Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

On this occasion a litany was added which I had heard before, and then came a hymn of the Blessed Virgin which I remembered well. My mother sang it herself and taught me to sing it, so that when the Maestro, swinging his little ivory baton, began in his alto voice--

"_Ave maris stella,
Dei Mater alma--_"

I joined in with the rest, but sang in English instead of Latin Of all appeals to the memory that of music is the strongest, and after a moment I forgot that I was at school in Rome, being back in my mother's room in Ellan, standing by her piano and singing while she played. I think I must have let my little voice go, just as I used to do at home, when it rang up to the wooden rafters, for utterly lost to my surroundings I had got as far as--

"_Virgin of all virgins,
To thy shelter take us--_"

when suddenly I became aware that I alone was singing, the children about me being silent, and even the Maestro's baton slowing down. Then I saw that all eyes were turned in my direction, and overwhelmed with confusion I stopped, for my voice broke and slittered into silence.

"Go on, little angel," said the Maestro, but I was trembling all over by this time and could not utter a sound.

Nevertheless the Reverend Mother said: "Let Mary O'Neill sing the hymn in church in future."

As soon as I had conquered my nervousness at singing in the presence of the girls, I did so, singing the first line of each verse alone, and I remember to have heard that the congregations on Sunday afternoons grew larger and larger, until, within a few weeks, the church was densely crowded.

Perhaps my childish heart was stirred by vanity in all this, for I remember that ladies in beautiful dresses would crowd to the bronze screen that separated us from the public and whisper among themselves, "Which is she?" "The little one in the green scarf with the big eyes!" "God bless her!"

But surely it was a good thing that at length life had began to have a certain joy for me, for as time went on I became absorbed in the life of the Convent, and particularly in the services of the church, so that home itself began to fade away, and when the holidays came round and excuses were received for not sending for me, the pain of my disappointment became less and less until at last it disappeared altogether.

If ever a child loved her mother I did, and there were moments when I reproached myself with not thinking of her for a whole day. These were the moments when a letter came from Father Dan, telling me she was less well than before and her spark of life had to be coaxed and trimmed or it would splutter out altogether.

But the effect of such warnings was wiped away when my mother wrote herself, saying I was to be happy as she was happy, because she knew that though so long separated we should soon be together, and the time would not seem long.

Not understanding the deeper meaning that lay behind words like these, I was nothing loath to put aside the thought of home until little by little it faded away from me in the distance, just as the island itself had done on the day when I sailed out with Martin Conrad on our great voyage of exploration to St. Mary's Rock.

Thus two years and a half passed since I arrived in Rome before the great fact befell me which was to wipe all other facts out of my remembrance.

It was Holy Week, the season of all seasons for devotion to the Sacred Heart, and our Convent was palpitating with the joy of its spiritual duties, the many offices, the masses for the repose of the souls in Purgatory, the preparations for Tenebrae, with the chanting of the Miserere, and for Holy Saturday and Easter Day, with the singing of the Gloria and the return of the Alleluia.

But beyond all this for me were the arrangements for my first confession, which, coming a little late, I made with ten or twelve other girls of my sodality, feeling so faint when I took my turn and knelt by the grating, and heard the whispering voice within, like something from the unseen, something supernatural, something divine, that I forgot all I had come to say and the priest had to prompt me.

And beyond that again were the arrangements for my first communion, which was to take place on Easter morning, when I was to walk in procession with the other girls, dressed all in white, behind a gilded figure of the Virgin, singing "Ave maris stella," through the piazza into the church, where one of the Cardinals, in the presence of the fathers and mothers of the other children, was to put the Holy Wafer on our tongues and we were to know for the first time the joy of communion with our Lord.

But that was not to be for me.

On the morning of Holy Wednesday the blow fell. The luminous grey of the Italian dawn was filtering through the windows of the dormitory, like the light in a tomb, and a multitude of little birds on the old tree in the garden were making a noise like water falling on small stones in a fountain, when the Mother of the Novices came to my bedside and said:

"You are to go to the Reverend Mother as soon as possible, my child."

Her voice, usually severe, was so soft that I knew something had happened, and when I went downstairs I also knew, before the Reverend Mother had spoken, what she was going to say.

"Mary," she said, "I am Sorry to tell you that your mother is ill."

I listened intently, fearing that worse would follow.

"She is very ill--very seriously ill, and she wishes to see you. Therefore you are to go home immediately."

The tears sprang to my eyes, and the Reverend Mother drew me to her side and laid my head on her breast and comforted me, saying my dear mother had lived the life of a good Christian and could safely trust in the redeeming blood of our Blessed Saviour. But I thought she must have some knowledge of the conditions of my life at home, for she told me that whatever happened I was to come back to her.

"Tell your father you _wish_ to come back to me," she said, and then she explained the arrangements that were being made for my journey.

I was to travel alone by the Paris express which left Rome at six o'clock that evening. The Mother of the Novices was to put me in a sleeping car and see that the greatest care would be taken of me until I arrived at Calais, where Father Donovan was to meet the train and take me home.

I cried a great deal, I remember, but everybody in the Convent was kind, and when, of my own choice, I returned to the girls at recreation, the sinister sense of dignity which by some strange irony of fate comes to all children when the Angel of Death is hovering over them, came to me also--poor, helpless innocent--and I felt a certain distinction in my sorrow.

At five o'clock the omnibus of the Convent had been brought round to the door, and I was seated in one corner of it, with the Mother of the Novices in front of me, when Mildred Bankes came running breathlessly downstairs to say that the Reverend Mother had given her permission to see me off.

Half an hour later Mildred and I were sitting in a compartment of the Wagon-Lit, while the Mother was talking to the conductor on the platform.

Mildred, whose eyes were wet, was saying something about herself which seems pitiful enough now in the light of what has happened since.

She was to leave the Convent soon, and before I returned to it she would be gone. She was poor and an orphan, both her parents being dead, and if she had her own way she would become a nun. In any case our circumstances would be so different, our ways of life so far apart, that we might never meet again; but if . . .

Before she had finished a bell rang on the platform, and a moment or two afterwards the train slid out of the station.

Then for the first time I began to realise the weight of the blow that had fallen on me. I was sitting alone in my big compartment, we were running into the Campagna, the heavens were ablaze with the glory of the sunset, which was like fields of glistening fire, but darkness seemed to have fallen on all the world.

SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER

Early on Good Friday I arrived at Calais. It was a misty, rimy, clammy morning, and a thick fog was lying over the Channel.

Almost before the train stopped I saw Father Dan, with his coat collar turned up, waiting for me on the platform. I could see that he was greatly moved at the sight of me, but was trying hard to maintain his composure.

"Now don't worry, my child, don't worry," he said. "It will be all ri. . . . But how well you are looking! And how you have grown! And how glad your poor mother will be to see you!"

I tried to ask how she was. "Is she . . ."

"Yes, thank God, she's alive, and while there's life there's hope."

We travelled straight through without stopping and arrived at Blackwater at seven the same evening. There we took train, for railways were running in Ellan now, and down the sweet valleys that used to be green with grass, and through the little crofts that used to be red with fuchsia, there was a long raw welt of upturned earth.

At the station of our village my father's carriage was waiting for us and a strange footman shrugged his shoulders in answer to some whispered question of Father Dan's, and from that I gathered that my mother's condition was unchanged.

We reached home at dusk, just as somebody was lighting a line of new electric lamps that had been set up in the drive to show the way for the carriage under the chestnuts in which the rooks used to build and caw.

I knew the turn of the path from which the house could be first seen, and I looked for it, remembering the last glimpse I had of my mother at her window. Father Dan looked, too, but for another reason--to see if the blinds were down.

Aunt Bridget was in the hall, and when Father Dan, who had grown more and more excited as we approached the end of our journey, asked how my mother was now, poor thing, she answered:

"Worse; distinctly worse; past recognising anybody; so all this trouble and expense has been wasted."

As she had barely recognised me I ran upstairs with a timid and quiet step and without waiting to take off my outer clothes made my way to my mother's bedroom.

I remember the heavy atmosphere of the room as I opened the door. I remember the sense I had of its being lower and smaller than I thought. I remember the black four-foot bedstead with the rosary hanging on a brass nail at the pillow end. I remember my little cot which still stood in the same place and contained some of the clothes I had worn as a child, and even some of the toys I had played with.

A strange woman, in the costume of a nurse, turned to look at me as I entered, but I did not at first see my mother, and when at length I did see her, with her eyes closed, she looked so white and small as to be almost hidden in the big white bed.

Presently Father Dan came in, followed by Doctor Conrad and Aunt Bridget, and finally my father, who was in his shirt sleeves and had a pen in his ear, I remember.

Then Father Dan, who was trembling very much, took me by the hand and led me to my mother's side, where stooping over her, and making his voice very low, yet speaking as one who was calling into a long tunnel, he said:

"My daughter! My daughter! Here is our little Mary. She has come home to see you."

Never shall I forget what followed. First, my mother's long lashes parted and she looked at me with a dazed expression as if still in a sort of dream. Then her big eyes began to blaze like torches in dark hollows, and then (though they had thought her strength was gone and her voice would never be heard again) she raised herself in her bed, stretched out her arms to me, and cried in loud strong tones:

"Mally veen! My Mally veen!"

How long I lay with my arms about my mother, and my mother's arms about me I do not know. I only know that over my head I heard Father Dan saying, as if speaking to a child:

"You are happy now, are you not?"

"Yes, yes, I am happy now," my mother answered.

"You have everything you want?"

"Everything--everything!"

Then came my father's voice, saying:

"Well, you've got your girl, Isabel. You wanted her, so we sent for her, and here she is."

"You have been very good to me, Daniel," said my mother, who was kissing my forehead and crying in her joy.

When I raised my head I found Father Dan in great excitement.

"Did you see that then?" he was saying to Doctor Conrad.

"I would have gone on my knees all the way to Blackwater to see it."

"I couldn't have believed it possible," the Doctor replied.

"Ah, what children we are, entirely. God confounds all our reckoning. We can't count with His miracles. And the greatest of all miracles is a mother's love for her child."

"Let us leave her now, though," said the Doctor. "She's like herself again, but still . . ."

"Yes, let us leave them together," whispered Father Dan, and having swept everybody out before him (I thought Aunt Bridget went away ashamed) he stepped off himself on tiptoe, as if treading on holy ground.

Then my mother, who was holding my hand and sometimes putting it to her lips, said:

"Tell me everything that has happened."

As soon as my little tongue was loosed I told her all about my life at the Convent--about the Reverend Mother and the nuns and the novices and the girls (all except Sister Angela and Alma) and the singing of the hymn to the Virgin--talking on and on and on, without observing that, after a while, my mother's eyes had closed again, and that her hand had become cold and moist.

At length she said: "Is it getting dark, Mary?"

I told her it was night and the lamp was burning.

"Is it going out then?" she asked, and when I answered that it was not she did not seem to hear, so I stopped talking, and for some time there was silence in which I heard nothing but the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, the barking of a sheep dog a long way off, and the husky breathing in my mother's throat.

I was beginning to be afraid when the nurse returned. She was going to speak quite cheerfully, but after a glance at my mother she went out quickly and came back in a moment with Doctor Conrad and Father Dan.

I heard the doctor say something about a change, whereupon Father Dan hurried away, and in a moment there was much confusion. The nurse spoke of taking me to another room but the doctor said:

"No, our little woman will be brave," and then leading me aside he whispered that God was sending for my mother and I must be quiet and not cry.

Partly undressing I climbed into my cot and lay still for the next half hour, while the doctor held his hand on my mother's pulse and the nurse spread a linen cloth over a table and put four or five lighted candles on it.

I remember that I was thinking that if "God sending for my mother" meant that she was to be put into a box and buried under the ground it was terrible and cruel, and perhaps if I prayed to our Lady He would not find it in His heart to do so. I was trying to do this, beginning under my breath, "O Holy Virgin, thou art so lovely, thou art so gracious . . ." when the nurse said:

"Here they are back again."

Then I heard footsteps outside, and going to the window I saw a sight not unlike that which I had seen on the night of the Waits.

A group of men were coming towards the house, with Father Dan in the middle of them. Father Dan, with his coat hung over his arms like a cloak, was carrying something white in both hands, and the men were carrying torches to light him on his way.

I knew what it was--it was the Blessed Sacrament, which they were bringing to my mother, and when Father Dan had come into the room, saying "Peace be to this house," and laid a little white box on the table, and thrown off his coat, he was wearing his priest's vestments underneath.

Then the whole of my father's household--all except my father himself--came into my mother's room, including Aunt Bridget, who sat with folded arms in the darkness by the wall, and the servants, who knelt in a group by the door.

Father Dan roused my mother by calling to her again, and after she had opened her eyes he began to read. Sometimes his voice seemed to be choked with sobs, as if the heart of the man were suffering, and sometimes it pealed out loudly as if the soul of the priest were inspiring him.

After Communion he gave my mother Extreme Unction--anointing the sweet eyes which had seen no evil, the dear lips which had uttered no wrong, and the feet which had walked in the ways of God.

All this time there was a solemn hush in the house like that of a church--no sound within except my father's measured tread in the room below, and none without except the muffled murmur which the sea makes when it is far away and going out.

When all was over my mother seemed more at ease, and after asking for me and being told I was in the cot, she said:

"You must all go and rest. Mary and I will be quite right now."

A few minutes afterwards my mother and I were alone once more, and then she called me into her bed and clasped her arms about me and I lay with my face hidden in her neck.

What happened thereafter seems to be too sacred to write of, almost too sacred to think about, yet it is all as a memory of yesterday, while other events of my life have floated away to the ocean of things that are forgotten and lost.

"Listen, darling," she said, and then, speaking in whispers, she told me she had heard all I had said about the Convent, and wondered if I would not like to live there always, becoming one of the good and holy nuns.

I must have made some kind of protest, for she went on to say how hard the world was to a woman and how difficult she had found it.

"Not that your father has been to blame--you must never think that, Mary, yet still . . ."

But tears from her tender heart were stealing down her face and she had to stop.

Even yet I had not realised all that the solemn time foreboded, for I said something about staying with my mother; and then in her sweet voice, she told me nervously, breaking the news to me gently, that she was going to leave me, that she was going to heaven, but she would think of me when she was there, and if God permitted she would watch over me, or, if that might not be, she would ask our Lady to do so.

"So you see we shall never be parted, never really. We shall always be together. Something tells me that wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I shall know all about it."

This comforted me, and I think it comforted my mother also, though God knows if it would have done so, if, with her dying eyes, she could have seen what was waiting for her child.

It fills my heart brimful to think of what happened next.

She told me to say a _De Profundis_ for her sometimes, and to think of her when I sang the hymn to the Virgin. Then she kissed me and told me to go to sleep, saying she was going to sleep too, and if it should prove to be the eternal sleep, it would be only like going to sleep at night and awaking in the morning, and then we should be together again, and "the time between would not seem long."

"So good-night, darling, and God bless you," she said.

And as well as I could I answered her "Good-night!"

* * * * *

When I awoke from the profound slumber of childhood it was noon of the next day and the sun was shining. Doctor Conrad was lifting me out of bed, and Father Dan, who had just thrown open the window, was saying in a tremulous voice:

"Your dear mother has gone to God."

I began to cry, but he checked me and said:

"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful Paradise after all her suffering. Let her go!"

So I lost her, my mother, my saint, my angel.

It was Easter Eve, and the church bells were ringing the Gloria.

EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER

After my mother's death there was no place left for me in my father's house.

Betsy Beauty (who was now called Miss Betsy and gave herself more than ever the airs of the daughter of the family) occupied half her days with the governess who had been engaged to teach her, and the other half in driving, dressed in beautiful clothes, to the houses of the gentry round about.

Nessy MacLeod, called the young mistress, had become my father's secretary, and spent most of her time in his private room, a privilege which enlarged her pride without improving her manners.

Martin Conrad I did not see, for in reward for some success at school the doctor had allowed him to spend his Easter holidays in London in order to look at Nansen's ship, the _Fram_, which had just then arrived in the Thames.

Hence it happened that though home made a certain tug at me, with its familiar sights and sounds, and more than once I turned with timid steps towards my father's busy room, intending to say, "Please, father, don't send me back to school," I made no demur when, six or seven days after the funeral, Aunt Bridget began to prepare for my departure.

"There's odds of women," said Tommy the Mate, when I went into the garden to say good bye to him "They're like sheep's broth, is women. If there's a head and a heart in them they're good, and if there isn't you might as well be supping hot water. Our Big Woman is hot water--but she'll die for all."

Within a fortnight I was back at the Convent, and there the Reverend Mother atoned to me for every neglect.

"I knew you would come back to me," she said, and from that hour onward she seemed to be trying to make up to me for the mother I had lost.

I became deeply devoted to her. As a consequence her spirit became my spirit, and, little by little, the religious side of the life of the Convent took complete possession of me.

At first I loved the church and its services because the Reverend Mother loved them, and perhaps also for the sake of the music, the incense, the flowers and the lights on the altar; but after I had taken my communion, the mysteries of our religion took hold of me--the Confessional with its sense of cleansing and the unutterable sweetness of the Mass.

For a long time there was nothing to disturb this religious side of my mind. My father never sent for me, and as often as the holidays came round the Reverend Mother took me with her to her country home at Nemi.

That was a beautiful place--a sweet white cottage, some twenty kilometres from Rome, at the foot of Monte Cavo, in the middle of the remains of a mediæval village which contained a castle and a monastery, and had a little blue lake lying like an emerald among the green and red of the grass and poppies in the valley below.

In the hot months of summer the place was like a Paradise to me, with its roses growing wild by the wayside; its green lizards running on the rocks; its goats; its sheep; its vineyards; its brown-faced boys in velvet, and its gleesome girls in smart red petticoats and gorgeous outside stays; its shrines and its blazing sunsets, which seemed to girdle the heavens with quivering bands of purple and gold.

Years went by without my being aware of their going, for after a while I became entirely happy.

I heard frequently from home. Occasionally it was from Betsy Beauty, who had not much to say beyond stories of balls at Government House, where she had danced with the young Lord Raa, and of hunts at which she had ridden with him. More rarely it was from Aunt Bridget, who usually began by complaining of the ever-increasing cost of my convent clothes and ended with accounts of her daughter's last new costume and how well she looked in it.

From Nessy MacLeod and my father I never heard at all, but Father Dan was my constant correspondent and he told me everything.

First of my father himself--that he had carried out many of his great enterprises, his marine works, electric railways, drinking and dancing palaces, which had brought tens of thousands of visitors and hundreds of thousands of pounds to Ellan, though the good Father doubted the advantage of such innovations and lamented the decline of piety which had followed on the lust for wealth.

Next of Aunt Bridget--that she was bringing up her daughter in the ways of worldly vanity and cherishing a serpent in her bosom (meaning Nessy MacLeod) who would poison her heart some day.

Next, of Tommy the Mate--that he sent his "best respec's" to the "lil-missy" but thought she was well out of the way of the Big Woman who "was getting that highty-tighty" that "you couldn't say Tom to a cat before her but she was agate of you to make it Thomas."

Then of Martin Conrad--that he was at college "studying for a doctor," but his heart was still at the North Pole and he was "like a sea-gull in the nest of a wood pigeon," always longing to be out on the wild waves.

Finally of the young Lord Raa--that the devil's dues must be in the man, for after being "sent down" from Oxford he had wasted his substance in riotous living in London and his guardian had been heard to say he must marry a rich wife soon or his estates would go to the hammer.

Such was the substance of the news that reached me over a period of six years. Yet welcome as were Father Dan's letters the life they described seemed less and less important to me as time went on, for the outer world was slipping away from me altogether and I was becoming more and more immersed in my spiritual exercises.

I spent much of my time reading religious books--the life of Saint Teresa, the meditations of Saint Francis of Sales, and, above all, the letters and prayers of our Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose love of the Sacred Heart was like a flaming torch to my excited spirit.

The soul of Rome, too, seemed to enter into my soul--not the new Rome, for of that I knew nothing, but the old Rome, the holy city, that could speak to me in the silence of the night within the walls of my convent-school, with its bells of the Dominican and Franciscan monasteries on either side, its stories of miracles performed on the sick and dying by the various shrines of the Madonna, its accounts of the vast multitudes of the faithful who came from all ends of the earth to the ceremonials at St. Peter's, and, above all, its sense of the immediate presence of the Pope, half a mile away, the Vicar and mouthpiece of God Himself.

The end of it all was that I wished to become a nun. I said nothing of my desire to anybody, not even to the Reverend Mother, but day by day my resolution grew.

Perhaps it was natural that the orphaned and homeless girl should plunge with all this passion into the aurora of a new spiritual life; but when I think how my nature was made for love, human love, the love of husband and children, I cannot but wonder with a thrill of the heart whether my mother in heaven, who, while she was on earth, had fought so hard with my father for the body of her child, was now fighting with him for her soul.

I was just eighteen years of age when my desire to become a nun reached its highest point, and then received its final overthrow.

Mildred Bankes, who had returned to Rome, and was living as a novice with the Little Sisters of the Poor, was about to make her vows, and the Reverend Mother took me to see the ceremony.

Never shall I forget the effect of it. The sweet summer morning, tingling with snow-white sunshine, the little white chapel in the garden of the Convent, covered with flowers, the altar with its lighted tapers, the friends from without clad in gay costumes as for a festival, the bishop in his bright vestments, and then, Mildred herself, dressed as a bride in a beautiful white gown with a long white veil and attended by other novices as bridesmaids.

It was just like a marriage to look upon, except for the absence of a visible bridegroom, the invisible one being Christ. And the taking of the vows was like a marriage service too--only more solemn and sacred and touching--the bride receiving the ring on her finger, and promising to serve and worship her celestial lover from that day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as life should last and through the eternity that was to follow it.

I cried all through the ceremony for sheer joy of its loveliness; and when it was over and we went into the refectory, and Mildred told me she was returning to England to work among the fallen girls of London, I vowed in my heart, though I hardly understood what she was going to do, that I would follow her example.

It was something of a jar to go back into the streets, so full of noise and bustle; and all the way home with the Reverend Mother I was forming the resolution of telling her that very night that I meant to be a nun, for, stirred to the depths of my soul by what I had seen and remembering what my poor mother had wished for me, I determined that no other life would I live under any circumstances.

Then came the shock.

As we drew up at our door a postman was delivering letters. One of them was for the Reverend Mother and I saw in a moment that it was in my father's handwriting. She read it in silence, and in silence she handed it to me. It ran:

"_Madam,

"I have come to Rome to take back my daughter. I believe her education will now be finished, and I reckon the time has arrived to prepare her for the change in life that is before her.

"The Bishop of our diocese has come with me, and we propose to pay our respects to you at ten o'clock prompt to-morrow morning.

"Yours, Madam_,

"DANIEL O'NEILL."

NINETEENTH CHAPTER

I saw, as by a flash of light, what was before me, and my whole soul rose in rebellion against it. That my father after all the years during which he had neglected me, should come to me now, when my plans were formed, and change the whole current of my life, was an outrage--an iniquity. It might be his right--his natural right--but if so his natural right was a spiritual wrong--and I would resist it--to my last breath and my last hour I would resist it.

Such were the brave thoughts with which I passed that night, but at ten o'clock next morning, when I was summoned to meet my father himself, it was on trembling limbs and with a quivering heart that I went down to the Reverend Mother's room.

Except that his hair was whiter than before my father was not much changed. He rose as I entered, saying, "Here she is herself," and when I went up to him he put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face.

"Quite a little Italian woman grown! Like your mother though," he said, and then speaking over my head to the Bishop, who sat on the other side of the room, he added:

"Guess this will do, Bishop, eh?"

"Perfectly," said the Bishop.

I was colouring in confusion at the continued scrutiny, with a feeling of being looked over for some unexplained purpose, when the Reverend Mother called me, and turning to go to her I saw, by the look of pain on her face that she, too, had been hurt by it.

She put me to sit on a stool by the side of her chair, and taking my right hand she laid it in her lap and held it there during the whole of the interview.

The Bishop, whom I had never seen before, was the first to speak. He was a type of the fashionable ecclesiastic, suave, smiling, faultlessly dressed in silk soutane and silver buckled shoes, and wearing a heavy gold chain with a jewelled cross.

"Reverend Mother," he said, "you would gather from Mr. O'Neill's letter that he wishes to remove his daughter immediately--I presume there will be no difficulty in his doing so?"

The Reverend Mother did not speak, but I think she must have bent her head.

"Naturally," said the Bishop, "there will be a certain delay while suitable clothes are being made for her, but I have no doubt you will give Mr. O'Neill your help in these preparations."

My head was down, and I did not see if the Reverend Mother bowed again. But the two gentlemen, apparently satisfied with her silence, began to talk of the best date for my removal, and just when I was quivering with fear that without a word of protest I was to be taken away, the Reverend Mother said:

"Monsignor!"

"Reverend Mother!"

"You are aware that this child"--here she patted my trembling hand--"has been with me for ten years?"

"I am given to understand so."

"And that during that time she has only once been home?"

"I was not aware--but no doubt it is as you say."

"In short, that during the greater part of her life she has been left to my undivided care?"

"You have been very good to her, very, and I'm sure her family are extremely grateful."

"In that case, Monsignor, doesn't it seem to you that I am entitled to know why she is being so suddenly taken away from me, and what is the change in life which Mr. O'Neill referred to in his letter?"

The smile which had been playing upon the Bishop's face was smitten away from it by that question, and he looked anxiously across at my father.

"Tell her," said my father, and then, while my heart thumped in my bosom and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to compose me, the Bishop gave a brief explanation.

The time had not come when it would be prudent to be more definite, but he might say that Mr. O'Neill was trying to arrange a happy and enviable future for his daughter, and therefore he wished her to return home to prepare for it.

"Does that mean marriage?" said the Reverend Mother.

"It may be so. I am not quite prepared to . . ."

"And that a husband has already been found for her?"

"That too perhaps. I will not say . . ."

"Monsignor," said the Reverend Mother, sitting up with dignity "is that fair?"

"Fair?"

"Is it fair that after ten years in which her father has done nothing for her, he should determine what her life is to be, without regard to her wish and will?"

I raised my eyes and saw that the Bishop looked aghast.

"Reverend Mother, you surprise me," he said. "Since when has a father ceased to be the natural guardian of his child? Has he not been so since the beginning of the world? Doesn't the Church itself build its laws on that foundation?"

"Does it?" said the Reverend Mother shortly. And then (I could feel her hand trembling as she spoke): "Some of its servants do, I know. But when did the Church say that anybody--no matter who--a father or anybody else--should take the soul of another, and control it and govern it, and put it in prison? . . ."

"My good lady," said the Bishop, "would you call it putting the girl in prison to marry her into an illustrious family, to give her an historic name, to surround her with the dignity and distinction . . ."

"Bishop," said my father, raising his hand, "I guess it's my right to butt in here, isn't it?"

I saw that my father's face had been darkening while the Reverend Mother spoke, and now, rolling his heavy body in his chair so as to face her, he said:

"Excuse me, ma'am, but when you say I've done nothing for my gel here I suppose you'll allow I've kept her and educated her?"

"You've kept and educated your dogs and horses, also, I dare say, but do you claim the same rights over a human being?"

"I do, ma'am--I think I do. And when the human being happens to be my own daughter I don't allow that anybody else has anything to say."

"If her mother were alive would _she_ have nothing to say?"

I thought my father winced at that word, but he answered:

"Her mother would agree to anything I thought best."

"Her mother, so far as I can see, was a most unselfish, most submissive, most unhappy woman," said the Reverend Mother.

My father glanced quickly at me and then, after a moment, he said:

"I'm obliged to you, ma'am, much obliged. But as I'm not a man to throw words away I'll ask you to tell me what all this means. Does it mean that you've made plans of your own for my daughter without consulting me?"

"No, sir."

"Then perhaps it means that the gel herself . . ."

"That may be so or not--I cannot say. But when you sent your daughter to a convent-school . . ."

"Wrong, ma'am, wrong for once. It was my wife's sister--who thinks the gel disobedient and rebellious and unruly . . ."

"Then your wife's sister is either a very stupid or a very bad-hearted woman."

"Ma'am?"

"I have known your daughter longer than she has, and there isn't a word of truth in what she says."

It was as much as I could do not to fall on the Reverend Mother's neck, but I clung to her hand with a convulsive grasp.

"May be so, ma'am, may be no," said my father. "But when you talk about my sending my daughter to a convent-school I would have you know that I've been so busy with my business . . ."

"That you haven't had time to take care of the most precious thing God gave you."

"Ma'am," said my father, rising to his feet, "may I ask what right you have to speak to me as if . . ."

"The right of one who for ten years has been a mother to your motherless child, sir, while you have neglected and forgotten her."

At that my father, whose bushy eyebrows were heavily contracted, turned to the Bishop.

"Bishop," he said, "is this what I've been paying my money for? Ten years' fees, and middling high ones too, I'm thinking?"

And then the Bishop, apparently hoping to make peace, said suavely:

"But aren't we crossing the river before we reach the bridge? The girl herself may have no such objections. Have you?" he asked, turning to me.

I was trembling more than ever now, and at first I could not reply.

"Don't you wish to go back home with your father?"

"No, sir," I answered.

"And why not, please?"

"Because my father's home is no home to me--because my aunt has always been unkind to me, and because my father has never cared for me or protected me, and because . . ."

"Well, what else?"

"Because . . . because I wish to become a nun."

There was silence for a moment, and then my father broke into bitter laughter.

"So that's it, is it? I thought as much. You want to go into partnership with the Mother in the nun business, eh?"

"My mother wished me to become a nun, and I wish it myself, sir."

"Your mother was a baby--that's what she was."

"My mother was an angel, sir," I said, bridling up, "and when she was dying she hoped I should become a nun, and I can never become anything else under any circumstance."

"Bah!" said my father, with a contemptuous lift of the hand, and then turning to the Reverend Mother he said:

"Hark here, ma'am. There's an easy way and a hard way in most everything. I take the easy way first, and if it won't work I take the hard way next, and then it's stiff pulling for the people who pull against me. I came to Rome to take my daughter home. I don't feel called upon to explain why I want to take her home, or what I'm going to do with her when I get her there. I believe I've got the rights of a father to do what I mean to do, and that it will be an ugly business for anybody who aids and abets my daughter in resisting her father's will. So I'll leave her here a week longer, and when I come back, I'll expect her to be ready and waiting and willing--ready and waiting and willing, mind you--to go along with me."

After saying this my father faced about and with his heavy flat step went out of the room, whereupon the Bishop bowed to the Reverend Mother and followed him.

My heart was by this time in fierce rebellion--all that the pacifying life of the convent-school had done for me in ten years being suddenly swept away--and I cried:

"I won't do it! I won't do it!"

But I had seen that the Reverend Mother's face had suddenly become very white while my father spoke to her at the end and now she said, in a timid, almost frightened tone:

"Mary, we'll go out to Nemi to-day. I have something to say to you."

TWENTIETH CHAPTER

In the late afternoon of the same day we were sitting together for the last time on the terrace of the Reverend Mother's villa.

It was a peaceful evening, a sweet and holy time. Not a leaf was stirring, not a breath of wind was in the air; but the voice of a young boy, singing a love-song, came up from somewhere among the rocky ledges of the vineyards below, and while the bell of the monastic church behind us was ringing the Ave Maria, the far-off bell of the convent church at Gonzano was answering from the other side of the lake--like angels calling to each other from long distances in the sky.

"Mary," said the Reverend Mother, "I want to tell you a story. It is the story of my own life--mine and my sister's and my father's."

I was sitting by her side and she was holding my hand in her lap, and patting it, as she had done during the interview of the morning.

"They say the reason so few women become nuns is that a woman is too attached to her home to enter the holy life until she has suffered shipwreck in the world. That may be so with most women. It was not so with me.

"My father was what is called a self-made man. But his fortune did not content him. He wanted to found a family. If he had had a son this might have been easy. Having only two daughters, he saw no way but that of marrying one of us into the Italian nobility.

"My sister was the first to disappoint him. She fell in love with a young Roman musician. The first time the young man asked for my sister he was contemptuously refused; the second time he was insulted; the third time he was flung out of the house. His nature was headstrong and passionate, and so was my father's. If either had been different the result might not have been the same. Yet who knows? Who can say?"

The Reverend Mother paused for a moment. The boy's voice in the vineyard was going on.

"To remove my sister from the scene of temptation my father took her from Rome to our villa in the hills above Albano. But the young musician followed her. Since my father would not permit him to marry her he was determined that she should fly with him, and when she hesitated to do so he threatened her. If she did not meet him at a certain hour on a certain night my father would be dead in the morning."

The Reverend Mother paused again. The boy's voice had ceased; the daylight was dying out.

"My sister could not bring herself to sacrifice either her father or her lover. Hence she saw only one way left--to sacrifice herself."

"Herself?"

The Reverend Mother patted my hand. "Isn't that what women in tragic circumstances are always doing?" she said.

"By some excuse--I don't know what--she persuaded our father to change rooms with her that night--he going upstairs to her bedroom in the tower, and she to his on the ground floor at the back, opening on to the garden and the pine forest that goes up the hill.

"What happened after that nobody ever knew exactly. In the middle of the night the servants heard two pistol shots, and next morning my sister was found dead--shot to the heart through an open window as she lay in my father's bed.

"The authorities tried in vain to trace the criminal. Only one person had any idea of his identity. That was my father, and in his fierce anger he asked himself what he ought to do in order to punish the man who had killed his daughter.

"Then a strange thing happened. On the day before the funeral the young musician walked into my father's room. His face was white and wasted, and his eyes were red and swollen. He had come to ask if he might be allowed to be one of those to carry the coffin. My father consented. 'I'll leave him alone,' he thought. 'The man is punished enough.'

"All the people of Albano came to the funeral and there was not a dry eye as the cortège passed from our chapel to the grave. Everybody knew the story of my sister's hopeless love, but only two in the world knew the secret of her tragic death--her young lover, who was sobbing aloud as he staggered along with her body on his shoulder, and her old father, who was walking bareheaded and in silence, behind him."

My heart was beating audibly and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to compose me--perhaps to compose herself also. It was now quite dark, the stars were coming out, and the bells of the two monasteries on opposite sides of the lake were ringing the first hour of night.

"That's my sister's story, Mary," said the Reverend Mother after a while, "and the moral of my own is the same, though the incidents are different.

"I was now my father's only child and all his remaining hopes centred in me. So he set himself to find a husband for me before the time came when I should form an attachment for myself. His choice fell on a middle-aged Roman noble of distinguished but impoverished family.

"'He has a great name; you will have a great fortune--what more do you want?' said my father.

"We were back in Rome by this time, and there--at school or elsewhere--I had formed the conviction that a girl must passionately love the man she marries, and I did not love the Roman noble. I had also been led to believe that a girl should be the first and only passion of the man who marries her, and, young as I was, I knew that my middle-aged lover had had other domestic relations.

"Consequently I demurred, but my father threatened and stormed, and then, remembering my sister's fate, I pretended to agree, and I was formally engaged.

"I never meant to keep my promise, and I began to think out schemes by which to escape from it. Only one way seemed open to me then, and cherishing the thought of it in secret, I waited and watched and made preparations for carrying out my purpose.

"At length the moment came to me. It was mid-Lent, and a masked ball was given by my fiancé's friends in one of the old Roman palaces. I can see it still--the great hall, ablaze with glowing frescoes, beautiful Venetian candelabras, gilded furniture, red and yellow damask and velvet, and then the throng of handsome men in many uniforms and beautiful women with rows of pearls falling from their naked throats.

"I had dressed myself as a Bacchante in a white tunic embroidered in gold, with bracelets on my bare arms, a tiger-skin band over my forehead, and a cluster of grapes in my hair.

"I danced every dance, I remember, most of them with my middle-aged lover, and I suppose no one seemed so gay and happy and heedless. At three o'clock in the morning I returned home in my father's carriage. At six I had entered a convent.

"Nobody in the outer world ever knew what had become of me, and neither did I know what happened at home after I left it. The rule of the convent was very strict. Sometimes, after morning prayers, the Superior would say, 'The mother of one of you is dead--pray for her soul,' and that was all we ever heard of the world outside.

"But nature is a mighty thing, my child, and after five years I became restless and unhappy. I began to have misgivings about my vocation, but the Mother, who was wise and human, saw what was going on in my heart. 'You are thinking about your father,' she said, 'that he is growing old, and needing a daughter to take care of him. Go out, and nurse him, and then come back to your cell and pray.'

"I went, but when I reached my father's house a great shock awaited me. A strange man was in the porter's lodge, and our beautiful palace was let out in apartments. My father was dead--three years dead and buried. After my disappearance he had shut himself up in his shame and grief, for, little as I had suspected it and hard and cruel as I had thought him, he had really and truly loved me. During his last days his mind had failed him and he had given away all his fortune--scattered it, no one knew how, as something that was quite useless--and then he died, alone and broken-hearted."

That was the end of the Reverend Mother's narrative. She did not try to explain or justify or condemn her own or her sister's conduct, neither did she attempt to apply the moral of her story to my own circumstances. She left me to do that for myself.

I had been spell-bound while she spoke, creeping closer and closer to her until my head was on her breast.