Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame

n which we see the history of our own characters. We awake to find our wills more inextricably caught in the tissues of their own

m unexpected depression. Had he been older, he might have accepted this unwillingness to go away as the best reason for leaving; but, young, and h

etain him through love of his company. "To-morrow will be Sunday, and you ought to go to vesp

ave on one side was filled with the black-veiled Sisters of the order; that on the other with the white-veiled novices-two far-journeying companies of consecrated souls who reminded him in the most solemn way how re

arms and wearing the battle-stained uniform of a veteran, steps forward to the van at the commander's side, and sets his fresh, pure face undaunted towards destruction. As he thought of her thus, deeper forces stirred within his nature than had ever been aroused by any other woman. In comparison every one that he had known became for the moment commonplace, human life as he was used to it gross and unin

the concealed organ-loft above, a low, minor prelude was heard, groping and striving nearer and nearer towards the concealed motive, as a little wave creeps further and further along a melancholy shore. Suddenly, beautiful and clear, more tender than love, more so

accusal. Still higher and higher it rose, borne triumphantly upward by love and aspiration, until the powers of the singer's frame seemed spending themselves in one superhuman effort of the soul to make its prayer understood to the divine forgiveness. Then, all at once, at the

ounds. Not far off he observed a lusty young countryman, with a frank, winning face, who appeared to be waiting, while he held

t was the matter

plied warmly. "Wait; she'll be h

ife came up and took the child, wh

ke down." Saying this, the young mother kissed her child, and slipping one hand into the great

tood there last. Thus at the moment when Gordon, sitting below, reverently set her far above him, as one looks up to a statue whose feet are above the level of his head, she, thinking of what she had been and had now become, seemed to herself as though fallen from a white pedestal to the miry earth. But when, to a nature like hers, absolute loyalty to a sinless standard of character is the only law o

side the rustic young husband and w

ang has a beautif

," replied the wife. "I love he

ooking at Gordon resentfully, as thoug

man till he marries you as your mother did me. I was going to join the Trappist monks, but my wife said I was too go

n't begged and begged me not," was the repl

don still more assertively, but joining in the laugh that fo

w procession of nameless women, the tapers, the incense, the hoary antiquity of the ceremonial, had carried him into a little-known region of his religious feeling. But from this he had been sharply recalled by the suggestion of a veiled personal tragedy close at hand in that unfinished song. His mood again became one of vast pity for her; and issuing from the church with this feeling, there, near the very entrance, he had come upon a rustic picture of husband, wife, and child, with a sharpnes

rn home. He took the letter to the station, and waited for the train to pass southward, watching it rush away with a subtle pleasure at being left on the platform, as though the bridges were now bu

aimed his time, and hence the trouble. But Gordon, who henceforth had no reason for tarrying with the old couple, threw himself eagerly upon this opportunity to do so, and offered his aid in despatching th

ion of whose visits plainly gave her secret concern; but he listened in silence, preferring the privacy of his own thoughts. Sometimes, under feint of hunting, he would take his gun in the afternoon and stroll out over the country; but always the presence of the convent made itself felt over the landscape, dominating it, solitary and impregnable, like a fortress. It began to draw his eyes with a species of fascination. He chafed against its assertion of barriers, and could have wished that his own will might be

atching for her, and walking often beside her in his dreams, with the folly of the young, with the romantic ardour of his race, and as part of the never-end

ue of elms. He traversed it, turned aside into the garden, and, following with many pauses around its borders, lived over again the day when she had led him through it. The mere sense of his greater physical nearness to her enthralled him. All her words came back: "These are daffodils. They bloomed in March, long ago.... And here are violets, which come in April." After awhile, leaving the garden, he walke

ked he saw two of the nuns moving about within. Was some one dying? Was this light the taper of the dead? He tried to throw off a sudden wei

s in the distance below him. Between the convent and the farm-house, in one of the fields, there is a circular, basin-like depressi

e pathway. One hand was passing bead by bead upward along her rosary. Her veil was pushed back, so that between its black border and the glistening whiteness of her forehead there ran, like a rippling band of gold, the exposed

women with lightning quickness. She did not recognise him, or give him time to recognise her. She merely turned again and walked onward at the same pace. But the

as no acquaintanceship between them, and that she regarded herself as much alone as though he were nowhere in sight, his feelings were arrested as if frozen by her coldness. Still, it was for this chance that he

ar," he said, in a tone of apology

eeming unpardonably rude; she could not say "No" without seeming to invite hi

his she said in the sweetest tone of apologetic courtesy, as though in ha

to draw her veil close, and the sunlight fell upon its loveliness. Never had she been to him half so beautiful

"I was at the church of the convent last Sunday and heard you sing. They said you were not well. I

of what her own thoughts had that day been. One hand absently tore to pieces the blooms of the chrysanthemums, s

d ever seen came forth from her soul to her face. But what a smile!

ain to-morrow," he said quickly, for s

little hurriedly, with averted face, and aga

gine that one would never do wrong if he could hear you sing whenever he i

e hurriedly. "It is the music of the

ce before. It was your

bout her face, and

the natures of women, if it lifts them to such ideals of duty, if it develops in them such characters, that merely to look into their fa

r of her unfaithfulness. And therefore while she revolved how with perfect gentleness she might ask him to allow her to

they ever seem less, it is the faul

ach in her tone at o

hey undertake? Is it not so with anything that they spend their hearts upon, toil for, and sacrifice themselves for? Do I see any beauty in your vows except such as your life gives to them? I can believe it. I can believe that if you had never taken those vows your life

must ask you to allow me to continue

n silence with the thought that he should never s

rgive them that they put between us a gulf that I cannot pass. Remember, I owe you a great deal. I owe you higher ideas of a woman's nature and clearer resolutions regarding my own life. Your vows

greater agitation; and though he could not see

it seemed impossible not to speak of other things. Of course this must seem strange to you-stranger, perhaps, than I may imagine, since we look at human relationships so differently. My life in this world can be

"Do not ask me to forgive anything. There is nothin

-bye to me?" And h

e stepped forward, gently took her hand fr

el barriers that they have rais

that were in her other hand, laid it on her breast so that the longest finger pointed towards the symbol of the transfixed heart,

I came back. Do not send me again, Mother, unless one of the Sisters goes with me." And with this half-truth on her lips and full remors

but since it was made, a sense of honour would not have allowed him to stop there, even had feeling carried him no further. Moreo

of his life-the life which he was asking her to share. He dwelt upon its possibilities, he pointed out the field of its aspirations. But he kept his

d to him. She sat by the hearthstone, with her head tied up in red flannel, and her large,

And ask her why she hasn't been to see me, and when she is coming." On this point her mind seemed more and more

kindling into a dull rage at a taunt made in the presence of a guest whose

noting how his mind was absorbed in pett

ou give the Sister the apples, deliver this. And

furtively into his pocket, with a backw

from other quarters, he will never

. He walked some distance to meet the old man the next two days, and his suspense became almost unendurable,

told me to g

d having reached a point screened from observa

I held most dear and binding, how could you ever believe that I would be true to anything else? Ah, no! Should you unite yourself to one who for your sake had been fai

t this moment, as never before, they give me a mournful admonition of my failure to exhibit to the world in my own life the beauty of their ineffable holiness. For had there not been something within me to l

ffering me your love you offer me the cup of sacred humiliation, and tha

be allowed me to make one request, I would entreat that you will n

are exalted women in the world who do not consecrate themselves to the church, I shall pray that you may find one of these to walk by your side t

having thus separated us, He yet brought us together only that we should thus know each other and then be parted, I cannot believe that there was not in it some needed lesson for us both. At least, if

remorse and a faltering of purpose, but the latter f

registering a vow, he added aloud, "And nothi

rmount the remaining barriers between them, for these now seemed hardly more than cobwebs to be brushed aside by his hand; and often, meanwhile