the sequel is enfolded in mystery. was i long unconscious? was i long ill? was there any voice among the alarmed nuns lifted in my favour? or was the secret kept among the superioress, the lay-sister who thrashed me, and the doctor? as a catholic in a strong and bigoted protestant centre, in the pay of a catholic community, it is not unreasonable to suppose him anxious to avoid a scandal. for outside there was the roaring lion, the terrible member for lysterby, seeking the catholics he might devour! that satanic creature who dreamed at night of tyburn, and, if he could, would have proscribed every priest and nun of the realm! picture the hue and cry in parliament and out of it, if it were known that a baby girl had been thrashed by strong, virile hands, as with a russian knout, with the ferocity of blood-thirsty jailers instead of the gentleness of holy women striving to inculcate precepts of virtue and christian charity in the breast of a tiny reprobate! and ladies, too, devoted to the worship of mercy and of mary, the maiden of sorrow, the mild mother of humanity.
i know i lay long in bed,—that my wounds, deep red open stripes, were dressed into scars by lint and sweet oil and herbs. the doctor, a cheery fellow with a scottish name, came and sat by my bedside, and gave me almond-drops, and begged me repeatedly "to look up." the pavement outside was rough, the little city street was narrow, and the flies rumbling past from the station to the craven arms shook my bed. the noise was novel, and excited me. i thought of my imaginary friend of the ivies, the white lady, and wondered if any one had ever thrashed her. the cook, sister joseph, from time to time stole up-stairs and offered me, by way of consolation, maybe a bribe, a shrewsbury biscuit, a jam-tart, a piece of seed-cake.
once the pain of my lacerated back subsided i was not at all bored. it was good to lie in a fresh white bed and listen dreamily to the discreet murmurs of a provincial town in the quiet convent-house, have nothing to do, no scrapes to get into, hear no scolding voices, and have plenty of nice things to eat, after the long famine of nine interminable months.
i do not remember when it was she first came to me. she was a slim, oldish nun, with a white delicate visage and eyes full of a wistful sadness, neither blue nor grey. her voice was very low, and gave me the same intense pleasure with which the soft touch of her thin small hands thrilled me. she was called mother aloysius, and painted pictures for the chapel and for the convent. did she know what had happened, and had she taken the community's debt to me upon her lean shoulders? or was i merely for her a sick and naughty little girl, to whom she was drawn by sympathy?
she never spoke of my whipping, nor did i. perhaps with the unconscious delicacy of sensitive childhood i divined that it would pain her. more probably still, i was only too glad to be enfolded in the mild warmth of her unquestioning tenderness. wickedness dropped from me as a wearisome garment, and, divested of its weight, i trotted after her heels like a little lapdog. she took me with her everywhere; into the big garden where she tended the flowers, and where she allowed me to water and dig myself out of breath, fondly persuaded that the fate of the flowers next year depended upon my exertions; to her work-room, where in awed [pg 146]admiration i watched her paint, and held her brushes and colours for her; to the chapel where she changed the flowers, and where i gathered the stalks into little hills and swept them into my pinafore. and all the time i talked, ceaselessly, volubly,—not of past sufferings, nor of present pain, but of the things that surprised and perplexed me, of the countless things i wanted to do, of the tales of tyburn and the white lady.
when i was well enough to go back to daily woe and insufficient food, i was dressed in hat and jacket and strong boots, and while i stood in the hall the awful superioress issued from the community-room and looked at me coldly.
"you have had your lesson, angela. you will be a good child in future, i hope," she said, and touched my shoulder with a lifeless gesture.
the mischievous impulse of saucy speech and wicked glance died when i encountered the gentle prayer of my new friend's faded eyes. i was only a baby, but i understood as well as if i had been a hundred what those kind and troubled eyes said, glancing at me behind the woman she must have known i hated. "be good, dear child; be silent, be respectful. forgive, forget, for my sake." i swallowed the angry words i longed to utter on the top of a sob, and went and held up my cheek to mother aloysius.
"you're a brave little girl, angela," she said, softly. "you'll see, if you are good, that reverend mother will let you come down and spend a nice long day with me soon again; and i'll take you to water the flowers and fill the vases in the chapel, and watch me paint up-stairs. good-bye."
she kissed me on both cheeks, not in the fleshless kiss of the nun, but with dear human warmth of lips, and her fingers lingered tenderly about my head. did she suspect the sacrifice i had made to her kindness?—the fierce and wrathful words i had projected to hurl at the head of the superioress, and that i had kept back to please her?
at the ivies i maintained a steadfast silence upon what had happened. i cannot now trace the obscure reasons of my silence, which must have pleased the nuns, for nobody ever knew about my severe whipping. thanks to the beneficent influences of my new friend, i was for a while a model of all the virtues. i studied hard, absorbed pages of useful knowledge in the "child's guide," and mastered the abstruse contents of cardinal wiseman's "history of england." at the end of a month, to the amazement of everybody and to my own dismay, i was rewarded with a medal of good conduct, and formally enrolled in that virtuous body, the children of the angels, and wore a medal attached to a brilliant green ribbon.
this transient period of grace, felt no doubt by all around me to be precarious and unstable, was deemed the fitting moment for my first confession. what a baby of eight can have to confess i know not. the value of such an institution for the infantine conscience escapes me. but there can be no question of its enormous sensational interest for us all. two new children had made their appearance since my tempestuous arrival. they belonged to the band, as well as an idiot girl two years older than i, and now deemed wise enough to crave pardon for sins she could not possibly commit. we carefully studied the "examination of conscience," and spelt out the particularly big words with a thrill: they looked nice mysterious sins, the sort of crimes we felt we would gladly commit if we had the chance.
i went about sombre and dejected, under the conviction that i must have sinned the sin against the holy ghost, and polly evans wondered if adultery figured upon the list of her misdoings. she was sure, however, that she had not defrauded the labourer of his daily wage, whatever that might be, for the simple reason that she had never met a labourer. i was tortured with a fresh sensational doubt. my foster-mother's cousin at kildare was a very nice labourer who often had given me sweets. could i, in a moment of temporary aberration, have defrauded him of his wage? and then adultery! if polly was sure she had committed adultery, might i not also have so deeply offended against heaven? i had not precisely killed anybody, but had i not desired to kill sister esmeralda the day i threw the stool at her?
and so we travelled conscientiously, like humble, but, in the very secret depths of our being, self-admiring pilgrims, over the weary and profitless road of self-examination, and assured ourselves with a fervent thrill that we were indeed miserable sinners. "i'll never get into a passion again," i swore to polly evans, like a monstrous little puritan, and before an hour had passed was thirsting for the blood of some offender.
i even went so far as to include sister [pg 150]esmeralda and frank in my offer of general amnesty to humanity; and indited at some nun's suggestion a queer epistle to my mother, something in the tone the prodigal son from afar might have used writing to his father when he first decided to abandon the husks and swine, etc. i boldly announced my intention of forsaking the path of wickedness, with a humble confession of hitherto having achieved supremacy in that nefarious kingdom, and of walking henceforth with the saints.
i added a practical postscript, that i was always very hungry, and stated with charming candour that i did not like any of the nuns except mother aloysius, which was rather a modification of the exuberant burst of virtue expressed on the first page. this postscript was judiciously altered past recognition, and i was ordered to copy it out: "i am very happy at lysterby. all the dear nuns are so kind to me. we shall have a little feast soon. please, dear mamma, send me some money."
if the money ever came, it was naturally confiscated by the dear nuns. it was not money we mites needed, but bread-and-butter and a cup of good milk, or a plate of simple sustaining porridge. however, for the moment the excitement of confession sustained us. having communicated to each other the solemn impression that we had broken all the commandments, committed the seven deadly sins, and made mockery of the four cardinal virtues, the next thing to decide was to what length of repentance we were bound to go. polly evans' enthusiasm was so exalted that she yearned to follow the example of the german emperor we had read of who walked, or crawled on his knees, i forget which, to rome, and made a public confession to the pope. but this we felt to be an immodest flight of fancy in a little girl who had done nothing worth speaking of. she was like my kildare companion mary jane, who constantly saw herself in a personal scuffle with queen victoria.
when the great day came we were bidden to stay in the chapel after the rest, and then were taken down to the town convent, with instructions to keep our minds fixed upon the awful sacrament of confession as we walked two and two through the streets.
"remember, children," said that infamous sister esmeralda, prettier than ever, as she fixed me with a deadly glance, "to tell a lie in the confessional box is to tell a lie to the holy ghost. you may be struck dead for it."
did she mean that for me? oh, why had i so rashly vowed myself to a life of virtue? why had i so precipitously chosen the companionship and example of the saints? why had i read the lives of st. louis of gonzaga, st. stanislaus of kotska, and other lamb-like creatures, and in a fit of admiration sworn to resemble them?—since all these good resolutions debarred me from flinging another stool at that lovely hostile visage. but having elected momentarily to play the part of a shocking little prig, i swallowed my wrath, with a compunctious sensation, and felt a glow all over to think i was already so much of a saint.
in the convent chapel, with our throbbing hearts in our mouths, we knelt, a diminutive row, in our sunday uniform (i have worn so many convent uniforms that i am rather mixed about them, and cannot remember which was blue on sunday and which was black, but the lysterby sunday uniform i know was black). polly evans was the first to disappear, swallowed up in the awful box. she issued forth, tremulous and wide-eyed, and i followed her, pallid and quaking. the square grating was closed, and the green curtain enfolded me in a terrific dusk. i felt sick and cold with fright. what was going to happen? could something spring suddenly out and clutch me? was the devil behind me? had my guardian angel forsaken me? i had read a great deal of late about "a yawning abyss," "a black pit," a "bottomless hole." was i going to tell a lie to the holy ghost unknowing, and so be struck dead like, like——?
the square slid swiftly back, and i saw a dim man's profile through the grating. had i seen father morris clear before me, my fears would instantly have been quelled, for he was a graceful, aristocratic, soft-voiced man, quick to captivate little children by his winning smile. but that dim formless thing behind the grating, what was it? they told me the priest in the confessional was god. the statement was not such that any childish imagination could grasp. the sickness of terror overcame me, and i, whom the rough sea of the irish channel had not harmed, fell down in a dreadful fit of nausea that left me prostrate for days.
