atha Raisin And The Case Of The Curious Cura

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Agatha Raisin And The Case Of The
Curious Curate

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 Agatha Raisin And The
Case Of The Curious
Curate

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.
“If you wanted to, it wouldn’t be an act,” said Elizabeth.
“But she doesn’t want me to,” I urged. “She is reading ‘Fabiola.’”
“Then you’ll give her the chance to make an act, too,” said the
relentless Elizabeth.
Argued into a corner, I turned at bay. “I won’t,” I said resolutely; to
which Elizabeth replied: “Well, I wouldn’t either, in your place,” and
the painful subject was dropped.
Four days before the feast the excitement had reached fever point,
though the routine of school life went on with the same smooth
precision. Every penny had been hoarded up for the candy fair. It
was with the utmost reluctance that we bought even the stamps for
our home letters, those weekly letters we were compelled to write,
and which were such pale reflections of our eager and vehement
selves. Perhaps this was because we knew that every line was read
by Madame Bouron before it left the convent; perhaps the discipline
of those days discouraged familiarity with our parents; perhaps the
barrier which nature builds between the adult and the normal child
was alone responsible for our lack of spontaneity. Certain it is that
the stiffly written pages despatched to father or to mother every
Sunday night gave no hint of our abundant and restless vitality, our
zest for the little feast of life, our exaltations, our resentments, our
thrice-blessed absurdities. Entrenched in the citadel of childhood,
with laws of our own making, and passwords of our own devising,
our souls bade defiance to the world.
If all our hopes centred in the congé, the candy fair, and the
operetta,—which was to be produced on a scale of unwonted
magnificence,—our time was sternly devoted to the unpitying
exactions of geography. Every night we took our atlases to bed with
us, under the impression that sleeping on a book would help us to
remember its contents. As the atlases were big, and our pillows very
small, this device was pregnant with discomfort. On the fourth night
before the feast, something wonderful happened. It was the evening
study hour, and I was wrestling sleepily with the mountains of Asia,
—hideous excrescences with unpronounceable and unrememberable
names,—when Madame Rayburn entered the room. As we rose to
our feet, we saw that she looked very grave, and our minds took a
backward leap over the day. Had we done anything unusually bad,
anything that could call down upon us a public indictment, and was
Madame Rayburn for once filling Madame Bouron’s office? We could
think of nothing; but life was full of pitfalls, and there was no sense
of security in our souls. We waited anxiously.
“Children,” said Madame Rayburn, “I have sorrowful news for you.
Reverend Mother has been summoned to France. She sails on her
feast day, and leaves for New York to-morrow.”
We stared open-mouthed and aghast. The ground seemed sinking
from under our feet, the walls crumbling about us. Reverend Mother
sailing for France! And on her feast day, too,—the feast for which so
many ardent preparations had been made. The congé, the
competition, the address, the operetta, the spiritual bouquet, the
candy fair,—were they, too, sailing away into the land of lost things?
To have asked one of the questions that trembled on our lips would
have been an unheard-of liberty. We listened in respectful silence,
our eyes riveted on Madame Rayburn’s face.
“You will all go to the chapel now,” she said. “To-night we begin a
novena to Mater Admirabilis for Reverend Mother’s safe voyage. She
dreads it very much, and she is sad at leaving you. Pray for her
devoutly. Madame Dane will bring you down to the chapel.”
She turned to go. Our hearts beat violently. She knew, she could not
fail to know, the thought that was uppermost in every mind. She
was too experienced and too sympathetic to miss the significance of
our strained and wistful gaze. A shadowy smile crossed her face.
“Madame Bouron would have told you to-morrow,” she said, “what I
think I shall tell you to-night. It is Reverend Mother’s express desire
that you should have your congé on her feast, though she will not
be here to enjoy it with you.”
A sigh of relief, a sigh which we could not help permitting to be
audible, shivered softly around the room. The day was saved; yet, as
we marched to the chapel, there was a turmoil of agitation in our
hearts. We knew that from far-away France—from a mysterious and
all-powerful person who dwelt there, and who was called Mother
General—came the mandates which governed our community. This
was not the first sudden departure we had witnessed; but Reverend
Mother seemed so august, so permanent, so immobile. Her very size
protested mutely against upheaval. Should we never again see that
familiar figure sitting in her stall, peering through her glass into a
massive prayer-book, a leviathan of prayer-books, as imposing in its
way as she was, or blinking sleepily at us as we filed by? Why, if
somebody were needed in France, had it not pleased Mother General
to send for Madame Bouron? Many a dry eye would have seen her
go. But then, as Lilly whispered to me, suppose it had been Madame
Rayburn. There was a tightening of my heart-strings at the thought,
a sudden suffocating pang, dimly foreboding the grief of another
year.
The consensus of opinion, as gathered that evening in the dormitory,
was not unlike the old Jacobite epitaph on Frederick, Prince of
Wales. Every one of us was sincerely sorry that Madame Bouron had
not been summoned,—
“Had it been his father,
We had much rather;”
but glad that Madame Dane, or Madame Rayburn, or Madame
Duncan, or some other favourite nun had escaped.
“Since it’s only Fred
Who was alive, and is dead,
There is no more to be said.”
The loss of our Superioress was bewildering, but not, for us, a thing
of deep concern. We should sleep as sweetly as usual that night.
The next morning we were all gathered into the big First Cours
classroom, where Reverend Mother came to bid us good-by. It was a
solemn leave-taking. The address was no longer in order; but the
spiritual bouquet had been made up the night before, and was
presented in our name by Madame Bouron, who read out the
generous sum-total of prayers, and acts, and offered-up trials, and
resisted temptations, which constituted our feast-day gift. As
Reverend Mother listened, I saw a large tear roll slowly down her
cheek, and my heart smote me—my heart was always smiting me
when it was too late—that I had contributed so meagrely to the
donation. I remembered the chocolate custard, and thought—for
one mistaken moment—that I should never want to taste of that
beloved dish again. Perhaps if I had offered it up, Reverend Mother
would cross the sea in safety. Perhaps, because I ate it, she would
have storms, and be drowned. The doubtful justice of this
arrangement was no more apparent to me than its unlikelihood. We
were accustomed to think that the wide universe was planned and
run for our reward and punishment. A rainy Sunday following the
misdeeds of Saturday was to us a logical sequence of events.
When the bouquet had been presented, Reverend Mother said a few
words of farewell. She said them as if she were sad at heart, not
only at crossing the ocean, not only at parting from her community,
but at leaving us, as well. I suppose she loved us collectively. She
couldn’t have loved us individually, knowing us only as two long rows
of uniformed, curtsying schoolgirls, whose features she was too
near-sighted to distinguish. On the other hand, if our charms and
our virtues were lost to her, so were our less engaging qualities.
Perhaps, taken collectively, we were rather lovable. Our uniforms
were spotless, our hair superlatively smooth,—no blowsy, tossing
locks, as in these days of libertinism, and our curtsies as graceful as
hours of practice could make them. We sank and rose like the crest
of a wave. On the whole, Reverend Mother had the best of us.
Madame Bouron might have been pardoned for taking a less
sentimental view of the situation.
That afternoon, while we were at French class, Reverend Mother
departed. We heard the carriage roll away, but were not permitted
to rush to the windows and look at it, which would have been a
welcome distraction from our verbs. An hour later, at recreation,
Madame Rayburn sent for Elizabeth. She was gone fifteen minutes,
and came back, tense with suppressed excitement.
“Oh, what is it?” we cried. “The congé is all right?”
“All right,” said Elizabeth.
“And the candy fair?” asked Lilly, whose father had given her a dollar
to squander upon sweets.
“Oh, it’s all right, too. The candy is here now; and Ella Holrook and
Mary Denniston and Isabel Summers are to have charge of the
tables. Madame Dane told me that yesterday.”
Our faces lightened, and then fell. “Is it the competition?” I asked
apprehensively.
Elizabeth looked disconcerted. It was plain she knew nothing about
the competition, and hated to avow her ignorance. We always felt so
important when we had news to tell. “Of course, after studying all
that geography, we’ll have to say it sooner or later,” she said. “But”—
a triumphant pause—“a new Reverend Mother is coming to-morrow.”
“Ciel!” murmured Marie, relapsing into agitated French; while Tony
whistled softly, and Emily and I stared at each other in silence. The
speed with which things were happening took our breath away.
“Coming to-morrow,” repeated Elizabeth; “and I’m going to say the
address as a welcome to her, on the night of the congé, before the
operetta.”
“Is her name Elizabeth, too?” I asked, bewildered.
“No, her name is Catherine. Madame Rayburn is going to leave out
the lines about St. Elizabeth, and put in something about St.
Catherine of Siena instead. That’s why she wanted the address. And
she is going to change the part about not sharing the Senate’s stern
debate, nor guiding with faltering hand the helm of state, because
St. Catherine did guide the helm of state. At least, she went to
Avignon, and argued with the Pope.”
“Argued with the Pope!” echoed Marie, scandalized.
“She was a saint, Marie,” said Elizabeth impatiently, and driving
home an argument with which Marie herself had familiarized us.
“She persuaded the Pope to go back to Rome. Madame Rayburn
would like Kate Shaw to make the address; but she says there isn’t
time for another girl to study it.”
“When is the feast of St. Catherine of Siena?” cried Tony, fired
suddenly by a happy thought. “Maybe we’ll have another congé
then.”
She rushed off to consult her prayer-book. Lilly followed her, and in a
moment their two heads were pressed close together, as they
scanned the Roman calendar hopefully. But before my eyes rose the
image of Reverend Mother, our lost Reverend Mother, with the slow
teardrop rolling down her cheek. Her operetta was to be sung to
another. Her address was to be made to another. Her very saint was
pushed aside in honour of another holy patroness. “The King is
dead. Long live the King.”
 The Game of Love

I was an ancient and honourable convent custom for the little girls
t
in the Second Cours to cultivate an ardent passion for certain
carefully selected big girls in the First Cours, to hold a court of love,
and vie with one another in extravagant demonstrations of affection.
We were called “satellites,” and our homage was understood to be of
that noble and exalted nature which is content with self-immolation.
No response of any kind was ever vouchsafed us. No favours of any
kind were ever granted us. The objects of our devotion—ripe
scholars sixteen and seventeen years old—regarded us either with
good-humoured indifference or unqualified contempt. Any other line
of action on their part would have been unprecedented and
disconcerting. We did not want petting. We were not the lap-dog
variety of children. We wanted to play the game of love according to
set rules,—rules which we found in force when we came to school,
and which we had no mind to alter.
Yet one of these unwritten laws—which set a limit to inconstancy—I
had already broken; and Elizabeth, who was an authority on the
code, offered a grave remonstrance. “We really don’t change that
quickly,” she said with concern.
I made no answer. I had “changed” very quickly, and, though
incapable of self-analysis, I was not without a dim foreboding that I
would change again.
“You were wild about Isabel Summers,” went on Elizabeth
accusingly.
“No, I wasn’t,” I confessed.
“But you said you were.”
Again I was silent. The one thing a child cannot do is explain a
complicated situation, even to another child. How could I hope to
make Elizabeth understand that, eager to worship at some shrine, I
had chosen Isabel Summers with a deliberation that boded ill for my
fidelity. She was a thin, blue-eyed girl, with a delicate purity of
outline, and heavy braids of beautiful fair hair. Her loveliness, her
sensitive temperament, her early and tragic death (she was drowned
the following summer), enshrined her sweetly in our memories. She
became one of the traditions of the school, and we told her tale—as
of another Virginia—to all new-comers. But in the early days when I
laid my heart at her feet, I knew only that she had hair like pale
sunshine, and that, for a First Cours girl, she was strangely tolerant
of my attentions. If I ventured to offer her the dozen chestnuts that
had rewarded an hour’s diligent search, she thanked me for them
with a smile. If I darned her stockings with painstaking neatness,—a
privilege solicited from Sister O’Neil, who had the care of our
clothes,—she sometimes went so far as to commend my work. I felt
that I was blessed beyond my comrades (Ella Holrook snubbed Tony,
and Antoinette Mayo ignored Lilly’s existence), yet there were
moments when I detected a certain insipidity in the situation. It
lacked the incentive of impediment.
Then in November, Julia Reynolds, who had been absent, I know not
why, returned to school; and I realized the difference between
cherishing a tender passion and being consumed by one, between
fanning a flame and being burned. To make all this clear to
Elizabeth, who was passion proof, lay far beyond my power. When
she said,—
“Holy Saint Francis! what a change is here,”
—or words to that effect,—I had not even Romeo’s feeble excuses to
offer, though I was as obstinate as Romeo in clinging to my new
love. Tony supported me, having a roving fancy of her own, and
being constant to Ella Holrook, only because that imperious graduate
regarded her as an intolerable nuisance.
Julia’s views on the subject of satellites were even more
pronounced. She enjoyed a painful popularity in the Second Cours,
and there were always half a dozen children abjectly and irritatingly
in love with her. She was held to be the cleverest girl in the school, a
reputation skilfully maintained by an unbroken superciliousness of
demeanour. Her handsome mouth was set in scornful lines; her
words, except to chosen friends, were few and cold. She carried on
an internecine warfare with Madame Bouron, fighting that
redoubtable nun with her own weapons,—icy composure, a mock
humility, and polite phrases that carried a hidden sting. It was for
this, for her arrogance,—she was as contemptuous as a cat,—and
for a certain elusiveness, suggestive even to my untrained mind of
new and strange developments, that I surrendered to her for a
season all of my heart,—all of it, at least, that was not the
permanent possession of Madame Rayburn and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was not playing the game. She was nobody’s satellite just
then, being occupied with a new cult for a new nun, whom it
pleased her to have us all adore. The new nun, Madame Dane, was
a formidable person, whom, left to myself, I should have timorously
avoided; but for whom, following Elizabeth’s example, I acquired in
time a very creditable enthusiasm. She was tall and high-shouldered,
and she had what Colly Cibber felicitously describes as a “poking
head.” We, who had yet to hear of Colly Cibber, admired this peculiar
carriage,—Elizabeth said it was aristocratic,—and we imitated it as
far as we dared, which was not very far, our shoulders being as
rigorously supervised as our souls. Any indication of a stoop on my
part was checked by an hour’s painful promenade up and down the
corridor, with a walking-stick held between my elbows and my back,
and a heavy book balanced on my head. The treatment was
efficacious. Rather than be so wearisomely ridiculous, I held myself
straight as a dart.
Madame Dane, for all her lack of deportment, was the stiffest and
sternest of martinets. She had a passion for order, for precision, for
symmetry. It was, I am sure, a lasting grievance to her that we were
of different heights, and that we could never acquire the sameness
and immobility of chessmen. She did her best by arranging and
rearranging us in the line of procession when we marched down to
the chapel, unable to decide whether Elizabeth was a hair’s breadth
taller than Tony, whether Mary Aylmer and Eloise Didier matched
exactly, whether Viola had better walk before Maggie McCullah, or
behind her. She never permitted us to open our desks during study
hours, or when we were writing our exercises. This was a general
rule, but Madame Dane alone enforced it absolutely. If I forgot to
take my grammar or my natural philosophy out of my desk when I
sat down to work (and I was an addlepated child who forgot
everything), I had to go to class with my grammar or my natural
philosophy unstudied, and bear the consequences. To have
borrowed my neighbour’s book would have been as great a breach
of discipline as to have hunted for my own. At night and morning
prayers we were obliged to lay our folded hands in exactly the same
position on the second rung of our chair backs. If we lifted them
unconsciously to the top rung, Madame Dane swooped down upon
us like a falcon upon errant doves,—which was dreadfully distracting
to our devotions.
“I don’t see how she stands our hair being of different lengths,” said
Tony. “It must worry her dreadfully. I caught her the other night
eyeing Eloise Didier’s long plats and my little pigtails in a most
uneasy manner. Some day she’ll insist on our all having it cut short,
like Elizabeth and Agnes.”
“That would be sensible,” said Elizabeth stoutly, while Lilly put up her
hands with a quick, instinctive gesture, as if to save her curly locks
from destruction.
“You needn’t talk,” went on Tony with impolite emphasis, “after what
you made her go through last Sunday. You and Agnes in your old
black veils. I don’t believe she was able to read her Mass prayers for
looking at you.”
Elizabeth grinned. She was not without a humorous enjoyment of
the situation. Our black veils, which throughout the week were
considered decorous and devotional, indicated on Sundays—when
white veils were in order—a depth of unpardoned and unpardonable
depravity. When Elizabeth and I were condemned to wear ours to
Sunday Mass and Vespers,—two little black sheep in that vast snowy
flock,—we were understood to be, for the time, moral lepers, to be
cut off from spiritual communion with the elect. We were like those
eminent sinners who, in the good old days when people had an eye
to effect, did penance in sheets and with lighted tapers at cathedral
doors,—thus adding immeasurably to the interest of church-going,
and to the general picturesqueness of life. The ordeal was not for us
the harrowing thing it seemed. Elizabeth’s practical mind had but a
feeble grasp of symbols. Burne-Jones and Maeterlinck would have
conveyed no message to her, and a black veil amid the Sunday
whiteness failed to disturb her equanimity. As for me, I was content
to wear what Elizabeth wore. Where MacGregor sat was always the
head of the table. The one real sufferer was the innocent Madame
Dane, whose Sabbath was embittered by the sight of two sable
spots staining the argent field, and by the knowledge that the
culprits were her own Second Cours children, for whom she held
herself responsible.
“She told me,” said Elizabeth, “that if ever I let such a thing happen
to me again, I shouldn’t walk by her side all winter.”
Lilly lifted her eyebrows, and Tony gave a grunt of deep significance.
It meant that this would be an endurable misfortune. A cult was all
very well, and Tony, like the rest of us, was prepared to play an
honourable part. But Elizabeth’s persistent fancy for walking by our
idol’s side at recreation had become a good deal of a nuisance. We
considered that Madame Dane was, for a grown-up person,
singularly vivacious and agreeable. She told us some of Poe’s stories
—notably “The Pit and the Pendulum”—in a manner which nearly
stopped the beating of our hearts. We were well disposed even to
her rigours. There was a straightforwardness about her methods
which commended itself to our sense of justice no less than to our
sense of humour. She dealt with us after fashions of her own; and, if
she were constitutionally incapable of distinguishing between wilful
murder and crossing one’s legs in class, she would have scorned to
carry any of our misdemeanours to Madame Bouron’s tribunal. We
felt that she had companionable qualities, rendered in some
measure worthless by her advanced years; for, after all, adults have
but a narrow field in which to exercise their gifts. There was a
pleasant distinction in walking by Madame Dane’s side up and down
Mulberry Avenue, even in the unfamiliar society of Adelaide Harrison,
and Mary Rawdon, who was a green ribbon, and Ellie Plunkett, who
was head of the roll of honour; but it would have been much better
fun to have held aloof, and have played that we were English
gypsies, and that Madame Dane was Ulrica of the Banded Brow,—
just then our favourite character in fiction.
Ulrica sounds, I am aware, as if she belonged in the Castle of
Udolpho; but she was really a virtuous and nobly spoken outlaw in a
story called “Wild Times,” which was the most exciting book—the
only madly exciting book—the convent library contained. It dealt
with the religious persecutions of Elizabeth’s glorious but stringent
reign, and was a good, thorough-going piece of partisan fiction, like
Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” or Wodrow’s “Sufferings of the Church of
Scotland.” I cannot now remember why Ulrica’s brow was banded,—I
believe she had some dreadful mark upon it,—but she was always
alluding to its screened condition in words of thrilling intensity. “Seek
not to know the secret of my shame. Never again shall the morning
breeze nor the cool breath of evening fan Ulrica’s brow.”—“Tear from
my heart all hope, all pity, all compunction; but venture not to lift
the veil which hides forever from the eye of man the blighting token
of Ulrica’s shame.” We loved to picture this mysterious lady—whose
life, I hasten to say, was most exemplary—as tall, high-shouldered,
and stern, like Madame Dane; and we merged the two characters
together in a very agreeable and convincing way. It enraptured us to
speak of the mistress of the Second Cours as “Ulrica,” to tell one
another that some day we should surely forget, and call her by that
name (than which nothing was less likely), and to wonder what she
would say and do if she found out the liberty we had taken.
A little private diversion of this kind was all the more necessary
because the whole business of loving was essentially a public affair.
Not that we were capable of voicing our affections,—Marie alone had
the gift of expression,—but we ranged ourselves in solid ranks for
and against the favourites of the hour. The system had its
disadvantages. It deprived us of individual distinction. I was
confirmed that winter, and, having found out that Madame Dane’s
Christian name was Theresa, I resolved to take it for my
confirmation name, feeling that this was a significant proof of
tenderness. Unfortunately, three other children came to the same
conclusion,—Ellie Plunkett was one of them,—and the four Theresas
made such an impression upon the Archbishop that he congratulated
us in a really beautiful manner upon our devotion to the great saint
whose name we had chosen, and whose example, he trusted, would
be our beacon light.
As for my deeper and more absorbing passion for Julia Reynolds, I
could not hope to separate it, or at least to make her separate it,
from the passions of her other satellites. She regarded us all with a
cold and impartial aversion, which was not without excuse, in view
of our reprehensible behaviour. Three times a day the Second Cours
filed through the First Cours classroom, on its way to the refectory.
The hall was always empty, as the older girls preceded us to our
meals; but at noon their hats and coats and shawls were laid neatly
out upon their chairs, ready to be put on as soon as dinner was
eaten. Julia Reynolds had a black and white plaid shawl, the sight of
which goaded us to frenzy. If Madame Dane’s eyes were turned for
one instant from our ranks, some daring child shot madly across the
room, wrenched a bit of fringe from this beloved shawl, and,
returning in triumph with her spoil, wore it for days (I always lost
mine) pinned as a love-knot to the bib of her alpaca apron. Viola
Milton performed this feat so often that she became purveyor of
fringe to less audacious girls, and gained honour and advantages
thereby. Not content with such vandalism, she conceived the daring
project of stealing a lock of hair. She hid herself in a music room,
and, when Julia went by to her music lesson, stole silently behind
her, and snipped off the end of one of her long brown braids. This,
with the generosity of a highwayman, she distributed, in single hairs,
to all who clamoured for them. To me she gave half a dozen, which I
gummed up for safe-keeping in an envelope, and never saw again.
It was a little trying that Viola—certainly, as I have made plain, the
least deserving of us all—should have been the only child who ever
obtained a word of kindness from our divinity. But this was the irony
of fate. Three days after the rape of the lock, she was sent to do
penance for one of her many misdemeanours by sitting under the
clock in the corridor, a post which, for some mysterious reason, was
consecrated to the atonement of sin. In an hour she returned,
radiant, beatified. Julia Reynolds had gone by on her way to the
chapel; and seeing the little solitary figure—which looked pathetic,
though it wasn’t—had given her a fleeting smile, and had said “Poor
Olie,” as she passed.
This was hard to bear. It all came, as I pointed out acrimoniously to
Tony, of Viola’s being at least a head shorter than she had any
business to be at ten years old, and of her having such absurdly thin
legs, and great, melancholy eyes. Of course people felt sorry for her,
whereas they might have known—they ought to have known—that
she was incapable of being abashed. She would just as soon have
sat astride the clock as under it.
One advantage, however, I possessed over all competitors. I took
drawing lessons, and so did Julia Reynolds. Twice a week I sat at a
table near her, and spent an hour and a half very pleasantly and
profitably in watching all she did. I could not draw. My mother
seemed to think that because I had no musical talent, and never in
my life was able to tell one note—nor indeed one tune—from
another, I must, by way of adjustment, have artistic qualities. Mr.
James Payn was wont to say that his gift for mathematics consisted
mainly of distaste for the classics. On precisely the same principle, I
was put to draw because I could not play or sing. An all-round
incapacity was, in those primitive days, a thing not wholly
understood.
The only branch of my art I acquired to perfection was the
sharpening of pencils and crayons; and, having thoroughly mastered
this accomplishment, I ventured in a moment of temerity to ask Julia
if I might sharpen hers. At first she decisively refused; but a week or
two later, seeing the deftness of my work, and having a regard for
her own hands, she relented, and allowed me this privilege.
Henceforward I felt that my drawing lessons were not given in vain.
Even Dr. Eckhart’s unsparing condemnation of my sketches—which
were the feeblest of failures—could not destroy my content. Love
was with me a stronger emotion than vanity. I used to look forward
all week to those two happy afternoons when I was graciously
permitted to waste my time and blacken my fingers in humble and
unrequited service.
Julia drew beautifully. She excelled in every accomplishment, as in
every branch of study. She sang, she played, she painted, she
danced, with bewildering ease and proficiency. French and Latin
presented no stumbling-blocks to her. The heights and abysses of
composition were for her a level and conquered country. Logic and
geometry were, so to speak, her playthings. We were bewildered by
such universality of genius,—something like Michael Angelo’s,—and
when I remember that, in addition to these legitimate attainments,
she was the most gifted actress on our convent stage, I am at a loss
now to understand why the world is not ringing with her name.
Certain it is that she was the pride of Dr. Eckhart’s heart, the one
solace of his harassed and tormented life. He was an elderly
German, irascible in disposition, and profane in speech. His oaths
were Teutonic oaths, but were not, on that account, the less
thunderous. He taught music and drawing,—those were not the days
of specialists,—so all the time that his ears were not vexed with
weak and tremulous discords, his eyes were maddened by crippled
lines, and sheets of smutty incompetence. The result of such dual
strain was that his spirit, which could hardly have been gentle at the
outset, had grown savage as a Tartar’s. When Christopher North
ventured to say that the wasp is the only one of God’s creatures
perpetually out of temper, it was because he never knew Carlyle or
Dr. Eckhart.
This irate old gentleman was an admirable teacher,—or at least he
would have been an admirable teacher if we could have enjoyed
eternal youth in which to profit by his lessons, to master step by
step the deep-laid foundations of an art. As it was, few of us ever
got beyond the first feeble paces, beyond those prolonged
beginnings which had no significance in our eyes. Yet we knew that
other children, children not more richly endowed by nature than we
were, made real pictures that, with careful retouching, were deemed
worthy of frames, and of places upon parental walls. Adelaide
Harrison had a friend who went to a fashionable city school, and
who had sent her—in proof of wide attainments—a work of art which
filled us with envy and admiration. It was a winter landscape; a
thatched cottage with wobbly walls, a bit of fence, and two quite
natural-looking trees, all drawn on a prepared surface of blue and
brown,—blue on top for the sky, brown underneath for the earth.
Then—triumph of realism—this surface was scraped away in spots
with a penknife, and the white cardboard thus brought to light
presented a startling resemblance to snow,—snow on the cottage
roof, snow on the branches of the trees, patches of snow on the
ground. It seemed easy to do, and was beautiful when done,—a
high order of art, and particularly adapted, by reason of its
wintriness, for Christmas gifts. I urged Adelaide to show it to Dr.
Eckhart, and to ask him if we might not do something like it, instead
of wasting our young lives, and possibly some hidden genius, in
futile attempts to draw an uninspiring group of cones and cylinders.
Adelaide, who was not without courage, and whose family had a
high opinion of her talents, undertook this dangerous commission,
and at our next lesson actually proffered her request.
Dr. Eckhart glared like an angry bull. He held the landscape out at
arm’s length, turning it round and round, as if uncertain which was
earth and which was heaven. “And that,” he said, indicating with a
derisive thumb a spot of white, “what, may I ask, is that?”
“Snow,” said Adelaide.
“Snow!” with a harsh cackle. “And do we then scratch in the ground
like hens for snow? Eh! tell me that! Like hens?” And he laughed,
softened in some measure by an appreciation of his own wit.
Adelaide stood her ground. But she thought it as well to have some
one stand by her side. “Agnes wants to do a picture, too,” she said.
Dr. Eckhart gasped. If I had intimated a desire to build a cathedral,
or write an epic, or be Empress of India, he could not have been
more astounded. “L’audace, l’audace, et toujours l’audace.” Words
failed him, but, reaching over, he picked up my drawing-board, and
held it aloft as one might hold a standard; held it rigidly, and
contemplated for at least three minutes the wavering outlines of my
work. Most of the class naturally looked at it too. The situation was
embarrassing, and was made no easier when, after this prolonged
exposure, my board was replaced with a thump upon the table, and
Dr. Eckhart said in a falsetto imitation of Adelaide’s mincing tones:
“Agnes wants to do a picture, too.” Then without another word of
criticism—no more was needed—he moved away, and sat down by
Julia Reynolds’s side. She alone had never lifted her eyes during this
brief episode, had never deemed it worthy of attention. I felt
grateful for her unconcern, and yet was humbled by it. It illustrated
my sterling insignificance. Nothing that I did, or failed to do, could
possibly interest her, even to the raising of an eyelid. At least, so I
thought then. I was destined to find out my mistake.
It was through Elizabeth that the new discovery was made. All our
inspirations, all the novel features of our life, owed their origin to
her. The fertility of her mind was inexhaustible. A few days after this
memorable drawing lesson she drew me into a corner at recreation,
and, rolling up her sleeve, showed me her arm. There, scratched on
the smooth white skin, bloody, unpleasant, and distinct, were the
figures 150.
I gazed entranced. A hundred and fifty was Madame Dane’s number
(the nuns as well as the girls all had numbers), and for months past
it had been the emblem of the cult. We never saw it without
emotion. When it stood at the head of a page, we always encircled it
in a heart. When we found it in our arithmetics, we encircled it in a
heart. We marked all our books with these three figures set in a
heart, and we cut them upon any wooden substance that came to
hand,—not our polished and immaculate desks, but rulers, slate
borders, and the swings. And now, happiest of happy devices,
Elizabeth had offered her own flesh as a background for these
beloved numerals.
The spirit of instant emulation fired my soul. I thought of Julia’s
number, twenty-one, and burned with desire to carve it
monumentally upon myself. “What did you do it with?” I asked.
“A pin, a penknife, and a sharpened match,” answered Elizabeth
proudly.
I shuddered. These surgical instruments did not invite confidence;
but not for worlds would I have acknowledged my distaste. Besides,
it is sweet to suffer for those we love. I resolved to out-herod Herod,
and use my hand instead of my arm as a commemorative tablet.
There was a flamboyant publicity about this device which appealed
to my Latin blood.
It did not appeal to Elizabeth, and she offered the practical
suggestion that publicity, when one is not a free agent, sometimes
entails unpleasant consequences. My arm was, so to speak, my own,
and I might do with it what I pleased; but my hand was open to
scrutiny, and there was every reason to fear that Madame Dane
would disapprove of the inscription. Her arguments were
unanswerable, but their very soundness repelled me. I was in no
humour for sobriety.
I did the work very neatly that night in my alcove, grateful, before it
was over, that there were only two figures in twenty-one. The next
day Viola followed my example. I knew she would. There was no
escaping from Viola. Tony cut seventy-seven, Ella Holrook’s number,
upon her arm. Annie Churchill and Lilly heroically cut a hundred and
fifty on theirs. The fashion had been set.
In three days half the Second Cours bore upon their suffering little
bodies these gory evidences of their love. And for four days no one
in authority knew. Yet we spent our time delightfully in examining
one another’s numerals, and freshening up our own. Like young
savages, we incited one another to painful rites, and to bloody
excesses. That Viola’s hand and mine should for so long have
escaped detection seems miraculous; but Madame Dane, though
keenly observant, was a trifle near-sighted. She may have thought
the scratches accidental.
On the fifth morning, as I came out from Mass, Madame Rayburn’s
eye lighted by chance upon the marks. She was not near-sighted,
and she never mistook one thing for another. A single glance told
her the story. A single instant decided her course of action. “Agnes,”
she said, and I stepped from the ranks, and stood by her side. I
knew what she had seen; but I did not know what she proposed
doing, and my heart beat uneasily. We waited until the First Cours
filed out of the chapel. Last, because tallest, came Ella Holrook and
Julia Reynolds. “Julia,” said Madame Rayburn, and she, too, left the
ranks and joined us. No word was spoken until the long line of girls
—burning with futile curiosity, but too well trained even to turn their
heads—had passed through the corridor. Then Madame Rayburn
took my hand in her firm grasp and held it up to view. “Look at this,
Julia,” she said.
I had supposed it impossible to move Julia Reynolds to wrath, to
arouse in her any other sentiment than the cold contempt, “la fierté
honorable et digne,” which she cultivated with so much care. But I
had not calculated on this last straw of provocation following upon
all she had previously endured. When she saw her number on my
hand, she crimsoned, and her eyes grew dark. She was simply and
unaffectedly angry,—what we in unguarded conversation called
“mad.”
“I won’t have it,” she said passionately. “I won’t! It’s too much to be
borne. I won’t put up with it another hour. Why should I be
tormented all my life by these idiotic children? Look at my shawl,—
how they have torn off half the fringe. It isn’t fit to be worn. Look at
my desk! I never open it without finding it littered with their trash.
Do I want their old flannel penwipers? Do I want their stupid
pincushions and needle-cases? Can I possibly want book-markers of
perforated cardboard, with ‘Julia’ worked on them in blue sewing
silk? I’ve had three this week. Do they think I don’t know my own
name, and that I have to be reminded of it by them? They have no
business to go near my desk. They have no business to put anything
in it. And I don’t want their candy. And I don’t want them to darn my
stockings in hard lumps. I’ve never encouraged one of them in my
life.” (Alas! Julia, this was your undoing.) “I’ve never spoken to one
of them. I did let her” (a scornful nod at me) “sharpen my crayons in
drawing class, and I suppose this impertinence is the result. I
suppose she thinks she is a favourite. Well, she isn’t. And this is
going a good deal too far. My number belongs to me personally, just
as much as my name does. I won’t have it paraded around the
Second Cours. It stands for me in the school, it’s mine, and she has
no right to cut it on her horrid little hand.”
There was a moment’s silence. Julia’s breath was spent, and
Madame Rayburn said nothing. She only looked at me.
Now I possessed one peculiarity which had always to be reckoned
with. Timid, easily abashed, and reduced to nothingness by a word
that hurt, I was sure, if pushed too far, to stand at bay. Nor had
nature left me altogether defenceless in a hard world. Julia’s first
glance had opened my eyes to the extravagance of my behaviour
(Oh, that I had followed Elizabeth’s counsel!), her first reproaches
had overwhelmed me with shame. But the concentrated scorn with
which she flung her taunts in my face, and that final word about my
horrid hand, stiffened me into resistance. My anger matched her
own. “All right,” I said shortly; “I’ll scratch it out.”
Madame Rayburn laughed softly. She had brought upon me this dire
humiliation because she thought my folly merited the punishment;
but she was not ill-pleased to find me undismayed. As for Julia, she
bent her keen eyes on my face (the first time she had ever really
looked at me), and something that was almost a smile softened the
corners of her mouth. It was evident that the idea of scratching out
what was already so deeply scratched in pleased her wayward fancy.
When she spoke again, it was in a different voice, and though her
words were unflattering, her manner was almost kind. “If you are
not altogether a fool,” she said, “and that sounds as if you were not,
why do you behave like one?”
To this query I naturally made no reply. It was not easy to answer,
and besides, at the first softening of her mood, my wrath had
melted away, carrying my courage with it. I was perilously near
tears. Madame Rayburn dropped my hand, and gave me a little nod.
It meant that I was free, and I scudded like a hare through the
corridor, through the First Cours classroom, and down into the
refectory. There the familiar aspect of breakfast, the familiar murmur
of “Pain, s’il vous plait,” restored my equanimity. I met the curious
glances cast at me with that studied unconcern, that blankness of
expression which we had learned from Elizabeth, and which was to
us what the turtle shell is to the turtle,—a refuge from inquisitors. I
had no mind that any one should know the exact nature of my
experience.
That night I made good my word, and erased the twenty-one after a
thorough-going fashion I hardly like to recall. But when the
operation was over, and I curled up in my bed, I said to myself that
although I should never again wear this beloved number upon hand
or arm, it would be engraved forever on my heart. As long as I lived,
I should feel for Julia Reynolds the same passionate and unalterable
devotion. Perhaps, some time in the future, I should have the
happiness of dying for her. I was arranging the details of this
charming possibility, and balancing in my mind the respective
delights of being bitten—while defending her—by a mad dog, or
being drowned in mid-ocean, having given her my place in the life-
boat, and was waving her a last farewell from the decks of the
sinking ship, when I finally fell asleep.
The next morning was Sunday, the never-to-be-forgotten Sunday,
when Marianus for the first time served Mass. And as I watched him,
breathless with delight, Julia’s image grew pale, as pale as that of
Isabel Summers, and faded quietly away. I looked at Elizabeth and
Tony. They, too, were parting with illusions. Their sore little arms
might now be permitted to heal, for their faithless hearts no longer
bore a scar. The reign of our lost loves was over. The sovereignty of
Marianus had begun.

The Riverside Press

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