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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Our Convent Days, by Agnes Repplier
-
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-Title: In Our Convent Days
-
-Author: Agnes Repplier
-
-Release Date: October 8, 2017 [EBook #55703]
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-Language: English
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-By Agnes Repplier
-
-
-    IN OUR CONVENT DAYS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.10, _net._ Postage extra.
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-    A BOOK OF FAMOUS VERSE. Selected by Agnes Repplier. In Riverside
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-    HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
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-    BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
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-
-
-
-IN OUR CONVENT DAYS
-
-
-
-
-  IN OUR
-  CONVENT DAYS
-
-  BY
-
-  AGNES REPPLIER, LITT.D.
-
-  [Illustration]
-
-  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
-
-  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
-
-  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
-
-  1905
-
-
-
-
-  COPYRIGHT 1905 BY AGNES REPPLIER
-
-  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
-
-
-  _Published October 1905_
-
-
-
-
-To "Elizabeth" Robins Pennell
-
-  "Thou know'st that we two went to school
-  together."
-
-                              JULIUS CÆSAR
-
-
-
-
-Introduction
-
-
-It has been many years since I went to school. Everything has changed
-in the Convent that I loved, and I am asked to believe that every
-change is for the better. I do not believe this at all. I am unmoved by
-the sight of steam registers and electric lights. I look with disfavour
-upon luxuries which would have seemed to us like the opulence of
-Aladdin's palace. I cannot wax enthusiastic over the intrusion of Mr.
-Matthew Arnold and Mr. Pater upon the library shelves, where Chambers'
-Miscellany used to be _our_ nearest approach to the intellectual. The
-old order changes, and that unlovely word, modernity, is heard within
-the tranquil convent walls. Even the iron hand of discipline has been
-relaxed; for the long line of girls whom I now watch filing sedately
-in and out of the chapel have been taught to rule themselves, to use
-their wider liberty with discretion. I wonder how they like it. I
-wonder if liberty, coupled with discretion, is worth having when one is
-eleven years old. I wonder if it be the part of wisdom to be wise so
-soon.
-
-The friends whom I loved are scattered far and wide. When Tony died,
-she took with her the sound of laughter into the silent land, and all
-things have seemed more sober since she left. To those who live, these
-pages will, I hope, bring back the sentiment of our early days. We made
-one another's world then,--a world full of adventures, and imaginings,
-and sweet absurdities that no one of us would now wish less absurd.
-Our successors to-day know more than we knew (they could not well
-know less), they have lectures, and enamelled bathtubs, and "Essays
-in Criticism;" but do they live their lives as vehemently as we lived
-ours; do they hold the secrets of childhood inviolate in their hearts
-as we held them in ours; are they as untainted by the commonplace, as
-remote from the obvious, as we always were; and will they have as vivid
-a picture of their convent days to look back upon, as the one we look
-at now?
-
-                                                               A. R.
-
-
-
-
-Contents
-
-
-
-  Marianus                        1
-
-  The Convent Stage              36
-
-  In Retreat                     72
-
-  Un Congé sans Cloche          107
-
-  Marriage Vows                 148
-
-  Reverend Mother's Feast       183
-
-  The Game of Love              220
-
-
-
-
-Marianus
-
-
-I do not know how Marianus ever came to leave his native land, nor
-what turn of fate brought him to flutter the dovecotes of a convent
-school. At eleven, one does not often ask why things happen, because
-nothing seems strange enough to provoke the question. It was enough for
-me--it was enough for all of us--that one Sunday morning he appeared
-in little Peter's place, lit the candles on the altar, and served
-Mass with decent and devout propriety. Our customary torpor of cold
-and sleepiness--Mass was at seven, and the chapel unheated--yielded
-to a warm glow of excitement. I craned my white-veiled head (we wore
-black veils throughout the week and white on Sundays) to see how
-Elizabeth was taking this delightful novelty. _She_ was busy passing
-her prayer-book, with something evidently written on the fly-leaf, to
-Emily Goring on the bench ahead. Emily, oblivious of consequences,
-was making telegraphic signals to Marie. Lilly and Viola Milton knelt
-staring open-mouthed at the altar. Tony was giggling softly. Only Annie
-Churchill, her eyes fixed on her Ursuline Manual, was thumping her
-breast remorsefully, in unison with the priest's "mea maxima culpa."
-There was something about Annie's attitude of devotion which always
-gave one a distaste for piety.
-
-Breakfast afforded no opportunity for discussion. At that Spartan
-meal, French conversation alone was permitted; and even had we been
-able or willing to employ the hated medium, there was practically no
-one to talk to. By a triumph of monastic discipline, we were placed
-at table, at our desks, and at church, next to girls to whom we had
-nothing to say;--good girls, with medals around their necks, and
-blue or green ribbons over their shoulders, who served as insulating
-mediums, as non-conductors, separating us from cheerful currents of
-speech, and securing, on the whole, a reasonable degree of decorum. I
-could not open my bursting heart to my neighbours, who sat stolidly
-consuming bread and butter as though no wild light had dawned upon our
-horizon. When one of them (she is a nun now) observed painstakingly,
-"J'espère que nous irons aux bois après midi;" I said "Oui," which was
-the easiest thing _to_ say, and conversation closed at that point. We
-always did go to the woods on Sunday afternoons, unless it rained.
-During the week, the big girls--the arrogant and unapproachable First
-Cours--assumed possession of them as an exclusive right, and left us
-only Mulberry Avenue in which to play prisoner's base, and Saracens
-and Crusaders; but on Sundays the situation was reversed, and the
-Second Cours was led joyously out to those sweet shades which in our
-childish eyes were vast as Epping Forest, and as full of mystery as
-the Schwarzwald. No one could have valued this weekly privilege more
-than I did; but the day was clear, and we were sure to go. I felt the
-vapid nature of Mary Rawdon's remark to be due solely to the language
-in which it was uttered. All our inanities were spoken in French; and
-those nuns who understood no other tongue must have conceived a curious
-impression of our intelligence.
-
-There was a brief recreation of fifteen minutes at ten o'clock, which
-sufficed for a rapturous exchange of confidences and speculations.
-Only those who have been at a convent school can understand how the
-total absence of man enriches him with a halo of illusion. Here we
-were, seven absurdly romantic little girls, living in an atmosphere
-of devout and rarified femininity; and here was a tall Italian youth,
-at least eighteen, sent by a beneficent Providence to thrill us with
-emotions. Was he going to stay? we asked with bated breath. Was he
-going to serve Mass every morning instead of Peter? We could not excite
-ourselves over Peter, who was a small, freckle-faced country boy,
-awkwardly shy, and--I should judge--of a saturnine disposition. We had
-met him once in the avenue, and had asked him if he had any brothers
-or sisters. "Naw," was the reply. "I had a brother wanst, but he
-died;--got out of it when he was a baby. He was a cute one, he was." A
-speech which I can only hope was not so Schopenhauerish as it sounds.
-
-And now, in Peter's place, came this mysterious, dark-eyed, and
-altogether adorable stranger from beyond the seas. Annie Churchill,
-who, for all her prayerfulness, had been fully alive to the situation,
-opined that he was an "exile," and the phrase smote us to the heart. We
-had read "Elizabeth; or the Exile of Siberia,"--it was in the school
-library,--and here was a male Elizabeth under our ravished eyes.
-"That's why he came to a convent," continued Annie, following up her
-advantage; "to be hidden from all pursuit."
-
-"No doubt he did," said Tony breathlessly, "and we'll have to be very
-careful not to say anything about him to visitors. We might be the
-occasion of his being discovered and sent back."
-
-This thought was almost too painful to be borne. Upon our discretion
-depended perhaps the safety of a heroic youth who had fled from tyranny
-and cruel injustice. I was about to propose that we should bind
-ourselves by a solemn vow never to mention his presence, save secretly
-to one another, when Elizabeth--not the Siberian, but our own unexiled
-Elizabeth--observed with that biting dryness which was the real secret
-of her ascendency: "We'd better not say much about him, anyway. On our
-own account, I mean." Which pregnant remark--the bell for "Christian
-Instruction" ringing at that moment--sent us silent and meditative to
-our desks.
-
-So it was that Marianus came to the convent, and we gave him our seven
-young hearts with unresisting enthusiasm. Viola's heart, indeed, was
-held of small account, she being only ten years old; but Elizabeth was
-twelve, and Marie and Annie were thirteen,--ages ripe for passion,
-and remote from the taunt of immaturity. It was understood from the
-beginning that we all loved Marianus with equal right and fervour. We
-shared the emotion fairly and squarely, just as we shared an occasional
-box of candy, or any other benefaction. It was our common secret,--our
-fatal secret, we would have said,--and must be guarded with infinite
-precaution from a cold and possibly disapproving world; but no one of
-us dreamed of setting up a private romance of her own, of extracting
-from the situation more than one sixth--leaving Viola out--of its
-excitement and ecstasy.
-
-We discovered in the course of time our exile's name and
-nationality,--it was the chaplain who told us,--and also that he
-was studying for the priesthood; this last information coming from
-the mistress of recreation, and being plainly designed to dull our
-interest from the start. She added that he neither spoke nor understood
-anything but Italian, a statement which we determined to put to the
-proof as soon as fortune should favour us with the opportunity. The
-possession of an Italian dictionary became meanwhile imperative, and
-we had no way of getting such a thing. We couldn't write home for one,
-because our letters were all read before they were sent out, and any
-girl would be asked why she had made this singular request. We couldn't
-beg our mothers, even when we saw them, for dictionaries of a language
-they knew we were not studying. Lilly said she thought she might ask
-her father for one, the next time he came to the school. There is a
-lack of intelligence, or at least of alertness, about fathers, which
-makes them invaluable in certain emergencies; but which, on the other
-hand, is apt to precipitate them into blunders. Mr. Milton promised
-the dictionary, without putting any inconvenient questions, though
-he must have been a little surprised at the scholarly nature of the
-request; but just as he was going away, he said loudly and cheerfully:--
-
-"Now what is it I am to bring you next time, children? Mint
-candy, and handkerchiefs,--your Aunt Helen says you must live on
-handkerchiefs,--and gloves for Viola, and a dictionary?"
-
-He was actually shaking hands with Madame Bouron, the Mistress General,
-as he spoke, and she turned to Lilly, and said:--
-
-"Lilly, have you lost your French dictionary, as well as all your
-handkerchiefs?"
-
-"No, madame," said poor Lilly.
-
-"It's an Italian dictionary she wants this time," corrected Mr. Milton,
-evidently not understanding why Viola was poking him viciously in the
-back.
-
-"Lilly is not studying Italian. None of the children are," said Madame
-Bouron. And then, very slowly, and with an emphasis which made two of
-her hearers quake: "Lilly has no need of an Italian dictionary, Mr.
-Milton. She had better devote more time and attention to her French."
-
-"I nearly fainted on the spot," said Lilly, describing the scene to
-us afterwards; "and father looked scared, and got away as fast as he
-could; and Viola was red as a beet; and I thought surely Madame Bouron
-was going to say something to me; but, thank Heaven! Eloise Didier
-brought up her aunt to say good-by, and we slipped off. Do you think,
-girls, she'll ask me what I wanted with an Italian dictionary?"
-
-"Say you're going to translate Dante in the holidays," suggested Tony,
-with unfeeling vivacity.
-
-"Say you're going to Rome, to see the Pope," said Marie.
-
-"Say you're such an accomplished French scholar, it's time you turned
-your attention to something else," said Emily.
-
-"Say you're making a collection of dictionaries," said the imp, Viola.
-
-Lilly looked distressed. The humours of the situation were, perhaps,
-less manifest to her perturbed mind. But Elizabeth, who had been
-thinking the matter over, observed gloomily: "Oh, Boots" (our
-opprobrious epithet for the Mistress General) "won't bother to ask
-questions. She knows all she wants to know. She'll just watch us, and
-see that we never get a chance to speak to Marianus. It was bad enough
-before, but it will be worse than ever now. He might almost as well be
-in Italy."
-
-Things did seem to progress slowly, considering the passionate nature
-of our devotion. Never was there such an utter absence of opportunity.
-From the ringing of the first bell at quarter past six in the morning
-to the lowering of the dormitory lights at nine o'clock at night, we
-were never alone for a moment, but moved in orderly squadrons through
-the various duties of the day. Marianus served Mass every morning, and
-on Sundays assisted at Vespers and Benediction. Outside the chapel, we
-never saw him. He lived in "Germany,"--a name given, Heaven knows why,
-to a farm-house on the convent grounds, which was used as quarters for
-the chaplain and for visitors; but though we cast many a longing look
-in its direction, no dark Italian head was ever visible at window or at
-door. I believe my own share of affection was beginning to wither under
-this persistent blight, when something happened which not only renewed
-its fervour, but which thrilled my heart with a grateful sentiment,
-not wholly dead to-day.
-
-It was May,--a month dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and fuller than
-usual of church-going, processions, and hymns. We were supposed to be,
-or at least expected to be, particularly obedient and studious during
-these four weeks; and, by way of incentive, each class had its candle,
-tied with the class colour, and standing amid a lovely profusion of
-spring flowers on the Madonna's altar. There were six of them: white
-for the graduates, purple for the first class, blue for the second, red
-for the third, green for the fourth, and pink for the fifth,--the very
-little girls, for whom the discipline of school life was mercifully
-relaxed. All the candles were lighted every morning during Mass, unless
-some erring member of a class had, by misconduct the day before,
-forfeited the honour, not only for herself, but for her classmates.
-These tapers were my especial abhorrence. The laudable determination
-of the third class to keep the red-ribboned candle burning all month
-maddened me, both by the difficulties it presented, and by the meagre
-nature of the consequences involved. I could not bring myself to
-understand why they should care whether it were lit or not. To be sent
-downstairs to a deserted music-room, there to spend the noon recreation
-hour in studying Roman history or a French fable;--that was a penalty,
-hard to avoid, but easy to understand. Common sense and a love of
-enjoyment made it clear that no one should lightly run such risks. But
-I had not imagination enough to grasp the importance of a candle more
-or less upon the altar. It was useless to appeal to my love for the
-Blessed Virgin. I loved her so well and so confidently, I had placed
-my childish faith in her so long, that no doubt of her sympathy ever
-crossed my mind. My own mother might side with authority. Indeed, she
-represented the supreme, infallible authority, from which there was no
-appeal. But in every trouble of my poor little gusty life, the Blessed
-Mother sided with me. Of that, thank Heaven! I felt sure.
-
-This month my path was darkened by a sudden decision on Elizabeth's
-part that our candle should not be once extinguished. Elizabeth, to
-do her justice, did not often incline to virtue; but when she did,
-there was a scant allowance of cakes and ale for any of us. She never
-deviated from her chosen course, and she never fully understood the
-sincere but fallible nature of our unkept resolutions. I made my usual
-frantic, futile effort to follow her lead, with the usual melancholy
-failure. Before the first week was over, I had come into collision
-with authority (it was a matter of arithmetic, which always soured
-my temper to the snapping point); and the sixth of May saw five
-candles only burning at the veiled Madonna's feet. I sat, angry and
-miserable, while Madame Duncan, who had charge of the altar, lit the
-faithful five, and retired with a Rhadamanthine expression to her
-stall. Elizabeth, at the end of the bench, looked straight ahead, with
-an expression, or rather an enforced absence of expression, which I
-perfectly understood. She would not say anything, but none the less
-would her displeasure be made chillingly manifest. Mass had begun.
-The priest was reading the Introit, when Marianus lifted a roving
-eye upon the Blessed Virgin's altar. It was not within his province;
-he had nothing to do with its flowers or its tapers; but when did
-generous mind pause for such considerations? He saw that one candle,
-a candle with a drooping scarlet ribbon, was unlit; and, promptly
-rising from his knees, he plunged into the sacristy, reappeared with
-a burning wax-end, and repaired the error, while we held our breaths
-with agitation and delight. Madame Duncan's head was lowered in seemly
-prayer; but the ripple of excitement communicated itself mysteriously
-to her, and she looked up, just as Marianus had deftly accomplished his
-task. For an instant she half rose to her feet; and then the absurdity
-of re-attacking the poor little red candle seemed to dawn on her (she
-was an Irish nun, not destitute of humour), and with a fleeting smile
-at me,--a smile in which there was as much kindness as amusement,--she
-resumed her interrupted devotions.
-
-But I tucked my crimson face into my hands, and my soul shouted with
-joy. Marianus, our idol, our exile, the one true love of our six
-hearts, had done this deed for me. Not only was I lifted from disgrace,
-but raised to a preëminence of distinction; for had I not been saved
-by _him_? Oh, true knight! Oh, chivalrous champion of the unhappy and
-oppressed! When I recall that moment of triumph, it is even now with
-a stir of pride, and of something more than pride, for I am grateful
-still.
-
-That night, that very night, I was just sinking into sleep when a hand
-was laid cautiously upon my shoulder. I started up. It was too dark
-to see anything clearly, but I knew that the shadow by my side was
-Elizabeth. "Come out into the hall," she whispered softly. "You had
-better creep back of the beds. Don't make any noise!"--and without a
-sound she was gone.
-
-I slipped on my wrapper,--night-gowns gleam so perilously white,--and
-with infinite precaution stole behind my sleeping companions, each
-one curtained safely into her little muslin alcove. At the end of the
-dormitory I was joined by another silent figure,--it was Marie,--and
-very gently we pushed open the big doors. The hall outside was flooded
-with moonlight, and by the open window crouched a bunch of girls,
-pressed close together,--so close it was hard to disentangle them.
-A soft gurgle of delight bubbled up from one little throat, and was
-instantly hushed down by more prudent neighbours. Elizabeth hovered
-on the outskirts of the group, and, without a word, she pushed me to
-the sill. Beneath, leaning against a tree, not thirty feet away, stood
-Marianus. His back was turned to us, and he was smoking. We could see
-the easy grace of his attitude,--was he not an Italian?--we could
-smell the intoxicating fragrance of his cigar. Happily unaware of his
-audience, he smoked, and contemplated the friendly moon, and wondered,
-perhaps, why the Fates had cast him on this desert island, as remote
-from human companionship as Crusoe's. Had he known of the six young
-hearts that had been given him unbidden, it would probably have cheered
-him less than we imagined.
-
-But to us it seemed as though our shadowy romance had taken form and
-substance. The graceless daring of Marianus in stationing himself
-beneath our windows,--or at least beneath a window to which we had
-possible access; the unholy lateness of the hour,--verging fast upon
-half-past nine; the seductive moonlight; the ripe profligacy of the
-cigar;--what was wanting to this night's exquisite adventure! As
-I knelt breathless in the shadow, my head bobbing against Viola's
-and Marie's, I thought of Italy, of Venice, of Childe Harold, of
-everything that was remote, and beautiful, and unconnected with the
-trammels of arithmetic. I heard Annie Churchill murmur that it was
-like a serenade; I heard Tony's whispered conjecture as to whether the
-silent serenader really knew where we slept;--than which nothing seemed
-less likely;--I heard Elizabeth's warning "Hush!" whenever the muffled
-voices rose too high above the stillness of the sleeping convent;
-but nothing woke me from my dreams until Marianus slowly withdrew
-his shoulder from the supporting tree, and sauntered away, without
-turning his head once in our direction. We watched him disappear in the
-darkness; then, closing the window, moved noiselessly back to bed. "Who
-saw him first?" I asked at the dormitory door.
-
-"I did," whispered Elizabeth; "and I called them all. I didn't intend
-letting Viola know; but, of course, sleeping next to Lilly, she heard
-me. She ought to be up in the 'Holy Child' dormitory with the other
-little girls. It's ridiculous having her following us about everywhere."
-
-And, indeed, Viola's precocious pertinacity made her a difficult
-problem to solve. There are younger sisters who can be snubbed into
-impotence. Viola was no such weakling.
-
-But now the story which we thought just begun was drawing swiftly to
-its close. Perhaps matters had reached a point when something had
-to happen; yet it did seem strange--it seems strange even now--that
-the crisis should have been precipitated by a poetic outburst on the
-part of Elizabeth. Of all the six, she was the least addicted to
-poetry. She seldom read it, and never spent long hours in copying it
-in a blank-book, as was our foolish and laborious custom. She hated
-compositions, and sternly refused the faintest touch of sentiment when
-compelled to express her thoughts upon "The First Snow-drop," or "My
-Guardian Angel," or the "Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots." Tony wrote
-occasional verses of a personal and satiric character, which we held
-to sparkle with a biting wit. Annie Churchill had once rashly shown
-to Lilly and to me some feeble lines upon "The Evening Star." Deep
-hidden in my desk, unseen by mortal eye save mine, lay an impassioned
-"Soliloquy of Jane Eyre," in blank verse, which was almost volcanic in
-its fervour, and which perished the following year, unmourned, because
-unknown to the world. But Elizabeth had never shown the faintest
-disposition to write anything that could be left unwritten, until
-Marianus stirred the waters of her soul. That night, that moonlit
-night, and the dark figure smoking in the shadows, cast their sweet
-spell upon her. With characteristic promptness, she devoted her French
-study hour the following afternoon to the composition of a poem, which
-was completed when we went to class, and which she showed me secretly
-while we were scribbling our _dictée_. There were five verses, headed
-"To Marianus," and beginning,--
-
-  "Gracefully up the long aisle he glides,"
-
-which was a poetic license, as the chapel aisle was short, and Marianus
-had never glided up it since he came. He always--in virtue of his
-office--entered by the sacristy door.
-
-But realism was then as little known in literature as in art, and
-poetry was not expected to savour of statement rather than emotion.
-Elizabeth's masterpiece expressed in glowing numbers the wave of
-sentiment by which we were submerged. Before night it had passed
-swiftly from hand to hand, and before night the thunderbolt had
-fallen. Whose rashness was to blame I do not now remember; but, thank
-Heaven! it was not mine. Some one's giggle was too unsuppressed. Some
-one thrust the paper too hurriedly into her desk, or dropped it on
-the floor, or handed it to some one else in a manner too obviously
-mysterious not to arouse suspicion. I only know that it fell into the
-hands of little Madame Davide, who had the eyes of a ferret and the
-heart of a mouse, and who, being unable to read a word of English, sent
-it forthwith to Madame Bouron. I only know that, after that brief and
-unsatisfactory glimpse in French class, I never saw it again; which
-is why I can now recall but one line out of twenty,--a circumstance I
-devoutly regret.
-
-It was a significant proof of Madame Bouron's astuteness that, without
-asking any questions, or seeking any further information, she summoned
-six girls to her study that evening after prayers. She had only the
-confiscated poem in Elizabeth's writing as a clue to the conspiracy,
-but she needed nothing more. There we were, all duly indicted, save
-Viola, whose youth, while it failed to protect us from the unsought
-privilege of her society, saved her, as a rule, from any retributive
-measures. Her absence on this occasion was truly a comfort, as her
-presence would have involved the added and most unmerited reproach of
-leading a younger child into mischief. Viola was small for her age,
-and had appealing brown eyes. There was not a nun in the convent who
-knew her for the imp she was. Lilly, gay, sweet, simple, generous, and
-unselfish, seemed as wax in her little sister's hands.
-
-There were six of us, then, to bear the burden of blame; and Madame
-Bouron, sitting erect in the lamplight, apportioned it with an
-unsparing hand. Her fine face (she was coldly handsome, but we did not
-like her well enough to know it) expressed contemptuous displeasure;
-her words conveyed a somewhat exaggerated confidence in our guilt. Of
-Elizabeth's verses she spoke with icy scorn;--she had not been aware
-that so gifted a writer graced the school; but the general impropriety
-of our behaviour was unprecedented in the annals of the convent. That
-we, members of the Society of St. Aloysius, should have shown ourselves
-so unworthy of our privileges, and so forgetful of our patron, was
-a surprise even to her; though (she was frankness itself) she had
-never entertained a good opinion either of our dispositions or of our
-intelligence. The result of such misconduct was that the chaplain's
-assistant must leave at once and forever. Not that _he_ had ever
-wasted a thought upon any girl in the school. His heart was set upon
-the priesthood. Young though he was, he had already suffered for the
-Church. His father had fought and died in defence of the Holy See. His
-home had been lost. He was a stranger in a far land. And now he must be
-driven from the asylum he had sought, because we could not be trusted
-to behave with that modesty and discretion which had always been the
-fairest adornment of children reared within the convent's holy walls.
-She hoped that we would understand how grievous was the wrong we had
-done, and that even our callous hearts would bleed when we went to our
-comfortable beds, and reflected that, because of our wickedness and
-folly, a friendless and pious young student was once more alone in the
-world.
-
-It was over! We trailed slowly up to the dormitory, too bewildered to
-understand the exact nature of our misdoing. The most convincing proof
-of our mental confusion is that our own immaculate innocence never
-occurred to any of us. We had looked one night out of the window at
-Marianus, and Elizabeth had written the five amorous verses. That was
-all. Not one of us had spoken a word to the object of our affections.
-Not one of us could boast a single glance, given or received. We had
-done nothing; yet so engrossing had been the sentiment, so complete
-the absorption of the past two months, that we, living in a children's
-world of illusions,--"passionate after dreams, and unconcerned about
-realities,"--had deemed ourselves players of parts, actors in an
-unsubstantial drama, intruders into the realms of the forbidden. We
-accepted this conviction with meekness, untempered by regret; but we
-permitted ourselves a doubt as to whether our iniquity were wholly
-responsible for the banishment of Marianus. The too strenuous pointing
-of a moral breeds skepticism in the youthful soul. When Squire Martin
-(of our grandfathers' reading-books) assured Billy Freeman that dogs
-and turkey-cocks were always affable to children who studied their
-lessons and obeyed their parents, that innocent little boy must have
-soon discovered for himself that virtue is but a weak bulwark in the
-barnyard. We, too, had lost implicit confidence in the fine adjustments
-of life; and, upon this occasion, we found comfort in incredulity. On
-the stairs Elizabeth remarked to me in a gloomy undertone that Marianus
-could never have intended to stay at the convent, anyhow, and that he
-probably had been "sent for." She did not say whence, or by whom; but
-the mere suggestion was salve to my suffering soul. It enabled me, at
-least, to bear the sight of Annie Churchill's tears, when, ten minutes
-later, that weak-minded girl slid into my alcove (as if we were not in
-trouble enough already), and, sitting forlornly on my bed, asked me in
-a stifled whisper, "did I think that Marianus was really homeless, and
-couldn't we make up a sum of money, and send it to him?"
-
-"How much have you got?" I asked her curtly. The complicated emotions
-through which I had passed had left me in a savage humour; and the
-peculiar infelicity of this proposal might have irritated St. Aloysius
-himself. We were not allowed the possession of our own money, though
-in view of the fact that there was ordinarily nothing to buy with it,
-extravagance would have been impossible. Every Thursday afternoon
-the "Bazaar" was opened; our purses, carefully marked with name and
-number, were handed to us, and we were at liberty to purchase such
-uninteresting necessities as writing-paper, stamps, blank-books,
-pencils, and sewing materials. The sole concession to prodigality was
-a little pile of pious pictures,--small French prints, ornamented with
-lace paper, which it was our custom to give one another upon birthdays
-and other festive occasions. They were a great resource in church,
-where prayer-books, copiously interleaved with these works of art, were
-passed to and fro for mutual solace and refreshment.
-
-All these things were as well known to Annie as to me, but she was too
-absorbed in her grief to remember them. She mopped her eyes, and said
-vacantly that she thought she had a dollar and a half.
-
-"I have seventy-five cents," I said; "and Elizabeth hasn't anything.
-She spent all her money last Thursday. We might be able to raise five
-dollars amongst us. If you think that much would be of any use to
-Marianus, all you have to do is to ask Madame Bouron for our purses,
-and for his address, and see if she would mind our writing and sending
-it to him."
-
-Annie, impervious at all times to sarcasm, looked dazed for a moment,
-her wet blue eyes raised piteously to mine. "Then you think we couldn't
-manage it?" she asked falteringly.
-
-But I plunged my face into my wash-basin, as a hint that the
-conversation was at an end. I, too, needed the relief of tears, and was
-waiting impatiently to be alone.
-
-For Marianus had gone. Of that, at least, there was no shadow of doubt.
-We should never see him again; and life seemed to stretch before
-me in endless grey reaches of grammar, and arithmetic, and French
-conversation; of getting up early in the morning, uncheered by the
-thought of seeing Marianus serve Mass; of going to bed at night, with
-never another glance at that dark shadow in the moonlight. I felt that
-for me the page of love was turned forever, the one romance of my life
-was past. I cried softly and miserably into my pillow; and resolved, as
-I did so, that the next morning I would write on the fly-leaves of my
-new French prayer-book and my "Thomas à Kempis" the lines:--
-
-  "'Tis better to have loved and lost,
-  Than never to have loved at all."
-
-
-
-
-The Convent Stage
-
-
-"From this hour I do renounce the creed whose fatal worship of bad
-passions has led thee on, step by step, to this blood-guiltiness!"
-
-Elizabeth was studying her part. We were all studying our parts; but we
-stopped to listen to this glowing bit of declamation, which Elizabeth
-delivered with unbroken calm. "I drop down on my knees when I say
-that," she observed gloomily.
-
-We looked at her with admiring, envious eyes. Our own rôles offered
-no such golden opportunities. Lilly's, indeed, was almost as easily
-learned as Snug's, being limited to three words, "The Christian slave?"
-which were supposed to be spoken interrogatively; but which she
-invariably pronounced as an abstract statement, bearing on nothing in
-particular. It was seldom, however, that we insignificant little girls
-of the Second Cours were permitted to take part in any play, and we
-felt to the full the honour and glory of our positions. "I come on in
-three scenes, and speak eleven times," I said, with a pride which I
-think now strongly resembled Mr. Rushworth's. "What are you, Tony?"
-
-"A beggar child," said Tony. "I cry 'Bread! bread!' in piercing
-accents" (she was reading from the stage directions), "and afterwards
-say to Zara,--that's Mary Orr,--'Our thanks are due to thee, noble
-lady, who from thy abundance feeds us once. Our love and blessings
-follow her who gave us daily of her slender store.'"
-
-"Is that all?"
-
-"The other beggar child says nothing but 'Bread! bread!'" replied Tony
-stiffly.
-
-"What a lot of costumes to get up for so many little parts!" commented
-Elizabeth, ever prone to consider the practical aspect of things.
-
-"I am dressed in rags," said Tony. "They oughtn't to give much trouble."
-
-"Lilly and I are to be dressed alike," I said. "'Slaves of the royal
-household.' Madame Rayburn said we were to wear Turkish trousers of
-yellow muslin, with blue tunics, and red sashes tied at the side. Won't
-we look like guys?"
-
-I spoke with affected disdain and real complacency, gloating--like Mr.
-Rushworth--over the finery I pretended to despise. Elizabeth stared at
-us dispassionately. "Lilly will look well in anything," she remarked
-with disconcerting candour, at which Lilly blushed a lovely rose pink.
-She knew how pretty she was, but she had that exquisite sweetness of
-temper which is so natural an accompaniment of beauty. Perhaps we
-should all be sweet-tempered if we could feel sure that people looked
-at us with pleasure.
-
-"You will have to wear Turkish trousers, too," said Tony maliciously to
-Elizabeth; "and get down on your knees in them."
-
-"No, I won't," returned Elizabeth scornfully. "I'm not a Turk. I'm a
-Moorish princess,--Zara's niece."
-
-"Moors and Turks are the same," said Tony with conviction.
-
-"Moors and Turks are not the same," said Elizabeth. "Turks live in
-Turkey, and Moors live--Whereabouts is this play, anyway, Marie?"
-
-"Granada," said Marie. "The Spanish army, under Ferdinand and Isabella,
-is besieging Granada. I wish I were a Moor instead of a pious Spanish
-lady. It would be a great deal more fun. I've always got pious parts."
-
-This was true, but then most of the parts in our convent plays
-_were_ pious, and if they were given to Marie, it was because she
-was so good an actress,--the only one our Second Cours could boast.
-Elizabeth, indeed, had her merits. She never forgot her lines, never
-was frightened, never blundered. But her absolutely unemotional
-rendering of the most heroic sentiments chilled her hearers' hearts.
-Marie was fervid and impassioned. Her _r-r_'s had the true Gallic
-roll. Her voice vibrated feelingly. She was tall for thirteen, without
-being hopelessly overgrown as Emily and I were. Strangest of all, she
-did not seem to mind the foolish and embarrassing things which she
-was obliged to do upon the stage. She would fling her arms around an
-aged parent, and embrace her fondly. She would expound the truths of
-Christianity, as St. Philomena. She would weep, and pray, and forgive
-her enemies, as the luckless Madame Elisabeth. What is more, she would
-do these things at rehearsals, in her short school frock, with unabated
-fervour, and without a shade of embarrassment. We recognized her as a
-Heaven-sent genius, second only to Julia Reynolds and Antoinette Mayo
-(who I still think _must_ have been the greatest of living actresses),
-yet in our secret souls we despised a little such absolute lack of
-self-consciousness. We were so awkward and abashed when brought face
-to face with any emotion, so incapable of giving it even a strangled
-utterance, that Marie's absorption in her parts seemed to us a trifle
-indecent. It was on a par with her rapid French, her lively gestures,
-her openly expressed affection for the nuns she liked, and the
-unconcern with which she would walk up the long classroom, between
-two rows of motionless girls, to have a medal hung around her neck
-on Sunday night at Primes. This hideous ordeal, which clouded our
-young lives, was no more to Marie than walking upstairs,--no more than
-unctuously repeating every day for a fortnight the edifying remarks of
-the pious Spanish lady.
-
-Plays were the great diversions of our school life. We had two or
-three of them every winter, presented, it seemed to me, with dazzling
-splendour, and acted with passionate fire. I looked forward to these
-performances with joyful excitement, I listened, steeped in delight,
-I dreamed of them afterwards for weeks. The big girls who played in
-them, and of whom I knew little but their names, were to me beings of
-a remote and exalted nature. The dramas themselves were composed with
-a view to our especial needs, or rather to our especial limitations.
-Their salient feature was the absence of courtship and of love. It
-was part of the convent system to ignore the master passion, to assume
-that it did not exist, to banish from our work and from our play any
-reference to the power that moves the world. The histories we studied
-skipped chastely on from reign to reign, keeping always at bay this
-riotous intruder. The books we read were as free as possible from any
-taint of infection. The poems we recited were as serene and cold as
-Teneriffe. "Love in the drama," says an acrimonious critic, "plays
-rather a heavy part." It played no part at all in ours, and I am
-disposed to look back now upon its enforced absence as an agreeable
-elimination. The students of St. Omer--so I have been told--presented
-a French version of "Romeo and Juliet," with all the love scenes
-left out. This _tour de force_ was beyond our scope; but "She Stoops
-to Conquer," shorn of its double courtship, made a vivacious bit of
-comedy, and a translation of "Le Malade Imaginaire"--expurgated to
-attenuation--was the most successful farce of the season.
-
-Of course the expurgation was not done by us. We knew Goldsmith and
-Molière only in their convent setting, where, it is safe to say, they
-would never have known themselves. Most of our plays, however, were
-original productions, written by some one of the nuns whose talents
-chanced to be of a dramatic order. They were, as a rule, tragic in
-character, and devout in sentiment,--sometimes so exceedingly devout
-as to resemble religious homilies rather than the legitimate drama. A
-conversation held in Purgatory, which gave to three imprisoned souls
-an opportunity to tell one another at great length, and with shameless
-egotism, the faults and failings of their lives, was not--to our way
-of thinking--a play. We listened unmoved to the disclosures of these
-garrulous spirits, who had not sinned deeply enough to make their
-revelations interesting. It was like going to confession on a large
-and liberal scale. The martyrdom of St. Philomena was nearly as dull,
-though the saint's defiance of the tyrant Symphronius--"persecutor of
-the innocent, slayer of the righteous, despot whose knell has even
-this hour rung"--lent a transient gleam of emotion; and the angel who
-visited her in prison--and who had great difficulty getting his wings
-through the narrow prison door--was, to my eyes at least, a vision of
-celestial beauty.
-
-What we really loved were historical dramas, full of great names and
-affecting incidents. Our crowning triumph (several times repeated)
-was "Zuma," a Peruvian play in which an Indian girl is accused of
-poisoning the wife of the Spanish general, when she is really trying
-to cure her of a fever by giving her quinine, a drug known only to
-the Peruvians, and the secret of which the young captive has sworn
-never to divulge. "Zuma" was a glorious play. Its first production
-marked an epoch in our lives. Gladly would we have given it a season's
-run, had such indulgence been a possibility. There was one scene
-between the heroine and her free and unregenerate sister, Italca,
-which left an indelible impression upon my mind. It took place in a
-subterranean cavern. The stage was darkened, and far-off music--the
-sound of Spanish revelry--floated on the air. Italca brings Zuma a
-portion of bark, sufficient only for her own needs,--for she too is
-fever-stricken,--but, before giving it, asks with piercing scorn: "Are
-you still an Inca's daughter, or a Castilian slave?"--a question at
-which poor Zuma can only weep piteously, but which sent thrills of
-rapture down my youthful spine. I have had my moments of emotion since
-then. When Madame Bernhardt as La Tosca put the lighted candles on
-either side of the murdered Scarpia, and laid the crucifix upon his
-breast. When Madame Duse as Magda turned suddenly upon the sleek Von
-Keller, and for one awful moment loosened the floodgates of her passion
-and her scorn: "You have asked after Emma and after Katie. You have not
-asked for your child." But never again has my soul gone out in such a
-tumult of ecstasy as when Zuma and Italca, Christian and Pagan sisters,
-the captive and the unconquered, faced each other upon our convent
-stage.
-
-And now for the first time I--I, eleven years old, and with no shadowy
-claim to distinction--was going to take part in a play, was going to
-tread the boards in yellow Turkish trousers, and speak eleven times for
-all the school to hear. No fear of failure, no reasonable misgivings
-fretted my heart's content. Marie might scorn the Spanish lady's rôle;
-but then Marie had played "Zuma,"--had reached at a bound the highest
-pinnacle of fame. Elizabeth might grumble at giving up our recreation
-hours to rehearsals; but then Elizabeth had been one of the souls in
-Purgatory, the sinfullest soul, and the most voluble of all. Besides,
-nothing ever elated Elizabeth. She had been selected once to make an
-address to the Archbishop, and to offer him a basket of flowers; he had
-inquired her name, and had said he knew her father; yet all this public
-notice begot in her no arrogance of soul. Her only recorded observation
-was to the effect that, if she were an archbishop, she wouldn't listen
-to addresses; a suggestion which might have moved the weary and patient
-prelate more than did the ornate assurances of our regard.
-
-With this shining example of insensibility before my eyes, I tried
-hard to conceal my own inordinate pride. Rehearsals began before we
-knew our parts, and the all-important matter of costumes came at once
-under consideration. The "play-closet," that mysterious receptacle
-of odds and ends, of frayed satins, pasteboard swords, and tarnished
-tinsel jewelry, was soon exhausted of its treasures. Some of the bigger
-girls, who were to be Spanish ladies in attendance upon Queen Isabella,
-persuaded their mothers to lend them old evening gowns. The rest of
-the clothes we manufactured ourselves, "by the pure light of reason,"
-having no models of any kind to assist or to disturb us.
-
-Happily, there were no Spanish men in the play. Men always gave a good
-deal of trouble, because they might not, under any circumstances, be
-clad in male attire. A short skirt, reaching to the knee, and generally
-made of a balmoral petticoat, was the nearest compromise permitted.
-Marlow, that consummate dandy, wore, I remember, a red and black
-striped skirt, rubber boots, a black jacket, a high white collar, and
-a red cravat. The cravat was given to Julia Reynolds, who played the
-part, by her brother. It indicated Marlow's sex, and was considered
-a little indecorous in its extreme mannishness. "They'll hardly know
-what she" (Mrs. Potts) "is meant for, will they?" asks Mr. Snodgrass
-anxiously, when that estimable lady proposes going to Mrs. Leo Hunter's
-fancy ball as Apollo, in a white satin gown with spangles. To which
-Mr. Winkle makes indignant answer: "Of course they will. They'll see
-her lyre." With the same admirable acumen, we who saw Marlow's cravat
-recognized him immediately as a man.
-
-Moors, and Peruvians, and ancient Romans were more easily attired.
-They wore skirts as a matter of course, looked a good deal alike,
-and resembled in the main the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," as costumed
-by Mr. Abbey. It is with much pleasure I observe how closely--if how
-unconsciously--Mr. Abbey has followed our convent models. His Valentine
-might be Manco or Cléante strutting upon our school stage. His Titania
-is a white-veiled first communicant.
-
-The Turkish trousers worn by Lilly and by me--also by Elizabeth, to
-her unutterable disgust--were allowed because they were portions of
-feminine attire. Made of rattling paper muslin, stiff, baggy, and
-with a hideous tendency to slip down at every step, they evoked the
-ribald mirth of all the other actors. Mary Orr, especially, having
-firmly declined a pair as part of Zara's costume, was moved to such
-unfeeling laughter at the first dress rehearsal that I could hardly
-summon courage to stand by Lilly's side. "The more you show people you
-mind a thing, the more they'll do it;" Elizabeth had once observed
-out of the profundity of her school experience,--an experience which
-dated from her seventh year. Her own armour of assumed unconcern was
-provocation-proof. She had mistrusted the trousers from the beginning,
-while I, thinking of Lalla Rookh and Nourmahal (ladies unknown to the
-convent library), had exulted in their opulent Orientalism. She had
-expressed dark doubts as to their fit and shape; and had put them on
-with visible reluctance, and only because no choice had been allowed
-her. The big girls arranged--within limits--their own costumes, but
-the little girls wore what was given them. Yet the impenetrable calm
-with which she presented herself dulled the shafts of schoolgirl
-sarcasm. You might as well have tried to cauterize a wooden leg--to use
-Mirabeau's famous simile--as to have tried to provoke Elizabeth.
-
-"Isabella of Castile" was a tragedy. Its heroine, Inez, was held a
-captive by the Moors, and was occupying herself when the play opened
-with the conversion to Christianity of Ayesha, the assumed daughter of
-the ever-famous Hiaya Alnayar,--a splendid anachronism (at the siege
-of Granada), worthy of M. Sardou. Inez embodied all the Christian
-virtues, as presented only too often for our consideration. She was
-so very good that she could hardly help suspecting how good she was;
-and she never spoke without uttering sentiments so noble and exalted
-that the Moors--simple children of nature--hated her unaffectedly, and
-made life as disagreeable for her as they knew how. The powers of evil
-were represented by Zara, sister of Hiaya, and the ruling spirit of
-Granada. Enlightened criticism would now call Zara a patriot; but we
-held sterner views. It was she who defied the Spaniards, who refused
-surrender, and who, when hope had fled, plotted the murder of Isabella.
-It was she who persecuted the saintly Inez, and whose dagger pierced
-Ayesha's heart in the last tumultuous scene. A delightful part to act!
-I knew every line of it before the rehearsals were over, and I used
-to rant through it in imagination when I was supposed to be studying
-my lessons, and when I was lying in my little bed. There were glowing
-moments when I pictured to myself Mary Orr falling ill the very day of
-the performance, Madame Rayburn in despair, everybody thunderstruck and
-helpless, and I stepping modestly forward to confess I knew the part.
-I saw myself suddenly the centre of attention, the forlorn hope of a
-desperate emergency, my own insignificant speeches handed over to any
-one who could learn them, and I storming through Zara's lines to the
-admiration and wonder of the school. The ease with which I sacrificed
-Mary Orr to this ambitious vision is pleasing now to contemplate; but I
-believe I should have welcomed the Bubonic plague, with the prospect of
-falling its victim the next day, to have realized my dreams.
-
-  "One crowded hour of glorious life
-  Is worth an age without a name."
-
-It was a pity that none of this dramatic fervour found expression in
-my own rôle, which, though modest, was not without its possibilities.
-But I was ardent only in imagination, dramatic only in my dreams. When
-it came to words, I was tame and halting; when it came to gestures, I
-was awkward and constrained. In vain Madame Rayburn read and re-read
-me my lines, which, in her clear, flexible voice, took on meaning
-and purpose. In vain she sought to impress upon me my own especial
-characteristics,--a slavish spitefulness and servility. It was my
-privilege to appear in the first scene, and to make the first speech of
-any importance,--to strike, as I was told, the keynote of the play. The
-rising curtain revealed Ayesha (Julia Reynolds) in her father's palace;
-Lilly and I in attendance.
-
-_Ayesha._ Send hither Inez.
-
-_Lilly._ (Her one great effort.) The Christian slave?
-
-_Ayesha_ (impatiently). Is there another Inez in the household? You
-may both retire.
-
-Obediently we bowed and retired; but on the threshold I remarked to
-Lilly in a bitter undertone, audible only to the house: "Ay! ay, we
-may retire. And yet I think her noble kinsmen would deem our songs and
-tales better amusement for a winter's eve than all these whispered
-controversies on the Christian faith that last sometimes the whole
-night through. I've overheard them. But wait until Zara returns."
-
-"Try and say those last words threateningly," Madame Rayburn would
-entreat. "Remember you are going to betray Ayesha's secret. '_Wait_
-until Zara returns.' And you might clench your right hand. Your _right_
-hand. No, no, don't raise it. Julia, if you giggle so, I shall never be
-able to teach the children anything. You embarrass and confuse them.
-Try once more: '_Wait_ until Zara returns.' Now enter Inez. 'Lady, you
-sent for me.'"
-
-Rehearsals were, on the whole, not an unmixed delight. A large circle
-of amused critics is hardly conducive to ease, and the free expression
-of dramatic force,--at least, not when one is eleven years old, and
-painfully shy. I envied Marie her fervour and pathos, her clasped
-hands and uplifted eyes. I envied Elizabeth her business-like repose,
-the steady, if somewhat perfunctory, fashion in which she played her
-part. I envied Lilly, who halted and stammered over her three words,
-but whose beauty made amends for all shortcomings. Yet day by day I
-listened with unabated interest to the familiar lines. Day by day
-the climax awoke in me the same sentiments of pity and exultation.
-Moreover, the distinction of being in the cast was something solid and
-satisfactory. It lifted me well above the heads of less fortunate,
-though certainly not less deserving, classmates. It enabled me to
-assume an attitude toward Annie Churchill and Emily which I can only
-hope they were generous enough to forgive. It was an honour universally
-coveted, and worth its heavy cost.
-
-The night came. The stage was erected at one end of our big study-room
-(classic-hall, we called it); the audience, consisting of the school
-and the nuns, for no strangers were admitted on these occasions, sat in
-serried ranks to witness our performance. Behind the scenes, despite
-the frenzy of suppressed excitement, there reigned outward order and
-tranquillity. The splendid precision of our convent training held good
-in all emergencies. We revolved like spheres in our appointed orbits,
-and confusion was foreign to our experience. I am inclined to think
-that the habit of self-restraint induced by this gentle inflexibility
-of discipline, this exquisite sense of method and proportion, was the
-most valuable by-product of our education. There was an element of
-dignity in being even an insignificant part of a harmonious whole.
-
-At the stroke of eight the curtain rose. Ayesha, reclining upon
-cushions, and wearing all the chains and necklaces the school could
-boast, listens with rapture to the edifying discourse of Inez, and
-confesses her readiness to be baptized. Inez gives pious thanks for
-this conversion, not forgetting to remind the Heavenly powers that it
-was through her agency it was effected. Into this familiar atmosphere
-of controversy the sudden return of Zara brings a welcome breath of
-wickedness and high resolve. Granada is doomed. Her days are numbered.
-The Spanish army, encamped in splendour, awaits her inevitable fall.
-Her ruler is weak and vacillating. Her people cry for bread. But Zara's
-spirit is unbroken. She finds Inez--in whom every virtue and every
-grace conspire to exasperate--distributing her own portion of food
-to clamorous beggars, and sweeps her sternly aside: "Dare not again
-degrade a freeborn Moslem into a recipient of thy Christian charity."
-She vows that if the city cannot be saved, its fall shall be avenged,
-and that the proud Queen of Castile shall never enter its gates in
-triumph.
-
-Dark whispers of assassination fill the air. The plot is touching in
-its simplicity. Inez, a captive of rank, is to be sent as a peace
-offering to the Spanish lines. Ayesha and Zoraiya (Elizabeth) accompany
-her as pledges of good faith. Zara, disguised as a serving woman, goes
-with them,--her soul inflamed with hate, her dagger hidden in her
-breast. Ayesha is kept in ignorance of the conspiracy; but Zoraiya
-knows,--knows that the queen is to be murdered, and that her own life
-will help to pay the penalty. "Does she consent?" whispers a slave to
-me; to which I proudly answer: "Consent! Ay, gladly. If it be well for
-Granada that this Spanish queen should die, then Zara's niece, being of
-Zara's blood, thinks neither of pity nor precaution. She says she deals
-with the Castilian's life as with her own, and both are forfeited."
-
-The scene shifts--by the help of our imagination, for scene-shifters
-we had none--to Santa Fe, that marvellous camp, more like a city than
-a battlefield, where the Spaniards lie entrenched. It is an hour of
-triumph for Inez, and, as might be expected, she bears herself with
-superlative and maddening sanctity. She is all the Cardinal Virtues
-rolled into one.
-
-  To live with the Saints in Heaven
-    Is untold bliss and glory;
-  But to live with the saints on earth
-    Is quite another story.
-
-When I--meanly currying favour--beg her to remember that I have ever
-stood her friend, she replies with proud humility: "I will remember
-naught that I have seen, or heard, or suffered in Granada; and therein
-lies your safety."
-
-The rôle of Isabella of Castile was played by Frances Fenton, a large,
-fair girl, with a round face, a slow voice, and an enviable placidity
-of disposition; a girl habitually decorated with all the medals,
-ribbons, and medallions that the school could bestow for untarnished
-propriety of behaviour. She wore a white frock of noticeable simplicity
-("so great a soul as Isabella," said Madame Rayburn, "could never stoop
-to vanity"), a blue sash, and a gold crown, which was one of our most
-valued stage properties. Foremost among the ladies who surrounded her
-was Marie, otherwise the Marchioness de Moya, mother of Inez, and
-also--though this has still to be divulged--of the long-lost Ayesha.
-It is while the marchioness is clasping Inez in her maternal arms,
-and murmuring thanks to Heaven, and all the other Spanish ladies are
-clasping their hands, and murmuring thanks to Heaven, that Zara sees
-her opportunity to stab the unsuspecting queen. She steals cautiously
-forward (my throbbing heart stood still), and draws the dagger--a
-mother-of-pearl paper knife--from the folds of her dress. But Ayesha,
-rendered suspicious by conversion, is watching her closely. Suddenly
-she divines her purpose, and, when Zara's arm is raised to strike, she
-springs forward to avert the blow. It pierces her heart, and with a
-gasp she falls dying at Isabella's feet.
-
-Every word that followed is engraven indelibly upon my memory. I have
-forgotten much since then, but only with death can this last scene be
-effaced from my recollection. It was now that Elizabeth was to make her
-vehement recantation, was to be converted with Shakespearian speed.
-It was now she was to fall upon her knees, and abjure Mohammedanism
-forever. She did not fall. She took a step forward, and knelt quietly
-and decorously by Ayesha's side, as if for night prayers. Her volcanic
-language contrasted strangely with the imperturbable tranquillity of
-her demeanour.
-
-_Zoraiya._ Oh! Zara, thou hast slain her, slain the fair flower of
-Granada. The darling of Hiaya's heart is dead.
-
-_Spanish Lady._ The girl speaks truth. 'Twas Zara's arm that struck.
-
-_Zoraiya_ (conscientiously). From this hour I do renounce the creed
-whose fatal worship of bad passions has led thee on, step by step, to
-this blood-guiltiness.
-
-_Zara._ Peace, peace, Zoraiya! Degrade not thyself thus for one not of
-thy blood nor race.
-
-_Zoraiya._ Thy brother's child not of our blood nor race! Thy crime has
-made thee mad.
-
-_Zara._ Thou shalt see. I would have word with the Marchioness de Moya.
-
-_Marchioness de Moya_ (springing forward). Why namest thou me, woman? O
-Queen! why does this Moslem woman call on me?
-
-_Isabella_ (with uplifted eyes). Pray, pray! my friend. Naught else
-can help thee in this hour which I see coming. For, oh! this is
-Heaven-ordained.
-
-_Zara._ Thou hadst a daughter?
-
-_Marchioness de Moya._ I have one.
-
-_Zara._ One lost to thee in infancy, when Hiaya stormed Alhama. If
-thou wouldst once again embrace her, take in thine arms thy dying child.
-
-_Marchioness de Moya_ (unsteadily). Thy hatred to our race is not
-unknown. Thou sayest this, seeking to torture me. But know, 'twere not
-torture, 'twere happiness, to believe thy words were words of truth.
-
-_Zara._ I would not make a Christian happy. But the words are spoken,
-and cannot be withdrawn. For the rest, Hiaya, whose degenerate wife
-reared as her own the captive child, will not dispute its truth, now
-that she is passing equally away from him and thee.
-
-_Spanish Lady._ Oh! hapless mother!
-
-_Marchioness de Moya_ (proudly). Hapless! I would not change my dying
-child for any living one in Christendom.
-
-And now, alas! that I must tell it, came the burning humiliation of my
-childhood. Until this moment, as the reader may have noticed, no one
-had offered to arrest Zara, nor staunch Ayesha's wound, nor call for
-aid, nor do any of the things that would naturally have been done off
-the stage. The necessity of explaining the situation had overridden--as
-it always does in the drama--every other consideration. But now, while
-the queen was busy embracing the marchioness, and while the Spanish
-ladies were bending over Ayesha's body, it was my part to pluck Zara's
-robe, and whisper: "Quick, quick, let us be gone! To linger here is
-death." To which she scornfully retorts: "They have no thought of thee,
-slave; and, as for me, I go to meet what fate Allah ordains:" and
-slowly leaves the stage.
-
-But where _was_ I? Not in our convent schoolroom, not on our convent
-stage; but in the queen's pavilion, witness to a tragedy which rent
-my soul in twain. Ayesha (I had a passionate admiration for Julia
-Reynolds), lying dead and lovely at my feet; Marie's pitiful cry
-vibrating in my ears; and Zara's splendid scorn and hatred overriding
-all pity and compunction. Wrapped in the contemplation of these things,
-I stood speechless and motionless, oblivious of cues, unaware of Zara's
-meaning glance, unconscious of the long, strained pause, or of Madame
-Rayburn's loud prompting from behind the scenes. At last, hopeless
-of any help in my direction, Zara bethought herself to say: "As for
-me, I go to meet what fate Allah ordains:" and stalked off,--which
-independent action brought me to my senses with a start. I opened my
-mouth to speak, but it was too late; and, realizing the horror of my
-position, I turned and fled,--fled to meet the flood-tide of Mary
-Orr's reproaches.
-
-"Every one will think that I forgot my lines," she stormed. "Didn't you
-see me looking straight at you, and waiting for my cue? The whole scene
-was spoiled by your stupidity."
-
-I glanced miserably at Madame Rayburn. Of all the nuns I loved her
-best; but I knew her too well to expect any comfort from her lips. Her
-brown eyes were very cold and bright. "The scene was not spoiled," she
-said judicially; "it went off remarkably well. But I did think, Agnes,
-that, although you cannot act, you had too much interest in the play,
-and too much feeling for the situation, to forget entirely where you
-were, or what you were about. There, don't cry! It didn't matter much."
-
-Don't cry! As well say to the pent-up dam, "Don't overflow!" or to
-the heaving lava-bed, "Don't leave your comfortable crater!" Already
-my tears were raining down over my blue tunic and yellow trousers.
-How could I--poor, inarticulate child--explain that it was because
-of my absorbing interest in the play, my passionate feeling for the
-situation, that I was now humbled to the dust, and that my career as an
-actress was closed?
-
-
-
-
-In Retreat
-
-
-We were on the eve of a "spiritual retreat,"--four whole days of
-silence,--and, in consideration of this fact, were enjoying the unusual
-indulgence of an hour's recreation after supper. The gravity of the
-impending change disturbed our spirits, and took away from us--such is
-the irony of fate--all desire to talk. We were not precisely depressed,
-although four days of silence, of sermons, of "religious exercises,"
-and examinations of conscience, might seem reasonably depressing. But
-on the other hand,--happy adjustment of life's burdens,--we should have
-no lessons to study, no dictations to write, no loathsome arithmetic
-to fret our peaceful hearts. The absence of French for four whole
-days was, in itself, enough to sweeten the pious prospect ahead of
-us. Elizabeth firmly maintained she liked making retreats; but then
-Elizabeth regarded her soul's perils with a less lively concern than I
-did. She was not cursed with a speculative temperament.
-
-What we all felt, sitting silent and somewhat apprehensive in the
-lamplight, was a desire to do something outrageous,--something which
-should justify the plunge we were about to make into penitence and
-compunction of heart. It was the stirring of the Carnival spirit within
-us, the same intensely human impulse which makes the excesses of Shrove
-Tuesday a prelude to the first solemn services of Lent. The trouble
-with us was that we did not know what to do. Our range of possible
-iniquities was at all times painfully limited. When I recall it, I
-am fain to think of a pleasant conceit I once heard from Mr. Royce,
-concerning the innocence of baby imps. Thanks to the closeness of our
-guardianship, and to the pure air we breathed, no little circle of
-azure-winged cherubim were ever more innocent than we; yet there were
-impish promptings in every guiltless heart. Is it possible to look at
-those cheerful, snub-nosed angels that circle around Fra Lippo Lippi's
-madonnas, without speculating upon the superfluity of naughtiness that
-must be forgiven them day by day?
-
-"We might blow out the lights," suggested Lilly feebly.
-
-Elizabeth shook her head, and the rest of us offered no response.
-To blow out the schoolroom lamps was one of those heroic misdeeds
-which could be attempted only in moments of supreme excitement, when
-some breathless romping game had raised our spirits to fever pitch.
-It was utterly out of keeping with our present mood, and besides
-it was not really wrong,--only forbidden under penalties. We were
-subtle enough--at least some of us were; nobody expected subtlety from
-Lilly--to recognize the difference.
-
-A silence followed. Tony's chin was sunk in the palm of her hand. When
-she lifted her head, her brown eyes shone with a flickering light. An
-enchanting smile curved her crooked little mouth. "Let's steal the
-straws from under the Bambino in the corridor," she said.
-
-We rose swiftly and simultaneously to our feet. Here was a crime,
-indeed; a crime which offered the twofold stimulus of pillage and
-impiety. The Bambino, a little waxen image we all ardently admired,
-reposed under a glass case in the wide hall leading to the chapel.
-He lay with his dimpled arms outstretched on a bed of symmetrically
-arranged straws; not the common, fuzzy, barnyard straws, but those
-large, smooth cylinders, through which all children love to suck up
-lemonade and soda water. Soda water was to us an unknown beverage,
-and lemonade the rarest of indulgences; but we had always coveted the
-straws, though the unblessed thought of taking them had never entered
-any mind before. Now, welcoming the temptation, and adding deceit
-to all the other sins involved, we put on our black veils, and made
-demure pretence of going to the chapel to pray. Except to go to the
-chapel, five little girls would never have been permitted to leave the
-schoolroom together; and, under ordinary circumstances, this sudden
-access of piety might have awakened reasonable suspicions in the breast
-of the Mistress of recreation. But the impending retreat made it seem
-all right to her (she was no great student of human nature), and her
-friendly smile, as we curtsied and withdrew, brought a faint throb of
-shame to my perfidious soul.
-
-Once outside the door, we scuttled swiftly to the chapel hall. It was
-silent and empty. Tony lifted the heavy glass cover which protected the
-Bambino,--the pretty, helpless baby we were going to ruthlessly rob.
-For a moment my inborn reverence conquered, and I stooped to kiss the
-waxen feet. Then, surging hotly through my heart, came the thought,--a
-Judas kiss; and with a shudder I pulled myself away. By this time, I
-didn't want the straws, I didn't want to take them at all; but, when
-one sins in company, one must respect one's criminal obligations.
-"Honour among thieves." Hurriedly we collected our spoils,--ten shining
-tubes, which left horrid gaps in the Bambino's bed. Then the case was
-lowered, and we stood giggling and whispering in the corridor.
-
-"Let's"--said Tony.
-
-But what new villainy she meditated, we never knew. The chapel door
-opened,--it was Madame Bouron,--and we fled precipitately back to the
-schoolroom. As we reached it, the clanging of a bell struck dolorously
-upon our ears. Our last free hour was over, and silence, the unbroken
-silence of four days, had fallen like a pall upon the convent. We took
-off our veils, and slipped limply into line for prayers.
-
-The next morning a new order of things reigned throughout the hushed
-school. The French conversation, which ordinarily made pretence
-of enlivening our breakfast hour, was exchanged for a soothing
-stillness. In place of our English classes, we had a sermon from Father
-Santarius, some chapters of religious reading, and a quiet hour to
-devote to any pious exercise we deemed most profitable to our souls.
-Dinner and supper were always silent meals, and one of the older
-girls read aloud to us,--a pleasant and profitable custom. Now the
-travels of Père Huc--a most engaging book--was laid aside in favour of
-Montalembert's "Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary,"--which also had its
-charm. Many deficiencies there were in our educational scheme,--it was
-so long ago,--but the unpardonable sin of commonplaceness could never
-be counted its shortcoming. After dinner there was an "instruction"
-from one of the nuns, and more time for private devotions. Then
-came our three-o'clock _goûter_, followed by a second instruction,
-Benediction, and the Rosary. After supper, Father Santarius preached
-to us again in the dimly lit chapel, and our fagged little souls were
-once more forcibly aroused to the contemplation of their imminent
-peril. Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven--which the catechism says are
-"the four last things to be remembered"--were the subjects of the four
-night sermons. Those were not days when soothing syrup was administered
-in tranquillizing doses from the pulpit.
-
-A sense of mystery attached itself to Father Santarius, attributable, I
-think, to his immense size, which must have equalled that of St. Thomas
-Aquinas. It was said that he had not seen his own feet for twenty
-years (so vast a bulk intervened), and this interesting legend was a
-source of endless speculation to little, lean, elastic girls. He was
-an eloquent and dramatic preacher, versed in all the arts of oratory,
-and presenting a striking contrast to our dull and gentle chaplain,
-one of the kindest and most colourless of men, to whose sermons we
-had long ceased to listen very attentively. We listened to Father
-Santarius, listened trembling while he thundered his denunciations
-against worldliness, and infidelity, and pride of place, and many
-dreadful sins we stood in no immediate danger of committing. The
-terrors of the Judgment Day were unfurled before our startled eyes with
-the sympathetic appreciation of a fifteenth-century fresco, and the
-dead weight of eternity oppressed our infant souls. Father Santarius
-knew his Hell as well as did Dante, and his Heaven (but we had not yet
-come to Heaven) a great deal better. Moreover, while Dante's Hell was
-arranged for the accommodation of those whom he was pleased to put in
-it, Father Santarius's Hell was prepared for the possible accommodation
-of _us_,--which made a vast difference in our philosophy. Perhaps a
-similar sense of liability might have softened the poet's vision. The
-third night's sermon reduced Annie Churchill to hysterical sobs; Marie
-was very white, and Elizabeth looked grave and uncomfortable. As for
-me, my troubled heart must have found expression in my troubled eyes,
-when I raised them to Madame Rayburn's face as we filed out of the
-chapel. She was not given to caresses, but she laid her hand gently on
-my black-veiled head. "Not for you, Agnes," she said, "not for you.
-Don't be fearful, child!" thus undoing in one glad instant the results
-of an hour's hard preaching, and sending me comforted to bed.
-
-The next afternoon I was seated at my desk in the interval between an
-instruction on "human respect"--which we accounted a heavy failing--and
-Benediction. We were all of us to go to confession on the following
-day; and, by way of preparation for this ordeal, I was laboriously
-examining my conscience, and writing down a list of searching
-questions, which were supposed to lay bare the hidden iniquities of
-my life, and to pave the way to those austere heights of virtue I
-hopefully expected to climb. It was a lengthy process, and threatened
-to consume most of the afternoon.
-
-"Is my conversation always charitable and edifying?"
-
-"Do I pride myself upon my talents and accomplishments?"
-
-"Have I freed my heart from all inordinate affection for created
-things?"
-
-"Do I render virtue attractive and pleasing to those who differ from me
-in religion?"--I wrote slowly in my little, cramped, legible hand.
-
-At this point Elizabeth crossed the schoolroom, and touched me on
-the shoulder. She carried her coral rosary, which she dangled before
-my eyes for a minute, and then pointed to the door, an impressive
-dumb show which meant that we should go somewhere, and say our beads
-together. There were times when the sign language we used in retreat
-became as animated as conversation, and a great deal more distracting,
-because of the difficulty we had in understanding it; but the
-discipline of those four days demanded above all things that we should
-not speak an unnecessary word. We became fairly skilled in pantomime by
-the time the days were over.
-
-On the present occasion, Elizabeth's rosary gave its own message, and
-I alacritously abandoned my half-tilled conscience for this new field
-of devotion. We meant to walk up and down the chapel hall (past the
-de-spoiled Bambino), but at the schoolroom door we encountered Madame
-Rayburn.
-
-"Where are you going, children?" she asked.
-
-This being an occasion for articulate speech, Elizabeth replied that we
-were on our way to the corridor to say our beads.
-
-"You had better be out of doors," Madame Rayburn said. "You look as
-if you needed fresh air. Go into the avenue until the bell rings for
-Benediction. No farther, remember, or you may be late. You had better
-take your veils with you to save time."
-
-This _was_ being treated with distinction. Sent out of doors by
-ourselves, just as if we were First Cours girls,--those privileged
-creatures whom we had seen for the last three days pacing gravely
-and silently up and down the pleasant walks. No such liberty had
-ever been accorded to us before, and I felt a thrill of pride when
-Julia Reynolds--walking alone in the avenue--raised her eyes from the
-"Pensées Chrétiennes" of Madame Swetchine (I recognized its crimson
-cover, having been recently obliged to translate three whole pages of
-it as a penance), and stared at us with the abstract impersonal gaze of
-one engrossed in high spiritual concerns. It was a grey day in early
-June, a soft and windless day, and, as we walked sedately under the big
-mulberry trees, a sense of exquisite well-being stole into my heart.
-I was conscious of some faint appreciation of the tranquillity that
-breathed around me, some dim groping after the mystery of holiness,
-some recognizable content in the close companionship of my friend. I
-forgot that I was going to free myself from all inordinate affection
-for created things, and knew only that it was pleasant to walk by
-Elizabeth's side.
-
-"Let us contemplate in this second joyful mystery the visitation of the
-Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin, St. Elizabeth," she said.
-
-Why, there it was! The Blessed Virgin's cousin was named Elizabeth,
-too. Of course they were friends; perhaps they were very fond of
-each other; only St. Elizabeth was so much too old. Could one have a
-real friend, years older than one's self? My mind was wandering over
-this aspect of the case while I pattered my responses, and my pearl
-beads--not half so pretty as Elizabeth's coral ones--slipped quickly
-through my fingers. When we had finished the five decades, and had said
-the _De profundis_ for the dead, there was still time on our hands. The
-chapel bell had not yet rung. We walked for a few minutes in silence,
-and then I held up my rosary as a suggestion that we should begin the
-sorrowful mysteries. But Elizabeth shook her head.
-
-"Let's have a little serious conversation," she said.
-
-Not Balaam, when he heard the remonstrance of his ass, not Albertus
-Magnus, when the brazen head first opened its lips and spoke, was more
-startled and discomfited than I. Such a proposal shook my moral sense
-to its foundations. But Elizabeth's light blue eyes--curiously light,
-by contrast with her dark skin and hair--were raised to mine with
-perfect candour and good faith. It was plain that she did not hold
-herself a temptress.
-
-"A little _serious_ conversation," she repeated with emphasis.
-
-For a moment I hesitated. Three speechless days made the suggestion a
-very agreeable one, and I was in the habit of consenting to whatever
-Elizabeth proposed. But conversation, even serious conversation,
-was a daring innovation for a retreat, and I was not by nature an
-innovator. Then suddenly a happy thought came to me. I had brought
-along my Ursuline Manual (in those days we went about armed with all
-our spiritual weapons), and I opened it at a familiar page.
-
-"Let's find out our predominant passions," I said.
-
-Elizabeth consented joyfully. Her own prayer-book was French, a
-_Paroissien Romain_, and the predominant passions had no place in it.
-She was evidently flattered by the magnificence of the term, as applied
-to her modest transgressions. It was something to know--at twelve--that
-one was possessed of a passion to predominate.
-
-"We'll skip the advice in the beginning?" she said.
-
-I nodded, and Elizabeth, plunging, as was her wont, into the heart of
-the matter, read with impressive solemnity:--
-
-"The predominant passion of many young people is pride, which never
-fails to produce such haughtiness of manner and self-sufficiency as to
-render them equally odious and ridiculous. Incessantly endeavouring
-to attract admiration, and become the sole objects of attention, they
-spare no pains to set themselves off, and to outdo their companions.
-By their conceited airs, their forwardness, their confidence in their
-own opinions, and neglect or contempt of that timid, gentle, retiring
-manner, so amiable and attractive in youth, they defeat their own
-purpose, and become as contemptible as they aim at being important."
-
-There was a pause. The description sounded so little like either of us
-that I expected Elizabeth to go right on to more promising vices. But
-she was evidently turning the matter over in her mind.
-
-"I think that's Adelaide Harrison's predominant passion," she said at
-length.
-
-Somewhat surprised, I acquiesced. It had not occurred to me to send my
-thoughts wandering over the rest of the school, or I should, perhaps,
-have reached some similar conclusion.
-
-"Yes, it's certainly Adelaide Harrison's passion," Elizabeth went on
-thoughtfully. "You remember how she behaved about that composition of
-hers, 'The Woods in Autumn,' that Madame Duncan thought so fine. She
-said she ought to be able to write a good composition when her mother
-had written a whole volume of poems, and her brother had written
-something else,--I don't remember what. That's what _I_ call pride."
-
-"She says they are a talented family," I added maliciously. ("Is my
-conversation always charitable and edifying?") "That she taught herself
-to read when she was six years old, and that they all speak French when
-they are together. I don't believe that."
-
-"It must be horrid, if they do," said Elizabeth. "I'm glad I'm not one
-of them. Vous ne mangez rien, ma chère Adelaide. Est-ce que vous êtes
-malade?"
-
-"Hélas! oui, mon père. J'ai peur que j'étudie trop. Go on, Elizabeth,
-I'm afraid the bell will ring."
-
-Thus adjured, Elizabeth continued: "There are many young people whose
-predominant passion is a certain ill-humour, fretfulness, peevishness,
-or irritability, which pervades their words, manners, and even looks.
-It is usually brought into action by such mere trifles that there is
-no chance of peace for those who live in the house with them. Even
-their best friends are not always secure from their ill-tempered
-sallies, their quarrelsome moods. Pettish and perverse, they throw a
-gloom over the gayest hour, and the most innocent amusement. As this
-luckless disposition is peculiarly that of women, young girls cannot be
-too earnestly recommended to combat the tendency in youth, lest they
-become, when older, the torment of that society they are intended to
-bless and ornament."
-
-Another pause,--a short one this time. Elizabeth's eyes met mine with
-an unspoken question, and I nodded acquiescence. "Tony!" we breathed
-simultaneously.
-
-It was true. Tony's engaging qualities were marred by a most prickly
-temper. We knew her value well. She played all games so admirably that
-the certainty of defeat modified our pleasure in playing with her.
-She was fleet of foot, ready of wit, and had more fun in her little
-brown head than all the rest of us could muster. She would plunge us
-into abysses of mischief with one hand, and extricate us miraculously
-with the other. She was startlingly truthful, and lived nobly up to our
-wayward but scrupulous standard of schoolgirl honour, to the curious
-code of ethics by which we regulated our lives. She might have been
-Elizabeth's vice-regent; she might even have disputed the authority of
-our constitutional sovereign, and have led us Heaven knows whither,
-had it not been for her pestilential quarrelsomeness. How often had
-she and I started out at the recreation hour in closest amity, and had
-returned, silent and glowering, with the wide gravel walk between us.
-If she were in a fractious mood, no saint from Paradise could have kept
-the peace. Therefore, when Elizabeth looked at me, we said "Tony!" and
-then stopped short. She was our friend, one of the band, and though we
-granted her derelictions, we would not discuss them. We could be ribald
-enough at Adelaide Harrison's expense, but not at Tony's.
-
-"Why don't you lend her this book?" said Elizabeth kindly.
-
-I shook my head. I knew why very well. And I rather think Elizabeth
-did, too.
-
-By this time it looked as if we were going to fit the whole school with
-predominant passions, and not find any for ourselves; but the next line
-Elizabeth read struck a chill into my soul, and, as she went on, every
-word seemed like a barbed arrow aimed unswervingly at me.
-
-"A propensity to extravagant partialities is a fault which frequently
-predominates in some warm, impetuous characters. These persons are
-distinguished by a precipitate selection of favourites in every
-society; by an overflow of marked attentions to the objects of their
-predilection, whose interests they espouse, whose very faults they
-attempt to justify, whose opinions they support, whether right or
-wrong, and whose cause they defend, often at the expense of good sense,
-charity, moderation, and even common justice. Woe to him who ventures
-to dissent from them. The friendship or affection of such characters
-does not deserve to be valued, for it results, not from discernment of
-merit, but from blind prejudice. Besides, they annoy those whom they
-think proper to rank among their favourites by expecting to engross
-their whole attention, and by resenting every mark of kindness they may
-think proper to show to others. However, as their affections are in
-general as short-lived as they are ardent, no one person is likely to
-be long tormented with the title of their friend."
-
-I was conscious of two flaming cheeks as we walked for a moment in
-silence, and I glanced at Elizabeth out of the tail of my eye to see
-if she were summing up my case. It wasn't true, it couldn't be true,
-that extravagant partialities (when they were _my_ partialities) were
-short-lived. I was preparing to combat this part of the accusation when
-Elizabeth's cool voice dispelled my groundless fears.
-
-"I think that's silly," she said. "Nobody is like that."
-
-The suddenness of my relief made me laugh outright, and then,--Oh,
-baseness of the human heart!--I sought to strengthen my own position by
-denouncing some one else. "Not Annie Churchill?" I asked.
-
-Elizabeth considered. "No, not even Annie Churchill. What makes you
-think of her?"
-
-It was an awkward question. How could I say that two nights before the
-retreat, Annie had slipped into my alcove,--a reprehensible habit she
-had,--and, with an air of mystery, had informed me she was "trying to
-do something,"--she didn't like to tell me what, because she thought
-that maybe I was trying to do it, too. Upon my intimating that I was
-trying to go to bed, and nothing else that I knew of, she had said
-quite solemnly: "I am trying to gain Elizabeth's affections." As it was
-impossible for me to adduce this piece of evidence (even an unsought
-confidence we held sacred), I observed somewhat lamely: "Oh, she does
-seem to get suddenly fond of people."
-
-"Who's she fond of?" asked the unsuspecting--and
-ungrammatical--Elizabeth.
-
-"Oh, do go on!" I urged, and, even as I said it, the Benediction
-bell rang. A score of girls, serious, black-veiled young penitents,
-appeared, as if by magic, hastening to the chapel. We joined them
-silently, and filed into rank. Already my conscience was pricking. Had
-our "serious" conversation been either charitable or edifying? Was it
-for this that Madame Rayburn had sent us out to walk under the mulberry
-trees?
-
-It pricked harder still--this sore little conscience--the next day,
-when Lilly came to me, looking downcast and miserable. "Madame Duncan
-said I might speak to you," she whispered, "because it was about
-something important. It _is_ important, very. Father Santarius is sure
-to tell us we must put those straws back, and I've broken one of mine."
-
-Straws! I stared at her aghast. Where were my straws? I didn't know. I
-hadn't the faintest idea. I had lost them both, as I lost everything
-else, except the empty head so firmly, yet so uselessly fixed upon
-my shoulders. It was really wonderful that a little girl who had only
-three places in the world in which to put anything--a desk, a washstand
-drawer, and a japanned dressing-case (our clothes were all kept for us
-with exquisite neatness in the vestry)--should not have known where
-her few possessions were; but I could have lost them all in any of
-these receptacles, and never have found one of them again. When a mad
-scramble through my desk had furnished incontestable proof that no
-straws were there, and Lilly had departed, somewhat comforted by my
-more desperate case, I sat gloomily facing the complicated problem
-before me. I must confess my sin, I would be called upon to make
-restitution, and I had nothing to restore. The more I thought about it,
-the more hopeless I grew, and the more confused became my sense of
-proportion. If I had stolen the Bambino himself,--as a peasant woman,
-it is said, once stole the Baby of Ara-Coeli,--I could not have felt
-guiltier.
-
-"Agnes," said Madame Rayburn's voice, "you had better go to the chapel
-now, and prepare for confession."
-
-She was looking down on me, and, as I rose to my feet, a light broke in
-upon my darkness. I knew where to turn for help.
-
-"If you've taken a thing, and you haven't got it any more to give it
-back, what can you do?" I asked.
-
-The suddenness with which my query was launched (I always hated
-roundabout approaches) startled even this seasoned nun. "If you've
-taken a thing," she echoed. "Do you mean stolen?"
-
-"Yes," I answered stolidly.
-
-She looked astonished for a moment, and then the shadow of a smile
-passed over her face. "Is it something you have eaten?" she asked, "and
-that is why you cannot give it back?"
-
-I laughed a little miserable laugh. It was natural that this solution
-of the problem should present itself to Madame Rayburn's mind, albeit
-we were not in the fruit season. But then, it had once happened that a
-collation had been set for the Archbishop and some accompanying priests
-in the conference room, and that Elizabeth, Lilly, and I, spying
-through a half-open door the tempting array of sandwiches and cake,
-had descended like Harpies upon the feast. This discreditable incident
-lingered, it was plain, in Madame Rayburn's memory, and prompted her
-question.
-
-"No, it wasn't anything to eat," I said; and then, recognizing the
-clemency of her mood (she was not always clement), I revealed the
-sacrilegious nature of my spoliation. "And I've lost them, and can't
-put them back," I wound up sorrowfully.
-
-Madame Rayburn looked grave. Whether it was because she was shocked, or
-because she was amused and wanted to conceal her amusement, I cannot
-say. "Did you do this by yourself?" she said; and then, seeing my face,
-added hastily: "No, I won't ask you that question. It isn't fair, and
-besides, I know you won't answer. But if there are any more straws in
-anybody's possession, I want you to bring them to me to-night. That's
-all. Now go to confession. Say you've told, and that it's all right."
-
-I was dismissed. With a light heart I sped to the chapel. To see one's
-way clear through the intricacies of life; to be sure of one's next
-step, and of a few steps to follow,--at eleven, or at threescore and
-ten, this is beatitude.
-
-It was Saturday morning when we emerged from retreat, a clear, warm
-Saturday in June. Mass was over, and we filed down in measureless
-content to the refectory. Because of our four days' silence, we were
-permitted to speak our blessed mother tongue at breakfast time.
-Therefore, instead of the dejected murmur which was the liveliest
-expression of our Gallic eloquence, there rose upon the startled air a
-clamorous uproar, a high, shrill, joyous torrent of sound. A hundred
-girls were talking fast and furiously to make up for lost time. We
-had hot rolls for breakfast, too, a luxury reserved for such special
-occasions; and we were all going to the woods in the afternoon, both
-First and Second Cours,--going for two long, lovely hours, which would
-give us time to reach the farthest limits of our territory. Elizabeth
-came and squeezed herself on the bench beside me, to propose a private
-search for the white violets that grew in the marshy ground beyond
-the lake, and that bloomed long after the wood violets had gone. Tony
-shouted across two intervening benches that she didn't see why we could
-not secure the boat, and have a row,--as if the Second Cours girls were
-at all likely to get possession of the boat when the First Cours girls
-were around. "We can, if we try," persisted Tony, in whom four days of
-peaceful meditation had bred the liveliest inclination for a brawl. As
-for me, I ate my roll, and looked out of the window at the charming
-vista stretching down to the woods; and my spirits mounted higher and
-higher with the rising tide of joy, with the glad return to the life of
-every day. Heaven, an assured hereafter, had receded comfortably into
-the dim future. Hell was banished from our apprehensions. But, oh, how
-beautiful was the world!
-
-
-
-
-Un Congé sans Cloche
-
-
-We had only two or three of them in the year, and their slow approach
-stirred us to frenzy. In the dark ages, when I went to school, no one
-had yet discovered that play is more instructive than work, no one was
-piling up statistics to prove the educational value of idleness. In
-the absence of nature studies and athletics, we were not encouraged
-to spend our lives out of doors. In the absence of nerve specialists,
-we were not tenderly restrained from studying our lessons too hard.
-It is wonderful how little apprehension on this score was felt by
-either mothers or teachers. We had two months' summer holiday,--July
-and August,--and a week at Christmas time. The rest of the year we
-spent at school. I have known parents so inhuman as to regret those
-unenlightened days.
-
-But can the glorified little children whose lives seem now to be
-one vast and happy playtime, can the privileged schoolgirls who
-are permitted to come to town for a matinée,--which sounds to me
-as fairy-like as Cinderella's ball,--ever know the real value of a
-holiday? As well expect an infant millionaire to know the real value
-of a quarter. We to whom the routine of life was as inevitable as the
-progress of the seasons, we to whom Saturdays were as Mondays, and who
-grappled with Church history and Christian doctrine on pleasant Sunday
-mornings, _we_ knew the mad tumultuous joy that thrilled through hours
-of freedom. The very name which from time immemorial had been given to
-our convent holidays illustrated the fulness of their beatitude. When
-one lives under the dominion of bells, every hour rung in and out
-with relentless precision, _sans cloche_ means glorious saturnalia.
-Once a nervous young nun, anxious at the wild scattering of her flock,
-ventured, on a _congé_, to ring them back to bounds; whereupon her
-bell was promptly, though not unkindly, taken away from her by two of
-the older girls. And when the case was brought to court, the Mistress
-General upheld their action. A law was a law, as binding upon its
-officers as upon the smallest subject in the realm.
-
-The occasions for a _congé sans cloche_ were as august as they were
-rare. "Mother's Feast," by which we meant the saint's day of the
-Superioress, could always be reckoned upon. The feast of St. Joseph was
-also kept in this auspicious fashion,--which gave us a great "devotion"
-to so kind a mediator. Once or twice in the year the Archbishop came
-to the convent, and in return for our addresses, our curtsies, our
-baskets of flowers, and songs of welcome, always bravely insisted that
-we should have a holiday. "Be sure and tell me, if you don't get it,"
-he used to say, which sounded charmingly confidential, though we well
-knew that we should never have an opportunity to tell him anything of
-the kind, and that we should never dare to do it, if we had.
-
-In the year of grace which I now chronicle, the Archbishop was going
-to Rome, and had promised to say good-by to us before he sailed. Those
-were troubled times for Rome. Even we knew that something was wrong,
-though our information did not reach far beyond this point. Like the
-little girl who couldn't tell where Glasgow was, because she had not
-finished studying Asia Minor, we were still wandering belated in the
-third Crusade,--a far cry from united Italy. When Elizabeth, who had
-read the address, said she wondered why the Pope was called "God's
-great martyr saint," we could offer her very little enlightenment. I
-understand that children now interest themselves in current events, and
-ask intelligent questions about things they read in the newspapers.
-For us, the Wars of the Roses were as yesterday, and the Crusades were
-still matters for deep concern. Berengaria of Navarre had been the
-"leading lady" of our day's lesson, and I had written in my "Compendium
-of History"--majestic phrase--this interesting and comprehensive
-statement: "Berengaria led a blameless life, and, after her husband's
-death, retired to a monastery, where she passed the remainder of her
-days."
-
-It was the middle of May when the Archbishop came, and, as the
-weather was warm, we wore our white frocks for the occasion. Very
-immaculate we looked, ranged in a deep, shining semicircle, a blue
-ribbon around every neck, and gloves on every folded hand. It would
-have been considered the height of impropriety to receive, ungloved,
-a distinguished visitor. As the prelate entered, accompanied by the
-Superioress and the Mistress General, we swept him a deep curtsy,--oh,
-the hours of bitter practice it took to limber my stiff little knees
-for those curtsies!--and then broke at once into our chorus of
-welcome:--
-
-  "With happy hearts we now repair
-  All in this joyous scene to share."
-
-There were five verses. When we had finished, we curtsied again and sat
-down, while Mary Rawdon and Eleanor Hale played a nervous duet upon the
-piano.
-
-The Archbishop looked at us benignantly. It was said of him that he
-dearly loved children, but that he was apt to be bored by adults. He
-had not what are called "social gifts," and seldom went beyond the
-common civilities of intercourse. But he would play jackstraws all
-evening with half a dozen children, and apparently find himself much
-refreshed by the entertainment. His eyes wandered during the duet to
-the ends of the semicircle, where sat the very little girls, as rigidly
-still as cataleptics. Wriggling was not then deemed the prescriptive
-right of childhood. An acute observer might perhaps have thought
-that the Archbishop, seated majestically on his dais, and flanked
-by Reverend Mother and Madame Bouron, glanced wistfully at these
-motionless little figures. We were, in truth, as remote from him as if
-we had been on another continent. Easy familiarity with our superiors
-was a thing undreamed of in our philosophy. The standards of good
-behaviour raised an impassable barrier between us.
-
-Frances Fenton made the address. It was an honour once accorded to
-Elizabeth, but usually reserved as a reward for superhuman virtue.
-Not on _that_ score had Elizabeth ever enjoyed it. Frances was first
-blue ribbon, first medallion, and head of the Children of Mary. There
-was nothing left for her but beatification. She stepped slowly, and
-with what was called a "modest grace," into the middle of the room,
-curtsied, and began:--
-
-  "Your children's simple hearts would speak,
-  But cannot find the words they seek.
-  These tones no music's spell can lend;
-  And eloquence would vainly come
-  To greet our Father, Guide, and Friend.
-  Let hearts now speak, and lips be dumb!"
-
-"Then why isn't she dumb?" whispered Tony aggressively, but without
-changing a muscle of her attentive face.
-
-I pretended not to hear her. I had little enough discretion, Heaven
-knows, but even I felt the ripe unwisdom of whispering at such a time.
-It was Mary Rawdon's absence, at the piano, I may observe, that placed
-me in this perilous proximity.
-
-  "Our reverence fond and hopeful prayer
-  Will deck with light one empty place,
-  And fill with love one vacant chair."
-
-"What chair?" asked Tony, and again I pretended not to hear.
-
-  "For e'en regret can wear a softened grace,
-  And smiling hope in whispers low
-  Will oft this cherished thought bestow:
-  Within the Eternal City's sacred wall,
-  He who has blest us in our Convent hall
-  Can now to us earth's holiest blessing bring
-  From God's great martyr saint, Rome's pontiff king."
-
-At this point, Tony, maddened by my unresponsiveness, shot out a
-dexterous little leg (I don't see how she dared to do it, when our
-skirts were so short), and, with lightning speed, kicked me viciously
-on the shins. The anguish was acute, but my sense of self-preservation
-saved me from so much as a grimace. Madame Bouron's lynx-like gaze was
-travelling down our ranks, and, as it rested on me for an instant,
-I felt that she must see the smart. Tony's expression was one of
-rapt and reverent interest. By the time I had mastered my emotions,
-and collected my thoughts, the address was over, and the Archbishop
-was saying a few words about his coming voyage, and about the Holy
-Father, for whom he bade us pray. Then, with commendable promptness,
-he broached the important subject of the _congé_. There was the usual
-smiling demur on Reverend Mother's part. The children had so many
-holidays ("I like that!" snorted Tony), so many interruptions to their
-work. It was so hard to bring them back again to quiet and orderly
-ways. If she granted this indulgence, we must promise to study with
-double diligence for the approaching examinations. Finally she yielded,
-as became a dutiful daughter of the Church; the first of June, ten days
-off, was fixed as the date; and we gave a hearty round of applause,
-in token of our gratitude and relief. After this, we rather expected
-our august visitor to go away; but his eyes had strayed again to the
-motionless little girls at the horns of the semicircle; and, as if they
-afforded him an inspiration, he said something in low, rather urgent
-tones to Reverend Mother,--something to which she listened graciously.
-
-"They will be only too proud and happy," we heard her murmur; and then
-she raised her voice.
-
-"Children," she said impressively, "his Grace is good enough to ask
-that you should escort him to the woods this afternoon. Put on your
-hats and go."
-
-This _was_ an innovation! Put on our hats at four o'clock--the hour
-for French class--and walk to the woods with the Archbishop. It was
-delightful, of course, but a trifle awesome. If, in his ignorance, he
-fancied we should gambol around him like silly lambs, he was soon to
-discover his mistake. Our line of march more closely resembled that of
-a well-drilled army. Madame Bouron walked on his right hand, and Madame
-Duncan on his left. The ribbons, the graduates, and a few sedate girls
-from the first class closed into a decorous group, half of them walking
-backwards,--a convent custom in which we were wonderfully expert. The
-flanks of the army were composed of younger and less distinguished
-girls, while the small fry hovered on its borders, out of sight and
-hearing. We moved slowly, without scattering, and without obvious
-exhilaration. I was occupied in freeing my mind in many bitter words
-to Tony, who defended her conduct on the score of my "setting up for
-sainthood,"--an accusation the novelty of which ought to have made it
-agreeable.
-
-When we reached the lake, a tiny sheet of water with a Lilliputian
-island, we came to a halt. The Archbishop had evidently expressed
-some desire, or at least some readiness, to trust himself upon the
-waves. The boat was unmoored, and Frances Fenton and Ella Holrook
-rowed him carefully around the island, while the rest of us were drawn
-up on shore to witness the performance. We made, no doubt, a very
-nice picture in our white frocks and blue neck ribbons; but we were
-spectators merely, still far remote from any sense of companionship.
-When the boat was close to shore, the Archbishop refused to land. He
-sat in the stern, looking at us with a curious smile. He was strikingly
-handsome,--a long, lean, noble-looking old man,--and he had a voice of
-wonderful sweetness and power. It was said that, even at sixty-five,
-he sang the Mass more beautifully than any priest in his diocese.
-Therefore it was a little alarming when he suddenly asked:--
-
-"My children, do you know any pretty songs?"
-
-"Oh, yes, your Grace," answered Madame Bouron.
-
-"Then sing me something now," said the Archbishop, still with that
-inscrutable smile.
-
-There was a moment's hesitation, a moment's embarrassment, and then,
-acting under instruction, we sang (or, at least, some of us did; there
-was no music in my soul) the "Canadian Boat-Song," and "Star of the
-Sea,"--appropriate, both of them, to the watery expanse before us.
-
-  "_Ave Maria_, we lift our eyes to thee;
-  _Ora pro nobis_; 'tis night far o'er the sea."
-
-The Archbishop listened attentively, and with an evident pleasure that
-must have been wholly disassociated from any musical sense. Then his
-smile deepened. "Would you like me to sing for you?" he said.
-
-"Oh, yes, if you please," we shrilled; and Madame Bouron gave us a
-warning glance. "Be very still, children," she admonished. "His Grace
-is going to sing."
-
-His Grace settled himself comfortably in the boat. His amused glance
-travelled over our expectant faces, and sought as usual the little
-girls, now close to the water's edge. Then he cleared his throat, and,
-as I am a Christian gentlewoman, and a veracious chronicler, _this_ is
-the song he sang:--
-
-  "In King Arthur's reign, a merry reign,
-  Three children were sent from their homes,
-  Were sent from their homes, were sent from their homes,
-  And they never went back again.
-
-  "The first, he was a miller,
-  The second, he was a weaver,
-  The third, he was a little tailor boy,
-  Three big rogues together."
-
-"Can't you join in the chorus, children?" interrupted the Archbishop.
-"Come! the last two lines of every verse."
-
-  "The third, he was a little tailor boy,
-  Three big rogues together."
-
-Our voices rose in a quavering accompaniment to his mellifluous notes.
-We were petrified; but, even in a state of petrification, we did as we
-were bidden.
-
-  "The miller, he stole corn,
-  The weaver, he stole yarn,
-  And the little tailor boy, he stole broadcloth,
-  To keep these three rogues warm."
-
-"Chorus!" commanded the Archbishop; and this time our voices were
-louder and more assured.
-
-  "And the little tailor boy, he stole broadcloth,
-  To keep these three rogues warm."
-
-  "The miller was drowned in his dam,
-  The weaver was hung by his yarn,
-  But the Devil ran away with the little tailor boy,
-  With the broadcloth under his arm."
-
-There was a joyous shout from our ranks. We understood it all now. The
-Archbishop was misbehaving himself, was flaunting his misbehaviour in
-Madame Bouron's face. We knew very well what would be said to us, if we
-sang a song like that, without the Archiepiscopal sanction, and there
-was a delicious sense of impunity in our hearts, as we vociferated the
-unhallowed lines:--
-
-  "But the Devil ran away with the little tailor boy,
-  With the broadcloth under his arm."
-
-Then the Archbishop stepped out of the boat, and there was a timid
-scramble to his side. The barriers were down. He had knocked at our
-hearts in the Devil's name, and we had flung them wide. The return
-to the convent was like a rout;--little girls wedging their way in
-among big girls, the Second Cours contesting every step of the path
-with the First Cours, the most insignificant children lifted suddenly
-to prominence and distinction. I was too shy to do more than move
-restlessly on the outskirts of the crowd; but I saw Tony conversing
-affably with the Archbishop (and looking as gentle as she was
-intelligent), and Viola Milton kissing his ring with the assurance of
-an infant Aloysius. When he bade us good-by, we shouted and waved our
-handkerchiefs until he was out of sight. He turned at the end of the
-avenue, and waved his in a last friendly salutation. That was very long
-ago. I trust that in Paradise the Holy Innocents are now bearing him
-company, for I truly believe his soul would weary of the society of
-grown-up saints.
-
-And our _congé_ was only ten days off. This thought was left to gild
-our waking hours. We--Elizabeth, Marie, Tony, Lilly, Emily, and
-I--resolved ourselves immediately into a committee of ways and means,
-and voted all the money in the treasury for supplies. It was not much,
-but, if well laid out, it would purchase sweets enough to insure a
-midnight pang. The privilege of buying so much as a stick of candy was
-one rigidly reserved for holidays. "Mary" did our shopping for us. Mary
-was a hybrid, a sort of uncloistered nun. Her out-of-date bonnet,
-worn instead of a lay sister's close white cap, proclaimed her as one
-free to come and go; and her mission in life was to transact outside
-business, to buy whatever was necessary or permitted. The lay sisters
-did the work of the convent; Mary ministered to its needs. We wrote
-down for her a list of delicacies.
-
-One dozen oranges.
-
-One box of figs.
-
-One pound of caramels,--which were dear.
-
-Two pounds of walnut taffy.
-
-Three pounds of cinnamon bun.
-
-A fair allowance, I surmise, for six well-fed little girls.
-
-"I tell you what I'll do," said Marie, in an excess of generosity.
-"I'll save up my wine, if you'll lend me bottles to put it in."
-
-We felt this to be noble. For some mysterious reason (she was never
-known to be ill), Marie was sent every morning at eleven o'clock to
-the infirmary; and at that unconvivial hour drank a solitary glass of
-wine. It was port, I believe, or Burgundy,--I am not sure which, and I
-pray Heaven I may never taste its like again. Now, provided with half a
-dozen empty bottles, which had erstwhile held tooth-wash and cologne,
-she undertook to elude the infirmarian's eye, and to decant her wine
-into these receptacles, instead of putting it where it was due. How
-she managed this we never knew (it would have seemed difficult to a
-prestidigitator), but Marie was a child of resources, second only to
-Tony in every baleful art.
-
-Clever though we deemed her, however, clever though we sometimes deemed
-ourselves, there was one in the school, younger, yet far more acute
-than any of us. Thursday was visitors' day, and Lilly's brother came
-to see her. After he had gone, Lilly joined us in the avenue, looking
-perturbed and mysterious.
-
-"I want to tell you something," she said lamely. "Viola has got some
-cigarettes. Jack gave them to her."
-
-Cigarettes! Dynamite could not have sounded more overwhelming.
-Cigarettes, and in Viola Milton's keeping! Never had a whiff of tobacco
-defiled the convent air. Never had the thought of such unbridled
-license entered into any heart. And Viola was ten years old.
-
-"I know what that means," said Tony sharply. "She wants to come with us
-on the _congé_."
-
-Lilly nodded. It was plain that Viola, having possessed herself of a
-heavy bribe, had persuaded her older sister to open negotiations.
-
-"Well, we won't have her," cried Tony vehemently. "Not if she has all
-the cigarettes in Christendom. Why on earth, Lilly, didn't you ask
-your brother for them yourself?"
-
-"I never thought of such a thing," pleaded Lilly. "I never even heard
-her do it."
-
-"Well, we won't have Viola, and you may go and tell her so," repeated
-Tony with mounting wrath. "Go and tell her so right off. We won't have
-a child of ten tagging round with us all day."
-
-"Agnes is only eleven," said Lilly.
-
-"How many cigarettes has she got?" It was Elizabeth who asked this
-pertinent question.
-
-"I don't know. Jack gave her all he had."
-
-"It doesn't make any difference how many she has. I won't have her,"
-flamed Tony.
-
-At this assertive "I," Elizabeth lifted her head. Her light blue eyes
-met Tony's sparkling brown ones. It was not the first time the two
-children had measured their forces. "We'll see, anyhow, what Viola's
-got," said Elizabeth calmly.
-
-Lilly, being despatched to make inquiries, returned in two minutes with
-her little sister by her side. Viola was a bony child, all eyes and
-teeth, as ugly as Lilly was beautiful. Her sombre glance was riveted
-wistfully upon Elizabeth's face. She was too wise to weaken her cause
-with words, but held out eleven little white objects, at which we
-looked enviously.
-
-"Seven from eleven leaves four," murmured Emily.
-
-"I don't want any," said Viola, who was bidding high. She would have
-bartered her immortal soul to gain her point.
-
-"And I don't want more than one," said Lilly. "That will leave two
-apiece for the rest of you."
-
-"Well?" asked Elizabeth, looking round the circle.
-
-"Oh, do let's have them!" I urged, dazzled by a sudden vision of
-debauchery. "They'll be just the thing to go with the wine."
-
-They were _just_ the thing. We found this out later on.
-
-"Oh, yes, let's have them," said Marie, who felt the responsibilities
-of a hostess.
-
-"Let's," said Emily, our silent member.
-
-"I won't!" asseverated Tony, battling heroically for a lost cause. "I
-won't have anything to do with the treat, if you let Viola in."
-
-"Then don't!" retorted Elizabeth, now sure of victory, and scornful of
-further dispute.
-
-Tony turned her back upon her venal friends, and marched off to another
-group of girls. There was no great novelty about this proceeding, but
-the imminence of the _congé_ lent it an unwonted seriousness.
-
-"Don't you suppose she'll play _cache cache_ with us?" asked Marie
-somewhat ruefully, and well aware of what we should lose if she did not.
-
-"Of course she will," said Elizabeth, "because she can't play without
-us."
-
-And Elizabeth was right. Before the first of June, Tony had "come
-round;" being persuaded to this condescension by Lilly the peacemaker.
-Every cluster of friends should look to it that there is one absolutely
-sweet-tempered person in the group. But one is enough.
-
-The first glorious thing about a _congé_ was that we got up at seven
-instead of at quarter-past six, and the next was that we began to
-talk before we were out of our beds. Breakfast was so hilarious that
-only the fear of wasting our precious hours ever dragged us from the
-refectory, and up into the schoolroom, to prepare for the special
-feature of the day, _cache cache_. We never played _cache cache_ except
-upon a holiday, which was why it seemed such a thrilling and wonderful
-game. No indulgence was likely to lose its value for us through
-unwarranted repetition. Two captains were chosen by acclamation, and
-they in turn elected their girls, picking them out alternately, one by
-one, until the whole Second Cours was divided into two bands of about
-twenty each. One band remained shut up in a music room (which was goal)
-for half an hour, while the other betook itself to the most secret
-and inaccessible spot that could be thought of as a hiding place. The
-captain might stay with her band, and direct its action, or she might
-be hidden separately; but no one except the captain was permitted to
-stray from the ranks for purposes of reconnoitring. The same rule held
-good for the searching party. The captain alone might play the scout.
-The rest were obliged to hold together. The capture of the hidden
-captain counted as half the game. The capture of the hidden band,
-before it could reach its goal, counted as the other half of the game.
-Thus the hiders were forced either to dispense with the invaluable
-services of their leader, or to risk the loss of the whole game, if she
-were surprised in their company. So much, indeed, depended upon the
-leader's tactics, and so keen was our thirst for victory, that the girl
-who saved the day for herself and for her comrades was held in higher
-esteem than the girl who came out ahead in the periodical blistering of
-examinations. College valuations are, perhaps, not so absolutely modern
-as they seem.
-
-Given an area of over a hundred acres, with woods and orchards, with a
-deep ravine choked with tangled underbrush for concealment, and with
-wide lawns for an open run,--and _cache cache_ becomes, or at least it
-became for us, a glorious and satisfying sport. To crouch breathless
-in the "poisonous valley" (there was a touch of poetry in all our
-nomenclature), to skirt cautiously the marshy ground of La Salette
-(named after the miraculous spring of Dauphiné), to crawl on one's
-stomach behind half a mile of inadequate hedge, to make a wild dash for
-goal within full view of the pursuing party,--these things supplied all
-the trepidation and fatigue, all the opportunities for generalship, and
-all the openings for dispute, that reasonable children could demand.
-We hardly needed the additional excitement provided by Eloise Didier's
-slipping into the marsh, and being fished out, a compact cake of mud;
-or by Tony's impiously hiding in the organ loft of the chapel, and
-being caught red-handed by Madame Duncan,--a nun whom, thank Heaven!
-it was possible, though difficult, to cajole.
-
-We played all morning and all afternoon, played until our strength and
-our spirits were alike exhausted; and then, when the shadows began
-to lengthen, and our vivacity to wane, we made ready for the mad
-carousal which was to close our day. A basement music room, as remote
-as possible from any chance of inspection, was chosen as the scene
-of revelry. It was not a cheerful spot; but it appeared reasonably
-safe. Hither we transported our feast, which, spread out upon a piano,
-presented a formidable appearance, and restored us to gayety and good
-humour. The advantage of childhood over riper years is its blessed
-slowness to recognize a failure. If a thing starts out to be a treat,
-why, it _is_ a treat, and that's the end of it. The cinnamon bun was
-certainly stale (Mary had, it was plain, consulted her own convenience
-as to the day of its purchase), but Heaven forbid that we should balk
-at staleness. Oranges and caramels, figs and walnut taffy present, to
-the thinking mind, an inharmonious combination; but that was a point on
-which we were to be subsequently enlightened. As for Marie's wine, it
-can be readily imagined what _it_ was like, after lying around for a
-warm May week in imperfectly corked tooth-wash bottles. I can only say
-that no medicine it had been my lot to taste was ever half so nasty;
-yet those were days when all drugs were of uncompromising bitterness.
-An effete civilization had not then devised gelatine capsules to
-defraud the palate of its pain.
-
-We ate everything, cake, fruit, and candy; we drank the wine
-(heroic young souls!), and, trembling with excitement, we lit the
-cigarettes,--a more difficult matter than we had imagined. I had not
-waited until this point to dree my weird. Excessive fatigue is but an
-indifferent preparation for unwonted indulgence; and I was a sickly
-child, to whom only the simplicity and regularity of school life lent
-a semblance of health. Ominous sensations were warning me of my deadly
-peril; but I held straight on. Suddenly Marie, who had been smoking
-with silent fortitude, said sweetly:
-
-"It's a shame Viola shouldn't have one of her own cigarettes. I'll give
-her my second."
-
-"She can have one of mine, too," said Emily.
-
-"Thank you," returned Viola hastily. "I don't want any. I gave them to
-you."
-
-"Oh, do try one!" urged Marie.
-
-"Yes, do!" said Tony sardonically. "Do try one, Viola. They are anxious
-enough to get rid of them."
-
-She flung this taunt at the crowd, but her eye met mine with a
-challenge I would not evade. "I want my second one," I said.
-
-Valour met valour. "So do I," smiled Tony.
-
-From this point, my recollections are vague. We talked about Madame
-Davide, and whether she really did not understand English, or only
-pretended not to,--a point which had never been satisfactorily
-settled. We talked about Madame Bouron, and her methods (which we
-deemed unworthy) of finding out all she knew. I added little to the
-sprightliness of the conversation, and after a while I slipped away. On
-the stairs a kindly fate threw me into the arms of Sister O'Neil, who
-had charge of the vestry, and who was carrying piles of clean linen to
-the dormitories. She was a friendly soul (nearly all the lay sisters
-were good to us), and she took possession of me then and there. When
-I was safe in bed,--collapsed but comforted,--she sprinkled me with
-holy water, and tucked the light covers carefully around me. "Lie quiet
-now," she said. "I'll go tell Madame Rayburn where you are, and that
-there was no time to ask leave of anybody."
-
-I did lie very quiet, and, after a while, fell into a doze, from which
-the sound of footsteps woke me. Some one was standing at the foot of my
-bed. It was Tony. She looked a trifle more sallow than usual, but was
-grinning cheerfully. "I'm better now," she said.
-
-The delicate emphasis on the _now_ was like a condensed epic. "So am
-I," I murmured confidentially.
-
-Tony disappeared, and in a few minutes was back again, comfortably
-attired in a dressing gown and slippers. She perched herself on the
-foot of my bed. "Hasn't it been a perfect _congé_?" she sighed
-happily. (Oh, blessed memory of youth!) "If you'd seen Madame Duncan,
-though, when I came stealing out of the chapel,--without a veil, too.
-'What does this mean, Tony?' she said. 'It isn't possible that'"--
-
-There was an abrupt pause. "Well?" I asked expectantly, though I had
-heard it all several times already; but Tony's eyes were fixed on the
-little pile of clean linen lying on my chair.
-
-"Oh! I say," she cried, and there was a joyous ring in her voice.
-"Here's our chance. Let's change all the girls' washes."
-
-I gazed at her with heartfelt admiration. To have passed recently
-through so severe a crisis,--a crisis which had reduced me to
-nothingness; and yet to be able instantly to think of such a charming
-thing to do. Not for the first time, I felt proud of Tony's
-friendship. Her resourcefulness compelled my homage. Had we been living
-in one of Mr. James's novels, I should have called her "great" and
-"wonderful."
-
-"Get up and help," said Tony.
-
-I stumbled out of bed, and into my slippers. My head felt curiously
-light when I lifted it from my pillow, and I had to catch hold of my
-curtain rod for support. The dormitory floor heaved up and down. Tony
-was already at work, carrying the linen from one side of the room to
-the other, and I staggered weakly after her. There were thirty beds,
-so it took us some time to accomplish our mission; but "The labour we
-delight in physicks pain;" and it was with a happy heart, and a sense
-of exalted satisfaction, that I saw the last pile safe in the wrong
-alcove, and crawled back between my sheets.--"Something attempted,
-something done, to earn a night's repose." Tony sat on my bed, and we
-talked confidentially until we heard the girls coming upstairs. Then
-she fled, and I awaited developments.
-
-They entered more noisily than was their wont. The law ruled that a
-_congé_ came to an end with night prayers, after which no word might be
-spoken; but it was hard to control children who had been demoralized
-by a long day of liberty. Moreover, the "Seven Dolours" dormitory was
-ever the most turbulent of the three; its inmates lacking the docility
-of the very little girls, and the equanimity of the big ones. They were
-all at what is called the troublesome age. There was a note of anxiety
-in Madame Chapelle's voice, as she hushed down some incipient commotion.
-
-"I must have perfect silence in the dormitory," she said. "You have
-talked all day; now you must go quietly to bed. Do you hear me,
-children? Silence!"
-
-There was a lull, and then--I knew it must soon come--a voice from the
-far end of the room. "I have thirty-seven's clothes" (everything was
-marked with our school numbers), "instead of mine."
-
-"Mary Aylmer, be quiet!" commanded Madame Chapelle.
-
-"But, Madame, I tell you truly, I have thirty-seven's clothes. Who is
-thirty-seven?"
-
-"I am," cried another voice,--Eloise Didier's. "But I haven't
-got your clothes, Mary Aylmer. I've got Alice Campbell's. Here,
-Alice,--twenty-two,--come take your things."
-
-"Who is thirty-three? Ruffled night-gown with two buttons off. Oh,
-shame!" sang out Marie jubilantly.
-
-"Children, will you be silent!" said Madame Chapelle, angry and
-bewildered. "What do you mean by such behaviour?"
-
-"Forty-two's stockings want darning," said a reproachful voice. It was
-very probable, for I was forty-two.
-
-"So do thirty-eight's."
-
-"Adelaide H. McC. Harrison," Elizabeth read slowly, and with
-painstaking precision. "Haven't you any more initials, Adelaide, you
-could have put on your underclothes?"
-
-"Look again, Elizabeth. Surely there's a coronet somewhere?" interposed
-Eloise Didier sardonically. Adelaide was not popular in our community.
-
-"Three coronets, a sceptre, and a globe," said Elizabeth.
-
-"Children," began Madame Chapelle; but her voice was lost in the
-scurrying of feet, as girl after girl darted across the polished floor
-to claim her possessions, or to rid herself of some one else's. They
-were, I well knew, devoutly grateful for this benign confusion, and
-were making the most of it. Fate did not often throw such chances in
-their way. For a moment I felt that noble joy which in this world
-is granted only to successful effort, to the accomplishment of some
-well-planned, well-executed design. Then silence fell suddenly upon the
-room, and I knew, though I could not see, that every girl was back in
-her own alcove.
-
-"May I ask the meaning of this disorder!" said Madame Rayburn coldly.
-
-She was _surveillante_, and was making the round of the dormitories,
-to see that everything was quiet after the day's excitement. Madame
-Chapelle began a nervous explanation. There was some mistake about
-the laundry. None of the children had their own clothes. They were
-trying--rather noisily, she admitted--to exchange them. Was it
-possible that Sister O'Neil--
-
-"Sister O'Neil!" interrupted Madame Rayburn impatiently. "Sister O'Neil
-had nothing to do with it. Answer me quietly, children. Did you all
-find you had some one else's clothes?"
-
-There was a murmur of assent,--a polite, subdued, apologetic sort
-of murmur; but, none the less, of universal assent. At that instant
-I remembered Sister O'Neil's parting words to me, and, with the
-instinctive impulse of the ostrich, slid deeper in my little bed. A
-quick step crossed the dormitory. A firm hand drew my curtain. "Agnes!"
-said Madame Rayburn, in a terrible voice.
-
-Ah, well! Anyway, the _congé_ was over.
-
-
-
-
-Marriage Vows
-
-
-We had decided upon the married estate, titles, and foreign travel.
-I do not mean that we cherished such ambitions for the future,--what
-was the future to us?--but that in the world of illusions, which was
-our world, we were about to assume these new and dazzling conditions.
-Childish even for our years, though our years were very few, and
-preserved mercifully from that familiar and deadening intercourse
-with adults, which might have resulted in our being sensible and well
-informed, we cultivated our imaginations instead of our minds. The
-very bareness of our surroundings, the absence of all appliances for
-play, flung us back unreservedly upon the illimitable resources of
-invention. It was in the long winter months, when nature was unkind,
-when the last chestnut had been gathered, and the last red leaf pressed
-carefully in an atlas, that we awoke to the recognition of our needs,
-and slipped across the border-land of fancy. It was then that certain
-wise and experienced nuns watched us closely, knowing that our pent-up
-energies might at any moment break down the barriers of discipline;
-but knowing also that it was not possible for a grown-up person,
-however well disposed, to enter our guarded realm. We were always under
-observation, but the secret city wherein we dwelt was trodden by no
-other foot than ours.
-
-It had rained for a week. We had exhausted the resources of literature
-and the drama. A new book in the convent library, a book with a most
-promising title, "The Witch of Melton Hill," had turned out to be
-a dismal failure. Elizabeth observed sardonically that if it had
-been named, as it should have been, "The Guardian Angel of Hallam
-House," we should at least have let it alone. An unreasoning relative
-had sent me as a belated Christmas gift, "Agnes Hilton; or Pride
-Corrected,"--making the feeble excuse that I bore the heroine's name.
-To a logical mind this would have seemed no ground either for giving me
-the story, or for blaming me because it proved unreadable. But Tony,
-to whom I lent it, reproached me with exceeding bitterness for having
-the kind of a name--a goody-goody name she called it--which was always
-borne by pious and virtuous heroines. She said she thanked Heaven none
-of them were ever christened Antoinette; and she seemed to hold me
-responsible for the ennobling qualities she despised.
-
-As for the drama, we had acted for the second time Elizabeth's
-masterpiece, "The Youth of Michael Angelo," and there appeared to be no
-further opening for our talents. We little girls, with the imitative
-instincts of our age, were always endeavouring to reproduce on a modest
-scale the artistic triumphs with which the big girls entertained the
-school. It was hard work, because we had no plays, no costumes, and no
-manager. We had only Elizabeth, who rose to the urgent needs of the
-situation, overcoming for our sake the aversion she felt for any form
-of composition, and substituting for her French exercises the more
-inspiring labours of the dramatist. Her first attempt was slight, a
-mere curtain raiser, and dealt with the fortunes of a robber chief,
-who, after passionate pursuit of a beautiful and beloved maiden, finds
-out that she is his sister, and hails the news with calm fraternal joy.
-By a fortunate coincidence, he also discovers that an aged traveller
-whom he had purposed robbing is his father; so the curtain falls upon
-a united family, the gentle desperado quoting an admirable sentiment
-of Cowper's (it was in our reader, accompanied by a picture of a
-gentleman, a lady, a baby, and a bird-cage):--
-
-  "Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
-  Of Paradise that has survived the fall."
-
-The success of this touching and realistic little play encouraged
-Elizabeth to more ambitious efforts. She set about dramatizing, with my
-assistance, a story from "The Boyhood of Great Painters," which told
-how the youthful Michael Angelo modelled a snow Faun in the gardens of
-Lorenzo de Medici, and how that magnificent duke, seeing this work of
-art before it had time to melt, showered praises and promises upon the
-happy sculptor. It was not a powerful theme, but there was an ancient
-retainer of the Buonarroti family (Elizabeth wisely reserved this part
-for herself), who made sarcastic remarks about his employers, and
-never appeared without a large feather duster, thus fulfilling all the
-legitimate requirements of modern comedy. What puzzled us most sorely
-was the Faun, which we supposed to be an innocent young quadruped,
-and had no possible way of presenting. Therefore, after a great deal
-of consideration, it was determined that a flower girl should be
-substituted; this happy idea (so suggestive of Michael Angelo's genius)
-being inspired by the plaster figures then sadly familiar to lawns and
-garden walks. In the story, the young artist emphasized the age of the
-Faun by deftly knocking out two of its front teeth,--a touch of realism
-beyond our range, as Viola Milton in a night-gown played the statue's
-part. In our drama, the Duke complained that the flower girl was too
-grave, whereupon Michael Angelo, with a few happy touches, gave her a
-smile so broad--Viola's teeth being her most prominent feature--that
-some foolish little girls in the audience thought a joke was intended,
-and laughed uproariously.
-
-Marie played Michael Angelo. I was his proud father, who appeared only
-in the last scene, and said, "Come to my arms, my beloved son!" which
-he did so impetuously--Marie was nothing if not ardent--that I was
-greatly embarrassed, and did not know how to hold him. Lorenzo the
-Magnificent was affably, though somewhat feebly, portrayed by Annie
-Churchill, who wore a waterproof cloak, flung, like Hamlet's mantle,
-over her left shoulder, and a beaver hat with a red bow and an ostrich
-plume, the property of Eloise Didier. It was a significant circumstance
-that when Marie, rushing to my embrace, knocked over a little table,
-the sole furniture of the Medicean palace, and indicating by its
-presence that we were no longer in the snow, Lorenzo hastily picked it
-up, and straightened the cover; while Elizabeth--who had no business
-to be in that scene--stood calmly by, twirling her feather duster,
-and apparently accustomed to being waited on by the flower of the
-Florentine nobility.
-
-The production of "Michael Angelo" cost us four weeks of hard and happy
-labour. His name became so familiar to our lips that Tony, whose turn
-it was to read night and morning prayers, substituted it profanely for
-that of the blessed Archangel. We always said the Credo and Confiteor
-in Latin, so that _beato Michaeli Archangelo_ became _beato Michael
-Angelo_, without attracting the attention of any ears save ours. It
-was one of those daring jests (as close to wickedness as we ever got)
-which served as passwords in our secret city. The second time we gave
-the play, we extended a general invitation to the First Cours to come
-and see it; and a score or so of the less supercilious girls actually
-availed themselves of the privilege. It is hard for me to make clear
-what condescension this implied. Feudal lord and feudal vassal were not
-more widely separated than were the First and Second Cours. Feudal lord
-and feudal vassal were not more firmly convinced of the justness of
-their respective positions. No uneasy agitator had ever pricked us into
-discontent. The existing order of things seemed to us as natural as the
-planetary system.
-
-Now, casting about for some new form of diversion, Elizabeth proposed
-one stormy afternoon that we should assume titles, and marry one
-another; secretly, of course, but with all the pomp and circumstance
-that imagination could devise. She herself, having first choice,
-elected England for her dwelling-place, and Emily for her spouse. She
-took Emily, I am sure, because that silent and impassive child was
-the only one of the five who didn't particularly covet the honour.
-Elizabeth, protecting herself instinctively from our affection and
-admiration, found her natural refuge in this unresponsive bosom.
-Because Emily would just as soon have married Lilly or me, Elizabeth
-wisely offered her her hand. She also insisted that Emily, being older,
-should be husband. Mere surface ambition was alien to her character.
-The position of _maîtresse femme_ satisfied all reasonable requirements.
-
-Names and titles were more difficult of selection. Emily was well
-disposed toward a dukedom; but Elizabeth preferred that her husband
-should be an earl, because an earl was "belted," and a duke, we
-surmised, wasn't.
-
-"A duke is higher than an earl," said the well-informed Emily.
-
-"But he isn't belted," insisted Elizabeth. "It's a 'belted knight' and
-a 'belted earl' always; never a belted duke. You can wear a belt if
-you're an earl, Emily."
-
-"I do wear a belt," said the prosaic Emily.
-
-"Then, of course, you've got to be an earl," retorted Elizabeth;
-reasoning by some process, not perfectly plain to us, but conclusive
-enough for Emily, who tepidly yielded the point. "Philip Howard, Earl
-of Arundel"--
-
-"I won't be named Philip," interrupted Emily rebelliously.
-
-"Well, then, Henry Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, and we'll live
-in Arundel Castle."
-
-"You got that out of 'Constance Sherwood,'" said Marie.
-
-Elizabeth nodded. Lady Fullerton's pretty story had been read aloud
-in the refectory, and we were rather "up" in English titles as a
-consequence.
-
-"I'm going to be Prince of Castile," said Tony suddenly.
-
-I leaped from my chair. "You shan't!" I flashed, and then stopped
-short, bitterly conscious of my impotence. Tony had "spoken first."
-There was no wresting her honours from her. She knew, she must have
-known that Castile was the home of my soul, though no one had ever
-sounded the depth of my devotion. My whole life was lit by Spain's
-sombre glow. It was the land where my fancy strayed whenever it escaped
-from thraldom, and to which I paid a secret and passionate homage.
-The destruction of the Invincible Armada was the permanent sorrow of
-my childhood. And now Tony had located herself in this paradise of
-romance. "Castile's proud dames" would be her peers and countrywomen.
-The Alhambra would be her pleasure-house (geographically I was a trifle
-indistinct), and Moorish slaves would wait upon her will. I could not
-even share these blessed privileges, because it was plain to all of us
-that Tony's one chance of connubial felicity lay in having Lilly for a
-partner. The divorce courts would have presented a speedy termination
-to any other alliance.
-
-"Never mind, Agnes," said Marie consolingly. "We don't want Castile.
-It's a soapy old place. We'll be Duke and Duchess of Tuscany."
-
-I yielded a sorrowful assent. Tuscany awoke no echoes in my bosom. I
-neither knew nor cared whence Marie had borrowed the suggestion. But
-the priceless discipline of communal life had taught us all to respect
-one another's rights, and to obey the inflexible rules of play. Tony
-had staked her claim to Castile; and I became Beatrice della Rovere,
-Duchess of Tuscany, without protest, but without elation. Lilly looked
-genuinely distressed. Her sweet heart was hurt to feel that she was
-depriving a friend of any happiness, and it is safe to say that she was
-equally indifferent to the grandeurs of Italy and of Spain. Perhaps
-Griselda the patient felt no lively concern as to the whereabouts of
-her husband's estates. She had other and more serious things to ponder.
-
-The marriage ceremony presented difficulties. We must have a priest
-to officiate; that is, we must have a girl discreet enough to be
-trusted with our secret, yet stupid enough, or amiable enough, to be
-put out of the play afterwards. We had no idea of being burdened with
-clerical society. Annie Churchill was finally chosen for the rôle. Her
-functions were carefully explained to her, and her scruples--she was
-dreadfully afraid of doing something wrong--were, by candid argument,
-overcome. Marie wanted to be married in the "Lily of Judah" chapel, a
-tiny edifice girt by the winding drive; but Elizabeth firmly upheld the
-superior claims of St. Joseph.
-
-St. Joseph was, as we well knew, the patron of marriage, its advocate
-and friend. We depended upon him to find us our future husbands,--in
-which regard he has shown undue partiality,--and it was in good
-faith that we now placed ourselves under his protection. Our play
-inevitably reflected the religious influences by which we were so
-closely environed. I hear it said that the little sons of ministers
-preach to imaginary audiences in the nursery,--an idea which conveys
-a peculiar horror to my mind. We did not preach (which of us would
-have listened?), but we followed in fancy, like the child, Eugénie
-de Guérin, those deeply coloured traditions which lent atmosphere to
-our simple and monotonous lives. One of our favourite games was the
-temptation of St. Anthony. Mariana Grognon, a little French girl of
-unsurpassed agility, had "created" the part of the devil. Its special
-feature was the flying leap she took over the kneeling hermit's head,
-a performance more startling than seductive. This vivacious pantomime
-had been frowned upon by the mistress of recreation, who had no idea
-what it meant, but who considered, and with reason, that Mariana was
-behaving like a tomboy. Then one day an over-zealous St. Anthony--Marie
-probably--crossed himself with such suspicious fervour when the devil
-made his jump that the histrionic nature of the sport became evident,
-and it was sternly suppressed. The primitive humour of the miracle play
-was not in favour at the convent.
-
-We were married in front of St. Joseph's statue, outside the chapel
-door, on Sunday afternoon. Sunday was selected for the ceremony, partly
-because we had possession of our white veils on that day,--and what
-bride would wear a black veil!--and partly because the greater liberty
-allowed us made possible an unobserved half-hour. It was Elizabeth's
-custom and mine to go to the chapel every Sunday before supper, and
-offer an earnest supplication to the Blessed Virgin that we might not
-be given medals that night at Primes. I loved Primes. It was the most
-exciting event of the week. There was an impressive solemnity about
-the big, hushed room, the long rows of expectant girls, Reverend
-Mother, begirt by the whole community, gazing at us austerely, and
-the seven days' record read out in Madame Bouron's clear, incisive
-tones. We knew how every girl in the school, even the exalted graduates
-and semi-sacred medallions, had behaved. We knew how they stood in
-class. We saw the successful students go up to receive their medals.
-Occasional comments from Madame Bouron added a bitter pungency to the
-situation. It was delightful from beginning to end, unless--and this
-happened very often to Elizabeth, and sometimes even to me--we had
-distinguished ourselves sufficiently to win our class medals for the
-week. _Then_, over an endless expanse of polished floor, slippery as
-glass, we moved like stricken creatures; conscious that our friends
-were watching us in mocking security from their chairs; conscious that
-we were swinging our arms and turning in our toes; and painfully
-aware that our curtsies would never come up to the required standard
-of elegance and grace. Elizabeth was furthermore afflicted by a dark
-foreboding that something--something in the nature of a stocking or
-a petticoat--would "come down" when she was in mid-stream, and this
-apprehension deepened her impenetrable gloom. It was in the hopes
-of averting such misery that we said our "Hail Marys" every Sunday
-afternoon, manifesting thereby much faith but little intelligence, as
-all these matters had been settled at "Conference" on Saturday.
-
-I have always believed, however, that it was in answer to our prayers
-that a law was passed in mid-term, ordaining that no girl should be
-eligible for a class medal unless she had _all_ her conduct notes,
-unless her week's record was without a stain. As this was sheerly
-impossible, we were thenceforth safe. We heard our names read out, and
-sat still, in disgraceful but blessed security. Even Madame Bouron's
-icy censure, and Reverend Mother's vaguely reproachful glance (she
-was hopelessly near-sighted, and hadn't the remotest idea where we
-sat) were easier to bear than that distressful journey up and down the
-classroom, with every eye upon us.
-
-The marriage ceremony would have been more tranquil and more imposing
-if we had not had such a poltroon of a priest. Annie was so nervous, so
-afraid she was committing a sin, and so afraid she would be caught in
-the commission, that she read the service shamefully, and slurred all
-the interesting details over which we wanted to linger. Elizabeth had
-to prompt her repeatedly, and Tony's comments were indefensible at such
-a solemn hour. When the three rings had been placed upon the brides'
-fingers, and the three veils bashfully raised to permit the salutations
-of the noble grooms, we promised to meet again in the boot and shoe
-closet, after the dormitory lights had been lowered, and hurried back
-to the schoolroom. To have played our parts openly in recreation hours
-would have been to destroy all the pleasures of illusion. Secrecy was
-indispensable, secrecy and mystery; a hurried clasp of Marie's hand, as
-she brushed by me to her desk; a languishing glance over our dictation
-books in class; a tender note slipped between the pages of my grammar.
-I have reason to believe I was the most cherished of the three brides.
-Tony was not likely to expend much energy in prolonged love-making,
-and Emily was wholly incapable of demonstration, even if Elizabeth
-would have tolerated it. But Marie was dramatic to her finger-tips;
-she played her part with infinite grace and zeal; and I, being by
-nature both ardent and imitative, entered freely into her conception of
-our rôles. We corresponded at length, with that freedom of phrase and
-singleness of idea which make love letters such profitable reading.
-
-It was in our stolen meetings, however, in those happy reunions in
-the boot and shoe closet, or in another stuffy hole where our hats
-and coats were hung, that the expansive nature of our play was made
-delightfully manifest. It was then that we travelled far and wide,
-meeting dangers with an unflinching front, and receiving everywhere
-the respectful welcome due to our rank and fortunes. We went to Rome,
-and the Holy Father greeted us with unfeigned joy. We went to Venice,
-and the Doge--of whose passing we were blissfully ignorant--took us
-a-pleasuring in the Bucentaur. Our Stuart proclivities would not
-permit us to visit Victoria's court,--that is, not as friends. Tony
-thirsted to go there and raise a row; but the young Pretender being
-dead (we ascertained this fact definitely from Madame Duncan, who read
-us a lecture on our ignorance), there seemed nobody to put in the place
-of the usurping queen. We crossed the desert on camels, and followed
-Père Huc into Tartary and Thibet. Our husbands gave us magnificent
-jewels, and Lilly dropped her pearl earrings into a well, like
-"Albuharez' Daughter" in the "Spanish Ballads." This charming mishap
-might have happened to me, if only I had been Princess of Castile.
-
-Then one day Elizabeth made a discovery which filled me with confusion.
-Before I came to school, I had parted with my few toys, feeling that
-paper dolls and grace-hoops were unworthy of my new estate, and that
-I should never again condescend to the devices of my lonely childhood.
-The single exception was a small bisque doll with painted yellow curls.
-I had brought it to the convent in a moment of weakness, but no one
-was aware of its existence. It was a neglected doll, nameless and
-wardrobeless, and its sole function was to sleep with me at night. Its
-days were spent in solitary confinement in my washstand drawer. This
-does not mean that evening brought any sense of exile to my heart.
-On the contrary, the night fears which at home made going to bed an
-ever repeated misery (I slept alone on a big, echoing third floor, and
-everybody said what a brave little girl I was) had been banished by the
-security of the dormitory, by the blessed sense of companionship and
-protection. Nevertheless, I liked to feel my doll in bed with me, and I
-might have enjoyed its secret and innocent society all winter, had I
-not foolishly carried it downstairs one day in my pocket, and stowed it
-in a corner of my desk. The immediate consequence was detection.
-
-"How did you come to have it?" asked Elizabeth, wondering.
-
-"Oh, it got put in somehow with my things," I answered evasively, and
-feeling very much ashamed.
-
-Elizabeth took the poor little toy, and looked at it curiously. She
-must have possessed such things once, but it was as hard to picture her
-with a doll as with a rattle. She seemed equally remote from both. As
-she turned it over, an inspiration came to her. "I tell you what we'll
-do," she said; "we'll take it for your baby,--it's time one of us had
-a child,--and we'll get up a grand christening. Do you want a son or a
-daughter?"
-
-"I hope we won't have Annie Churchill for a priest," was my irrelevant
-answer.
-
-"No, we won't," said Elizabeth. "I'll be the priest, and Tony and
-Lilly can be godparents. And then, after its christening, the baby can
-die,--in its baptismal innocence, you know,--and we'll bury it."
-
-I was silent. Elizabeth raised her candid eyes to mine. "You don't want
-it, do you?" she asked.
-
-"I don't want it," I answered slowly.
-
-Marie decided that, as our first-born was to die, it had better
-be a girl. A son and heir should live to inherit the estates. She
-contributed a handkerchief for a christening robe; and Emily, who was
-generous to a fault, insisted on giving a little new work-basket,
-beautifully lined with blue satin, for a coffin. Lilly found a piece of
-white ribbon for a sash. Tony gave advice, and Elizabeth her priestly
-benediction. Beata Benedicta della Rovere ("That name shows she's
-booked for Heaven," said Tony) was christened in the _bénitier_ at the
-chapel door; Elizabeth performing the ceremony, and Tony and Lilly
-unctuously renouncing in her behalf the works and pomps of Satan. It
-was a more seemly service than our wedding had been, but it was only a
-prelude, after all, to the imposing rites of burial. These were to take
-place at the recreation hour the following afternoon; but owing to the
-noble infant's noble kinsmen not having any recreation hour when the
-afternoon came, the obsequies were unavoidably postponed.
-
-It happened in this wise. Every day, in addition to our French classes,
-we had half an hour of French conversation, at which none of us ever
-willingly conversed. All efforts to make us sprightly and loquacious
-failed signally. When questions were put to us, we answered them;
-but we never embarked of our own volition upon treacherous currents
-of speech. Therefore Madame Davide levied upon us a conversational
-tax, which, like some of the most oppressive taxes the world has ever
-known, made a specious pretence of being a voluntary contribution.
-Every girl in the class was called upon to recount some anecdote, some
-incident or story which she had heard, or read, or imagined, and which
-she was supposed to be politely eager to communicate to her comrades.
-We always began "Madame et mesdemoiselles, figurez-vous," or "il y
-avait une fois," and then launched ourselves feebly upon tales, the
-hopeless inanity of which harmonized with the spiritless fashion of the
-telling. We all felt this to be a degrading performance. Our tender
-pride was hurt by such a betrayal, before our friends, of our potential
-imbecility. Moreover, the strain upon invention and memory was growing
-daily more severe. We really had nothing left to tell. Therefore five
-of us (Marie belonged to a higher class) resolved to indicate that our
-resources were at an end by telling the same story over and over again.
-We selected for this purpose an Ollendorfian anecdote about a soldier
-in the army of Frederick the Great, who, having a watch chain but no
-watch, attached a bullet--I can't conceive how--to the chain; and, when
-Frederick asked him the hour of the day, replied fatuously: "My watch
-tells me that any hour is the time to die for your majesty."
-
-The combined improbability and stupidity of this tale commended it for
-translation, and the uncertainty as to the order of the telling lent an
-element of piquancy to the plot. Happily for Lilly, she was called upon
-first to "réciter un conte," and, blushing and hesitating, she obeyed.
-Madame Davide listened with a pretence of interest that did her credit,
-and said that the soldier had "beaucoup d'esprit;" at which Tony, who
-had pronounced him a fool, whistled a soft note of incredulity. After
-several other girls had enlivened the class with mournful pleasantries,
-my turn came, and I told the story as fast as I could,--so fast that
-its character was not distinctly recognized until the last word was
-said. Madame Davide looked puzzled, but let it pass. Perhaps she
-thought the resemblance accidental. But when Emily with imperturbable
-gravity began: "Il y avait une fois un soldat, honnête et brave, dans
-l'armée de Frédéric le Grand," and proceeded with the familiar details,
-she was sharply checked. "Faut pas répéter les mêmes contes," said
-Madame Davide; at which Emily, virtuous and pained, explained that it
-was _her_ conte. How could she help it if other girls chose it too?
-By this time the whole class had awakened to the situation, and was
-manifesting the liveliest interest and pleasure. It was almost pitiful
-to see children so grateful for a little mild diversion. Like the
-gratitude of Italian beggars for a few sous, it indicated painfully
-the desperate nature of their needs. There was a breathless gasp of
-expectancy when Elizabeth's name was called. We knew we could trust
-Elizabeth. She was constitutionally incapable of a blunder. Every trace
-of expression was banished from her face, and in clear, earnest tones
-she said: "Madame et mesdemoiselles,--il y avait une fois un soldat,
-honnête et brave, dans l'armée de Frédéric le Grand,"--whereupon
-there arose a shout of such uncontrollable delight that the class was
-dismissed, and we were all sent to our desks. Tony alone was deeply
-chagrined. Through no fault of hers, she was for once out of a scrape,
-and she bitterly resented the exclusion. It was in consequence of
-this episode that Beata Benedicta's funeral rites were postponed for
-twenty-four hours.
-
-The delay brought no consolation to my heart. It only prolonged my
-unhappiness. I did not love my doll after the honest fashion of a
-younger child. I did not really fear that I should miss her. But, what
-was infinitely worse, I could not bring myself to believe that Beata
-Benedicta was dead,--although I was going to allow her to be buried.
-The line of demarcation between things that can feel and things that
-cannot had always been a wavering line for me. Perhaps Hans Andersen's
-stories, in which rush-lights and darning needles have as much life
-as boys and girls, were responsible for my mental confusion. Perhaps
-I merely held on longer than most children to a universal instinct
-which they share with savages. Any familiar object, anything that I
-habitually handled, possessed some portion of my own vitality. It
-was never wholly inanimate. Beata's little bisque body, with its
-outstretched arms, seemed to protest mutely but piteously against
-abandonment. She had lain by my side for months, and now I was going
-to let her be buried alive, because I was ashamed to rescue her. There
-was no help for it. Rather than confess I was such a baby, I would have
-been buried myself.
-
-A light fall of snow covered the frozen earth when we dug Beata's grave
-with our penknives, and laid her mournfully away. The site selected
-was back of the "Seven Dolours" chapel (chapels are to convent grounds
-what arbours and summer-houses are to the profane), and we chose it
-because the friendly walls hid us from observation. We had brought
-out our black veils, and we put them on over our hats, in token of our
-heavy grief. Elizabeth read the burial service,--or as much of it as
-she deemed prudent, for we dared not linger too long,--and afterwards
-reassured us on the subject of Beata's baptismal innocence. That was
-the great point. She had died in her sinless infancy. We crime-laden
-souls should envy her happier fate. We put a little cross of twigs
-at the head of the grave, and promised to plant something there when
-the spring came. Then we took off our veils, and stuffed them in our
-pockets,--those deep, capacious pockets of many years ago.
-
-"Let's race to the avenue gate," said Tony. "I'm frozen stiff. Burying
-is cold work."
-
-"Or we might get one of the swings," said Lilly.
-
-But Marie--whose real name, I forgot to say, was Francesco--put her arm
-tenderly around me. "Don't grieve, Beatrice," she said. "Our little
-Beata has died in her baptismal"--
-
-"Oh, come away!" I cried, unable to bear the repetition of this phrase.
-And I ran as fast as I could down the avenue. But I could not run fast
-enough to escape from the voice of Beata Benedicta, calling--calling to
-me from her grave.
-
-
-
-
-Reverend Mother's Feast
-
-
-"Mother's feast"--in other words the saint's day of the
-Superioress--was dawning upon our horizon, and its lights and shadows
-flecked our checkered paths. Theoretically, it was an occasion of pure
-joy, assuring us, as it did, a _congé_, and not a _congé_ only, but the
-additional delights of a candy fair in the morning, and an operetta,
-"The Miracle of the Roses," at night. Such a round of pleasures filled
-us with the happiest anticipations; but--on the same principle that the
-Church always prefaces her feast days with vigils and with fasts--the
-convent prefaced our _congé_ with a competition in geography, and with
-the collection of a "spiritual bouquet," which was to be our offering
-to Reverend Mother on her fête.
-
-A competition in anything was an unqualified calamity. It meant hours
-of additional study, a frantic memorizing of facts, fit only to be
-forgotten, and the bewildering ordeal of being interrogated before the
-whole school. It meant for _me_ two little legs that shook like reeds,
-a heart that thumped like a hammer in my side, a sensation of sickening
-terror when the examiner--Madame Bouron--bore down upon me, and a mind
-reduced to sudden blankness, washed clean of any knowledge upon any
-subject, when the simplest question was asked. Tried by this process,
-I was only one degree removed from idiocy. Even Elizabeth, whose legs
-were as adamant, whose heart-beats had the regularity of a pendulum,
-and who, if she knew a thing, could say it, hated to bound states and
-locate capitals for all the school to hear. "There are to be prizes,
-too," she said mournfully. "Madame Duncan said so. I don't like going
-up for a prize. It's worse than a medal at Primes."
-
-"Oh, well, maybe you won't get one," observed Tony consolingly. "You
-didn't, you know, last time."
-
-"I did the time before last," said Elizabeth calmly. "It was 'La
-Corbeille de Fleurs.'"
-
-There was an echo of resentment in her voice, and we all--even
-Tony--admitted that she had just cause for complaint. To reward
-successful scholarship with a French book was one of those
-black-hearted deeds for which we invariably held Madame Bouron
-responsible. She may have been blameless as the babe unborn; but it was
-our habit to attribute all our wrongs to her malign influence. We knew
-"La Corbeille de Fleurs." At least, we knew its shiny black cover, and
-its frontispiece, representing a sylphlike young lady in a floating
-veil bearing a hamper of provisions to a smiling and destitute old
-gentleman. There was nothing in this picture, nor in the accompanying
-lines, "Que vois-je? Mon Dieu! Un ange de Ciel, qui vient à mon
-secours," which tempted us to a perusal of the story, even had we been
-in the habit of voluntarily reading French.
-
-As for the "spiritual bouquet," we felt that our failure to contribute
-to it on a generous scale was blackening our reputations forever. Every
-evening the roll was called, and girl after girl gave in her list
-of benefactions. Rosaries, so many. Litanies, so many. Aspirations,
-so many. Deeds of kindness, so many. Temptations resisted, so many.
-Trials offered up, so many. Acts, so many. A stranger, listening to
-the replies, might have imagined that the whole school was ripe for
-Heaven. These blossoms of virtue and piety were added every night to
-the bouquet; and the sum total, neatly written out in Madame Duncan's
-flowing hand, was to be presented, with an appropriate address, to
-Reverend Mother on her feast, as a proof of our respectful devotion.
-
-It was a heavy tax. From what resources some girls drew their supplies
-remained ever a mystery to us. How could Ellie Plunkett have found
-the opportunity to perform four deeds of kindness, and resist seven
-temptations, in a day? We never had any temptations to resist. Perhaps
-when one came along, we yielded to it so quickly that it had ceased
-to tempt before its true character had been ascertained. And to whom
-was Ellie Plunkett so overweeningly kind? "Who wants Ellie Plunkett
-to be kind to her?" was Tony's scornful query. There was Adelaide
-Harrison, too, actually turning in twenty acts as one day's crop, and
-smiling modestly when Madame Duncan praised her self-denial. Yet, to
-our unwarped judgment, she seemed much the same as ever. We, at least,
-refused to accept her estimate of her own well-spent life.
-
-"Making an act" was the convent phraseology for doing without
-something one wanted, for stopping short on the verge of an innocent
-gratification. If I gave up my place in the swing to Viola Milton,
-that was an act. If I walked to the woods with Annie Churchill, when
-I wanted to walk with Elizabeth, that was an act. If I ate my bread
-unbuttered, or drank my tea unsweetened, that was an act. It will be
-easily understood that the constant practice of acts deprived life
-of everything that made it worth the living. We were so trained in
-this system of renunciation that it was impossible to enjoy even the
-very simple pleasures that our convent table afforded. If there were
-anything we particularly liked, our nagging little consciences piped
-up with their intolerable "Make an act, make an act;" and it was only
-when the last mouthful was resolutely swallowed that we could feel sure
-we had triumphed over asceticism. There was something maddening in the
-example set us by our neighbours, by those virtuous and pious girls who
-hemmed us in at study time and at our meals. When Mary Rawdon gently
-waved aside the chocolate custard--which was the very best chocolate
-custard it has ever been my good fortune to eat--and whispered to me
-as she did so, "An act for the bouquet;" I whispered back, "Take it,
-and give it to me," and held out my plate with defiant greed. Annie
-Churchill told us she hadn't eaten any butter for a week; whereat Tony
-called her an idiot, and Annie--usually the mildest of girls--said
-that "envy at another's spiritual good" was a very great sin, and that
-Tony had committed it. There is nothing so souring to the temper as
-abstinence.
-
-What made it singularly hard to sacrifice our young lives for the
-swelling of a spiritual bouquet was that Reverend Mother, who was to
-profit by our piety, had so little significance in our eyes. She was as
-remote from the daily routine of the school as the Grand Lama is remote
-from the humble Thibetans whom he rules; and if we regarded her with a
-lively awe, it was only because of her aloofness, of the reserves that
-hedged her majestically round. She was an Englishwoman of good family,
-and of vast bulk. There was a tradition that she had been married and
-widowed before she became a nun; but this was a subject upon which we
-were not encouraged to talk. It was considered both disrespectful and
-indecorous. Reverend Mother's voice was slow and deep, a ponderous
-voice to suit her ponderous size; and she spoke with what seemed to us
-a strange and barbarous accent, pronouncing certain words in a manner
-which I have since learned was common in the days of Queen Elizabeth,
-and which a few ripe scholars are now endeavouring to reintroduce.
-She was near-sighted to the verge of blindness, and always at Mass
-used a large magnifying glass, like the one held by Leo the Tenth in
-Raphael's portrait. She was not without literary tastes of an insipid
-and obsolete order, the tastes of an English gentlewoman, reared in
-the days when young ladies read the "Female Spectator," and warbled
-"Oh, no, we never mention her." Had she not "entered religion," she
-might have taken Moore and Byron to her heart,--as did one little girl
-whose "Childe Harold" lay deeply hidden in a schoolroom desk,--but the
-rejection of these profane poets had left her stranded upon such feeble
-substitutes as Letitia Elizabeth Landon, whose mysterious death she was
-occasionally heard to deplore.
-
-Twice on Sundays Reverend Mother crossed our orbit; in the morning,
-when she instructed the whole school in Christian doctrine, and at
-night, when she presided over Primes. During the week we saw her only
-at Mass. We should never even have known about Letitia Elizabeth
-Landon, had she not granted an occasional audience to the graduates,
-and discoursed to them sleepily upon the books she had read in her
-youth. Whatever may have been her qualifications for her post (she
-had surpassing dignity of carriage, and was probably a woman of
-intelligence and force), to us she was a mere embodiment of authority,
-as destitute of personal malice as of personal charm. I detested Madame
-Bouron, and loved Madame Rayburn. Elizabeth detested Madame Bouron,
-and loved Madame Dane. Emily detested Madame Bouron, and loved Madame
-Duncan. These were emotions, amply nourished, and easily understood. We
-were capable of going to great lengths to prove either our aversion or
-our love. But to give up chocolate custard for Reverend Mother was like
-suffering martyrdom for a creed we did not hold.
-
-"It's because Reverend Mother is so fond of geography that we're going
-to have the competition," said Lilly. "Madame Duncan told me so."
-
-"Why can't Reverend Mother, if she likes it so much, learn it for
-herself?" asked Tony sharply. "I'll lend her my atlas."
-
-"Oh, she knows it all," said Lilly, rather scandalized. "Madame Duncan
-told me it was her favourite study, and that she knew the geography of
-the whole world."
-
-"Then I don't see why she wants to hear us say it," observed Elizabeth,
-apparently under the impression that competitions, like gladiatorial
-shows, were gotten up solely for the amusement of an audience. It never
-occurred to her, nor indeed to any of us, to attach any educational
-value to the performance. We conceived that we were butchered to make a
-convent holiday.
-
-"And it's because Reverend Mother is so fond of music that we are going
-to have an operetta instead of a play," went on Lilly, pleased to have
-information to impart.
-
-I sighed heavily. How could anybody prefer anything to a play? I
-recognized an operetta as a form of diversion, and was grateful for
-it, as I should have been grateful for any entertainment, short of an
-organ recital. We were none of us surfeited with pleasures. But to me
-song was at best only an imperfect mode of speech; and the meaningless
-repetition of a phrase, which needed to be said but once, vexed my
-impatient spirit. We were already tolerably familiar with "The Miracle
-of the Roses." For two weeks past the strains had floated from every
-music room. We could hear, through the closed doors, Frances Fenton,
-who was to be St. Elizabeth of Hungary, quavering sweetly,--
-
-  "Unpretending and lowly,
-  Like spirits pure and holy,
-  I love the wild rose best,
-  I love the wild rose best,
-  I love the wi-i-ild rose best."
-
-We could hear Ella Holrook announcing in her deep contralto,--
-
-  "'Tis the privilege of a Landgrave
-  To go where glory waits him,
-      Glory waits him;"
-
-and the chorus trilling jubilantly,--
-
-  "Heaven has changed the bread to roses,
-  Heaven has changed the bread to roses."
-
-Why, I wondered, did they have to say everything two and three times
-over? Even when the Landgrave detects St. Elizabeth in the act of
-carrying the loaves to the poor, his anger finds a vent in iteration.
-
-  "Once again you've dared to brave my anger,
-  Yes, once again you've dared to brave my anger;
-          My power you scorn,
-          My power you scorn."
-
-To which the Saint replies gently, but tediously,--
-
-          "My lord they are,
-          My lord they are
-          But simple roses,
-          But simple ro-o-oses,
-  That I gathered in the garden even now."
-
-"Suppose that bread hadn't been changed to roses," said Elizabeth
-speculatively, "I wonder what St. Elizabeth would have done."
-
-"Oh, she knew it had been, because she prayed it would be," said Marie,
-who was something of a theologian.
-
-"But suppose it hadn't."
-
-"But it _had_, and she knew it had, because of her piety and faith,"
-insisted Marie.
-
-"I shouldn't have liked to risk it," murmured Elizabeth.
-
-"_I_ think her husband was a pig," said Tony. "Going off to the
-Crusade, and making all that fuss about a few loaves of bread. If I'd
-been St. Elizabeth"--
-
-She paused, determining her course of action, and Marie ruthlessly
-interposed. "If you're not a saint, you can't tell what you would do if
-you were a saint. You would be different."
-
-There was no doubt that Tony as a saint would have to be so very
-different from the Tony whom we knew, that Marie's dogmatism prevailed.
-Even Elizabeth was silenced; and, in the pause that followed, Lilly
-had a chance to impart her third piece of information. "It's because
-Reverend Mother's name is Elizabeth," she said, "that we're going to
-have an operetta about St. Elizabeth; and Bessie Treves is to make the
-address."
-
-"Thank Heaven, there is another Elizabeth in the school, or I might
-have to do it," cried our Elizabeth, who coveted no barren honours;
-and--even as she spoke--the blow fell. Madame Rayburn appeared at
-the schoolroom door, a folded paper in her hand. "Elizabeth," she
-said, and, with a hurried glance of apprehension, the saint's unhappy
-namesake withdrew. We looked at one another meaningly. "It's like
-giving thanks before you're sure of dinner," chuckled Tony.
-
-I had no chance to hear any particulars until night, when Elizabeth
-watched her opportunity, and sallied forth to brush her teeth while
-I was dawdling over mine. The strictest silence prevailed in the
-dormitories, and no child left her alcove except for the ceremony
-of tooth-brushing, which was performed at one of two large tubs,
-stationed in the middle of the floor. These tubs--blessed be their
-memory!--served as centres of gossip. Friend met friend, and smothered
-confidences were exchanged. Our gayest witticisms,--hastily choked by
-a toothbrush,--our oldest and dearest jests were whispered brokenly
-to the accompaniment of little splashes of water. It was the last
-social event of our long social day, and we welcomed it as freshly
-as if we had not been in close companionship since seven o'clock in
-the morning. Elizabeth, scrubbing her teeth with ostentatious vigour,
-found a chance to tell me, between scrubs, that Bessie Treves had been
-summoned home for a week, and that she, as the only other bearer of
-Reverend Mother's honoured name, had been chosen to make the address.
-"It's the feast of St. Elizabeth," she whispered, "and the operetta is
-about St. Elizabeth, and they want an Elizabeth to speak. I wish I had
-been christened Melpomene."
-
-"You couldn't have been christened Melpomene," I whispered back,
-keeping a watchful eye upon Madame Chapelle, who was walking up and
-down the dormitory, saying her beads. "It isn't a Christian name. There
-never was a St. Melpomene."
-
-"It's nearly three pages long," said Elizabeth, alluding to the
-address, and not to the tragic Muse. "All about the duties of women,
-and how they ought to stay at home and be kind to the poor, like St.
-Elizabeth, and let their husbands go to the Crusades."
-
-"But there are no Crusades any more for their husbands to go to," I
-objected.
-
-Elizabeth looked at me restively. She did not like this fractious
-humour. "I mean let their husbands go to war," she said.
-
-"But if there are no wars," I began, when Madame Chapelle, who had not
-been so inattentive as I supposed, intervened. "Elizabeth and Agnes,
-go back to your alcoves," she said. "You have been quite long enough
-brushing your teeth."
-
-I flirted my last drops of water over Elizabeth, and she returned the
-favour with interest, having more left in her tumbler than I had. It
-was our customary good-night. Sometimes, when we were wittily disposed,
-we said "_Asperges me_." That was one of the traditional jests of
-the convent. Generations of girls had probably said it before us. Our
-language was enriched with scraps of Latin and apt quotations, borrowed
-from Church services, the Penitential Psalms, and the catechism.
-
-For two days Elizabeth studied the address, and for two days more she
-rehearsed it continuously under Madame Rayburn's tutelage. At intervals
-she recited portions of it to us, and we favoured her with our candid
-criticisms. Tony objected vehemently to the very first line:--
-
-  "A woman's path is ours to humbly tread."
-
-She said she didn't intend to tread it humbly at all; that Elizabeth
-might be as humble as she pleased (Elizabeth promptly disclaimed any
-personal sympathy with the sentiment), and that Marie and Agnes were
-welcome to all the humility they could practise (Marie and Agnes
-rejected their share of the virtue), but that she--Tony--was tired
-of behaving like an affable worm. To this, Emily, with more courage
-than courtesy, replied that a worm Tony might be, but an affable worm,
-never; and Elizabeth headed off any further retort by hurrying on with
-the address.
-
-  "A woman's path is ours to humbly tread,
-  And yet to lofty heights our hopes are led.
-  We may not share the Senate's stern debate,
-  Nor guide with faltering hand the helm of state;
-  Ours is the holier right to soften party hate,
-  And teach the lesson, lofty and divine,
-  Ambition's fairest flowers are laid at Virtue's shrine."
-
-"Have you any idea what all that means?" asked Marie discontentedly.
-
-"Oh, I don't have to say what it means," returned Elizabeth, far too
-sensible to try to understand anything she would not be called upon to
-explain. "Reverend Mother makes that out for herself."
-
-  "Not ours the right to guide the battle's storm,
-  Where strength and valour deathless deeds perform.
-  Not ours to bind the blood-stained laurel wreath
-  In mocking triumph round the brow of death.
-  No! 'tis our lot to save the failing breath,
-  'Tis ours to heal each wound, and hush each moan,
-  To take from other hearts the pain into our own."
-
-"It seems to me," said Tony, "that we are expected to do all the work,
-and have none of the fun."
-
-"It seems to _me_," said Marie, "that by the time we have filled
-ourselves up with other people's pains, we won't care much about fun.
-Did Reverend Mother, I wonder, heal wounds and hush up moans?"
-
-"St. Elizabeth did," explained Elizabeth. "Her husband went to the
-Holy Land, and was killed, and then she became a nun. There are some
-lines at the end, that I don't know yet, about Reverend Mother,--
-
-  'Seeking the shelter of the cloister gate,
-  Like the dear Saint whose name we venerate.'
-
-Madame Rayburn wants me to make an act, and learn the rest of it at
-recreation this afternoon. That horrid old geography takes up all my
-study time."
-
-"I've made three acts to-day," observed Lilly complacently, "and said a
-whole pair of beads this morning at Mass for the spiritual bouquet."
-
-"I haven't made one act," I cried aghast. "I haven't done anything at
-all, and I don't know what to do."
-
-"You might make one now," said Elizabeth thoughtfully, "and go talk to
-Adelaide Harrison."
-
-I glanced at Adelaide, who was sitting on the edge of her desk,
-absorbed in a book. "Oh, I don't want to," I wailed.
-
-"If you wanted to, it wouldn't be an act," said Elizabeth.
-
-"But she doesn't want me to," I urged. "She is reading 'Fabiola.'"
-
-"Then you'll give her the chance to make an act, too," said the
-relentless Elizabeth.
-
-Argued into a corner, I turned at bay. "I won't," I said resolutely; to
-which Elizabeth replied: "Well, I wouldn't either, in your place," and
-the painful subject was dropped.
-
-Four days before the feast the excitement had reached fever point,
-though the routine of school life went on with the same smooth
-precision. Every penny had been hoarded up for the candy fair. It was
-with the utmost reluctance that we bought even the stamps for our
-home letters, those weekly letters we were compelled to write, and
-which were such pale reflections of our eager and vehement selves.
-Perhaps this was because we knew that every line was read by Madame
-Bouron before it left the convent; perhaps the discipline of those
-days discouraged familiarity with our parents; perhaps the barrier
-which nature builds between the adult and the normal child was alone
-responsible for our lack of spontaneity. Certain it is that the stiffly
-written pages despatched to father or to mother every Sunday night gave
-no hint of our abundant and restless vitality, our zest for the little
-feast of life, our exaltations, our resentments, our thrice-blessed
-absurdities. Entrenched in the citadel of childhood, with laws of our
-own making, and passwords of our own devising, our souls bade defiance
-to the world.
-
-If all our hopes centred in the _congé_, the candy fair, and
-the operetta,--which was to be produced on a scale of unwonted
-magnificence,--our time was sternly devoted to the unpitying exactions
-of geography. Every night we took our atlases to bed with us, under
-the impression that sleeping on a book would help us to remember its
-contents. As the atlases were big, and our pillows very small, this
-device was pregnant with discomfort. On the fourth night before the
-feast, something wonderful happened. It was the evening study hour,
-and I was wrestling sleepily with the mountains of Asia,--hideous
-excrescences with unpronounceable and unrememberable names,--when
-Madame Rayburn entered the room. As we rose to our feet, we saw that
-she looked very grave, and our minds took a backward leap over the
-day. Had we done anything unusually bad, anything that could call down
-upon us a public indictment, and was Madame Rayburn for once filling
-Madame Bouron's office? We could think of nothing; but life was full of
-pitfalls, and there was no sense of security in our souls. We waited
-anxiously.
-
-"Children," said Madame Rayburn, "I have sorrowful news for you.
-Reverend Mother has been summoned to France. She sails on her feast
-day, and leaves for New York to-morrow."
-
-We stared open-mouthed and aghast. The ground seemed sinking from under
-our feet, the walls crumbling about us. Reverend Mother sailing for
-France! And on her feast day, too,--the feast for which so many ardent
-preparations had been made. The _congé_, the competition, the address,
-the operetta, the spiritual bouquet, the candy fair,--were they, too,
-sailing away into the land of lost things? To have asked one of the
-questions that trembled on our lips would have been an unheard-of
-liberty. We listened in respectful silence, our eyes riveted on Madame
-Rayburn's face.
-
-"You will all go to the chapel now," she said. "To-night we begin
-a novena to _Mater Admirabilis_ for Reverend Mother's safe voyage.
-She dreads it very much, and she is sad at leaving you. Pray for her
-devoutly. Madame Dane will bring you down to the chapel."
-
-She turned to go. Our hearts beat violently. She knew, she could not
-fail to know, the thought that was uppermost in every mind. She was
-too experienced and too sympathetic to miss the significance of our
-strained and wistful gaze. A shadowy smile crossed her face. "Madame
-Bouron would have told you to-morrow," she said, "what I think I shall
-tell you to-night. It is Reverend Mother's express desire that you
-should have your _congé_ on her feast, though she will not be here to
-enjoy it with you."
-
-A sigh of relief, a sigh which we could not help permitting to be
-audible, shivered softly around the room. The day was saved; yet, as we
-marched to the chapel, there was a turmoil of agitation in our hearts.
-We knew that from far-away France--from a mysterious and all-powerful
-person who dwelt there, and who was called Mother General--came the
-mandates which governed our community. This was not the first sudden
-departure we had witnessed; but Reverend Mother seemed so august,
-so permanent, so immobile. Her very size protested mutely against
-upheaval. Should we never again see that familiar figure sitting in
-her stall, peering through her glass into a massive prayer-book, a
-leviathan of prayer-books, as imposing in its way as she was, or
-blinking sleepily at us as we filed by? Why, if somebody were needed
-in France, had it not pleased Mother General to send for Madame Bouron?
-Many a dry eye would have seen _her_ go. But then, as Lilly whispered
-to me, suppose it had been Madame Rayburn. There was a tightening of
-my heart-strings at the thought, a sudden suffocating pang, dimly
-foreboding the grief of another year.
-
-The consensus of opinion, as gathered that evening in the dormitory,
-was not unlike the old Jacobite epitaph on Frederick, Prince of Wales.
-Every one of us was sincerely sorry that Madame Bouron had not been
-summoned,--
-
-  "Had it been his father,
-  We had much rather;"
-
-but glad that Madame Dane, or Madame Rayburn, or Madame Duncan, or some
-other favourite nun had escaped.
-
-  "Since it's only Fred
-  Who was alive, and is dead,
-  There is no more to be said."
-
-The loss of our Superioress was bewildering, but not, for us, a thing
-of deep concern. We should sleep as sweetly as usual that night.
-
-The next morning we were all gathered into the big First Cours
-classroom, where Reverend Mother came to bid us good-by. It was a
-solemn leave-taking. The address was no longer in order; but the
-spiritual bouquet had been made up the night before, and was presented
-in our name by Madame Bouron, who read out the generous sum-total of
-prayers, and acts, and offered-up trials, and resisted temptations,
-which constituted our feast-day gift. As Reverend Mother listened,
-I saw a large tear roll slowly down her cheek, and my heart smote
-me--my heart was always smiting me when it was too late--that I had
-contributed so meagrely to the donation. I remembered the chocolate
-custard, and thought--for one mistaken moment--that I should never
-want to taste of that beloved dish again. Perhaps if I had offered it
-up, Reverend Mother would cross the sea in safety. Perhaps, because I
-ate it, she would have storms, and be drowned. The doubtful justice of
-this arrangement was no more apparent to me than its unlikelihood. We
-were accustomed to think that the wide universe was planned and run for
-our reward and punishment. A rainy Sunday following the misdeeds of
-Saturday was to us a logical sequence of events.
-
-When the bouquet had been presented, Reverend Mother said a few
-words of farewell. She said them as if she were sad at heart, not
-only at crossing the ocean, not only at parting from her community,
-but at leaving us, as well. I suppose she loved us collectively.
-She couldn't have loved us individually, knowing us only as two long
-rows of uniformed, curtsying schoolgirls, whose features she was too
-near-sighted to distinguish. On the other hand, if our charms and our
-virtues were lost to her, so were our less engaging qualities. Perhaps,
-taken collectively, we were rather lovable. Our uniforms were spotless,
-our hair superlatively smooth,--no blowsy, tossing locks, as in these
-days of libertinism, and our curtsies as graceful as hours of practice
-could make them. We sank and rose like the crest of a wave. On the
-whole, Reverend Mother had the best of us. Madame Bouron might have
-been pardoned for taking a less sentimental view of the situation.
-
-That afternoon, while we were at French class, Reverend Mother
-departed. We heard the carriage roll away, but were not permitted to
-rush to the windows and look at it, which would have been a welcome
-distraction from our verbs. An hour later, at recreation, Madame
-Rayburn sent for Elizabeth. She was gone fifteen minutes, and came
-back, tense with suppressed excitement.
-
-"Oh, what is it?" we cried. "The _congé_ is all right?"
-
-"All right," said Elizabeth.
-
-"And the candy fair?" asked Lilly, whose father had given her a dollar
-to squander upon sweets.
-
-"Oh, it's all right, too. The candy is here now; and Ella Holrook and
-Mary Denniston and Isabel Summers are to have charge of the tables.
-Madame Dane told me that yesterday."
-
-Our faces lightened, and then fell. "Is it the competition?" I asked
-apprehensively.
-
-Elizabeth looked disconcerted. It was plain she knew nothing about
-the competition, and hated to avow her ignorance. We always felt so
-important when we had news to tell. "Of course, after studying all that
-geography, we'll have to say it sooner or later," she said. "But"--a
-triumphant pause--"a new Reverend Mother is coming to-morrow."
-
-"_Ciel!_" murmured Marie, relapsing into agitated French; while Tony
-whistled softly, and Emily and I stared at each other in silence. The
-speed with which things were happening took our breath away.
-
-"Coming to-morrow," repeated Elizabeth; "and I'm going to say the
-address as a welcome to her, on the night of the _congé_, before the
-operetta."
-
-"Is her name Elizabeth, too?" I asked, bewildered.
-
-"No, her name is Catherine. Madame Rayburn is going to leave out the
-lines about St. Elizabeth, and put in something about St. Catherine
-of Siena instead. That's why she wanted the address. And she is going
-to change the part about not sharing the Senate's stern debate, nor
-guiding with faltering hand the helm of state, because St. Catherine
-did guide the helm of state. At least, she went to Avignon, and argued
-with the Pope."
-
-"Argued with the Pope!" echoed Marie, scandalized.
-
-"She was a saint, Marie," said Elizabeth impatiently, and driving
-home an argument with which Marie herself had familiarized us. "She
-persuaded the Pope to go back to Rome. Madame Rayburn would like Kate
-Shaw to make the address; but she says there isn't time for another
-girl to study it."
-
-"When is the feast of St. Catherine of Siena?" cried Tony, fired
-suddenly by a happy thought. "Maybe we'll have another _congé_ then."
-
-She rushed off to consult her prayer-book. Lilly followed her, and in a
-moment their two heads were pressed close together, as they scanned the
-Roman calendar hopefully. But before my eyes rose the image of Reverend
-Mother, our lost Reverend Mother, with the slow teardrop rolling down
-her cheek. Her operetta was to be sung to another. Her address was
-to be made to another. Her very saint was pushed aside in honour of
-another holy patroness. "The King is dead. Long live the King."
-
-
-
-
-The Game of Love
-
-
-It was an ancient and honourable convent custom for the little girls in
-the Second Cours to cultivate an ardent passion for certain carefully
-selected big girls in the First Cours, to hold a court of love, and vie
-with one another in extravagant demonstrations of affection. We were
-called "satellites," and our homage was understood to be of that noble
-and exalted nature which is content with self-immolation. No response
-of any kind was ever vouchsafed us. No favours of any kind were ever
-granted us. The objects of our devotion--ripe scholars sixteen and
-seventeen years old--regarded us either with good-humoured indifference
-or unqualified contempt. Any other line of action on their part would
-have been unprecedented and disconcerting. We did not want petting. We
-were not the lap-dog variety of children. We wanted to play the game
-of love according to set rules,--rules which we found in force when we
-came to school, and which we had no mind to alter.
-
-Yet one of these unwritten laws--which set a limit to inconstancy--I
-had already broken; and Elizabeth, who was an authority on the code,
-offered a grave remonstrance. "We really don't change that quickly,"
-she said with concern.
-
-I made no answer. I had "changed" very quickly, and, though incapable
-of self-analysis, I was not without a dim foreboding that I would
-change again.
-
-"You were wild about Isabel Summers," went on Elizabeth accusingly.
-
-"No, I wasn't," I confessed.
-
-"But you said you were."
-
-Again I was silent. The one thing a child cannot do is explain a
-complicated situation, even to another child. How could I hope to
-make Elizabeth understand that, eager to worship at some shrine, I
-had chosen Isabel Summers with a deliberation that boded ill for my
-fidelity. She was a thin, blue-eyed girl, with a delicate purity of
-outline, and heavy braids of beautiful fair hair. Her loveliness, her
-sensitive temperament, her early and tragic death (she was drowned
-the following summer), enshrined her sweetly in our memories. She
-became one of the traditions of the school, and we told her tale--as
-of another Virginia--to all new-comers. But in the early days when I
-laid my heart at her feet, I knew only that she had hair like pale
-sunshine, and that, for a First Cours girl, she was strangely tolerant
-of my attentions. If I ventured to offer her the dozen chestnuts that
-had rewarded an hour's diligent search, she thanked me for them with
-a smile. If I darned her stockings with painstaking neatness,--a
-privilege solicited from Sister O'Neil, who had the care of our
-clothes,--she sometimes went so far as to commend my work. I felt
-that I was blessed beyond my comrades (Ella Holrook snubbed Tony, and
-Antoinette Mayo ignored Lilly's existence), yet there were moments
-when I detected a certain insipidity in the situation. It lacked the
-incentive of impediment.
-
-Then in November, Julia Reynolds, who had been absent, I know not why,
-returned to school; and I realized the difference between cherishing
-a tender passion and being consumed by one, between fanning a flame
-and being burned. To make all this clear to Elizabeth, who was passion
-proof, lay far beyond my power. When she said,--
-
-  "Holy Saint Francis! what a change is here,"
-
---or words to that effect,--I had not even Romeo's feeble excuses to
-offer, though I was as obstinate as Romeo in clinging to my new love.
-Tony supported me, having a roving fancy of her own, and being constant
-to Ella Holrook, only because that imperious graduate regarded her as
-an intolerable nuisance.
-
-Julia's views on the subject of satellites were even more pronounced.
-She enjoyed a painful popularity in the Second Cours, and there were
-always half a dozen children abjectly and irritatingly in love with
-her. She was held to be the cleverest girl in the school, a reputation
-skilfully maintained by an unbroken superciliousness of demeanour.
-Her handsome mouth was set in scornful lines; her words, except to
-chosen friends, were few and cold. She carried on an internecine
-warfare with Madame Bouron, fighting that redoubtable nun with her
-own weapons,--icy composure, a mock humility, and polite phrases that
-carried a hidden sting. It was for this, for her arrogance,--she was
-as contemptuous as a cat,--and for a certain elusiveness, suggestive
-even to my untrained mind of new and strange developments, that I
-surrendered to her for a season all of my heart,--all of it, at least,
-that was not the permanent possession of Madame Rayburn and Elizabeth.
-
-Elizabeth was not playing the game. She was nobody's satellite just
-then, being occupied with a new cult for a new nun, whom it pleased
-her to have us all adore. The new nun, Madame Dane, was a formidable
-person, whom, left to myself, I should have timorously avoided; but
-for whom, following Elizabeth's example, I acquired in time a very
-creditable enthusiasm. She was tall and high-shouldered, and she
-had what Colly Cibber felicitously describes as a "poking head."
-We, who had yet to hear of Colly Cibber, admired this peculiar
-carriage,--Elizabeth said it was aristocratic,--and we imitated it
-as far as we dared, which was not very far, our shoulders being as
-rigorously supervised as our souls. Any indication of a stoop on
-_my_ part was checked by an hour's painful promenade up and down the
-corridor, with a walking-stick held between my elbows and my back, and
-a heavy book balanced on my head. The treatment was efficacious. Rather
-than be so wearisomely ridiculous, I held myself straight as a dart.
-
-Madame Dane, for all her lack of deportment, was the stiffest and
-sternest of martinets. She had a passion for order, for precision, for
-symmetry. It was, I am sure, a lasting grievance to her that we were of
-different heights, and that we could never acquire the sameness and
-immobility of chessmen. She did her best by arranging and rearranging
-us in the line of procession when we marched down to the chapel,
-unable to decide whether Elizabeth was a hair's breadth taller than
-Tony, whether Mary Aylmer and Eloise Didier matched exactly, whether
-Viola had better walk before Maggie McCullah, or behind her. She
-never permitted us to open our desks during study hours, or when we
-were writing our exercises. This was a general rule, but Madame Dane
-alone enforced it absolutely. If I forgot to take my grammar or my
-natural philosophy out of my desk when I sat down to work (and I was an
-addlepated child who forgot everything), I had to go to class with my
-grammar or my natural philosophy unstudied, and bear the consequences.
-To have borrowed my neighbour's book would have been as great a breach
-of discipline as to have hunted for my own. At night and morning
-prayers we were obliged to lay our folded hands in exactly the same
-position on the second rung of our chair backs. If we lifted them
-unconsciously to the top rung, Madame Dane swooped down upon us like
-a falcon upon errant doves,--which was dreadfully distracting to our
-devotions.
-
-"I don't see how she stands our hair being of different lengths," said
-Tony. "It must worry her dreadfully. I caught her the other night
-eyeing Eloise Didier's long plats and my little pigtails in a most
-uneasy manner. Some day she'll insist on our all having it cut short,
-like Elizabeth and Agnes."
-
-"That would be sensible," said Elizabeth stoutly, while Lilly put up
-her hands with a quick, instinctive gesture, as if to save her curly
-locks from destruction.
-
-"_You_ needn't talk," went on Tony with impolite emphasis, "after
-what you made her go through last Sunday. You and Agnes in your old
-black veils. I don't believe she was able to read her Mass prayers for
-looking at you."
-
-Elizabeth grinned. She was not without a humorous enjoyment of the
-situation. Our black veils, which throughout the week were considered
-decorous and devotional, indicated on Sundays--when white veils were in
-order--a depth of unpardoned and unpardonable depravity. When Elizabeth
-and I were condemned to wear ours to Sunday Mass and Vespers,--two
-little black sheep in that vast snowy flock,--we were understood to
-be, for the time, moral lepers, to be cut off from spiritual communion
-with the elect. We were like those eminent sinners who, in the good old
-days when people had an eye to effect, did penance in sheets and with
-lighted tapers at cathedral doors,--thus adding immeasurably to the
-interest of church-going, and to the general picturesqueness of life.
-The ordeal was not for us the harrowing thing it seemed. Elizabeth's
-practical mind had but a feeble grasp of symbols. Burne-Jones and
-Maeterlinck would have conveyed no message to her, and a black veil
-amid the Sunday whiteness failed to disturb her equanimity. As for
-me, I was content to wear what Elizabeth wore. Where MacGregor sat
-was always the head of the table. The one real sufferer was the
-innocent Madame Dane, whose Sabbath was embittered by the sight of two
-sable spots staining the argent field, and by the knowledge that the
-culprits were her own Second Cours children, for whom she held herself
-responsible.
-
-"She told me," said Elizabeth, "that if ever I let such a thing happen
-to me again, I shouldn't walk by her side all winter."
-
-Lilly lifted her eyebrows, and Tony gave a grunt of deep significance.
-It meant that this would be an endurable misfortune. A cult was all
-very well, and Tony, like the rest of us, was prepared to play an
-honourable part. But Elizabeth's persistent fancy for walking by our
-idol's side at recreation had become a good deal of a nuisance. We
-considered that Madame Dane was, for a grown-up person, singularly
-vivacious and agreeable. She told us some of Poe's stories--notably
-"The Pit and the Pendulum"--in a manner which nearly stopped the
-beating of our hearts. We were well disposed even to her rigours. There
-was a straightforwardness about her methods which commended itself to
-our sense of justice no less than to our sense of humour. She dealt
-with us after fashions of her own; and, if she were constitutionally
-incapable of distinguishing between wilful murder and crossing one's
-legs in class, she would have scorned to carry any of our misdemeanours
-to Madame Bouron's tribunal. We felt that she had companionable
-qualities, rendered in some measure worthless by her advanced years;
-for, after all, adults have but a narrow field in which to exercise
-their gifts. There was a pleasant distinction in walking by Madame
-Dane's side up and down Mulberry Avenue, even in the unfamiliar society
-of Adelaide Harrison, and Mary Rawdon, who was a green ribbon, and
-Ellie Plunkett, who was head of the roll of honour; but it would have
-been much better fun to have held aloof, and have played that we
-were English gypsies, and that Madame Dane was Ulrica of the Banded
-Brow,--just then our favourite character in fiction.
-
-Ulrica sounds, I am aware, as if she belonged in the Castle of Udolpho;
-but she was really a virtuous and nobly spoken outlaw in a story called
-"Wild Times," which was the most exciting book--the only madly exciting
-book--the convent library contained. It dealt with the religious
-persecutions of Elizabeth's glorious but stringent reign, and was a
-good, thorough-going piece of partisan fiction, like Fox's "Book of
-Martyrs," or Wodrow's "Sufferings of the Church of Scotland." I cannot
-now remember why Ulrica's brow was banded,--I believe she had some
-dreadful mark upon it,--but she was always alluding to its screened
-condition in words of thrilling intensity. "Seek not to know the secret
-of my shame. Never again shall the morning breeze nor the cool breath
-of evening fan Ulrica's brow."--"Tear from my heart all hope, all
-pity, all compunction; but venture not to lift the veil which hides
-forever from the eye of man the blighting token of Ulrica's shame." We
-loved to picture this mysterious lady--whose life, I hasten to say,
-was most exemplary--as tall, high-shouldered, and stern, like Madame
-Dane; and we merged the two characters together in a very agreeable and
-convincing way. It enraptured us to speak of the mistress of the Second
-Cours as "Ulrica," to tell one another that some day we should surely
-forget, and call her by that name (than which nothing was less likely),
-and to wonder what she would say and do if she found out the liberty we
-had taken.
-
-A little private diversion of this kind was all the more necessary
-because the whole business of loving was essentially a public affair.
-Not that we were capable of voicing our affections,--Marie alone
-had the gift of expression,--but we ranged ourselves in solid
-ranks for and against the favourites of the hour. The system had
-its disadvantages. It deprived us of individual distinction. I was
-confirmed that winter, and, having found out that Madame Dane's
-Christian name was Theresa, I resolved to take it for my confirmation
-name, feeling that this was a significant proof of tenderness.
-Unfortunately, three other children came to the same conclusion,--Ellie
-Plunkett was one of them,--and the four Theresas made such an
-impression upon the Archbishop that he congratulated us in a really
-beautiful manner upon our devotion to the great saint whose name we had
-chosen, and whose example, he trusted, would be our beacon light.
-
-As for my deeper and more absorbing passion for Julia Reynolds, I
-could not hope to separate it, or at least to make her separate it,
-from the passions of her other satellites. She regarded us all with a
-cold and impartial aversion, which was not without excuse, in view of
-our reprehensible behaviour. Three times a day the Second Cours filed
-through the First Cours classroom, on its way to the refectory. The
-hall was always empty, as the older girls preceded us to our meals;
-but at noon their hats and coats and shawls were laid neatly out upon
-their chairs, ready to be put on as soon as dinner was eaten. Julia
-Reynolds had a black and white plaid shawl, the sight of which goaded
-us to frenzy. If Madame Dane's eyes were turned for one instant from
-our ranks, some daring child shot madly across the room, wrenched a
-bit of fringe from this beloved shawl, and, returning in triumph with
-her spoil, wore it for days (I always lost mine) pinned as a love-knot
-to the bib of her alpaca apron. Viola Milton performed this feat so
-often that she became purveyor of fringe to less audacious girls, and
-gained honour and advantages thereby. Not content with such vandalism,
-she conceived the daring project of stealing a lock of hair. She hid
-herself in a music room, and, when Julia went by to her music lesson,
-stole silently behind her, and snipped off the end of one of her
-long brown braids. This, with the generosity of a highwayman, she
-distributed, in single hairs, to all who clamoured for them. To me she
-gave half a dozen, which I gummed up for safe-keeping in an envelope,
-and never saw again.
-
-It was a little trying that Viola--certainly, as I have made plain,
-the least deserving of us all--should have been the only child who
-ever obtained a word of kindness from our divinity. But this was the
-irony of fate. Three days after the rape of the lock, she was sent to
-do penance for one of her many misdemeanours by sitting under the
-clock in the corridor, a post which, for some mysterious reason, was
-consecrated to the atonement of sin. In an hour she returned, radiant,
-beatified. Julia Reynolds had gone by on her way to the chapel; and
-seeing the little solitary figure--which looked pathetic, though it
-wasn't--had given her a fleeting smile, and had said "Poor Olie," as
-she passed.
-
-This was hard to bear. It all came, as I pointed out acrimoniously
-to Tony, of Viola's being at least a head shorter than she had any
-business to be at ten years old, and of her having such absurdly thin
-legs, and great, melancholy eyes. Of course people felt sorry for her,
-whereas they might have known--they ought to have known--that she was
-incapable of being abashed. She would just as soon have sat astride the
-clock as under it.
-
-One advantage, however, I possessed over all competitors. I took
-drawing lessons, and so did Julia Reynolds. Twice a week I sat at
-a table near her, and spent an hour and a half very pleasantly and
-profitably in watching all she did. I could not draw. My mother seemed
-to think that because I had no musical talent, and never in my life was
-able to tell one note--nor indeed one tune--from another, I must, by
-way of adjustment, have artistic qualities. Mr. James Payn was wont to
-say that his gift for mathematics consisted mainly of distaste for the
-classics. On precisely the same principle, I was put to draw because I
-could not play or sing. An all-round incapacity was, in those primitive
-days, a thing not wholly understood.
-
-The only branch of my art I acquired to perfection was the sharpening
-of pencils and crayons; and, having thoroughly mastered this
-accomplishment, I ventured in a moment of temerity to ask Julia if I
-might sharpen hers. At first she decisively refused; but a week or two
-later, seeing the deftness of my work, and having a regard for her own
-hands, she relented, and allowed me this privilege. Henceforward I felt
-that my drawing lessons were not given in vain. Even Dr. Eckhart's
-unsparing condemnation of my sketches--which were the feeblest of
-failures--could not destroy my content. Love was with me a stronger
-emotion than vanity. I used to look forward all week to those two happy
-afternoons when I was graciously permitted to waste my time and blacken
-my fingers in humble and unrequited service.
-
-Julia drew beautifully. She excelled in every accomplishment, as in
-every branch of study. She sang, she played, she painted, she danced,
-with bewildering ease and proficiency. French and Latin presented no
-stumbling-blocks to her. The heights and abysses of composition were
-for her a level and conquered country. Logic and geometry were, so
-to speak, her playthings. We were bewildered by such universality of
-genius,--something like Michael Angelo's,--and when I remember that,
-in addition to these legitimate attainments, she was the most gifted
-actress on our convent stage, I am at a loss now to understand why the
-world is not ringing with her name.
-
-Certain it is that she was the pride of Dr. Eckhart's heart, the one
-solace of his harassed and tormented life. He was an elderly German,
-irascible in disposition, and profane in speech. His oaths were
-Teutonic oaths, but were not, on that account, the less thunderous. He
-taught music and drawing,--those were not the days of specialists,--so
-all the time that his ears were not vexed with weak and tremulous
-discords, his eyes were maddened by crippled lines, and sheets of
-smutty incompetence. The result of such dual strain was that his
-spirit, which could hardly have been gentle at the outset, had grown
-savage as a Tartar's. When Christopher North ventured to say that the
-wasp is the only one of God's creatures perpetually out of temper, it
-was because he never knew Carlyle or Dr. Eckhart.
-
-This irate old gentleman was an admirable teacher,--or at least he
-would have been an admirable teacher if we could have enjoyed eternal
-youth in which to profit by his lessons, to master step by step the
-deep-laid foundations of an art. As it was, few of us ever got beyond
-the first feeble paces, beyond those prolonged beginnings which had no
-significance in our eyes. Yet we knew that other children, children
-not more richly endowed by nature than we were, made real pictures
-that, with careful retouching, were deemed worthy of frames, and of
-places upon parental walls. Adelaide Harrison had a friend who went
-to a fashionable city school, and who had sent her--in proof of wide
-attainments--a work of art which filled us with envy and admiration.
-It was a winter landscape; a thatched cottage with wobbly walls, a bit
-of fence, and two quite natural-looking trees, all drawn on a prepared
-surface of blue and brown,--blue on top for the sky, brown underneath
-for the earth. Then--triumph of realism--this surface was scraped away
-in spots with a penknife, and the white cardboard thus brought to light
-presented a startling resemblance to snow,--snow on the cottage roof,
-snow on the branches of the trees, patches of snow on the ground. It
-seemed easy to do, and was beautiful when done,--a high order of art,
-and particularly adapted, by reason of its wintriness, for Christmas
-gifts. I urged Adelaide to show it to Dr. Eckhart, and to ask him if we
-might not do something like it, instead of wasting our young lives, and
-possibly some hidden genius, in futile attempts to draw an uninspiring
-group of cones and cylinders. Adelaide, who was not without courage,
-and whose family had a high opinion of her talents, undertook this
-dangerous commission, and at our next lesson actually proffered her
-request.
-
-Dr. Eckhart glared like an angry bull. He held the landscape out at
-arm's length, turning it round and round, as if uncertain which was
-earth and which was heaven. "And that," he said, indicating with a
-derisive thumb a spot of white, "what, may I ask, is that?"
-
-"Snow," said Adelaide.
-
-"Snow!" with a harsh cackle. "And do we then scratch in the ground like
-hens for snow? Eh! tell me that! Like hens?" And he laughed, softened
-in some measure by an appreciation of his own wit.
-
-Adelaide stood her ground. But she thought it as well to have some one
-stand by her side. "Agnes wants to do a picture, too," she said.
-
-Dr. Eckhart gasped. If I had intimated a desire to build a cathedral,
-or write an epic, or be Empress of India, he could not have been more
-astounded. "L'audace, l'audace, et toujours l'audace." Words failed
-him, but, reaching over, he picked up my drawing-board, and held it
-aloft as one might hold a standard; held it rigidly, and contemplated
-for at least three minutes the wavering outlines of my work. Most of
-the class naturally looked at it too. The situation was embarrassing,
-and was made no easier when, after this prolonged exposure, my board
-was replaced with a thump upon the table, and Dr. Eckhart said in a
-falsetto imitation of Adelaide's mincing tones: "Agnes wants to do a
-picture, too." Then without another word of criticism--no more was
-needed--he moved away, and sat down by Julia Reynolds's side. She alone
-had never lifted her eyes during this brief episode, had never deemed
-it worthy of attention. I felt grateful for her unconcern, and yet
-was humbled by it. It illustrated my sterling insignificance. Nothing
-that I did, or failed to do, could possibly interest her, even to the
-raising of an eyelid. At least, so I thought then. I was destined to
-find out my mistake.
-
-It was through Elizabeth that the new discovery was made. All our
-inspirations, all the novel features of our life, owed their origin to
-her. The fertility of her mind was inexhaustible. A few days after
-this memorable drawing lesson she drew me into a corner at recreation,
-and, rolling up her sleeve, showed me her arm. There, scratched on the
-smooth white skin, bloody, unpleasant, and distinct, were the figures
-150.
-
-I gazed entranced. A hundred and fifty was Madame Dane's number (the
-nuns as well as the girls all had numbers), and for months past it had
-been the emblem of the cult. We never saw it without emotion. When it
-stood at the head of a page, we always encircled it in a heart. When
-we found it in our arithmetics, we encircled it in a heart. We marked
-all our books with these three figures set in a heart, and we cut them
-upon any wooden substance that came to hand,--not our polished and
-immaculate desks, but rulers, slate borders, and the swings. And now,
-happiest of happy devices, Elizabeth had offered her own flesh as a
-background for these beloved numerals.
-
-The spirit of instant emulation fired my soul. I thought of Julia's
-number, twenty-one, and burned with desire to carve it monumentally
-upon myself. "What did you do it with?" I asked.
-
-"A pin, a penknife, and a sharpened match," answered Elizabeth proudly.
-
-I shuddered. These surgical instruments did not invite confidence; but
-not for worlds would I have acknowledged my distaste. Besides, it is
-sweet to suffer for those we love. I resolved to out-herod Herod, and
-use my hand instead of my arm as a commemorative tablet. There was a
-flamboyant publicity about this device which appealed to my Latin blood.
-
-It did not appeal to Elizabeth, and she offered the practical
-suggestion that publicity, when one is not a free agent, sometimes
-entails unpleasant consequences. My arm was, so to speak, my own, and
-I might do with it what I pleased; but my hand was open to scrutiny,
-and there was every reason to fear that Madame Dane would disapprove
-of the inscription. Her arguments were unanswerable, but their very
-soundness repelled me. I was in no humour for sobriety.
-
-I did the work very neatly that night in my alcove, grateful, before it
-was over, that there were only two figures in twenty-one. The next day
-Viola followed my example. I knew she would. There was no escaping from
-Viola. Tony cut seventy-seven, Ella Holrook's number, upon her arm.
-Annie Churchill and Lilly heroically cut a hundred and fifty on theirs.
-The fashion had been set.
-
-In three days half the Second Cours bore upon their suffering little
-bodies these gory evidences of their love. And for four days no one
-in authority knew. Yet we spent our time delightfully in examining
-one another's numerals, and freshening up our own. Like young savages,
-we incited one another to painful rites, and to bloody excesses. That
-Viola's hand and mine should for so long have escaped detection seems
-miraculous; but Madame Dane, though keenly observant, was a trifle
-near-sighted. She may have thought the scratches accidental.
-
-On the fifth morning, as I came out from Mass, Madame Rayburn's eye
-lighted by chance upon the marks. She was not near-sighted, and she
-never mistook one thing for another. A single glance told her the
-story. A single instant decided her course of action. "Agnes," she
-said, and I stepped from the ranks, and stood by her side. I knew
-what she had seen; but I did not know what she proposed doing, and my
-heart beat uneasily. We waited until the First Cours filed out of the
-chapel. Last, because tallest, came Ella Holrook and Julia Reynolds.
-"Julia," said Madame Rayburn, and she, too, left the ranks and joined
-us. No word was spoken until the long line of girls--burning with
-futile curiosity, but too well trained even to turn their heads--had
-passed through the corridor. Then Madame Rayburn took my hand in her
-firm grasp and held it up to view. "Look at this, Julia," she said.
-
-I had supposed it impossible to move Julia Reynolds to wrath, to arouse
-in her any other sentiment than the cold contempt, "la fierté honorable
-et digne," which she cultivated with so much care. But I had not
-calculated on this last straw of provocation following upon all she had
-previously endured. When she saw her number on my hand, she crimsoned,
-and her eyes grew dark. She was simply and unaffectedly angry,--what
-we in unguarded conversation called "mad."
-
-"I won't have it," she said passionately. "I won't! It's too much to be
-borne. I won't put up with it another hour. Why should I be tormented
-all my life by these idiotic children? Look at my shawl,--how they have
-torn off half the fringe. It isn't fit to be worn. Look at my desk! I
-never open it without finding it littered with their trash. Do I want
-their old flannel penwipers? Do I want their stupid pincushions and
-needle-cases? Can I possibly want book-markers of perforated cardboard,
-with 'Julia' worked on them in blue sewing silk? I've had three this
-week. Do they think I don't know my own name, and that I have to be
-reminded of it by them? They have no business to go near my desk.
-They have no business to put anything in it. And I don't want their
-candy. And I don't want them to darn my stockings in hard lumps. I've
-never encouraged one of them in my life." (Alas! Julia, this was your
-undoing.) "I've never spoken to one of them. I did let her" (a scornful
-nod at me) "sharpen my crayons in drawing class, and I suppose this
-impertinence is the result. I suppose she thinks she is a favourite.
-Well, she isn't. And this is going a good deal too far. My number
-belongs to me personally, just as much as my name does. I won't have it
-paraded around the Second Cours. It stands for me in the school, it's
-mine, and she has no right to cut it on her horrid little hand."
-
-There was a moment's silence. Julia's breath was spent, and Madame
-Rayburn said nothing. She only looked at me.
-
-Now I possessed one peculiarity which had always to be reckoned with.
-Timid, easily abashed, and reduced to nothingness by a word that hurt,
-I was sure, if pushed too far, to stand at bay. Nor had nature left me
-altogether defenceless in a hard world. Julia's first glance had opened
-my eyes to the extravagance of my behaviour (Oh, that I had followed
-Elizabeth's counsel!), her first reproaches had overwhelmed me with
-shame. But the concentrated scorn with which she flung her taunts in
-my face, and that final word about my horrid hand, stiffened me into
-resistance. My anger matched her own. "All right," I said shortly;
-"I'll scratch it out."
-
-Madame Rayburn laughed softly. She had brought upon me this dire
-humiliation because she thought my folly merited the punishment; but
-she was not ill-pleased to find me undismayed. As for Julia, she bent
-her keen eyes on my face (the first time she had ever really looked at
-me), and something that was almost a smile softened the corners of her
-mouth. It was evident that the idea of scratching out what was already
-so deeply scratched in pleased her wayward fancy. When she spoke again,
-it was in a different voice, and though her words were unflattering,
-her manner was almost kind. "If you are not altogether a fool," she
-said, "and that sounds as if you were not, why do you behave like one?"
-
-To this query I naturally made no reply. It was not easy to answer,
-and besides, at the first softening of her mood, my wrath had melted
-away, carrying my courage with it. I was perilously near tears. Madame
-Rayburn dropped my hand, and gave me a little nod. It meant that I
-was free, and I scudded like a hare through the corridor, through the
-First Cours classroom, and down into the refectory. There the familiar
-aspect of breakfast, the familiar murmur of "Pain, s'il vous plait,"
-restored my equanimity. I met the curious glances cast at me with that
-studied unconcern, that blankness of expression which we had learned
-from Elizabeth, and which was to us what the turtle shell is to the
-turtle,--a refuge from inquisitors. I had no mind that any one should
-know the exact nature of my experience.
-
-That night I made good my word, and erased the twenty-one after a
-thorough-going fashion I hardly like to recall. But when the operation
-was over, and I curled up in my bed, I said to myself that although I
-should never again wear this beloved number upon hand or arm, it would
-be engraved forever on my heart. As long as I lived, I should feel for
-Julia Reynolds the same passionate and unalterable devotion. Perhaps,
-some time in the future, I should have the happiness of dying for
-her. I was arranging the details of this charming possibility, and
-balancing in my mind the respective delights of being bitten--while
-defending her--by a mad dog, or being drowned in mid-ocean, having
-given her my place in the life-boat, and was waving her a last farewell
-from the decks of the sinking ship, when I finally fell asleep.
-
-The next morning was Sunday, the never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, when
-Marianus for the first time served Mass. And as I watched him,
-breathless with delight, Julia's image grew pale, as pale as that of
-Isabel Summers, and faded quietly away. I looked at Elizabeth and Tony.
-They, too, were parting with illusions. Their sore little arms might
-now be permitted to heal, for their faithless hearts no longer bore a
-scar. The reign of our lost loves was over. The sovereignty of Marianus
-had begun.
-
-
-
-
-  The Riverside Press
-  _Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
-  Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
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-TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
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-  Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
-
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-
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-  standardized.
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