“Now, Zella, remember that, if ever you want to speak to me, you can write a little note and tell me so, and I will find time to come down to you.”
“Oh, thank you!” cried Zella, her habitually pretty tones of gratitude over-emphasized from sheer nervousness.
“Any of the children may speak to me when they really wish it, and I am always especially glad to see the elder girls.”
Rightly or wrongly, Zella interpreted this into an insinuation that the projected favour should not be looked upon as a personal and exclusive one, and immediately felt unreasonably dejected.
She did not quite know what she had expected as outcome of the interview, but felt vaguely that it had fallen short of the anticipations raised by the awe and envy with which such a privilege was always mentioned by the other girls.
She rallied her forces desperately as she prepared to open the door for Reverend Mother, in a last valiant effort to raise the tone of the interview to a higher level.
“Will you sometimes say a prayer for me?” she asked wistfully, lifting her dark grey eyes appealingly.
Most of the children gabbled a request of the sort on meeting most of the nuns, but the invariable formula was, “Pray for me, won’t you?” or, if the suppliant were facetiously inclined, “Pray for my conversion, please, Mother.”
The request had naturally hitherto been a strange one to Zella’s lips, and the slight timidity in her manner and wording were not without effect.
Reverend Mother did not reply, as Zella had half expected she would, “I pray for all our children, dear,” with the impersonal accent so beloved of convents, but answered warmly:
“Indeed I will, dear child, most especially; and you must pray, too, for yourself, that you may learn whatever you are meant to learn at the convent, and make good use of all the opportunities God gives you. He has designs on your soul, dear child, you may be sure of it.”
Zella regarded as a special object of attention from the Almighty, was a pleasant object for Zella to contemplate, and her depression fled.
She ventured a final touch.
“Won’t you give me the little cross on my forehead?” she asked, alluding to Reverend Mother’s habitual form of greeting to the children.
Reverend Mother smiled, and traced the sign of the Cross with her thumb on the uplifted brow. She also murmured a quite unintelligible blessing, then disappeared down the long passage that led to the part of the house reserved for the community.
Zella returned to the recreation-room on the whole well pleased with herself.
To add to her elation, she found that the girls were disposed to treat her with a new friendliness.
“I say, you are lucky,” said Dorothy Brady enviously. “You got a whole half-hour, didn’t you?”
Zella had had considerably less, owing to Reverend Mother’s lack of promptitude in making her appearance, but she saw her advantage and instantly seized it:
“Wasn’t it kind of her?” she smiled, thus delicately implying the correctness of Dorothy’s conjecture.
“Reverend Mother doesn’t often see new girls, either,” said Kathleen, the pretty Irish girl whom Zella was disposed to like.
‘Are you starting a ‘vo.,’ Zella?” laughed one of the younger ones.
Mary McNeill shoved her into silence. Zella felt rather than heard the muttered warning: “Shut up! don’t you know she isn’t a Catholic, she’s a Protestant?”
“Can’t Protestants get a vocation?” demanded the infant, unabashed.
“Of course not. Don’t be silly.” Zella felt annoyed. She had already had serious visions of the young heiress of Villetswood renouncing all the pomps and riches of this world and adopting the becoming veil and habit of the Order, and she was indignant at having it supposed that she, as a Protestant, was debarred from what these convent girls evidently considered as the highest summit of attainment in this life.
Her unformulated thought might have been translated into a determination that she must conform to the standards of her surroundings at all costs; and not only conform, but find herself placed considerably above the average line of conformity.
She prayed that night, with a strong sense of her own humility and desire for Truth, “Lord, increase my faith.” Her complacency was only disturbed by a tiny involuntary petition that she found herself murmuring into the pillow when she had finished drawing the Almighty’s attention to her state of spiritual receptiveness:
“And please do let Reverend Mother take an interest in me.”
XIV
“am I never to make a real friend?” thought Zella despairingly when she had been at the convent some time, and found herself no nearer to this favourite vision of her school days.
Intimacies among the pupils were not encouraged. “Charity” might be, and was, enforced by every pious precept of the nuns, but it must be practised indiscriminately, as it were, and in equal measure towards all alike. Tête-à-tête conversations were absolutely forbidden, nor was any opportunity afforded for such in the ordered monotony of the days.
Zella was by this time on terms of easy chaff with most of her companions, having rapidly caught the tone prevalent amongst them, and learnt to alternate, as they did, between the free-and-easy camaraderie implied in flat contradiction or noisy argument, and the matter -of course good-will expressed in an earnest request for prayers about a frightfully special intention.
For some time Zella was utterly in the dark as to what an “intention” might be, but characteristically uttered an emphatic assent without making any inquiry.
She was enlightened one day by Kathleen.
“I’ll tell you what my intention is, if you’ll promise not to tell a soul,” she whispered, after the customary formulas had been exchanged between them.
“Oh, do tell me!”
“Well, I want it simply frightfully badly, so you must pray like anything. It’s this.” Kathleen drew a long breath. “You know Mother Monica takes the violin pupils? Well, I’ve written to ask my father if I may learn the violin next term, and there’s just a chance he may say yes. Just think of having a whole hour’s lesson with her once a week! I’m simply praying to everyone I can think of. St. Cecilia ought to get it for me, oughtn’t she? as she’s the patroness of music.”
Zella looked at her in mute amazement. The convent perspective still had power to astonish her, and the sensation was so very evident in her face that Kathleen’s own expression of hopeful eagerness changed, as she murmured hastily:
“Of course I forgot — I suppose it isn’t exactly the same thing for you. You don’t have saints in the Protestant Church, do you?”
It was not a question, Zella felt, but a statement of fact, and as such it humiliated her.
It was mortifying to know that even the smallest child in the school looked upon her with pity or curiosity as a “Protestant,” and that the humblest lay Sister in the community doubtless thought it the merest act of common charity to murmur an occasional prayer for her conversion.
No one, however, endeavoured to lure her into the Fold, and there were times when Zella wearied heartily of this discretion, and thought that the Jesuitical intrigues predicted by Mrs. Lloyd-Evans would have been infinitely preferable to the continuance of this monotonously impersonal atmosphere.
The regularity of convent life was scarcely less trying to her than its detachment, and it was with proportionate eagerness that Zella looked forward to an event which apparently loomed enormous on the convent horizon.
This was spoken of as “Reverend Mother’s Feast” by the children, and by the nuns, with a slightly emotional inflection, and even, in extreme cases, a moistened glance, as “Our dear Mother’s Feast-day.”
“What are you going to do for our dear Mother on her feast, children?” inquired Mother Veronica one evening at recreation. “I think it’s time we began our spiritual bouquet.”
In quality of her position as First Mistress, she habitually addressed the pupils as “we.” She was
not popular, and most of the girls instinctively resented it.
“That will give us a whole month,” observed Mary McNeill with satisfaction. “We can get heaps of things done by that time. Doesn’t Reverend Mother like acts of mortification best?”
“I’ve begun already,” proudly announced Dorothy Brady, one of Reverend Mother’s devotees. “I’ve done fourteen acts already.”
The others looked impressed, and one or two appeared rather envious. Even Mother Veronica remarked, with unusual cordiality:
“Well done, Dorothy! I like to hear that; it shows the right spirit, dear. Now, I’ve got a paper all ready here, and if I pin it up in the hall to-morrow you can all keep count on that.”
“Oh, but, Mother,” objected Kathleen, “then they’ll all be added up together, and we shan’t know who’s done most. Do let’s each keep count separately, and then give in the numbers at recreation some evening, and add them up all together, like we did last year.”
Zella, to whom most of this conversation was almost incomprehensible, looked with great curiosity at the paper in Mother Veronica’s hand. It was inscribed listwise with various pious practices, and included such unfamiliar terms as “Acts,”
“Ejaculatory Prayers,” and even “Hours of Silence.”
The whole was headed “Spiritual Bouquet.”
She would have liked to ask the meaning of this remarkable collection, but was too much afraid of being thought as ignorant as she really was, and was glad that she had refrained, when Kathleen burst unasked into eager explanation:
“You see, we each put a stroke against whatever it is, as soon as we’ve done it; and if we each keep a separate list beside, every one’ll know how much she’s given. Last year that little kid Mollie Pearse actually had down one hundred and eighty-five ejaculations — and she was only seven then. Reverend Mother was most frightfully pleased when she heard about it. She liked it better than anything else.”
“And had she really done them all?” asked Zella rather sceptically, and not absolutely certain what an “ejaculation” might be.
“Oh yes, rather! She did the last fifty straight off, all in one go, at recreation one night. It was too funny to see her, sitting in the corner and muttering away as fast as she could go, and all the other juniors standing looking at her, trying to keep count. Mere Jeanne wouldn’t let anyone interrupt her. She says ejaculations are the best sort of prayers, you know.”
“I don’t at all agree,” remarked Dorothy Brady loudly. “The Holy Souls for me. I can get simply anything I want by one De Profundis. They’ll do anything for me — anything.”
She spoke as though alluding to particularly highly trained performing animals, thought Zella.
“Oh, give me the rosary,” said Mary McNeill, complacently whisking hers into her neighbour’s face.
She habitually carried a rosary about with her, and contrived to tell an inconceivable number of beads while going up and down stairs, or in and out of doors, in file.
A babel immediately broke out, as the girls in various degrees of shrillness and enthusiasm vehemently proclaimed their favourite devotions.
The familiarity with which sacred names were screamed aloud scandalized Zella profoundly..
She looked at Mother Veronica, wondering if she would not rebuke the irreverence of which these noisy partisans appeared to be guilty. But Mother Veronica smiled on serenely, until the tumult had somewhat subsided and she was able to make her own voice heard.
“Well, all devotions are good in their way, children, of course; but I must say that nothing ever seems to me quite equal to the dear Holy Ghost.”
It appeared to Zella that the last word in profanity had been uttered by the smiling nun.
These shocks, however, were not destined to be the only ones sustained by Zella in connection with the much-talked-of Feast of Reverend Mother.
She quickly became accustomed to the sheet of foolscap inscribed “Spiritual Bouquet,” hanging in the hall, and to which her companions rushed so frequently to place a fabulous number of pencil strokes. She even decided that it would be rather touching for the little Protestant to ask wistfully whether she also might not contribute her mite to the offering.
Instinctively selecting the guileless Mere Jeanne as victim for this histrionic experiment, Zella made her simple appeal one afternoon.
Mere Jeanne immediately kissed her warmly on both cheeks.
“Bien sure, mon pauvre cheri! of course you must join in with the others, as far as you can. I will make you a list at once, and we shall see what you can do.”
She nodded triumphantly as she fumbled in her ample pocket for pencil and paper.
“Tiens! I thought I had a pencil, but no — it is not there.”
She drew out of the pocket a small rusty pocket-knife, two fat foreign envelopes with frayed and torn edges, a small black rosary, a stout little book where innumerable cards and pictures were imperfectly confined by a worn elastic band, and the large checked square of duster that served her as pocket-handkerchief.
“No, it does not seem to be here.”
She dived again, and Zella, fascinated, saw emerge yet another little book, this time protected by a neat garb of black alpaca, Mere Jeanne’s well-worn old spectacle case, and a tiny stump of pencil concealed among a handful of old postage-stamps torn off their envelopes.
“What a lot your pocket holds!” she observed with polite astonishment.
“You must not be scandalized to see a religious, vowed to holy poverty, owning so much,” said the old nun anxiously. “The stamps are collected for a Chinese mission, which I believe has been specially recommended by the Holy Father,” she added triumphantly. “The little rosary is one that has actually touched the Rock of Lourdes, and I always carry it about for my rheumatism, which is very bad in this damp climate.”
Her twisted hands fumbled at the beads lovingly.
“As for the spectacle case, it is in the true spirit of poverty that I possess such a thing, since it preserves my spectacles from getting broken. I have had this very pair for fifteen years, without an accident; so that the case is really an economy, since if the spectacles got broken they would have to be replaced. We nuns are not so unpractical as people in the world would like to imagine; we think of these little contrivances.”
“What a good idea!” said Zella, feeling as though she were humouring a child.
“As for the books, dear, they are not mine at all; they are the Community’s, and lent to me by Our Mother. You shall see what we inscribe in all the books we use.”
She opened one shabby little volume, and Zella saw that on the fly-leaf was pencilled in pointed French handwriting:
“A l’usage de Soeur Jeanne Marie.”
“You see, dear, a nun has nothing at all of her own. I have used this book for twenty years, but, as it is not mine, I can have no inordinate attachment to it.”
“I thought one only had inordinate attachments for people, not for things,” said Zella, mindful of her Thomas a Kempis.
“Oh no, my dear child. Human nature is very weak, and can easily attach itself to trifles. I remember hearing a very sad story when I was a child, that made a great impression on me. It was about a very holy nun, belonging to one of the strictest contemplative Orders, though I can’t for the moment remember which one. She had always been a shining light in her Community through her love of obedience and mortification, and when she lay dying the Mother Prioress and all the Sisters expected to be greatly edified, and they all knelt round the bed, praying for her departing soul, and thinking what beautiful dispositions she must be in after such a holy life. Presently, however, they saw that she became very uneasy and was no longer attending to the prayers, and at last she was in such a state of alarm and agitation that her confessor felt she must have something on her conscience. So he bent down and asked her what it was.
“And, my dear, it is terrible to relate, but that poor dying soul was tormented by a dreadful certainty that someth
ing was drawing her down to hell; and the fearful part of it was that she couldn’t remember having done a deliberate sin for years and years. Well, her confessor, who was a very wise man, suddenly bethought himself of asking her whether, perhaps, she had not allowed herself to become attached to some material object of which she had the use. And, sure enough, she suddenly remembered a ball of twine that had been given her for some particular purpose, and that she had kept in her cell afterwards because she thought it might prove useful some other time. And she begged and implored that it might be fetched; so they brought it to her, and she was able to give it back to the Prioress with her own hands and ask pardon for her want of detachment, and for the scandal she had given. So then she was able to die in peace, and the Devil was robbed of his prey after all.
“But that story has always seemed to me a warning of how very easily one can risk one’s soul. Just think, my dear, of that little ball of string being able to draw the soul of a religious into hell. It is too terrible.”
Zella was silent, not, as Mère Jeanne doubtless supposed, because she was too deeply impressed by this appalling anecdote to utter a word, but from sheer amazement at a point of view so utterly foreign to her.
It was impossible to doubt the old nun’s absolute sincerity, and the very impression of unyielding conviction which her tones conveyed was almost terrifying to the child brought up in the lax atmosphere of Villetswood.
She was positively relieved when Mère Jeanne calmly went on:
“But I am forgetting what I wanted my pencil for. Look, dear, I will mark down for you what I think you can do towards our dear Mother’s bouquet. Prayers: We can all say our prayers, you know, and God will accept them as they are meant.”
Her tone conveyed an impression of broad-mindedness on the part of the Deity expressly expended for Zella’s benefit.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 14