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79 pages

English

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Kentucky author James Lane Allen was one of the American South's foremost practitioners of the "local color" genre of realism. This collection brings together two of his novellas, both of which deal with the vagaries of love and the tendency of the human heart to yearn for that which is unattainable.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 février 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776530717
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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SISTER DOLOROSA AND POSTHUMOUS FAME
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JAMES LANE ALLEN

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Sister Dolorosa and Posthumous Fame First published in 1892 Epub ISBN 978-1-77653-071-7 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77653-072-4 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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SISTER DOLOROSA Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII POSTHUMOUS FAME Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV
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TO HER
FROM WHOSE FRAIL BODY HE DREW LIFE IN THE BEGINNING, FROM WHOSE STRONG SPIRIT HE WILL DRAW LIFE UNTIL THE CLOSE, THESE TALES, WITH ALL OTHERS HAPLY HEREAFTER TO BE WRITTEN, ARE DEDICATED AS A PERISHABLE MONUMENT OF INEFFABLE REMEMBRANCE
SISTER DOLOROSA
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Chapter I
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When Sister Dolorosa had reached the summit of a low hill on her way tothe convent, she turned and stood for a while looking backward. Thelandscape stretched away in a rude, unlovely expanse of grey fields,shaded in places by brown stubble, and in others lightened by pale, thincorn—the stunted reward of necessitous husbandry. This way and that ranwavering lines of low fences, some worm-eaten, others rotting beneathover-clambering wild-rose and blackberry. About the horizon masses ofdense and rugged woods burned with sombre fires as the westering sunsmote them from top to underbrush. Forth from the edge of one a fewlong-horned cattle, with lowered heads, wound meekly homeward to thescant milking. The path they followed led towards the middle backgroundof the picture, where the weather-stained and sagging roof of afarmhouse rose above the tops of aged cedars. Some of the branches,broken by the sleet and snow of winters, trailed their burdens from thethinned and desolated crests—as sometimes the highest hopes of themind, after being beaten down by the tempests of the world, droop aroundit as memories of once transcendent aspirations.
Where she stood in the dead autumn fields few sounds broke in upon thepervasive hush of the declining day. Only a cricket, under the warm clodnear by, shrilled sturdily with cheerful forethought of drowsyhearthstones; only a lamb, timid of separation from the fold, calledanxiously in the valley beyond the crest of the opposite hill; only thesummoning whistle of a quail came sweet and clear from the depths of aneighbouring thicket. Through all the air floated that spirit of vastloneliness which at seasons seems to steal like a human mood over thebreast of the great earth and leave her estranged from her transitorychildren. At such an hour the heart takes wing for home, if any home ithave; or when, if homeless, it feels the quick stir of that yearning forthe evening fireside with its half-circle of trusted faces, young andold, and its bonds of love and marriage, those deepest, most enchantingrealities to the earthly imagination. The very landscape, barren anddead, but framing the simple picture of a home, spoke to the beholderthe everlasting poetry of the race.
But Sister Dolorosa, standing on the brow of the hill whence the wholepicture could be seen, yet saw nothing of it. Out of the western skythere streamed an indescribable splendour of many-hued light, and farinto the depths of this celestial splendour her steadfast eyes weregazing.
She seemed caught up to some august height of holy meditation. Hermotionless figure was so lightly poised that her feet, just visiblebeneath the hem of her heavy black dress, appeared all but rising fromthe dust of the pathway; her pure and gentle face was upturned, so thatthe dark veil fell away from her neck and shoulders; her lips wereslightly parted; her breath came and went so imperceptibly that herhands did not appear to rise and fall as they clasped the cross to herbosom. Exquisite hands they were—most exquisite—gleaming as white aslilies against the raven blackness of her dress; and with startlingfitness of posture, the longest finger of the right hand pointed like amarble index straight towards a richly-embroidered symbol over her leftbreast—the mournful symbol of a crimson heart pierced by a crimsonspear. Whether attracted by the lily-white hands or by the red symbol, abutterfly, which had been flitting hither and thither in search of thegay races of the summer gone, now began to hover nearer, and finallylighted unseen upon the glowing spot. Then, as if disappointed not tofind it the bosom of some rose, or lacking hope and strength for furtherquest—there it rested, slowly fanning with its white wings the torturedemblem of the divine despair.
Lower sank the sun, deeper and more wide-spread the splendour of thesky, more rapt and radiant the expression of her face. A painter of theangelic school, seeing her standing thus, might have named the scene thetransfiguration of angelic womanhood. What but heavenly images shouldshe be gazing on; or where was she in spirit but flown out of theearthly autumn fields and gone away to sainted vespers in thecloud-built realm of her own fantasies? Perhaps she was now enteringyon vast cathedral of the skies, whose white spires touched the blueeternity; or toiling devoutly up yon grey mount of Calvary, with itsblackened crucifix falling from the summit.
Standing thus towards the close of the day, Sister Dolorosa had not yetpassed out of that ideal time which is the clear white dawn of life. Shewas still within the dim, half-awakened region of womanhood, whosechanging mists are beautiful illusions, whose shadows about the horizonare the mysteries of poetic feeling, whose purpling east is the paletteof the imagination, and whose up-springing skylark is blithe aspirationthat has not yet felt the weight of the clod it soars within. Before herstill was the full morning of reality and the burden of the mid-dayhours.
But if the history of any human soul could be perfectly known, who wouldwish to describe this passage from the dawn of the ideal to the morningof the real—this transition from life as it is imagined through hopesand dreams to life as it is known through action and submission? It isthen that within the country of the soul occur events too vast,melancholy, and irreversible to be compared to anything less than thedownfall of splendid dynasties, or the decay of an august religion. Itis then that there leave us for ever bright, aerial spirits of thefancy, separation from whom is like grief for the death of the beloved.
The moment of this transition had come in the life of Sister Dolorosa,and unconsciously she was taking her last look at the gorgeous westernclouds from the hill-tops of her chaste life of dreams.
A flock of frightened doves sped hurtling low over her head, and put anend to her reverie. Pressing the rosary to her lips, she turned andwalked on towards the convent, not far away. The little footpath acrossthe fields was well trodden and familiar, running as it did between theconvent and the farmhouse behind her, in which lived old Ezra and MarthaCross; and as she followed its windings, her thoughts, as is likely tobe true of the thoughts of nuns, came home from the clouds to thehumblest concerns of the earth, and she began to recall certainincidents of the visit from which she was returning.
The aged pair were well known to the Sisters. Their daughters had beeneducated at the convent; and, although these were married and scatterednow, the tie then formed had since become more close through their ageand loneliness. Of late word had come to the Mother Superior that oldMartha was especially ailing, and Sister Dolorosa had several times beensent on visits of sympathy. For reasons better to be understood lateron, these visits had had upon her the effect of an April shower on athirsting rose. Her missions of mercy to the aged couple over, for awhile the white taper of ideal consecration to the Church always burnedin her bosom with clearer, steadier lustre, as though lit afresh fromthe Light eternal. But to-day she could not escape the conviction thatthese visits were becoming a source of disquietude; for the old couple,forgetting the restrictions which her vows put upon her very thoughts,had spoken of things which it was trying for her to hear—love-making,marriage, and children. In vain had she tried to turn away from theproffered share in such parental confidences. The old mother had evenread aloud a letter from her eldest son, telling them of his approachingmarriage, and detailing the hope and despair of his wooing. With burningcheeks and downcast eyes Sister Dolorosa had listened till the close andthen risen and quickly left the house.
The recollection of this returned to her now as she pursued her wayalong the footpath which descended into the valley; and there came toher, she knew not whence or why, a piercing sense of her own separationfrom all but the Divine love. The cold beauty of unfallen spiritualitywhich had made her august as she stood on the hill-top died away, andher face assumed a tenderer, more appealing loveliness, as there creptover it, like a shadow over snow, that shy melancholy under which thosewomen dwell who have renounced the great drama of the heart. Sheresolved to lay her trouble before the Mother Superior to-night, and askthat some other Sister be sent hereafter in her stead. And yet thisresolution gave her no peace, but a throb of painful renunciation; andsince she was used to the most scrupulous examination of herconscience, to detect the least presence of evil, she grew so disturbedby th