Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

My mother and I breakfasted in bed, and then there was great commotion. It chiefly consisted for me in putting on my new clothes, including my furs, and then turning round and round on tiptoe and smiling at myself in a mirror. I was doing this while my mother was telling me to write to her as often as I was allowed, and while she knelt at her prayer stool, which she used as a desk, to make a copy of the address for my letters.

Then I noticed that the first line of her superscription "Mrs. Daniel O'Neill" was blurred by the tears that were dropping from her eyes, and my throat began to hurt me dreadfully. But I remembered what Father Dan had told me to do, so I said:

"Never mind, mammy. Don't worry--I'll be home for the holidays."

Soon afterwards we heard the carriage wheels passing under the window, and then Father Dan came up in a white knitted muffler, and with a funny bag which he used for his surplice at funerals, and said, through a little cloud of white breath, that everything was ready.

I saw that my mother was turning round and taking out her pocket-handkerchief, and I was snuffling a little myself, but at a sign from Father Dan, who was standing at the threshold. I squeezed back the water in my eyes and cried:

"Good-bye mammy. I'll be back for Christmas," and then darted across to the door.

I was just passing through it when I heard my mother say "Mary" in a strange low voice, and I turned and saw her--I can see her still--with her beautiful pale face all broken up, and her arms held out to me.

Then I rushed back to her, and she clasped me to her breast crying, "Mally veen! My Mally veen!" and I could feel her heart beating through her dress and hear the husky rattle in her throat, and then all our poor little game of make-believe broke down utterly.

At the next moment my father was calling upstairs that I should be late for the steamer, so my mother dried her own eyes and then mine, and let me go.

Father Dan was gone when I reached the head of the stairs but seeing Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty at the bottom of them I soon recovered my composure, and sailing down in my finery I passed them in stately silence with my little bird-like head in the air.

I intended to do the same with Aunt Bridget, who was standing with a shawl over her shoulders by the open door, but she touched me and said:

"Aren't you going to kiss me good-bye, then?"

"No," I answered, drawing my little body to its utmost height.

"And why not?"

"Because you've been unkind to mamma and cruel to me, and because you think there's nobody but Betsy Beauty. And I'll tell them at the Convent that you are making mamma ill, and you're as bad as . . . as bad as the bad women in the Bible!"

"My gracious!" said Aunt Bridget, and she tried to laugh, but I could see that her face became as white as a whitewashed wall. This did not trouble me in the least until I reached the carriage, when Father Dan, who was sitting inside, said:

"My little Mary won't leave home like that--without kissing her aunt and saying good-bye to her cousins."

So I returned and shook hands with Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty, and lifted my little face to my Aunt Bridget.

"That's better," she said, after she had kissed me, but when I had passed her my quick little ear caught the words:

"Good thing she's going, though."

During this time my father, with the morning mist playing like hoar-frost about his iron-grey hair, had been tramping the gravel and saying the horses were getting cold, so without more ado he bundled me into the carriage and banged the door on me.

But hardly had we started when Father Dan, who was blinking his little eyes and pretending to blow his nose on his coloured print handkerchief, said, "Look!" and pointed up to my mother's room.

There she was again, waving and kissing her hand to me through her open window, and she continued to do so until we swirled round some trees and I lost the sight of her.

What happened in my mother's room when her window was closed I do not know, but I well remember that, creeping into a corner of the carriage. I forgot all about the glory and grandeur of going away, and that it did not help me to remember when half way down the drive a boy with a dog darted from under the chestnuts and raced alongside of us.

It was Martin, and though his right arm was in a sling, he leapt up to the step and held on to the open window by his left hand while he pushed his head into the carriage and made signs to me to take out of his mouth a big red apple which he held in his teeth by the stalk. I took it, and then he dropped to the ground, without uttering a word, and I could laugh now to think of the gruesome expression of his face with its lagging lower lip and bloodshot eyes. I had no temptation to do so then, however, and least of all when I looked back and saw his little one-armed figure in the big mushroom hat, standing on the top of the high wall of the bridge, with William Rufus beside him.

We reached Blackwater in good tithe for the boat, and when the funnels had ceased trumpeting and we were well away, I saw that we were sitting in one of two private cabins on the upper deck; and then Father Dan told me that the other was occupied by the young Lord Raa, and his guardian, and that they were going up together for the first time to Oxford.

I am sure this did not interest me in the least at that moment, so false is it that fate forewarns us when momentous events are about to occur. And now that I had time to think, a dreadful truth was beginning to dawn on me, so that when Father Dan, who was much excited, went off to pay his respects to the great people, I crudled up in the corner of the cabin that was nearest to the door and told myself that after all I had been turned out of my father's house, and would never see my mother and Martin any more.

I was sitting so, with my hands in my big muff and my face to the stern, making the tiniest occasional sniff as the mountains of my home faded away in the sunlight, which was now tipping the hilltops with a feathery crest, when my cabin was darkened by somebody who stood in the doorway.

It was a tail boy, almost a man, and I knew in a moment who he was. He was the young Lord Raa. And at first I thought how handsome and well dressed he was as he looked down at me and smiled. After a moment he stepped into the cabin and sat in front of me and said:

"So you are little Mary O'Neill, are you?"

I did not speak. I was thinking he was not so very handsome after all, having two big front teeth like Betsy Beauty.

"The girl who ought to have been a boy and put my nose out, eh?"

Still I did not speak. I was thinking his voice was like Nessy MacLeod's--shrill and harsh and grating.

"Poor little mite! Going all the way to Rome to a Convent, isn't she?"

Even yet I did not speak. I was thinking his eyes were like Aunt Bridget's--cold and grey and piercing.

"So silent and demure, though! Quite a little nun already. A deuced pretty one, too, if anybody asks me."

I was beginning to have a great contempt for him.

"Where did you get those big angel eyes from? Stole them from some picture of the Madonna, I'll swear."

By this time I had concluded that he was not worth speaking to, so I turned my head and I was looking back at the sea, when I heard him say:

"I suppose you are going to give me a kiss, you nice little woman, aren't you?"

"No."

"Oh, but you must--we are relations, you know."

"I won't."

He laughed at that, and rising from his seat, he reached over to kiss me, whereupon I drew one of my hands out of my muff and doubling my little mittened fist, I struck him in the face.

Being, as I afterwards learned, a young autocrat, much indulged by servants and generally tyrannising over them, he was surprised and angry.

"The spitfire!" he said. "Who would have believed it? The face of a nun and the temper of a devil! But you'll have to make amends for this, my lady."

With that he went away and I saw no more of him until the steamer was drawing up at the landing stage at Liverpool, and then, while the passengers were gathering up their luggage, he came back with Father Dan, and the tall sallow man who was his guardian, and said:

"Going to give me that kiss to make amends, or are you to owe me a grudge for the rest of your life, my lady?"

"My little Mary couldn't owe a grudge to anybody," said Father Dan. "She'll kiss his lordship and make amends; I'm certain."

And then I did to the young Lord Raa what I had done to Aunt Bridget--I held up my face and he kissed me.

It was a little, simple, trivial incident, but it led with other things to the most lamentable fact of my life, and when I think of it I sometimes wonder how it comes to pass that He who numbers the flowers of the field and counts the sparrows as they fall has no handwriting with which to warn His children that their footsteps may not fail.

TWELFTH CHAPTER

Of our journey to Rome nothing remains to me but the memory of sleeping in different beds in different towns, of trains screaming through tunnels and slowing down in glass-roofed railway stations, of endless crowds of people moving here and there in a sort of maze, nothing but this, and the sense of being very little and very helpless and of having to be careful not to lose sight of Father Dan, for fear of being lost--until the afternoon of the fourth day after we left home.

We were then crossing a wide rolling plain that was almost destitute of trees, and looked, from the moving train, like green billows of the sea with grass growing over them. Father Dan was reading his breviary for the following day, not knowing what he would have to do in it, when the sun set in a great blaze of red beyond the horizon, and then suddenly a big round black ball, like a captive balloon, seemed to rise in the midst of the glory.

I called Father Dan's attention to this, and in a moment he was fearfully excited.

"Don't worry, my child," he cried, while tears of joy sprang to his eyes. "Do you know what that is? That's the dome of St. Peter's! Rome, my child, Rome!"

It was nine o'clock when we arrived at our destination, and in the midst of a great confusion I walked by Father Dan's side and held on to his vertical pocket, while he carried his own bag, and a basket of mine, down the crowded platform to an open cab outside the station.

Then Father Dan wiped his forehead with his print handkerchief and I sat close up to him, and the driver cracked his long whip and shouted at the pedestrians while we rattled on and on over stony streets, which seemed to be full of statues and fountains that were lit up by a great white light that was not moonlight and yet looked like it.

But at last we stopped at a little door of a big house which seemed to stand, with a church beside it, on a high shelf overlooking the city, for I could see many domes like that of St. Peter lying below us.

A grill in the little door was first opened and then a lady in a black habit, with a black band round her forehead and white bands down each side of her face, opened the door itself, and asked us to step in, and when we had done so, she took us down a long passage into a warm room, where another lady, dressed in the same way, only a little grander, sat in a big red arm-chair.

Father Dan, who was still wearing his knitted muffler, bowed very low to this lady, calling her the Reverend Mother Magdalene, and she answered him in English but with a funny sound which I afterwards knew to be a foreign accent.

I remember that I thought she was very beautiful, nearly as beautiful as my mother, and when Father Dan told me to kiss her hand I did so, and then she put me to sit in a chair and looked at me.

"What is her age?" she asked, whereupon Father Dan said he thought I would be eight that month, which was right, being October.

"Small, isn't she?" said the lady, and then Father Dan said something about poor mamma which I cannot remember.

After that they talked about other things, and I looked at the pictures on the walls--pictures of Saints and Popes and, above all, a picture of Jesus with His heart open in His bosom.

"The child will be hungry," said the lady. "She must have something to eat before she goes to bed--the other children have gone already."

Then she rang a hand-bell, and when the first lady came back she said:

"Ask Sister Angela to come to me immediately."

A few minutes later Sister Angela came into the room, and she was quite young, almost a girl, with such a sweet sad face that I loved her instantly.

"This is little Mary O'Neill. Take her to the Refectory and give her whatever she wants, and don't leave her until she is quiet and comfortable."

"Very well, Mother," said Sister Angela, and taking my hand she whispered: "Come, Mary, you look tired."

I rose to go with her, but at the same moment Father Dan rose too, and I heard him say he must lose no time in finding an hotel, for his Bishop had given him only one day to remain in Rome, and he had to catch an early train home the following morning.

This fell on me like a thunderbolt. I hardly know what I had led myself to expect, but certainly the idea of being left alone in Rome had never once occurred to me.

My little heart was fluttering, and dropping the Sister's hand I stepped back and took Father Dan's and said:

"You are not going to leave your little Mary are you, Father?"

It was harder for the dear Father than for me, for I remember that, fearfully flurried, he stammered in a thick voice something about the Reverend Mother taking good care of me, and how he was sure to come back at Christmas, according to my father's faithful promise, to take me home for the holidays.

After that Sister Angela led me, sniffing a little still, to the Refectory, which was a large, echoing room, with rows of plain deal tables and forms, ranged in front of a reading desk that had another and much larger picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall above it. Only one gasjet was burning, and I sat under it to eat my supper, and after I had taken a basin of soup I felt more comforted.

Then Sister Angela lit a lamp and taking my hand she led me up a stone staircase to the Dormitory, which was a similar room, but not so silent, because it was full of beds, and the breathing of the girls, who were all asleep, made it sound like the watchmaker's shop in our village, only more church-like and solemn.

My bed was near to the door, and after Sister Angela had helped me to undress, and tucked me in, she made her voice very low, and said I would be quite comfortable now, and she was sure I was going to be a good little girl and a dear child of the Infant Jesus; and then I could not help taking my arms out again and clasping her round the neck and drawing her head down and kissing her.

After that she took the lamp and went away to a cubicle which was partitioned off the end of the Dormitory and there I could see her prepare to go to bed herself--taking the white bands off her cheeks and the black band off her forehead, and letting her long light hair fall in beautiful wavy masses about her face, which made her look so sweet and home like.

But oh, I was so lonely! Never in my life since--no, not even when I was in my lowest depths--have I felt so little and helpless and alone. After the Sister had gone to bed and everything was quiet in the Dormitory save for the breathing of the girls--all strangers to me and I to them--from mere loneliness I covered up my head in the clothes just as I used to do when I was a little thing and my father came into my mother's room.

I try not to think bitterly of my father, but even yet I am at a loss to know how he could have cast me away so lightly. Was it merely that he wanted peace for his business and saw no chance of securing it in his own home except by removing the chief cause of Aunt Bridget's jealousy? Or was it that his old grudge against Fate for making me a girl made him wish to rid himself of the sight of me?

I do not know. I cannot say. But in either case I try in vain to see how he could have thought he had a right, caring nothing for me, to tear me from the mother who loved me and had paid for me so dear; or how he could have believed that because he was my father, charged with the care of my poor little body, he had control over the little bleeding heart which was not his to make to suffer.

He is my father--God help me to think the best of him.

THIRTEENTH CHAPTER

At half past six in the morning I was awakened by the loud ringing of the getting-up bell, and as soon as I could rouse myself from the deep sleep of childhood I saw that a middle-aged nun with a severe face was saying a prayer, and that all the girls in the dormitory were kneeling in their beds while they made the responses.

A few minutes later, when the girls were chattering and laughing as they dressed, making the room tingle with twittering sounds like a tree full of linnets in the spring, a big girl came up to me and said:

"I am Mildred Bankes and Sister Angela says I am to look after you to-day."

She was about fifteen years of age, and had a long plain-featured face which reminded me of one of my father's horses that was badly used by the farm boys; but there was something sweet in her smile that made me like her instantly.

She helped me to dress in my brown velvet frock, but said that one of her first duties would be to take me to the lay sisters who made the black habits which all the girls in the convent wore.

It was still so early that the darkness of the room was just broken by pale shafts of light from the windows, but I could see that the children of my own age were only seven or eight altogether, while the majority of the girls were several years older, and Mildred explained this by telling me that the children of the Infant Jesus, like myself, were so few that they had been put into the dormitory of the children of the Sacred Heart.

In a quarter of an hour everybody was washed and dressed, and then, at a word from Sister Angela, the girls went leaping and laughing downstairs to the Meeting Room, which was a large hail, with a platform at the farther end of it and another picture of the Sacred Heart, pierced with sharp thorns, on the wall.

The Reverend Mother was there with the other nuns of the Convent, all pale-faced and slow eyed women wearing rosaries, and she said a long prayer, to which the scholars (there were seventy or eighty altogether) made responses, and then there was silence for five minutes, which were supposed to be devoted to meditation, although I could not help seeing that some of the big girls were whispering to each other while their heads were down.

After that, and Mass in the Church, we went scurrying away to the Refectory, which was now warm with the steam from our breakfast and bubbling with cheerful voices, making a noise that was like water boiling in a saucepan.

I was so absorbed by all I saw that I forgot to eat until Mildred nudged me to do so, and even when my spoon was half way to my mouth something happened which brought it down again.

At the tinkle of a hand-bell one of the big girls had stepped up to the reading-desk and begun to read from a book which I afterwards knew to be "The Imitation of Christ." She was about sixteen years of age, and her face was so vivid that I could not take my eyes off it.

Her complexion was fair and her hair was auburn, but her eyes were so dark and searching that when she raised her head, as she often did, they seemed to look through and through you.

"Who is she?" I whispered.

"Alma Lier," Mildred whispered back, and when breakfast was over, and we were trooping off to lessons, she told me something about her.

Alma was an American. Her father was very rich and his home was in New York. But her mother lived in Paris, though she was staying at an hotel in Rome at present, and sometimes she came in a carriage to take her daughter for a drive.

Alma was the cleverest girl in the school too, and sometimes at the end of terms, when parents and friends came to the Convent and one of the Cardinals distributed the prizes, she had so many books to take away that she could hardly carry them down from the platform.

I listened to this with admiring awe, thinking Alma the most wonderful and worshipful of all creatures, and when I remember it now, after all these years, and the bitter experiences which have come with them, I hardly know whether to laugh or cry at the thought that such was the impression she first made on me.

My class was with the youngest of the children, and Sister Angela was my teacher. She was so sweet to me that her encouragement was like a kiss and her reproof like a caress; but I could think of nothing but Alma, and at noon, when the bell rang for lunch and Mildred took me back to the Refectory, I wondered if the same girl would read again.

She did, but this time in a foreign language, French as Mildred whispered--from the letters of the Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque--and my admiration for Alma went up tenfold. I wondered if it could possibly occur that I should ever come to know her.

There is no worship like that of a child, and life for me, which had seemed so cold and dark the day before, became warm and bright with a new splendour.

I was impatient of everything that took me away from the opportunity of meeting with Alma--the visit to the lay-sisters to be measured for my new black clothes, the three o'clock "rosary," when the nuns walked with their classes in the sunshine and, above all, the voluntary visit to the Blessed Sacrament in the Church of the Convent, which seemed to me large and gorgeous, though divided across the middle by an open bronze screen, called a Cancello--the inner half, as Mildred whispered, being for the inmates of the school, while the outer half was for the congregation which came on Sunday to Benediction.

But at four o'clock we had dinner, when Alma read again--this time in Italian--from the writings of Saint Francis of Sales--and then, to my infinite delight, came a long recreation, when all the girls scampered out into the Convent garden, which was still bright with afternoon sunshine and as merry with laughter and shouts as the seashore on a windy summer morning.

The garden was a large bare enclosure, bounded on two sides by the convent buildings and on the other two by a yellow wall and an avenue made by a line of stone pines with heads like open umbrellas, but it had no other foliage except an old tree which reminded me of Tommy the Mate, having gnarled and sprawling limbs, and standing like a weather-beaten old sailor, four-square in the middle.

A number of the girls were singing and dancing around this tree, and I felt so happy just then that I should have loved to join them, but I was consumed by a desire to come to close quarters with the object of my devotion, so I looked eagerly about me and asked Mildred if Alma was likely to be there.

"Sure to be," said Mildred, and hardly were the words out of her mouth when Alma herself came straight down in our direction, surrounded by a group of admiring girls, who were hanging on to her and laughing at everything she said.

My heart began to thump, and without knowing what I was doing I stopped dead short, while Mildred went on a pace or two ahead of me.

Then I noticed that Alma had stopped too, and that her great searching eyes were looking down at me. In my nervousness, I tried to smile, but Alma continued to stare, and at length, in the tone of one who had accidentally turned up something with her toe that was little and ridiculous, she said:

"Goodness, girls, what's this?"

Then she burst into a fit of laughter, in which the other girls joined, and looking me up and down they all laughed together.

I knew what they were laughing at--the clothes my mother had made for me and I had felt so proud of. That burnt me like iron, and I think my lip must have dropped, but Alma showed no mercy.

"Dare say the little doll thinks herself pretty, though," she said. And then she passed on, and the girls with her, and as they went off they looked back over their shoulders and laughed again.

Never since has any human creature--not even Alma herself--made me suffer more than I suffered at that moment. My throat felt tight, tears leapt to my eyes, disappointment, humiliation, and shame swept over me like a flood, and I stood squeezing my little handkerchief in my hand and feeling as if I could have died.

At the next moment Mildred stepped back to me, and putting her arm about my waist she said:

"Never mind, Mary. She's a heartless thing. Don't have anything to do with her."

But all the sunshine had gone out of the day for me now and I cried for hours. I was still crying, silently but bitterly, when, at eight o'clock, we were saying the night prayers, and I saw Alma, who was in the opposite benches, whispering to one of the girls who sat next to her and then looking straight across at me.

And at nine o'clock when we went to bed I was crying more than ever, so that after the good-night-bell had been rung and the lights had been put down, Sister Angela, not knowing the cause of my sorrow, stepped up to my bed before going down stairs for her own studies, and whispered:

"You mustn't fret for home, Mary. You will soon get used to it."

But hardly had I been left alone, with the dull pain I could find no ease for, when somebody touched me on the shoulder, and, looking up, I saw a girl in her nightdress standing beside me. It was Alma and she said:

"Say, little girl, is your name O'Neill?"

Trembling with nervousness I answered that it was.

"Do you belong to the O'Neills of Ellan?"

Still trembling I told her that I did.

"My!" she said in quite another tone, and then I saw that by some means I had begun to look different in her eyes.

After a moment she sat on the side of my bed and asked questions about my home--if it was not large and very old, with big stone staircases, and great open fireplaces, and broad terraces, and beautiful walks going down to the sea.

I was so filled with the joy of finding myself looking grand in Alma's eyes that I answered "yes" and "yes" without thinking too closely about her questions, and my tears were all brushed away when she said:

"I knew somebody who lived in your house once, and I'll tell her all about you."

She stayed a few moments longer, and when going off she whispered:

"Hope you don't feel badly about my laughing in the garden to-day. I didn't mean a thing. But if any of the girls laugh again just say you're Alma Lier's friend and she's going to take care of you."

I could hardly believe my ears. Some great new splendour had suddenly dawned upon me and I was very happy.

I did not know then that the house which Alma had been talking of was not my father's house, but Castle Raa. I did not know then that the person who had lived there was her mother, and that in her comely and reckless youth she had been something to the bad Lord Raa who had lashed my father and sworn at my grandmother.

I did not know anything that was dead and buried in the past, or shrouded and veiled in the future. I only knew that Alma had called herself my friend and promised to take care of me. So with a glad heart I went to sleep.

FOURTEENTH CHAPTER

Alma kept her word, though perhaps her method of protection was such as would have commended itself only to the heart of a child.

It consisted in calling me Margaret Mary after our patron saint of the Sacred Heart, in taking me round the garden during recreation as if I had been a pet poodle, and, above all, in making my bed the scene of the conversaziones which some of the girls held at night when they were supposed to be asleep.

The secrecy of these gatherings flattered me, and when the unclouded moon, in the depths of the deep blue Italian sky, looked in on my group of girls in their nightdresses, bunched together on my bed, with my own little body between, I had a feeling of dignity as well as solemnity and awe.

Of course Alma was the chief spokeswoman at these whispered conferences. Sometimes she told us of her drives into the Borghese Gardens, where she saw the King and Queen, or to the Hunt on the Campagna, where she met the flower of the aristocracy, or to the Pincio, where the Municipal band played in the pavilion, while ladies sat in their carriages in the sunshine, and officers in blue cloaks saluted them and smiled.

Sometimes she indicated her intentions for the future, which was certainly not to be devoted to retreats and novenas, or to witness another black dress as long as she lived, and if she married (which was uncertain) it was not to be to an American, but to a Frenchman, because Frenchmen had "family" and "blood," or perhaps to an Englishman, if he was a member of the House of Lords, in which case she would attend all the race-meetings and Coronations, and take tea at the Carlton, where she would eat _méringues glacés_ every day and have as many _éclairs_ as she liked.

And sometimes she would tell us the stories of the novels which she bribed one of the washing-women to smuggle into the convent--stories of ladies and their lovers, and of intoxicating dreams of kissing and fondling, at which the bigger girls, with far-off suggestions of sexual mysteries still unexplored, would laugh and shudder, and then Alma would say:

"But hush, girls! Margaret Mary will be shocked."

Occasionally these conferences would be interrupted by Mildred's voice from the other end of the dormitory, where she would raise her head from her pillow and say:

"Alma Lier, you ought to be ashamed of yourself--keeping that child up when she ought to be asleep, instead of listening to your wicked stories."

"Helloa, Mother Mildred, is that you?" Alma would answer, and then the girls would laugh, and Mildred was supposed to be covered with confusion.

One night Sister Angela's footsteps were heard on the stairs, and then the girls flew back to their beds, where, with the furtive instinct of their age and sex, they pretended to be sleeping soundly when the Sister entered the room. But the Sister was not deceived, and walking up the aisle between the beds she said in an angry tone:

"Alma Lier, if this ever occurs again I'll step down to the Reverend Mother and tell her all about you."

Little as I was, I saw that between Alma and Sister Angela there was a secret feud, which must soon break into open rupture, but for my own part I was entirely happy, being still proud of Alma's protection and only feeling any misgivings when Mildred's melancholy eyes were looking at me.

Thus week followed week until we were close upon Christmas, and the girls, who were to be permitted to go home before the Feast, began to count the days to the holidays. I counted them too, and when anybody talked of her brother I thought of Martin Conrad, though his faithful little figure was fading away from me, and when anybody spoke of her parents I remembered my mother, for whom my affection never failed.

But, within a week from the time for breaking up, the Reverend Mother sent for me, and with a sinking heart I went to her room, knowing well what she was going to say.

"You are not to go home for the holidays this time, my child. You are to remain here, and Sister Angela is to stay to take care of you."

She had a letter from Father Dan, telling her that my mother was still unwell, and for this and other reasons it was considered best that I should not return at Christmas.

Father Dan had written a letter to me also, beginning, "My dear daughter in Jesus" and ending "Yours in Xt," saying it was not his fault that he could not fulfil his promise, but my father was much from home now-a-days and Aunt Bridget was more difficult than ever, so perhaps I should be happier at the Convent.

It was a bitter blow, though the bitterest part of it lay in the fear that the girls would think I was of so little importance to my people that they did not care to see me.

But the girls were too eager about their own concerns to care much about me, and even on the very last day and at the very last moment, when everything was bustle and joy, and boxes were being carried downstairs, and everybody was kissing everybody else and wishing each other a Happy Christmas, and then flying away like mad things, and I alone was being left, Alma herself, before she stepped into a carriage in which a stout lady wearing furs was waiting to receive her, only said:

"By-by, Margaret Mary! Take care of Sister Angela."

Next day the Reverend Mother went off to her cottage at Nemi, and the other nuns and novices to their friends in the country, and then Sister Angela and I were alone in the big empty, echoing convent--save for two elderly lay Sisters, who cooked and cleaned for us, and the Chaplain, who lived by himself in a little white hut like a cell which stood at the farthest corner of the garden.

We moved our quarters to a room in the front of the house, so as to look out over the city, and down into the piazza which was full of traffic, and after a while we had many cheerful hours together.

During the days before Christmas we spent our mornings in visiting the churches and basilicas where there were little illuminated models of the Nativity, with the Virgin and the Infant Jesus in the stable among the straw. The afternoons we spent at home in the garden, where the Chaplain, in his black soutane and biretta, was always sitting under the old tree, reading his breviary.

His name was Father Giovanni and he was a tall young man with a long, thin, pale face, and when Sister Angela first took me up to him she said:

"This is our Margaret Mary."

Then his sad face broke into warm sunshine, and he stroked my head, and sent me away to skip with my skipping-rope, while he and Sister Angela sat together under the tree, and afterwards walked to and fro in the avenue between the stone pines and the wall, until they came to his cell in the corner, where she craned her neck at the open door as if she would have liked to go in and make things more tidy and comfortable.

On Christmas Day we had currant cake in honour of the feast, and Sister Angela asked Father Giovanni to come to tea, and he came, and was quite cheerful, so that when the Sister, who was also very happy, signalled to me to take some mistletoe from the bottom of a picture I held it over his head and kissed him from behind. Then he snatched me up in his arms and kissed me back, and we had a great romp round the chairs and tables.

But the Ave Maria began to ring from the churches, and Father Giovanni (according to the rule of our Convent) having to go, he kissed me again, and then I said:

"Why don't you kiss Sister Angela too?"

At that they only looked at each other and laughed, but after a moment he kissed her hand, and then she went downstairs to see him out into the garden.

When she came back her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were flushed, and, that night, when she took away her black and white whimple and gorget on going to bed, she stood before a looking-glass and wound her beautiful light hair round her finger and curled it over her forehead in the way it was worn by the ladies we saw in the streets.

I think it was two nights later that she told me I was to go to bed early because Father Giovanni was not well and she would have to go over to see him.

She went, and I got into bed, but I could not sleep, and while I lay waiting for Sister Angela I listened to some men who as they crossed the piazza were singing, in tremulous voices, to their mandolines and guitars, what I believed to be love songs, for I had begun to learn Italian.

"_Oh bella Napoli. Oh suol beato
Onde soiridere volta il creato_."

It was late when Sister Angela came back and then she was breathing hard as if she had been running. I asked if Father Giovanni's sickness was worse, and she said no, it was better, and I was to say nothing about it. But she could not rest and at last she said:

"Didn't we forget to say our prayers, Mary?"

So I got up again and Sister Angela said one of the beautiful prayers out of our prayer-book. But her voice was very low and when she came to the words:

"O Father of all mankind, forgive all sinners who repent of their sins," she broke down altogether.

I thought she was ill, but she said it was only a cold she had caught in crossing the garden and I was to go to sleep like a good girl and think no more about her.

But in the middle of the night I awoke, and Sister Angela was crying.

FIFTEENTH CHAPTER

Most of the girls were depressed when they returned to school, but Alma was in high spirits, and on the first night of the term she crept over to my bed and asked what we had been doing during the holidays.

"Not a thing, eh?"

I answered that we had done lots of things and been very happy.

"Happy? In this gloomy old convent? You and Sister Angela alone?"

I told her we had two lay sisters-and then there was Father Giovanni.

"Father Giovanni? That serious old cross-bones?"

I said he was not always serious, and that on Christmas Day he had come to tea and kissed me under the mistletoe.

"Kissed you under the mistletoe!" said Alma, and then she whispered eagerly,

"He didn't kiss Sister Angela, did he?"

I suppose I was flattered by her interest, and this loosened my tongue, for I answered:

"He kissed her hand, though."

"Kissed her hand? My! . . . Of course she was very angry . . . wasn't she angry?"

I answered no, and in my simplicity I proceeded to prove this by explaining that Sister Angela had taken Father Giovanni down to the door, and when he was ill she had nursed him.

"Nursed him? In his own house, you mean?"

"Yes, at night, too, and she stayed until he was better, and caught a cold coming back."

"Well, I never!" said Alma, and I remember that I was very pleased with myself during this interview, for by the moonlight which was then shining into the room, I could see that Alma's eyes were sparkling.

The next night we recommenced our conferences in bed, when Alma told us all about her holiday, which she had spent "way up in St. Moritz," among deep snow and thick ice, skating, bobbing, lugging, and above all riding astride, and dragging a man on skis behind her.

"Such lots of fun," she said. And the best of it was at night when there were dances and fancy-dress balls with company which included all the smart people in Europe, and men who gave a girl such a good time if she happened to be pretty and was likely to have a dot.

Alma had talked so eagerly and the girls had listened so intently, that nobody was aware that Sister Angela had returned to the room until she stepped forward and said:

"Alma Lier, I'm ashamed of you. Go back to your bed, miss, this very minute."

The other girls crept away and I half covered my face with my bed-clothes, but Alma stood up to Sister Angela and answered her back.

"Go to bed yourself, and don't speak to me like that, or you'll pay for your presumption."

"Pay? Presumption? You insolent thing, you are corrupting the whole school and are an utter disgrace to it. I warned you that I would tell the Reverend Mother what you are and now I've a great mind to do it."

"Do it. I dare you to do it. Do it to-night, and to-morrow morning _I_ will do something."

"What will you do, you brazen hussy?" said Sister Angela, but I could see that her lip was trembling.

"Never mind what. If I'm a hussy I'm not a hypocrite, and as for corrupting the school, and being a disgrace to it, I'll leave the Reverend Mother to say who is doing that."

Low as the light was I could see that Sister Angela was deadly pale. There was a moment of silence in which I thought she glanced in my direction, and then stammering something which I did not hear, she left the dormitory.

It was long before she returned and when she did so I saw her creep into her cubicle and sit there for quite a great time before going to bed. My heart was thumping hard, for I had a vague feeling that I had been partly to blame for what had occurred, but after a while I fell asleep and remembered no more until I was awakened in the middle of the night by somebody kissing me in my sleep.

It was Sister Angela, and she was turning away, but I called her back, and she knelt by my bed and whispered:

"Hush! I know what has happened, but I don't blame you for it."

I noticed that she was wearing her out-door cloak, and that she was breathing rapidly, just as she did on the night she came from the chaplain's quarters, and when I asked if she was going anywhere she said yes, and if I ever heard anything against Sister Angela I was to think the best of her.

"But you are so good. . . ."

"No, I am not good. I am very wicked. I should never have thought of being a nun, but I'm glad now that I'm only a novice and have never taken the vows."

After that she told me to go to sleep, and then she kissed me again, and I thought she was going to cry, but she rose hurriedly and left the room.

Next morning after the getting-up bell had been rung, and I had roused myself to full consciousness, I found that four or five nuns were standing together near the door of the dormitory talking about something that had happened during the night--Sister Angela had gone!

Half an hour afterwards when full of this exciting event, the girls went bursting down to the Meeting Room they found the nuns in great agitation over an incident of still deeper gravity--Father Giovanni also had disappeared!

A convent school is like a shell on the shore of a creek, always rumbling with the rumour of the little sea it lives under; and by noon the girls, who had been palpitating with curiosity, thought they knew everything that had happened--how at four in the morning Father Giovanni and Sister Angela had been seen to come out of the little door which connected the garden with the street; how at seven they had entered a clothing emporium in the Corso, where going in at one door as priest and nun they had come out at another as ordinary civilians; how at eight they had taken the first train to Civita Vecchia, arriving in time to catch a steamer sailing at ten, and how they were now on their way to England.

By some mysterious instinct of their sex the girls had gathered with glistening eyes in front of the chaplain's deserted quarters, where Alma leaned against the wall with her insteps crossed and while the others talked she smiled, as much as to say, "I told you so."

As for me I was utterly wretched, and being now quite certain that I was the sole cause of Sister Angela's misfortune, I was sitting under the tree in the middle of the garden, when Alma, surrounded by her usual group of girls, came down on me.

"What's this?" she said. "Margaret Mary crying? Feeling badly for Sister Angela, is she? Why, you little silly, you needn't cry for her. She's having the time of her life, she is!"

At this the girls laughed and shuddered, as they used to do when Alma told them stories, but just at that moment the nun with the stern face (she was the Mother of the Novices) came up and said, solemnly:

"Alma Lier, the Reverend Mother wishes to speak to you."

"To me?" said Alma, in a tone of surprise, but at the next moment she went off jauntily.

Hours passed and Alma did not return, and nothing occurred until afternoon "rosary," when the Mother of the Novices came again and taking me by the hand said:

"Come with me, my child."

I knew quite well where we were going to, and my lip was trembling when we entered the Reverend Mother's room, for Alma was there, sitting by the stove, and close beside her, with an angry look, was the stout lady in furs whom I had seen in the carriage at the beginning of the holidays.

"Don't be afraid," said the Reverend Mother, and drawing me to her side she asked me to tell her what I had told Alma about Sister Angela.

I repeated our conversation as nearly as I could remember it, and more than once Alma nodded her head as if in assent, but the Reverend Mother's face grew darker at every word and, seeing this, I said:

"But if Sister Angela did anything wrong I'm sure she was very sorry, for when she came back she said her prayers, and when she got to 'Father of all mankind, forgive all sinners . . .'"

"Yes, yes, that will do," said the Reverend Mother, and then she handed me back to the Mother of the Novices, telling her to warn me to say nothing to the other children.

Alma did not return to us at dinner, or at recreation, or at chapel (when another chaplain said vespers), or even at nine o'clock, when we went to bed. But next morning, almost as soon as the Mother of the Novices had left the dormitory, she burst into the room saying:

"I'm leaving this silly old convent, girls. Mother has brought the carriage, and I've only come to gather up my belongings."

Nobody spoke, and while she wrapped up her brushes and combs in her nightdress, she joked about Sister Angela and Father Giovanni and then about Mildred Bankes, whom she called "Reverend Mother Mildred," saying it would be her turn next.

Then she tipped up her mattress, and taking a novel from under it she threw the book on to my bed, saying:

"Margaret Mary will have to be your story-teller now. By-by, girls!"

Nobody laughed. For the first time Alma's humour had failed her, and when we went downstairs to the Meeting Room it was with sedate and quiet steps.

The nuns were all there, with their rosaries and crosses, looking as calm as if nothing had occurred, but the girls were thinking of Alma, and when, after prayers, during the five minutes of silence for meditation, we heard the wheels of a carriage going off outside, we knew what had happened--Alma had gone.

We were rising to go to Mass when the Reverend Mother said,

"Children, I have a word to say to you. You all know that one of our novices has left us. You also know that one of our scholars has just gone. It is my wish that you should forget both of them, and I shall look upon it as an act of disobedience if any girl in the Convent ever mentions their names again."

All that day I was in deep distress, and when, night coming, I took my troubles to bed, telling myself I had now lost Alma also, and it was all my fault, somebody put her arms about me in the darkness and whispered:

"Mary O'Neill, are you awake?"

It was Mildred, and I suppose my snuffling answered her, for she said:

"You mustn't cry for Alma Lier. She was no friend of yours, and it was the best thing that ever happened to you when she was turned out of the convent."

SIXTEENTH CHAPTER

A child lives from hour to hour, and almost at the same moment that my heart was made desolate by the loss of my two friends it was quickened to a new interest.

Immediately after the departure of Sister Angela and Alma we were all gathered in the Meeting Room for our weekly rehearsal of the music of the Benediction--the girls, the novices, the nuns, the Reverend Mother, and a Maestro from the Pope's choir, a short fat man, who wore a black soutane and a short lace tippet.

Benediction was the only service of our church which I knew, being the one my mother loved best and could do most of for herself in the solitude of her invalid room, but the form used in the Convent differed from that to which I had been accustomed, and even the _Tantum ergo_ and the _O Salutaris Hostia_ I could not sing.