Tales of the Cloister/The Ordeal of Sister Cuthbert
The Ordeal of Sister Cuthbert
The Ordeal of Sister Cuthbert
ISTER PHILOMENE, mistress of novices at St. Mary's, fingered nervously the letter she held in her hand. The envelope, addressed to Sister M. Cuthbert, lay face upward on the table before her. She looked at the firm, clear writing and smiled ironically when she realized that she was studying the characteristic slope of the letters in an absent-minded endeavor to read from them something of the writer's personality. This interest in chirography was the nearest approach to a hobby in the life of the self-contained nun. It seemed singular, however, to her that it could encroach ever so slightly on her attention when her mind was engrossed by a painful problem.
She frowned reflectingly and opened the drawer of her desk. Another letter, addressed to herself, lay in it. She took it out, drew it from its envelope, and spread it open on the table beside the first. Then, with a deepening of the line between her severe, straight brows, she carefully reread them both. The second was written in the stiff, angular hand of age. It exhibited no elegance of style, but the cry of a human heart was in it:
"Dear Child,—You will grieve to hear that your father cannot remain with us much longer. He gets weaker all the time, and the doctor says he cannot live more than a few days. He is conscious, and knows us all. He knows he is going to die, but he will not talk about it, or let us say a word about the salvation of his soul. You know how much I want him to die a Catholic. I have hoped and prayed for fifty years that he would be converted, and you have hoped it, too, ever since you were old enough to know what it meant. But he says he will die in the Protestant faith his mother taught him.
"It breaks my heart. Even Father Murphy is almost discouraged. He thinks there is just one hope for your father, and that is you. If you come and talk to him, he may listen. He loves you, and you might be able to do something with him. I cannot bear to think of his death unless he changes. How can I live alone without any hope of meeting him in heaven? He keeps asking for you all the time. Come home and see him. The Superior will send you home, I know, if you tell her this. Write and let me know when to expect you. There is no time to be lost Mother."
"If I go, Sister Rodriguez is the only one who could take charge of my duties," reflected Sister Philomene. "That would mean that Sister Cuthbert would have to take her place in the infirmary."
She read again, slowly, the letter addressed to the novice:
"Dear Madam, You will pardon the intrusion of a friend who writes in your interest. I feel it my duty to inform you of the very alarming condition of your mother. Yesterday at the request of the family I and several other physicians held a consultation over her case. There was only one opinion. Unless a marked change for the better comes within forty-eight hours, we must look for the end. I regret to say there is little probability of such a change, but there is one chance for her, and that, it seems to me, rests with you.
"A pathetic feature of your mother's illness, and one which, as an old friend of the family as well as its physician, has moved me deeply, is the fact that in her delirium she constantly calls for you. In her conscious moments she insists with the unselfishness you know so well that you be not summoned to her, as such a call at this time might interfere with your duties in the cloister. She has made the family promise not to send for you. I, however, am free to follow the dictates of heart and reason, and I refuse to see her agonizing for her daughter, whose presence at this juncture might afford the one chance of her mother's recovery, without doing what I can to secure her that boon. Now you have the facts. You will do as you think best—and in any event you will pardon the interference of a friend who has known you from your childhood.
"Respectfully yours,
"Sister Cuthbert must take as much of Sister Rodriguez's work as she can while I am away," reflected Sister Philomene, slowly. "Her mother is a good Catholic, and will die happily in the Church. She herself realizes that her daughter's duty lies here. The case is clear to me; I hope it will be to Sister Cuthbert. And yet—it is hard, for she must be told of it, and her love for her mother is the strongest I have ever seen."
She quietly returned the letters to their envelopes after this brief summing-up of the question. It was part of her routine work to read the correspondence that came to the nuns under her care, and the duty frequently brought in its train harassing problems and responsibilities. It had never brought her a harder one than this. Before her rose the face of the young novice, at work in happy unconsciousness of the clouds that hung over the dear home she had forsaken. She was in the infirmary assisting Sister Rodriguez, the convent infirmarian, and had proved a tower of strength to the fragile nun whose health had failed sadly during the year. In fact, it was a question whether Sister Rodriguez herself would not soon be forced to swell the list of invalids under Sister Cuthbert's zealous care. She had to hurry from the wing of the convent where the sick nuns lay to the dormitory that held the ailing pupils, and her days knew little rest. The pupils submitted to her tender ministrations with touching docility. In fact, it was whispered that the presence of this popular novice in the infirmary had brought about an alarming increase in the list of applicants for its shelter.
Only Sister Philomene fully understood the far-reaching influence of the ascetic novice in whose deep eyes burned the light of intense religious fervor. Sister Philomene knew why the other novices went to Sister Cuthbert in their trouble, rather than to her. It was Sister Cuthbert who soothed them, who quieted their fears, who prayed for them and with them when doubt or trials assailed them. It was Sister Cuthbert's simple piety, so deep and so moving, which, by the mere fact of its holiness, had brought many to a realization of their religion as the most important element in their lives.
"She can do more with them than I can," Sister Philomene had reported to the Superior. She recalled the remark now as she waited for Sister Cuthbert to respond to the summons she had sent.
"I wonder how she will take it?" she thought. "She will do her duty—there is no doubt of that. But will this experience do her good or harm?" She started almost guiltily at the sound of Sister Cuthbert's gentle tap on the door, and when the young nun had entered and stood awaiting orders with respectful, downcast eyes, her superior found it oddly difficult to speak. When she spoke, the words came slowly.
"We have both had bad news, Sister," she said. "We must pray for each other, that God may give us strength to bear it rightly."
She handed the two letters to her and bade her read them. Sitting in her big chair, she noted with her steady, clear eyes every change of expression on the other's face. There were many. Sister Cuthbert had unfolded her own letter first and glanced at the signature. Then, with a quick flush and a word of apology, she laid it down and read the other slowly and carefully. She looked up when she finished, with a sweet, modest sympathy in her glance. Her reverence for her superior had something of awe in it. She was about to speak, when Sister Philomene said, quietly:
"Read your letter, Sister Cuthbert."
There was silence in the little office, broken only by the ticking of the clock, marking off the slow, precious moments of the cloister. Sister Cuthbert hurried through her letter, growing white as she read. At the end, she raised her eyes quickly to meet the grave gaze fixed on her.
"I must go," she said, breathlessly. "I ought to go. Reverend Mother has promised that I may obey a call like this from my mother." Her voice was choked and her features looked ghastly in the dim light of the little room. "I may start at once, may I not?" she added, turning towards the door.
Sister Philomene rose and laid a lightly detaining hand upon her arm. This was one of the crises to which she was accustomed, and she knew how to meet it. Sister Cuthbert was very human, she reflected, after all.
"Wait," she said, gently. "You have forgotten something. Your mother is dying a good Catholic, with all the consolations of religion. My father is at the point of death, and is not a Catholic. I shall submit both these letters to Reverend Mother. If I go, there is no one to take my place but Sister Rodriguez; there is no one but you to take hers. It will have to be for both of us what Reverend Mother decides, but I should be glad to have your own heart select now what later may be imposed as obedience."
Sister Cuthbert sank upon her knees and laid her forehead against the carved arm of the chair from which her superior had risen. Tears poured from her eyes.
"Forgive me," she said, chokingly. "Forgive me—and may God forgive me. I was selfish; I thought only of myself. I must stay. And I will pray for my dear mother here—" she stopped. The older woman slipped a strong hand under her arm and helped her to her feet.
"You have chosen wisely," she said. "It is well that you made this sacrifice voluntarily—well, indeed. But your ordeal may come later. Go to the chapel and pray for strength to bear it."
She heard the door close and the soft steps of the novice recede in the distance. There was an unusually mild expression in her keen gray eyes as she went to the Mother Superior with the two letters. She submitted them without a word.
In the dim chapel of the convent Sister Cuthbert knelt before the altar and prayed chokingly. In her short, serene life no such grief as this had come to her before, and the anguish of it rolled over her like a great wave. Yes, she would do her duty—with all her soul would she do it. But could she bear the pain? Could she live through the next few days, hearing in her ears the voice of her mother calling to her in her delirium—as she heard it now, as she would hear it day and night—until the end? Seeing her mother's face, the soft brown eyes looking for her so eagerly—looking for her whom they would never see again. She would not go—no. She would stay, as duty and her own will dictated. But could mind and body stand the strain? Could she listen to that voice, that dearly loved voice, calling, calling—and calling in vain? It was in her ears now, in the silent chapel. Would she ever cease to hear it if she did not obey it? Only one short half-hour had passed since she read that letter, and already she seemed to have gone through the suffering of a long life. Could she bear it? Or was it some awful dream, some hideous fantasy of the night from which she would mercifully awake? If that was it— Oh, God, for daylight! She felt as if she might shriek aloud. Never had she been conscious of the restraint of convent walls till now. Was she losing her mind? Was she going to succumb to the assault of one great affliction?
Ah, but such a grief—and such a mother! True, she had left her mother. She had given her up when she heard the call to the cloister, and they had both realized, the two who loved each other so fondly, all that separation meant. But her mother had been well and strong and happy in the love of her husband and her other daughter. At the stipulated intervals her letters had come to the convent without the maternal tenderness and the home atmosphere they breathed ever causing a regret in the nun's breast. But now, in sickness, in sorrow, in death—oh, if she could be there, with her mother!
Sister Cuthbert sank lower before the altar. She had forgotten where she was; almost forgotten what she was. She drooped, a huddled mass of black, under the white veil that told of her probation.
Yes, she reflected stanchly, her place was here, and here she would remain. Was it only yesterday she had been so happy? Now she felt like a prisoner, for her mother lay dying outside the walls within which, by her own act, she had shut herself away. She had come, and her mother had wished her to come. Were they both wrong in feeling that here her life-work lay? Never! A thrill of the old ecstasy in her choice filled the nun. Across the black of her horizon a blue line appeared dimly. She straightened herself, buried her face in her hands, and prayed again. And as she prayed the clouds that had obscured her soul were dissipated and peace came to her.
Thank God, it was only a passing storm that had struck her. Through all she had not really wavered in her choice. This was her life—this the ideal life—she, one of those gloriously privileged to share it. If she had seemed to waver, it was because the strongest human love she knew was threatened. She had been weak, she would be strong; she had rebelled, she would be submissive. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but they were those that fall when the storm has spent itself. After their soothing flow, the young nun raised her head as a flower straightens itself under an April shower.
She was alone in the chapel. That was fortunate, she thought. No other eye had seen her struggle, no one but her Maker knew how far she had fallen below the standard she had set herself. But she would go on from this point unfalteringly. The dear mother would understand—she who always understood. Even here, she would see—and how much more beyond! What was this little life, this little world, that one should mourn over a few years of separation? After it came the enduring peace of perfect union. Sister Cuthbert looked up at the altar; in her eyes burned their habitual look of exaltation. The suffering of the hour had left few traces on her serene face. It was over. She had struggled; she had conquered; she could endure. She leaned her head against the low railing with a parting prayer of resignation and faith.
"Into Thy dear hands, O Lord, I place myself utterly; and there, too, I place the dear mother whom I love more than anything save Thee. Be Thou the more with her, now that Thy will keeps me from her."
Her eyes were wide open, but she no longer saw the altar and the familiar surroundings of the chapel. Instead there came before her vividly an old Colonial house, towards the entrance of which she seemed to be walking up a garden path. The door opened. She entered the house, passed through the wide hall, and up the broad steps that led to the second floor. At the head of them she turned to the right and entered a large, square room. She moved with accustomed steps, for she knew every inch of the way, and all the objects on which her eyes rested were the familiar surroundings of her early years. It was her home.
The room she entered was full, but no one heeded her. She walked its length to the bed between the windows opposite the door, and took her station at its head. In the bed lay her mother, with closed eyes; she seemed to breathe, but that was all. Dr. Sedgwick held the sick woman's hand in his, counting the pulse. Beside him stood a strange man with a professional air whom the nun had never seen before. At the foot of the bed knelt her father, his face hidden in the counterpane, and her sister Edith sat in a large chair near him, her head buried in her hands. The physicians talked softly, but the nun could not hear what they said. This did not surprise her, nor the fact that no one observed her entrance. She looked steadily at her mother's face and saw the eyelids flicker. The physicians bent over their patient. They worked rapidly. Something was done; something that looked like a battery was applied. There was a quantity of apparatus near the bed, unfamiliar to her. At last the mother's eyes opened. She alone of those in the room saw the black-robed novice at the head of the bed. Over her face flashed a look of recognition and delight.
"Katherine," she gasped. "You have come—how good—dear child—now I can die content."
She smiled the old familiar smile, and closed her eyes. Over her face a gray shadow fell. Even as the nun looked the features seemed to stiffen. The doctors stepped back, and Dr. Sedgwick, going to the man at the foot of the bed, put a sympathetic hand under his arm and helped him to rise. Edith, who had sprung to her feet, sank down again with a bitter cry. The strange doctor drew the sheet gently over the still face on the pillow.
And now there were tapers burning about that placid face.—No!—This was the convent chapel, and the tapers were those that burned dimly on the altar. It had grown dark and cold. She was still upon her knees. She heard the sound of the vesper bell.
Oh, the tender mercifulness of God! She had given up seeing her mother after the long, rebellious outcry of her weak, human heart. And then He had taken her to her mother, who had seen her and had died in peace. She seemed not to touch the floor as she walked down the long aisle and out of the chapel to the main hall beyond.
One of the nuns met her and spoke as she passed. Sister Cuthbert replied with her usual sweet dignity, but her expression, in the white light of the electric globe overhead, breathed such exaltation that the nun stopped and looked after her with reverent wonder. Sister Cuthbert went directly to the room of the Mother Superior and told her experience.
In the days that followed, the influence of Sister Cuthbert, always benign, had in it in the sickroom a new element which even the most careless of the girls felt strongly. In the past she had helped, strengthened, and comforted. Now she seemed to uplift as well—to bear others upward by the gentle force of her own spiritual ascent. If there had been any criticism of her in the old days, among those most severe of critics, the school-girls, it was that she was visionary.
"She is not human enough; she is not one of us," they had said. "She lives in a rarefied atmosphere. Her sympathy is not the sympathy of understanding; it is sympathy in the abstract—a regret over something she has never known and only half gets."
Groping around now in their puzzled minds for an explanation of the change in her, they decided that the new element was a human one—the sympathy of perfect understanding. But with it was an increase of the spiritual quality which had always characterized the young nun.
"She is more ecstatic in her moods than ever," said May Iverson, slowly, "and yet, somehow, she is more of us. What an atmosphere she gives out! Her mere presence is like a prayer. The expression is not new, but how it fits!—how well it fits! She is going through some experience, take my word for it; something we know nothing about."
Sister Philomene returned a week from the day she had left. Her father had passed away, but one look at her face made Sister Cuthbert feel that her mission had been successful. There was no time for conversation between the two on the subjects so near to both. Sister Cuthbert made her verbal report with her usual sweet conciseness, and, though Sister Philomene felt the subtle change in her, she could ask no questions.
The afternoon of her return the portress brought Sister Philomene a message and a card. The card read:
HENRY C. SEDGWICK, M.D.
The message, conscientiously delivered by the little portress, was rather a lengthy one. The gentleman, she said, was the physician of Sister Cuthbert's family. Sister Cuthbert's mother had died a week ago, and the doctor wished to tell the young nun of her affliction and give her some details concerning the last hours of her mother's life. He had not made the journey for that purpose; professional business had brought him to the city near the convent, and he had driven there on the chance that an interview might be granted him. And because he was to come, her family had not yet written her of their great loss. Sister Philomene made her decision promptly.
"Ask him to be so kind as to wait," she said to the portress, "and tell Sister Cuthbert I would like to see her." She glanced sympathetically at the young nun when she responded to the summons.
"Dr. Sedgwick is here to see you," she said, "and to tell you the details of your dear mother's—death. We will go to him together, if you would like it." She straightened the papers on her desk very carefully as she spoke, and listened, with a little quickening of her steady heart-beats, for some sound from the other woman. There was none. Sister Cuthbert was silently moving towards the door. She stepped back as she reached it, and stood aside for her superior to precede her. Sister Philomene looked at her as she passed, and something in the nun's expression made her catch her breath. Sister Cuthbert was almost smiling.
The doctor, awaiting them in the prim little reception-room at the right of the convent entrance, was stalking up and down the highly polished floor, bending his shaggy head over the wax pieces on the small tables, and scrutinizing with his near-sighted eyes the paintings and embroideries on the wall. He dreaded the fifteen minutes before him with his keener realization of the cost of the kindly impulse that had made him come. But the sense of personal tax faded away as he turned to greet the young nun he had known since she was a child. He held out both hands, and she laid her own in them. Then he bowed gravely to the Sister who accompanied her, and placed chairs for them both with punctilious courtesy. Not a word had been spoken, but his quick eyes had already taken in every detail of the novice's expression, and he, too, wondered.
"You can surmise my melancholy errand, Sister," he said, gently. "Your dear mother died a week ago to-day—the day you must have received the letter I wrote telling you of her illness. You could hardly have reached her in time, you see, even had you started at once. I thought there might be some comfort to you in hearing of her last hours, and so I have ventured to make this call."
"You are very kind," said the nun, softly.
Dr. Sedgwick rubbed his glasses. He was conscious of a sensation touching on irritability. Was this the warm-hearted girl he had known—this woman who had not one tear for her mother's death? Or was it another illustration of the drying-up of all human impulse which he believed convent life entailed? He unconsciously took on his most professional manner as he continued.
"There was no pain or suffering at the last. But one rather extraordinary thing happened. Your mother, as I wrote you, had been calling for you constantly. Just at the end she became conscious, and she thought she saw you. She spoke to you and died happy in the belief that you were with her."
"I was," said Sister Cuthbert, quietly; "I was there." She lifted her eyes as she spoke and fixed them on the doctor's face. He regarded her with professional calm.
"Sister Cuthbert means," interrupted Sister Philomene, gently, "that she was there in spirit and sympathy. Her duties kept her here. It was unfortunate, but we could not permit her to go."
"I was there," repeated Sister Cuthbert, with quiet conviction. She seemed not to have heard the other woman's words. She spoke slowly, as one who describes a picture and wishes to overlook no detail.
"She died between four and five o'clock," she continued, "in her own room. The bed had been moved between the two large windows. You were there, and another man I had never seen before, who seemed to be a doctor, too—both standing at the left side of the bed. You held my mother's hand and counted her pulse. Father knelt at the foot of the bed, with his face buried in the bedclothes. My sister Edith sat on a chair near him. When you were giving my mother some stimulant she revived and saw me. She said, 'Katherine—you have come—how good—dear child. Now I can die content. Then she—fell asleep, and you helped my dear old stricken father to his feet."
Comprehension dawned on the doctor's face. "Oh, you have heard from your father or sister, after all," he said, more briskly and with an air of relief. "They said they would not write, as I was to tell you personally. But I see they have given you minute details."
"No one has written," said the novice, simply. "I have not heard one word." She was very erect, and her pure tones had the throbbing quality of a cello string.
"I saw it all—the whole scene—as I knelt before the altar in our chapel, where I had been praying God for strength to do my duty here. He gave it—and more. He took me there, my mother saw me, and I saw her die. I told Reverend Mother of it that night—just as I have told it now. Oh—the glory of it, the goodness of it, the miracle of it! Do you wonder that I can endure her death after that? Do you wonder that I can smile, though she has gone?"
Sister Philomene started to her feet. Her serene face was transfigured by a reflection of the light that shone from the face of the novice. She crossed herself. Without doubt or question she accepted the experience, as Sister Cuthbert had done, as a manifestation of the divine love and mercy. Her lips moved as she prayed silently. Sister Cuthbert, too, was praying. Both seemed to have forgotten that they were not alone.
Dr. Sedgwick took his hat and turned it doubtfully in his hands. He looked at the inspired faces of the nuns and his eyes dropped as he bowed his farewell. Here was something new in his experience. Give him time and he could explain the thing, he thought. In fact, half a dozen explanations suggested themselves as he went slowly down the steps that led from the convent entrance to the street. The novice was in an overwrought, nervous state at the time of the—er—vision, he reflected. She knew the house and the room, and some telepathic signal might have come to her at the hour of her mother's death. But she had described the scene so accurately! How could she know the mother's very words, and that little incident of his helping the broken husband to rise?
Dr. Sedgwick stopped a passing cab and jumped in. His nerves were on edge. He did not like to meet these supernatural experiences on a bright, warm day in the beginning of the scientific twentieth century. The clang of the cable-car was in his ears, the shouts of quarrelsome cabmen rising above it, yet in these most prosaic surroundings that strange experience kept obtruding itself. Dr. Sedgwick put it away at last by a strong effort of will.
"Too much work, not enough nourishment, I'm afraid," he reflected, practically. "What she needs is a change of air, rest, and good food." This was satisfactory as far as it went. But no sooner had the doctor nicely adjusted his point of view than he recalled, with surprising vividness, that scene in the death-room.
Oh, the radiance of the dying face as the woman had looked up at that empty corner: "Katherine—you have come—how good—dear child. Now I can die content."
What had she seen? Dr. Sedgwick brusquely turned away from the answer.