Sister Josepha.doc

《Sister Josepha.doc》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《Sister Josepha.doc（5页珍藏版）》请在淘文阁 - 分享文档赚钱的网站上搜索。

1、Sister JosephaSister Josepha told her beads mechanically, her fingers numb with the accustomed exercise. The little organ creaked a dismal O Salutaris, and she still knelt on the floor, her white-bonneted head nodding suspiciously. The Mother Superior gave a sharp glance at the tired figure; then, a

2、s a sudden lurch forward brought the little sister back to consciousness, Mothers eyes relaxed into a genuine smile. The bell tolled the end of vespers, and the sombre-robed nuns filed out of the chapel to go about their evening duties. Little Sister Josephas work was to attend to the household lamp

3、s, but there must have been as much oil spilled upon the table to-night as was put in the vessels. The small brown hands trembled so that most of the wicks were trimmed with points at one corner which caused them to smoke that night. Oh, cher Seigneur, she sighed, giving an impatient polish to a ref

4、ractory chimney, it is wicked and sinful, I know, but I am so tired. I cant be happy and sing any more. It doesnt seem right for le bon Dieu to have me all cooped up here with nothing to see but stray visitors, and always the same old work, teaching those mean little girls to sew, and washing and fi

5、lling the same old lamps. Pah! And she polished the chimney with a sudden vigorous jerk which threatened destruction. They were rebellious prayers that the red mouth murmured that night, and a restless figure that tossed on the hard dormitory bed. Sister Dominica called from her couch to know if Sis

6、ter Josepha were ill. No, was the somewhat short response; then a muttered, Why cant they let me alone for a minute? That pale-eyed Sister Dominica never sleeps; thats why she is so ugly. About fifteen years before this night some one had brought to the orphan asylum connected with this convent, du

7、Sacre Coeur, a round, dimpled bit of three-year-old humanity, who regarded the world from a pair of gravely twinkling black eyes, and only took a chubby thumb out of a rosy mouth long enough to answer in monosyllabic French. It was a child without an identity; there was but one name that any one see

8、med to know, and that, too, was vague,-Camille. She grew up with the rest of the waifs; scraps of French and American civilization thrown together to develop a seemingly inconsistent miniature world. Mademoiselle Camille was a queen among them, a pretty little tyrant who ruled the children and domin

9、ated the more timid sisters in charge. One day an awakening came. When she was fifteen, and almost fully ripened into a glorious tropical beauty of the type that matures early, some visitors to the convent were fascinated by her and asked the Mother Superior to give the girl into their keeping. Cami

10、lle fled like a frightened fawn into the yard, and was only unearthed with some difficulty from behind a group of palms. Sulky and pouting, she was led into the parlour, picking at her blue pinafore like a spoiled infant. The lady and gentleman wish you to go home with them, Camille, said the Mother

11、 Superior, in the language of the convent. Her voice was kind and gentle apparently; but the child, accustomed to its various inflections, detected a steely ring behind its softness, like the proverbial iron hand in the velvet glove. You must understand, madame, continued Mother, in stilted English,

12、 that we never force children from us. We are ever glad to place them in comfortable-how you say that?-quarters -maisons-homes-bien! But we will not make them go if they do not wish. Camille stole a glance at her would-be guardians, and decided instantly, impulsively, finally. The woman suited her;

13、but the man! It was doubtless intuition of the quick, vivacious sort which belonged to her blood that served her. Untutored in worldly knowledge, she could not divine the meaning of the pronounced leers and admiration of her physical charms which gleamed in the mans face, but she knew it made her fe

14、el creepy, and stoutly refused to go. Next day Camille was summoned from a task to the Mother Superiors parlour. The other girls gazed with envy upon her as she dashed down the courtyard with impetuous movement. Camille, they decided crossly, received too much notice. It was Camille this, Camille th

15、at; she was pretty, it was to be expected. Even Father Ray lingered longer in his blessing when his hands pressed her silky black hair. As she entered the parlour, a strange chill swept over the girl. The room was not an unaccustomed one, for she had swept it many times, but to-day the stiff black c

16、hairs, the dismal crucifixes, the gleaming whiteness of the walls, even the cheap lithograph of the Madonna which Camille had always regarded as a perfect specimen of art, seemed cold and mean. Camille, ma chere, said Mother, I am extremely displeased with you. Why did you not wish to go with Monsie

17、ur and Madame Lafaye yesterday? The girl uncrossed her hands from her bosom, and spread them out in a deprecating gesture. Mais, ma mere, I was afraid. Mothers face grew stern. No foolishness now, she exclaimed. It is not foolishness, ma mere; I could not help it, but that man looked at me so funny,

18、 I felt all cold chills down my back. Oh, dear Mother, I love the convent and the sisters so, I just want to stay and be a sister too, may I? And thus it was that Camille took the white veil at sixteen years. Now that the period of novitiate was over, it was just beginning to dawn upon her that she

19、had made a mistake. Maybe it would have been better had I gone with the funny-looking lady and gentleman, she mused bitterly one night. Oh, Seigneur, I m so tired and impatient; its so dull here, and, dear God, Im so young. There was no help for it. One must arise in the morning, and help in the ref

20、ectory with the stupid Sister Francesca, and go about ones duties with a prayerful mien, and not even let a sigh escape when ones head ached with the eternal telling of beads. A great fete day was coming, and an atmosphere of preparation and mild excitement pervaded the brown walls of the convent li

21、ke a delicate aroma. The old Cathedral around the corner had stood a hundred years, and all the city was rising to do honour to its age and time-softened beauty. There would be a service, oh, but such a one! with two Cardinals, and Archbishops and Bishops, and all the accompanying glitter of soldier

22、s and orchestras. The little sisters of the Convent du Sacre Coeur clasped their hands in anticipation of the holy joy. Sister Josepha curled her lip, she was so tired of churchly pleasures. The day came, a gold and blue spring day, when the air hung heavy with the scent of roses and magnolias, and

23、the sunbeams fairly laughed as they kissed the houses. The old Cathedral stood gray and solemn, and the flowers in Jackson Square smiled cheery birthday greetings across the way. The crowd around the door surged and pressed and pushed in its eagerness to get within. Ribbons stretched across the banq

24、uette were of no avail to repress it, and important ushers with cardinal colours could do little more. The Sacred Heart sisters filed slowly in at the side door, creating a momentary flutter as they paced reverently to their seats, guarding the blue-bonneted orphans. Sister Josepha, determined to se

25、e as much of the world as she could, kept her big black eyes opened wide, as the church rapidly filled with the fashionably dressed, perfumed, rustling, and self-conscious throng. Her heart beat quickly. The rebellious thoughts that will arise in the most philosophical of us surged in her small heav

26、ily gowned bosom. For her were the gray things, the neutral tinted skies, the ugly garb, the coarse meats; for them the rainbow, the ethereal airiness of earthly joys, the bonbons and glaces of the world. Sister Josepha did not know that the rainbow is elusive, and its colours but the illumination o

27、f tears; she had never been told that earthly ethereality is necessarily ephemeral, nor that bonbons and glaces, whether of the palate or of the soul, nauseate and pall upon the taste. Dear God, forgive her, for she bent with contrite tears over her worn rosary, and glanced no more at the worldly gl

28、itter of femininity. The sunbeams streamed through the high windows in purple and crimson lights upon a veritable fugue of colour. Within the seats, crush upon crush of spring millinery; within the aisles erect lines of gold-braided, gold-buttoned military. Upon the altar, broad sweeps of golden rob

29、es, great dashes of crimson skirts, mitres and gleaming crosses, the soft neutral hue of rich lace vestments; the tender heads of childhood in picturesque attire; the proud, golden magnificence of the domed altar with its weighting mass of lilies and wide-eyed roses, and the long candles that sparkl

30、ed their yellow star points above the reverent throng within the altar rails. The soft baritone of the Cardinal intoned a single phrase in the suspended silence. The censer took up the note in its delicate clink clink, as it swung to and fro in the hands of a fair-haired child. Then the organ, pausi

31、ng an instant in a deep, mellow, long-drawn note, burst suddenly into a magnificent strain, and the choir sang forth, Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison. One voice, flute-like, piercing, sweet, rang high over the rest. Sister Josepha heard and trembled, as she buried her face in her hands, and let her t

32、ears fall, like other beads, through her rosary. It was when the final word of the service had been intoned, the last peal of the exit march had died away, that she looked up meekly, to encounter a pair of youthful brown eyes gazing pityingly upon her. That was all she remembered for a moment, that

33、the eyes were youthful and handsome and tender. Later, she saw that they were placed in a rather beautiful boyish face, surmounted by waves of brown hair, curling and soft, and that the head was set on a pair of shoulders decked in military uniform. Then the brown eyes marched away with the rest of

34、the rear guard, and the white-bonneted sisters filed out the side door, through the narrow court, back into the brown convent. That night Sister Josepha tossed more than usual on her hard bed, and clasped her fingers often in prayer to quell the wickedness in her heart. Turn where she would, pray as

35、 she might, there was ever a pair of tender, pitying brown eyes, haunting her persistently. The squeaky organ at vespers intoned the clank of military accoutrements to her ears, the white bonnets of the sisters about her faded into mists of curling brown hair. Briefly, Sister Josepha was in love. Th

36、e days went on pretty much as before, save for the one little heart that beat rebelliously now and then, though it tried so hard to be submissive. There was the morning work in the refectory, the stupid little girls to teach sewing, and the insatiable lamps that were so greedy for oil. And always th

37、e tender, boyish brown eyes, that looked so sorrowfully at the fragile, beautiful little sister, haunting, following, pleading. Perchance, had Sister Josepha been in the world, the eyes would have been an incident. But in this home of self-repression and retrospection, it was a life-story. The eyes

38、had gone their way, doubtless forgetting the little sister they pitied; but the little sister? The days glided into weeks, the weeks into months. Thoughts of escape had come to Sister Josepha, to flee into the world, to merge in the great city where recognition was impossible, and, working her way l

39、ike the rest of humanity, perchance encounter the eyes again. It was all planned and ready. She would wait until some morning when the little band of black-robed sisters wended their way to mass at the Cathedral. When it was time to file out the side-door into the courtway, she would linger at praye

40、rs, then slip out another door, and unseen glide up Chartres Street to Canal, and once there, mingle in the throng that filled the wide thoroughfare. Beyond this first plan she could think no further. Penniless, garbed, and shaven though she would be, other difficulties never presented themselves to

41、 her. She would rely on the mercies of the world to help her escape from this torturing life of inertia. It seemed easy now that the first step of decision had been taken. The Saturday night before the final day had come, and she lay feverishly nervous in her narrow little bed, wondering with wide-e

42、yed fear at the morrow. Pale-eyed Sister Dominica and Sister Francesca were whispering together in the dark silence, and Sister Josephas ears pricked up as she heard her name. She is not well, poor child, said Francesca. I fear the life is too confining. It is best for her, was the reply. You know,

43、sister, how hard it would be for her in the world, with no name but Camille, no friends, and her beauty; and then- Sister Josepha heard no more, for her heart beating tumultuously in her bosom drowned the rest. Like the rush of the bitter salt tide over a drowning man clinging to a spar, came the co

44、mplete submerging of her hopes of another life. No name but Camille, that was true; no nationality, for she could never tell from whom or whence she came; no friends, and a beauty that not even an ungainly bonnet and shaven head could hide. In a flash she realised the deception of the life she would

45、 lead, and the cruel self-torture of wonder at her own identity. Already, as if in anticipation of the worlds questionings, she was asking herself, Who am I? What am I? The next morning the sisters du Sacre Coeur filed into the Cathedral at High Mass, and bent devout knees at the general confession.

46、 Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, murmured the priest; and tremblingly one little sister followed the words, Je confesse a Dieu, tout puissant-que jai beaucoup peche par pensees-cest ma faute-cest ma faute-cest ma tres grande faute. The organ pealed forth as mass ended, the throng slowly filed out, and the sisters paced through the courtway back into the brown convent walls. One paused at the entrance, and gazed with swift longing eyes in the direction of narrow, squalid Chartres Street, then, with a gulping sob, followed the rest, and vanished behind the heavy door.