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                          Transcriber’s Notes

This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’
from July, 1913. The table of contents, based on the index from the May
issue, has been added by the transcriber.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been retained, but
punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected. Passages
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                            FICTION NUMBER

                        ~The Century Magazine~

             ~Vol. LXXXVI~        JULY, 1913        No. 3




CONTENTS

                                                                    PAGE

  ~Beelzebub Came to the Convent, How~    _Ethel Watts Mumford_      323
      Picture by N. C. Wyeth.

  ~Millet’s Return to his Old Home.~      _Truman H. Bartlett_       332
      Pictures from pastels
        by Millet.

  ~Man who did not Go to Heaven on        _Ellis Parker Butler_      340
    Tuesday, The~

  ~Borrowed Lover, The~                   _L. Frank Tooker_          348

  ~Remington, Frederic, Recollections
    of~                                   _Augustus Thomas_          354
      Pictures by Frederic Remington,
        and portrait.

  ~Spinster, American, The~               _Agnes Repplier_           363

  ~Coming Sneeze, The~                    _Harry Stillwell Edwards_  368
      Picture by F. R. Gruger.

  ~Balkan Peninsula, Skirting the~        _Robert Hichens_
      V. In Constantinople.                                          374
        Pictures by Jules Guérin and
          from photographs.

  ~Noteworthy Stories of the Last
    Generation.~
      The New Minister’s Great            _C. H. White_              390
        Opportunity.
      With portrait of the author,
        and new picture by Harry
        Townsend.

  ~Camilla’s First Affair.~               _Gertrude Hall_            400
      Pictures by Emil
        Pollak-Ottendorff.

  ~T. Tembarom.~                          _Frances Hodgson Burnett_  413
      Drawings by Charles S. Chapman.

  ~Mannering’s Men.~                      _Marjorie L. C. Pickthall_ 427

  ~Verita’s Stratagem.~                   _Anne Warner_              430

  ~St. Elizabeth of Hungary.~ By          _Timothy Cole_             437
    Francisco Zubarán. Engraved
    on wood by

  ~Hard Money, The Return to~             _Charles A. Conant_        439
      Portraits, and cartoons by
        Thomas Nast.

  ~Morgan’s, Mr., Personality~            _Joseph B. Gilder_         459
      Picture from photograph.

  ~Socialism in the Colleges.~            _Editorial_                468

  ~Money behind the Gun, The~             _Editorial_                470

  ~One Way to make Things Better.~        _Editorial_                471

  ~“Schedule K,” Comments on~             _Editorial_                472

  ~Christmas, On Allowing the Editor      _Leonard Hatch_            473
    to Shop Early for~

  ~Business in the Orient.~               _Harry A. Franck_          475

  ~Cartoons.~
    Foreign Labor.                        _Oliver Herford_           477
    Ninety Degrees in the Shade.          _J. R. Shaver_             477


VERSE

  ~My Conscience.~                        _James Whitcomb Riley_     331
      Decoration by Oliver Herford.

  ~House-without-Roof.~                   _Edith M. Thomas_          339

  ~Sierra Madre.~                         _Henry Van Dyke_           347

  ~Prayers for the Living.~               _Mary W. Plummer_          367

  ~Little People, The~                    _Amelia Josephine Burr_    387

  ~Belle Dame Sans Merci, La~             _John Keats_               388
      Republished with pictures by
        Stanley M. Arthurs.

  ~Eden, Beauty in.~                      _Alfred Noyes_             399

  ~Gettysburg, High Tide at, The.~        _Will H. Thompson_         410

  ~Blank Page, For a~                     _Austin Dobson_            458

  ~Maeterlinck, Maurice~                  _Stephen Phillips_         467

  ~Brother Mingo Millenyum’s Ordination.~ _Ruth McEnery Stuart_      475

  ~Ballade of Protest, A~                 _Carolyn Wells_            476

  ~Same Old Lure, The~                    _Berton Braley_            478

  ~Limericks.~:
      Text and pictures by Oliver Herford.
          XXX.    The Gnat and the Gnu.                              479
          XXXI.   The Sole-Hungering Camel.                          480




HOW BEELZEBUB CAME TO THE CONVENT

BY ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD

Author of “The Eyes of the Heart,” “Whitewash,” etc.

WITH A PICTURE BY N. C. WYETH

Copyright 1913, by ~The Century Co.~ All rights reserved.


Sister Eulalia rose from the bench by the door in answer to Sister
Teresa’s call. The broken pavement in the outer patio of the Convent of
La Merced echoed the tapping of her stick as she slowly made her way
to the arch leading to the interior of the building. Sister Eulalia
was blind, but as nearly the whole seventy years of her life had been
passed within these same gray walls familiarity supplied the defect
of vision. Her daily tasks never had been interrupted since, a full
half-century before, a wind-driven cactus-thorn had robbed her of
sight. She wore with simple dignity the white woolen garb of the order,
with its band of blue ribbon from which depended a silver cross, the
snowy coif framing her saintly face with smooth bands that contrasted
with the wrinkled surface of her skin. To the eye of an artist, her
frail figure in its quaint surroundings of Spanish architecture, dating
from the early years of the seventeenth century, would have made an
irresistible appeal. But no artist ever sought that remote, almost
forgotten city, and for the few Indians and half-breeds who have
inherited the fallen glories of Antigua de Guatemala, the moribund
convent held no interest. Occasionally one of the older “Indigenes”
whose conscience troubled him would leave an offering of food at the
twisted iron gate and mumble a request for prayers of intercession; or
the dark-eyed half-Spanish children would stare with something of both
fascination and fear at the five white-clad ancient women who, morning
and evening, crossed the patio to the chapel: Sister Eulalia on the arm
of Sister Teresa, Sister Rose de Lima and Sister Catalina, one on each
side of the Mother Superior. To these two younger sisters--their years
were but sixty-six and sixty-nine--had fallen, by common consent, the
care of the Mother Superior, whose age no one knew, so great it was,
and whose infirmities the nuns loyally concealed. By them her wandering
sentences were received as divine revelations, and indeed her strange,
thin voice, as it repeated Latin texts with level insistence, conveyed
a weird, Delphic impression.

The Mother Superior had been a woman of learning, of beauty, and of
high birth, but all that had been long ago. Now she was but a pale
shade repeating vaguely the words learned in a former life. Her
features remained fine and fair, as if preserved in some crystalline
substance. Her skin was unlined, for care and sorrow could reach her no
more.

Unless she were being conducted to and from the chapel by her devoted
handmaidens, or lay at rest in the state bed of the visitors’ room,
she sat in the high carved seat at the end of the refectory table, her
thin hands folded, her eyes fixed on the symbolic cross on her breast,
unconscious of those who came and went about her, or of the echoing
aisles and lofty pillared porticos that surrounded her abstracted
existence.

As the blind nun crossed the court and entered the refectory, she
became conscious of an unusual stir. She divined the presence of
each of the sisters, divined them strangely intent and not a little
agitated. The voice of Sister Rose de Lima reached her in a whisper of
portent.

“The reverend Mother has spoken--in Spanish!”

A pause followed the announcement. There was a slight sound from the
white prophetess. Sister Teresa and Sister Catalina, who stood beside
her, drew insensibly closer. Their hands were joined, finger-tip to
finger-tip, in the prayerful pose of medieval funereal statues; their
withered faces were drawn with expectation. At the opposite end of
the table stood Sister Rose, leaning forward breathlessly. Sister
Eulalia remained at the entrance, rigid, as if turned into stone. The
moments lengthened. The sunlight danced in golden motes through the
long windows, innocent now of their olden glories of painted glass,
and showed the worn carving of memorial stones emblazoned with coats
of arms, half erased by the passing of many sandaled feet. The stone
walls betrayed by protruding nails the absence of their wood-carvings
and panels. The badly repaired rifts in the earthquake-torn walls
showed garishly. The white figures, as in a tableau, remained still
and unmoving, and the seated form of the Mother Superior appeared as
lifeless as the waxen figure of Jesus under its shade of glass on the
little altar.

She opened her eyes, if such a slow unclosing of the lids could be so
called, revealing two wells of opaque blackness. A quick sigh escaped
the lips of the three nuns. Sister Eulalia heard, and slowly knelt,
ready to receive the word should such be sent.

The reverend Mother’s colorless lips moved. At first no sound issued
from them. Then, with strange forceful vibration, her voice broke the
waiting stillness.

“Woe!” she cried. “Woe! ‘The Fiend, as a roaring lion, walketh about,
seeking whom he may devour!’”

Four withered hands hastily made the sign of the cross.

Heavily as they had lifted, the waxen lids closed over the opaque black
eyes. The rigid body relaxed slightly, and the Mother Superior relapsed
into her wonted insensibility.

“We are surely to be tempted!” said Sister Eulalia. “Sisters, we must
be strong to resist the Fiend.” Sister Teresa nodded. “We are warned,”
she added.

Sister Rose crossed herself again.

Very gently Sister Catalina assured herself of the comfort of the
reverend Mother, and the four aged nuns turned to their tasks again,
but with beating hearts. The Fiend would beset them soon, and in
some dreadful guise. Sister Rose breathed a prayer for strength, as
she filled the tiny red lamp burning ever before the waxen image.
Sister Teresa hurriedly began “Aves,” as she peeled an onion; Sister
Catalina’s “paternosters” preceded her into the garden; and Sister
Eulalia’s beads slipped hastily through her knotted fingers as she
returned to the mechanical perfection of her work at the loom.

“As a roaring lion!”--Sister Eulalia’s blind eyes could conjure more
dreadful sights than the faded vision of her less afflicted companions
would ever see. Now she brought them before her in endless array of
horror. She would know him only by his roar, she thought, and he might
creep up close noiselessly. Her ear was alert to the lightest sound.
But the day wore on and no roaring beast came with hellish clamor to
affright the gentle recluse.

[Illustration: Drawn by N. C. Wyeth. Half-tone plate engraved by H.
Davidson

“THE FIVE WHITE-CLAD ANCIENT WOMEN WHO, MORNING AND EVENING, CROSSED
THE PATIO TO THE CHAPEL”]

Sister Catalina entered the patio from the garden-close, a yellow
hill-rose in her hand to pleasure her afflicted companion with its
subtle peppery scent; an act not sanctioned by the drastic rules of the
convent. But years upon years had rolled by, bringing a gentle sagging
of discipline. Occasionally one of the few priests who still clung to
the wrecked cathedrals came to hear confessions of puerile and trifling
misdemeanors, and a severer penance than a dozen “Aves” was unknown and
unmerited. Sister Eulalia inhaled the rose’s fragrance gratefully. Her
blunt, weaving-calloused fingers sought and found the soft petals of
the flower with loving touch.

It was thus that the Rev. Dr. Joel McBean saw them. He paused,
delighted. What a characteristic picture! How well composed; how
symbolical of a decaying faith! His kodak was instantly leveled, and
with a snap the sisters were immortalized. For Dr. McBean was known far
and wide on the west coast for his lectures on the benighted people of
other lands. His present visit to Central America combined his vacation
with a search for new material for his winter tour.

The click of the camera caused Eulalia, the sightless, to turn sharply.
Catalina, who was slightly deaf, seeing her companion’s movement,
looked about and stood still in open-mouthed amazement. Then she made
the gesture common to all women in all lands, and emitted the sound
that accompanies it when the invading hen must be incited to flight.

“Shoo!” she cried. “Shiss--shiss!” and waved her garden apron at the
intruder.

Sister Eulalia grasped the hem of Catalina’s flowing sleeve.

“What is it? Oh, what is it?” she gasped.

“A man! A strange man!” came the answer in a frightened whisper.

The gentleman in question realized that he was distinctly de trop, but
he strongly desired to gather more lecture material from this promising
source. Setting down the camera, he took out his well-thumbed volume
of “Handy Spanish” and sought for a suitable phrase of explanation and
introduction. There were headings about “The Hotel,” “The Laundry,”
“The Eating and Procuring of Meals,” “At the Railway Station,” “The
Diligence,” “The Physician”; but among the thousand useful phrases,
not one seemed to offer itself aptly. At last he found the heading he
sought: “Cameras--Films--Developing, etc.” “Have you any cyanide?” did
not fit. “Have you a darkroom in this hotel?” seemed ambiguous. “Direct
me to the photographer” would not do. Ah! Eureka! “May I take your
picture?” He bowed politely, approached the now thoroughly frightened
nuns, and with carefully spaced utterance made his request. “May I take
your picture?” he repeated, with a graceful sweep of his white hand.
“Fotografia--cuadro--”

Sister Rose appeared in the doorway, followed by Teresa. His gesture
included them also, and the ancient gateway, the columned portico, and
the quaint façade of the little chapel.

“Beautiful!” he cried. “Multo bueno! Hermosa, hermosa--muy hermosa!”

He wanted to take their picture! The nuns were completely at sea. Why
should this stranger, this man with queer apparel and strange speech,
want their picture? They possessed only one--the portrait of Our
Lady of Mercy above the little altar of the chapel--and why should
any one want a thing that so obviously it was impossible for them to
give? Bewildered, they looked from one to another. Sister Rose, being
the youngest and most mentally alert, became aware of the sacerdotal
character of their visitor: the gold cross at the end of his chain, the
wide-bordered felt hat which he waved so gracefully, the neat black
clothes, the breviary that bulged from his pocket; but, more than all,
the expression of his smiling face and gentle, near-sighted eyes.

“He is a priest--see you not?” she said excitedly. “His dress, his
manner, bespeak it. He comes from some foreign land. Alas! that the
reverend Mother cannot speak with him in Latin!”

“It is true,” said Catalina. “Pardon, reverend Father,” she quavered,
“I did not know! Our picture--you shall see it.”

She turned toward the chapel, but the visitor waved her back. The group
before him was irresistible, just as they were. Catalina instinctively
obeyed his gesture, marveling.

“Are--are there any more of you?” he inquired in his halting Spanish.

Now at last they understood. The reverend Father was making the rounds
of the clerical houses in order to make his report to the bishop. That
had happened once before. Sister Rose launched into explanations.

“No. We are all that are left, except the Mother Superior,” she told
him. “We are allowed here on sufferance only, for as, of course, the
reverend Father knows, the churches have all been taken by the state,
and but for the reverend Mother, who was kinswoman to some one great
in the land, we should have been sent forth. Alas! our numbers have
dwindled--grave upon grave we have made, each nun for herself, and now
all are filled save five. We have not, it is quite true, turned the
holy sod of our last sleeping-places as often as is the rule; but we
have grown old, and the work is hard--”

It was the lecturer’s turn to be utterly confused and routed; the
sudden change of manner, the deference shown to him all at once;
above all the avalanche of Spanish was too much for him, but he still
retained his amateur photographer’s zeal. With a hand raised to draw
their attention, but which the nuns mistook for pastoral blessing, he
steadied the camera against his narrow chest, and snapped a second
picture. With a polite “Thank you” and a sigh of satisfaction, he wound
the reel, heartily regretting the while that the limits of the camera’s
focus must necessarily leave out the perfection of the setting--the
towering, smoking peak of the Volcan de Fuego on the right, stained
red and yellow by its sulphurous outpourings, and the menacing green
inactivity of Agua’s deadly summit; all the gloom and glow of those
earthquake-seamed walls, and tottering, carved gateways.

“Mil gracias!” He thanked them awkwardly. “I--well--goodness! how
_does_ one say it?” He seized upon the “Handy Spanish Phrases”
again, and ran his finger down the line of camera sentences. “Please
make me six prints.” “This is over-exposed.” “You have fogged the
plate.”--“Tut, tut!” he exclaimed impatiently, “how in the world do you
say ‘I’ll give you a blue-print’?--blue-print--blue-print--Ah! this
will do. ‘An excellent portrait’--presented--for you,” he explained,
and supplemented the statement with an elaborate pantomime. The nuns
watched his gesticulations with breathless interest. He pointed to each
in turn, made a circle around his own face, smiling blandly and nodding
appreciation.

The sisters conferred.

“It clears!” said Sister Rose. “He asks us have we broken the rules
and looked at ourselves in a looking-glass.” She advanced toward Dr.
McBean and spoke for the sisterhood with deep earnestness. “Oh, no,
reverend Father, we have not seen our own reflections for fifty years,
and more--oh, never! There never has been a mirror on the walls of La
Merced. Vanity is not our sin. Thanks be to Our Lady, not even in the
convent well have we looked to see our faces reflected. Oh, no!”

Dr. McBean caught a word here and there, and felt that he was being
vehemently reassured about something, probably that the nuns would
be grateful for his kindness; that the elderly virgins knew nothing
whatever of such a thing as a camera, and had no idea of the use to
which he put his black box, would have seemed so ridiculous that the
possibility of it never occurred to him. With more bows, and renewed
and halting thanks, he took his departure.

“To-morrow,” he called. “_Mañana_--I will bring the
blue-prints--_mañana_. Adios! Gracias!”

The nuns watched his departure in silence, but as the sound of his
tripping footsteps died away, they turned to one another excitedly.

“Tell me, you who have eyes--what was he like?” begged Eulalia.

The others turned to her pityingly.

“Thou shalt hear. We had forgotten thine affliction, poor sister. He is
thin of the leg and round above. He wears glasses on a small nose. His
eyes are blue, and his hands are beautiful and white, like the hands
of Father Ignatius--the saints rest his soul! He wore black, with a
cassock very short indeed; and a round white collar, and a gold cross
hung at his waist. He bore a small black box, that doubtless contained
a holy relic, for ofttimes he clasped it to his bosom and cared for it
most lovingly.”

“How strange,” mused Eulalia, “that the reverend Fathers should send
one to question us thus unannounced, and one who also speaks so
strangely! His words were confusing, and I caught not often the sense,
though I listened with all my ears. Had it not been for Sister Rose, I
never should have guessed his mission.”

“Had’st thou seen him, thou would’st have known,” said Sister Teresa.
“His calling was not to be mistaken; moreover, with the reliquary he
blessed us.”

They had great food for speculation. Such excitement had not come into
their lives in unnumbered years. The dreadful prophecy of the Mother
Superior was forgotten. For the first time in a decade Eulalia was
heard to lament her loss of sight. Try as she would, she could not
make a satisfactory mental picture from her companions’ descriptions
of their visitor. These were vivid and detailed enough, but somehow
she could not bring them to take definite shape. Over and over again
they discussed the form and face, the manners and raiment of Dr. Joel
McBean. Not a gesture they did not speculate upon and imitate, not a
sentence of his incoherent Spanish that was not dissected, analyzed,
and wondered about. In particular, why did he want their picture, and
then leave without it?

But “to-morrow” he had said, to-morrow he would come; then perhaps they
would understand.

The sunlight turned copper-red, warning them of the lateness of the
hour and putting a sudden end to their excited converse. Suddenly
sobered and recalled to its own world, the flustered dove-cote
subsided. With stately tread they sought the reverend Mother. She
suffered herself to be lifted from her chair, and with eyes downcast
took her slow way to the chapel, with the help and guidance of her two
faithful attendants.

       *       *       *       *       *

The perspiration stood in great beads upon the brow of Joel McBean as
he emerged from a black, unventilated closet in the Posada del Rey, a
tray of chemicals in his hand. He held the developed films up to the
light and nodded with satisfaction. The pictures were excellent, clear
and sharp, well composed, excellently suited to the enlargement of
the stereopticon. He examined each with minute care, but found none
requiring the intensifier. There at last they were fixed forever,
the replicas of this strange land of contradictions--pictures that
should make his audiences realize how fortunate they were to be able
to stay at home in comfort while an intrepid and intelligent explorer
braved the trials of arduous travel in order to bring the simulacrum of
these other lands to their very doors, together with enlightening and
well-turned elucidations of the manners and customs of these benighted
dwellers in lands forgotten. Already he felt glowing sentences
stirring in his brain, sonorous and uplifting words, at once pitying
and broad-minded. “Tolerance”--that was the motto of his discourses;
tolerance always, but coupled with the well-directed searchlight
of comparison. What a point he would make of these aged, recluse
women--their ignorance, their useless lives, their abasement before the
Juggernaut of outworn rules! He flattered himself that his presence,
momentary as it was, had brought new impetus, and a realization of
other and more intelligent peoples, to these remnants of obsolete
conditions. “Obsolete conditions”--ah, a good expression!

He slipped the sensitized paper under the films in their wooden cases,
and set them for a moment on the rim of his balcony overlooking the
cobbled pavement of the unfrequented King’s Highway, upon which the
tropic sun beat with white fury. A moment only sufficed, and he
withdrew the prints. They proved marvelously good; as portraits they
could not have been excelled. He smiled with satisfaction. How pleased
these benighted little sisters would be, he thought, for he was a
kindly man. He slipped the photographs between the leaves of his “Handy
Spanish Phrases,” and, walking along the red-tiled gallery, made his
way across the blue-and-white-walled patio, and while parrots shrieked
at him and capuchin monkeys chattered, he passed from their cages
toward the great, sweating water-jars, and emerged into the glare of
the street.

Everywhere the remains of huge triumphal arches met his eye; enormous
buildings of state and vast churches, seamed and cracked by the
volcano’s upheavals, now flowered with creepers and plumed with growing
trees. The silence indicated complete desertion, except where one
caught, from time to time, in some shattered palace, a glimpse of an
Indian family at their squalid tasks, or the bray of a burro echoing
from some stately ruin.

At last the twisted wrought-iron gate and the flanking spiral columns
of the gateway of the convent came in sight. Dr. McBean quickened his
steps.

He had been eagerly awaited within those solemn walls. After matins
the excited sisters had gossiped and chatted over the events of the
previous day, and then proceeded--each quietly, in her own cell, and
unknown to her fellows--to make an elaborate toilet. The least faded
blue ribbons were put on, a fresh coif was found, spots and stains
were removed from worn white garments, while the little silver crosses
received an unaccustomed furbishing.

Somewhat shamefaced they met, and laughed like children as each
realized the worldliness of the others, till again Sister Eulalia’s
complaint turned them to consolatory condolences. A frown of petulance
had settled between Sister Eulalia’s brows. To be sure, it was lost
in a maze of wrinkles, but it was there. In her old heart was revolt
against the sorrow accepted so bravely fifty years before. She did not
realize her sin, absorbed as she was in the Great Interest.

When Dr. McBean entered the patio he was met by the four nuns, who
advanced smiling, with murmured hopes of a happy sleep of the night
before and perfect health to-day.

“I kept my promise, you see,” he beamed, handing the prints to Sister
Teresa, and speaking in his native tongue. “The pictures are really
very good, and I hope you will enjoy having them. Thank you so
much--and good-by. I start on my journey again to-day; so I must be
off. Good-by, again. Adios--buanos dais!”

The nuns curtsied and bowed. He paused a moment in order to jot in
his note-book: “Ignorant peoples invariably gratefully receive and
appreciate--all evidences superior civilization”--bowed again and
departed.

It was not till any further glimpse of him was denied by the corner
wall that they turned to the photographs. They looked in astonishment,
which increased to puzzled wonder; then a look of fear crossed Sister
Teresa’s face. Sister Eulalia, with tears in her eyeless lids, had
disconsolately sought her seat on the weaving-bench. These marvels
were not for her. For a moment she hated her companions--they were no
longer companions. She was alone in her misery.

From the depths of self-pity she was rushed to sudden astounded
attention by sounds of wrath, of venomous speech, of resentment and
anger. Sister Eulalia could not believe her ears, and the angry
conversation gave her no hint of its cause. It seemed the babblings of
sheer madness.

Sister Teresa had been the first to exclaim.

“See!” she cried, “I cannot understand