The Sister Superior had a long upper lip, which she was in the habit of
drawing still further down; it gave her an air of great diplomatic
caution, almost of casuistry. Her face was pale and narrow. She had eyes
that desired to be very penetrating, and a flat little stooping figure
with a suggestion of extreme neutrality within her voluminous draperies.
She carried about with her all the virtues of a monastic order, patience
was written upon her, and repression, discipline and the love of
administration, written and underlined, so that the Anglican Sister whom
no Pope blessed was more priestly in her personal effect than any
Jesuit. It was difficult to remember that she had begun as a woman; she
was now a somewhat anæmic formula making for righteousness. Sister Ann
Frances, who in her turn suggested the fat capons of an age of friars
more indulgent to the flesh, and whose speech was of the crispest in
this world, where there was so much to do, thought poorly of the
executive ability of the Sister Superior, and resented the imposition,
as it were, of the long upper lip. Out of this arose the only
irritations that vexed the energetic flow of duty at the Baker
Institution, slight official raspings which the Sister Superior
immediately laid before Heaven at great length. She did it with
publicity, too, kneeling on the chunam floor of the chapel for an hour
at a time explaining matters. The bureaucracy of the country was
reflected in the Baker Institution: it seemed to Sister Ann Frances that
her superior officer took undue advantage of her privilege of direct
communication with the Supreme Authority, giving any colour she liked to
the incident. And when the Sister Superior's lumbago came on in direct
consequence of the cold chunam, the annoyance of Sister Ann Frances was
naturally not lessened.
There were twenty or thirty of them, with their little white caps tied
close under their chins, their long veils and their girdled black robes.
They were the most self-sacrificing women in Asia, the most devout, the
most useful. Government gave hospitals and doctors into their hands;
they took the whole charge of certain schools. They differed in
complexion, some of the newly arrived being delightfully fresh and pink
under their starched bandeaux. But they were all official, they all
walked discreetly and directly about their business, with a jangle of
keys in the folds of their robes, immensely organised, immensely under
orders. Hilda, when she had time, had the keenest satisfaction in
contemplating them. She took the edge off the fact that she was not
quite one, in aim and method, with these dear women, as they supposed
her to be, with the reflection that, after all, it might be worth while
to work out a solution of life in those terms, standing aside from the
world--the world was troublesome--and keeping an unfaltering eye upon
the pity of things, an unfaltering hand at its assuagement. It was
simple and fine and indisputable, this work of throwing the clear shadow
of the Cross upon the muddy sunlight of the world. It carried the boon
of finality in itself. One might be stopped and put away at any moment,
and nothing would be spoiled, broken, unfinished; and it absolutely
barred out such considerations as were presented by Hamilton Bradley.
There was a time early in her probation when she thought seriously that
if it were not Stephen Arnold it should be this.
She begged to be put on hospital work and was sent for her indiscretion
to teach in the Orphanage for Female Children of British Troops. The
first duty of a novice was to be free of preference, to obey without a
sigh of choice. On the third day, however, Sister Ann Frances,
supervising, stopped at the open schoolroom door to hear the junior
female orphans repeating in happy chorus after their instructress the
statement that seven times nine were fifty-six. I think Hilda saw Sister
Ann Frances in the door. That couldn't go on, even in the name of
discipline, and Miss Howe was placed at the disposal of the chief
nursing Sister at the General Hospital next day. Sister Ann Frances was
inclined to defend Hilda's imperfect acquaintance with primary
arithmetic.
"We all have our gifts," she said. "Miss Howe's is not the
multiplication table, but neither is mine stage-acting." At which the
upper lip lengthened further into an upward-curving smile, and the
Sister Superior remarked cautiously that she hoped Miss Howe would
develop one for making bandages, otherwise----
The depth of what was unusual in Hilda's relation with Alicia
Livingstone--perhaps it has been plain that they were not quite the
ordinary feminine liens--seems to me to be sounded in the tacit
acceptance of Hilda's novitiate on its merits that fell between the two
women. The full understanding of it was an abyss between them, across
which they joined hands, looking elsewhere. Even in the surprise of
Hilda's announcement Alicia had the instinct to glance away, lest her
eyes should betray too many facts that bore upon the situation. It had
never been discussed, but it had to be accepted and occasionally
referred to; and the terms of acceptance and reference made no
implication of Stephen Arnold. In her inmost privacy Alicia gazed
breathless at the conception as a whole; she leaped at it, and caught
it, and held it to look, with a feverish comparison of possibilities. It
was not strange, perhaps, that she took a vivid personal interest in the
essentials that enabled one to execute a flank movement like Hilda's nor
that she should conceive the first of them to be that one must come out
of a cab. She dismissed that impression with indignation as ungenerously
cynical, but it always came back for redismissal. It did not interfere
in the least, however, with her deliberate invitations to Stephen to
come to 10, Middleton street on afternoons or evenings when Hilda was
there. She was like one standing denied in the Street of Abundance; she
had an avidity of the eye for even love's reflection.
That was a little later. At first there was the transformation to
lament, the loss, the break.
"You look," cried Miss Livingstone, the first time Hilda arrived in the
dress of the novice, a kind of understudy of the Sisters' black and
white, "you look like a person in a book, full of salient points, and
yet made so simple to the reader. If you go on wearing those things I
shall end by understanding you perfectly."
"If you don't understand me," Hilda said, dropping into the corner of a
sofa, "_Cela que je m'en doute_, it's because you look for too much
elaboration. I am a simple creature, done with rather a broad
brush--_voila tout!_"
Nevertheless, Miss Livingstone's was a happy impression. The neutrality
of her hospital dress left Hilda in a manner exposed: one saw in a
special way the significance of lines and curves; it was an
astonishingly vigourous human expression.
Alicia leaned forward, her elbow on the arm of her chair, her chin
tucked into her palm, and looked at it. The elbow bent itself in a light
blue muslin sleeve of extreme elegance, trimmed with lace. The colour
found a wistful echo in the eyes that regarded Miss Howe, who was
accustomed to the look and met it with impenetrable commonplace, being
made impatient by nothing in this world so much as by futility, however
charming.
"Just now," Alicia said, "the shadows under your eyes are brushed too
deep."
"I don't believe I sleep well in a dormitory."
"Horrible! All the little privacies of life--don't you miss them?"
"I never had them, my dear--I never had them. Life has never given me
the luxury of curtains--I don't miss them. An occasional blind--a closed
door--and those we got even at the Institution. The decencies are
strictly conserved, believe me."
"One imagines that kind of place is always clean."
"When I have time I think of Number Three, Lal Behari's Lane, and
believe myself in Paradise. The repose is there, the angels also--dear
commanding things--and a perpetual incense of cheap soap. And there is
some good in sleeping in a row. It reminds one that after all one is
very like other women."
"It wouldn't convince me if I were you. And how did the Sisters receive
you--with the harp and the psaltery?"
"That was rather," said Hilda gravely, "what I expected. On the
contrary, they snubbed me--they really did. There were two of them. I
said, 'Reverend ladies, please be a little kind. Convents are strange to
me; I shall probably commit horrible sins without knowing it. Give me
your absolution in advance--at least your blessing."
"Hilda, you didn't!"
"It is delightful to observe the Mother Abbess, or whatever she is,
disguising the fact that she takes any interest in me. Such
diplomacy--funny old thing."
"They must be _devoured_ with curiosity!"
"Well, they ask no questions. One sees an everlasting finger on the lip.
It's a little boring. One feels inclined to speak up and say, 'Mesdames,
_entendez_--it isn't so bad as you think.' But then their fingers would
go into their ears."
"And the rules, Hilda? I can't imagine you, somehow, under rules."
"I am attached to the rules; I think about them all day long. They make
the thing simple and--possible. It is a little like living for the first
time in a house all right angles after--after a life-long voyage in a
small boat."
"Isn't the house rather empty?"
"Oh, well!"
Alicia put out her hand and tucked an irrelevant bit of lace into
Hilda's bosom. "I can tell you who is interested," she cried. "The
Archdeacon--the Archdeacon and Mrs. Barberry. They both dined here last
night; and you lasted from the fish to the pudding. I got so bored with
you, my dear, in your new capacity."
A new ray of happiness came into the smile of the novice. "What did they
say? Do tell me what they said."
"There was a difference of opinion. The Archdeacon held that with God
all things were possible. He used an expression more suitable to a
dinner-party, but I think that is what he meant. Mrs. Barberry thought
it wouldn't last. Mrs. Barberry was very cynical. She said anyone could
see that you were as emotional as ever you could be."
The eyes of the two women met and they laughed frankly. A sense of
expansion came between them, in which for an instant they were silent.
"Tell me about the hospital," Alicia said presently.
"Ah, the hospital!" Hilda's face changed. There came into her eyes the
moved look that always waked a thrill in Alicia Livingstone, as if she
were suddenly aware that she had stepped upon ground where feet like
hers passed seldom.
"There is nothing to tell you that is not--sad. Such odds and ends of
life, thrown together!"
"Have you had any experiences yet?"
Hilda stared for a moment absently in front of her, and then turned her
head aside to answer as if she closed her eyes on something.
"Experiences? Delightful Alicia, speaking your language, no. You are
thinking of the resident surgeon, the medical student, the interesting
patient. My resident surgeon is fifty years old; the medical student is
a Bengali in white cotton and patent-leather shoes. I am occupied in a
ward full of deck hands. For these I hold the bandage and the basin;
they are hardly aware of me."
"You are sure to have them," Alicia said. "They crop up wherever you go
in this world, either before you or behind you."
Hilda fixed her eyes attentively upon her companion. "Sometimes," she
said, "you say things that are extremely true in their general bearing.
A fortune-teller with cards gives one the same shock of surprise. Well,
let me tell you, I have been promoted to temperatures. I took
thirty-five to-day. Next week I am to make poultices; the week after
baths and fomentations."
"What are the others like--the other novices?"
"Nearly all Eurasians, one native, a Hindu widow--the Sisters are almost
demonstrative to her--and one or two local European girls; the
Commissariat-Sergeant class, I should think."
"They don't sound attractive and I am glad. You will depend the more
upon me."
Hilda looked thoughtfully at Miss Livingstone. "I will depend," she
said, "a good deal upon you."
It was Alicia's fate to meet the Archdeacon again that evening at
dinner. "And is she really throwing her heart into the work?" asked that
dignitary, referring to Miss Howe.
"Oh, I think so," Alicia said; "Yes."