May Iverson's Career

by Elizabeth Garver Jordan

The Diplomat laid down his half-finished cigar, and put his elbows on the table, joining his finger-tips in the pose characteristic of his most thoughtful moments. He, too, took a moment for preparation, and the faces of the others at the table showed that they were already considering the twist they would give to the story when their opportunity came.

"The mother and daughter reached Rome in May," began the Diplomat. "They rented a few rooms and bought a few pieces of furniture, and, because they were very poor, they lived very frugally. While the daughter sought recognition at the Vatican the old mother spent her days pottering around their little garden and trying to learn a few words of Italian from her neighbors. It was hard to be transplanted at eighty-one, but she was happy, for she was with the daughter she had always adored. She would rather have been alone with her in a strange land than in the highest heaven without her.

"One of the Cardinals at the Vatican finally took up the case of Miss Driscoll. It interested him. He knew of the splendid work she had done as Mother General Elise. He began an investigation of the whole involved affair, and he had accumulated a great mass of documents, and was almost ready to submit a formal report to the Holy Father, when he fell ill with pneumonia and died a few days later.

"That was a crushing blow for Mother Elise. Under the shock of the disappointment she, too, fell ill, and was taken to what we will call the Hospital of the White Sisters. Her mother went with her, because an old lady of eighty-two could not be left alone."

The old Diplomat paused and looked unseeingly before him, as if he were calling up a picture.

"The convent hospital had a beautiful garden," the Diplomat resumed, at last. "There the mother spent the next few days working among the flowers and following the lay Sisters along the garden walks as a contented child follows its nurse. Once a day she was allowed to see her daughter for a few moments. It was her custom to reach the sick-room long before the hour appointed and to wait in the hall until she was admitted. She said the time of waiting seemed shorter there, where she was so near. So one day, when a pale Sister told her that her daughter was not quite ready to be seen, the old lady was not surprised. This was her usual experience.

"Nothing warned her, no intuition told her, that her daughter had died exactly five minutes before and that the Sisters back of that closed door were huddled together, trying to find words to tell her what had happened. They could not find them; words scamper away like frightened beings in moments like that. So they sent for their Mother Superior, and she came and put an arm around the bent shoulders of the old woman and told her that her daughter's pain and trouble were over for all time. Later they took her into the room where her daughter lay in a peace which remained triumphant even while the mother's heart broke as she looked upon it. When they found that they could not persuade her to leave the room they allowed her to remain; and there she sat at the foot of the bed day and night, while the Sisters came and went and knelt and prayed, and the long wax tapers at the head and feet of the dead nun burned slowly down to their sockets."

The Diplomat stopped. Then, as no one spoke, he turned to the Author.

"Will you go on?" he asked.

The Author took up the tale. "Mother Elise was buried in Rome," he said, "and in the chapel of the White Sisters tapers still burn for her. Her mother remained there, and was given a home in the convent, because she had no other place to go. It was kind of the Sisters, for, unlike her daughter, she was not a Catholic. But her old heart was broken, and as months passed and she began to realize what had happened she was filled with a great longing for her native land. The bells of Rome got on her shattered nerves. They seemed eternally ringing for her dead. From the garden she could see her daughter's grave on the hill just beyond the convent walls. She longed for the only thing she had left—her own country. She longed to hear her native tongue. She said so to all who would listen. One day she received an anonymous letter, inclosing bank-notes for five thousand lira. The letter read: