Curious, if True: Strange TalesGaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
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Curious, if True: Strange Tales
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Curiosities and wonders -- Fiction; Horror tales; Short stories
'A Poor Clare is dying! A Poor Clare is dead for hunger! God forgive
us, and our city!'
We pressed on. The stream bore us along where it would. We were carried
through refectories, bare and crumbless; into cells over whose doors
the conventual name of the occupant was written. Thus it was that I,
with others, was forced into Sister Magdalen's cell. On her couch lay
Gisborne, pale unto death, but not dead. By his side was a cup of
water, and a small morsel of mouldy bread, which he had pushed out of
his reach, and could not move to obtain. Over against his bed were
these words, copied in the English version: 'Therefore, if thine enemy
hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.'
Some of us gave him of our food, and left him eating greedily, like
some famished wild animal. For now it was no longer the sharp tinkle,
but that one solemn toll, which in all Christian countries tells of the
passing of the spirit out of earthly life into eternity; and again a
murmur gathered and grew, as of many people speaking with awed breath,
'A Poor Clare is dying! a Poor Clare is dead!'
Borne along once more by the motion of the crowd, we were carried into
the chapel belonging to the Poor Clares. On a bier before the high
altar, lay a woman--lay sister Magdalen--lay Bridget Fitzgerald. By her
side stood Father Bernard, in his robes of office, and holding the
crucifix on high while he pronounced the solemn absolution of the
Church, as to one who had newly confessed herself of deadly sin. I
pushed on with passionate force, till I stood close to the dying woman,
as she received extreme unction amid the breathless and awed hush of
the multitude around. Her eyes were glazing, her limbs were stiffening;
but when the rite was over and finished, she raised her gaunt figure
slowly up, and her eyes brightened to a strange intensity of joy, as,
with the gesture of her finger and the trance-like gleam of her eye,
she seemed like one who watched the disappearance of some loathed and
fearful creature.
'She is freed from the curse!' said she, as she fell back dead.
* * * * *
Now, of all our party who had first listened to my Lady Ludlow, Mr.
Preston was the only one who had not told us something, either of
information, tradition, history, or legend. We naturally turned to him;
but we did not like asking him directly for his contribution, for he
was a grave, reserved, and silent man.
He understood us, however, and, rousing himself as it were, he said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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