SISTER SERAPHINE
We were sitting upon the terrace of Château Châteauroux in the early evening—the old Comtesse M——, Mischna Stepanoff, and myself. It was the time of the first soft warmth of spring. Two blossoming fruit trees beside us were sweet ghosts in the early night. About them white butterflies fluttered.
In the west there were great piled clouds edged with a pink as rare and as wonderful as that which Watteau created for his frail creatures of joy. And this pink was reflected in soft broken ribbons in the gently moving surface of the Loire.
“What a night for love!” sighed Mischna Stepanoff, in whose life the passion had played no unimportant part.
“Yes,” I replied, “love and youth and spring; they are earth’s immortal trinity.”
“That reminds me of a story—a true story—of spring and youth and love,” sighed reminiscently the old Comtesse, who had been a famous beauty in her day.
“Tell it to us,” urged Mischna Stepanoff. “Next to being in love oneself is the pleasure of listening to the stories of other people who have been in love.”
“But I feel that I cannot do justice to it,” objected the old Comtesse. “It is a story for the pen of Maupassant, who wrote of the tress of hair. It might have been included among the pagan and Oriental dreams of Gautier, or such fragile and dainty reminiscences of youth as De Nerval occasionally indulged in. What could I do with a fancy like that?”
“Tell it, anyway,” we insisted.
“Well, what I lack, your own greater imaginative skill must supply,”—smiling and waving deprecatingly toward us a tiny jeweled hand.
“It is the strangest, the most interesting story in the world. And it is true.
“Over there where the hills step aside to make room for the passing of the Loire, is the ruin of a convent which you have probably noticed. In my youth it was inhabited by Les Sœurs Blanches, a well-conducted and aristocratic order of nuns, who educated the daughters of the old noblesse.
“One day I paid a visit there and for the first time saw Sister Seraphine. She was about eighteen then, I should judge, although she had already taken the final vows. I was at once attracted by her face and her strange beauty. The upper part of the face—the brow, the eyes, the nose—were those of an ascetic, a dreamer, an intellectual. The brow was nobly formed and broad; the nose chastely chiseled and modeled to an artist’s taste; and the eyes were the spiritual gray-blue of the mystic. The eyes were very beautiful, too—mistily humid, like the valley of our Loire here on a morning of spring.
“But the mouth! How can I tell you what it was like! There will never be another in the world like it. In its color alone there were hidden all the sins of earth. Such a color might have been born from the conflagration of a world, or in the feverish brain of some sightless dreamer. In its curves there was all the resistless languor of a mediæval mondaine, or a voluptuous Roman woman who had idled in the villas of Baiæ. Imagine, if you will, such a mouth beneath that ascetic brow! It was the cause of her undoing, too—and her ruin.
“It contradicted the rest of her face so sharply that it was as if she were two persons in one. It threw the beholder into a sort of stupefaction. It made him feel as if he had stumbled awkwardly upon some unguarded secret. It was that rarest of all features—a perfect mouth! And yet, perchance, I think its perfection was a trifle over-accented. It was, I think, a shade too red, too alluring, too sensuous. It was a veritable Cupid’s bow set about with mocking dimples that changed like light on the mobile surface of the Loire.
“No one could have known less of the world than Sister Seraphine. She had been placed with Les Sœurs Blanches when she was four years old. And she had never once left their sheltering care. She was of noble blood, too, although the bar sinister blackened her birth record. On her father’s side, it was whispered, she came of that royal blood of old France that had never known the meaning of fear. And her mother was the gay Comtesse of Marny.
“Now in all her young life Sister Seraphine had never seen a man except the village priests and those who sat on Sundays beyond the grating in the church. Think of it! Can you even imagine such a condition! Every holiday and fête day before her final vows were taken, plans had been made to give her an outing in the great world, to introduce her to that society to which by birth she belonged. But, some way or other, each time the plans miscarried. Some other person’s welfare and happiness intervened, had to be considered first. The result was that she had never left the convent walls.
“Shortly after this first visit of mine, the Duchesse de St. Loisy presented to the convent two long mirrors for the reception room. About this same time Sister Seraphine was put in charge of the room to receive guests and the relatives of the jeunes demoiselles on visiting days. Callers at the convent were not very frequent in those days. Traveling facilities were not what they have come to be since, so Sister Seraphine was left alone for hours in the great room.
“Here she acquired the habit of looking at herself in one of the mirrors. At first eyes stared blankly back at eyes. She could not see herself. It is difficult, always, to get acquainted with oneself. That to me, Mischna Stepanoff, has been one of the pleasures of living—to find within me things that I did not dream were there. Sister Seraphine after a while discovered her mouth. She was surprised, as you may imagine. It was as if it were the mouth of some strange unknown person who dwelled within her. It was—the other—made visible!
“Soon she sensed, rather than reasoned, that it was in harmony with the fragrant creative spring outside; that she was part of an universal nature that lived and laughed. It seemed to her that even in repose her mouth laughed. It was like the pagan sunshine, which always laughed. She became interested in her mouth. She became fascinated with the many things that it expressed, with its color, its flexibility, and its capacity for joyous sensation, if by chance she touched it to a flower.
“One night, just before she closed and left the great room for the night, she leaned long by the mirror’s edge looking up at the stars through a near-by window. They were merry that night, the stars. It was spring, which is youth in the world, and they laughed. They laughed so gayly, so alluringly, that she turned impulsively and kissed her own mouth in the mirror.
“For days after this Sister Seraphine was meditative and beyond her habit thoughtful. She could not look at the mirrors. Her cheeks flushed with shame. She felt disgraced and dishonored. Every time she was obliged to pass by the great mirrors, she carefully turned her eyes away.
“During these days it seemed as if Spring, like a bandit, broke through the ponderous convent walls. Its murmur and its mystery and its fragrance and its buoyant life were everywhere. They poured invisibly through the somber, painted windows. They swept enticingly down the long bare halls. All night they sang beneath the casements of the penitential chambers. They awoke with the first penetrating sweetness of the dawn.
“Each morning, in the opening flower cups, Sister Seraphine found other mouths that looked like hers. She saw there the same desirous, satiny lips. The same brilliant color burned upon them, the same dewy ripeness. One night, unable to sleep, so many and so mighty were the voices that called her, she got up softly and tiptoed down the long bare corridors to the reception room. It was not ever really night anywhere that spring, it seems to me as I recall it. The frail gray shadows of summer made instead a sort of semi-day.
“She knelt down on the floor in front of one of the mirrors. There she saw a white face under an aureole of short gold hair, two eyes that shone like stars, and a mouth that was red as a wound. Again she kissed it. When she crept back to her room, she found it lonelier than before. Something, she knew not what, was missing. The world was empty. Some joy had gone out of life.
“The next day she asked for permission to see Father Richards, the aged priest of the parish.
“‘Father,’ she began, ‘you know that I have never left the convent walls, do you not?’
“‘Yes, my daughter.’
“‘You know that I have known no other home.’
“‘Yes, my daughter.’
“‘That I have read only my breviary and the books of the saints. And yet, Father, I have sinned, sinned grievously—’
“‘How, my daughter?’
“‘I have kissed—’
“‘Kissed?’
“‘Yes, Father. I have kissed a mouth, because I wanted to; because it was red and sweet, like the flowers outside in the spring.’
“‘What! You say—Explain, my daughter!’ said the aged priest, greatly puzzled.
“‘I kissed my own mouth, Father. I kissed it in the mirror, not once, Father, but twice. And I am not sorry. It gave me pleasure, Father. Were not mouths made to kiss? And the pleasure was not that which I have felt when I kissed the white feet of the Virgin. And I am not sorry, Father.’
“‘It is your youth, my daughter; spring, too, in the blood. You must pray and fast—especially fast. That will subdue evil.’
“‘No, Father. I think differently. I will not. I am going away. The great mirrors in the drawing-room there have shown me my mouth, Father. And it has told me of another life—a life to which I belong! Do you know what made it so red, so wonderful, so faultless, Father, this mouth of mine? It was the splendid, free, pleasure-loving, tempestuous lives that they lived who made me. There is not in this mouth of mine one servile curve, one penitential or humiliating line, one touch of pleading or regret. Although I have not seen them, I know that it must have been a great race that bore me. They did not even leave me a name to which I have a just claim. But right here, on my mouth, Father, they set the red seal of their pleasures, their aristocratic arrogance, their fearlessness, and their power.
“‘I can see the life they lived! I can see it all—through the days and the nights and the years. A regal life it was, in great moat-encircled castles, amid clash of steel, cries of joy and triumph and music and the madness of power.
“‘I can see the white glorious faces of the women they loved, framed in fluttering and triumphant banners.
“‘Think of the kisses given by brave men to the lips of beautiful women! Think of the banquets and the feasting in great halls, where a thousand candles flickered over satins and silks and gems and laces and smooth shoulders and lustrous hair! Think of the wine they drank in those long, long nights of revelry—wine that had treasured up and kept the sweetness of a thousand springs; think of the songs, the laughter, the dance, the jests! Think of the resounding hunt across fields vivid with spring; the inspiriting call of the horns, the tossing of plumes, the eyes afire with joy!
“‘Think of their daring and their high-hearted days when they cheerfully placed life in the balance, to weigh against a kiss! Think of the strength that took whatsoever it wanted, regardless of results; that flung defiance in the face of Fate!
“‘This mouth, Father, told all this to me. This mouth is their message to me.
“‘Do you know what has happened, Father? The strangest, the most unbelievable, the most preposterous thing in the world! I have been seduced by my own mouth! A miracle! A miracle of earth, not of heaven, Father—by my own mouth!
“‘I am going away, too, Father, now.’
“And right there, before the feeble and astonished old man, she tore off her hood and the bindings of her brow, and went out into the spring that was waiting for her—across the fields, and away. Think of the audacity, the power of decision, the strong, quick-working will that nothing could enfeeble!
“You have both heard of Madame X——, have you not, who had such a genius for life and luxury, whose sables the Tzaritza envied, who had at her feet half the desirable men of France? She was Sister Seraphine.”
“Every one has a right to happiness, do you not think so?” exclaimed Mischna Stepanoff, the joy of her own lost youth leaping to her eyes.