The Path of a Star Part 27

The Mother Superior had a long upper lip, which she was in the habit of drawing still further down; it gave her an air of great diplomatic caution, almost of casuistry. Her face was pale and narrow; she had eyes that desired to be very penetrating, and a flat little stooping figure within her voluminous draperies. She carried about with her all the virtues of a monastic order, patience was written upon her, and repression, discipline, and the love of administration, written and underlined, so that the Anglican Sister whom no Pope blessed was more priestly in her personal effect than any Jesuit. It was difficult to remember that she had begun as a woman; she was now a somewhat anaemic formula making for righteousness. Sister Ann Frances, who in her turn suggested the fat capons of an age of friars more indulgent to the flesh, and whose speech was of the crispest in this world where there was so much to do, thought poorly of the executive ability of the Mother Superior, and resented the imposition, as it were, of the long upper lip. Out of this arose the only irritations that vexed the energetic flow of duty at the Baker Inst.i.tution, slight official raspings which the Mother Superior immediately laid before Heaven at great length. She did it with publicity, too, kneeling on the chunam floor of the chapel for an hour at a time obviously explaining matters. The bureaucracy of the country was reflected in the Baker Inst.i.tution; it seemed to Sister Ann Frances that her superior officer took undue advantage of her privilege of direct communication with the Supreme Authority, giving any colour she liked to the incident. And when the Mother Superior's lumbago came on in direct consequence of the cold chunam, the annoyance of Sister Ann Frances was naturally not lessened.

There were twenty or thirty of them, with their little white caps tied close under their chins, their long veils and their girdled black robes.

They were the most self-sacrificing women in Asia, the most devout, the most useful. Government gave hospitals and doctors into their hands; they took the whole charge of certain schools. They differed in complexion, some of the newly arrived being delightfully fresh and pink under their starched bandeaux; but they were all official, they all walked discreetly and directly about their business, with a jangle of keys in the folds of their robes, immensely organised, immensely under orders. Hilda, when she had time, had the keenest satisfaction in contemplating them. She took the edge off the fact that she was not quite one, in aim and method, with these dear women as they supposed her to be, with the reflection that after all it might be worth while to work out a solution of life in those terms, standing aside from the world--the world was troublesome--and keeping an unfaltering eye upon the pity of things, an unfaltering hand at its a.s.suagement. It was simple and fine and indisputable, this work of throwing the clear shadow of the Cross upon the muddy sunlight of the world; it carried the boon of finality in itself. One might be stopped and put away at any moment, and nothing would be spoiled, broken, unfinished; and it absolutely barred out such considerations as were presented by Hamilton Bradley.

There was a time early in her probation when she thought seriously that if it were not Stephen Arnold it should be this.

She begged to be put on hospital work, and was sent for her indiscretion to teach in the Orphanage for Female Children of British Troops. The first duty of a novice was to be free of preference, to obey without a sigh of choice. On the third day, however, Sister Ann Frances, supervising, stopped at the open schoolroom door to hear the junior female orphans repeating in happy chorus after their instructress the statement that seven times nine were fifty-six. I think Hilda saw Sister Ann Frances in the door. That couldn't go on, even in the name of discipline, and Miss Howe was placed at the disposal of the Chief Nursing Sister at the General Hospital next day. Sister Ann Frances was inclined to defend Hilda's imperfect acquaintance with primary arithmetic.

"We all have our gifts," she said. "Miss Howe's is not the multiplication table; but neither is mine stage-acting." At which, the upper lip lengthened further into an upward curving smile, and the Mother Superior remarked cautiously that she hoped Miss Howe would develop one for making bandages, otherwise--And there for the time being the matter rested.

The depth of what was unusual in Hilda's relation with Alicia Livingstone--perhaps it has been plain that they were not quite the ordinary feminine liens--seems to me to be sounded in the tacit acceptance of Hilda's novitiate on its merits that fell between the two women. The full understanding of it was an abyss between them, across which they joined hands, looking elsewhere. Even in the surprise of Hilda's announcement Alicia had the instinct to glance away, lest her eyes should betray too many facts that bore upon the situation. It had never been discussed, but it had to be accepted, and occasionally referred to; and the terms of acceptance and reference made no implication of Stephen Arnold. In her inmost privacy Alicia gazed breathless at the conception as a whole; she leaped at it, and caught it and held it to look, with a feverish comparison of possibilities. It was not strange, perhaps, that she took a vivid personal interest in the essentials that enabled one to execute a flank movement like Hilda's, not that she should conceive the first of them to be that one must come out of a cab. She dismissed that impression with indignation as ungenerously cynical, but it always came back for redismissal. It did not interfere in the least, however, with her deliberate invitations to Stephen to come to Ten, Middleton Street, on afternoons or evenings when Hilda was there. She was like one standing denied in the Street of Abundance; she had an avidity of the eye for even love's reflection.

That was a little later. At first there was the transformation to lament, the loss, the break.

"You look," cried Miss Livingstone, the first time Hilda arrived in the dress of the novice, a kind of under-study of the Sisters' black and white, "you look like a person in a book, full of salient points, and yet made so simple to the reader. If you go on wearing those things I shall end by understanding you perfectly."

"If you don't understand me," Hilda said, dropping into the corner of a sofa, "Cela que je m'en doute, it's because you look for too much elaboration. I am a simple creature, done with rather a broad brush--voila tout!"

Nevertheless, Miss Livingstone's was a happy impression. The neutrality of her hospital dress left Hilda in a manner exposed: one saw in a special way the significance of lines and curves; it was an astonishingly vigorous human expression.

Alicia leaned forward, her elbow on the arm of her chair, her chin tucked into her palm, and looked at it. The elbow bent itself in light blue muslin of extreme elegance, trimmed with lace. The colour found a wistful echo in the eyes that regarded Miss Howe, who was accustomed to the look, and met it with impenetrable commonplace, being made impatient by nothing in this world so much as by futility, however charming.

"Just now," Alicia said, "the shadows under your eyes are brushed too deep."

"I don't believe I sleep well in a dormitory."

"Horrible! All the little comforts of life--don't you miss them?"

"I never had them, my dear--I never had them. Life has never given me very many luxuries--I don't miss them. An occasional hour to one's self--and that we get even at the Inst.i.tution. The conventions are strictly conserved, believe me."

"One imagines that kind of place is always clean."

"When I have time I think of Number Three, Lal Behari's Lane, and believe myself in Paradise. The repose is there, the angels also--dear commanding things--and a perpetual incense of cheap soap. And there is some good in sleeping in a row. It reminds one that after all one is very like other women."

"It wouldn't convince me if I were you. And how did the sisters receive you--with the harp and the psaltery?"

"That was rather," said Hilda gravely, "what I expected. On the contrary. They snubbed me--they really did. There were two of them. I said, 'Reverend ladies, please be a little kind. Convents are strange to me; I shall probably commit horrible sins without knowing it. Give me your absolution in advance--at least your blessing.'"

"Hilda, you didn't!"

"It is delightful to observe the Mother Abbess, or whatever she is, disguising the fact that she takes any interest in me. Such diplomacy--funny old thing."

"They must be devoured with curiosity!"

"Well, they ask no questions. One sees an everlasting finger on the lip.

It's a little boring. One feels inclined to speak up and say, 'Mesdames, entendez--it isn't so bad as you think.' But then their fingers would go into their ears."

"And the rules, Hilda? I can't imagine you, somehow, under rules."

"I am attached to the rules; I think about them all day long. They make the thing simple and--possible. It is a little like living for the first time in a house all right angles after--after a lifelong voyage in a small boat."

"Isn't the house rather empty?"

"Oh, well!"

Alicia put out her hand and tucked an irrelevant bit of lace into Hilda's bosom. "I can tell you who is interested," she cried. "The Archdeacon--the Archdeacon and Mrs. Barberry. They both dined here last night; and you lasted from the fish to the pudding. I got so bored with you, my dear, in your new capacity."

A new ray of happiness came into the smile of the novice. "What did they say? Do tell me what they said."

"There was a difference of opinion. The Archdeacon held that with G.o.d all things were possible. He used an expression more suitable to a dinner-party; but I think that is what he meant. Mrs. Barberry thought it wouldn't last. Mrs. Barberry was very cynical. She said anyone could see that you were as emotional as ever you could be."

The eyes of the two women met, and they laughed frankly. A sense of expansion came between them, in which for an instant they were silent.

"Tell me about the hospital," Alicia said presently. "Ah, the hospital!"

Hilda's face changed; there came into her eyes the moved look that always waked a thrill in Alicia Livingstone, as if she were suddenly aware that she had stepped upon ground where feet like hers pa.s.sed seldom.

"There is nothing to tell you that is not--sad. Such odds and ends, of life, thrown together!"

"Have you had any experiences yet?"

Hilda stared for a moment absently in front of her, and then turned her head aside to answer as if she closed her eyes on something.

"Experiences? Delightful Alicia, speaking your language, no. You are thinking of the resident surgeon, the medical student, the interesting patient. My resident surgeon is fifty years old; the medical student is a Bengali in white cotton and patent leather shoes. I am occupied in a ward full of deck hands. For these I hold the bandage and the bottle; they are hardly aware of me."

"You are sure to have them," Alicia said. "They crop up wherever you go in this world, either before you or behind you."

Hilda fixed her eyes attentively upon her companion. "Sometimes," she said, "you say things that are extremely true in their general bearing.

A fortuneteller with cards gives one the same shock of surprise.

Well, let me tell you, I have been promoted to temperatures. I took thirty-five to-day. Next week I am to make poultices; the week after, baths and fomentations."

"What are the others like--the other novices?"

"Nearly all Eurasians, one native, a Hindu widow--the Sisters are almost demonstrative to her--and one or two local European girls: the commissariat sergeant cla.s.s, I should think."

"They don't sound attractive, and I am glad. You will depend the more upon me."

Hilda looked thoughtfully at Miss Livingstone. "I will depend," she said, "a good deal upon you."

It was Alicia's fate to meet the Archdeacon again that evening at dinner. "And is she really throwing her heart into the work?" asked that dignitary, referring to Miss Howe.

"Oh, I think so," Alicia said. "Yes."

CHAPTER XXVI

The labours of the Baker Inst.i.tution and of the Clarke Mission were very different in scope, so much so that if they had been secular bodies working for profit, there would have been hardly a point of contact between them. As it was they made one, drawing together in affiliation for the comfort of mutual support in a heathen country where all the other Englishmen wrote reports, drilled troops, or played polo, with all the other Englishwomen in the corresponding female parts. Doubtless the little communities prayed for each other. One may imagine, not profanely, their pet.i.tions rising on either side of the heedless, mult.i.tudinous, idolatrous city, and meeting at some point in the purer air above the yellow dust-haze. I am not aware that they held any other mutual duty or privilege, but this bond was known, and enabled people whose conscience p.r.i.c.ked them in that direction to give little garden teas to which they invited Clarke Brothers and Baker Sisters, secure in doing a benevolent thing and at the same time embarra.s.sing n.o.body except, possibly, the Archdeacon, who was officially exposed to being asked as well and had no right to complain. The affiliation was thus a social convenience, since it is unlikely that without it anybody would have hit upon so ingenious a way of killing, as it were, a Baker Sister and a Clarke Brother with one stone. It is not surprising that this degree of intelligence should fail to see the profound official difference between Baker Sisters and Baker novices. As the Mother Superior said, it did not seem to occur to people that there could be in connection with a religious body, such words as discipline and subordination, which were certainly made ridiculous for the time being, when she and Sister Ann Frances were asked to eat ices on the same terms as Miss Hilda Howe. It must have been more than ever painful to these ladies, regarded from the official point of view, when it became plain, as it usually did, that the interest of the afternoon centred in Miss Howe, whether or not the Archdeacon happened to be present. Their displeasure was so clear, after the first occasion, that Hilda felt obliged when the next one came, to fall back on her original talent, and ate her ice abashed and silent speaking only when she was spoken to, and then in short words and long hesitations. Thereupon the Sisters were of opinion that after all poor Miss Howe could not help her unenviable lot, she was perhaps more to be pitied on account of it than--anything else.