Nothing, however, appeared to be farther from Reverend Mother’s views than this heroic ideal.
She bade Zella good-night very kindly at the end of the interview, and did not again allude to the absorbing subject until nearly six weeks later.
“And do you still think of some day becoming a nun, Zella?” she then inquired, with a mild appearance of interest.
Zella’s face took on a rapt expression. “Yes,” she said fervently; “I am quite, quite sure that is what I am meant for.”
“Have you thought that such a course would entail many sacrifices?”
A hasty vista of admiring London at her feet, of flatterers crowding round in obsequious homage, opened for a moment before the eager gaze of Zella’s ever-ready imagination, only to be brushed aside by the infinitely more alluring picture of a high renunciation.
“Yes, I know,” she answered resolutely, and feeling in herself a distinct resemblance to St. Agnes before the Roman Prefect.
“I mean sacrifices on the part of other people — those whom you love. That is always the hardest thought — that one is causing suffering to those whom one loves. Your father, for instance, Zella.”
“Oh,” said Zella hastily, rather annoyed that the prerogative of sacrifice should be thus passed on to another, “I don’t really think that he would mind so very, very much. He — he has a lot of other interests besides me.’
“You think that he would give his consent, then?”
“Oh yes, I think he would give his consent to anything that would make me happy,” returned Zella, rather surprised.
She could not imagine Louis issuing a stern prohibition, or declaring that if his daughter became a nun she should never look upon his face again. Interesting though it might be to become the heroine of such a persecution, Zella felt convinced that such could never be her role.
“He might want me to wait a little while, you know,” she explained—” perhaps even till I am twenty-one.”
“Well, then,” said Reverend Mother cheerfully, “that will make a very good probation. If you have indeed a vocation, and are faithful to it, then you will be of all the more use to your community for having seen a little of the world before entering.”
“But that would mean waiting about four years,” cried Zella, aghast.
“Ah, you would like to do everything at once. But that cannot be, my dear child. It would be neither right nor wise to allow you to take any decisive step at present. Why, you have still much to learn about your religion, is it not so?”
“Yes, of course,” said the dissatisfied Zella. A phrase that she had heard recently came to her mind: “Then, you don’t think that I — I should be unfaithful to the grace of my vocation, in waiting so long?”
Reverend Mother laughed heartily.
“No, no, certainly not. Do not trouble about that for the present, but be very faithful to the little duties of everyday life, and then — then perhaps we shall see.”
She left the room, still laughing.
Zella remained in a curious tumult of conflicting emotions. She was angry that her high and noble purpose should apparently be received as unworthy of serious attention; she was immediately doubtful of her own sincerity because it seemed to her that Reverend Mother doubted it, and yet in some strange contradictory fashion she felt distinctly pleased that Reverend Mother had shown herself so unlike the crafty and yet fanatical nun of tradition, luring the young heiress and her fortune into the convent.
Zella felt curiously proud of Reverend Mother’s display of common-sense, even while it surprised and disconcerted her.
Nuns were not at all what Aunt Marianne supposed them to be. With spiritual insight and an intimate acquaintance with the ways of God, they also combined common-sense and a surprising knowledge of the world and of worldly wisdom.
How little all this was realized by those outside! Why, Zella herself had thought the nuns childish and superstitious before light had been vouchsafed to her.
She felt herself infinitely superior to that youthful Zella who had found herself so helpless and bewildered in the strange convent atmosphere so long ago.
The gap between fourteen and seventeen and a half is a long one, and it will be seen that Zella’s point of view had shifted indeed.
Her last term at the convent was also her happiest one. Although she did not attain to the heights of popularity of which she had dreamed so long, that mattered little to one who knew herself to be the favourite, as it were, of Almighty God. Zella continued to dream happily of her vocation to the religious life, of the austerities she would practise, and of the touching aspect she would present in the ample white habit and falling veil of a novice.
It ceased to disturb her that Reverend Mother should not take any very violent interest in this aspect of Zella’s spiritual development. God saw everything, and was a sufficient audience for the time being.
Zella no longer asked herself, “What is true — what is the realest thing of all?”
She thought that she had found it, and if there was still a tiny lurking spirit of inquiry within her, she was hardly aware of its existence.
Her devotion to the convent increased, and her belief in the infallibility of its teachings was in proportion to the ardour which she characteristically brought to bear upon every new enthusiasm that possessed her.
But Zella’s convent days were not destined to close, as she could have wished, upon this exalted note. That the convent phase was a transitory one was first made manifest in that final admonitory talk by which Mother Veronica strove to prepare those of her elder pupils who were about to leave the school for the perils of that life which now lay before them.
“You are going to enter a world which is full of temptations, children,” she said firmly, but not discouragingly; “and now is the time to show everyone all that your convent training has done for you. You have got to be a credit to your religion, you know. Some of you, perhaps, have Protestant homes” — Zella looked self-conscious— “and most of you, I suppose, will come into contact sooner or later with Protestants. Then you will have to take a firm stand, a very firm stand.”
Mother Veronica’s glasses trembled with the determined shakings of her head.
“Never be ashamed of your religion, children.”
“But, Mother, I’m sure I never should be,” said Mary McNeill, with much truth.
“There are a great many ways of denying Christ, dear. Remember St. Peter. Now, I dare say, it seems a simple enough thing to you to say your grace before and after every meal, but you may not find it at all easy in the world. It needs quite an effort to overcome human respect and make a big, deliberate sign of the Cross, I assure you.”
“I always do,” said Dorothy Brady in a self-satisfied manner.
“You have a good Catholic home, Dorothy. It is a very different thing when you are with strangers, perhaps all of them Protestants, who would think the sign of the Cross odd and out of place. Worldly people have a great objection to the sign of the Cross, it is one of the ways by which you can recognize them.”
“Well, it would be no business of theirs.”
“Quite true, Dorothy; but how would you like it, if you were at a big party, perhaps, and everyone in the room began to laugh or make fun of you for saying your grace and making a good honest sign of the Cross?”
Zella strove to picture to herself a society of which the behaviour would be such as that described by Mother Veronica, and failed.
“Then there’s Friday abstinence, and the fast-days. Sometimes you’re obliged to go out into the world, even on days of penance, because your parents wish it, and you must obey them in all that is not sin. But you’re not obliged to enjoy yourselves. Think of St. Rose, who wore thorns concealed under the wreath with which she was made to decorate her hair. Nothing so heroic is required of you, but you must make a very strict rule of recollecting days of abstinence and the like, and keeping to them whatever happens.”
“Supposing it was Friday
, and there was nothing but meat to eat?” inquired one of the girls, with much interest.
“Well, dear, you can make a very good meal off bread and vegetables. Many poor people do not get anything half so nourishing.”
“But one’s hostess,” said Zella, with a great appearance of perplexity, “she would think it so rude, wouldn’t she?”
There speaks human respect,” emphatically retorted Mother Veronica. “What will other people think? Once we begin to ask ourselves that question the Devil has gained half the victory. Besides, you need not make yourself conspicuous. Just sit at the table, smiling pleasantly, attending to the wants of your neighbours on either side, and as likely as not your empty plate will pass unnoticed. People are not always thinking about you.”
Mother Veronica’s method of rendering herself inconspicuous at the luncheon-table, however, failed to make any appeal to Zella.
But if one was asked why one wasn’t eating?” she persisted.
“Then speak the truth, dear,” energetically replied the nun. Just be quite simple and open about it all, and answer very quietly that, as a Catholic, you are obeying the rule of your Church in abstaining from meat one day a week, the same day as that on which our dear Lord died for us. I assure you that sometimes a little word like that, and the edification given by seeing a Catholic faithful to her religion in those ways, have just made all the difference to a soul — perhaps brought it into the Church, even.”
Zella again tried to visualize social intercourse as run on the lines indicated by Mother Veronica, and again failed.
“I can assure you,” continued the earnest nun, “that people in the world are very much on the lookout to see how Catholics behave. Protestants know very well what a Catholic ought to be, and you will find that they respect you much more for living up to your duties, even though you may get laughed at.”
Zella listened with a growing sense of discontent. Was this all the light that the convent teaching could shed upon the future? Were these words of final advice, which she felt to be so curiously inadequate, the outcome of a Catholic education, the summing up, as it were, of a long course of preparation?
The familiar sense of unreality obsessed her anew. These counsels did not really mean anything. Circumstances would never shape themselves in such fashion as to require the course of conduct prescribed by Mother Veronica.
A dim foreshadowing of new standards, of yet another scale of relative values, troubled Zella’s thoughts of the near future.
XVIII
The midsummer breaking-up drew near. The last days arrived, weighted with all that oppression consecrated to last days, and vaguely reminding Zella of the atmosphere at Boscombe. Several of the elder girls were leaving, and the school watched with interest to see the degree of grief which would mark the affection in which each held the beloved convent.
“Mary McNeill has begun to howl already. I saw her last night at Benediction.”
“Poor thing! She always cries fairly easily, though. When I leave next year, I expect I shall simply howl buckets full. It’ll be too frightful.”
“Dorothy Brady hasn’t cried a bit, and yet she minds leaving most frightfully, I know. But she’s bound to begin sooner or later.”
“Oh, bound to!”
Such fragments of discussion filled the air. Zella began to consider her own attitude, and to wonder anxiously how a happy medium could best be struck between excessive weeping, which might be difficult of achievement, and heartless indifference, signalled by a tearless departure. Mary McNeill had been at the convent for ten years, Dorothy for six, and Zella did not feel that her comparatively short experience entitled her to a quite equal display of emotion. Nevertheless, she reminded herself, it was at the convent that she had undergone the deepest and truest experience which life would doubtless ever have to offer her — her conversion to the Catholic Faith.
That evening at night prayers she began to cry, and cried at intervals during the next twenty-four hours. Zella’s tears were always very ready, and in the general atmosphere of moisture and farewell they flowed easily.
Her emotion gave rise to a certain amount of compassion amongst the girls, all more or less in a state of excitement and tension at the prospect of two months’ holiday. Zella came nearer to realizing her dream of popularity during her last day at school than ever before.
She walked about the garden arm-in-arm with companions who had hitherto serenely ignored her existence, exchanged lavish promises of correspondence with girls with whom she had nothing in common save one or two years spent under the same roof, and visited every shrine and statue in the house and grounds with the inward murmured petition, “Oh, bring me back here soon, for always!”
It was almost impossible to resist dropping hints of a future return, which impressed the other girls quite unmistakably, but Zella reserved her most touching effusions for her farewell interview with Reverend Mother.
“Oh, Reverend Mother, I feel that I shall come back!” she cried with uplifted eyes and that ring of innocent conviction in her voice which always made her feel most in earnest. “I can’t feel that I’m really leaving the convent; it seems, somehow, meant to be my home. I shall come back very, very soon, if you’ll have me, and then I think God means me to stay here always.”
“What, instead of the Carmelites?” said Reverend Mother, smiling a little.
Zella had momentarily forgotten her recent aspirations towards Mount Carmel, but she contrived not to look disconcerted, and to maintain her slightly exalted expression.
“I think so. I think — I hope — that I only want to go where God wishes me to be, but it seems to me that I wasn’t sent here in such a wonderful way for nothing.”
“Well, my dear child, I shall pray for you with all my heart,” said Reverend Mother, serious at last. “If you have indeed a religious vocation, it is a most wonderful grace, and you must be very, very faithful.”
“Oh, I will be!” interposed Zella fervently.
“Do not forget your spiritual reading, and all the pious practices you have learnt here. I know that there may be difficulties as to daily Mass,” continued Reverend Mother with an air of concession; “but when you can, you will make a point of it, I know.”
“Oh yes, yes!”
“Above all, my dear child, be faithful to your meditation. A quarter of an hour every day — I will not ask you to promise more.”
“It shall be half an hour,” declared Zella resolutely.
“Well, well, you are a good fervent child, and must see what you have time for. There will be home duties as well which must not be neglected — your good father, for instance. There will be many little ways in which you can add to his comfort — perhaps see that his room is well dusted, or do some mending for him now and then.”
Zella tried not to think that the household at Villetswood would be more disconcerted than edified if she indulged in these domestic pieties.
“You will be a good child, I feel sure, and perhaps one day you will have the happiness of bringing your father into the Church. I shall pray much for that, and for you. Now, my dear child, there are others waiting to see me, and I must say good-bye to you.”
Zella dropped on to her knees.
“Oh, give me your blessing, Reverend Mother!” she implored in a muffled voice.
She rose from her knees with the ready tears streaming down her face.
After this, it was a matter of course that her other farewells should be interspersed with quivering tones and tearful outbursts.
Mother Veronica, enshrouded in several additional veils, and wearing a long cloak over her habit, was to escort those of the girls who were going to London, where their respective relatives would meet them. She stood waiting in the hall, grasping a large umbrella that seemed strangely out of place under a cloudless midsummer sky, and a straw receptacle apparently held together by pieces of string, and bulging with books of devotion.
Zella came slowly down the stairs, wearing the dark bl
ue school uniform and unbecoming hard straw hat for the last time.
“Are you ready, dear? And where is Dorothy? The cab is at the door. Better get in, children.”
“Good-bye! good-bye!” clamoured the girls who were not going till later.
“Good-bye! Pray for me — mind you write soon.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll write this very evening.”
“Here you are at last, Dorothy! Now then, children, get into the cabs. You two can come with me, and you two little ones — no, no! I must have a Child of Mary in the other cab. Get in, Mary.”
Thus Mother Veronica, brisk and business-like, and altogether disturbing Zella’s last long view of the convent by her incessant zeal for organization.
“Put up that window, Zella; little Agnes has got a cold, and we mustn’t let it get worse. Dear me! the glass fits very badly into the frame, and looks as though it would be the better for a good cleaning. Don’t lean back, dear, that cushion looks so extremely dirty. I wish the poor man kept his cab cleaner, but we mustn’t rashly judge him; I dare say he hasn’t the time, a man with a very large family. Murphey I believe his name is, and Reverend Mother has always employed him for the last twenty years.”
Zella tried to take a last look at the convent as the cab jolted through the iron gates.
“Zella, if you want to look out of the window, you had better pull your plait over your shoulder, and not let it rub against the cushion. You can never tell what you might pick up in this sort of vehicle. However, it’s a charity to employ the poor man, no doubt; and he is a most excellent Catholic, and comes to confession quite regularly.”
Zella drew out her handkerchief and dried her eyes as the convent was finally lost to view amongst the trees.
“My girlhood is over for ever,” she thought to herself, “and I am beginning real life. I am grown up.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 18