Tales of the Cloister/As Told by May Iverson
As Told by May Iverson
As Told by May Iverson
HIS is a story you must not publish, because it seems so improbable. Persons who don't know anything about convent life—and, for that matter, those who think they know all about it—will say it could not have happened. But, as it did happen right under my own eyes, and I helped it along all I could, I can testify that every word of it is true.
Of course, I cannot tell it in a dramatic way, as writers do; so I will jot down the facts in the best English I know, and if you decide to use it, you may change and polish it up as much as you please. Then if people say it didn't happen, why, just send them to me.
To begin at the beginning. The episode, if that is what it should be called, occurred last year, a few months before I was graduated. I was up to my eyes in work, for, besides the regular course, I had taken French and music and all the other extras, and we were having Commencement rehearsals every day, and Sister Cecilia was always poking her head into the class-room and announcing that she "wanted Miss Iverson for a few minutes." I played the piano in one number of the programme, and the harp in another, and the zither in something else; and besides all that I sang in two or three of the choruses. I had been with Sister Cecilia so many years that I knew her ways and ideas, and when she was very much rushed I helped her to drill some of the girls.
I don't mention all these things to show you that I was a musical prodigy, but that you may understand that the usual discipline was a little relaxed. I was coming and going from one part of the convent to another pretty much as I pleased.
Well, during those weeks I saw a great deal of Sister Chrysostom. She was a musician, and a good one—oh, if you could have heard her sing! Everybody said she was sure to be Sister Cecilia's successor, and I think Sister Cecilia thought so too, for she was very nice to her and taught her all she knew.
Sister Chrysostom was Sister Cecilia's first assistant, chief counsellor, and general support during those few months, and we girls were glad of it. Sister Cecilia used to get excited and have nervous crises which were very bad for us all, but Sister Chrysostom never lost her head, nor her cool, calm manner. She had a lovely face and sang like an angel, and looked as if she had had a past. So we girls all adored her and raved over her and didn't mind when she snubbed us, which she did most of the time. There was nothing sentimental about Sister Chrysostom, but there was something very interesting, and I used to look at her and wish I knew what it was. Perhaps that is why I found out.
You know how the "Day School side" of the convent is arranged. When you pass the big double doors that open from the street, you find yourself in a square entrance hall, with a small reception-room at the right and a flight of stairs at the left, leading down to the kindergarten. Directly in front of you are two more swinging doors, and when you have passed those you find yourself in a long corridor, with rows of doors on the right and left. These doors, you remember, all lead into small music-rooms, and in each room a girl is practising on the piano. The din is some thing dreadful, of course, for each is playing a different thing, and most of them haven't half learned it.
During rehearsal weeks it was Sister Chrysostom's duty to go up and down this long corridor, dropping into the different rooms and inspiring the girls to fresh efforts. Sometimes she would sit down and talk with them about their music, and point out their mistakes, and correct their technique, and so on. It was really a kind of supplementary lesson, and they adored her so that they actually paid attention to what she said, and got some good from it. Once in a long time she would speak of other things. Of course, the girls were always trying to make her do this, but they didn't often succeed. When they did it was interesting. We used to meet and compare notes. It was plain to all of us that Sister Chrysostom had not stepped right out of a class-room into a nun's habit, as so many of the Sisters had. She had seen life. She was really a woman of the world. She understood human nature—and we could see that our point of view amused her.
In the convent, of course, the greenest girls put on airs, in a way, over the nuns. The least experienced feels that she has more worldly wisdom than the Sisters, and usually she is right. The day pupils live at home and have their evenings for amusement, not to speak of their Saturdays and Sundays. Most of them have big brothers and sisters who are in society, and the girls get more information from them than they dream they are giving. As for the boarders, they have their long vacations at home—and they make the most of them!
All this has really nothing to do with the story, and I do not know why I am writing it, for you understand these things much better than I do. But I think it came to me because I suddenly remembered how we girls used to sit in the garden and talk about Sister Chrysostom, and how we analyzed the difference between her and the other Sisters, and how cheap we used to feel sometimes when she pricked the poor little bubble of our conceit. Please leave that in about the bubble; I think it's rather good, though perhaps I have heard the expression somewhere.
Well, now I must go back a little. You see I don't know how to tell a story—I don't understand what parts to put first. But from this point on I'll tell things as they happened.
One day in January, Sister Chrysostom came into one of the little music-rooms where I was sitting alone, banging away on the Sixth Hungarian Rhapsodic. There were eight of us practising it that week, and we brought tears of anguish to poor Sister Cecilia's eyes. Sister Chrysostom sat down beside me and made as many criticisms as she thought I could bear, and then she leaned back in her chair, and I knew she was going to talk! Of course I went right on playing—I knew enough for that. If we stopped, Sister Chrysostom always left. But I kept to the first two pages, which I knew pretty well, and played them over and over very softly. Sister Chrysostom saw through it, for her lips twitched; but she sat for a time without speaking, and I played on and waited.
At last she said, "May, do you ever go to the theatre?"
I thought I would drop off the piano-stool! In the first place, she had never called me "May" before; you know how formal they always are. In my graduation year it was "Miss Iverson" with all of them, no matter how many years they had known me, and I hadn't known her a year, for she had just come to the convent the fall before, from some other institution. And then, for her to speak of the theatre!
I kept as cool as I could and answered, as if I thought the question the most natural one in the world, that I went to the matinée every Saturday, and sometimes to an evening performance. I said papa would only let me go in the evening if it was Shakspere or something very good; but that my married sister, Mrs. George R. Verbeck, always gave me matinée tickets, whether the play was good or not. She knew how I loved to go, and anyhow she's the sweetest thing in the world. I call her my big sister because she's so much older than I am. She's twenty-eight—the poor dear! But she does lovely things for me, and every now and then she buys a box for the matinée and lets me ask my friends. Of course, she has loads of money and can afford it, but lots of sisters wouldn't think of it. I know girls—but I am running away from my story again.
I told Sister Chrysostom all about Grace—that's my sister, Mrs. Verbeck—and how good she was to me, and how she'd do anything in the world for me, but Sister Chrysostom didn't pay much attention. She seemed to be thinking. Then she said:
"Did you ever see or hear of a company called the 'Bannerton Troubadours'?"
I remembered them right off. They had been at the Academy of Music the year before in a play called "Every-day Frolics," or something of that kind. There was no plot—just a lot of singing and dancing, and what they called "specialties." I didn't go.
I told Sister Chrysostom I hadn't seen them, but that they were coming to the Academy again in March, for I had looked up all the coming plays and made a list for Grace of the ones I wanted to see. I remembered that I marked most every one, and Grace laughed when she looked at the list. But I hadn't marked the "Bannerton Troubadours," and I didn't know just what time in March they were coming, for the date had not been set.
Sister Chrysostom hesitated for a moment and then said:
"When you learn the dates I wish you would tell me. There is a girl in that company whom I used to know. I shall be interested to feel that she is in the same city." And then she changed the subject and went back to the old music again, and of course I had to submit. But you can just believe I was excited. And curious? My! But I didn't dare ask her a single question.
One thing pleased me, though, and that was she didn't ask me not to tell. Of course I knew she meant me not to, and I never breathed a word to the girls, though I was dying to, for wouldn't it have simply thrilled them to think Sister Chrysostom knew an actress! I didn't tell a living soul but Grace; I tell her everything. She was interested, but didn't say much.
Well, now, you see, I've got to where I began my story, which was in the midst of the March rehearsals. At first after my talk with Sister Chrysostom I kept thinking of it all the time; but as the weeks went on I was so busy it dropped from my mind. I had almost entirely forgotten it, though I was seeing Sister Chrysostom every day, when I heard my brother Jack's chum say to him at the dinner-table one evening:
"Let's go to see the 'Bannerton Troubadours' to-night."
It gave me a start, I can tell you! But I didn't dare to show that I was interested, for Jack has the worst way of getting things from me that I don't want to tell. But as soon as I got away from the table I simply flew for the evening paper and found the announcement. "The Troubadours" were in town: this was Monday, and they were to open at the Academy that evening. So you see I had almost slipped up on my promise to Sister Chrysostom. Those dreadful rehearsals had driven everything else out of my head.
However, it was all right, after all, I thought, for she merely wanted to know when they were in town, and I could tell her the next morning. They were to leave Thursday, but anyhow she'd have two days to think about her old friend as being in the same city with her.
The next morning I saw her hurrying along the convent hall, and I followed her. She looked almost annoyed when I stopped her, for she must have been very busy, but my first words made her attentive enough. When I said "Sister Chrysostom, I want to tell you that the 'Bannerton Troubadours' are in town," her whole face changed. Usually she was so calm you couldn't imagine anything could shake her, and her lips had a queer little curl to them that was almost sarcastic. We girls dreaded it. We used to see it coming and change the subject, whatever it was. We knew we'd made some break. But when I mentioned the "Bannerton Troubadours" I felt as if I had never really seen Sister Chrysostom before; it was as if she had dropped a mask. First she was excited, and her eyes shone and she drew a long breath. Then over her whole face came the sweetest, softest, dearest expression, and her eyes looked as Grace's do sometimes when she's watching her little boy and thinks no one sees her. I could have hugged her—Sister Chrysostom, I mean—but she didn't give me a chance. She caught my hand and drew me into a music-room that happened to be empty, and she closed the door and stood with her back to it. Then she said, "Now tell me all you know about it, quickly."
Well, I told her. It wasn't much, of course, and then I waited to see if she'd tell me anything. She did. She told me the whole story in one sentence. She said:
"My only sister is in that company, May—" and then she added, under her breath, "Oh, if I could see her!"
"Well," I said, "she'll come to see you, won't she?" You know their friends can come and see the Sisters and have a happy visit sitting on the other side of an iron grating and talking to them. I've had to do that once or twice since I was graduated, and it just makes me sick. But I was talking about Sister Chrysostom.
She shook her head and said, very sadly, "No, she does not know that I am here. Even if she did, she would not come." Then all the brightness faded out of her face, and she looked her old self again. Even the sarcastic little lines around her mouth came back. She passed her hand across her forehead, and when she spoke again her voice seemed tired. She said: "Thank you for telling me, May. She is my little sister. She is only twenty now, and I have not seen her since she was twelve. When we were together no two sisters ever loved each other more. I really brought her up until I—came here. My people opposed my entering the convent, and none of them wrote to me. Four years ago a friend told me Clara had gone on the stage—also against the wishes of the family, of course. She has married a theatrical man, this Mr. Bannerton, and plays the leading part in his comedy, or whatever it is. My friend said Clara asked very particularly that I should not be told of the career she had chosen, as of course she felt that I would disapprove of it. And somehow I got the impression that something was wrong, and I have been miserable ever since."
You can imagine how I felt. I thought of Grace and how awful it would be if she and I were separated. Then the wildest kind of an idea flashed into my mind, and I spoke right out before I had time to think.
"Sister," I said, "if she doesn't come to see you, why don't you go to her?"
I shall never forget the look she gave me. There was indignation in it, and reproach, and something else that hurt me most of all—regret for the confidence she had given me. She turned without a word and opened the door to leave the room, but I caught her hand and held her. I had to get out of this some way, and what Jack calls one of my "lucid moments" came to me. I drew her back into 
"'WHY DON'T YOU GO TO HER?'"
"Sister," I said, "I beg you will at least listen. I know what I say, and I can arrange it all. The 'Troubadours' give a matinée to-morrow, Wednesday. It begins at two and ends at five. The Academy is only six blocks from the convent. My sister will lend me her carriage. I will have it here at three and drive you over there; we'll time it to get there between the first and second acts. You can see your sister, and I'll have you back in the convent within an hour."
Sister Chrysostom pushed my hands away. "You are insane," she said—and then she went to the window and looked out. Wild as the plan was, she was actually considering it, and I could see that she was tempted. I could hardly stand still with the romance of it all. I never thought so fast in my life. She just stood there without saying a word, and I went right on planning.
"I'll tell Grace all about it to-night," I said, "and get her to help us." (My! but I liked that word us!) "She will, I promise you; she was graduated at this convent herself—years and years and years ago, but still she remembers it. She'll arrange about the carriage and about getting into the theatre. Sister Cecilia will be up in the Commencement hall all afternoon, and you'll be on duty in these rooms. If they miss you from one, they'll think you're in one of the others. But they can't miss you, for we won't be gone much more than half an hour."
Sister Chrysostom turned and looked at me with her queer little smile. "How about the portress?" was all she said, but I felt as if she had poured ice-water over me. Of course the portress was the one big obstacle. There she stood, at the door, opening and shutting it and gazing through and through every one that came in and out. And if the last trump sounded, she wouldn't answer it until she had those doors locked and those keys tucked away just so.
As I said, the mention of her was chilling, but my blood was up, and I wasn't going to give in now. I set my teeth and went ahead. I said, very airily: "Oh, never mind the portress; I'll arrange about her," and then suddenly another inspiration came to me. Two "lucid moments" in the same day would have surprised Jack. They surprised me! I said: "Grace has a long black ulster that reaches to the floor. I'll bring it in a bundle to-morrow morning, with a black hat and gloves and a big black veil. It will all make a large bundle, but perhaps the girls will think it's my valedictory that I've been working on so hard." This was a joke, for I was in high spirits, but Sister Chrysostom never smiled. I think she might have. She merely looked at me strangely, and said very slowly:
"You extraordinary girl—I really believe it might be done." Then she turned, with a queer, almost desperate gesture, and whispered to herself, "It cannot be wrong, for I know the child needs me."
I could hardly believe my ears. Can you imagine it? And doesn't it prove what I said about her being a woman of the world? There she was, taking it quietly, when any other nun— But there is no use of making comparisons, for at the mere suggestion I think any other nun in the convent would have fainted.
She went on very coolly, though there was a queer, excited look in her eyes:
"You could bring the bundle into this music-room, because it is the one nearest the main entrance. It could be put away in the closet until I need it. Just before three I could slip in here, take off my veil and head-piece, leave them in the closet, put on the ulster, the hat, the veil (it must be very heavy), the gloves—" Then she stopped and bit her lips. "But how shall we get out when I have them on?" Here I actually had another flash. I never did such thinking in my life.
"We'll have Grace herself come for us," I said; "she'll ring and come in the front entrance as usual. She's a privileged character, you know, and she roams about to suit herself, and often leaves the convent by the entrance on the other side of the building. I'll bring her to the music-room where you are, and we'll watch our chance. When the corridor is clear and the portress busy at the door, we will all stroll to the other side of the building and leave by that entrance. The portress there will think you're a friend of Grace's. Any of the Sisters or girls who meet us will think the same thing. Out we go. When we come back we'll come through this entrance, and the portress will think you are some member of the family coming to hear me rehearse. Everything is lax just now on account of these rehearsals. We can do it."
Sister Chrysostom shrugged her shoulders with an odd little gesture she had. It signified her final decision on any point. We girls used to think there was some foreign blood in her veins. Then she said: "We can try it. Will you make all the arrangements?" and walked away without another word.
I went from school to Grace's house, and found her dressing for a dinner-party, but I made her send her maid away while I told her all about the plan. At first she was horrified and made objections and preached, but in the end she promised to help us, like a dear, as I knew she would. She gave me the ulster and things, and I walked off with the bundle. It made me look like a laundress carrying home the week's wash. I got it up to my room without anybody's seeing it, and all the evening I was so excited I couldn't talk, and when I got to bed I couldn't sleep.
I was at the convent bright and early in the morning, but I had thought better of the bundle, so I carried the things in Jack's dress-suitcase. Sister Vincent looked at it as I went in, but I suppose she thought it held music, especially as I walked into the first music-room and left it there. But you may believe I kept the key in my pocket until one o'clock. Then I had a chance to slip it into Sister Chrysostom's hand when I met her in the hall. Her fingers closed on it in the cutest way.
When three o'clock came I was so excited I could hardly breathe, for of course if we were found out I'd be expelled, and I don't know what would have happened to Sister Chrysostom. I rushed into the little reception-room to the right of the entrance. Its windows looked into the street. There was Grace's carriage driving up, and I saw her get out. Then the coachman drove off, and I knew he was going round to the other entrance in the next block. I slipped back and waited for Grace in the inner corridor, beyond the swinging doors. I heard the bell ring and the big key turn, and the little portress gurgle in her glee at seeing Grace. She likes my big sister; every one does. Then Grace told the portress she would go and find me, and she came swinging along the hall in a very debonair fashion, but when I met her she looked frightened. She said: "You monkey, I'm afraid you're making a lot of trouble for us all." She hadn't time to say more, for I pulled her into the music-room, and there was Sister Chrysostom, and Grace became the woman of the world at once. Mrs. Verbeck is famous for her charming manner, and I was proud of her when I introduced her, but I was proud of Sister Chrysostom, too. They were both as polished as ivory balls, and they deserved credit, for in their hearts they were scared to death.
We helped Sister Chrysostom into the street things, and then I sallied forth to look over the field. I never had such an exciting time in my life, and I believe I would have screamed if anybody had touched me. The corridor was not empty, so we waited a few moments. Then we all strolled out together, Grace and I talking as carelessly as we could. Sister Chrysostom looked very natural in her street things, and that was comforting; I had feared she wouldn't. When we turned off the main corridor into the left wing of the building I thought all was lost, for we met one of Grace's former teachers face to face, and of course she stopped. I drew Sister Chrysostom on, but my heart stood still as I listened, for Sister George said, "Reverend Mother was asking for you yesterday, Mrs. Verbeck; she wishes to see you, I think, in regard to the Commencement music."
Grace adores Reverend Mother, and I thought she would have dropped us then and there and flown to her, but Sister George went on, "She is engaged to-day, but may I tell her you will come to-morrow afternoon?"
Of course Grace said she was at Reverend Mother's service at all times. Then we all breathed again.
I forgot to say that I could not have left the convent by its side entrance if Grace hadn't been with me. Day pupils are not allowed to use it, as it is supposed to be for visitors only. Grace smiled at the portress, who beamed back at her, and we all three strolled out of the door and into the crisp, cold air. I wondered then, and I've often wondered since, how Sister Chrysostom felt at that moment. Of course we could not see her face under the veil, and she didn't speak. She took her place in the carriage without a word, and we followed her. The coachman had his orders from Grace, and the horses started off with a bound. It couldn't have been much more than five minutes before we were at the stage door of the Academy.
Here, too, Grace had fixed everything. That sister of mine is a treasure. She showed the doorkeeper a pass, and he let us in, and a very grimy boy led us along the dirtiest, darkest passage I've ever seen. Sister Chrysostom caught Grace's arm and said: "You will not leave me for a moment, will you? Do not permit us to be separated."
Grace promised. We both knew how the Sister felt. A sailor clinging to a life-line with the under-tow pulling him down would feel about the same way, I think. The grimy boy knocked at a grimy door and left us standing before it. A voice said, "Come in," and in we went.
I had always supposed that actresses had beautiful dressing-rooms, with soft carpets 
"THEN WE ALL STROLLED OUT TOGETHER"
Sister Chrysostom threw back her veil and went right up to the girl and took her in her arms. "My little sister," she said, "you don't know how I've hungered for you," and there was something in her voice that brought the tears to my eyes. I turned and looked at Grace; her cheeks were wet, too. Then we heard a short laugh, and we both glanced up. The girl in the blond wig had drawn herself out of Sister Chrysostom's arms and stood looking at her with a queer smile.
"Well, Helen!" she said, in the most off-hand way imaginable. "What on earth brings you here? Have you shaken the convent? I always thought you would if you got a chance. There isn't much convent fever in our blood!"
She picked up the paint she had been using and got in front of the mirror again. "Who're your friends?" she said, daubing away with her back to us, but looking boldly at us in the glass.
Sister Chrysostom could not speak. I think she felt as if she had been struck. She would have preferred a blow. My big sister came forward—if one could be said to come forward in that space. She smiled as sweetly as if the girl had been the Queen of England.
"I am Mrs. Verbeck," she said, "and this is my little sister May. I am afraid you do not understand your sister's position, Mrs. Bannerton. She has not left the convent; we brought her here for a few moments with you, because she loves you, and has not seen you for so many years, and was willing to undergo a great deal to have another look at you. We must take her away almost immediately. Perhaps you would like to see each other alone."
The blond girl laughed again. "What for?" she said; "we haven't any secrets to talk over. At least I haven't. Have you, Nell? And I hope you haven't come here to preach." She put on her dress as she spoke; it was one of the silk, fluffy things that stage dancers wear. It was short and very low, and gave me quite a shock there in the dressing-room. I don't think she had much delicate feeling. She fastened it and fluffed it out and turned round to us with her mouth full of pins. Her whole manner was as cool and off-hand as if two or three actresses from the next dressing-room had run in to see her.
"Well, I suppose you three are up to some lark," she said, with a kind of sneer. "This tale of devotion is all very well, but I notice Nell didn't mind leaving me when I was a kid."
If you print this story you must put in something here about the contrast between the vulgar-looking girl in her cheap finery, and her paint and her bare arms and shoulders, and the beautiful nun who sat looking up at her with such an expression of suffering in her eyes as I hope I'll never see in any eyes again. I can't describe the thing, but I felt it and so did Grace, and we both knew that we were looking at a tragedy.
Sister Chrysostom had been sitting in her chair in a limp heap, as if something that held her up had given way, but she rose when her sister said that about the lark.
"We must go," she said, and her voice sounded as if she were speaking in her sleep, and her eyes looked that way, too. The blond girl laughed again. She had the most unpleasant laugh I ever heard, but she used it often enough.
"Well, that's what I was going to say," she said. "This is all very nice for you people, of course, but I'll get my cue in a minute—"
Sister Chrysostom turned her eyes towards her and yet looked as if she didn't see her. You've seen that expression; it isn't pleasant. Then she spoke, and there was something in her voice that made her sister turn and look squarely at her for the first time.
"Clara," she said, "you have broken my heart and I am glad of it. It is a fitting punishment for the thing I have done—the only punishment I could have felt. If you had received me in the spirit in which I came to you, if you had returned the love I have given you all these years, I should have gone back to the convent exulting. It is true that I left you for the convent; perhaps I did wrong. But you have punished me now for that and for this, for all the past and all the future. You are not to blame. God has made you His instrument of chastisement. Before I go, is there anything in the world I can do for you—is there anything I can say?"
"Nothing," said the blond girl, briefly.
Sister Chrysostom turned to my sister and held out her hands.
"Take me away," she said, and then she went all to pieces and cried like a little child. "Take me from this place—take me back."
My sister turned her back on the blond girl, and so did I. Grace's face was white and set—I have never seen her look so angry. We drew the veil over Sister Chrysostom's face, and we each put an arm around her and half carried her out into the grimy passage-way. We met the dirty boy coming to give the blond girl her cue, and we heard the orchestra striking into the music I suppose she was going to dance. I glanced behind and the girl beckoned to me. Her face was twisted in a queer way, and her cheeks looked a sickly white under their paint. I went back and she caught my hand.
"I had to do it," she gasped out. "It was best for her and for me. She'll stop caring for me now and be content in the convent. And if I had been nice to her she'd have asked me all sorts of questions that I couldn't answer—that's the whole truth of it. I'd rather have her think me brutal than—well, than have her know the truth. Don't you ever tell her."
Then she began to daub her face again with the paint. The slovenly boy called her, and she pushed me before her out of the room. A short, fat man came hurrying down the passage, and swore when he saw her, and asked what she meant by being late. Her skirts whisked around the corner, and I heard clapping and knew she had gone on the stage.
Well, that is all there was to it.
Grace had helped Sister Chrysostom into the carriage and was telling the coachman to drive fast. We got back to the convent, and Grace left, and Sister Chrysostom and I passed the portress, Sister Vincent, without arousing any suspicion. There were several strangers at the door, and we walked coolly in while Sister Vincent was talking to them. We went into the music-room, and I held the door while Sister Chrysostom took off Grace's things and arranged her own veil. She was talking to herself all the time she did it. She said the same thing twenty times, I should think, like a child learning to spell a word.
"It was a just punishment," she said. "I deserve it—I deserve it."