Part 3 (2/2)
”It would not be fair to forget them because they are dead. But they are not dead; they go away for a season, and it would not be fair to forget them because they have gone away.” This she said simply and seriously as though her conscience were dealing with human virtues and duties.
”And are you satisfied to love things that are not present?” he asked, looking at her with sudden earnestness.
”The Mother Superior will wish him to take away a favourable impression of the convent,” said the Sister. ”Young ladies are sometimes sent to us from that region.” And now, having gotten from Ezra the information she desired and turned their steps towards the others, she looked at Helm with greater interest.
”Should you like to go upon the observatory?” she meekly asked, pointing to the top of the adjacent building. ”From there you can see how far the convent lands extend. Besides, it is the only point that commands a view of the whole country.”
The scene of the temptation was to be transferred to the pinnacle of the temple.
”It is not asking too much of you to climb so far for my pleasure?”
”It is our mission to climb,” she replied wearily; ”and if our strength fails, we rest by the way.”
Of herself she spoke literally; for when they came to the topmost story of the building, from which the observatory was reached by a short flight of steps, she sank into a seat placed near as a resting-place.
”Will you go above, Sister?” she said feebly. ”I will wait here.”
On the way up, also, the old man had been shaking his head with a stupid look of alarm and muttering his disapproval.
”There is a high railing, Ezra,” she now said to him, ”You could not fall.” But he refused to go further; he suffered from vertigo.
The young pair went up alone.
For miles in all directions the landscape lay s.h.i.+mmering in the autumnal sunlight--a poor, rough, homely land, with a few farmhouses of the plainest kind. Briefly she traced for him the boundary of the convent domain. And then he, thinking proudly of his own region, now lying heavy in varied autumnal ripeness and teeming with n.o.ble, gentle animal life; with rolling pastures as green as May under great trees of crimson and gold; with flas.h.i.+ng streams and placid sheets of water, and great secluded homesteads--he, in turn, briefly described it; and she, loving the sensuous beauty of the world, listened more dreamily, merely repeating over and over, half to herself, and with more guarded courtesy half to him, ”It must be very beautiful.”
But whether she suddenly felt that she had yielded herself too far to the influence of his words and wished to counteract this, or whether she was aroused to offset his description by another of unlike interest, scarcely had he finished when she pointed towards a long stretch of woodland that lay like a mere wavering band of brown upon the western horizon.
”It was through those woods,” she said, her voice trembling slightly, ”that the procession of Trappists marched behind the cross when they fled to this country from France. Beyond that range of hills is the home of the Silent Brotherhood. In this direction,” she continued, pointing southward, ”is the creek which used to be so deep in winter that the priests had to swim it as they walked from one distant mission to another in the wilderness, holding above the waves the crucifix and the sacrament. Under that tree down there the Father who founded this convent built with his own hands the cabin that was the first church, and hewed out of logs the first altar. It was from those trees that the first nuns got the dyes for their vestments. On the floor of that cabin they sometimes slept in mid-winter with no other covering than an armful of straw. Those were heroic days.”
If she had indeed felt some secret need to recover herself by reciting the heroisms of local history, she seemed to have succeeded. Her face kindled with emotion; and as he watched it he forgot even her creed in this revelation of her nature, which touched in him also something serious and exalted. But as she ceased he asked, with peculiar interest--
”Are there any Kentuckians among the Trappist Fathers?”
”No,” she replied, after a momentary silence, and in a voice lowered to great sadness. ”There was one a few years ago. His death was a great blow to the Fathers. They had hoped that he might some day become the head of the order in Kentucky. He was called Father Palemon.”
For another moment nothing was said. They were standing side by side, looking towards that quarter of the horizon which she had pointed out as the site of the abbey. Then he spoke meditatively, as though his mind had gone back unawares to some idea that was very dear to him--
”No, this does not seem much like Kentucky; but, after all, every landscape is essentially the same to me if there are homes on it. Poor as this country is, still it is history; it is human life. Here are the eternal ties and relations. Here are the eternal needs and duties; everything that keeps the world young and the heart at peace. Here is the unchanging expression of our common destiny, as creatures who must share all things, and bear all things, and be bound together in life and death.”
”Sister!” called up the nun waiting below, ”is not the wind blowing?
Will you not take cold?”
”The wind is not blowing, Sister, but I am coming.”
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