—The girl is beautiful, too beautiful, the Bishop thought. It is sometimes a curse of God …
He leaned forward, patted her hand, remarking:
“You must pray to the Blessèd Virgin to guide you through life, to make your heart pure. Life is full of many temptations. Do you understand?” For a moment his voice was soft and then it changed and became hard and inflexible. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
That night in the dormitory, the figure of the Virgin Mary seemed less motherly, more distant and abstracted, like the Bishop who supervised many charities and was greatly concerned with God’s work here on earth. In the guttering candle-light it seemed as if the Mother of God herself looked at her with tight, compressed, practical lips—like the Bishop.
IV
If one wandered carelessly through the heart of Montreal, round the Hotel de Ville, across the asphalted Champ de Mars (at that time resounding to the tramping feet of soldiers training for the war against the Boers), up narrow Notre Dame Street, along St. Antoine Street with its machine shops and huge warehouses, back along St. James Street lined with banks and newspaper offices, one came sooner or later to Place d’Armes. To the east and west of the square stood large brown office buildings which housed the musty offices of Queen’s Counsellors, barristers and notaries. In the center of the plaza stood a bronze figure of Maisonneuve, holding the royal flag of France aloft to the indifferent gaze of hurrying passers-by. To the north of the square stood the squat, threatening Bank of Montreal building with its stone columns of marbled viridescence which stood guard like sentries before the temple of commerce. On the other side of the square, facing the bank, stood the gray, gothic Notre Dame Cathedral, ancient and discolored by the intruding but nevertheless welcome smoke of industry. The imposing cruciformed building dwarfed the flag-bearing Maisonneuve to minute importance; the contrast was symbolical of the towering power of the Church as compared to the puny strength of individual man. At the foot of the church passed Notre Dame Street, dark with dingy office buildings and smaller storehouses, hundred-year-old buildings which here and there housed a sweet-sour-smelling saloon.
One Sunday morning in her eighth year Ruth and a host of girls from the convent came to the cathedral for holy communion. It was a proud day for Mrs. Throop. She wore an all-embracing fluttering dress, a short military jacket, a tightly fitting bonnet and long white kid gloves. Major Throop, twisting and tugging at his drooping mustache, stood beside his wife near the holy water stoup watching the company of devout Pleiades march sedately into the cathedral. The girls shimmered in white silken dresses, their faces were covered with long veils and each head was crowned with a wreath of fleur-de-lis.
Inside the cathedral the Bishop himself administered the blessed sacrament. Mrs. Throop looked upon the scene in reverent wonder. She recalled the day of her own communion and soon found herself weeping. She daintily tapped each eye with a sad gesture of philosophical resignation.
—I am now nearly thirty-five. Heavens, how time flies! Now it is communion, soon it will be marriage …
The intonations of the Bishop’s Latin (desecrated by his French-Canadian accent) brought to Mrs. Throop’s mind a schoolgirl joke. She tried to dismiss the thought, but without avail. “Tempus is always fugiting,” she said to herself. She smiled and then remembered that levity in church was sinful. She finally composed herself and followed the ceremony with close attention.
To Mrs. Throop the ritual was so satisfying; despite its mystery there was something so positively substantial about it all: the massiveness of the pillared stone nave, the comfort of numbers, the tonal ascensions and descensions of the service, the majestic bearing of the Bishop.
After communion the Throops walked out on to the broad, shallow steps of the cathedral, blinked in the sudden brilliant Canadian sunlight and pulled their gloves on with studied care and composure. For Mrs. Throop the Place d’Armes was the symbol of her security and peace of mind; behind her stood the cathedral, gray and worn with time, and before her crouched the Bank of Montreal, looking like a low-slung British bulldog with monstrous, long, green fangs.
Later, with Ruth home for the afternoon (a very special privilege), the Throops ate the customary, substantial English Sunday dinner: roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, a tart, and afterwards old port, rich and nutty—as old and as pleasant to the taste as the Bank and the cathedral were to the sight.
V
When Ruth was twelve years old she found herself troubled in mind. The tall young priest, who occasionally substituted for old Father Boniface on Sundays, had set the convent afire. True, he was not aware of the impression he made on the Mother Superior’s charges, but he was a sensation nevertheless. He walked toward the chapel lost in thought, oblivious of two hundred pairs of eyes which hungrily followed him. His thoughts were of his duty to God and his heart was filled with a craving for piety and grace. He was tall, dark, and sallow and he wore his snugly fitting cassock with a dandyism ordinarily unassociated with the Church. When he crossed the yard leading to the chapel his skirts swished and flared in a most disturbing manner. At his first appearance at the convent, little Ruth fell hopelessly in love with him, but so, unfortunately, did some two hundred other girls. For weeks Ruth planned to find a way of speaking to him. To stand in his presence, to feel his eyes upon you, to hear his voice addressed only to you! What she would say to him and what he would speak of to her did not enter her mind. The thought was too tremendous to admit analysis. Sometimes of a Saturday he came to the convent to hear confession, and Ruth decided that she must attract the attention of the young priest at all costs. And what could be a better place than in the privacy of a confessional! It was true that a latticed wall separated priest and penitent, but one accepted the fortunes of love and war with fortitude; it was this stoicism which set the warrior apart from his fellows. She would win his pity and attention (she dreaded to think the word “love”—it was too much!) by making a sensational confession.
There were few girls in the chapel and she hurriedly entered the booth, knelt (her heart thumped extravagantly), and said:
“Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I confess to Almighty God, to the Blessèd Mary ever Virgin, to Blessèd Michael the Archangel, to Blessèd John the Baptist, to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul … ”
As she recited the list of the holy company, a certain terror seized her. She had completely forgotten John the Baptist and the holy apostles in making her plans. This was a most grievous sin which she was committing. A masculine odor came through the latticed wall and she heard the young priest’s even breathing. These worldly considerations made her forget the eternal punishment which would most certainly await her for using confession for a carnal purpose and she continued:
“ … and to all the Saints, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore I beseech the Blessèd Mary ever Virgin … ” Here again followed the names of the heavenly company; but this time Ruth was not frightened; she had made her bargain with the Lord and had decided to pay the price. And so on to the end of the confiteor.
She peered through the lattice and with great effort imagined she saw the murky outline of the young priest beyond. Ruth continued:
“Since my last confession two weeks ago I accuse myself of—”
She paused for a moment and in that moment all her plans vanished. She forgot the gaudy sins which were calculated to win the slender priest’s sympathy.
“I—I accuse myself of—of having had impure thoughts and desires.”
Again she paused, expecting to hear a startled exclamation; but the voice of the priest, maddeningly calm, asked:
“And what, my daughter, was the nature of your thoughts?”
She searched her brain for a specific picture of tainted desire but her thoughts remained confused but chaste. A phrase came to her assistance:
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“I—I lusted, father.”
The sacerdotal calm behind the lattice continued.
“Lusted after what?”
“After sin!”
“What sin?”
Ruth was now hopelessly involved; her mind refused to function. Sin is sin and this scholastic searching for specific truth brought her to the verge of tears. She floundered and stammered:
“I have—I have forgotten, father.”
“Forgotten your sins?”
“Yes, father.” (Contritely.)
There was a silence as the young priest meditated for a moment; then he announced:
“For little girls who cannot remember and who waste the father confessor’s time—I give ten Hail Marys to be said before going to bed tonight.” There was an amused, tolerant note in his voice. Then: “Thy sins are forgiven thee … ”
Hot and confused with shame and disappointment, Ruth left the booth.
VI
Between Ruth and the realities of life (the mysteries of childhood), stood the mystic ritual of the Church. It was soothing, like the warm ample breasts of a mother. In its bosom one forgot; forgot darkened hallways and corridors, the whispering profundities of adults, the dark, forbidding sins which haunt the minds of Catholic children, the eyes of shabbily dressed men who looked strangely at the girls as they sometimes paraded through the Montreal streets, the vague matters of which the older girls spoke in undertones (marriage, love, birth, death). To Ruth the Church was sanctuary; sanctuary from life and the need of facing it. A dimly lit sanctuary with thin, curling wisps of incense in which music swelled and ascended to the arched ceiling of the nave.
Once when Ruth had lied to Sister Espérance, the thought of her sin tormented her all week. But on Sunday a feeling of peace and forgiveness came over her as the priest intoned: “Sprinkle me, O Lord, with hyssop and I shall be cleansed: wash me and I shall become whiter than snow.”
And at night in bed the rich phrases echoed in her ears:
—I am sinful but the Lord will sprinkle me with hyssop, sprinkle me, sprinkle me, and I shall become whiter, whiter than snow.
The words soothed and reassured. One prostrated oneself before the Lord and he sprinkled the body with hyssop and one was cleansed.
—He wouldn’t sprinkle the clothes with hyssop. You were naked and hyssop was sprinkled on the naked body. And I shall become whiter than snow.
It was a long time afterward that she learned with keen disappointment that hyssop was a sort of caper.
“Like those used in the sauce that went with boiled mutton,” she thought.
VII
As Ruth grew older her perplexity increased. New forces were at work, strange influences molded her character. She experienced unfamiliar palpitations when she beheld the figure of the Lord crucified, her hands trembled suddenly in class on a hot droning afternoon and at night she was troubled by dreams peopled with images alien to her quiet, convent experience. Spring, which hitherto had been merely the end of the shut-in winter, this year became a heady season of doubt and bewilderment.
At confession and at other times when she had looked through her missal and was reminded of sexual sins, the text had appeared meaningless. She used to read the short table of sins (“to help the memory when we prepare for confession”) and wondered how they could possibly apply to her: “Have you been guilty of lascivious dressing or painting; lewd company; have you read immodest books? Been guilty of unchaste songs, discourses, words, looks, or actions by yourself or others? Willfully entertained impure thoughts or desires?”
Now the last question held her eye. She was not sure. Was a dream a willful entertainment? She was not certain.
At night in the dormitory as her comrades undressed, slipping nightdress over petticoats and slips, convent-fashion, her heart beat a shade faster when, by chance, she beheld the white body of a neighbor …
And like St. Augustine, who, too, was tempted in his youth, she felt the briers of impure fantasy growing rank over her head. Nor were release and forgetfulness to be had in the dark, in the solitude of her bed. Here, too, there was temptation. Even after three fervent, pleading Hail Marys were uttered, the disturbing thoughts refused to surrender dominion of the girl’s mind—and heart. At such times she prayed incessantly, like the most devout réligieuse, inflicted penances upon herself and fasted until Sister Constance, she who taught English, was convinced that Ruth surely must have a vocation, that she was a blessed one of God.
Perhaps, Sister Constance thought, the girl’s pallor and luminous eyes are evidences of her saintliness. Perhaps, like St. Theresa when she fell before the image of Christ and felt every carnal emotion perish within her, the girl is ridding herself of the bonds which hold the soul imprisoned.
One night as Sister Constance passed Ruth’s bed she heard the girl praying in her sleep. And now more than ever the sister felt that the girl had seen the face of the Lord. The nun knelt at the sleeping girl’s bedside and joined her in prayer.
—Who can tell in what strange manner the Lord makes His will manifest? Perhaps I am now being called to assist this pure and beautiful young virgin to holiness.
In the morning Ruth awoke tired and depressed. The circles under her eyes were dark and in the sight of Sister Constance the girl’s harrowed expression was a clear indication of inner grace. At mass the girl bowed her head in deep devotion as the priest uttered the words: “Sprinkle me, oh Lord, with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed; wash me, and I shall become whiter than the snow.”
VIII
The soul, Montaigne remarked, discharges her love and hate upon substitute objects when the true and natural ones are wanting. The exhausted female spider approaching her moment of death continues to spin the protective web-covering after the eggs have been destroyed and substituted by the cunning naturalist. So Ruth found in the Church a receptacle for the love which normally should have flown to her mother. The still, brooding quality which marks the virginal opening of the flower (slowly, imperceptibly) needed the emotional solace of a mother, needed the assuasive comfort of warm breasts. But this was lacking and she turned to the Church ritual for comfort; to ritual the power of which lies not so much in the uttered words but in the very act itself: the catharsis of confession, the via dolorosa, the rosary, holy communion. She loved the Church: the medieval twilight of the high-arching nave of the cathedral, weighted with mystery; the deep gloom stabbed here and there by flickering points of candle light, the deep resonant tones of the organ during High Mass; the magic words of the priest as he bowed and struck his breast three times—“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.”
Her body quivered with awe and emotional tension as the surpliced priest knelt, adored the Sacred Host and then rising, elevated it as the three mystic chimes of the altar bell sounded faintly. The world outside the convent, the world of the flesh, the worldly world in which her stepfather and mother moved, seemed remote and unimportant at such moments. And after the priest uttered the three final words in which all the pomp and authority of the Church were contained: “lte; missa est”—go; the mass is ended—she walked with her comrades into the blinding light of day, out of one world into another. As she moved down the steps on to the flagged walk, her face was suffused with a glowing expression such as Joan of Arc must have had when she valorously faced her stupid accusers.
As the convent sun-dial circled off Ruth’s years (she read the motto of the dial carelessly, not understanding its prophetic legend), she began to mature into nascent, beautiful womanhood. Now that she was more calm, Sister Constance said that this serenity, too, was an evidence of God’s call to the girl. Hers is the beauty, the sister said, which comes from the soul, the outer evidence of inner grace.
—A saint beautiful in body as well as in soul. And I, by the grace of God and the Lady of Sorrows, shall be the handmaiden to bring her to the throne of the Lord.
The ritual of th
e Church, her music (she now played the massive Bach preludes and fugues), the affection of the sisters, the air of quiet devotion—these were symbolized in the physical convent: the ivy-covered walls, the time-colored limestone, the gray wall tracery, so that many years afterward when she remembered these peaceful days she said: “Ah, the old convent! What an old and familiar friend!”
But then it was too late.
IX
The following Spring, when the northern slope of Mount Royal was stippled with the pointed viridity of newfledged birch and maple, Mrs. Throop, the Major willing, took Ruth home.
It was different outside of the convent: life, speech, dress, manners, the tempo of things, everything was different. It was difficult at first to become accustomed to the new viewpoint. A very simple thing, for example, was the matter of early mass. In the convent, the day started with chapel and gave point and reality to the succeeding hours. Here at home, going to the seven o’clock mass was the cause of irritation and commotion. The servants had to get up an hour earlier, there were little annoying complaints and soon Ruth fell into the slipshod church habits of her parents.
Even Mrs. Throop, now that she was nearing forty-five and leaned rather heavily on the Church, considered an occasional high mass as full payment for a seat on the right hand of God. The attitude of Ruth’s stepfather, Major Throop, towards the Church was as perfunctory as the brushing of one’s teeth; and the Major’s point of view affected the habits of his entire household. This was so altogether different from the brooding quiet of convent devotion, where the ritual (the tolling of the bell on Sunday, the silent genuflecting sisters and girls) seemed to have a special inwrought significance. Now going to church was accompanied with much chatter and grumbling, and when the family arrived at the steps of the cathedral Ruth was bored by the empty gossip and whispered inanities of the black-frocked parishioners. For the first few months she was unhappy; she was lost in this new world and when finally she stammered her thoughts to her mother she was told that this was the world and one had to become accustomed to it.
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