Story of the Month: The Candle Burns

Sister Yolanda set the cup of milk on the small table standing beside the head of the bed, and bent over the sleeping man, saying in a soft voice:

"Good morning, Captain."

The man opened his eyes with some surprise, for he had not felt anyone come in. He stirred, trying to sit up, and said with a smile:

"Good morning, Sister."

"Still asleep, and it is ten o'clock?"

He moved his left hand, pointing to the newspaper he had been reading:

"I am not asleep; only I grew weary of reading, and of the din of the telegrams and the news printed in the paper, so I closed my eyes to rest."

Then he went on, in a voice like that of children when vexation drives them to disobedience: "Or rather, I am still asleep, because my guardian angel did not wake me this morning either. I once had a guardian angel who cared for me; now he has neglected me and forgotten me, and my waking and my sleeping are all one to him."

"Our guardian angel never leaves us, Captain. He is always with us. But it is we who must seek him with the eye of the spirit in order to see him."

"I, Sister, see only with the eye of the body."

"It is not with the eye of the body that we behold the face of God, Captain."

"As for me, it is enough for the eye of the body that it beholds some of God's angels on earth, Sister."

The nun lowered her lids over her large dark eyes — her lashes were so long and so thick that they cast a shadow on the tops of her cheeks — and said in her compassionate voice:

"I have brought you the milk you are accustomed to drink every morning at this hour. Won't you drink?"

"Yes, I'll drink."

He said this and stretched out his left hand to help hers hold the cup in balance. Yet he did not drink, but kept looking at her face in silence, slowly savoring in secret the pleasure he felt. Then he asked:

"Why did you not come to wake me from sleep this morning, nor yesterday, nor the day before, nor the day before that? Why did a nun other than you come to me, and another bring me my breakfast?"

She answered, explaining simply and without any show of affection:

"At the early hour I visit only the sick. And we have many sick these days. The doctors are strict in their orders, so I must carry them out myself, or keep close watch over their execution; otherwise I cannot present my report on the condition of all the patients when the doctors arrive in the morning. As for you, since you are convalescing from the fever that struck you after the wound, anyone at all can perform the simple service you need."

"Then I wish my wound had not healed!"

He touched the place of the wound on his right arm and said:

"Shall I open it so that the fever comes back to me and I deserve care once more?"

She smiled with that reserve which is the rule of a nun's life, and said:

"Thank God for your recovery. Besides, I have other occupations this week, and today especially. We are arranging the church and dressing it in its festive ornaments so that it will be beautiful tomorrow, New Year's Day. Most of the convalescents will leave the hospital today, going off to their homes to spend the holidays among their families. But the work in the church continues without pause until the sixth of January, the feast of the Epiphany. This week is the season of feasts, as you know."

"I shall stay here through the whole season, for my family is far away and I have no friends in Cairo. Will you take me in, Sister?"

"You do well to stay here a few days more, Captain, for life in the hospital is better ordered, better timed, and more sheltered than life outside, where your health might suffer a relapse. Nor will you feel bored, for we prepare for our patients pleasant little parties in which they amuse themselves and take delight, without excess or strain.

Won't you drink the milk?"

"I'll drink it. I'll drink it."

And as he made to adjust his position, he could not keep from groaning and letting out a sudden cry; she drew the cup away from him a little and asked:

"What is it? Are you in pain?"

"A pain not worth mentioning, whenever I move my right arm without paying attention — the moment I forget it is wounded and do not lead it to prepare for the movement with a little maneuvering."

"That will pass with time. And did you sleep well?"

"Very well. I sleep like a child, I wake like a child, and like a child I live out my day, looking at life with the affection people show a child, instead of their seeing in it, always, harshness and coldness and readiness to attack and to hurt, and meeting it in kind. Isn't that so?"

"Each of us has his duty, to perform faithfully under the watch of Divine Providence, whatever the outcome. Won't you drink, Captain? Afterward you will go to the garden for your morning exercise, so that the servants can clean your room and make up your bed. Look at this day — how beautiful it is! Nowhere but in Egypt will you find a sun like this, shining in such a season. As though we were in the heart of spring! Drink, and be quick about rising."

He sat up straight in his bed and stretched out his right hand to help hers bring the cup near his lips. Her hand moved slowly, in keeping with his ailing hand. And when the cup touched his lips he did not drink this time either. He kept looking at her face bent over him. He kept contemplating her lids, lowered over two pupils that hid their secrets. He kept looking in silence, and contemplating in silence. Then he shifted his hand and turned it slowly about the nun's wrist, and finger after finger his fingers touched her hand, as though he were testing his strength upon it. And when he felt that strength did not fail him, he pressed warmly upon the hand that did not move — for fear of spilling the milk, and out of gentleness toward his ailing hand.

A slight tremor crept into her lowered lashes. But her face remained still, its features composed, as though nothing had happened. And in her quiet voice, as was her habit, she said:

"Drink, sir."

"How sweet is the sweetness in your face, Sister! Did you gain it by the practice of patience in your religious life — a life of privation, renunciation, austerity, and spiritual rapture? Or did it spring from your experience in attending surgical operations, and your habit of tenderness toward the sick, consoling them and speaking to them — men and women, old and young — as one speaks to an infant in need of care and love? Or is this sweetness a gift to you from God?"

"Man possesses nothing that is not among the gifts of God, Captain. They began the daily rounds of the patients at ten o'clock, and it will not be long before your turn comes and they join you in the garden."

She went out with steps that made no sound, as though she wore slippers of cotton. She had gone but a little way along the hall when she caught sight of the soldier — the officer's "orderly" — coming toward her, heading for the room she had left.

"Good morning, Sister. May I go in to my captain?"

"What are you carrying in your hand? The Captain is in the best of health. But the doctors' insistence that he must keep his nerves calm has not changed. So it is better not to give him these letters if they carry troubling news."

"Only two letters, Sister. As for this one" (and he showed a large yellow envelope), "it is an official communication from headquarters. Official communications addressed to a wounded, ailing officer are not usually troubling — that is, if they do not contain something to gladden him. And as for this letter" (and he showed a blue envelope printed with the name of a hotel in Alexandria), "it comes to him from someone whose news he is glad to receive." (As he said this, the "orderly" twitched one side of his face in a meaningful way.)

"Go to him, then, before he leaves his room for the garden."

She resumed her way, walking slowly. And sorrow showed on her face as she gazed at the hand his hand had touched a while before, communing with herself: Why did he touch me in that way? It is not the touch I have known from the sick when they are in pain and complain, asking for relief from the pain, expecting words of hope; nor has my own touch ever been like this before. His touch today had command in it, and there was rejoicing in it too.

Is this the touch of man, against whose evil our Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Mother Church warns us? Is that how men touch women in the life of society? My God, forgive me, for I showed no displeasure and I felt no displeasure! Pardon the vast gladness that flooded my heart! It is a sinful gladness... What a bewitching young man! What a long, deep gaze, and what full lips when they hasten to drink, as though they drowned in the milk the words that hovered over it! Something of him clings to my hand. His hand cast a spark into mine. O Child Jesus, cleanse my hand of the stain that clings to it, and put this temptation far from me!...

Eleven o'clock passed while Sister Yolanda, the head nurse, went about her many duties: conferring with the doctors and receiving their orders, visiting the patients and listening to their complaints, giving medicine to some of them, supervising the servants in cleaning the rooms of those away in the garden or on the balconies.

And when she reached the Captain's room she found the servants there; she ordered the bedsheets changed and began pulling them off the bed with her own hand. It was then she came upon the two letters under the pillow, and understood that the Captain had opened them and read them before going out, leaving them open under the pillow. She picked them up to lay them on the table, without any intention of reading them. But her glance fell upon them by chance. And when she read the first words of the blue letter, she forgot that she was a nun, and a well-bred woman who may not look into personal letters even if she finds them open. Her eyes ran over the lines, devouring them, and she read the following:

Dear Maurice!

"You always used to say of this fiancée of yours that she was a mistress of skillful stratagem. I now agree with your opinion, and I confess to you frankly that I deserve it, for I succeeded in persuading Émilie, my cousin, to visit Egypt during the season's holidays with her husband

instead of going to the Riviera as is her custom. Nothing about her holiday matters to me except being able to accompany her on the voyage, so as to reach you and see you, if only for a single day, before your return to camp.

"Can you imagine how great my anxiety and my torment have been all this time, ever since I learned that you lay ill? I speak to you now of what I suffered because I know that you are cured. I know it thanks to our consul in Cairo, from whom, before our departure, we received word announcing that you would soon be leaving the hospital.

We arrived at Alexandria this morning on the steamer Mariette Pasha, and tomorrow, when you receive this letter, we shall be making ready to take the noon train to Cairo. We shall arrive there about four o'clock, so they tell us, and go straight to the consulate to ask where you are staying. If only we might meet you at the consulate at that hour, so that our happiness would be complete!

But it is happiness enough for me that I shall see you tomorrow in perfect health, and spend with you the last day of the departing year and the first day of the new! Happiness enough that it may be given to me to serve you and pamper you and make you feel something of my love for you! "From afar I touch your wounded arm with longing and eagerness — and until tomorrow! — Mimi."

The church is quiet in the last hours of the night, and the light of the lamps is drowsy, like two eyes worn out with wakefulness. On the altar a candle is melting, with only a little of it left. A candle the nursing nun placed for the intention of the officer who has gone off to meet his fiancée; and the candle's flame joined with the nun in imploring God to enfold the Captain and his fiancée in His care, and to make their life pleasant and happy.

The nun would not grant the Captain's request when he insisted on summoning her, that he might see her, bid her farewell, and thank her before leaving the hospital. How could she bid him farewell and hear words of thanks from him? How could she dare so much as look at him? No! She is working in the convent, where he cannot reach her...

And here she has spent the whole night in the church, on her knees, hiding her face with the hand his touch had burned, praying:

"I gave You my life all at once, O my God; my hand is Yours and belongs to no creature. I forsook the ways of the world to walk in Your way, and I left the pleasures and joys of this life to seek the pains and sufferings that bring me near to Your purity. I offered my life as a candle burning at Your feet, as this little candle burns upon the altar — what, then, is this storm that has swept over me? Will You forgive me my weakness, O merciful God? Will You pardon me, because I found in the touch of sinful man a sweetness the like of which I have not found, O Child Jesus, in Your love and Your worship?"