Part 7
Then one day Elizabeth made a discovery which filled me with confusion. Before I came to school, I had parted with my few toys, feeling that paper dolls and grace-hoops were unworthy of my new estate, and that I should never again condescend to the devices of my lonely childhood. The single exception was a small bisque doll with painted yellow curls. I had brought it to the convent in a moment of weakness, but no one was aware of its existence. It was a neglected doll, nameless and wardrobeless, and its sole function was to sleep with me at night. Its days were spent in solitary confinement in my washstand drawer. This does not mean that evening brought any sense of exile to my heart. On the contrary, the night fears which at home made going to bed an ever repeated misery (I slept alone on a big, echoing third floor, and everybody said what a brave little girl I was) had been banished by the security of the dormitory, by the blessed sense of companionship and protection. Nevertheless, I liked to feel my doll in bed with me, and I might have enjoyed its secret and innocent society all winter, had I not foolishly carried it downstairs one day in my pocket, and stowed it in a corner of my desk. The immediate consequence was detection.
"How did you come to have it?" asked Elizabeth, wondering.
"Oh, it got put in somehow with my things," I answered evasively, and feeling very much ashamed.
Elizabeth took the poor little toy, and looked at it curiously. She must have possessed such things once, but it was as hard to picture her with a doll as with a rattle. She seemed equally remote from both. As she turned it over, an inspiration came to her. "I tell you what we'll do," she said; "we'll take it for your baby,--it's time one of us had a child,--and we'll get up a grand christening. Do you want a son or a daughter?"
"I hope we won't have Annie Churchill for a priest," was my irrelevant answer.
"No, we won't," said Elizabeth. "I'll be the priest, and Tony and Lilly can be godparents. And then, after its christening, the baby can die,--in its baptismal innocence, you know,--and we'll bury it."
I was silent. Elizabeth raised her candid eyes to mine. "You don't want it, do you?" she asked.
"I don't want it," I answered slowly.
Marie decided that, as our first-born was to die, it had better be a girl. A son and heir should live to inherit the estates. She contributed a handkerchief for a christening robe; and Emily, who was generous to a fault, insisted on giving a little new work-basket, beautifully lined with blue satin, for a coffin. Lilly found a piece of white ribbon for a sash. Tony gave advice, and Elizabeth her priestly benediction. Beata Benedicta della Rovere ("That name shows she's booked for Heaven," said Tony) was christened in the _bénitier_ at the chapel door; Elizabeth performing the ceremony, and Tony and Lilly unctuously renouncing in her behalf the works and pomps of Satan. It was a more seemly service than our wedding had been, but it was only a prelude, after all, to the imposing rites of burial. These were to take place at the recreation hour the following afternoon; but owing to the noble infant's noble kinsmen not having any recreation hour when the afternoon came, the obsequies were unavoidably postponed.
It happened in this wise. Every day, in addition to our French classes, we had half an hour of French conversation, at which none of us ever willingly conversed. All efforts to make us sprightly and loquacious failed signally. When questions were put to us, we answered them; but we never embarked of our own volition upon treacherous currents of speech. Therefore Madame Davide levied upon us a conversational tax, which, like some of the most oppressive taxes the world has ever known, made a specious pretence of being a voluntary contribution. Every girl in the class was called upon to recount some anecdote, some incident or story which she had heard, or read, or imagined, and which she was supposed to be politely eager to communicate to her comrades. We always began "Madame et mesdemoiselles, figurez-vous," or "il y avait une fois," and then launched ourselves feebly upon tales, the hopeless inanity of which harmonized with the spiritless fashion of the telling. We all felt this to be a degrading performance. Our tender pride was hurt by such a betrayal, before our friends, of our potential imbecility. Moreover, the strain upon invention and memory was growing daily more severe. We really had nothing left to tell. Therefore five of us (Marie belonged to a higher class) resolved to indicate that our resources were at an end by telling the same story over and over again. We selected for this purpose an Ollendorfian anecdote about a soldier in the army of Frederick the Great, who, having a watch chain but no watch, attached a bullet--I can't conceive how--to the chain; and, when Frederick asked him the hour of the day, replied fatuously: "My watch tells me that any hour is the time to die for your majesty."
The combined improbability and stupidity of this tale commended it for translation, and the uncertainty as to the order of the telling lent an element of piquancy to the plot. Happily for Lilly, she was called upon first to "réciter un conte," and, blushing and hesitating, she obeyed. Madame Davide listened with a pretence of interest that did her credit, and said that the soldier had "beaucoup d'esprit;" at which Tony, who had pronounced him a fool, whistled a soft note of incredulity. After several other girls had enlivened the class with mournful pleasantries, my turn came, and I told the story as fast as I could,--so fast that its character was not distinctly recognized until the last word was said. Madame Davide looked puzzled, but let it pass. Perhaps she thought the resemblance accidental. But when Emily with imperturbable gravity began: "Il y avait une fois un soldat, honnête et brave, dans l'armée de Frédéric le Grand," and proceeded with the familiar details, she was sharply checked. "Faut pas répéter les mêmes contes," said Madame Davide; at which Emily, virtuous and pained, explained that it was _her_ conte. How could she help it if other girls chose it too? By this time the whole class had awakened to the situation, and was manifesting the liveliest interest and pleasure. It was almost pitiful to see children so grateful for a little mild diversion. Like the gratitude of Italian beggars for a few sous, it indicated painfully the desperate nature of their needs. There was a breathless gasp of expectancy when Elizabeth's name was called. We knew we could trust Elizabeth. She was constitutionally incapable of a blunder. Every trace of expression was banished from her face, and in clear, earnest tones she said: "Madame et mesdemoiselles,--il y avait une fois un soldat, honnête et brave, dans l'armée de Frédéric le Grand,"--whereupon there arose a shout of such uncontrollable delight that the class was dismissed, and we were all sent to our desks. Tony alone was deeply chagrined. Through no fault of hers, she was for once out of a scrape, and she bitterly resented the exclusion. It was in consequence of this episode that Beata Benedicta's funeral rites were postponed for twenty-four hours.
The delay brought no consolation to my heart. It only prolonged my unhappiness. I did not love my doll after the honest fashion of a younger child. I did not really fear that I should miss her. But, what was infinitely worse, I could not bring myself to believe that Beata Benedicta was dead,--although I was going to allow her to be buried. The line of demarcation between things that can feel and things that cannot had always been a wavering line for me. Perhaps Hans Andersen's stories, in which rush-lights and darning needles have as much life as boys and girls, were responsible for my mental confusion. Perhaps I merely held on longer than most children to a universal instinct which they share with savages. Any familiar object, anything that I habitually handled, possessed some portion of my own vitality. It was never wholly inanimate. Beata's little bisque body, with its outstretched arms, seemed to protest mutely but piteously against abandonment. She had lain by my side for months, and now I was going to let her be buried alive, because I was ashamed to rescue her. There was no help for it. Rather than confess I was such a baby, I would have been buried myself.
A light fall of snow covered the frozen earth when we dug Beata's grave with our penknives, and laid her mournfully away. The site selected was back of the "Seven Dolours" chapel (chapels are to convent grounds what arbours and summer-houses are to the profane), and we chose it because the friendly walls hid us from observation. We had brought out our black veils, and we put them on over our hats, in token of our heavy grief. Elizabeth read the burial service,--or as much of it as she deemed prudent, for we dared not linger too long,--and afterwards reassured us on the subject of Beata's baptismal innocence. That was the great point. She had died in her sinless infancy. We crime-laden souls should envy her happier fate. We put a little cross of twigs at the head of the grave, and promised to plant something there when the spring came. Then we took off our veils, and stuffed them in our pockets,--those deep, capacious pockets of many years ago.
"Let's race to the avenue gate," said Tony. "I'm frozen stiff. Burying is cold work."
"Or we might get one of the swings," said Lilly.
But Marie--whose real name, I forgot to say, was Francesco--put her arm tenderly around me. "Don't grieve, Beatrice," she said. "Our little Beata has died in her baptismal"--
"Oh, come away!" I cried, unable to bear the repetition of this phrase. And I ran as fast as I could down the avenue. But I could not run fast enough to escape from the voice of Beata Benedicta, calling--calling to me from her grave.
Reverend Mother's Feast
"Mother's feast"--in other words the saint's day of the Superioress--was dawning upon our horizon, and its lights and shadows flecked our checkered paths. Theoretically, it was an occasion of pure joy, assuring us, as it did, a _congé_, and not a _congé_ only, but the additional delights of a candy fair in the morning, and an operetta, "The Miracle of the Roses," at night. Such a round of pleasures filled us with the happiest anticipations; but--on the same principle that the Church always prefaces her feast days with vigils and with fasts--the convent prefaced our _congé_ with a competition in geography, and with the collection of a "spiritual bouquet," which was to be our offering to Reverend Mother on her fête.
A competition in anything was an unqualified calamity. It meant hours of additional study, a frantic memorizing of facts, fit only to be forgotten, and the bewildering ordeal of being interrogated before the whole school. It meant for _me_ two little legs that shook like reeds, a heart that thumped like a hammer in my side, a sensation of sickening terror when the examiner--Madame Bouron--bore down upon me, and a mind reduced to sudden blankness, washed clean of any knowledge upon any subject, when the simplest question was asked. Tried by this process, I was only one degree removed from idiocy. Even Elizabeth, whose legs were as adamant, whose heart-beats had the regularity of a pendulum, and who, if she knew a thing, could say it, hated to bound states and locate capitals for all the school to hear. "There are to be prizes, too," she said mournfully. "Madame Duncan said so. I don't like going up for a prize. It's worse than a medal at Primes."
"Oh, well, maybe you won't get one," observed Tony consolingly. "You didn't, you know, last time."
"I did the time before last," said Elizabeth calmly. "It was 'La Corbeille de Fleurs.'"
There was an echo of resentment in her voice, and we all--even Tony--admitted that she had just cause for complaint. To reward successful scholarship with a French book was one of those black-hearted deeds for which we invariably held Madame Bouron responsible. She may have been blameless as the babe unborn; but it was our habit to attribute all our wrongs to her malign influence. We knew "La Corbeille de Fleurs." At least, we knew its shiny black cover, and its frontispiece, representing a sylphlike young lady in a floating veil bearing a hamper of provisions to a smiling and destitute old gentleman. There was nothing in this picture, nor in the accompanying lines, "Que vois-je? Mon Dieu! Un ange de Ciel, qui vient à mon secours," which tempted us to a perusal of the story, even had we been in the habit of voluntarily reading French.
As for the "spiritual bouquet," we felt that our failure to contribute to it on a generous scale was blackening our reputations forever. Every evening the roll was called, and girl after girl gave in her list of benefactions. Rosaries, so many. Litanies, so many. Aspirations, so many. Deeds of kindness, so many. Temptations resisted, so many. Trials offered up, so many. Acts, so many. A stranger, listening to the replies, might have imagined that the whole school was ripe for Heaven. These blossoms of virtue and piety were added every night to the bouquet; and the sum total, neatly written out in Madame Duncan's flowing hand, was to be presented, with an appropriate address, to Reverend Mother on her feast, as a proof of our respectful devotion.
It was a heavy tax. From what resources some girls drew their supplies remained ever a mystery to us. How could Ellie Plunkett have found the opportunity to perform four deeds of kindness, and resist seven temptations, in a day? We never had any temptations to resist. Perhaps when one came along, we yielded to it so quickly that it had ceased to tempt before its true character had been ascertained. And to whom was Ellie Plunkett so overweeningly kind? "Who wants Ellie Plunkett to be kind to her?" was Tony's scornful query. There was Adelaide Harrison, too, actually turning in twenty acts as one day's crop, and smiling modestly when Madame Duncan praised her self-denial. Yet, to our unwarped judgment, she seemed much the same as ever. We, at least, refused to accept her estimate of her own well-spent life.
"Making an act" was the convent phraseology for doing without something one wanted, for stopping short on the verge of an innocent gratification. If I gave up my place in the swing to Viola Milton, that was an act. If I walked to the woods with Annie Churchill, when I wanted to walk with Elizabeth, that was an act. If I ate my bread unbuttered, or drank my tea unsweetened, that was an act. It will be easily understood that the constant practice of acts deprived life of everything that made it worth the living. We were so trained in this system of renunciation that it was impossible to enjoy even the very simple pleasures that our convent table afforded. If there were anything we particularly liked, our nagging little consciences piped up with their intolerable "Make an act, make an act;" and it was only when the last mouthful was resolutely swallowed that we could feel sure we had triumphed over asceticism. There was something maddening in the example set us by our neighbours, by those virtuous and pious girls who hemmed us in at study time and at our meals. When Mary Rawdon gently waved aside the chocolate custard--which was the very best chocolate custard it has ever been my good fortune to eat--and whispered to me as she did so, "An act for the bouquet;" I whispered back, "Take it, and give it to me," and held out my plate with defiant greed. Annie Churchill told us she hadn't eaten any butter for a week; whereat Tony called her an idiot, and Annie--usually the mildest of girls--said that "envy at another's spiritual good" was a very great sin, and that Tony had committed it. There is nothing so souring to the temper as abstinence.
What made it singularly hard to sacrifice our young lives for the swelling of a spiritual bouquet was that Reverend Mother, who was to profit by our piety, had so little significance in our eyes. She was as remote from the daily routine of the school as the Grand Lama is remote from the humble Thibetans whom he rules; and if we regarded her with a lively awe, it was only because of her aloofness, of the reserves that hedged her majestically round. She was an Englishwoman of good family, and of vast bulk. There was a tradition that she had been married and widowed before she became a nun; but this was a subject upon which we were not encouraged to talk. It was considered both disrespectful and indecorous. Reverend Mother's voice was slow and deep, a ponderous voice to suit her ponderous size; and she spoke with what seemed to us a strange and barbarous accent, pronouncing certain words in a manner which I have since learned was common in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and which a few ripe scholars are now endeavouring to reintroduce. She was near-sighted to the verge of blindness, and always at Mass used a large magnifying glass, like the one held by Leo the Tenth in Raphael's portrait. She was not without literary tastes of an insipid and obsolete order, the tastes of an English gentlewoman, reared in the days when young ladies read the "Female Spectator," and warbled "Oh, no, we never mention her." Had she not "entered religion," she might have taken Moore and Byron to her heart,--as did one little girl whose "Childe Harold" lay deeply hidden in a schoolroom desk,--but the rejection of these profane poets had left her stranded upon such feeble substitutes as Letitia Elizabeth Landon, whose mysterious death she was occasionally heard to deplore.
Twice on Sundays Reverend Mother crossed our orbit; in the morning, when she instructed the whole school in Christian doctrine, and at night, when she presided over Primes. During the week we saw her only at Mass. We should never even have known about Letitia Elizabeth Landon, had she not granted an occasional audience to the graduates, and discoursed to them sleepily upon the books she had read in her youth. Whatever may have been her qualifications for her post (she had surpassing dignity of carriage, and was probably a woman of intelligence and force), to us she was a mere embodiment of authority, as destitute of personal malice as of personal charm. I detested Madame Bouron, and loved Madame Rayburn. Elizabeth detested Madame Bouron, and loved Madame Dane. Emily detested Madame Bouron, and loved Madame Duncan. These were emotions, amply nourished, and easily understood. We were capable of going to great lengths to prove either our aversion or our love. But to give up chocolate custard for Reverend Mother was like suffering martyrdom for a creed we did not hold.
"It's because Reverend Mother is so fond of geography that we're going to have the competition," said Lilly. "Madame Duncan told me so."
"Why can't Reverend Mother, if she likes it so much, learn it for herself?" asked Tony sharply. "I'll lend her my atlas."
"Oh, she knows it all," said Lilly, rather scandalized. "Madame Duncan told me it was her favourite study, and that she knew the geography of the whole world."
"Then I don't see why she wants to hear us say it," observed Elizabeth, apparently under the impression that competitions, like gladiatorial shows, were gotten up solely for the amusement of an audience. It never occurred to her, nor indeed to any of us, to attach any educational value to the performance. We conceived that we were butchered to make a convent holiday.
"And it's because Reverend Mother is so fond of music that we are going to have an operetta instead of a play," went on Lilly, pleased to have information to impart.
I sighed heavily. How could anybody prefer anything to a play? I recognized an operetta as a form of diversion, and was grateful for it, as I should have been grateful for any entertainment, short of an organ recital. We were none of us surfeited with pleasures. But to me song was at best only an imperfect mode of speech; and the meaningless repetition of a phrase, which needed to be said but once, vexed my impatient spirit. We were already tolerably familiar with "The Miracle of the Roses." For two weeks past the strains had floated from every music room. We could hear, through the closed doors, Frances Fenton, who was to be St. Elizabeth of Hungary, quavering sweetly,--
"Unpretending and lowly, Like spirits pure and holy, I love the wild rose best, I love the wild rose best, I love the wi-i-ild rose best."
We could hear Ella Holrook announcing in her deep contralto,--
"'Tis the privilege of a Landgrave To go where glory waits him, Glory waits him;"
and the chorus trilling jubilantly,--
"Heaven has changed the bread to roses, Heaven has changed the bread to roses."
Why, I wondered, did they have to say everything two and three times over? Even when the Landgrave detects St. Elizabeth in the act of carrying the loaves to the poor, his anger finds a vent in iteration.
"Once again you've dared to brave my anger, Yes, once again you've dared to brave my anger; My power you scorn, My power you scorn."
To which the Saint replies gently, but tediously,--
"My lord they are, My lord they are But simple roses, But simple ro-o-oses, That I gathered in the garden even now."
"Suppose that bread hadn't been changed to roses," said Elizabeth speculatively, "I wonder what St. Elizabeth would have done."
"Oh, she knew it had been, because she prayed it would be," said Marie, who was something of a theologian.
"But suppose it hadn't."
"But it _had_, and she knew it had, because of her piety and faith," insisted Marie.
"I shouldn't have liked to risk it," murmured Elizabeth.
"_I_ think her husband was a pig," said Tony. "Going off to the Crusade, and making all that fuss about a few loaves of bread. If I'd been St. Elizabeth"--
She paused, determining her course of action, and Marie ruthlessly interposed. "If you're not a saint, you can't tell what you would do if you were a saint. You would be different."
There was no doubt that Tony as a saint would have to be so very different from the Tony whom we knew, that Marie's dogmatism prevailed. Even Elizabeth was silenced; and, in the pause that followed, Lilly had a chance to impart her third piece of information. "It's because Reverend Mother's name is Elizabeth," she said, "that we're going to have an operetta about St. Elizabeth; and Bessie Treves is to make the address."
"Thank Heaven, there is another Elizabeth in the school, or I might have to do it," cried our Elizabeth, who coveted no barren honours; and--even as she spoke--the blow fell. Madame Rayburn appeared at the schoolroom door, a folded paper in her hand. "Elizabeth," she said, and, with a hurried glance of apprehension, the saint's unhappy namesake withdrew. We looked at one another meaningly. "It's like giving thanks before you're sure of dinner," chuckled Tony.