In Convent Walls Part 24

"I mean, Mother, that he never hath any change of work," she said.

"Every morrow he has to rise, and every night must he set: and always the one in east and the other in west. I think he must be sore, sore weary, for he hath been at it over five thousand years."

Sister Roberga and Sister Philippa laughed. Mother Alianora did not laugh. A soft, rather sorrowful, sort of smile came on her aged face.

"Art thou so weary, my daughter, that the thought grew therefore?" saith she.

Something came into Margaret's eyes for a moment, but it was out again, almost before I could see it. I knew not what it was; Margaret's eyes are yet a puzzle to me. They are very dark eyes, but they are different in their look from all the other dark eyes in the house. Sister Olive has eyes quite as dark; but they say nothing. Margaret's eyes talk so much that she might do very well without her tongue. Not that I always understand what they say; the language in which they speak is generally a foreign one to me. I fancy Mother Alianora can read it better. I listened for Margaret's reply.

"Dear Mother, is not weariness the lot of all humanity, and more especially of women?"

"Mary love us!" cries Philippa. "What gibberish you talk, Sister Margaret!"

"Sister Philippa will come here and ask Sister Margaret's forgiveness at once," saith Mother Gaillarde, the sub-Prioress.

Sister Philippa banged down her battledore on the table, and marching up, knelt before Margaret and asked forgiveness, making a face behind her back as soon as she had turned.

"Sister Philippa will take no cheese at supper," added the sub-Prioress.

Sister Philippa pulled another face--a very ugly one; it reminded me somewhat too much of the carved figure of the Devil with his mouth gaping on the Prior's stall in our Abbey Church. That and Sister Philippa's faces are the ugliest things I ever saw, except the Cellarer, and he looks so good-tempered that one forgets his ugliness.

"Sister Philippa is not weary, as it should seem," saith Mother Alianora, again with her quiet smile. "Otherwise, to speak thereof should scarcely seem gibberish to her."

I spoke not, but I thought it was in no wise gibberish to me. For I never had that vocation which alone should make nuns. Not G.o.d, but man, forced this veil upon me; for, ah me! I was meant for another life.

And that other life, that should have been mine, I never cease to long for and to mourn over.

Only six years old was I--for though my seventh birthday was near, it was not past--when I was thrust into this house of religion. My vocation and my will were never asked. We--Margaret and I--were in Queen Isabel's way; and she plucked us and flung us over the hedge like weeds that c.u.mbered her garden. It was all by reason she hated our father: but what he had done to make her thus hate him, that I never knew. And I was an affianced bride when I was torn away from all that should have made life glad, and prisoned here for ever more. How my heart keeps whispering to me, "It might have been!" There is a woman who comes for doles to the convent gate, and at times she hath with her the loveliest little child I ever saw; and they smile on each other, mother and child, and look so happy when they smile. Why was I cut off thus from all that makes other women happy? n.o.body belongs to me; n.o.body loves me. The very thought of being loved, the very wish to be so, is sin in _me_, who am a veiled nun. But why was it made sin? It was not sin aforetime. _He_ might have loved me, he whom I never saw after I was flung over the convent wall--he who was mine and not hers to whom I suppose they will have wedded him. But I know nothing: I shall never know. And they say it is sin to think of him. Every thing seems to be sin; and loving people more especially. Mother Ada told me one day that she saw in me an inclination to be too much drawn to Mother Alianora, and warned me to mortify it, because she was my father's sister, and therefore there was cause to fear it might be an indulgence of the flesh. And now, these weeks past, my poor, dry, withered heart seems to have a little faint pulsation in it, and goes out to Margaret-- my sister Margaret with the strange dark eyes, my own sister who is an utter stranger to me. Must I crush the poor dry thing back, and hurt all that is left to hurt of it? Oh, will no saint in Heaven tell me why it is, that G.o.d, who loveth men, will not have monks and nuns to love each other? The Lord Prior saith He is a jealous G.o.d, and demands that we give all our love to Him. Yet I may love the blessed saints without any derogation to Him--but I must not love mine own sister. It is very perplexing. Do earthly fathers forbid their children to love one another, lest they should not be loved themselves sufficiently? I should have thought that love, like other things, increased by exercise, and that loving my sister would rather help me to love G.o.d. But they say not. I suppose they know.

Ah me, if I should find out at last that they mistook G.o.d's meaning!-- that I might have had His love and Margaret's too!--nay, even that I might have had His love and that other, of which it is so wicked in me to think, and yet something is in me that will keep ever thinking! O holy and immaculate Virgin, O Saint Margaret, Saint Agnes, and all ye blessed maidens that dwell in Heaven, have mercy on me, miserable sinner! My soul is earth-bound, and I cannot rise. I am the bride of Christ, and I cannot cease lamenting my lost earthly bridal.

But hath Christ a thousand brides? They say holy Church is His Bride, and she is one. Then how can all the vestals in all the convents be each of them His bride? I suppose I cannot understand as I ought to do.

Perhaps I should have understood better if that _might have been_ had been--if I had not stood withering all these years, taught to crush down this poor dried heart of mine. They will not let me have any thing to love. When Mother Ada thought I was growing too fond of little Erneburg, she took her away from me and gave her to Sister Roberga to teach. Yet the child seemed to soften my heart and do it good.

"Are the holy Mother and the blessed saints not enough for thee?" she said.

But the blessed saints do not look at me and smile, as Erneburg did.

She doth it even now, across the schoolroom--though I have never been permitted to speak word to her since Mother Ada took her from me. And I must smile back again,--ay, however many times I have to lick a cross on the oratory floor for doing it. Why ought I not? Did not our Lord Himself take the little children into His arms? I am sure He must have smiled on them--they would have been frightened if He had not done so.

They say I have but a poor wit, and am fit to teach only babes.

"And not fit to teach them," saith Mother Ada--in a tone which I am sure people would call cross and snappish if she were an extern--"for her fancy all runs to playing with them, rather than teaching them any thing worth knowing."

Ah, Mother Ada, but is not love worth knowing? or must they have that only from their happy mothers, who not being holy women are permitted to love, and not from a poor, crushed, hopeless heart like mine?

There is nothing in our life to look forward to. "Till death" is the vow of the Sisterhood. And death seems a poor hope.

I know, of course, what Mother Ada would say: that I have no vocation, and my heart is in the world and of the world. But G.o.d sent me to the world: and man--or rather woman--thrust me against my will into this Sisterhood.

"Not a bit better than Lot's wife!" says Mother Ada. "She was struck to a pillar of salt for looking back, and so shalt thou be, Sister Annora, with thy worldly fancies and carnal longings."

Well, if I were, I am not sure I should feel much different. Sometimes I seem to myself to be hardening into stone, body and soul. Soul! ah, that is the worst of it.

Now and then, in the dead of night, when I lie awake--and for an hour or more after lauds, I can seldom sleep--one awful thought harrieth and weareth me, at times almost to madness. I never knew till a year ago, when I heard the Lord Prior speaking to Mother Gaillarde thereanent, that holy Church held the contract of marriage for the true canonical tie. And if it be thus, and we were never divorced--and I never heard word thereof--what then? Am I his true wife--I, not she? Is he happy with her? Who is she, and what is she? Doth she care for him, and make him her first thought, and give all her heart to him, as I would have done, if--

How the convent bell startled me! Miserable me! I am vowed to G.o.d, and I am His for ever. But the vow that came first, if it were never undone--_Mater purissima, Sancta Virgo virginum, ora pro me_!

Is there some tale, some sad, strange story, lying behind those dark eyes, in that shut-up heart of my sister Margaret? Not like mine; she was never betrothed. But her eyes seem to me to tell a story.

Margaret never speaks to me, unless I do it first: and I dare not, except about some work, when Mother Gaillarde or Mother Ada is present.

Yet once or twice I have caught those dark eyes scanning my face, with a wistful look. Maybe she too is trying to crush down her heart, as I have done. But I cannot help thinking that the heart behind those eyes will take a great deal of crushing.

Mother Alianora is so different from the two I named just now, I am sure there is not a better nor holier woman in all the Order. But she is always gentle and tender; never cold like Mother Ada, nor hard and sarcastic like Mother Gaillarde. I am glad my Lady Prioress rules with an easy hand--("sadly too slack!" saith Mother Gaillarde)--so that dear Mother Alianora doth not get chidden for what is the best part of her.

I should not be afraid of speaking to Margaret if only she were present of our superiors.

At recreation-time, this afternoon, Sister Amphyllis asked Mother Alianora how long she had been professed.

"Forty-nine years," saith she, with her gentle smile.

I was surprised to hear it. She hath then been in the Order only five years longer than I have.

"And how old were you, Mother?" saith Sister Amphyllis.

"Nineteen years," saith she.

"There must many an one have died since you came here, Mother?"

"Ay," quoth Mother Alianora, with a far-away look at the trees without.

"The oldest nun in all the Abbey, Sister Margery de Burgh, died the month after I came hither. She remembered a Sister that was nearly an hundred years old, and that had received the holy veil from the hand of Saint Gilbert himself."

Sister Amphyllis crossed herself.

"Annora," saith Mother Alianora, "canst thou remember Mother Guendolen?"

What did I know about Mother Guendolen? Some faint, vague, misty memories seemed to awake within me--an odd, incongruous mixture like a dream--dark eyes like Margaret's, which told a tale, but this seemed a tale of terror; and an enamelled cross, which had somewhat to do with a battle and a queen.

"I scarcely know, Mother," said I. "Somewhat do I recall, yet what it is I hardly know. Were her eyes dark, with an affrighted look in them?"

"They were dark," said Mother Alianora, "but the very peace of G.o.d was in them. Ah, thou art mixing up two persons--herself and her cousin, Mother Gladys. They were near of an age, and Mother Guendolen only outlived Mother Gladys by one year: but they were full diverse manner of women. Thou shouldst remember her, Annora. Thou wert a maiden of fifteen when she died."

All at once she seemed to flash up before me.

"I do remember her, Mother, if it please you. She was tall, and had very black hair, and dark flashing eyes, and she moved like a queen."

"I think of her," saith Mother Alianora, "rather as she was in her last days, when those flashing eyes flashed no longer, and the queen was lost in the saint."

"If it please you, Mother," I said, "had she not an enamelled cross that she wore? I recollect something about it."

Mother Alianora smiled, somewhat amusedly.

"She had; and perchance thy memory runneth back to a battle over that cross betwixt her and Sister Sayena, who laid plaint afore my Lady Prioress that Mother Guendolen kept to herself an article of private property, which should have gone into the treasury. It had been her mother's, a marriage-gift from the Queen that then was. Well I remember Mother Guendolen's words--'I sware to part from this cross alone with life, and the Master granted me to keep it when I entered the Order.'