Chapter XII: I Am Infamously Retaliated on

I remember once dining in Sorrento with the Marquis de P----, a most exclusive sybarite and dilettante. The table was spread with a flesh silk damask, whose very touch was a caress. Before each of the company--a small and appreciative one--was placed one iridescent Venetian goblet, and a bunch of lavender in a floss silk napkin--nothing else whatever. The room--vaulted into Moorish arabesques, and swimming with a slumberous half-penetrable light, in which the crusted gold of stalactites, high in the groining, alloyed and confused itself with the stain from purple windows--gave upon a dusky pillared court, where zithers and the plash of a fountain wedded in soft music, and the breath of orange blossoms made us a dim impalpable barrier against the world. The plates were served each ready charged, and each with a golden spoon only; for knives were not to be allowed to sever this dream of sensuous rumination. There was but a single wine--the Château Yquem, which is reserved for the nobility of its district, and which never goes beyond but in a few favoured directions. We talked but little and idly, with a mingling of delicious sighs and happy low laughter. Towards the end the zithers ceased; the remote fountain tinkled alone; and a girl, a ghost of loveliness, danced and wreathed herself without in a flood of moonlight. It was all perfect satisfaction without surfeit. Of such is the kingdom of heaven. And yet there are times when I wonder if my host has gone to join Lazarus or Dives. _Mon ami_, I am often full of such wonders; and then sometimes--when, perhaps, I have not kept the perfect proportion, and my head aches--I think I will end my days in a convent, and purify my wicked digestion on lentils and spring water. Only, where is the convent? I have seen some in my day, and in not one have they cultivated their little paradise on cabbages. I find myself standing aghast on that neutral ground between the world and the Church; and, alas! there are so many other nice people standing there to keep me company. With such, this desert itself becomes an Eden, and on either side I cannot escape from it but into another.

The Convent of Perpetual Invocation received me with open arms from my morose jailer. It conducted me, in the person of its Mother, to the sunny parlour, and there sleeked and patted me fondly.

“You dear,” she said. “I am so glad we have got you at last.”

Her coif looked as if she had slept in it, and her plump hands were by no means over clean. She was a stumpy, beaming little woman, moist with good living. Her skin worked so freely, and in such prosperous folds, it might have made a dyspeptic sigh with envy. I felt at home with her directly.

“There, dear,” she said, “you have brought us many good things in your time, but none so good as yourself; and now we take you in pledge of better.”

It may have been meant as a little sly spiritual reflection, but she smacked her ripe lips over it as if she already tasted in me, as madam’s direct protégée, a very plethora of venison and larded fowls. For many years, I believe, these good little women had been secretly looking forward to the term of my novitiate as their gastronomic millennium. I could laugh, I declare, with remorse to think how the dear pink little pigs were defrauded.

I had been delivered without directions, but with a surly intimation that madam would call on the morrow. It was not my business to enlighten anyone; and so I enjoyed the best of my present favour.

She trotted me out by and by to see her asparagus and strawberry beds, fat in promise, though tucked now and slumbering under their autumn blankets of manure; her hives; her mushroom pits; her stewpond thick with fat carps stuffed up to the neck and something her own shape; her pigeon cotes and rabbit hutches. There was an odd family likeness, a general assimilation to the neckless, apoplectic type amongst them all--Sisters, animals, and vegetables. Perpetual invocation, it was evident, had an obliterating effect on the individual. I shifted my own dimpled shoulders. How long would they be rounding to the contour of these squat little vessels? I thought with a certain terror of my admirable digestion, and determined as long as I remained here to live sparely. What if, like the wolf in the fable, I were to eat so many fat pancakes that I could not escape through the hole in the wall again!

That evening we had a refection of sweet bread and fruit and prayers, and a delightful supper (alas for my resolution!) and comfortable droning prayers again. Then we went each to her cosy cell, which was like a crib for a fat baby, and slept the round of the clock to prayers and breakfast. My fellow-sisters delighted me. I never saw such a community of bow-windows, the most comfortable little parlours one could imagine for the spirit to be entertained in. They had their scapulars made very large, and of flannel, so as to serve the double purpose of tokens and liver pads. At meals we were forbidden to talk--a most fattening proscription, or prescription. Prayer, at all seasons or out of them, was the single ordinance of the society--perpetual invocation on behalf of our unenlightened land. We were safe, perhaps, in not considering the logical result of its efficacy, or, indeed, the prospect of a second reformation might have frightened us into heresy. For, our point once gained, our occupation would be gone, and our creed of self-content be called upon to vindicate itself very likely in self-denial. However, England as yet was far from recanting its heresy of prosperity-worship. Our very fatness was the best argument in the world to it of our right to survive; so it showed no tendency to do other than keep us eternally praying for it.

Madam drove over on the day following my arrival, and was closeted for a considerable time with the Mother. I was not summoned to her presence, but I think she did not dare to vent her full heart of spleen upon me in her report. She could not very well, without compromising herself. She must have revealed, or intimated, however, so much as give the poor woman a hopelessly bewildered impression of my personal contribution to art. For the rest, I think she was satisfied with having scotched her terrible little snake, and did not doubt that, having done so, my own sense of final commitment to my calling would keep me immured out of harm’s way, and hers, to the end of time. It must have been with a feeling of guilty relief that she drove back to conclusions with her inamorato.

The Mother, having sent for me on her withdrawal, looked at me with the most cherubic doubt and dread, and pressed my hand quite speechless.

“Dear,” she whispered, all of a sudden, “so very _décolletée_! and think of the draughts!”

“Why more than the angels?” I said, pouting. “They don’t wear underclothes.”

“They are symbols,” she answered doubtfully. “Besides, we don’t know.”

“O, _ma mère_!” I cried. “What’s the good of being an angel, if one has to?”

“Hush!” she said. “Anyhow, they may take liberties denied to us. Besides, this young person was not an angel.”

“There you are wrong,” I cried. “She was an angel of purity.”

“Is that so?” she asked a little curiously. “Well, it makes a difference, of course. But it would have been more becoming of her to be painted by a woman. There is the respectable Madame Kauffmann, for instance, who, I am told, depicts religion and the virtues. But there, dear, we will say no more about it; only pray to the good Father, now the naughty little episode’s over, that we may be accepted meekly into His fold.”

I heard no more from Wellcot after this for a couple of days, and was beginning already to torment myself with qualms of jealousy of my sweet little vicegerent there, being at the last almost driven to break out and precipitate matters, when I was saved by a call from the darling herself. Our meeting, to which the Mother’s presence gave a conventual sanction, though fond and cordial, would have been barren of result had not my friend, with a finesse which delighted me, and the more because I had thought her incapable of it, rid us of our incumbrance.

“Good lud!” said she, after the first embrace, twinkling through her tears, “if I haven’t left my little basket of cream cheeses for the Sisters melting outside in the sun!”

The bait took instant. The Mother, with a little gentle reproof for her carelessness, waddled out with such a benevolent glare as though she had heard the last trump.

“Wait, dears, and I’ll be with you again!” said she.

The moment she was gone, Patty threw herself upon me.

“I hid it under some bushes,” she said, “just to keep her hunting, and where it wouldn’t melt really.”

Her second reason was characteristic enough. She could never offer the tiniest hurt from one hand without its remedy from the other. I foresaw she’d whip her children by and by with a strap of healing-plaister, the poor little weak creature.

“O, you _naughty_ little thing!” I giggled; but was serious the next moment, questioning and urging her.

“Quick!” I said. “What’s he going to do? Have you a letter?”

She shook her head.

“He’ll have a postchaise outside in a night or two, and will let you know; but for the moment he’s watched, and daren’t move, or commit himself to paper.”

“The hero! He’s still there, then, at Wellcot? If it had been me, I’d have had my servants flog him out of the house.”

“O, Diana! How can you say such a thing, and you in love with him!”

“Whom I love I chasten. I’m in love, like Mrs. Sophia, with myself through him. He’s going to make me great. Now, tell me what’s the state of things there.”

She shook her head rather piteously.

“I don’t know. It’s all very sad and lonely without you. I think she wants to forgive him; but he’s proud and angry, and holds aloof.”

I turned up my nose with a sniff.

“It’s nicer to be a healthy sinner. Her fulsomeness makes me sick. And how did you get leave to come and see me?”

“I didn’t get leave at all,” she said. “I daren’t even ask it, feeling sure she’d refuse. I slipped out without telling, hearing cook had something to send. I expect she’ll be very angry when she hears.”

“_If_ she hears,” I corrected her.

She looked at me with sad, puzzled eyes, the comical dear.

“How shall I ever bear with it all after you are gone, Diana?” she said. “You’ll let me come and stay with you sometimes, when you’re married?”

“Now, Patty,” I said, “tell me the truth. Is the creature still making eyes at you?”

“No,” she answered stoutly; then added, conscience-stricken, “At least, I don’t know. I never look at him. But--but--O, Diana! I wish he’d go altogether, and leave us, you and me, as we were.”

“That’s perhaps not a very kind wish, child,” said I. “But you shall come and stay with us when once I’ve got him under control, never fear.” Then, as I heard the step of the Mother returning, “Hush!” I whispered; “tell him I’ve no idea of being buried alive here: that he must arrange it very quickly, or I shall return and give everything away.”

She answered silently, with a hug and a gush of tears. She looked haggard and distraught, poor little wretch; yet I had no alternative but to use her.

I waited two days longer, in an anxiety that rose to distraction. Still no message came from him; and at last I made up my mind, and sent him an upbraiding letter by a misbegotten old beldame, with a leery eye, who helped in the convent laundry. She brought me back an answer--that he would be waiting for me, with a postchaise, in the lane without, at nine o’clock that very night. O, my friend! how dreadful is the first realisation of perfidy in those whom our inexperience trusts! This cursed Hecate was all the time in the pay of the authorities whom my innocence thought to hoodwink. When the time came, I wondered, indeed, to find Fortune so blind in my interest. So far seemed there from being the least suggestion of suspicion, of uneasiness abroad, chance appeared to invite me with open portals. What Sisters I encountered, even the Mother herself, manœuvred, I could have thought, to leave me my way unobstructed. Miserable parasites of power, subordinating their consciences to the lusts of their abominable little stomachs! To pamper those, they were lending themselves without scruple to a deed of unutterable darkness--the consigning of their innocent sister to a living death.

I found the chaise waiting in a dusk corner beneath trees. A cloaked and sombre figure, engaging me in the shadow, hurried me within, leapt after, slammed the door, and gave the word to proceed. In a moment we were tearing through the night.

So great was the flurry of my nerves, I had not, until the lamp at the convent gate flashed upon us and was gone, noticed that we were four in company. Then, all at once, I started. The man who sat beside me had removed his hat and was wiping his brow. Two thick-set, motionless figures sat facing me.

“Easy done, sir,” said one of these.

“Ha!” said my companion, “yes.”

In a sudden terror, I struggled to rise. He restrained me.

“Mr. de Crespigny!” I exclaimed.

“Ha!” said my companion again. “You hear that, Willing?”

“I hear,” responded the second of the others gruffly.

My companion turned to me suavely.

“Mr. de Crespigny?” he said. “Yes, and what about him, madam?”

“You are not he!” I cried wildly. “Let me out! He was to have met me!”

With a sort of tacit understanding, they all hemmed me in with their knees, imprisoning and controlling me at once.

“You make a mistake, madam,” said my captor. “He was not to have met you. But, be reconciled; time and judicious treatment, I have not the least doubt, will cure you of this delusion.”

In an instant the whole horror of this snare, of this most wicked scheme, opened like a black gulf before my eyes. The convent--to anticipate an analogy--had been my Elba; now my St. Helena was to be an asylum. She had discovered; or he, the dastard, had betrayed me; and, in the result, she had not hesitated, with the connivance of some sycophant doctor, to stoop to this.

It was night; the chaise drove on by back ways; I sunk back, sick and almost senseless, and abandoned myself to despair.