Tales of the Cloister/The Girl Who Was
The Girl Who Was
The Girl Who Was
HEN Katherine Randolph was graduated at the early age of seventeen, she bore away from St. Mary's the "Cross of Honor," the "Crown," and the worshipful regard of her twenty girl classmates.
The "Cross of Honor" was awarded for her general record as a student and an honor to the institution. The "Crown" fell on her brow to attest her mastery of the field of knowledge known as Christian doctrine.
Miss Randolph wore both the cross and the crown on Graduation day, but in the evening laid the latter and her ribbon-tied valedictory away with a few fitting tears. The cross she continued to wear, at first on the gold neck-chain then in fashion, and later as a pin. She was careful not to lose it, for in addition to its associations and sentimental value, it had practical uses not to be disdained. She once mentioned these to friends.
"You see," she said, with grateful exultation, "this cross gives me admission as a guest at any convent in the world. If I am travelling alone and do not wish to go to a hotel, I need only present myself at a cloister and the portress will give my cross one look and throw wide the doors to it—and myself. Then, some time, when I am ninety or a hundred years old, I may come back to my Alma Mater a battered veteran of the battle of life, with a smooth cross on my weary breast. By that sign they will know me, and gather me in."
Her friends laughed at the light words, but no one could deny that Miss Randolph wore the cross faithfully during the summer following her graduation. Like many convent girls, she found it very hard to keep away from the institution which had sheltered her for years. She felt homesick for it, and the intervals between her frequent visits were weeks to be lived through in the thought of the open cloister doors that lay at the end of them. After this restful, lazy summer she meant to work and win her place in the world. In the mean time it was pleasant to wander through the old garden and discuss her plans with the Sisters.
She had many plans, and was singularly free to carry them out. Her father had permitted her to spend her childhood and girlhood in the convent. At first this had been done in deference to the earnestly expressed wishes of a strong-willed second wife, but as the years went by he became so reconciled to the situation that even the girl's holidays were passed at the homes of classmates. Her father made her a liberal allowance for her expenses and felt that his duty was done. Her proposition to go out into the world and make a career for herself met with his lively approval.
She put the situation frankly before her friends the nuns.
"You see," she said, with much cheerfulness, one warm August day, "I shall be eighteen the last of this month, and then I shall come into the money my mother left me. It is not much, but it is well invested, and will yield an income of eleven or twelve hundred dollars a year. That is almost a hundred a month, and I can go to New York and take singing lessons and live very comfortably on such an income. I must make a home and friends for myself somewhere, and I might as well begin there as anywhere. Later, perhaps, I may go to Europe, if my voice develops well. Sister Cecilia says it is full of promise, and that if I work hard I am sure to succeed."
The plan did not especially appeal to the quiet inmates of the cloister, but they had nothing better to suggest, except that she remain in its safe shelter with them. They did this only tentatively, for nuns are not prone to give such advice to their pupils. The gentle proposal did not appeal to Miss Randolph. She shook her auburn head, and her red-brown eyes twinkled mischievously.
"I must see life first," she laughed. "There is a big, beautiful world beyond these walls, and I want to know what it's like. I must know. For years the longing for it has been in me. If it treats me badly, I'll come home."
So they let her go because they could do nothing else, and the world swallowed her as if she had been a small and succulent oyster. At first, letters from her drifted back into the cloister at close intervals, strange letters, showing how rapidly the girl was turning the pages of life's great ledger. And at longer intervals a letter from the cloister went to her, sweet with the love and prayers of the gentle friends behind the convent walls.
Katherine Randolph used to re-read these letters sometimes, and even think them over a little. But she was very busy, for she wished to see life and the world, and many men and women showed a sociable willingness to set them before her.
It was a simple matter for the girl with no home influences or close ties to drift into the "bohemian" set—so unique and interesting to her convent eyes. She went with these new friends to New York's music-halls, to its cheap table-d'hôte restaurants, even to French balls and the slums, and felt that she was seeing life. Men and women sometimes looked at her pure face and wondered over its contrast with the rather sophisticated ones around her. Once an elderly woman with white hair and "mother eyes" took it upon herself to give a little advice to the girl with the gold cross at her neck.
"Do you think, my dear," she said, "that these are the best friends for you? There is no special harm in them, perhaps, but they are not in your class and may bring you into theirs. I don't think you would like that, would you? Forgive me for speaking in this way, but if you were my daughter it would break my heart to see you with them."
Katherine listened courteously and even with a little awe. She realized the kindliness of the woman's purpose. It came to her dimly that her mother, had she been alive, might have said the same thing. But she was young, this life gay, and she was fond of her new friends. She was still sufficiently naïve to repeat the incident to them, and they treated it with off-hand good humor.
"The dear old thing means well," said one of them, "but she looks at the world with narrow, old-fashioned eyes. She can't realize that we have such a good time and yet are the 'square' crowd we are. Don't worry about her, Kate; we'll take care of you."
They did for a time, in their characteristic, easy-going way. But old friends fell out of the circle and new ones came, and it grew wider and also deeper. After a year or two "little Randolph" was no longer a novice to be counselled and advised. The "have beens" and the "might have beens" of the press and the stage caught her in their human eddies, and the undertow drew her down. She became a sophisticated young woman, learned New York pretty well on its gay side, talked about human nature, and thought she understood men and women. Her voice developed to the satisfaction of her teacher, who unselfishly suggested that she give it a final polish abroad. She was rather tired of New York by this time; she had lived there four years, and felt that it had few secrets and fewer novelties for her. She sailed for Paris.
There is kinship in the arts, and she drifted into the Latin Quarter life. The rollicking students liked her; so did the painters who taught them. They enjoyed the wit and audacity of the little American. A great artist persuaded her to pose for him, and the picture, on the line at the Spring Salon, was the sensation of the year. It was only a face, a young and brilliant face, framed in a halo of red-gold hair, with brown eyes looking straight at the observer. There was a suggestion of white about the throat, and against this a gold cross. But the genius of the picture lay in the eyes. All of earth that French art and French imagination could put into them was there. Above the gold cross and the soft dimples in cheek and chin, the devil himself looked out of their brown depths. The artist called his picture, with grim humor, "The Convent Girl."
Half-tone reproductions of it filled the art journals of Europe, and were copied in the newspapers and magazines of America. The original of "The Convent Girl" became a subject for newspaper correspondence, stories, and other pictures. Famous artists sought her as a model. One of Paris's enterprising managers engaged her to sing a little song between the acts of a new comedy, and on her first appearance she became the talk of the clubs and salons.
Her descent was swift, starting, as she did, half-way down the long hill at whose foot lives the demi-mondaine of Paris. A princeling from some petty German state smiled upon her; an Indian rajah succumbed stolidly to her charm; the gayest set of the gayest city in the world was at her feet.
In the course of time one of the magazine reproductions of "The Convent Girl" found its way into the American convent from which Miss Randolph had been graduated. Under it were a few words about the original—now known all over Europe under the sobriquet she had gained from the title of the picture.
The Mother Superior and the girl's former teacher looked at it together for a moment. The face was the face of the pupil they had loved; the eyes were those of the woman who unflinchingly faced the world that had made her what she was. Even the guileless glance of the nuns read what was there, and did not need the illumination afforded by the text. The Superior solemnly tore the scrap of paper into little bits.
"We can still pray for her," she said, slowly.
In Paris, the gay life of the Convent Girl went on with increasing swiftness. Given the opportunity to achieve the kind of fame she had learned to crave, she grasped it. She began to work and study, taking as her model a notorious French singer whose exquisite art in the singing of unspeakable songs had won unwilling recognition from the people of two continents. The Convent Girl vanquished this singer on her own ground, for the latter had become an old story and the new-comer was young and beautiful. To the blasé French there was a fascination in the contrast between the pure lips and the words that came from them, the gold cross always worn by her, and the eyes above it.
"Who is this 'Convent Girl' they re talking about?" an English woman of rank asked her husband. She did not visit the cafés chantants of Paris, nor did she read publications which would have told her what she asked. Her husband was very well informed on the subject.
"She is a woman who has the wickedest eyes in all Europe," he said, curtly.
The Convent Girl continued her swift swirling in the Paris whirlpool. Men ruined themselves for her, and women studied the fashions of her gowns. Among her kind she was regarded as a good sort. She gave freely, with the off-hand generosity that involves no self-sacrifice. She posed for one or two promising young painters and made them the fashion. Occasionally it pleased her to put on a simple frock and go among the poor, giving right and left. This amused her, and she said it was better than chloral. "For I'm sometimes afraid," she added, lightly, "that my recording angel is over-worked."
The stories of her transatlantic success interested New York managers, and flattering offers came to her from them each season. For eight years she declined these; she had "broken with America," she said. She had no American correspondents; she did not even read the American newspapers. Why should she return to her native land when in all its length and breadth it held no friends of hers? Even her old bohemian associates had a meagre sense of propriety. She, the defier of all fit human standards, could have nothing in common even with them. But one day a sudden, unaccountable wave of homesickness rolled over her. She felt a strange longing for the sights and sounds of Broadway; for her Western home—strangest of all, an aspiration towards her old convent itself. Her lips curled in self-scorn. She—a visitor at the convent! That the idea should have found a place in her consciousness showed that something was wrong with her. She wondered what it was. She had not been well for months—perhaps that was it.
Yet the longing for America remained. It was only a whim, of course, but her life was given up to the gratification of whims. Why not gratify this one? She decided that she would, and perhaps she might know again the gay indifference that alone made her life endurable.
The next day a delighted New York manager received a cable, and within a week the great dailies teemed with the news of "The Convent Girl's" approaching visit. It was a dull season, and the editors were glad to give much space to this subject. The Sunday editions devoted pages to the story of her career, illustrated with the photographs which were already on exhibition everywhere. Flaming posters placarded the city. The woman with "the wickedest eyes in Europe" had at last mercifully consented to turn them again upon her native land.
She had little time for reflection after her arrival. The reporters were on tiptoe for her, and her press agent was feverishly active. She granted interviews right and left, and sat for photographs, and wrote autographs, and attended a few rehearsals, and smiled disdainfully over the hundreds of letters that poured in upon her. Friendship and respect were not lavished upon her, but there was no dearth of attention and flattery.
Her first night was one of professional triumph for "The Convent Girl." The vast house rose to her, flowers were showered upon her, boisterous applause greeted her repeated appearances before the curtain. She sang in French, and although few understood the current slang of the Paris streets, all felt her strange magnetism and admitted her devilish art. The newspapers which chronicled her success the next morning did not mention the fact that after the performance was over the woman had quietly fainted in her dressing-room, where doctors had worked for hours to bring her back to consciousness. This publication would have hurt "business," her manager, and herself; the reporters were considerate.
The best-known of the doctors who attended her was an acquaintance of her bohemian career in New York. Once or twice in those days she had gone to him with simple ailments. He had come to see the "little Randolph" of years ago, and had tried to find in the brilliant figure on the stage some trace of the girl he had known. In the midst of his reverie he had felt a touch on his shoulder, and quietly followed behind the scenes the usher who gave it.
She was there, and there, too, was the shadow, at least, of "little Randolph." The paint had been washed off her face, and the gorgeous costume of the evening was replaced by a simple dressing-gown. She lay on a sofa, breathing heavily, her brown lashes resting on cheeks whose pallor was startling. An agitated maid and several superfluous attendants bustled around her.
Dr. Raymond went to work with professional coolness; other doctors came, and they applied remedies until her eyes once more opened on life. The faces of the physicians had been very grave, but they at once took on a smile of professional cheerfulness as the great brown eyes roved in turn to each of them.
"I've been ill," said the Convent Girl, "very ill, I think." She recognized Dr. Raymond, and smiled faintly. "I saw you in the audience. You must make me well. Please come to see me in the morning," and having thus indicated her choice of a physician, she signed to her maid to take her home.
In the morning Dr. Raymond found her dressed, but very pale and with exhausted vitality. She met him with an affectation of confidence that moved him strangely.
"It is only a little thing, of course," she said, with something of her old-time vivacity, "but I can't afford to be ill at all. This has been coming on for a year, I think. I have had queer attacks. Do you suppose it is my heart? You must make a careful examination, doctor, and give me something to build me up thoroughly. Then after a while I will take a rest."
The doctor made the examination skilfully. After it was over he slowly replaced his instruments in their case. He would have given much to avoid the bad quarter of an hour that lay before him.
"Miss Randolph, you must take a rest now," he said, at last.
The woman opened her eyes at the tone and the rarely used name. A singular, rebellious light flashed in them.
"Why?" she asked, tersely. The doctor parried the question.
"You are run down," he said. "Very much run down." She had to be told; half measures would effect little.
"That is why I have called you in," she retorted.
"Miss Randolph," he said, deliberately, "you are in a grave condition. You have a surprisingly small amount of vitality, your nerves are exhausted, and—your heart is seriously affected. You must give up all work at once, cancel all engagements, go to bed, and let yourself be taken care of."
"And if I refuse?" remarked the woman.
The doctor looked at her. There was a mocking light in her eyes that irritated him. He had tried to be considerate but convincing, and it had not worked. He turned a little brutal.
"Then you will play fast and loose with your life," he said, dryly. "I have warned you; if you choose to ignore the warning, you must bear the consequences."
"You mean that I would probably die?" she demanded, the reckless light still dancing in her eyes. He met them squarely.
"Beyond one doubt," he replied, brusquely, and went away.
She disregarded his warning, as he had known she would do. It did not surprise him to see that she continued singing, and filling not only night but day with feverish excitement. Once she fainted on the stage, and twice her manager had to announce that she could not appear. But she sang, when she did appear, with as much magnetic vivacity and art as ever, and she was always seen after the performance at some restaurant with half a dozen men around her. Rumors of the frequent collapses circulated, but Dr. Raymond made no effort to see her. During the last week of her New York engagement she sent for him, and the phlegmatic physician was horrified at the change two short months had made in her.
She gave him her hand and motioned him wearily to a chair.
"I did not believe you," she said, "and I did not take your advice. I have seen other doctors since, and they tell me that there is no hope, so I have sent for you that you may gloat over me."
"God forbid!" said Dr. Raymond, shocked at her levity. "I wish with all my heart that I had been, as you thought, mistaken. What are you going to do?" he added.
The woman laughed bitterly.
"Die," she said, with savage directness. "All you doctors say I must. And soon, too. But I am going to do something first, and I have sent for you to help me. If I must die, I will not die here with these—people—around me. I am going home, to my old convent, out West."
"You cannot bear the journey," objected the doctor.
"That is why I have sent for you," retorted the Convent Girl, feverishly. "You must go with me, and keep me alive until we get there. It is a long journey and a wearisome one, I know. But we can leave here on the limited to-day and get there Friday morning. You must leave your patients in other hands. I will pay you well. I have plenty of money. It is all I have got now," she added, recklessly.
The doctor hesitated, then put a question.
"Will they take you after you get there?"
She touched the gold cross which had never left her neck.
"This will make them," she said. "Do you know, I've had a sense from the first that I should need it—a strange foreboding. Fate took me in hand, God knows why, and made me what I am. I could not help it. You will not believe it, but I tried—at first—and through it all I held fast to this one thing. If they hesitate, you must talk to the Superior. Tell her that since this weakness has come upon me, I have had but one thought, one wish, day and night—to get home—to get home! Tell her I long for the peace and rest of the convent and—for the goodness of the Sisters. Tell her I want to repent, I want to confess, I want"—she burst suddenly into a paroxysm of hysterical weeping—"I want to wipe out these horrible years before I go."
"I will tell her," said the doctor, quietly.
He never told what passed between him and the Mother Superior at their meeting the following Friday, but he came away with some thing more than respect in his heart for that woman with a cloister's purity. He returned to the convent an hour later, his patient with him.
"She is very low," he said, "and only semi-conscious. But she knows you are taking her in. She has kept herself alive through the journey, by sheer, indomitable will, for this alone. You spoke of her receiving the last sacraments. I think you should send for a priest at once."
The Convent Girl heard him, and opened the brown eyes on which already a dull film had gathered.
"I have come back to you, Reverend Mother," she said, gaspingly. "I have come home to—to begin again. Perhaps I can get well here. It is so quiet, so peaceful—so peaceful—" Her voice died away and she lay staring at the bare white ceiling of the room to which she had been carried. The little gleam of consciousness went out. From the distant chapel came the voices of Sister Cecilia's choir, rehearsing the music of the next day. The sick woman heard it and started up, pushing back the hands that tried to hold her.
"Singing!" she cried, excitedly. "Singing! I can sing, too! See, it is time for my turn. And the house is packed. All these rows, black with people—and not one real friend! Oh, I'll sing—Oui, messieurs et dames. Je veux chanter. Que voulez vous? 'Les Vieux Messieurs?' 'A la Villette'?"
Dr. Raymond pushed her back on the bed. There was an almost comical look of anxiety on his face.
"To sing those here!" he thought. "They might not understand—but the horror of it!" He glanced at the ascetically bare walls and the crucifix above the bed.
She lay silent for a moment, picking at the white spread that covered her. Her eyes opened and met those of the Superior, fixed on her with tenderest pity. A look of comprehension crept into her eyes.
"No," she said, hoarsely, "no, I won't sing. I am home. Nobody sings at home where things are quiet and restful—restful—and dark. It is only when the crowds are there, and the lights are burning—that one sings."
Dr. Raymond drew the Superior aside.
"There is one point, Reverend Mother, that I unfortunately overlooked when I asked you to take this poor woman into your kind hands," he said. "I forgot that she is not herself, and may not be until the end. In her delirium she may sing or say things that will be painful to you. Most of it will probably be in French. So I would suggest that you select for her attendants in the sick-room Sisters who do not understand that language."
The Superior inclined her head without speaking. The woman in the bed turned her eyes from one to the other.
"Where is my cross?" she cried, suddenly.
They had removed it when they undressed her, but one of the Sisters got it and placed it in her hand to quiet her.
"Fasten it," she said, "fasten it here, on my breast. Do you know what that cross means? It means home! Some day I shall go home, you know. I've never had a home here. And I shall show them the cross and they will let me in—they will let me in—"
The doctor felt her pulse.
"She is weaker than I thought," he said. "The excitement has told. I will remain—with your permission. It is not safe to leave her now."
The voice from the pillow babbled on of the old school-days, of former companions and classmates, of girlish revels, of the quiet garden, of the little chapel, of favorite Sisters. All the memories of the old convent life seemed 
"'I KNOW THAT MUSIC'"
"She is going fast," reflected Dr. Raymond.
The voices of the distant choir, singing in the chapel, rose mournfully on the music of Millard's Mass. The Convent Girl sat up in bed, her eyes ablaze with sudden excitement.
"Singing!" she cried again. "Why don't I sing? I know that music. I sang it in white. Oui, mes amis! Attendez." And then, from the lips which had sung the songs that disgraced the French stage, the music she had learned years ago from Sister Cecilia flowed like a prayer.
"Qui tollis, Qui tollis, Qui tollis peccata mundi—"
To the listeners, knowing not what was to come, it was as if the mouth of a sewer had opened and poured forth a mountain stream. The faint, exquisite voice sang on:
"Parce nobis, Domine. Exaudi nos, Domine; miserere nobis."
A sudden change caught the doctor's eye. He sprang to the bedside as the voice stopped abruptly.
"The lights are out," she said. "I can't sing—in the dark."
In answer to the doctor's quick signal, one of the nuns hastily left the room. When she returned the chaplain of the convent was with her. He administered the last sacraments, while the brown eyes of the dying woman gazed at him unseeingly.
"She may rally even yet," the doctor said, "for a few hours, but I fear not. I think the end is very near."
The priest, the Superior, some Sisters, and the doctor waited patiently.
"All the lights are out," murmured the Convent Girl, piteously; "how shall I find my way?"
The lids closed, and the thin face was drawn like a child's about to cry. The Sisters had sunk upon their knees. Dr. Raymond stood immovable, his gaze riveted on the seemingly breathless form. There was a heavy silence in the room.
Suddenly her eyes opened wide with a contented wonder in them.
"Oh, the light!" she gasped. "You must let me in. See, I have worn it—always."
Her thin hand tremulously sought for the cross upon her neck. Dr. Raymond bent and placed it within her grasp. There was one short flutter of content as she touched it. Then the Convent Girl was still.