BEHIND THE SCREEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19840, 14 May 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

BEHIND THE SCREEN

WHEN THE CANDLES BURNED LOW A VIENNESE TALE (WRITTEN FOR THE “CHRONICLE.”) The candles had burned low in their sticks, and the conversation had turned to women—as it inevitably will when Continentals meet and talk ©ver wine in the half light. They wore men of wide and varied experience, these—men who had roamed the world and who had returned to Vienna to end their days. There was the Surgeon and the Journalist, the Advocate, the Soldier, the Sculptor and the Actor. All men who kad been students together long ago! The Sculptor was a cynic, “I have searched for beauty all the world over,” he said, “and once I thought that Woman’s every attribute was beautiful. Now I realise that it is only her body that is beautiful, and its beauty is increased a thousandfold when it is sculped in chaste, cold marble. “We men become infatuated with women’s bodies.” he continued, 41 and we allow that very real beauty to be reflected on her mind and she becomes an incarnation of the virtues. I consider that woman is unfaithful, unstable, and mercenary. She has no tenderness except the tenderness an animal has for her mate and her young. She expects from her mate nothing but money and animal attractiveness. When his charms pall she is ready for the arms of the first handsome, debonair young stranger who happens along.” His denunciation was not answered or commented upon for some minutes. Then the Journalist spoke. 44 D0 you really mean that, Max?” he asked; “you had a mother whose memory you revere.” 4 *l was not particularising.” was the reply. “I still say that, as a general rule, woman deserves my indictment.” The Actor and the Journalist exchanged glances. “Will you tell them. Fridolin, or shall I?” 44 " You tell them. Telling stories is your job—mine is merely chronicling them.” “Bear with me. my friends,” said the Actor, as he cut the tip from a cigar “this story is very near Fridolin’s heart and mine. We have never told it before, because it is not to cur credit and only now do we make it known so that Max’s accusation will not go unchallenged. You will forgive us what we did then —for we were young and impulsive. “It was many years ago. and both Fridolin and I were in the Mater Misericordia Hospital recovering from injuries we received in the Socialist student riots. The night sister in our ward was a woman with the face of a Madonna—Sister Therese. We both were infatuated with her, although we realised her vows, and it piqued us that she spent most of her time at night attending to a man in a bed at the end of the ward. This bed was enclosed by screens, and every night Sister Therese would hurry through her attentions to us others, and carry a great armful of flowers to the bed behind the screens. There she would stay all night, and we would hear her reading to him and crooning as a woman will to her babe, or to the man whom she loves. ‘ ‘Fridolin and I were cynics. At our age we had thoughts like those of dear old Max, here. We credited few women with virtue, and the beautiful, Madonna-like Therese became to us an object of suspicion. We thought she was carrying on a liaison with the unknown behind the screen and jealousy flamed in us. We imagined him young and handsome a dashing gallant who had swept up the Sister of Mercy' in a wave of forbidden passion. “One night when we were convalescent, Fridolin turned-to me. 44 ‘The vestal has been with her lover for three hours now.’ he said, *1 am going to look behind the screen.’ “The lights had flickered low as we swung ourselves over the sides of onr cots and crept toward the screened bed. “From behind the screen came Therese"s whispered tones, and she broke into a crooning lullaby as we reached the bed. We pulled aside a curtain and looked down at the bed.” The Actor paused for a moment and almost shuddered as he took up the thread of the narrative. Fridolin’s grey head had fallen on his hands. “What we saw made us saddened, contrite men, but it also made us revere that Sister as a saint in a world of sinners. “Therese was on her knees beside the bed, bathing what once had been a man’s face. The poor devil’s jawbones and eye sockets had been laid bare by cancer, and he lay there, mute and blind,"a travesty of God’s handiwork.’ ’ The Sculptor raised his glass in a silent toast, and across the room an old man s tear dropped on a faded daguerrotype of a nun.—“ Anatol.”