I
Twilight was spreading her cloak as we passed from the lodge into the
flagged yard. Several windows of the tall red building were already
alight, and on the sill outside the largest window of all, which was not
alight, stood a pineapple and some grapes on a plate.
Within, the feet fell chill on the chequered flags of the hall; and
this, by its size, should have been a spacious-seeming hall, but that
was not the way it impressed one. There was one of those bamboo
hat-stands with a strip of looking-glass running up the middle of it,
but I followed my companion’s example in not leaving more than my hat,
for that was a chilly place. Through a great oaken double-door on our
right came murmurings of a religious nature and every now and then a
woman’s manlike voice raised, no doubt, in exhortation. Conrad Masters
explained that some of the nuns would be at their devotions whenever
they could manage, their religious observances being so deranged by
night-duty and this and the other. “But why,” I thought to ask, “is Mrs.
Storm here, for don’t you as a rule immure your patients in the Avenue
Malakoff?”
“She wished it,” said Conrad Masters sharply. “She has a God.”
And thereupon he left me, to see another patient he had there, but I had
not waited more than a few minutes in the waiting-room, which had that
intangible odour of old cloth and illness, when I was called upstairs by
an old stern nun, hard and silent as a rock, and I remember wondering:
“Good my God, if this should be Iris’s day-nurse. Oh, poor Iris!”
The stairway we ascended was handsome and wide, of polished oak, the
most dignified stairway you could well imagine in a nursing-home. It
swept in a noble curve to a broad passage, also of oak, as, no doubt,
was only fit and proper in a nursing-home patronised by _une clientèle
européenne la plus chic_. But maybe it was a little too dignified, I
thought, it was sombre; and the old stern nun who was my guide did not
seek to relieve the atmosphere, giving me a massive black shoulder and
to my question no more than a stern whisper which was no more and no
less than a shout of disapproval: “_Assez bien, monsieur, assez bien.
Nous nous confions en Dieu._”
The chill, the gloom, the nun, the air of religious prostration, to
which I am lamentably ill-accustomed, had quite killed my spirit, else,
as I did my best quietly to follow her up the long, dark, uncarpeted
passage, I had put it to her that to trust in God is very well but must
He be trusted at such little expense, for in these oaken passages they
had no more than a jet or two of gas-light, and wasn’t it also
reasonable to suppose that the patients behind the doors, each inscribed
with a Saint’s name, would lie the more comfortably for a strip of
carpet along the passages? From below, as though from the bowels of the
earth in labour, one might still faintly hear the murmurings of a
religious nature and the woman’s manlike voice raised, no doubt, in
exhortation; but I supposed the patients would not be minding that for
they would be Catholics, and I wondered if Iris was a Catholic, but
nowadays that is the last thing one ever learns about anybody, whether
they are Catholic, Anglican, Jew, or what they are....
As we came by a certain door, not far from which a gas-jet flamed an
ailing yellow, it was opened from within and I saw before me the
sweetest face that I ever saw in my life, and I knew that her God had
been good to Iris.
“_Sœur Virginie_,” said the stern old nun, and I am glad to say I never
saw _her_ again. Sister Virginie, looking up at me with a grave smile,
for she was very little, greeted me by my name, and do you know that I
said: “Sister Virginie, had I only met you last night I would have slept
much better than I did.”
She had altogether such a neat and tidy look, an inner look as well as
an outer look, that you must be sceptical indeed not to believe at once
that if ever there was a nurse to soothe away death here she was before
you, her hands folded over her wooden crucifix, smiling up at you as
though you were a gentle friend. Her face was oval and so white, but
white in a different way, a soft clear way, and it was only when I came
to think back on this sweet lady that I realised that of course this
would be so because Sister Virginie never had used powder and such
things, and that must also be why she had the lips of a girl, although
what I could see of the dark brown eyes under the nun’s coif showed the
understanding of more than forty years.
“You see, I know your name,” she said. She did not need to whisper.
“Madame has a great regard for you, I must tell you. Now, you must not
talk when you go in. She will look, look. But you must not say one word.
She will see you are there, and it will make her content that her friend
has thought of her.”
The oak door behind her was just ajar, and within I could see a faint
pink glow, as it might be of a deeply-shaded light far in the room.
Across the door, just above Sister Virginie’s coif, for she was very
little, was painted in faded black lettering the name of a Saint, but
what the Saint was I could not make out, and the only other time I
called there I forgot to look.
“Now, remember,” Sister Virginie was saying, “you must not say one word
in there. She will look, that is all. But how she looks, as though she
is listening to the choir of angels!”
“Sister Virginie,” I said, “do you promise me that she will not die?”
And Sister Virginie smiled up at me with a gaiety that I have only seen
on the still faces of women in old French books.
“To-day we have thought she will not die,” she said, “for last night we
gave her a _piqure du cœur_....”