Part 9

"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.