In Convent Walls Part 27

"What on earth does it matter?" said Mother Gaillarde. "Aren't you both going to Heaven? You can talk there--without fear of disobedience."

"My Lord Prior said. Mother, in his last charge, that a convent ought to be a little heaven. If that be so, why should we not talk now?"

Mother Gaillarde's laugh positively frightened me. It was the hardest, driest, most metallic sound I ever heard.

"Sister Annora, you must be a baby! You have lived in a convent nearly fifty years, and you ask if it be a little heaven!"

"I cry you mercy, Mother. I asked if it should not be so."

"That's another matter," said she, with a second laugh, but it did not startle me like the first. "We should all be perfect, of course. Pity we aren't!"

As she worked away at the plums she was stoning without saying either yes or no, I ventured to repeat my question.

"You may do as you are told!" was Mother Gaillarde's answer. "Can't you let things alone?"

Snappishly as she spoke, yet--I hardly know why,--I did not feel the appeal to her as hopeless as to Mother Ada. To entreat the latter was like beseeching a stone wall. Mother Gaillarde's very peevishness (if I dare call it so) showed that she was a woman, and not an image.

"Mother Gaillarde," I said, suddenly--for something seemed to bid me speak out--"be not angry with me, I pray you. I am afraid of letting things alone. My heart seems to be like a dry bough, and my soul withering up, and I want to keep them alive and warm. Surely death is not perfection!"

I was going on, but something which I saw made me stop suddenly. Two warriors were fighting together in Mother Gaillarde's face. All at once she dropped the knife, and hiding her face in her veil, she sobbed for a minute as if her heart were breaking. Then, all at once, she brushed away her tears and stood up again.

"Child!" she said, in a voice very unlike her usual one, "you are too young for your years. Do not think that dried-up hearts are the same thing as no hearts. Women who seem as though they could not love any thing may have loved once too well, and when they awoke from the dream may never have been able to dream again. Ay, thou art right: death is not perfection. Some of us, maybe, are very far off perfection--further than others think us; furthest of all from what we think ourselves.

There have been times when I seemed to see for a moment what perfection is--and it was far, far from all we call it here. G.o.d forgive us all!

Go to the Infirmary: and if any chide thee for being there, say thou earnest in obedience to me."

She turned back to her plum-stoning with a resolute face which might have been a mask of iron: and I, after offering lowly thanks, took the way to the Infirmary.

I fear I have been unjust to Mother Gaillarde, and I am sorry for it. I seem to see now, that her hard, snappish speeches (for she does snap sometimes) are not from absence of heart, but are simply a veil to hide the heart. Ah me! how little we human creatures know of each others'

hidden feelings! But I shall never think Mother Gaillarde without heart again.

Note 1. The rule of silence varied considerably in different Orders, but in all, except the very strict, nuns were at liberty to converse during some period of the day.

Note 2. This transferring of Margaret from Watton is purely imaginary.

PART THREE, CHAPTER 2.

SISTER MARGARET.

"Do I not know The life of woman is full of woe?

Toiling on and on and on, With breaking heart, and tearful eyes, And silent lips--and in the soul The secret longings that arise, Which this world never satisfies?"

Longfellow.

Mother Alianora was lying in her bed when I entered the Infirmary, just under the window, where the soft light of the low autumn sun came in and lit up her pillow and her dear old face. She smiled when she saw me.

There was another Sister in the room, who was stirring a pan over the fire, and at first I scarcely noticed her. I went up to the dear Mother, and asked her how she was.

"Well, my child," she said, tenderly. "Nearly at Home."

Something came up in my throat that would not let me speak.

"Hast thou been sent to relieve Sister Marian?" she asked.

"I know not," said I, after a moment's struggle with myself: then, remembering what I had been bidden, I added, "Mother Gaillarde bade me come."

We sat silent for a few moments. Sister Marian poured out the broth and brought it to the Mother, and I supported her while she drank a little of it. She could not take much.

Just before the bell rang for compline, Mother Ada came in.

"I bring an order from my Lady," said she. "Sister Marian will be relieved after compline by another Sister, who will be sent up. Sister Annora is to stay with the sick Mother during compline, and both she and the Sister who then comes will keep watch during the night."

I was surprised. I never knew any case of sickness, unless it were something very severe and urgent, allowed to interfere with a Sister's attendance at compline. But I was glad enough to stay.

Mother Ada went away again after her orders were given, and Sister Marian followed her when the bell rang. As soon as the little sounds of the Sisters' footsteps had died away, and we knew they were all shut in the oratory, Mother Alianora, in a faint voice, bade me bring a stool beside her bed and sit down.

"Annora," said she, in that feeble voice, "my child, thou art fifty years old, yet I think of thee as a child still. And in many respects thou art so. It has been thy lot, whether for good or evil--which, who knoweth save G.o.d?--to be safe sheltered from very much of the ill that is in the world. But I doubt not, at times, questionings will arise in thy heart, whether the good may not have been shut out too. Is it so, my child?"

I suppose Mother Ada would say I was exceedingly carnal. But something in the touch of that soft, wrinkled hand, in whose veins I knew ran mine own blood, seemed to break down all my defences. I laid my head down on the coverlet, my cheek upon her hand, and in answer I poured forth all that had been so long shut close in mine own heart--that longing cry within me for some real, warm, human love, that ceaseless regret for the lost happiness which was meant to have been mine.

"O Mother, Mother! is it wicked in me?" I cried. "You, who are so near G.o.d, you should see with clearer eyes than we, lost in the tangled wilderness of this world. Is it wicked of me to dream of that lost love, and of all that it might have been to me? Am I his true wife, or is she--whoever that she may be? Am I robbing; G.o.d when I love any other creature? Must I only love any one in Heaven? and am I to prepare for that by loving n.o.body here on earth?"

The door opened softly, and the Sister who was to share my watch came in. She must have heard my closing words.

"My child!" said the faint voice of the dear Mother, who had always felt to me more like what I supposed mothers to be than any other I had known--"my child, 'it is impossible that scandals should not come: but woe unto them through whom they come!' It seems to me probable that one sin may be written in many books: that the actor, and the inciter, and the abettor--ay, and those who might have prevented, and did not--may all have their share. Thy coming hither, and thy religious life, having received no vocation of G.o.d, was not thy fault, poor, helpless, oppressed child! and such temptations as distress thee, therefrom arising, will not be laid to thy charge as sins. But if thou let a temptation slide into a sin by consenting thereto, by cheris.h.i.+ng and pursuing it with delight, then art thou not guiltless. That thou shouldst feel thyself unhappy here, in an unsuitable place, and that thou mightest have been a happier woman in the wedded life of the world,--that is no marvel: truly, I think it of thee myself. To know it is no sin: to repine and murmur thereat, these are forbidden. Thy lot is appointed of G.o.d Himself--G.o.d, thy Father, who loveth thee, who hath given Himself for thee, who pleased not Himself when He came down to die for thee. Are there not here drops of honey to sweeten the bitter cup?

And if thou want another yet, then remember how short this life is, and that after it, they that have done His will shall be together with Him for ever. Dear hearts, it is only a little while."

The Sister who was to watch with me had come forward to the foot of the bed, and was standing silent there. When Mother Alianora thus spoke, I fancied that I heard a little sob. Wondering who she was, I looked up-- looked up, to my great astonishment, into those dark, strange eyes of my own sister Margaret.

Margaret and I, alone, to keep the watch all night long! What could my Lady Prioress mean? Here was an opportunity to indulge my will, not to mortify it; to make my love grow, instead of repressing it. I had actually put into my hand the chance that I had so earnestly desired, to speak to Margaret alone.

But now that the first difficulty was removed, another rose up before me. Would Margaret speak to me? Was she, perhaps, searching for opportunities of mortification, and would refuse the indulgence permitted? I knew as much of the King's Court, as much of a knightly tournament, as I knew of that sealed-up heart of hers. Should I be allowed to know any more?

"Annora," said our aunt again, "there is one thine in my life that I regret sorely, and it is that I was not more of a mother to thee when thou earnest as a little child. Of course I was under discipline: but I feel now that I did not search for opportunities as I might have done, that I let little chances pa.s.s which I might have seized. My child, forgive me!"

"Dearest Mother!" I said, "you were ever far kinder to me than any one else in all the world."

"Thank G.o.d I have heard that!" saith she. "Ah, children--for we are children to an aged woman like me--life looks different indeed, seen from a deathbed, to what it does viewed from the little mounds of our human wisdom as we pa.s.s along it. Here, there is nothing great but G.o.d; there is nothing fair save Christ and Heaven; there is nothing else true, nor desirable, nor of import. Every thing is of consequence, if, and just so far as, it bears on these: and all other things are as the dust of the floor, which ye sweep off and forth of the doors into the outward. Life is the way upward to G.o.d, or the way down to Satan. What does it matter whether the road were smooth or rough, when ye come to the end thereof? The more weary and footsore, the more chilled and hungered ye are, the sweeter shall be the marriage-supper and the rest of the Father's House."

"Ay--when we are there." It was Margaret who spoke.

"And before, let us look forward, my child."

"Easy enough," said Margaret, "when the sun gleameth out fair, and ye see the domes of the city stand up bravely afore. But in the dark night, when neither sun nor star appeareth, and ye are out on a wild moor, and thick mist closeth you in, so that ye go it may be around thinking it be forward, till ye know not whether your face is toward the city or no--"

"Let thy face be toward the Lord of the city," said Mother Alianora.