiled from her kingdom. Then Miss Driscoll and her mother sailed for
Italy."
The Diplomat leaned forward, his faded eyes as eager as a boy's. "Let
me tell some of it!" he begged. "Let me tell what happened in Rome!"
The blue-eyed woman who had started the discussion clapped her hands.
"Let each of us tell some of it," she cried. The Playwright smiled
across at the Diplomat. "By all means," she urged, "tell the Roman end
of it."
The Diplomat laid down his half-finished cigar, and put his elbows on
the table, joining his finger-tips in the pose characteristic of his
most thoughtful moments. He, too, took a moment for preparation, and
the faces of the others at the table showed that they were already
considering the twist they would give to the story when their
opportunity came.
"The mother and daughter reached Rome in May," began the Diplomat.
"They rented a few rooms and bought a few pieces of furniture, and,
because they were very poor, they lived very frugally. While the
daughter sought recognition at the Vatican the old mother spent her
days pottering around their little garden and trying to learn a few
words of Italian from her neighbors. It was hard to be transplanted at
eighty-one, but she was happy, for she was with the daughter she had
always adored. She would rather have been alone with her in a strange
land than in the highest heaven without her.
"One of the Cardinals at the Vatican finally took up the case of Miss
Driscoll. It interested him. He knew of the splendid work she had done
as Mother General Elise. He began an investigation of the whole
involved affair, and he had accumulated a great mass of documents, and
was almost ready to submit a formal report to the Holy Father, when he
fell ill with pneumonia and died a few days later.
"That was a crushing blow for Mother Elise. Under the shock of the
disappointment she, too, fell ill, and was taken to what we will call
the Hospital of the White Sisters. Her mother went with her, because
an old lady of eighty-two could not be left alone."
The old Diplomat paused and looked unseeingly before him, as if he
were calling up a picture.
"The convent hospital had a beautiful garden," the Diplomat resumed,
at last. "There the mother spent the next few days working among the
flowers and following the lay Sisters along the garden walks as a
contented child follows its nurse. Once a day she was allowed to see
her daughter for a few moments. It was her custom to reach the
sick-room long before the hour appointed and to wait in the hall until
she was admitted. She said the time of waiting seemed shorter there,
where she was so near. So one day, when a pale Sister told her that
her daughter was not quite ready to be seen, the old lady was not
surprised. This was her usual experience.
"Nothing warned her, no intuition told her, that her daughter had died
exactly five minutes before and that the Sisters back of that closed
door were huddled together, trying to find words to tell her what had
happened. They could not find them; words scamper away like frightened
beings in moments like that. So they sent for their Mother Superior,
and she came and put an arm around the bent shoulders of the old woman
and told her that her daughter's pain and trouble were over for all
time. Later they took her into the room where her daughter lay in a
peace which remained triumphant even while the mother's heart broke as
she looked upon it. When they found that they could not persuade her
to leave the room they allowed her to remain; and there she sat at the
foot of the bed day and night, while the Sisters came and went and
knelt and prayed, and the long wax tapers at the head and feet of the
dead nun burned slowly down to their sockets."
The Diplomat stopped. Then, as no one spoke, he turned to the Author.
"Will you go on?" he asked.
The Author took up the tale. "Mother Elise was buried in Rome," he
said, "and in the chapel of the White Sisters tapers still burn for
her. Her mother remained there, and was given a home in the convent,
because she had no other place to go. It was kind of the Sisters, for,
unlike her daughter, she was not a Catholic. But her old heart was
broken, and as months passed and she began to realize what had
happened she was filled with a great longing for her native land. The
bells of Rome got on her shattered nerves. They seemed eternally
ringing for her dead. From the garden she could see her daughter's
grave on the hill just beyond the convent walls. She longed for the
only thing she had left--her own country. She longed to hear her
native tongue. She said so to all who would listen. One day she
received an anonymous letter, inclosing bank-notes for five thousand
lira. The letter read:
"I hear that you are homesick. Take this money and return to
your native land. It will pay your passage and secure your
admission to a home for aged gentlewomen. Do not try to
discover the source of the gift.
"FROM ONE WHO LOVED YOUR DAUGHTER.
"A little blossom of comfort bloomed in the old woman's heart, like an
edelweiss on a glacier. She packed her few possessions and sailed for
America. There was no one to meet her, but she had kept the name and
address of the woman editor; she was sure the editor would advise her
about getting into the right home. In the mean time she went from the
steamer to a cheap New York lodging-house, of which some fellow
passenger had told her, and from there she sent a hurried summons to
the editor. She was already panic-stricken in this big country, which
held the graves of all she loved but one. It suddenly seemed to her as
strange, as terrible as Italy. She was afraid of everything--afraid of
the people she met, of the sounds she heard, of the prying
lodging-house keeper and her red-eyed husband. Most of all, she was
afraid of these two, and she had reason to be.
"The editor had not even known the old lady was coming to this
country, but she responded to the call the night she received it, for
she could tell that the writer was frantic with fear. She climbed
three flights of rickety stairs and found the old woman in a state of
unreasoning terror, like a lost child in the dark. Already the keepers
of the lodging-house had tried to get her money from her; she was
hungry, for they did not furnish meals, and she had been afraid to go
out for food. The editor took her away from the place that night and
home to her own apartment. There she had a long talk with her.
"'Now, Mrs. Driscoll,' she said, 'I want you to forget your troubles
if you can and settle down here and be at peace. Leave the matter of
the home to me. I will find the right place, and when I have found it
I will tell you about it and take you to see it. Then, if you approve,
in you go. We will put your money in the bank to-morrow and leave it
there until the matter of the home is settled. In the mean time don't
think or talk about the future. It may take some time to find the
right home. I'm not going to run to you with every hope or
disappointment that my investigation brings. Forget about it yourself,
but don't think I have forgotten because I am not keeping you stirred
up with daily or weekly reports.'
"The old lady settled down like a contented child in its mother's lap.
As the weeks passed her eyes lost their look of panic and took on the
serenity of age. Her thin figure filled out. She transferred to her
only friend something of the devotion she had given her daughter. She
was almost happy.
"In the mean time the editor began her investigations, and she at once
discovered that it is not easy to find a home for an aged and indigent
gentlewoman. All the institutions to which she applied were filled,
and each had waiting-lists that looked, she said, 'yards long.' The
secretaries were courteous. They almost invariably sent her lists of
other institutions, and she wrote to these, or visited them if they
were within reach; and the weeks and months crawled by, and the city
grew hot and stifling. She was worn out by the quest to which she was
giving every hour of her spare time, but she was no nearer success
than she had been the first day. She had arranged to go to Europe for
a rest which she sadly needed, and the date of her sailing was very
near. But she could not go and leave her protégée unprovided for, nor
could she leave her alone with a servant. Her search became a very
serious thing; it kept her awake nights; it got on her nerves; it
became an obsession which, waking or sleeping, she could not forget.
She began to go down under it, but no one knew that, for she kept it
to herself; and the least suspicious person of all her friends was the
old lady, who each evening listened for her footstep as one listens
for that of the best beloved, coming home."
The Author stopped.
"By Jove!" said the Best Seller, "it _is_ a depressing yarn. Let me
see if I can't brighten it up a bit."
But the Author glanced at me. "Forgive me, old man," he said to the
Best Seller, who was a friend of his. "I know what you would do. You
would certainly brighten it up. You would discover a long-lost son,
throw in Thanksgiving at the old home, and wind up with the tango. I
think Miss Iverson ought to go on with the story."
He and the Playwright smiled at me. I felt neither nervous nor
self-conscious as I took up the story, but the Best Seller openly
grumbled.
"I could put some snap in that," he exclaimed. "But go on, Miss
Iverson. Only I call this a close corporation."
"There came," I began, "a very hot day. The editor had heard of a home
beyond the city limits, where the view was beautiful and the air was
pure. She went to see it. The date was the twenty-second of July, and
the day was the hottest of the season. At the end of the trolley-line
there was a broiling walk in the sun. The editor dragged her weary
feet along the dusty road, her eyes on the great brick building she
was approaching. Before it a cool lawn sloped down to a protecting
hedge. She could see old ladies sitting on benches under trees, and a
big lump came into her throat as she thought of her protégée and
wondered if at last she had found her a permanent resting-place, if
this haven was for her. In the dim reception-room she waited
hopefully, but almost the first words of the Sister who finally
appeared showed that nothing could be expected from her.
"She was merely repeating all the phrases the editor knew by heart.
The place was 'full to overflowing.' There were 'almost two hundred on
the waiting-list.' But, of course, there were other places. She
rattled off an impressive list. Every home on it was one the editor
had already visited or heard from; there was no room, she knew, in any
of them. At her side the Sister uttered sympathetic murmurs. It was,
she said, very sad. Then briskly she arose. She was a busy woman, and
she had already given this caller more time than she could well spare.
Perhaps the look on the editor's face checked her steps. Uncertainly
for a second she hesitated at the threshold. She could do nothing,
but--yes, there was still the impulse of hospitality.
"'Would you like to see our new chapel?' she asked, kindly. 'It is
just finished, and we are very proud of it.'
"The editor did not really care to see the new chapel. In her
depression she would not have cared to see anything. But she was very
warm, very tired, utterly discouraged. She wanted a few quiet moments
in which to pull herself together, to rest, to think, and to plan. The
new chapel would give her these. She followed the Sister to its dim
shelter, and, crossing its threshold, knelt in a pew near the door.
Sister Italia, kneeling beside her, suddenly leaned toward her and
whispered in her ear.
"'Remember,' she smiled, 'when you pray in a new chapel three prayers
are surely answered.'
"The editor returned her smile. Already she was feeling better. The
chapel was really beautiful, and its atmosphere was infinitely
soothing. Before the altar gleamed one soft light, like a distant
star, and like larger stars the rose windows at the right and left
seemed to pulse with color. Here and there a black-veiled nun knelt
motionless with bowed head. The editor offered two of her prayers:
that she might soon find a home for Mrs. Driscoll; that Mrs. Driscoll
might be happy and content in the home when she had found it. Then,
her eyes still on the distant altar light, her thoughts turned to
Mother Elise--at rest in her Roman grave. Here, surely, was a fit
setting for thought of her--a convent chapel such as those in which
she had spent years of her life. How many vigils she must have had in
such a place, how many lonely hours of fasting and of prayer!
"'I wish,' the editor reflected, dreamily, 'I wish I could feel that
she is with me in this search for the home. Of course she is--if she
knows. I'm sure of that. But _does_ she know? Or is she in some place
so inconceivably remote that even the tears and prayers of her
helpless old mother have never reached her? I wish I could know that
she is watching--that she won't let me make a mistake.'
"She sighed. Close to her Sister Italia stirred, then rose from her
knees and led the way from the chapel. The editor followed. At the
outer door of the main building Sister Italia asked a question.
"'Did you offer your three prayers?' she wanted to know.
"The editor reflected. 'I offered two,' she said, slowly. Then a
sudden memory came to her, and she smiled. 'Why, yes,' she said, 'I
offered all three, without realizing it.'"
The Best Seller interrupted. He was an irrepressible person. "It's
still too somber," he said. "But I see now how it can be lightened a
bit. Take your cue from the musicians. They're playing the Maxixe."
"Hush!" begged the woman with the blue eyes. She turned them on me.
There was an odd mist over their cold brilliance. "Please go on, Miss
Iverson," she said, gently.