Interlude with a Very Small Person
The infants’ dormitory was large. It was high, and the shadows from the dim lamp were enormous; the stove in front of the lamp made the shape of an elephant on the ceiling. The newcomer lay there looking at it for a moment to see if it would move.
Then, when she grew tired of looking, she listened instead. The air was very quiet; but it was also full of noises. Small noises. There was the creaking of a mattress somewhere. And the sound of breathing. A lot of breathing. The low rhythmical murmur of a score of sleepers. And someone had a cough that sounded like a little dog in the room. But they had tucked her up so snugly for the night that she couldn’t sit up to find out. She could only wriggle her legs and turn over on her back again. Then the person who had coughed, coughed again and she could tell that it was a cough: she gave up trying to find the little dog.
The bed was uncomfortable. It was not wide enough for both of them, and Suzette took up such a lot of room. She was a large doll with hard unbending arms and she slept sprawled out because the stitches in her shoulders had been drawn too tight. But she was an affectionate doll, and Annette loved her: she leant over and kissed the firm calico forehead.
As she did so, she realised suddenly that she wanted to be kissed herself. A fierce uncontrollable longing for kissing came over her, and she began to cry. She cried softly at first, simply sobbing miserably, her mouth still covered by the bedclothes. But, as she cried, her misery increased. They had told her that her mother had gone away but would be coming back soon; and she could not understand it. She wouldn’t have gone away and left her mother. She hated her for going. Hated her for going, but still loved her enough to want her to be back more again more than anything. Loved and hated her. Hated her so much that she wanted to bite her; bite her and be kissed at the same time.
The other little girls here hadn’t got any mothers. They didn’t understand when she tried to explain. And they were such ugly little girls. One of them had eyes that looked at each other in the middle: she hadn’t known that there were such ugly little girls in the world.
Then she remembered her new dress. It was a very pretty dress. They had given it to her the first morning when she woke up. All the other little girls—and even the big ones too—had dresses of the same kind. They were striped dresses; they buttoned all up the front, and the stripes were so close that they made you giddy to look at them. And the boots, too, were exciting: they were very heavy and hard: she liked practising walking in them. They made a noise like hammers, and she could kick things, stones and the sides of walls, that she had never been able to kick before. They were quite different from the little shoes that she had always worn.
But she forgot the boots again as suddenly as she had remembered them; and all that she could think about was her mother, and the fact that she wasn’t there by her. She even forgot that she hated her for going away. She was aware of only two things, that something was wrong somewhere and that she wanted to be loved. It was a bad wrong, a very bad one if it could affect her mother, too; and she was frightened by it. The more she thought of it the more it scared her. The most awful thing was that she thought that perhaps her mother was unhappy too. It seemed suddenly as if the whole bottom had dropped out of the universe and that there was nothing that was safe and secure and comforting anywhere. She needed her mother so badly that she realised at last that she couldn’t live any longer without her.
She managed to get herself clear of those confining bedclothes and sat up. It was her mother that she wanted and she began calling for her. Calling and calling, in a voice that was all mixed up with crying, in that big dreadful room with the dim lamp and the other little girls and the enormous shadows.
Chapter XXXVII
I
“They can have them all,” Anna was saying. “They are doing no good here.”
She was on her knees in the box-room where her cases had been taken, and the clothes were spread around her like a fan. In the half light, the colours of the silks, the brocades, seemed more rich and splendid than ever: they were the living afterglow of some dead magnificence. She had started first to lay out on the floor the sheets of paper in which her maid had packed the clothes, but Sister Veronica who was with her had only laughed. The floor was clean enough, she said.
Sister Veronica picked up one of the dresses—it was an evening gown, sleeveless and cut very low at the neck, and began to finger it. Her fingers dwelt lovingly on the smooth texture; she stroked it.
“I remember once I had …” she began, and then stopped herself.
She began gathering the dresses together more roughly than she need have done. “We must hurry,” she said brusquely, “or Sister Ursula will be sending for us.”
“But there are some more,” Anna told her. “I have a whole going-away outfit in there.”
“We’ve enough here for Sister Ursula to get on with,” she replied. “Besides you may need them. No one ever said that you were going to stop here always.”
In the corner were two other cases that Anna had not opened. They were different from the others, smaller and of white leather. Sister Veronica glanced towards them inquiringly. Anna caught the glance and answered it.
“They are Annette’s,” she said. “I cannot bring myself …”
The nun smiled.
“Leave them,” she said. “You’ll feel better about them later on.”
Her own arms were now full and she stood there watching Anna pick up the garments one by one.
“I wish I had seen you wearing them, my dear,” she said. “You must have looked beautiful.”
Anna smiled at her.
“But she doesn’t understand,” she thought. “She doesn’t know that I don’t mind giving these clothes away. I’m glad they’re going to be cut up, destroyed. M. Moritz chose those clothes. They’re his, not mine.”
There was a tap on the door, and one of the lay sisters, a small frightened woman in her forties, stood there.
“Sister Ursula asked me to find out how much longer you would be,” she said. “She’s growing very impatient. She asks if you will return straight away.”
Sister Veronica smiled, a slow deliberate smile.
“You can follow me,” she said. “I will say that there are so many dresses that it took longer than we expected.”
She turned to the lay sister who was standing in the doorway listening.
“Be off,” she said, “or you’ll have Sister Ursula after you too.”
When they reached the sewing-room Sister Ursula went over the dresses with the skill and expertness of a dealer. She shook them out, one by one, holding them at arm’s length and examining them, and then folding them away again. As she put the last of them away she shook her head and complained that they were all too fine, too fancy and that there was no substance in any of them.
II
She had been in the convent for a week now. But it was not a week really. The days had joined and telescoped themselves together so that they stretched a solid, unbroken barrier between the old world and the present. Somewhere on the other side lay the villa, and the Casino and sunlight. Only they weren’t real things any more: it was as though simply with leaving them they had ceased abruptly to exist, had dissolved suddenly with her departure. And those seven days stretched endlessly. They were a lifetime set somehow in the middle of a life. Her whole mind and body were ruled by the convent now. She did not belong to herself any more.
It was Sister Veronica who rescued her from the black depression into which she was falling. Conversation time had come round again, and she called Anna over to her.
“Come,” she said. “I’ll show you something.”
She led the way out of the courtyard and in the direction of the garden. It was a poor affair, the garden; four rectangular flowerbeds bordered an hexagonal one—and that was all. In between, ran a narrow path of crushed sea shell so finely ground that it clung to the shoes like sand. It was up and down this powdery sea-sh
ell path that the Reverend Mother used to walk with her most important visitors.
Sister Veronica, however, walked straight on with Anna beside her until she came to the gate of the kitchen garden. She closed the gate carefully again behind her. In front of them now stretched only the brownness of turned earth, the never-ending rows of beans, the horse-peas, the red globes of the onions. The ground was flat and orderly like the fields at Rhinehausen. A broad path, a road almost, ran ahead of them, and Sister Veronica followed it. They met no one; the only figures in sight were two old nuns, bent almost double, weeding; but they did not even trouble to look up as the intruders passed.
At the far end of the garden was a little hillock; a rubbish mound, scarcely more. The whole thing stood some eight or ten feet high. A melon plant dangled down one side of it.
Sister Veronica proceeded to climb the mound, raising her skirts above her ankles to save herself from stumbling. Anna followed, and stood there on the tiny eminence beside her. She noticed that Sister Veronica was smiling. There was an air of peculiar triumph on her face.
“Look,” she said.
And she pointed over the tilled earth, over the stone wall that enclosed it, into the inner courtyard beyond.
It was the courtyard of the school. And in this courtyard a long crocodile of children was moving. There must have been fifty or sixty of them, big girls in front, the seven and eight year olds in the middle and the little ones behind. A nun walked in between each pair of infants at the back, holding one with either hand.
The crocodile wound and re-wound upon itself. It zigzagged. It performed loops. It marched through itself. And, all the time, a nun in the centre of the square kept clapping her hands so that the small feet should keep in step. It may have been because of the dresses—awkward, shapeless envelopes of striped cotton that the children were wearing—that they did not seem like real children at all. They were simply so many marching midgets, so many dolls. Clap, clip; clap, clip the nun’s hands went on unceasingly as though she, too, were something made of clockwork that had been wound up and then set going.
“Can you see her?” Sister Veronica asked.
“No,” Anna cried involuntarily. “Annette isn’t there. She can’t be. My Annette can’t be one of those.”
III
The Reverend Mother was regarding her with a steady, faintly incredulous gaze. Her hands, after her custom, were clasped together beneath her chin almost as if she were praying.
“But my daughter,” she was saying. “You are worrying yourself unnecessarily. I have already explained to you that you shall see your child as soon as it is good for her. I was speaking of it to the Sister-in-charge only yesterday.”
Anna met those pale, unwavering eyes.
“But how can it be bad,” she asked, “for a child to see her mother? Isn’t it natural? Isn’t it just as it should be?”
The Reverend Mother did not reply immediately.
“Do you not think?” she asked at last, “that perhaps other people are better judges of what is good for her? Can you be so sure that you are not allowing your feelings to run away with you?”
“But how can I help having feelings?” Anna answered.
Again there was the long pause, the same reproving fixity in the eyes before the Mother Superior answered. Her voice when she spoke was flat, emotionless.
“It is our duty,” she said, “to help you to control those feelings. If we cannot show you that it is wrong to follow every instinct no matter where it may lead you, then we shall have failed. But before we can succeed we must have your help. It is impossible to save someone who does not even want to be rescued.”
She paused again and seemed to be looking through Anna, and beyond. It was almost as though she had forgotten that she was there. But finally she spoke.
“You have so much to be thankful for,” she said, “that you should go away and pray. You may spend the morning in the chapel; I will see that you are excused the sewing-class. Then after you have prayed, you may come back to me. We will talk of these matters again when you have cleared your mind by praying. I shall be here all the time. You may come back to me as soon as you are ready.”
“But Reverend Mother,” Anna began, “please, I beg you. Just once let me see …”
The Reverend Mother raised her hand.
“This afternoon will be time enough,” she said. “I have so many here to consider. There are nearly three hundred of us. I cannot spend the whole morning discussing the affairs of only one.…”
Three whole weeks were up now, and they had not allowed her to see Annette. She had asked—how many times she could not remember—and always it had been the same. The Reverend Mother had been very gentle in her refusals, the language which she had used had been calm and reasonable. But she had been adamant.
Then Anna remembered Father Ignatius. He had said that he would help her, had offered to be of service to her if she needed him. They had been his last words before he had gone away again. She resolved to write to him immediately. And with him to intercede, there seemed nothing that could prevent it. The whole future brightened and her heart grew lighter. She saw herself and Annette reunited.
When she sat down to write her hand trembled so much at first that she had to pause and steady it. She covered the first sheet, the second. And into them she poured everything that was in her heart. She begged, she implored, him to help her. She declared that she was being driven out of her mind. She offered to perform any penances that he might impose if only he would let her see Annette. She swore that the behaviour of the Reverend Mother, of the Sister-in-Charge, was inhuman, that it was un-Christian. She invoked the names of the Blessed Virgin and St. Christopher.
When she had finished the letter she sealed it down carefully and thrust it into the bodice of the rough garment that she was wearing. To write it was one thing: to get it delivered was another, and she saw that she would have to watch her chance. In the end she had carried the letter about with her for two whole days, a burning guilty secret, before the opportunity came. But when it came, she was ready.
The convent van was waiting in the broad gravel drive, the old bent horse sleeping between the shafts. The lay sister—the same old peasant woman who had brought her—was sitting in the driving seat, her vacant face staring towards the gate through which she soon would be passing. Anna went up to her and thrust the letter into her hands. The old woman looked at it suspiciously; then, seeing that it was addressed to Father Ignatius, her face cleared.
“I want you to deliver this,” Anna told her. “It is important. The Father must get it to-day. To-morrow will be too late. It is very important.”
The nun creased up her face and nodded obediently.
“I understand,” she said. “I won’t fail you.”
The gates in front of her were opening and she picked up the tattered whip that hung behind her. Slowly the cart began to move. Anna stood watching it until it was out of sight.
Three days after the letter had been sent, the Reverend Mother sent for Anna. She was in the sewing-room at the time and Sister Ursula excused her grudgingly. Anna put down the garment that she was unpicking and left without even glancing in her direction. She did not doubt the reason for the summons. Her heart was beating very rapidly and a curious weakness had come over her.
The Reverend Mother was seated at her desk when Anna entered. Her hands were clasped and her clear eyes met Anna’s.
“Sit down, my daughter,” she said quietly. “I have something I wish to speak of to you.”
Anna leant forward eagerly.
“Then it’s all right?” she asked. “I can see her?”
The Reverend Mother did not answer. It was as though she had not heard her. And as she began to speak Anna saw that in front of her a letter was lying. It was her letter to Father Ignatius.
“You have been very foolish,” she heard the Reverend Mother saying. “And you have also been disloyal. You have made charges against the Sisters of this
Convent—bitter charges. The things that you wrote were not worthy of you: you should have fought against them when they came into your mind. Fortunately it was Father Ignatius who received this letter. He returned it to me.”
Anna passed her hand across her forehead.
“But he told me that he would help me,” she said faintly.
“He has helped you,” the Reverened Mother replied, her voice still as inflexible as ever. “And he has helped me too. He has enabled me to see into your mind. He has shown me how right the Sister-in-Charge has been in not wishing you to see your child. He has shown me, just when I was beginning to doubt it myself.”
She paused and Anna noticed that she was not even looking at her any longer. Her eyes were fixed somewhere in space beyond.
“I do not intend to punish you for writing this letter,” she continued. “I have forgiven you already. The Sisters need never know what you have said about them. But I will ask them to pray for you: you need all our prayers now.”
She paused again and still without looking at Anna she resumed.
“I shall, of course, have to punish the nun who delivered the letter. I shall have to curtail her liberties. She has been with us long enough to know that no letters are permitted to leave this convent unless I have been shown them first. That has always been the rule here, and it must continue.” For a moment her eyes met Anna’s and she dropped her head slightly.
“You may go now, my daughter,” she said. “I am sure that you will not offend again.”
There was a purple covered book of devotions on the table in front of her and, picking up a large magnifying lens, she began to read as though oblivious that Anna was still with her.
IV
“How long have I been here now?” Anna asked herself; and she realised suddenly that she could not remember. It was either six weeks or seven—there was no way of telling. Sundays made the only break in the everlasting succession of the week; but Sundays too had nothing to distinguish them from each other. They simply came with their hours of Chapel—everyone in the convent attended Communion, High Mass and Benediction—and then they, too, merged into the long background.
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