Melvyna to her new guests the evening of their arrival, when the shy
little Sister had retreated to her own room above. "They thought she was
dying, and she was so long about it, and useless on their hands, that
they sent her up here to the village for sea air, and to be red of her,
I guess. 'Tany rate, there she was in one of them crowded, dirty old
houses, and so--I jest brought her over here. To tell the truth,
gentlemen--the real bottom of it--my baby died last year--and--and Miss
Luke she was so good I'll never forget it. I ain't a Catholic--fur from
it; I hate 'em. But she seen us coming up from the boat with our little
coffin, and she came out and brought flowers to lay on it, and followed
to the grave, feeble as she was; and she even put in her little black
shawl, because the sand was wet--this miserable half-afloat land, you
know--and I couldn't bear to see the coffin set down into it. And I said
to myself then that I'd never hate a Catholic again, gentlemen. I don't
love 'em yet, and don't know as I ever shell; but Miss Luke, she's
different. Consumption? Well, I hardly know. She's a sight better than
she was when she come. I'd like to make her well again, and, someway, I
can't help a-trying to, for I was a nurse by trade once. But then what's
the use? She'll only hev to go back to that old convent!" And Melvyna
clashed her pans together in her vexation. "Is she a good Catholic, do
you say? Heavens and earth, yes! She's _that_ religious--my! I couldn't
begin to tell! She believes every word of all that rubbish those old
nuns have told her. She thinks it's beautiful to be the bride of heaven;
and, as far as that goes, I don't know but she's right: 'tain't much the
other kind is wuth," pursued Melvyna, with fine contempt for mankind in
general. "As to freedom, they've as good as shoved her off their hands,
haven't they? And I guess I can do as I like any way on my own island.
There wasn't any man about their old convent, as I can learn, and so
Miss Luke, she hain't been taught to run away from 'em like most nuns.
Of course, if they knew, they would be sending over here after her; but
they don't know, and them priests in the village are too fat and lazy to
earn their salt, let alone caring what has become of her. I guess, if
they think of her at all, they think that she died, and that they buried
her in their crowded, sunken old graveyard. They're so slow and sleepy
that they forget half the time who they're burying! But Miss Luke, she
ought to go out in the air, and she is so afraid of everything that it
don't do her no good to go alone. I haven't got the time to go; and so,
if you will let her walk along the beach with you once in a while, it
will do her a sight of good, and give her an appetite--although what I
want her to hev an appetite for I am sure I don't know; for, ef she gets
well, of course she'll go back to the convent. Want to go? _That_ she
does. She loves the place, and feels lost and strange anywhere else. She
was taken there when she was a baby, and it is all the home she has.
_She_ doesn't know they wanted to be red of her, and she wouldn't
believe it ef I was to tell her forty times. She loves them all dearly,
and prays every day to go back there. Spanish? Yes, I suppose so; she
don't know herself what she is exactly. She speaks English well though,
don't she? Yes, Sister St. Luke is her name; and a heathenish name it is
for a woman, in my opinion. _I_ call her Miss Luke. Convert her?
Couldn't any more convert her than you could convert a white gull, and
make a land-bird of him. It's his nature to ride on the water and be wet
all the time. Towels couldn't dry him--not if you fetched a thousand!"
"Our good hostess is a woman of discrimination, and sorely perplexed,
therefore, over her _protégée_" said Keith, as the two young men sought
their room, a loft under the peaked roof, which was to be their abode
for some weeks, when they were not afloat. "As a nurse she feels a
professional pride in curing, while as a Calvinist she would almost
rather kill than cure, if her patient is to go back to the popish
convent. But the little Sister looks very fragile. She will probably
save trouble all round by fading away."
"She is about as faded now as a woman can be," answered Carrington.
The two friends, or rather companions, plunged into all the phases of
the southern ocean with a broad, inhaling, expanding delight which only
a physique naturally fine, or carefully trained, can feel. George
Carrington was a vigorous young Saxon, tall and broad, feeling his life
and strength in every vein and muscle. Each night he slept his eight
hours dreamlessly, like a child, and each day he lived four hours in
one, counting by the pallid hours of other men. Andrew Keith, on the
other hand, represented the physique cultured and trained up to a high
point by years of attention and care. He was a slight man, rather
undersized, but his wiry strength was more than a match for Carrington's
bulk, and his finely cut face, if you would but study it, stood out like
a cameo by the side of a ruddy miniature in oils. The trouble is that
but few people study cameos. He was older than his companion, and "one
of those quiet fellows, you know," said the world. The two had never
done or been anything remarkable in their lives. Keith had a little
money, and lived as he pleased, while Carrington, off now on a vacation,
was junior member of a firm in which family influence had placed him.
Both were city men.
"You absolutely do not know how to walk, señora," said Keith. "I will be
doctor now, and you must obey me. Never mind the crabs, and never mind
the jelly-fish, but throw back your head and walk off briskly. Let the
wind blow in your face, and try to stand more erect."
"You are doctor? They told me, could I but see one, well would I be,"
said the Sister. "At the convent we have only Sister Inez, with her
small and old medicines."
"Yes, I think I may call myself doctor," answered Keith gravely. "What
do you say, Carrington?"
"Knows no end, Miss, Miss--Miss Luke--I should say, Miss St. Luke. I am
sure I do not know why I should stumble over it when St. John is a
common enough name," answered Carrington, who generally did his thinking
aloud.
"No end?" repeated the little Sister inquiringly. "But there is an end
in this evil world to all things."
"Never mind what he says, señora," interrupted Keith, "but step out
strongly and firmly, and throw back your head. There now, there are no
crabs in sight, and the beach is hard as a floor. Try it with me: one,
two; one, two."
So they treated her, partly as a child, partly as a gentle being of an
inferior race. It was a new amusement, although a rather mild one
Carrington said, to instruct this unformed, timid mind, to open the
blinded eyes, and train the ignorant ears to listen to the melodies of
nature.
"Do you not hear? It is like the roll of a grand organ," said Keith as
they sat on the door-step one evening at sunset. The sky was dark; the
wind had blown all day from the north to the south, and frightened the
little Sister as she toiled at her lace-work, made on a cushion in the
Spanish fashion, her lips mechanically repeating prayers meanwhile; for
never had they such winds at the inland convent, embowered in its
orange-trees. Now, as the deep, low roll of the waves sounded on the
shore, Keith, who was listening to it with silent enjoyment, happened to
look up and catch the pale, repressed nervousness of her face.
"Oh, not like an organ," she murmured. "This is a fearful sound; but an
organ is sweet--soft and sweet. When Sister Teresa plays the evening
hymn it is like the sighing of angels."
"But your organ is probably small, señora."
"We have not thought it small. It remains in our chapel, by the window
of arches, and below we walk, at the hour of meditation, from the
lime-tree to the white-rose bush, and back again, while the music sounds
above. We have not thought it small, but large--yes, very large."
"Four feet long, probably," said Carrington, who was smoking an evening
pipe, now listening to the talk awhile, now watching the movements of
two white heron who were promenading down the beach. "I saw the one over
in the village church. It was about as long as this step."
"Yes," said the Sister, surveying the step, "it is about as long as
that. It is a very large organ."
"Walk with me down to the point," said Keith--"just once and back
again."
The docile little Sister obeyed; she always did immediately whatever
they told her to do.
"I want you to listen now; stand still and listen--listen to the sea,"
said Keith, when they had turned the point and stood alone on the shore.
"Try to think only of the pure, deep, blue water, and count how
regularly the sound rolls up in long, low chords, dying away and then
growing louder, dying away and then growing louder, as regular as your
own breath. Do you not hear it?"
"Yes," said the little Sister timorously.
"Keep time, then, with your hand, and let me see whether you catch the
measure."
So the small brown hand, nerveless and slender, tried to mark and
measure the roar of the great ocean surges, and at last succeeded, urged
on by the alternate praises and rebukes of Keith, who watched with some
interest a faint color rise in the pale oval face, and an intent
listening look come into the soft, unconscious eyes, as, for the first
time, the mind caught the mighty rhythm of the sea. She listened, and
listened, standing mute, with head slightly bent and parted lips.
"I want you to listen to it in that way every day," said Keith, as he
led the way back. "It has different voices: sometimes a fresh, joyous
song, sometimes a faint, loving whisper; but always something. You will
learn in time to love it, and then it will sing to you all day long."
"Not at the dear convent; there is no ocean there."
"You want to go back to the convent?"
"Oh, could I go! could I go!" said the Sister, not impatiently, but with
an intense yearning in her low voice. "Here, so lost, so strange am I,
so wild is everything. But I must not murmur"; and she crossed her hands
upon her breast and bowed her head.
* * * * *
The two young men led a riotous life; they rioted with the ocean, with
the winds, with the level island, with the sunshine and the racing
clouds. They sailed over to the reef daily and plunged into the surf;
they walked for miles along the beach, and ran races over its white
floor; they hunted down the center of the island, and brought back the
little brown deer who lived in the low thicket on each side of the
island's backbone. The island was twenty miles long and a mile or two
broad, with a central ridge of shell-formed rock about twenty feet in
height, that seemed like an Appalachian chain on the level waste; below,
in the little hollows on each side, spread a low tangled thicket, a few
yards wide; and all the rest was barren sand, with movable hills here
and there--hills a few feet in height, blown up by the wind, and changed
in a night. The only vegetation besides the thicket was a rope-like vine
that crept over the sand, with few leaves far apart, and now and then a
dull purple blossom--a solitary tenacious vine of the desert, satisfied
with little, its growth slow, its life monotonous; yet try to tear it
from the surface of the sand, where its barren length seems to lie
loosely like an old brown rope thrown down at random, and behold, it
resists you stubbornly. You find a mile or two of it on your hands,
clinging and pulling as the strong ivy clings to a stone wall; a giant
could not conquer it, this seemingly dull and half-dead thing; and so
you leave it there to creep on in its own way, over the damp,
shell-strewn waste. One day Carrington came home in great glory; he had
found a salt marsh. "Something besides this sand, you know--a stretch of
saw-grass away to the south, the very place for fat ducks. And somebody
has been there before us, too, for I saw the mast of a sail-boat some
distance down, tipped up against the sky."
"That old boat is ourn, I guess," said Melvyna. "She drifted down there
one high tide, and Pedro he never would go for her. She was a mighty
nice little boat, too, ef she was cranky."
Pedro smiled amiably back upon his spouse, and helped himself to another
hemisphere of pie. He liked the pies, although she was obliged to make
them, she said, of such outlandish things as figs, dried oranges, and
pomegranates. "If you could only see a pumpkin, Pedro," she often
remarked, shaking her head. Pedro shook his back in sympathy; but, in
the mean time, found the pies very good as they were.
"Let us go down after the boat," said Carrington. "You have only that
old tub over at the inlet, Pedro, and you really need another boat."
(Carrington always liked to imagine that he was a constant and profound
help to the world at large.) "Suppose anything should happen to the one
you have?" Pedro had not thought of that; he slowly put down his knife
and fork to consider the subject.
"We will go this afternoon," said Keith, issuing his orders, "and you
shall go with us, señora."
"And Pedro, too, to help you," said Melvyna. "I've always wanted that
boat back, she was such a pretty little thing: one sail, you know, and
decked over in front; you sat on the bottom. I'd like right well to go
along myself; but I suppose I'd better stay at home and cook a nice
supper for you."
Pedro thought so, decidedly.
When the February sun had stopped blazing down directly overhead, and a
few white afternoon clouds had floated over from the east to shade his
shining, so that man could bear it, the four started inland toward the
backbone ridge, on whose summit there ran an old trail southward, made
by the fierce Creeks three centuries before. Right up into the dazzling
light soared the great eagles--straight up, up to the sun, their
unshrinking eyes fearlessly fixed full on his fiery ball.
"It would be grander if we did not know they had just stolen their
dinners from the poor hungry fish-hawks over there on the inlet," said
Carrington.
Sister St. Luke had learned to walk quite rapidly now. Her little black
gown trailed lightly along the sand behind her, and she did her best to
"step out boldly," as Keith directed; but it was not firmly, for she
only succeeded in making a series of quick, uncertain little paces over
the sand like bird-tracks. Once Keith had taken her back and made her
look at her own uneven footsteps. "Look--no two the same distance
apart," he said. The little Sister looked and was very much mortified.
"Indeed, I _will_ try with might to do better," she said. And she did
try with might; they saw her counting noiselessly to herself as she
walked, "One, two; one, two." But she had improved so much that Keith
now devoted his energies to teaching her to throw back her head and
look about her. "Do you not see those soft banks of clouds piled up in
the west?" he said, constantly directing her attention to objects above
her. But this was a harder task, for the timid eyes had been trained
from childhood to look down, and the head was habitually bent, like a
pendant flower on its stem. Melvyna had deliberately laid hands upon the
heavy veil and white band that formerly encircled the small face. "You
can not breathe in them," she said. But the Sister still wore a light
veil over the short dark hair, which would curl in little rings upon her
temples in spite of her efforts to prevent it; the cord and heavy beads
and cross encircled her slight waist, while the wide sleeves of her
nun's garb fell over her hands to the finger-tips.
"How do you suppose she would look dressed like other women?" said
Carrington one day. The two men were drifting in their small yacht,
lying at ease on the cushions, and smoking.
"Well," answered Keith slowly, "if she was well dressed--very well, I
mean, say in the French style--and if she had any spirit of her own, any
vivacity, you might, with that dark face of hers and those eyes--you
_might_ call her piquant."
"Spirit? She has not the spirit of a fly," said Carrington, knocking the
ashes out of his pipe and fumbling in an embroidered velvet pouch, one
of many offerings at his shrine, for a fresh supply of the strong
aromatic tobacco he affected, Keith meanwhile smoking nothing but the
most delicate cigarettes. "The other day I heard a wild scream; and
rushing down stairs I found her half fainting on the steps, all in a
little heap. And what do you think it was? She had been sitting there,
lost in a dream--mystic, I suppose, like St. Agnes--
Deep on the convent roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon:
My breath to heaven like vapor goes.
May my soul follow soon--
and that sort of thing."
"No," said Keith, "there is nothing mystical about the Luke maiden; she
has never even dreamed of the ideal ecstasies of deeper minds. She says
her little prayers simply, almost mechanically, so many every day, and
dwells as it were content in the lowly valleys of religion."
"Well, whatever she was doing," continued Carrington, "a great sea crab
had crawled up and taken hold of the toe of her little shoe. Grand
tableau--crab and Luke maiden! And the crab had decidedly the better of
it."
"She _is_ absurdly timid," admitted Keith.
And absurdly timid she was now, when, having crossed the stretch of sand
and wound in and out among the low hillocks, they came to the hollow
where grew the dark green thicket, through which they must pass to reach
the Appalachian range, the backbone of the island, where the trail gave
them an easier way than over the sands. Carrington went first and hacked
out a path with his knife; Keith followed, and held back the branches;
the whole distance was not more than twelve feet; but its recesses
looked dark and shadowy to the little Sister, and she hesitated.
"Come," said Carrington; "we shall never reach the salt marsh at this
rate."
"There is nothing dangerous here, señora," said Keith. "Look, you can
see for yourself. And there are three of us to help you."
"Yes," said Pedro--"three of us." And he swung his broad bulk into the
gap.
Still she hesitated.
"Of what are you afraid?" called out Carrington impatiently.
"I know not, indeed," she answered, almost in tears over her own
behavior, yet unable to stir. Keith came back, and saw that she was
trembling--not violently, but in a subdued, helpless sort of way which
was pathetic in its very causelessness.
"Take her up, Pedro," he ordered; and, before she could object, the
good-natured giant had borne her in three strides through the dreaded
region, and set her down safely upon the ridge. She followed them humbly
now, along the safe path, trying to step firmly, and walk with her head
up, as Keith had directed. Carrington had already forgotten her again,
and even Keith was eagerly looking ahead for the first glimpse of green.
"There is something singularly fascinating in the stretch of a salt
marsh," he said. "Its level has such a far sweep as you stand and gaze
across it, and you have a dreamy feeling that there is no end to it. The
stiff, drenched grasses hold the salt which the tide brings in twice a
day, and you inhale that fresh, strong, briny odor, the rank, salt,
invigorating smell of the sea; the breeze that blows across has a tang
to it like the snap of a whip-lash across your face, bringing the blood
to the surface, and rousing you to a quicker pace."
"Ha!" said Carrington; "there it is. Don't you see the green? A little
farther on, you will see the mast of the boat."
"That is all that is wanted," said Keith. "A salt marsh is not complete
without a boat tilted up aground somewhere, with its slender dark mast
outlined against the sky. A boat sailing along in a commonplace way
would blight the whole thing; what we want is an abandoned craft, aged
and deserted, aground down the marsh with only its mast rising above the
waste."
"_Bien_! there it is," said Carrington; "and now the question is, how to
get to it."
"You two giants will have to go," said Keith, finding a comfortable
seat. "I see a mile or two of tall wading before us, and up to your
shoulders is over my head. I went duck-shooting with that man last year,
señora. 'Come on,' he cried--'splendid sport ahead, old fellow; come
on.'
"'Is it deep?' I asked from behind. I was already up to my knees, and
could not see bottom, the water was so dark.
"'Oh, no, not at all; just right,' he answered, striding ahead. 'Come
on.'
"I came; and went in up to my eyes."
But the señora did not smile.
"You know Carrington is taller than I am," explained Keith, amused by
the novelty of seeing his own stories fall flat.
"Is he?" said the Sister vaguely.
It was evident that she had not observed whether he was or not.
Carrington stopped short, and for an instant stared blankly at her. What
every one noticed and admired all over the country wherever he went,
this little silent creature had not even seen!
"He will never forgive you," said Keith laughing, as the two tall forms
strode off into the marsh. Then, seeing that she did not comprehend in
the least, he made a seat for her by spreading his light coat on the
Appalachian chain, and, leaning back on his elbow, began talking to her
about the marsh. "Breathe in the strong salt," he said, "and let your
eyes rest on the green, reedy expanse. Supposing you were painting a
picture, now--does any one paint pictures at your convent?"
"Ah, yes," said the little nun, rousing to animation at once. "Sister
St. James paints pictures the most beautiful on earth. She painted for
us Santa Inez with her lamb, and Santa Rufina of Sevilla, with her palms
and earthen vases."
"And has she not taught you to paint also?"
"Me! Oh, no. I am only a Sister young and of no gifts. Sister St. James
is a great saint, and of age she has seventy years."
"Not requisites for painting, either of them, that I am aware," said
Keith. "However, if you were painting this marsh, do you not see how the
mast of that boat makes the feature of the landscape the one human
element; and yet, even that abandoned, merged as it were in the desolate
wildness of the scene?"
The Sister looked over the green earnestly, as if trying to see all that
he suggested. Keith talked on. He knew that he talked well, and he did
not confuse her with more than one subject, but dwelt upon the marsh;
stories of men who had been lost in them, of women who had floated down
in boats and never returned; descriptions clear as etchings; studies of
the monotone of hues before them--one subject pictured over and over
again, as, wishing to instruct a child, he would have drawn with a chalk
one letter of the alphabet a hundred times, until the wandering eyes had
learned at last to recognize and know it.
"Do you see nothing at all, feel nothing at all?" he said. "Tell me
exactly."
Thus urged, the Sister replied that she thought she did feel the salt
breeze a little.
"Then take off that shroud and enjoy it," said Keith, extending his arm
suddenly, and sweeping off the long veil by the corner that was nearest
to him.
"Oh!" said the little Sister--"oh!" and distressfully she covered her
head with her hands, as if trying to shield herself from the terrible
light of day. But the veil had gone down into the thicket, whither she
dared not follow. She stood irresolute.
"I will get it for you before the others come back," said Keith. "It is
gone now, however, and, what is more, you could not help it; so sit
down, like a sensible creature, and enjoy the breeze."
The little nun sat down, and confusedly tried to be a sensible creature.
Her head, with its short rings of dark hair, rose childlike from the
black gown she wore, and the breeze swept freshly over her; but her eyes
were full of tears, and her face so pleading in its pale, silent
distress, that at length Keith went down and brought back the veil.
"See the cranes flying home," he said, as the long line dotted the red
of the west. "They always seem to be flying right into the sunset,
sensible birds!"
The little Sister had heard that word twice now; evidently the cranes
were more sensible than she. She sighed as she fastened on the veil;
there were a great many hard things out in the world, then, she thought.
At the dear convent it was not expected that one should be as a crane.
The other two came back at length, wet and triumphant, with their prize.
They had stopped to bail it out, plug its cracks, mend the old sail
after a fashion, and nothing would do but that the three should sail
home in it, Pedro, for whom there was no room, returning by the way they
had come. Carrington, having worked hard, was determined to carry out
his plan; and said so.
"A fine plan to give us all a wetting," remarked Keith.
"You go down there and work an hour or two yourself, and see how _you_
like it," answered the other, with the irrelevance produced by aching
muscles and perspiration dripping from every pore.
This conversation had taken place at the edge of the marsh where they
had brought the boat up through one of the numerous channels.
"Very well," said Keith. "But mind you, not a word about danger before
the Sister. I shall have hard enough work to persuade her to come with
us as it is."
He went back to the ridge, and carelessly suggested returning home by
water.
"You will not have to go through the thicket then," he said.
Somewhat to his surprise, Sister St. Luke consented immediately, and
followed without a word as he led the way. She was mortally afraid of
the water, but, during his absence, she had been telling her beads, and
thinking with contrition of two obstinacies in one day--that of the
thicket and that of the veil--she could not, she would not have three.
So, commending herself to all the saints, she embarked.