The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 31 July 1913, Page 5

The Storyteller

our OF THE DESERT Mrs. Graham awoke from a- pleasant slumber, looked once around her, closed her eyes and shuddered. All her pretty life had been passed amid scenes of beauty, where roses bloomed always, and the sun shone, and merry voices prattled like brooks in the wildwood. Her eyes had avoided the unlovely things of life; her feet had tripped on velvet ; many servants had smoothed the roughness out of life, and . a wealthy husband had travelled about the earth for scenes and climates suited to the delicate body and amiable whims of the woman he loved. Her beautiful children loved her; her friends were legion, youth still abode with her; and yet Fate had suddenly whisked them all away from her feeble hands, and had landed her in the desert of Arizona, the only place where for a time death might be held at bay, the wise medical men declared. In the dry climate of the desert there was a chance that her broken health might mend. Every other place refused to receive her except to die, and Lily Graham with all the strength of her spoiled nature was determined to cheat death. Never would- she have set foot in this desolate place but for the persistent declaration of the specialist that the Arizona desert around Tucson held her one chance of safety. She was failing so fast then that a week’s delay might deprive her even of that chance. She must depart within the hour, with all speed; and, for a wonder, she caught from his tone, her husband’s distress, and other signs, the necessity for quick submission. Everything was abandoned in the flight. Her bright world faded in a night, as if it had never been; and the desert, simple, gray, infinite, and terrible, swallowed her like a monster. No pen could follow the changes of feeling and thought in such a mind after such a disaster, and give them proper expression. From the palace she had stepped to the sanatorium, from the company of princes to that of the maimed and the disfigured. There had been no time to engage a house and servants, the hotels would not receive such a patient, so there was nothing left but the general institution for the time being. As it would be only for a brief stay, she even urged upon her husband the fitness of the place, and sent him

back home to look after the children. In utter despair, in black despondency, she felt that nothing worse could happen to her, alone and solitary. She was almost at the bottom of the abyss. The experience was something like death itself, which deprives us of everything. . Being a pious woman in a frivolous. way—that is, she had never thought anything about it, simply following the usual forms, —she prayed a little for speedy deliverance from her situation. Her one strength was, the certainty that the Arizona air would cure her, with some criticism for the doctors who were unable to recommend a more respectable place than a desert. She looked at it the first day with contempt, and never looked again intentionally. Her chief duty was to breathe the healing air; so she breathed and read, and ate and drank mechanically. Once in a while she wondered why such things could happen, why her life had vanished, what was the meaning of the life around her. But there were no .answers to such speculations. Sleep soothed her with forgetfulness, and at every waking she shuddered at the thought of what was out there beyond her. It was the desert. Occasionally Sister Thomassina shut out that view, as sho did on this occasion. Mrs. Graham did not like her special attendant, who was inclined to conversation; and liked to Chirrup to her patients. Mrs. Graham disliked chirruping, unless ordered by herself, from an exclusive chirruper. Sister Thomassina had used her skill on all sorts of people, and had probably just come from cheering up a dying person. What a terrible thought! So she closed her eyes again, to shut out the desert and the thought together. Sister Thomassina had just discussed Mrs Graham’s case with the medical man, and had decided that something must be done to lift her out of the darkness in which the poor creature lived. * Even il>l have to quarrel with her ; and that would be almost a sin, she is so beautiful, so gentle, and yet so hopeless,’ the Sister observed to her superior. ‘ I can suggest a better way than that,’ said the superior. ‘ She has been here a full week, —all the time you need to spoil a patient. Just leave, her for a day to Sister Clare, and she will wake up to the situation.’ ‘ I don’t think she would notice the change. Certainly she -would make no complaint about it. No: she is of the kind that will die without saying a word, so horrified is she at the calamity which has happened to her.’ The superior made a gesture of despair and went her way. All patients had their whims, and methods of dealing with whims were a useless discussion. Sister Thomassina looked down on the sleeping Mrs. Graham, rearranged her covering, and said soothingly : You should not be so timid about looking at the desert. One should always try to find the sweet in the bitter. Easy enough to find the bitter in the sweet; not so easy to do the other, and yet it’s there. I found it so, and many others besides. Some think the sweetness which comes out of bitterness is the best.’ Mrs. Graham opened her eyes with something like scorn in their blue depths, but she smiled at the Sister’s persistence. 1 One must find a philosophy to suit circumstances,’ she said. ‘ When all is darkness, the last match becomes priceless. I am not afraid to look at the desert, but I am not attracted. Like my life, there is nothing in it.’ ‘ Happy for you, indeed,’ said the Sister, ‘ if your life has as much in it as the desert. If you can give as much to man as this gray plain gives every day your life may well be called happy and rich.’ A trifle provoked, Mrs. Graham sat up on her couch and looked out over the dry expanse, glistening under the afternoon sun. Miles away rose a noble range of mountains, majestic as giant" kings of the hoary past turned to stone. They seemed to be seated there like watchers of the desert. On the plain between were visible the roofs and spires of a little city, and a road ran out of it toward the sanatorium— a road which crossed a stream, and had a border of trees large enough to defy the whirling dust of the deserts. Bits of green dotted the gray waste. Close at hand was the

convent garden, in which grew cactus and things without; other beauty than, their color. Even that was dimmed by the envious sand. ‘ * I have heard that the Esquimaux love the icy North,’ said Mrs. Graham, and will live nowhere else. But I have seen Italy and the mountains of Greece ; and a desert is nothing more than a desert, after all.’ ‘ Yet see what courage and faith and hope _ and love have made out of it/. replied the Sister. ‘ What must it have been before the town came, and the railroad, and this retreat! With their coming, the poor Indians of the district became farmers and gave up their wild life. Here the sick find health, a longer life, and many other blessings. The good work is going on" all the time. You see only the sand and tho big mountains, and turn your eyes from the jewels which they conceal.’ ‘ I suppose so/ said the lady, indifferently. But she smiled as she lay back to sleep again; and Sister Thomassina went away with the satisfaction of -having turned her thoughts into a healthier channel. Mrs. Graham understood very well what was meant. She really must take some interest in the life around her, dull as it looked; and show herself a sociable being, in her own behalf. One needs the stimulus of human companionship. It would be dreadful to mingle with the patients, to see the work of caring for them, to encounter the human riffraff of the vicinity; but, after all, one must really learn to find the sweet in the bitter. She had really been nursing a bad temper, spoiling her own sunny disposition, even delaying her recovery, her return to life and beauty and home and children. Sho must do better, and, become not merely courageous but cheerful. The little world of the sanatorium was in a state of mild surprise the next few days by the frequent appearance of the lady and her amiability. She came and went simply, and chatted pleasantly with her nearest neighbor, as if the general conditions were the most natural in the world. Encountering the Rev. Mother in the skimpy garden, she complimented her on the beauty of the situation. Mother Fidelia was a tall, spare woman, whose years sat lightly on her, and who looked as if she might live forever in just this fashion. ‘ The old Bishop who chose the spot/ said she in answer to the compliment, ‘ lived in this little palace. We use it now for a storehouse.’ Mrs. Graham looked at the adobe shack which had sheltered a Bishop for years, and became confused. ‘ It is difficult to connect a Bishop with such a little shed.’ ‘ One would never have known him to be a Bishop,’ the superior went on. ‘He mended his own clothes and made his own shoes, besides doing his own carpentering, painting, and so on. He was a desert Bishop. He built the hospital here. Wo added the convent and the sanatorium, and wo are very proud of them.’ * You have good reason to be, although I have seen finer institutions,’ said Mrs. Graham. ‘ But a rose in the desert is more wonderful and beautiful than the rose in the king’s garden.’ ‘Just so, my dear! Come inside and see how the place is managed.’ Although she shrank from intimacy with the hospital details, shuddering at the mere hint of what she might see, the lady followed the nun into the kitchen region and was properly guided through its intricacies. As it was partly underground, built in the old-fashioned -way, the Sisters worked in semi-darkness; but no fault, could be found with the cheerfulness of the workers, the neatness and order, the sweet odors of the place. And I must introduce to you the good genius of the institution/ said Mother Fidelia, —‘the Sister who arranges the meal trays for all our patients. Sister Antonia, Mrs. Graham. Without her skill and taste wo should all be in a bad way indeed.’ ‘ I have been in the business long enough to have learned something/ Sister Antonia said modestly. Twenty years every day have I worked here, and not even a headache in all that time, thank God t . ‘And your work looks so pretty!’ Mrs. Graham said. 1 I laughed the first day so many pretty things on one tray, and nothing seemed crowded,’

, * Sho knows by instinct, every trick of . appetite in every patient/ said Mother Fidelia. ‘ There is nothing like practice to develop good. qualities. ; - ' ' - t. - - When they came into the open again, and were standing 'on the verandah, Mrs. Graham was still wondering over th% daily task of Sister Antonia. ‘ Twenty years in this desert/ said she half to herself, ‘ and twenty years in that little cave, and twenty years of fitting out trays of food for the whimsical sick—-’ ‘ And not even a headache in 'all that time, thank God!’ the superior interposed. ‘Pardon me for interrupting you with Sister Antonia’s phrase, but it means for her, not only good health, but a love for her work and her place in life, which you can not understand.’ .Mrs. Graham sat down to think of things rather foreign to her habit. Twenty years at one task, in one place, in this desert. And a nature as cheerful and active as a summer garden. No trace of grief, bitterness, or regret. While she herself, 'after a life of ease, luxury, elegance, pleasure, travel, and a thousand other things, grovelled in despair. Her past gave her no consolation/ her present offered her only pain and despair; her possessions were a, useless .burden. This desert alone, which she had ridiculed and' despised, had the power to help her. She looked at it steadily as one looks into the face of a homely friend and benefactor, whose kind heart has just revealed itself in the homely face. The sun was setting, , and her moist eyes could see the amethystine mist which filled the air finer in tint than the misty green of an Eastern spring, inexpressibly touching and beautiful. ‘ Isn’t it beautiful?’ remarked a voice close by. She nodded in silence to a young fellow, plump and handsome, who was standing there, smiling in sympathy with her own mood, ‘ It is the first time that I have seen it.’ ‘ I must have been here a full, month before I discovered the strange beauty of the desert,’ he replied. ‘ Coming from old Virginia, the place looked like what some one called itthe land God forgot. But now that it has given me life, I find, more beauty in it than in the green fields of the East.’ ‘ Life is surely a great gift,’ she said ‘and its giver should be deeply loved. You—are going back to Virginia?’ m ‘ No; I shall remain here, where life is certain. I am young; but I know as well as an old man that life without health is unbearable, in Virginia or elsewhere. So I remain.’ He went off down the road to the town, whistling, .his sombrero tilted gaily on his jaunty head, his step as gay as a dancer’s. Truly the desert gives life, as Sister Thomassina had said; and even wisdom in addition, for this young man was wise. Deep thoughts stirred in .her bosom, —too deep, indeed, for her trifling nature, but full of benefit. Day by day her nature deepened into strength. Sweet it had always been, but trifling and pettish and thoughtless. Somehow, that far infinite of sand and the grim sentinel mountain provoked in her thoughts of the stern realities of life. She began to realise that people are laboring, suffering, - dying throughout the great desert of the world; they had to be helped, nursed, consoled, strengthened; and Sister Thomassina and Mother Fidelia and Sister Clare and their companions were doing the work which sho had always avoided even in thought. Like the pagan, she had insisted that there should be no pain, no shadow, no thorns in life, only the joy and the sunshine and the roses, —a fool’s dream, which would not have mattered but that it had wrought injustice to others and misery to herself. Resolutely she set out to see every part of the hospital, and to hear the details of its everyday life, the struggle of its foundation. Mother Fidelia had all these things in her heart and mind, and told them to the woman, about to awake in this pretty creature, without mincing matters. It was a hard story, but full of sweetness. This strong woman had not only wrung success from the desert (which was comparatively easy), but she had interested the unfeeling world, which leaves its foolish 'disciples to die alone when their health and money ate gone'. In that struggle she had acquired the

fibre of the soldier and the merchant, without losing the tenderness of the woman and the sweetness of the faith. Calm and solid as the mountains in the distance, she watched, not over the desert, but over deserted, desolate, lonely humankind. ‘ One must look close and deep to see things,’ the poor lady sighed to herself, as all her past folly rose up before her. ‘ I thought these people commonplace, and they are pure gold. I thought this desert horrible, and it is more lovely than the Riviera.’ She was looking at it one morning at dawn, toward the west, while yet the sun was hidden. A heavy dew had fallen during the night and washed the hills and the plain clean of the dust. The moisture dropped from the cactus plants and sparkled in the foliage of the trees. The hills to the west had lost their grey tones, and looked like olive-green velvet, soft, sweet, inviting, peaceful—a pathway to the sky. What depth of color ! Dressing hastily, she ran out to see the vast plain toward the east, which now lay before her as delicately colored as the eye of a painter could desire. It was ravishing. And everywhere a solemn peace and silence, as tense as if the scene were awaiting the voice of an archangel. No murmur of the wind, no rushing of waters, no sound of human life, hardly the note of a bird, breathed in the ear; and yet so eloquent the silver sky, the tinted plain, the majestic face of the mountains, that one expected suddenly a, solemn burst of harmony as from a cathedral choir. * We are both breaking the rules, I think,’ said a voice near; ‘ but I just had to come out and see.’ ‘ You have been up some time, Sister Lucia ; have you not?’ ‘ The poor boy in the county ward had a bad spell, and I said the prayers for him. But he is better. He will live a little longer like myself.’ Mrs. Graham shuddered, and yet smiled on the little nun who talked so lightly about death. ‘ Have you no hope at all, Sister?’ ‘ None whatever, although I look fairly well and can get around better than most. The doctor told me as soon as I arrived that the desert would do nothing for me. I am only waiting to die.’ ‘And the boy in the county ward?’ the lady ventured. ‘He may live a-week. Such a fellow, so resigned, and so utterly alone!’ ‘I would like to see him.’ ‘ Let us go down after breakfast. He will be so glad; for he likes visitors.’ Mrs. Graham felt that it was the last straw, but she followed Sister Lucia into the county ward bravely, after learning that here the poor were housed at the charge of the county, that there really was no room for them, but Mother Fidelia had accented them in charity, lest they die in the road, and that they were quite happy to ‘get decent shelter and care. The patients were mostly half-breeds and Mexicans, poorest of the poor, ruder than the stones on the hill ; and among them sat the white boy, smiling even with the death-dew on his white face, comfortable and joyous as a college youth in his room, fie had good manners and thanked the ladies for their visit. ‘ I am so sorry for you,’ Mrs. Graham said. ‘ Sister tells me that you are quite alone in the world.’ ‘ The very last of the family, m’am; and we were a big family, and all died young. I’m glad that they’re gone. They’re safe anyway, and I don’t have to worry about any one but myself. And I’m happy and content. Once I thought I’d have to die in the road. It feels so good to have a bed and a roof and care, and people around you, and things to eat, and visitors, that I can die just happy. I’m not worrying about what I haven’t got. I’m just hugging all "the good things I have.’ ‘ It is good to die among friends,’ said Sister Lucia. ‘ So good that I don’t mind when I go.’ Then he demanded of Mrs. Graham, in a boyish way, the story of her travels, of the wonderful places which she had seen, and listened- in rapture to her account of an audience with the Pope ; and when she described how she had held the hand of the Pontiff and

kissed his beautiful ring, the lad reached out his hand shyly, saying:, ‘ May i touch the hand which touched his She took the cold, wasted, delicate hand in her two and held it a little while, without a thought of contamination. While they were chatting, the cheery Virginian boy came in, and later the superior herself, and then Sister Thornassina, each with a kind word for the simple-hearted sufferer and for one another. Mrs. Graham held back her sobs. They had all come from the ends of the earth, strangers. She was rich and these were poor; she had been the idler, and these were the workers; her path had been among the roses, and theirs among the thorns, when it should have been otherwise ; and misfortune and love had assembled them about the deathbed of a poor boy, to learn the great lessons of God. Strong lights indeed rose up out of this desert to guide its children. * After having looked straight into the face of Death, Mrs. Graham found herself wonderfully strengthened ; and out of the bitterness of her lot she had tasted a sweetness hitherto unknown,the sweetness of strength. She knew now, with the poet, how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong. / . And all at once the hospital became a delight to her, ' and the desert a great charm. She interested herself in the of hospital lire, and made the acquaintance of the inmates, travelling along the main road of suffering, and down its many bypaths,, greeting death at odd intervals with a sigh and a smile and a prayer. Her sweet nature, her great beauty, made her a -favorite. Her courage was not surpassed by the Sisters, and her resignation rose to that point which earned the respectful tribute of Sister Thornassina. ‘ Our life is nothing more, than a desert,’ said the Sister ; ‘and it is a grave mistake to try to make it a paradise. We can live in the desert; beautify it a little, pex lmps , but we must keep our eyes on heaven, where we belong. Now, you found in the foolish paradise of the world the terrible desert, sickness; but here in the desert of Arizona vou found the paradise of the soul and the paradise of health, —for I think you are going to get well. But you surely were a stubborn creature at the beginning.’ I shall always be grateful to the desert,’ said Mrs. Graham.—The Rev. John Talbot Smith in the Ave Maria. ,