In Convent Walls Part 28

"He shall lead thee forth by the right way, that thou mayest come to His city and to His holy hill. The right way, daughter, is sometimes the way over the moor, and through the mist. 'Who of you walketh in darkness, and there is no light to him? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and lean upon his G.o.d.' Why, my child, it is only when man cannot see that it is possible for him to trust. Faith is not called in exercise so long as thou walkest by sight."

"But when thou art utterly alone," said my sister in a low voice, "with not one footstep on the road beside thee--"

"That art thou never, child, so thou be Christ's. _His_ footsteps are alway there."

"In suffering, ay: but in perplexity?"

"Daughter, when thou losest His steps, thou yet hast Himself. 'If any lack wisdom, let him ask of G.o.d.' And G.o.d is never from home."

"Neither is Satan."

"'Greater is He that is in you than he in the world.'"

Mother Alianora seemed weary when she had said this, and lay still a while: and Margaret did not answer. I think the Mother dropped asleep; I sat beside her and watched. But Margaret stood still at the foot of the bed, not sitting down, and in the dim light of our one little lamp I could scarcely see her face as she stood, only that it was turned toward the cas.e.m.e.nt, where a faint half-moon rode in the heavens, and the calm ancient stars looked down on us. Oh, how small a world is ours in the great heavens! yet for one soul of one little babe in this small world, the Son of G.o.d hath died.

My heart went out to Margaret as she stood there: yet my lips were sealed. I felt, strangely, as if I could not speak. Something held me back, and I knew not if it were G.o.d, or Satan, or only mine own want of sense and bravery. The long hours wore on. The church bell tolled for lauds, and we heard the soft tramp of the Sisters' feet as they pa.s.sed and returned: then the doors closed, and Mother Ada's voice said,

"_Laus Deo_!" and Sister Ismania's replied, "_Deo gratias_!" Then Mother Ada's footsteps pa.s.sed the door as she went to her cell, and once more all was silence. On rolled the hours slowly, and still Mother Alianora seemed to sleep: still Margaret stood as if she had been cut in stone, without so much as moving, and still I sat, feeling much as if I were stone too, and had no power to move or speak.

It might be about half-way between lauds and prime when the spell was at last broken. And it was broken, to my astonishment, by Margaret's asking me a question that fairly took my breath away.

"Annora, art thou a saint?"

These were the first words Margaret had ever spoken to me, except from necessity. That weary, dried-up thing that I call mine heart, seemed to give a little bit of throb.

"Our Lady love us, no!" said I. "I never was, nor never could be."

"I am glad to hear it," she said.

"Why, Margaret?"

Oh, how my heart wanted to call her something sweeter! _It_ said, My darling, my beloved, mine own little sister! But my tongue was all so unwonted to utter such words that I could not persuade it to say them.

Yet more to my surprise, Margaret came out of the window,--came and knelt at my feet, and laid her clasped hands on my knee.

"Hadst thou said 'Ay,' I should have spoken no more. As thou art not-- Annora, is it true that we twain had one mother?"

Something in Margaret's tone helped me. I took the clasped hands in mine own.

"It is true, mine own Sister," I said.

"'Sister!' and 'Mother!'" she said. "They are words that mean nothing at all to me. I wonder if G.o.d meant them to mean nothing to us? Could we not have been as good women, and have served Him as well, if we had dwelt with our own blood, as other maidens do, or even if--"

Her voice died away.

"Margaret," I said, "Mother Ada would say it was wicked, but mine heart is for ever asking the same questions."

"Is it?" she said eagerly. "O Annora! then thou knowest! I thought, maybe, thou shouldst count it wicked, and chide me for indulging such thoughts."

"How could I chide any one, sinner as I am!" said I. "Nay, Margaret, I doubt not my thoughts have been far unholier than thine. Thou rememberest not, I am sure; but ere we were professed, I was troth-plight unto a young n.o.ble, and always that life that I have lost flitteth afore me, as a bird that held a jewel in his beak might lure me on from flower to flower, ever following, never grasping the sweet illusion. Margaret, sister, despise me not for my confession! But thou wilt see I am no saint, nor like to be."

"Despise thee!" she said. "Dear heart, wert thou to know how much further I have gone!"

I looked on her with some alarm.

"Margaret! we are professed religious women." [Note 1.]

"Religious women!" she answered. "If thou gild a piece of wood, doth it become gold? Religious women are not women that wear black and white, cut in a certain fashion: they are women that set G.o.d above all things.

And have I not done that? Have I not laid mine heart upon His altar, a living sacrifice, because I believed He called me to break that poor quivering thing in twain? And will He judge me that did His will, to the best of my power and knowledge, because now and then a human sob breaks from my woman-heart, by reason that I am not yet an angel, and that He did not make me a stone? I do not believe it. I will not believe it. He that gave His own Son to die for man can be no Moloch delighting in human suffering--caring not how many hearts be crushed so long as there be flowers upon His altar, how many lives be made desolate so long as there be choirs to sing antiphons! Annora, it is not G.o.d who does such things, but men."

I was doubtful how to answer, seeing I could not understand what she meant. I only said--

"Yet G.o.d permits men to do them."

"Ay. But He never bids them to make others suffer,--far less to take pleasure in doing so."

"Margaret," said I, "may I know thy story? I have told thee mine.

Truly, it is not much to tell."

"No," she said, as if dreamily,--"not much: only such an one as will be told out by the mile rather than the yard, from thousands of convents on the day when the great doom shall be. Only the story of a crushed heart--how much does that matter to the fathers of the Order? There be somewhat too many in these cells for them to take any note of one."

I remembered what Mother Gaillarde had said.

"It is terrible, if that be true," I answered. "I thought I was the only one, and that made me unhappy because I must be so wicked. At times, in meditation, I have looked round the chamber and thought--Here be all these blessed women, wrapped in holy meditations, and only I tempted by wicked thoughts of the world outside, like Lot's wife at Sodom."

Margaret fairly laughed. "Verily," said she, "if it were given to us to lift the veil from the hearts of all these blessed women, and scan their holy meditations, I reckon thine amaze would not be small. Annora, I think thou art a saint."

"Impossible!" said I. "Why, I fell asleep in the midst of the Rosary a s'ennight back,--having been awake half the night before--and Father Benedict said I must do penance for it. Saints are not such as I."

"Annora, if the angels that write in men's books have no worse to set down in thine than what thou hast told me, I count they shall reckon their work full light. O humble and meek of heart, thinking all other better than thyself--trust me, they be, at best, like such as thou."

Margaret left her station at my feet, and coming round, knelt down beside me, and laid her head on my shoulder.

"Kiss me, Sister," she said.

So did I, at once, without thought: and then, perceiving what I had done, I was affrighted.

"O Margaret! have we not sinned? Is it not an indulgence of the flesh?"

"Wert thou made without flesh?" asked Margaret, with a short, dry laugh.

"No, but it must be mortified!"

"Sin must be mortified," she answered more gravely. "Why should we mortify love?"

"Not spiritual love: but natural love, surely, we renounce."

"Why should we renounce it? Does G.o.d make men sons and brothers, husbands and fathers, only that they may have somewhat to renounce? Can He train us only in the wilderness of Sinai, and not in the land flowing with milk and honey?"