“Where do we go now?” Zella ventured to ask her neighbour.
“Night prayers, and then to bed, thank goodness,” replied the girl, who had laughed and screamed as loudly as anyone during the past hour.
“Hush! there’s the bell.”
A great bell clanged out from somewhere overhead, and the procession of girls once more filed through the passages, where the bare white walls and nagged stones struck Zella with a sense of chill ugliness, across the entrance hall. There a green baize door admitted them into a sort of small lobby, where each girl seized a square of folded black net from the pigeonholes lining the walls, and placed it as a veil over her head.
Zella, in a fresh agony, instantly saw herself the only unveiled person in the chapel, covered with confusion, no doubt contemptuously eyed by everyone, and perhaps ignominiously turned out for irreverence or disregard of rules.
Not one of these alarming forecasts, however, was fulfilled. Mary McNeill, elbowing her way through the pushing, crowded girls, thrust a very stiff new veil into Zella’s hands, muttered something unintelligible, and opened the heavy oak door that led to the chapel.
It was a pretty little building, with none of the glamour that Zella had expected from a convent chapel, and quite cheerfully and unmysteriously lighted by gas-jets at intervals against the whitewashed walls. A very light oaken screen separated the children’s section from the double rows of carved wooden stalls at which the nuns habitually knelt.
Zella had half expected to hear the low pealing of an organ, or at least the sweet voices of gentle nuns uplifted in an evening hymn; but after a few moments’ silence one of the girls began to read aloud from a small book, rather quickly and very loudly, a series of prayers which the others punctuated with Amens.
Zella paid little or no attention, and was fully occupied in pulling at her stiff veil, which persisted in slipping off her head backwards.
Still clutching at it, she followed her neighbours out of the chapel when prayers were finished, and upstairs into a long dormitory. On entering, each of the girls dipped a finger into the holy-water stoup hanging by the door, and a good many of them seemed to find some humour in liberally splashing it at one another.
Mary McNeill silently pointed to a white curtain near the end of the room, and Zella, timidly pulling it aside, saw that the long dormitory was divided into cubicles. The space into which a bed, chair, and washing-stand with two drawers in it, had been compressed seemed to her incredibly tiny. One thin strip of carpet only, lay near the bed, and there was no sign of a looking-glass. Zella was vaguely dismayed, but she was tired and miserable, and longed only to be alone in the dark. She undressed hastily, looked for hot water on the washing stand, and, finding only cold, got into bed with no further attempt at performing any ablutions, leaving her clothes in an untidy heap on the floor.
It was not until she was in bed, hoping that the gas would soon be extinguished, that Zella realized that every sound in the cubicles could be plainly heard on either side of the thin match-board partition.
She was too proud to endure the thought of being heard crying, and lay resolutely choking back her tears while mysterious bells clanged at intervals from a distance; and when she fell into an uneasy doze, it was only to wake with a start at the unexpected sound of a voice in the silence proclaiming, “May the peace of the Lord remain always with us all.” Upon which a babble of voices replied Amen, and the light was put out.
XIII
Zella rather resented the fact that she did not, on the morning following her arrival at the convent, wake suddenly to the deafening clamour of a bell, and the conviction that it was the middle of the night and the house was on fire. But this orthodox experience, proper to the heroine of every school story she had ever read, was denied her. She woke, on the contrary, just as a big clock from outside chimed half-past five, did not feel in the least bewildered by her new surroundings, and lay wide awake for a weary hour, wishing that it were time to get up, and yet dreading the experiences that might lie before her.
At half-past six a lay Sister substituted a mild ejaculatory prayer at the curtain of each cubicle for the violent bell-ringing of Zella’s imagination, and she heard various muffled voices, in different degrees of sleepiness, return an unintelligible response.
When the lay Sister paused outside Zella’s curtain and uttered her short Latin formula, Zella, not to be outdone, also muttered something which she trusted would pass as a reply, sooner than let her silence betray her inevitable ignorance.
This infinitesimal incident might have served as the keynote to all her school days. She was occupied, not gradually and half consciously, but frenziedly and continuously, in conforming to type.
At the convent everyone conformed to type. Every nun seemed to Zella exactly like every other nun, even though one or two belonged to the perfectly sweet” category, several to the class that was “frightfully reserved, but awfully nice when you know them,” and still more to the type described as “a frightfully kind old thing, but rather deadly.”
One limited vocabulary was common to all, one set of feelings animated all alike, all were employing one means to one end.
The girls conformed to type in the same way, and Zella, despising the type and utterly at a loss to understand it, instantly turned all her attention to the same object.
The majority of the vocabulary brought from Villetswood, where the rather precise and elaborate English of a bi-lingual household had prevailed, was discarded, and Zella substituted for all other adjectives the only three recognized and employed, always strictly out of place, by her companions.
She insincerely declared Reverend Mother to be both sweet and ripping, and violently echoed the assertion that it must be awful to arouse Reverend Mother’s displeasure.
She acquired slang in a week, learnt that the keenest gratification that could be offered to any of her companions was the most blatant form of raillery, in the presence of as many witnesses as possible, on her infatuation for some particular nun, and that a sure passport to friendship was the observation:
I say, you do look tired to-day; I’m sure you didn’t eat a thing at dinner.”
She even, in the space of a fortnight, began to indulge in the pious practices of splashing two fingers mechanically into every holy-water stoup — and there were many — in the house, rapidly jerking her left knee towards the ground when passing the door of the chapel, and displaying a flaming badge of the Sacre Coeur upon the front of her alpaca apron.
Zella was far from being unaware that nuns and pupils alike were apt to comment amongst themselves upon this innocent progress towards true faith on the part of the Protestant. She conjectured, very correctly, that Mother Rose might say to Mother Veronica:
“Ah, our Lord has certainly got designs upon that child’s soul. I have watched her genuflect in the chapel, when she had no idea that she was being noticed, and I can see the look of faith dawning on her face. It is quite wonderful.”
“Yes, indeed, and what a joy it would be to Reverend Mother! We mustn’t forget to pray for her daily.”
And very likely the conversation would be repeated, with triumphant hopefulness, to Reverend Mother herself.
Zella, quick as she was to adopt the standard of values prevailing amongst her surroundings, desired ardently to become an object of interest to Reverend Mother. Any girl of whom it was said, “Oh, Reverend Mother takes a great interest in her,” was at once set apart from her companions as possessing some rare and indefinable virtue, and to this altitude Zella aspired.
With this end in view, she piously insisted upon getting up for the seven o’clock Mass attended daily by the children, knelt when everybody but one or two of the more devout Children of Mary was sitting down, and kept her face hidden in her slender hands throughout the service, with a motionless devotion that might have shamed her companions, provided with prayer-books and rosaries as they were.
But what might be termed Zella’s greatest success as a Prot
estant was her behaviour upon the occasion when she first attended Benediction.
Zella had been to Benediction once or twice in Rome, in one or two of the larger churches, where the ritual had seemed to her utterly incomprehensible and the music merely a meaningless edition of a sacred concert; and she anticipated the convent Benediction with a sensation of unmistakable boredom at the prospect of enduring it twice a week.
But the effect of the small chapel, with the candle and flower decked altar close to the front benches, the organ pealing soft fragments of the Gounod so dearly loved of convents, and the devout voices raised in unison in the rhythm of tunes that, though unknown to Zella, yet carried a general sense of familiarity in their lilting cadences, was to surprise her into emotion.
It was, in fact, the episode of the Frascati church bells on a slightly more elaborate scale.
Only this time Zella thrust the onus of her emotion on to religion, or, rather, the absence of religion.
Oh faith that she had never known! Oh sanctity that would be so easy of attainment if one did but believe!... “Lead, kindly Light... the night is dark, and I am far from home....”
The pathos of this last reflection overcame her altogether, and her face was plunged into her hands.
Her place in the chapel was quite within reasonable view of Reverend Mother’s carved stall.
Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” with variations, was softly rendered by the musical Mother Rose, as the voices became silent and the white-veiled heads in the chapel bent low.
Oh the beauty of the Catholic religion! Zella, who knew that she had now penetrated to the heart of it, wandered into a misty metaphorical prayer, in which the wings of a dove became entangled with the strayings of a lamb outside the fold. A chance movement of her hand betrayed the gratifying fact that the ledge of the bench in front of her was extremely wet.
Zella’s tears immediately redoubled.
The girls on either side of her exchanged a glance over her bent head and heaving shoulders, and she was acutely aware of it, with that curious sharpening of every faculty which is the effect of a certain form of emotion.
The singing of the Litany of Loreto, Zella thought, made the deepest chords in her vibrate unbearably. In other and more accurate words, it put the last touch to her enjoyment.
The apparently endless reiteration of the very simple air, the solo being taken by a soft, untrained, but Very true and sweet soprano from the choir, and the responses coming in unison from the whole chapel, was unlike anything Zella had heard before.
The simple Latinity, almost altogether intelligible to her from her knowledge of French and Italian, and the poetic beauty of each invocation, filled her with a sort of poignant pleasure that found its best expression in her choking sobs and streaming tears.
Her one desire was that the Litany should not cease. At last, however, it was ended, and Zella, divining that the end of the service was near, modified the violence of her emotion.
She had successfully graduated into the not unbecoming stages of swollen eyelids, pale face, and downcast lashes still sparkling with tears, when the children rose at the usual signal, and filed slowly two by two in front of Reverend Mother’s stall, past the high-altar, and out of the chapel.
To her mixed relief and disappointment, no one inquired into the cause of her tears, but Mother Veronica patted her shoulder that evening in the refectory, and said, “One of these days we must find time for our talk, dear. I will try and see you on Sunday afternoon.”
And Dorothy Brady, with more friendliness than she had yet displayed, observed at recreation:
“I’m sure you’re frightfully delicate, Zella. You look awfully tired to-night.”
At which gratifying remark Zella felt a passionate and altogether disproportionate sense of gratitude.
The next day she heard, with a curious unacknowledged sense of triumph, that Reverend Mother would see her that evening.
A private interview with Reverend Mother was no light matter. It generally implied either some offence too heinous to be dealt with by a class mistress, a family bereavement, or the approaching responsibility of a reception into the Sodality of the Children of Mary. If the honour could not be accounted for in any of these ways, it was surmised in whispers that the recipient of it must be “getting a vocation.”
Zella was agreeably conscious of her own importance when, towards the end of the evening recreation, a lay Sister made her way to the nun in charge, and delivered a message in the mysterious half-whisper characteristic of convent communications, and with many side-glances towards Zella herself.
The girls stopped playing and looked intensely curious, and the nun immediately said: “Go on with your game, children. Why can’t you make a little mortification of your curiosity for once?”
Thus compelled, the little mortification was half-heartedly attempted; but Zella was quite aware of the number of eyes that followed her when the nun had made half a dozen cryptic signals to convey to her that she should follow Sister Mary Anne.
Once in the passage, the wrinkled old Sister turned on her a face beaming with pleasure.
“Mother is going to see you in the parlour! Don’t you think you’re very lucky, dear? Now, mind you’re very open with her. She’ll give you all sorts of help, and see right down into your very soul. Ah, I assure you that Reverend Mother is very wonderful.”
Zella thought that she was growing tired of hearing so.
“And you that haven’t got a mother, poor child!” said the old lay Sister compassionately. But you’ll find one in Reverend Mother, dear, just as we all do.”
She bestowed Zella in a small scantily furnished parlour, and there left her to her anticipations for the better part of half an hour.
At last Reverend Mother made her tardy entrance, with no appearance of haste and no expressions of regret, and Zella rose rather timidly.
“Well, my dear child, so you’ve come to have a little talk with me, and I’m very glad to see you. And how do you like our convent life?”
“Oh, very much,” said Zella glibly, the reply having been frequently on her lips during the past fortnight.
“That’s right — that’s right. It is not like anything you have ever known before, eh?”
“No,” said Zella, raising her eyes with an expression of confiding candour. “You see, I’ve never been to school, and I don’t think I’ve been brought up in quite an ordinary way, either.”
“No?” said Reverend Mother encouragingly, and sitting down as though for a long conference.
Zella felt that she was being a success.
“My father and — and mother did not really bring me up in any special religion, or teach me much about it,” she faltered, the facts of the case suddenly taking new aspects before her eyes as she related them. “I have hardly ever been to church, and I never had catechism lessons and — and things like other girls.”
“Poor child! and you are beginning to feel the want of religion. We can none of us do without it, you know, dear.”
Zella thought of her father, whom she honestly supposed to be a man without religion, and then of the Baronne, with her intense, almost child-like faith.
“My grandmother is a Catholic,” she said wistfully, “and my aunt, but all my English relations are Protestants.”
A recollection crossed her mind as she spoke of Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, and the indignation with which that lady would have heard her Anglican Catholicity profaned by such an adjective as Protestant.
“And does not the Protestant Faith satisfy you, Zella?” inquired Reverend Mother gravely.
Zella readily followed her lead.
“It does not really mean very much to me,” she returned, with much truth.
“You must pray for faith, and Our Lord will answer that prayer in His own way and His own time.”
It was not quite the response expected by the impetuous Zella, and she supposed herself to be on the wrong tack, as it were.
“So long as one does one
’s best, I am sure God does not mind which creed one professes. After all, we are all Christians and all trying to get to Heaven,” she informed Reverend Mother with a confident smile, and a happy remembrance of a similar doctrine overheard long ago amongst her mother’s friends at Villetswood.
But Reverend Mother’s expression was one of unaffected disapproval.
“No, dear child,” she replied very firmly indeed, “that is far from being the case. God has established His Church, one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, and that is the way of salvation that He has appointed.”
“Then why aren’t we all born into it?” demanded Zella, more from a desire to impress Reverend Mother with her logical mind than from any real wish for information.
“Faith is a free gift of God, which He bestows of His great mercy. But we can all pray for more faith, and it is a prayer that will never remain unanswered. The Apostles prayed that their faith might be increased, you know.”
“Yes,” eagerly replied Zella, who did not know. “And if one prays like that, and does one’s best, it must be right. After all, I suppose it is better to be a good sincere heathen than a bad Christian.”
“No, no, that is quite wrong idea,” said Reverend Mother more firmly than ever. “Remember, there must be Truth somewhere, and it is better to be in the Truth, even if one has the misfortune not to live up to the amount of grace bestowed, than out of it.”
Zella felt at least ten years older and wiser than Reverend Mother, and inquired rather incredulously:
“And do you really think it is better to be, say, a bad Catholic than a good Protestant?”
“Certainly I do; but you do not understand that, I see. It sounds to you narrow-minded and uncharitable, does it not?” said Reverend Mother, laughing with a whole-heartedness that rather disconcerted Zella, the more especially as Reverend Mother’s diagnosis of her thoughts was a perfectly correct one. She felt so much less superior than before that it was a relief when the nun began to question her as to her various classes.
The conversation proceeded readily enough, though Zella was conscious of a slight undercurrent of disappointment that Reverend Mother apparently did not care to pursue the topic of Zella’s religious views any farther; and at the end of twenty minutes the nun said kindly, but rising rather with the air of one who had brought a duty to its successful conclusion:
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 13