Part 2

which was a poetic license, as the chapel aisle was short, and Marianus had never glided up it since he came. He always--in virtue of his office--entered by the sacristy door.

But realism was then as little known in literature as in art, and poetry was not expected to savour of statement rather than emotion. Elizabeth's masterpiece expressed in glowing numbers the wave of sentiment by which we were submerged. Before night it had passed swiftly from hand to hand, and before night the thunderbolt had fallen. Whose rashness was to blame I do not now remember; but, thank Heaven! it was not mine. Some one's giggle was too unsuppressed. Some one thrust the paper too hurriedly into her desk, or dropped it on the floor, or handed it to some one else in a manner too obviously mysterious not to arouse suspicion. I only know that it fell into the hands of little Madame Davide, who had the eyes of a ferret and the heart of a mouse, and who, being unable to read a word of English, sent it forthwith to Madame Bouron. I only know that, after that brief and unsatisfactory glimpse in French class, I never saw it again; which is why I can now recall but one line out of twenty,--a circumstance I devoutly regret.

It was a significant proof of Madame Bouron's astuteness that, without asking any questions, or seeking any further information, she summoned six girls to her study that evening after prayers. She had only the confiscated poem in Elizabeth's writing as a clue to the conspiracy, but she needed nothing more. There we were, all duly indicted, save Viola, whose youth, while it failed to protect us from the unsought privilege of her society, saved her, as a rule, from any retributive measures. Her absence on this occasion was truly a comfort, as her presence would have involved the added and most unmerited reproach of leading a younger child into mischief. Viola was small for her age, and had appealing brown eyes. There was not a nun in the convent who knew her for the imp she was. Lilly, gay, sweet, simple, generous, and unselfish, seemed as wax in her little sister's hands.

There were six of us, then, to bear the burden of blame; and Madame Bouron, sitting erect in the lamplight, apportioned it with an unsparing hand. Her fine face (she was coldly handsome, but we did not like her well enough to know it) expressed contemptuous displeasure; her words conveyed a somewhat exaggerated confidence in our guilt. Of Elizabeth's verses she spoke with icy scorn;--she had not been aware that so gifted a writer graced the school; but the general impropriety of our behaviour was unprecedented in the annals of the convent. That we, members of the Society of St. Aloysius, should have shown ourselves so unworthy of our privileges, and so forgetful of our patron, was a surprise even to her; though (she was frankness itself) she had never entertained a good opinion either of our dispositions or of our intelligence. The result of such misconduct was that the chaplain's assistant must leave at once and forever. Not that _he_ had ever wasted a thought upon any girl in the school. His heart was set upon the priesthood. Young though he was, he had already suffered for the Church. His father had fought and died in defence of the Holy See. His home had been lost. He was a stranger in a far land. And now he must be driven from the asylum he had sought, because we could not be trusted to behave with that modesty and discretion which had always been the fairest adornment of children reared within the convent's holy walls. She hoped that we would understand how grievous was the wrong we had done, and that even our callous hearts would bleed when we went to our comfortable beds, and reflected that, because of our wickedness and folly, a friendless and pious young student was once more alone in the world.

It was over! We trailed slowly up to the dormitory, too bewildered to understand the exact nature of our misdoing. The most convincing proof of our mental confusion is that our own immaculate innocence never occurred to any of us. We had looked one night out of the window at Marianus, and Elizabeth had written the five amorous verses. That was all. Not one of us had spoken a word to the object of our affections. Not one of us could boast a single glance, given or received. We had done nothing; yet so engrossing had been the sentiment, so complete the absorption of the past two months, that we, living in a children's world of illusions,--"passionate after dreams, and unconcerned about realities,"--had deemed ourselves players of parts, actors in an unsubstantial drama, intruders into the realms of the forbidden. We accepted this conviction with meekness, untempered by regret; but we permitted ourselves a doubt as to whether our iniquity were wholly responsible for the banishment of Marianus. The too strenuous pointing of a moral breeds skepticism in the youthful soul. When Squire Martin (of our grandfathers' reading-books) assured Billy Freeman that dogs and turkey-cocks were always affable to children who studied their lessons and obeyed their parents, that innocent little boy must have soon discovered for himself that virtue is but a weak bulwark in the barnyard. We, too, had lost implicit confidence in the fine adjustments of life; and, upon this occasion, we found comfort in incredulity. On the stairs Elizabeth remarked to me in a gloomy undertone that Marianus could never have intended to stay at the convent, anyhow, and that he probably had been "sent for." She did not say whence, or by whom; but the mere suggestion was salve to my suffering soul. It enabled me, at least, to bear the sight of Annie Churchill's tears, when, ten minutes later, that weak-minded girl slid into my alcove (as if we were not in trouble enough already), and, sitting forlornly on my bed, asked me in a stifled whisper, "did I think that Marianus was really homeless, and couldn't we make up a sum of money, and send it to him?"

"How much have you got?" I asked her curtly. The complicated emotions through which I had passed had left me in a savage humour; and the peculiar infelicity of this proposal might have irritated St. Aloysius himself. We were not allowed the possession of our own money, though in view of the fact that there was ordinarily nothing to buy with it, extravagance would have been impossible. Every Thursday afternoon the "Bazaar" was opened; our purses, carefully marked with name and number, were handed to us, and we were at liberty to purchase such uninteresting necessities as writing-paper, stamps, blank-books, pencils, and sewing materials. The sole concession to prodigality was a little pile of pious pictures,--small French prints, ornamented with lace paper, which it was our custom to give one another upon birthdays and other festive occasions. They were a great resource in church, where prayer-books, copiously interleaved with these works of art, were passed to and fro for mutual solace and refreshment.

All these things were as well known to Annie as to me, but she was too absorbed in her grief to remember them. She mopped her eyes, and said vacantly that she thought she had a dollar and a half.

"I have seventy-five cents," I said; "and Elizabeth hasn't anything. She spent all her money last Thursday. We might be able to raise five dollars amongst us. If you think that much would be of any use to Marianus, all you have to do is to ask Madame Bouron for our purses, and for his address, and see if she would mind our writing and sending it to him."

Annie, impervious at all times to sarcasm, looked dazed for a moment, her wet blue eyes raised piteously to mine. "Then you think we couldn't manage it?" she asked falteringly.

But I plunged my face into my wash-basin, as a hint that the conversation was at an end. I, too, needed the relief of tears, and was waiting impatiently to be alone.

For Marianus had gone. Of that, at least, there was no shadow of doubt. We should never see him again; and life seemed to stretch before me in endless grey reaches of grammar, and arithmetic, and French conversation; of getting up early in the morning, uncheered by the thought of seeing Marianus serve Mass; of going to bed at night, with never another glance at that dark shadow in the moonlight. I felt that for me the page of love was turned forever, the one romance of my life was past. I cried softly and miserably into my pillow; and resolved, as I did so, that the next morning I would write on the fly-leaves of my new French prayer-book and my "Thomas à Kempis" the lines:--

"'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all."

The Convent Stage

"From this hour I do renounce the creed whose fatal worship of bad passions has led thee on, step by step, to this blood-guiltiness!"

Elizabeth was studying her part. We were all studying our parts; but we stopped to listen to this glowing bit of declamation, which Elizabeth delivered with unbroken calm. "I drop down on my knees when I say that," she observed gloomily.

We looked at her with admiring, envious eyes. Our own rôles offered no such golden opportunities. Lilly's, indeed, was almost as easily learned as Snug's, being limited to three words, "The Christian slave?" which were supposed to be spoken interrogatively; but which she invariably pronounced as an abstract statement, bearing on nothing in particular. It was seldom, however, that we insignificant little girls of the Second Cours were permitted to take part in any play, and we felt to the full the honour and glory of our positions. "I come on in three scenes, and speak eleven times," I said, with a pride which I think now strongly resembled Mr. Rushworth's. "What are you, Tony?"

"A beggar child," said Tony. "I cry 'Bread! bread!' in piercing accents" (she was reading from the stage directions), "and afterwards say to Zara,--that's Mary Orr,--'Our thanks are due to thee, noble lady, who from thy abundance feeds us once. Our love and blessings follow her who gave us daily of her slender store.'"

"Is that all?"

"The other beggar child says nothing but 'Bread! bread!'" replied Tony stiffly.

"What a lot of costumes to get up for so many little parts!" commented Elizabeth, ever prone to consider the practical aspect of things.

"I am dressed in rags," said Tony. "They oughtn't to give much trouble."

"Lilly and I are to be dressed alike," I said. "'Slaves of the royal household.' Madame Rayburn said we were to wear Turkish trousers of yellow muslin, with blue tunics, and red sashes tied at the side. Won't we look like guys?"

I spoke with affected disdain and real complacency, gloating--like Mr. Rushworth--over the finery I pretended to despise. Elizabeth stared at us dispassionately. "Lilly will look well in anything," she remarked with disconcerting candour, at which Lilly blushed a lovely rose pink. She knew how pretty she was, but she had that exquisite sweetness of temper which is so natural an accompaniment of beauty. Perhaps we should all be sweet-tempered if we could feel sure that people looked at us with pleasure.

"You will have to wear Turkish trousers, too," said Tony maliciously to Elizabeth; "and get down on your knees in them."

"No, I won't," returned Elizabeth scornfully. "I'm not a Turk. I'm a Moorish princess,--Zara's niece."

"Moors and Turks are the same," said Tony with conviction.

"Moors and Turks are not the same," said Elizabeth. "Turks live in Turkey, and Moors live--Whereabouts is this play, anyway, Marie?"

"Granada," said Marie. "The Spanish army, under Ferdinand and Isabella, is besieging Granada. I wish I were a Moor instead of a pious Spanish lady. It would be a great deal more fun. I've always got pious parts."

This was true, but then most of the parts in our convent plays _were_ pious, and if they were given to Marie, it was because she was so good an actress,--the only one our Second Cours could boast. Elizabeth, indeed, had her merits. She never forgot her lines, never was frightened, never blundered. But her absolutely unemotional rendering of the most heroic sentiments chilled her hearers' hearts. Marie was fervid and impassioned. Her _r-r_'s had the true Gallic roll. Her voice vibrated feelingly. She was tall for thirteen, without being hopelessly overgrown as Emily and I were. Strangest of all, she did not seem to mind the foolish and embarrassing things which she was obliged to do upon the stage. She would fling her arms around an aged parent, and embrace her fondly. She would expound the truths of Christianity, as St. Philomena. She would weep, and pray, and forgive her enemies, as the luckless Madame Elisabeth. What is more, she would do these things at rehearsals, in her short school frock, with unabated fervour, and without a shade of embarrassment. We recognized her as a Heaven-sent genius, second only to Julia Reynolds and Antoinette Mayo (who I still think _must_ have been the greatest of living actresses), yet in our secret souls we despised a little such absolute lack of self-consciousness. We were so awkward and abashed when brought face to face with any emotion, so incapable of giving it even a strangled utterance, that Marie's absorption in her parts seemed to us a trifle indecent. It was on a par with her rapid French, her lively gestures, her openly expressed affection for the nuns she liked, and the unconcern with which she would walk up the long classroom, between two rows of motionless girls, to have a medal hung around her neck on Sunday night at Primes. This hideous ordeal, which clouded our young lives, was no more to Marie than walking upstairs,--no more than unctuously repeating every day for a fortnight the edifying remarks of the pious Spanish lady.

Plays were the great diversions of our school life. We had two or three of them every winter, presented, it seemed to me, with dazzling splendour, and acted with passionate fire. I looked forward to these performances with joyful excitement, I listened, steeped in delight, I dreamed of them afterwards for weeks. The big girls who played in them, and of whom I knew little but their names, were to me beings of a remote and exalted nature. The dramas themselves were composed with a view to our especial needs, or rather to our especial limitations. Their salient feature was the absence of courtship and of love. It was part of the convent system to ignore the master passion, to assume that it did not exist, to banish from our work and from our play any reference to the power that moves the world. The histories we studied skipped chastely on from reign to reign, keeping always at bay this riotous intruder. The books we read were as free as possible from any taint of infection. The poems we recited were as serene and cold as Teneriffe. "Love in the drama," says an acrimonious critic, "plays rather a heavy part." It played no part at all in ours, and I am disposed to look back now upon its enforced absence as an agreeable elimination. The students of St. Omer--so I have been told--presented a French version of "Romeo and Juliet," with all the love scenes left out. This _tour de force_ was beyond our scope; but "She Stoops to Conquer," shorn of its double courtship, made a vivacious bit of comedy, and a translation of "Le Malade Imaginaire"--expurgated to attenuation--was the most successful farce of the season.

Of course the expurgation was not done by us. We knew Goldsmith and Molière only in their convent setting, where, it is safe to say, they would never have known themselves. Most of our plays, however, were original productions, written by some one of the nuns whose talents chanced to be of a dramatic order. They were, as a rule, tragic in character, and devout in sentiment,--sometimes so exceedingly devout as to resemble religious homilies rather than the legitimate drama. A conversation held in Purgatory, which gave to three imprisoned souls an opportunity to tell one another at great length, and with shameless egotism, the faults and failings of their lives, was not--to our way of thinking--a play. We listened unmoved to the disclosures of these garrulous spirits, who had not sinned deeply enough to make their revelations interesting. It was like going to confession on a large and liberal scale. The martyrdom of St. Philomena was nearly as dull, though the saint's defiance of the tyrant Symphronius--"persecutor of the innocent, slayer of the righteous, despot whose knell has even this hour rung"--lent a transient gleam of emotion; and the angel who visited her in prison--and who had great difficulty getting his wings through the narrow prison door--was, to my eyes at least, a vision of celestial beauty.

What we really loved were historical dramas, full of great names and affecting incidents. Our crowning triumph (several times repeated) was "Zuma," a Peruvian play in which an Indian girl is accused of poisoning the wife of the Spanish general, when she is really trying to cure her of a fever by giving her quinine, a drug known only to the Peruvians, and the secret of which the young captive has sworn never to divulge. "Zuma" was a glorious play. Its first production marked an epoch in our lives. Gladly would we have given it a season's run, had such indulgence been a possibility. There was one scene between the heroine and her free and unregenerate sister, Italca, which left an indelible impression upon my mind. It took place in a subterranean cavern. The stage was darkened, and far-off music--the sound of Spanish revelry--floated on the air. Italca brings Zuma a portion of bark, sufficient only for her own needs,--for she too is fever-stricken,--but, before giving it, asks with piercing scorn: "Are you still an Inca's daughter, or a Castilian slave?"--a question at which poor Zuma can only weep piteously, but which sent thrills of rapture down my youthful spine. I have had my moments of emotion since then. When Madame Bernhardt as La Tosca put the lighted candles on either side of the murdered Scarpia, and laid the crucifix upon his breast. When Madame Duse as Magda turned suddenly upon the sleek Von Keller, and for one awful moment loosened the floodgates of her passion and her scorn: "You have asked after Emma and after Katie. You have not asked for your child." But never again has my soul gone out in such a tumult of ecstasy as when Zuma and Italca, Christian and Pagan sisters, the captive and the unconquered, faced each other upon our convent stage.

And now for the first time I--I, eleven years old, and with no shadowy claim to distinction--was going to take part in a play, was going to tread the boards in yellow Turkish trousers, and speak eleven times for all the school to hear. No fear of failure, no reasonable misgivings fretted my heart's content. Marie might scorn the Spanish lady's rôle; but then Marie had played "Zuma,"--had reached at a bound the highest pinnacle of fame. Elizabeth might grumble at giving up our recreation hours to rehearsals; but then Elizabeth had been one of the souls in Purgatory, the sinfullest soul, and the most voluble of all. Besides, nothing ever elated Elizabeth. She had been selected once to make an address to the Archbishop, and to offer him a basket of flowers; he had inquired her name, and had said he knew her father; yet all this public notice begot in her no arrogance of soul. Her only recorded observation was to the effect that, if she were an archbishop, she wouldn't listen to addresses; a suggestion which might have moved the weary and patient prelate more than did the ornate assurances of our regard.

With this shining example of insensibility before my eyes, I tried hard to conceal my own inordinate pride. Rehearsals began before we knew our parts, and the all-important matter of costumes came at once under consideration. The "play-closet," that mysterious receptacle of odds and ends, of frayed satins, pasteboard swords, and tarnished tinsel jewelry, was soon exhausted of its treasures. Some of the bigger girls, who were to be Spanish ladies in attendance upon Queen Isabella, persuaded their mothers to lend them old evening gowns. The rest of the clothes we manufactured ourselves, "by the pure light of reason," having no models of any kind to assist or to disturb us.

Happily, there were no Spanish men in the play. Men always gave a good deal of trouble, because they might not, under any circumstances, be clad in male attire. A short skirt, reaching to the knee, and generally made of a balmoral petticoat, was the nearest compromise permitted. Marlow, that consummate dandy, wore, I remember, a red and black striped skirt, rubber boots, a black jacket, a high white collar, and a red cravat. The cravat was given to Julia Reynolds, who played the part, by her brother. It indicated Marlow's sex, and was considered a little indecorous in its extreme mannishness. "They'll hardly know what she" (Mrs. Potts) "is meant for, will they?" asks Mr. Snodgrass anxiously, when that estimable lady proposes going to Mrs. Leo Hunter's fancy ball as Apollo, in a white satin gown with spangles. To which Mr. Winkle makes indignant answer: "Of course they will. They'll see her lyre." With the same admirable acumen, we who saw Marlow's cravat recognized him immediately as a man.

Moors, and Peruvians, and ancient Romans were more easily attired. They wore skirts as a matter of course, looked a good deal alike, and resembled in the main the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," as costumed by Mr. Abbey. It is with much pleasure I observe how closely--if how unconsciously--Mr. Abbey has followed our convent models. His Valentine might be Manco or Cléante strutting upon our school stage. His Titania is a white-veiled first communicant.

The Turkish trousers worn by Lilly and by me--also by Elizabeth, to her unutterable disgust--were allowed because they were portions of feminine attire. Made of rattling paper muslin, stiff, baggy, and with a hideous tendency to slip down at every step, they evoked the ribald mirth of all the other actors. Mary Orr, especially, having firmly declined a pair as part of Zara's costume, was moved to such unfeeling laughter at the first dress rehearsal that I could hardly summon courage to stand by Lilly's side. "The more you show people you mind a thing, the more they'll do it;" Elizabeth had once observed out of the profundity of her school experience,--an experience which dated from her seventh year. Her own armour of assumed unconcern was provocation-proof. She had mistrusted the trousers from the beginning, while I, thinking of Lalla Rookh and Nourmahal (ladies unknown to the convent library), had exulted in their opulent Orientalism. She had expressed dark doubts as to their fit and shape; and had put them on with visible reluctance, and only because no choice had been allowed her. The big girls arranged--within limits--their own costumes, but the little girls wore what was given them. Yet the impenetrable calm with which she presented herself dulled the shafts of schoolgirl sarcasm. You might as well have tried to cauterize a wooden leg--to use Mirabeau's famous simile--as to have tried to provoke Elizabeth.