“I have been a good deal abroad, and meals are at those hours in France and Italy,” Zella informed her.
They reached a large cloakroom with pegs all round three of the walls, and a row of washing basins against the fourth.
“Let me see,” said Mother Mary Veronica: “you can hang your hat here on this empty peg for to-night. I will find you one to-morrow, and you will have a number, like the others.”
Zella saw that against each peg was a little blue-edged label gummed to the wall, and bearing an elaborately inked-in number in Roman figures, surrounded by an ornamental sea of little pen-and-ink flourishes that betrayed a French hand.
“You are in mourning, dear,” observed Mother Mary Veronica acutely, after looking from Zella’s black hat to her black-and-white check frock.
“Yes, for my mother. She only died a few months ago,” said Zella pathetically.
“Poor child!” Mother Mary Veronica took Zella’s hand in hers and looked at her pityingly, but after a moment inquired regretfully:
“And your dear mother was not a Catholic, either?”
“No,” admitted Zella.
“Ah! Well, our dear Lord is very good,” said the nun, shaking her head, and giving an indescribable impression of being too broad-minded to think that Zella’s mother need necessarily be looked upon as lost, They went from the cloakroom down another long passage, and the nun, holding Zella’s hand, nearly upset her equilibrium by unexpectedly swooping on to one knee for a moment as they passed a heavy oaken door.
The startled Zella surmised that it must be the entrance to the chapel.
“The chapel is in there, dear,” remarked Mother Mary Veronica, hurrying on again. “I am afraid we are late, and the children will have begun supper.”
There was little doubt of it, as a clatter of plates and knives and a babel of voices made themselves heard at the far end of the passage.
“They do not talk at meals as a rule, but this is the last night of the Easter holidays.”
She opened a door as she spoke, and the clatter immediately became deafening.
“This is our children’s refectory,” encouragingly observed Mother Mary Veronica to the half-stunned Zella.
It was a long light refectory, with bare boards and white-washed walls. A crucifix at the end of the room hung over a raised wooden dais with a desk and chair on it.
Three long tables ran lengthways along the room, and the benches on either side of them were occupied by girls in blue serge uniforms and black alpaca aprons.
Another nun was walking up and down the length of the refectory, a rosary dangling from her hand and slipping rapidly through her fingers, in spite of the noise and the vigilant eye which she kept turning from one table to another.
A few of the girls turned round and stared at Zella, but the clamour of voices did not abate, and Mother Mary Veronica articulated a high-pitched introduction.
“Another nun, and exactly like the others!” thought? Zella despairingly, as she submitted once more to having her face scratched by the stiff white frilling surrounding the nun’s face under her black veil.
“You must want your supper, dear. Come and sit here.”
Mother Mary Veronica nodded smilingly at Zella and went away.
She followed her new guide up the room, and was thankful when a space was found on one of the benches.
“Now, dear, mind you make a good supper,” said the nun encouragingly. “Mary McNeill, this is a new pupil; you must look after her.”
Zella felt incapable of raising her eyes to the extent of inspecting Mary McNeill.
She had not hitherto supposed herself to be shy, but this first evening amongst her own contemporaries revealed to the unfortunate Zella her full capacity for suffering all the agonies of an acute self-consciousness.
XII
Zella sat at the table, intensely self-conscious and rather miserable, yet listening with interest to the conversation of the girls round her. They all spoke very loudly, and the noise seemed to her bewildering. Not much less bewildering than the manner was the matter of their speech.
“I say, Mollie, what a noise you were making in the infirmary passage this afternoon! I heard you.”
“I wasn’t!”
“Well, someone was. I heard them.”
“It was Kathleen, I expect.”
“No, it wasn’t!” screamed Kathleen from farther down the table.
“Oh yes, it was,” cried the first speaker and the girl called Mollie, together.
“Well, it just wasn’t, then! Nobody would dare make a noise in the infirmary passage — not even me.”
The others laughed.
“Even Kathleen wouldn’t dare to make a noise in the infirmary passage,” cried Mollie. “Did you hear that, Mary McNeill?”
“Well, I should hope not, just outside Mother Rose’s door,” said her neighbour, a placid-looking girl with a blue ribbon over her shoulders.
“Mary McNeill’s blushing,” sang out the girl next to Zella.
“What about?” asked someone else. “Oh, about Mother Rose, of course. Need you ask, my dear?”
“I’m not,” declared Mary, giggling. “Yes, you are.”
The prolonged laughter that followed seemed to Zella inane to a degree. She thought her future companions common and ill-bred, and noted with disgust the red and chilblained hands of her neighbours.
The only pretty girl at the table was the one called Kathleen, a slight, dark-haired girl with merry Irish eyes.
Zella saw her push away her plate presently, still half filled with meat and underdone potato.
“I can’t eat this stuff,” Zella heard her mutter to her neighbour.
“Go on, Kathleen, you must. You’ll only have old Rose down on you.”
“I don’t care.”
“Sister will make you eat it.”
“No, she won’t, not if I coax her. She never tells on one, she’s a little duck. That’s what it is to be Irish.”
“The conceit of some people!”
They both laughed a good deal more than the sally seemed to warrant.
“All the same, you’ll be ill if you don’t eat, Kathleen,” said the neighbour solicitously..” No, I shan’t.”
“Yes, you will. I tell you what, I shall tell Mother Pauline you’re not eating anything.”
“You’re not to.”
“Yes, I shall.”
“I simply won’t have her told. Besides, she wouldn’t care. She hates me.”
“Of course she doesn’t; only, you know, she’s not supposed to encourage you to run after her. I can’t think why you want to.”
“Oh, she’s awfully sweet, when you know her. I adore the way she looks up through her glasses at one, you know.”
“Well, I shall tell her you won’t eat.”
“No, you’re not to. I won’t have it.”
“I shall.”
“Well,” said Kathleen, in an extremely gratified tone, “I shall be simply furious if you do, that’s all.”
Zella felt more contemptuous than ever, but at the same time she was annoyed that none of her future companions had as yet taken any notice of her, beyond staring at her. Presently, however, the girl next Zella, a girl of about her own age, with a face that Zella mentally qualified as bold-looking and common, turned to her, and asked, though with no great appearance of being interested in the reply:
“Is this the first time you’ve been to school?”
“Yes,” said Zella, furious at feeling herself flush scarlet.
“Poor thing! you’ll hate it at first,” remarked her neighbour, her eyes, even as she spoke, roving restlessly over the table in search of something.
Zella could think of no rejoinder, but, anxious not to fall back into her former state of silent isolation, she timidly pushed forward a plate of bread.
“Is that what you want?” she asked, in tones that even to her own ears sounded curiously clear and childish amongst the shrill-toned gabble around her.
One o
r two of the girls opposite looked at her, and then exchanged glances.
“Bright kid!” said her neighbour approvingly. “Tell you what,” she added, with a mischievous expression and a side-glance to see if her wit would be appreciated by the girls nearest her, “wouldn’t you like to get up, and go to that cupboard there at the very end of the room, and look and see if you can find a knife, and bring it here. Mine’s dirty, and I want a clean one!”
She concluded with a suppressed titter, in which one or two of the girls joined. The one called Mary McNeill said, “Dorothy! shut up!” in a reproving voice, but they all looked curiously at Zella.
But Zella, though she again changed colour, was acute enough to recognize the type of girl to which Dorothy belonged, and replied with spirit, although she could scarcely command her voice:
“No, thank you. I haven’t come here as knife-boy.”
It was her first attempt at schoolgirl repartee, and met with instant success.
Dorothy herself laughed loudly and said, “Jolly good answer!” and Mary McNeill, who seemed to be the eldest girl in the vicinity, with some sort of authority over the others, turned to Zella and said?
“Don’t you mind Dorothy Brady. She always talks a lot of nonsense, but it’s a shame to try it on a new girl. Haven’t you ever been to school before?”
“No,” said Zella very low, wondering if she should get through the meal without disgracing herself by crying.
“You’ll soon get used to it,” said Mary comfortably. “We all love it here.”
Zella noted with relief that Mary expressed no surprise at Zella’s lack of school experience.
“The nuns are awfully nice — perfect angels some of them.”
“They look very sweet and gentle,” said Zella, who had frequently heard these adjectives applied en bloc to the inmates of religious houses and supposed them to be universally applicable to anyone wearing a veil and habit.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” replied Mary, giggling; “some of them are frightfully strict, and one or two of awfully nice, really.”
“I’ve never known any nuns before,” volunteered Zella. “You see, I’m not a Catholic.”
If she had expected her announcement to create any interest of a complimentary description, Zella was doomed to disappointment.
“Are you a Protestant?” asked Mary, with a disapproving inflexion in her voice.
‘I suppose so,” replied Zella, anxious to create the impression of one broad-minded enough to be bound by no narrow particular creed.
“Suppose so! You must know what you are.”
“I don’t really belong to any very special sect,” faltered Zella, conscious that she was not producing a favourable impression.
Good gracious! I suppose you’re the same as your father and mother, if they’re Protestants. Or are they Catholics who don’t practise their religion?” demanded Mary suspiciously.
Zella wished that she had sufficient courage to tell Mary that her questions were becoming impertinent. Being, however, far from possessing anything of the kind, she tried the effect of a rebukeful solemnity.
But they’re “My mother is dead,” she said very low.
“Oh!” Mary looked uncomfortable, and said no more.
Zella spent the rest of the meal in silence, and in telling herself that she had traded upon her loss as a cheap bid for pity. It was of small consolation to feel that the bid had not been particularly successful.
After what seemed to Zella an interminable while, the nun at the end of the refectory gave a signal by clapping her hands smartly together. There was instant silence, only the irrepressible Dorothy Brady muttering: “No more talking at meals for a whole week! Bother!” thereby greatly relieving Zella, who thought that meals in such company would be infinitely preferable eaten in silence.
A voice gabbled some formula which Zella supposed to be grace, and the girls filed out of the refectory one by one, Zella following the blue-uniformed figure in front of her.
Through bare whitewashed passages, and a big hall with a pedestal on which stood an enormous statue, they filed in silence, until a large match-boarded room, containing no furniture save a battered-looking piano and one or two forms, was reached. Here the girls ranged themselves into two silent rows, to the surprise of Zella, who had supposed that they were about to begin the evening recreation.
But the spectacled nun who stood facing them gave another clap of the hands, and instantly there was a fluttering motion all along the line.
Zella for one moment wondered whether the entire school had gone mad, as she recognized in all these flourishes the sign of the Cross.
However, the nun spoke a short prayer aloud in French, the girls responded in a loud gabble, and another signal was given, at which they all began to talk or play in varying degrees of shrillness and noisiness.
Zella stood bewildered.
The nun approached her, and said with some obviousness:
“Are you a new arrival, dear?”
“Yes,” faltered Zella; “I only came this evening.”
“You will soon get used to it, and like it very much.”
“Never!” thought Zella, looking more dejected than before. But aloud she said very gently: “Oh yes, I’m sure I shall. But I’ve never been to school before, and it seems rather strange at first.”
The nun patted her hand absently, calling two passing children to order at the same time.
“Rose and Mollie, not two together, if you please.”
Zella looked astounded.
“That is one of our rules, you know,” explained the nun. “In fact, I think it is the same in every convent. Girls must not be two together without a third.”
“Why not?” said Zella.
“It is against the rule,” repeated the nun, as though that were reason enough. But, seeing Zella still obviously bewildered, “Two people talking together are very apt to be tempted to uncharitable speaking, you know. They say the Devil always makes a third in tete-a-tete conversations,” said the nun very seriously.
Zella looked at her in amazement, asking herself indignantly, “Does she take me for a baby?” and utterly at a loss in a world where that medieval myth, the Devil, was apparently received as an accepted institution.
The nun began to pace up and down the long room, and Zella, not knowing what else to do, walked beside her. Presently a girl of about sixteen joined them, gazing curiously at Zella, who felt that her black-and... white check skirt, soft white blouse, and loosened hair fastened only by a broad ribbon on the top of her head, were so many objects of contempt to her severely pigtailed and uniformed contemporaries.
“What is your name?” asked the girl suddenly.
“Zella de Kervoyou.”
“What?”
Zella once more flushed scarlet.
Even the nun laughed a little, and said good-naturedly enough: “What a mouthful!”
At that moment Zella could willingly have killed her.
“Aren’t you English?” demanded the girl.
“I am a good deal English, but partly French,” stammered Zella, hardly knowing what she said.
“What did you say your first name was, dear?” inquired the nun, looking pleasant, but quite uninterested. “Zella.”
“Is there a saint of that name? Surely not.”
Zella scented a note of disapproval, and hastily replied:
“My real name is Gisele; I am only called Zella for short.”
“I see. A French name. I expect you can talk French nicely, then; and here is an opportunity, for here comes Mere Jeanne to take my place.”
An old nun, who seemed to Zella perfectly indistinguishable from all the other nuns she had already seen, was ambling slowly down the room, peering from side to side with evidently short-sighted eyes.
The younger mistress walked briskly up to her.
“Here is a new pupil, Mere Jeanne, with a French name,” she said, rather as though introducing a curiosity.
>
Zella came forward with her pretty, hesitating smile. Mere Jeanne immediately kissed her on both cheeks, and inquired:
“But you are not French, child?”
“A moitie,” answered Zella readily.
The old nun was enchanted, and began at once to speak her native tongue:
“C’est gentil! Comme elle parle bien francais, cette petite! Comment vous appelez, mon cheri?”
“Zella de Kervoyou.”
“Je connais ce nom-la, voyons! C’est Breton, n’est-ce pas?”
For the first time Zella felt a ray of comfort. She only trusted that the girls gathered round understood French well enough to grasp the fact that Mere Jeanne, at all events, saw nothing either strange or amusing in possessing a French name such as the noble one of Kervoyou.
For the rest of the evening Zella remained thankfully beside the old French nun, talking to her very prettily in her own language, and gaining repeated exclamations of praise at the purity of her French.
But even this solitary triumph was not destined to remain an unmitigated one. Mere Jeanne presently asked with much interest where Zella had made to Premiere Communion.
“I — I am afraid I am not a Catholic.”
“Not a Catholic!” exclaimed the old nun in consternation. “But you have come to us for instruction, perhaps?”
“No,” said Zella, and her passionate desire to be approved made her add feebly, “not exactly.”
Mere Jeanne, who did not belong to the ancienne politesse franchise for nothing, asked no more questions, but nodded her head a great number of times, and said:
“Ah, my dear child, you are a good child, I can see that, and God has not sent you here to the convent for nothing.”
Zella had not been brought up to think of God as taking much interest in her whereabouts, and, indeed, God, as interpreted by Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, could be nothing but pained and indignant at the introduction of a Protestant child into a Romish convent, but she replied with more politeness than truth: “I am sure that I shall like the convent very much, when I get used to it.”
“Ah yes, my dear child, all our children love it.”
Just before eight o’clock Mere Jeanne called the girls to order, and they once more placed themselves in rank.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 12