II

Who has not known, at least once in his life, what it is to lose

some precious thing; and after hunting through his papers,

ransacking his memory, and turning his house upside down; after

one or two days spent in vain search, and hope, and despair;

after a prodigious expenditure of the liveliest irritation of

soul, who has not known the ineffable pleasure of finding that

all-important nothing which had come to be a king of monomania?

Very good.  Now, spread that fury of search over five years; put

a woman, put a heart, put love in the place of the trifle;

transpose the monomania into the key of high passion; and,

furthermore, let the seeker be a man of ardent temper, with a

lion's heart and a leonine head and mane, a man to inspire awe

and fear in those who come in contact with him--realise this, and

you may, perhaps, understand why the General walked abruptly out

of the church when the first notes of a ballad, which he used to

hear with a rapture of delight in a gilt-panelled boudoir, began

to vibrate along the aisles of the church in the sea.

The General walked away down the steep street which led to the

port, and only stopped when he could not hear the deep notes of

the organ.  Unable to think of anything but the love which broke

out in volcanic eruption, filling his heart with fire, he only

knew that the Te Deum was over when the Spanish congregation came

pouring out of the church.  Feeling that his behaviour and

attitude might seem ridiculous, he went back to head the

procession, telling the alcalde and the governor that, feeling

suddenly faint, he had gone out into the air.  Casting about for

a plea for prolonging his stay, it at once occurred to him to

make the most of this excuse, framed on the spur of the moment.

He declined, on a plea of increasing indisposition, to preside at

the banquet given by the town to the French officers, betook

himself to his bed, and sent a message to the Major-General, to

the effect that temporary illness obliged him to leave the

Colonel in command of the troops for the time being.  This

commonplace but very plausible stratagem relieved him of all

responsibility for the time necessary to carry out his plans.

The General, nothing if not "catholic and monarchical," took

occasion to inform himself of the hours of the services, and

manifested the greatest zeal for the performance of his religious

duties, piety which caused no remark in Spain.

The very next day, while the division was marching out of the

town, the General went to the convent to be present at vespers.

He found an empty church.  The townsfolk, devout though they

were, had all gone down to the quay to watch the embarkation of

the troops.  He felt glad to be the only man there.  He tramped

noisily up the nave, clanking his spurs till the vaulted roof

rang with the sound; he coughed, he talked aloud to himself to

let the nuns know, and more particularly to let the organist know

that if the troops were gone, one Frenchman was left behind.  Was

this singular warning heard and understood?  He thought so.  It

seemed to him that in the Magnificat the organ made response

which was borne to him on the vibrating air.  The nun's spirit

found wings in music and fled towards him, throbbing with the

rhythmical pulse of the sounds.  Then, in all its might, the

music burst forth and filled the church with warmth.  The Song of

Joy set apart in the sublime liturgy of Latin Christianity to

express the exaltation of the soul in the presence of the glory

of the ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart almost

terrified by its gladness in the presence of the glory of a

mortal love; a love that yet lived, a love that had risen to

trouble her even beyond the grave in which the nun is laid, that

she may rise again as the bride of Christ.

The organ is in truth the grandest, the most daring, the most

magnificent of all instruments invented by human genius.  It is a

whole orchestra in itself.  It can express anything in response

to a skilled touch.  Surely it is in some sort a pedestal on

which the soul poises for a flight forth into space, essaying on

her course to draw picture after picture in an endless series, to

paint human life, to cross the Infinite that separates heaven

from earth?  And the longer a dreamer listens to those giant

harmonies, the better he realises that nothing save this

hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space between

kneeling men, and a God hidden by the blinding light of the

Sanctuary.  The music is the one interpreter strong enough to

bear up the prayers of humanity to heaven, prayer in its

omnipotent moods, prayer tinged by the melancholy of many

different natures, coloured by meditative ecstasy, upspringing

with the impulse of repentance--blended with the myriad fancies

of every creed.  Yes.  In those long vaulted aisles the melodies

inspired by the sense of things divine are blent with a grandeur

unknown before, are decked with new glory and might.  Out of the

dim daylight, and the deep silence broken by the chanting of the

choir in response to the thunder of the organ, a veil is woven

for God, and the brightness of His attributes shines through it.

And this wealth of holy things seemed to be flung down like a

grain of incense upon the fragile altar raised to Love beneath

the eternal throne of a jealous and avenging God.  Indeed, in the

joy of the nun there was little of that awe and gravity which

should harmonise with the solemnities of the Magnificat.  She had

enriched the music with graceful variations, earthly gladness

throbbing through the rhythm of each.  In such brilliant

quivering notes some great singer might strive to find a voice

for her love, her melodies fluttered as a bird flutters about her

mate.  There were moments when she seemed to leap back into the

past, to dally there now with laughter, now with tears.  Her

changing moods, as it were, ran riot.  She was like a woman

excited and happy over her lover's return.

But at length, after the swaying fugues of delirium, after the

marvellous rendering of a vision of the past, a revulsion swept

over the soul that thus found utterance for itself.  With a swift

transition from the major to the minor, the organist told her

hearer of her present lot.  She gave the story of long melancholy

broodings, of the slow course of her moral malady.  How day by

day she deadened the senses, how every night cut off one more

thought, how her heart was slowly reduced to ashes.  The sadness

deepened shade after shade through languid modulations, and in a

little while the echoes were pouring out a torrent of grief.

Then on a sudden, high notes rang out like the voices of angels

singing together, as if to tell the lost but not forgotten lover

that their spirits now could only meet in heaven.  Pathetic hope!

Then followed the Amen.  No more Joy, no more tears in the air,

no sadness, no regrets.  The Amen was the return to God.  The

final chord was deep, solemn, even terrible; for the last

rumblings of the bass sent a shiver through the audience that

raised the hair on their heads; the nun shook out her veiling of

crepe, and seemed to sink again into the grave from which she had

risen for a moment.  Slowly the reverberations died away; it

seemed as if the church, but now so full of light, had returned

to thick darkness.

The General had been caught up and borne swiftly away by this

strong-winged spirit; he had followed the course of its flight

from beginning to end.  He understood to the fullest extent the

imagery of that burning symphony; for him the chords reached deep

and far.  For him, as for the sister, the poem meant future,

present, and past.  Is not music, and even opera music, a sort of

text, which a susceptible or poetic temper, or a sore and

stricken heart, may expand as memories shall determine?  If a

musician must needs have the heart of a poet, must not the

listener too be in a manner a poet and a lover to hear all that

lies in great music?  Religion, love, and music--what are they

but a threefold expression of the same fact, of that craving for

expansion which stirs in every noble soul.  And these three forms

of poetry ascend to God, in whom all passion on earth finds its

end.  Wherefore the holy human trinity finds a place amid the

infinite glories of God; of God, whom we always represent

surrounded with the fires of love and seistrons of gold--music

and light and harmony.  Is not He the Cause and the End of all

our strivings?

The French General guessed rightly that here in the desert, on

this bare rock in the sea, the nun had seized upon music as an

outpouring of the passion that still consumed her.  Was this her

manner of offering up her love as a sacrifice to God?  Or was it

Love exultant in triumph over God?  The questions were hard to

answer.  But one thing at least the General could not mistake--in

this heart, dead to the world, the fire of passion burned as

fiercely as in his own.

Vespers over, he went back to the alcalde with whom he was

staying.  In the all-absorbing joy which comes in such full

measure when a satisfaction sought long and painfully is attained

at last, he could see nothing beyond this--he was still loved!

In her heart love had grown in loneliness, even as his love had

grown stronger as he surmounted one barrier after another which

this woman had set between them!  The glow of soul came to its

natural end.  There followed a longing to see her again, to

contend with God for her, to snatch her away--a rash scheme,

which appealed to a daring nature.  He went to bed, when the meal

was over, to avoid questions; to be alone and think at his ease;

and he lay absorbed by deep thought till day broke.

He rose only to go to mass.  He went to the church and knelt

close to the screen, with his forehead touching the curtain; he

would have torn a hole in it if he had been alone, but his host

had come with him out of politeness, and the least imprudence

might compromise the whole future of his love, and ruin the new

hopes.

The organ sounded, but it was another player, and not the nun of

the last two days whose hands touched the keys.  It was all

colourless and cold for the General.  Was the woman he loved

prostrated by emotion which wellnigh overcame a strong man's

heart?  Had she so fully realised and shared an unchanged,

longed-for love, that now she lay dying on her bed in her cell?

While innumerable thoughts of this kind perplexed his mind, the

voice of the woman he worshipped rang out close beside him; he

knew its clear resonant soprano.  It was her voice, with that

faint tremor in it which gave it all the charm that shyness and

diffidence gives to a young girl; her voice, distinct from the

mass of singing as a prima donna's in the chorus of a finale.  It

was like a golden or silver thread in dark frieze.

It was she!  There could be no mistake.  Parisienne now as ever,

she had not laid coquetry aside when she threw off worldly

adornments for the veil and the Carmelite's coarse serge.  She

who had affirmed her love last evening in the praise sent up to

God, seemed now to say to her lover, "Yes, it is I.  I am here.

My love is unchanged, but I am beyond the reach of love.  You

will hear my voice, my soul shall enfold you, and I shall abide

here under the brown shroud in the choir from which no power on

earth can tear me.  You shall never see me more!"

"It is she indeed!" the General said to himself, raising his

head.  He had leant his face on his hands, unable at first to

bear the intolerable emotion that surged like a whirlpool in his

heart, when that well-known voice vibrated under the arcading,

with the sound of the sea for accompaniment.

Storm was without, and calm within the sanctuary.  Still that

rich voice poured out all its caressing notes; it fell like balm

on the lover's burning heart; it blossomed upon the air--the air

that a man would fain breathe more deeply to receive the

effluence of a soul breathed forth with love in the words of the

prayer.  The alcalde coming to join his guest found him in tears

during the elevation, while the nun was singing, and brought him

back to his house.  Surprised to find so much piety in a French

military man, the worthy magistrate invited the confessor of the

convent to meet his guest.  Never had news given the General more

pleasure; he paid the ecclesiastic a good deal of attention at

supper, and confirmed his Spanish hosts in the high opinion they

had formed of his piety by a not wholly disinterested respect.

He enquired with gravity how many sisters there were in the

convent, and asked for particulars of its endowment and revenues,

as if from courtesy he wished to hear the good priest discourse

on the subject most interesting to him.  He informed himself as

to the manner of life led by the holy women.  Were they allowed

to go out of the convent, or to see visitors?

"Senor," replied the venerable churchman, "the rule is strict.

A woman cannot enter a monastery of the order of St. Bruno

without a special permission from His Holiness, and the rule here

is equally stringent.  No man may enter a convent of Barefoot

Carmelites unless he is a priest specially attached to the

services of the house by the Archbishop.  None of the nuns may

leave the convent; though the great Saint, St. Theresa, often

left her cell.  The Visitor or the Mothers Superior can alone

give permission, subject to an authorisation from the Archbishop,

for a nun to see a visitor, and then especially in a case of

illness.  Now we are one of the principal houses, and

consequently we have a Mother Superior here.  Among other foreign

sisters there is one Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa; she it is who

directs the music in the chapel."

"Oh!" said the General, with feigned surprise.  "She must have

rejoiced over the victory of the House of Bourbon."

"I told them the reason of the mass; they are always a little

bit inquisitive."

"But Sister Theresa may have interests in France.  Perhaps she

would like to send some message or to hear news."

"I do not think so.  She would have come to ask me."

"As a fellow-countryman, I should be quite curious to see her,"

said the General.  "If it is possible, if the Lady Superior

consents, if..."

"Even at the grating and in the Reverend Mother's presence, an

interview would be quite impossible for anybody whatsoever; but,

strict as the Mother is, for a deliverer of our holy religion and

the throne of his Catholic Majesty, the rule might be relaxed for

a moment," said the confessor, blinking.  "I will speak about

it."

"How old is Sister Theresa?" enquired the lover.  He dared not

ask any questions of the priest as to the nun's beauty.

"She does not reckon years now," the good man answered, with a

simplicity that made the General shudder.

Next day before siesta, the confessor came to inform the French

General that Sister Theresa and the Mother consented to receive

him at the grating in the parlour before vespers.  The General

spent the siesta in pacing to and fro along the quay in the

noonday heat.  Thither the priest came to find him, and brought

him to the convent by way of the gallery round the cemetery.

Fountains, green trees, and rows of arcading maintained a cool

freshness in keeping with the place.

At the further end of the long gallery the priest led the way

into a large room divided in two by a grating covered with a

brown curtain.  In the first, and in some sort of public half of

the apartment, where the confessor left the newcomer, a wooden

bench ran round the wall, and two or three chairs, also of wood,

were placed near the grating.  The ceiling consisted of bare

unornamented joists and cross-beams of ilex wood.  As the two

windows were both on the inner side of the grating, and the dark

surface of the wood was a bad reflector, the light in the place

was so dim that you could scarcely see the great black crucifix,

the portrait of Saint Theresa, and a picture of the Madonna which

adorned the grey parlour walls.  Tumultuous as the General's

feelings were, they took something of the melancholy of the

place.  He grew calm in that homely quiet.  A sense of something

vast as the tomb took possession of him beneath the chill

unceiled roof.  Here, as in the grave, was there not eternal

silence, deep peace--the sense of the Infinite?  And besides this

there was the quiet and the fixed thought of the cloister--a

thought which you felt like a subtle presence in the air, and in

the dim dusk of the room; an all-pervasive thought nowhere

definitely expressed, and looming the larger in the imagination;

for in the cloister the great saying, "Peace in the Lord,"

enters the least religious soul as a living force.

The monk's life is scarcely comprehensible.  A man seems

confessed a weakling in a monastery; he was born to act, to live

out a life of work; he is evading a man's destiny in his cell.

But what man's strength, blended with pathetic weakness, is

implied by a woman's choice of the convent life!  A man may have

any number of motives for burying himself in a monastery; for him

it is the leap over the precipice.  A woman has but one

motive--she is a woman still; she betrothes herself to a Heavenly

Bridegroom.  Of the monk you may ask, "Why did you not fight

your battle?"  But if a woman immures herself in the cloister,

is there not always a sublime battle fought first?

At length it seemed to the General that that still room, and the

lonely convent in the sea, were full of thoughts of him.  Love

seldom attains to solemnity; yet surely a love still faithful in

the breast of God was something solemn, something more than a man

had a right to look for as things are in this nineteenth century?

The infinite grandeur of the situation might well produce an

effect upon the General's mind; he had precisely enough elevation

of soul to forget politics, honours, Spain, and society in Paris,

and to rise to the height of this lofty climax.  And what in

truth could be more tragic?  How much must pass in the souls of

these two lovers, brought together in a place of strangers, on a

ledge of granite in the sea; yet held apart by an intangible,

unsurmountable barrier!  Try to imagine the man saying within

himself, "Shall I triumph over God in her heart?" when a faint

rustling sound made him quiver, and the curtain was drawn aside.

Between him and the light stood a woman.  Her face was hidden by

the veil that drooped from the folds upon her head; she was

dressed according to the rule of the order in a gown of the

colour become proverbial.  Her bare feet were hidden; if the

General could have seen them, he would have known how appallingly

thin she had grown; and yet in spite of the thick folds of her

coarse gown, a mere covering and no ornament, he could guess how

tears, and prayer, and passion, and loneliness had wasted the

woman before him.

An ice-cold hand, belonging, no doubt, to the Mother Superior,

held back the curtain.  The General gave the enforced witness of

their interview a searching glance, and met the dark, inscrutable

gaze of an aged recluse.  The Mother might have been a century

old, but the bright, youthful eyes belied the wrinkles that

furrowed her pale face.

"Mme la Duchesse," he began, his voice shaken with emotion,

"does your companion understand French?"  The veiled figure

bowed her head at the sound of his voice.

"There is no duchess here," she replied.  "It is Sister

Theresa whom you see before you.  She whom you call my companion

is my mother in God, my superior here on earth."

The words were so meekly spoken by the voice that sounded in

other years amid harmonious surroundings of refined luxury, the

voice of a queen of fashion in Paris.  Such words from the lips

that once spoke so lightly and flippantly struck the General dumb

with amazement.

"The Holy Mother only speaks Latin and Spanish," she added.

"I understand neither.  Dear Antoinette, make my excuses to

her."

The light fell full upon the nun's figure; a thrill of deep

emotion betrayed itself in a faint quiver of her veil as she

heard her name softly spoken by the man who had been so hard in

the past.

"My brother," she said, drawing her sleeve under her veil,

perhaps to brush tears away, "I am Sister Theresa."

Then, turning to the Superior, she spoke in Spanish; the General

knew enough of the language to understand what she said perfectly

well; possibly he could have spoken it had he chosen to do so.

"Dear Mother, the gentleman presents his respects to you, and

begs you to pardon him if he cannot pay them himself, but he

knows neither of the languages which you speak"

The aged nun bent her head slowly, with an expression of angelic

sweetness, enhanced at the same time by the consciousness of her

power and dignity.

"Do you know this gentleman?" she asked, with a keen glance.

"Yes, Mother."

"Go back to your cell, my daughter!" said the Mother

imperiously.  The General slipped aside behind the curtain lest

the dreadful tumult within him should appear in his face; even in

the shadow it seemed to him that he could still see the

Superior's piercing eyes.  He was afraid of her; she held his

little, frail, hardly-won happiness in her hands; and he, who had

never quailed under a triple row of guns, now trembled before

this nun.  The Duchess went towards the door, but she turned

back.

"Mother," she said, with dreadful calmness, "the Frenchman is

one of my brothers."

"Then stay, my daughter," said the Superior, after a pause.

The piece of admirable Jesuitry told of such love and regret,

that a man less strongly constituted might have broken down under

the keen delight in the midst of a great and, for him, an

entirely novel peril.  Oh! how precious words, looks, and

gestures became when love must baffle lynx eyes and tiger's

claws!  Sister Theresa came back.

"You see, my brother, what I have dared to do only to speak to

you for a moment of your salvation and of the prayers that my

soul puts up for your soul daily.  I am committing mortal sin.  I

have told a lie.  How many days of penance must expiate that lie!