Tales of the Cloister/Between Darkness and Dawn
Between Darkness and Dawn
Between Darkness and Dawn
HE graduation exercises were in progress. Elizabeth Van Nest heard the pening notes of the overture to "Die Zauberflöte" as she walked down the long corridor towards Commencement Hall. Many of her friends and classmates were members of the convent orchestra, and they had practised the music of the graduation programme until even Mozart's melodies beat drearily against the ear. Elizabeth had laughed with them over the seemingly endless repetitions, but now the music took on a sudden and unexpected charm. Her eyes filled with tears, and the hand that held her essay trembled a little. The heavy perfume of the flowers banked against the stage floated out to her. In half an hour she would be standing there delivering the valedictory.
She wondered vaguely if she could do it—if, with this sickening sense of loneliness and loss strong in her, she could say to that waiting audience the farewell words that had come so easily to her tongue during the rehearsals of the past week. She must do it, and do it well. It was the closing act of her school life, and she ought to leave as pleasant a memory behind her as she took away. In her heart she knew she would. She usually did things well—this calm, self-contained pupil of whom the nuns expected so much. Then, too, she reflected, Sister Estelle would be in the wings with her, and Sister Estelle would help her if she faltered. Dear Sister Estelle, who had never failed her from the day she had been brought to the convent, a little child, and given to the sweet-faced nun as a special charge.
To-day they were to part, she and this woman who had been the strongest element in her life for twelve years—guide, philosopher, teacher, sister, mother, all in one. After to day she could call at the convent at proper intervals and talk to Sister Estelle—perhaps through the wire grating in the little reception-room. Her heart contracted at the thought. She had never before rebelled against a rule of the great institution, but this seemed very hard. The proper intervals would be far between, she reflected, with some bitterness. She was to go to Chicago the next day to begin the study of medicine. She had chosen her profession, and Sister Estelle had approved the choice, which was enough. The thinly veiled disapprobation of her guardian and other friends counted for little against that.
She had reached the entrance to Commencement Hall, but she passed it, and, after a preliminary tap, entered a room a few doors beyond. It was empty except for a Sister, in her severe black garb, standing at the window over looking the convent garden. The nun did not turn. She slipped her arm around the girdled waist and laid her cheek against the stiff white linen that covered her friend s bosom. The little act meant much, for caresses were rare between these two, who understood each other so well without them.
The young girl looked up into the nun's eyes and wondered whether it was fancy or if the lids were a trifle reddened. She dared not think so, for that might mean the loss of her own self-control. Sister Estelle did not approve of tears even when shed in such circumstances as these and by the pupil of her heart.
"How can I get up there and read to them," Elizabeth asked, "with our parting before me? You will help me, I know; tell me that I must do it, and that I shall do it well."
The nun smiled serenely. "Assuredly you will do it well, my dear," she said, almost lightly. "We cannot have you fail at this of all times. You will do justice to yourself and to us." She hesitated a little. "I will be near you," she added, simply.
The repetition of the familiar assurance that had run like a golden thread throughout the years silenced them both. By a common impulse they turned unseeing eyes upon the smiling garden below, while memories rose before them.
"I will be near you," Sister Estelle had said to the frightened little girl when darkness fell on the first night in the convent walls. "I will be near you," she had repeated at the crisis of the long illness several years later. Elizabeth recalled now those nights of delirium in which the silent, black-robed figure had remained at her bedside to do battle, the child thought, with the phantoms and goblins that filled the room. The gentle Sister had indeed been with her in all the marked episodes of her school-girl life; she was with her now in this last scene. They turned and read the same thought in each other's eyes. The nun took her pupil in her arms and held her there.
"No, dear child, it is not for the last time," she said, with quiet confidence. "I have been with you until now—I shall be with you in 
"STANDING AT THE WINDOW OVERLOOKING THE CONVENT GARDEN
She kissed the wet cheek upturned to her, and drew her pupil gently towards the door. A ripple of applause rolled towards them from the hall. The orchestra had just finished its selection. They walked quickly down a side corridor which led to the stage wings. The fresh young voices of the convent quartette were raised in the song that preceded the valedictory. Elizabeth Van Nest smoothed her gloves, shook out her white plumage, and looked up into her friend's face with the smile and assurance of her childhood days.
"I will do my very bestest best," she said, tenderly. "Could I do anything else, with you looking on?"
Miss Van Nest's fellow-students at the medical college did her the honor to speculate about her with much interest. She was head and shoulders above them in her work; that they all felt and most of them admitted. It would have been difficult to do otherwise, with the faculty treating her as a genius given into their developing care. Miss Van Nest had chosen surgery as her life-work, and Dr. Lincoln, the famous consulting surgeon of the clinic attached to the college, made no secret of the fact that he regarded her as a phenomenon. He invariably selected her as one of his assistants in operations, and made curt, illuminative comments to her as the work progressed. He had even been heard to warn her not to study too hard—a caution rarely given by the great doctor, who held the days all too short for the things to be done in them. Notwithstanding this warning, she continued to work eighteen hours of the twenty-four. There were no distractions, for she had few acquaintances and no intimates. Several times a year she left the city for a few days, and it became known in some mysterious way that she spent them in a distant convent with a former teacher to whom she was devoted, and who continued to exercise great influence over her. It was whispered that she had been led to adopt surgery as a profession by the advice of this cloister friend. Dr. Lincoln sniffed openly when the surmise came to his ears.
"She will be a surgeon because she was born one," he said. "She has the brain, nerves, and hands for it." He loaded her with work, which she cheerfully accepted, and boasted to his colleagues about her, predicting that she would do great things.
She was graduated with honors which would have turned the head of one not so well poised. She did hospital work in Chicago for two years, and then went abroad for four more of supplementary training among the horrors of hospitals in great European cities. When she returned to her own country and established herself in New York, her fame had preceded her. Dr. Elizabeth Van Nest promptly took a place in the front rank of her profession, and enhanced the reputation already acquired by a series of brilliant operations. One of these was performed in Chicago, and while the newspapers were still full of the marvel of it, for the case was an unusual one and the patient a woman of national fame, the surgeon slipped away, leaving no address except in the patient's home.
"The convent again, I suppose," Dr. Lincoln reflected, dryly. "Hasn't she got over that habit yet? It is twelve years since she was graduated." Then his stern eyes softened. "If it's a weakness," he added, "it is her only one, and I wish she had more. She ought to have some strong human interest in her life."
Dr. Lincoln was fond as well as proud of his brilliant pupil.
Dr. Van Nest's heart felt no such need as she rang the convent bell on the afternoon of her arrival in the city of her girlhood. She looked up lovingly at the cold, gray walls, and a film came over the eyes usually keen and steady rather than soft. The familiar little portress of years ago opened the door, and her shy exclamation of recognition and delight was music to the doctor's ears.
"I had no time to write to Reverend Mother," she explained as she entered the little reception-room. "I came West unexpectedly, and did not know until last night that I would be able to leave Chicago to-day. But surely she will permit me to see Sister Estelle without delay. Please tell her that I am here, Sister, and that I am—heart-hungry."
The portress hesitated. "I am sure you may see her, Miss Van Nest—Doctor Van Nest, I mean. You see, we know all about you, even here, and we rejoice in your success. But you must be prepared for some change in Sister Estelle. She—she has not been well."
Dr. Van Nest grew a little indignant. "Why was I not informed?" she asked, quickly. The portress looked at her with a smile which deprecated the unconsciously assumed professional manner.
"It was Sister Estelle's own request that you should not know," she said, softly. "You were abroad, and she feared your anxiety, if you knew her condition, might interfere with your work. She believed there was no cause for anxiety. She knew you would come to see her as soon after your return to America as you could."
Dr. Van Nest became again the child of the convent. "Let me see her," she begged. "Let me see her at once—not behind the grating, but here, or in the garden, by ourselves. Please ask Reverend Mother."
The little portress departed, leaving the impatient visitor alone. Dr. Van Nest looked around her with a reminiscent smile. It was years since she had been in this particular wing of the great building, but nothing was changed. The same high polish shone on the waxed floor; the same chairs stood at precisely the same angles in the same corners; the same religious pictures hung on the walls; the same wax flowers stood on the same small table. There was the desk which the child Elizabeth Van Nest used to approach shaking in her little shoes, to be reprimanded for some childish mistake by the nun who sat there. Here at last there was a change. The nun was there no more. Dr. Van Nest recalled a line in one of Sister Estelle's letters, sent to her in Paris,
"Our dear Sister Raymond has found her reward."
It seemed a long time that she waited. When at last a step came along the hall, she rose and went forward in her impatience. It was the portress, alone, but she anticipated the words on the other's lips.
"I am to take you to the west parlor," she said. "Sister Estelle is not well enough to come to you here. She will see you there alone."
Dr. Van Nest followed her guide without a word. She kept close beside her as they walked through the halls, but the nooks and corridors where she had played as a child had now no memories for her. The gentle portress prattled on artlessly, but the visitor did not hear her words. Her mind was concentrated on the dread of what was to come. She paced the west parlor in a fever of foreboding. Then came a light step, slow and hesitating, but unmistakably the step she awaited, and Sister Estelle stood in the doorway, supported by the arm of Sister Rodriguez, the convent infirmarian. The doctor went forward without a word, took the slender, emaciated figure in her strong arms, and carried it to a reclining-chair. It was a pathetically light burden, though Sister Rodriguez looked with deep respect at the superbly formed woman who bore it, and who had won so enviable a position in the big world that the knowledge of it had penetrated even to the convent pharmacy. She went away and left them together, speechless, the visitor's dark head buried in Sister Estelle's lap.
"Oh, why—why did you not tell me?" she cried at last. The hand that lay on her lap trembled slightly.
"Why should I, dear?" the nun asked. "You could have done nothing—even you could have done nothing for me." There was a caress as well as a compliment in the words. "Weak lungs are not in your line of work. And I was so proud of you, so anxious for you to be the successful woman you are. It is a great gift you have, my dear child—this ability to relieve and save. I could not distract you in your work, as you would have been distracted if you had known. And now I am happy, for I have been permitted to remain until you came, and to see you again."
Dr. Van Nest kissed the thin hands without speaking. Rebellion was in her heart—rebellion against her own helplessness in the face of this disaster. The hollow voice, the bright spots in the cheeks, the brilliant eyes that shone like polished agate under the band of linen across the brow—all these things testified eloquently that Sister Estelle's "reward" was soon to come.
"Can you stay here with me until I go?" the nun asked, almost diffidently. "They have told me"—she hesitated—"that it will be but a short time. Reverend Mother has kindly given her permission for you to stay if your duties will permit."
"I will not leave you for a moment," said the other woman. She added, with an uncontrollable sob: "What shall I do, what can I do, without you? All my work has been for you—to please you. Your letters and your love have made me what I am. In every crisis of my life you have been with me; I could not have met them without you. I have come to you always, and you have never failed me. How can I live on alone?"
The sick woman looked at her with wet eyes. "Listen to me, my little girl," she said. "This may not be so great a separation as you think. The memory of me will always be with you, and you know whether I shall forget you when I am with God. You know how I would have you act. And if you have some time a peculiar, pressing need of me, perhaps I may be permitted to come to you. Our Lord may grant us this. Why not? When He gave you to me for all these years as the child of my heart." She bent forward and kissed the bowed head in her lap. "Remember," she said, softly. "I promise. If you need me, and if it is permitted me, I will come to you."
Dr. Van Nest, aged thirty-eight, stood at the window of her New York office and looked out at the falling snow. It was Christmas Day, but the season had little holiday significance for the famous surgeon. She had worked as usual, driving in her carriage from hospital to private house, and carrying from place to place with her the constant thought of a white face and a pair of pained, appealing eyes.
When she entered her house late in the evening the smiling maid had pointed to a varied assortment of packages, which had not yet been opened. Large boxes, with the names of prominent florists on their covers, breathed sweetly of the love of friends. Telegrams and notes were piled high on her desk. She unwrapped several of the packages, and her lips set a little grimly over the cards that accompanied them.
"From your grateful patient," she read. "With the deepest appreciation of all your kindness," ran another. "To the dear doctor to whom I owe my merry Christmas," was the inscription of a third. She dropped them with a sigh, looked out of the window, and then, with her characteristic walk, began pacing up and down the long room, her hands clasped behind her and her forehead puckered with thought and anxiety.
"The doctor's worried over some case," the maid reported to the cook. "I can always tell when she's anxious."
Dr. Van Nest's footsteps on the polished floor echoed rather inharmoniously in the large room. On the hearth a bright fire sparkled, but its cheery invitation did not lure her from her restless tramp. Before her there were al ways the same pale face and dark eyes pathetically full of love and trust. The doctor uttered a sigh that was almost a groan as she at last sank into a chair before the grate and looked into the glowing coals. They formed at once into the outlines of the haunting face.
"I am going to lose that case," she thought, forebodingly. "And I'm going to have a nervous collapse, too," she continued, with grim conviction. "I never felt like this before. I have no confidence in myself. I am as nervous as an hysterical school-girl. And how she trusts me!"
She sat brooding dully for a moment.
"I can't feel as I want to about her case. Is there something I don't foresee?" she went on, putting the situation before herself with rigid truthfulness. "Lincoln agrees with me. So does Dr. Vandeveer. Still, I cannot help feeling there is something under it all that none of us grasps. There is this sense of some unappreciated element in the case which always comes up whenever I think of it. And I—am to operate on her to-morrow. She trusts me as if I were infallible!"
She threw back her head with an air of rebellious hopelessness. Before her came the picture of the patient as she had looked during the preliminary examination of the day before. She had come out of the ether repeating a portion of the Apostles Creed.
"I believe in God, the Father Almighty," she had murmured; then, suddenly, "And I believe in Dr. Van Nest, too; oh, I do believe in her. I believe in Elizabeth."
The consulting surgeons had smiled irresistibly, the little incident revealed so fully the discussion that must have been waged in the patient's home. Her friends had urged a man surgeon for the operation. But Dr. Van Nest had been conscious of an unfamiliar lump in her throat. For the first time in her professional experience she was not feeling sure of herself. She wondered whether the patient had felt it, and whether these lynx-eyed male colleagues had any suspicion of it. Her strong white hands were as steady and as deft as ever, but she felt her heart sink. Was she to fail now, for the first time, and on this friend of her heart—this friend who had come, it seemed to her, to fill the place of Sister Estelle, dead these eight years? The sufferer would permit no one but her to operate. This life, so dear to her and to others, lay in her hands—and for the first time in her experience she shrank from the responsibility. She felt suddenly cold, and held her hand to the blaze. It shook visibly. Dr. Van Nest sprang to her feet with an exclamation of anger.
"Fool that I am," she said. "I am letting myself go to pieces. I shall be in fine condition for to-morrow's work." Her eyes filled with sudden, rare tears. "She is the only being I love," she breathed, "and I am going to lose her. First, Sister Estelle. And now she must go—and under my hands at that."
Her thoughts flew to the grave in the convent cemetery out West, marked by a simple pine board darkened by the storms of many seasons. A childlike longing for the familiar touch and voice, so dear in the years gone by, overwhelmed her. She felt like the panic-stricken little girl of thirty years ago—the child who had been calmed and cheered by a white hand and a soft, reassuring voice.
"I will be near you, dear, " repeated the doctor, sadly. "If she could be near me to day, she would pull me out of this condition I'm allowing myself to get into. Oh, for a moment with her here and now!"
She looked up almost expectantly, as if she had uttered the words of an incantation. The little clock ticked steadily on the mantel, the fire crackled on the hearth, and the wind of December sang its elfish song at the windows. That was all.
She resolutely pulled herself together and rang the bell. Night had fallen, and lights were flashing from the windows of the neighboring houses.
"Bring me something to eat, and then I am going to bed," she said, when the maid appeared. "I must have a good night's sleep—if I can."
She seemed to have slept for a very short time, when she awoke with every sense alert. It was yet night, but through the large windows hygienically open at the top she could see the pearl-gray shadows that preceded dawn. On the hearth the fire burned low, but each object in the room was distinct in the dim light. The clock ticked cheerily. She could not quite distinguish its face across the room, but as she strained her eyes in the effort it struck five.
It was not usual for her to wake at this hour, but she experienced no surprise or annoyance. Instead, she was conscious of a vague but trustful responsiveness. She let her eyes roam slowly around the room, and smiled to herself. Fear and unrest had left her; she felt composed, wholly at peace. She threw back the covering and sat up. As she did so a soft hand touched her own. It was years since she had felt it, but she recognized it at once, and with out the slightest shock or fear her mind adapted itself to the experience. She turned quickly and saw Sister Estelle standing at the side of the bed. She was a little in shadow, but her tall figure in the sombre habit of her order was clearly defined, and under the white band across her brow her dark eyes shone luminously. The smile with which she met the doctor's eyes was the old sweet smile of long ago—loving, reassuring, and touched now with a peaceful gratitude which her first words explained.
"You are glad to see me," she said, quietly—"and you are not afraid."
The doctor put the hand to her lips and held it there. It was firm and cool, and there was the same velvety texture which the school-girl of twenty years ago had secretly admired. She echoed the other's words.
"Afraid, Sister?" she said. "Of you? Never in the world. My heart is too full of love and gratitude."
She bent nearer to the other as she spoke, but as she did so the nun's figure drew slightly away. The movement did not hurt her. She understood, and there could be no thought of disappointment in the presence of that steadfast, loving smile. She sank back on the pillow with a sigh of perfect content and happiness.
"You have come," she murmured. "You said you would, and I have looked for you all these years since you left me."
"You did not need me before. You thought you did at times," added the nun, "but you did not. Could you think that I would fail when the hour came? You need me now, and I am here."
"Tell me of yourself," begged the doctor.
The Sister shook her head. "That I am here, through God's mercy, tells you that all is well with me. I have come to tell you what you need to know—things that will help you," she said. "You have reached a crisis in your career. To-morrow will be the turning-point. If you had failed in the case of your friend, you would have turned morbid and introspective; you would have lost confidence in yourself. You will not fail. I have come to tell you so. The case is as you have diagnosed it, with the one additional element which you have dimly felt throughout, but could not place. You had a similar case in Paris—Madame Bertrand's. You made notes of it at the time. They are in the lowest left-hand drawer of your desk, hidden under old newspapers and clippings. They will give you the key to the situation."
Dr. Van Nest drew a long breath. "I have it now," she cried. "This is almost the same case. They are so rare, it is odd that I should have two of them in my experience, but not as strange as that the recollection of the other should not have come to my tormented mind. I remember the other one perfectly."
The scientific interest of the discovery obscured for a moment the full realization of the strange experience through which she was passing. Sister Estelle resumed:
"The operation will be a success," she said. 
"'YOU ARE GLAD TO SEE ME?'"
Dr. Van Nest threw out imploring hands. "Do not leave me yet," she begged. "How shall I know in the morning that it was not all a dream? How can I tell then that you truly came to me as you promised, and that it was not a fantasy of the night?"
Sister Estelle smiled. "To-morrow you will find your note-book. That will supply what you need. But that you may know the sweetness of our Lord in letting me come as I promised, you shall have an unmistakable sign that I was here. Peace be with you."
The clock chimed the quarter, and Dr. Van Nest looked wide-eyed at the place where the nun had been. The coals in the grate had turned to ashes. The gray of the eastern sky was quickening into light. Through the open windows came sounds of the awakening city, the blowing of distant whistles, the rumble of wheels borne in on the cold, bracing air of the day that was just born. Some were already at their work. Dr. Van Nest closed her eyes, sank back among her pillows, and fell asleep to prepare herself for hers as she had been told.
It was late when she awoke, and she had to dress and breakfast rapidly to keep several morning appointments. She was almost herself—quick, alert, clear-eyed. She pushed resolutely into her mental background the memory of the night's experience. This was the close of the nineteenth century, and she was a fin de siècle product. Visions could hardly be taken more seriously than to gather from them such comfort as they might yield. She smiled and sighed at the same time as she entered her library at two that afternoon. She had to go to her friend's house at three to perform the operation, but in the interval she would look in the old desk that held the accumulated notes of years, and see what her note-book said. Her hand trembled a little as she unlocked the lowest left-hand drawer.
Far back in the corner, dust-covered and hidden under some French journals, was the forgotten note-book. But this was broad daylight, and the life of the great city was going on outside of her library windows. It had merely been a logical trick of memory, she reflected, that had brought the thought of the book to her while she slept, and had connected it with Sister Estelle.
She sat down and plunged into its record. Yes. Here was the case of Madame Bertrand. She read with close attention, absorbed in the purely scientific interest of the subject. Suddenly she gave a little gasp of satisfaction, and made two or three notes. Her dream, if a perplexing psychical freak, had proved a profitable aid, and it was sweet to have dreamed of Sister Estelle as coming to her in her need.
A wave of perfume—sweet, heavy, full of memories, was borne in upon her sense. She looked up wonderingly and inhaled it deeply. The air was perfumed richly with mignonette. There was none in the room, none on the desk, none in the old note-book she was reading. No mignonette was near her that cold December day.
She went to the window and leaned forth. The perfume failed her utterly. It did not come from without. From somewhere in her room it rose in such a whiff as she had not known for years. There had been a great bed of it in the convent garden; it was Sister Estelle's favorite flower.
Sister Estelle's favorite flower!
Dr. Van Nest's heart gave a great leap. The perfume was still with her and around her. Her nostrils and lungs were full of it—as full as they had been the day Sister Estelle had been laid away in a grave which the doctor's own hands had lined with the simple flower the dead nun loved.
For one moment she was rigidly motionless, her mind working, not feverishly, but with intense activity. It had been no dream! Sister Estelle had really come to her in the hour of her trying need, as she had promised. Here was the sign which was to convince her how peculiar a privilege she had been accorded in that personal visit of her old convent guardian. It brought a certainty as great as Dr. Van Nest had ever known in her life.
She rose to her feet and stood erect, her eyes shining, a beaming confidence written on her face. She looked at her watch. Quarter of three! With swift despatch she threw on her coat, drew on her gloves, and put on her hat. Then, with a quick, long breath, she grasped firmly her surgeon's case, walked briskly to the door and flung it open. It closed after her with a sharp click.