Consequences

Gradually some sort of poise returned to her. She could control her tears, and drink the soups and tisanes that were specially prepared and put before her, and as the year advanced, she could feel the first hint of Spring stirring in her exhaustion. She was devoid alike of apprehension and of hope.

No solution appeared to her conceivable, save possibly that of her own death, and she knew that none would be attempted until the return of the Superior-General from South America.

As this delayed, she became more and more convinced, in despite of all reason, of the immutable eternity of the present state of affairs.

It shocked her when one day the Superior said to her:

"You are to go to the Superior of the Jesuits' College in the parlour this afternoon. Do you remember, he preached the sermon for your Profession, and I think he has been here once or twice in the last year or two? He is a very wise and clever and holy man, and ought to help you. Besides, he is of your own nationality."

Alex remembered the tall, good-looking Irishman very well. He had once or twice visited the convent, and had always told amusing stories at recreation, and preached vigorous, inspiring sermons in the chapel, with more than a spice of originality to colour them.

The children adored him.

Alex wondered.

Perhaps Father Farrell, the clever and educated priest, would really see in some new aspect the problem that left her baffled and sick of soul and body.

She went into the parlour that afternoon trembling with mingled dread, and the first faint stirrings of hope that understanding and release from herself and her wickedness might yet be in store for her.

Father Farrell, big and broad-shouldered, with iron-grey, wavy hair and a strong, handsome face, turned from the window as she entered the room.

"Come in, Sister, come in. Sit down, won't you? They tell me ye've not been well – ye don't look it, ye don't look it!"

His voice, too, was big and bluff and hearty, full of decision, the voice of a man accustomed to the command of men.

He pushed a chair forward and motioned her, with a quick, imperious gesture that yet held kindness, to sit down.

He himself stood, towering over her, by the window.

"Well, now, what's all the trouble, Sister?"

There was the suspicion of a brogue in his cultivated tones.

Alex made a tremendous effort. She told herself that he could not help her unless she told him the truth.

She said, as she had said to the French Superior:

"I am very unhappy – I want to be released from my vows as a nun."

The priest gave her one very quick, penetrating look, and his thick eyebrows went up into his hair for an instant, but he did not speak.

"I don't think I have ever had any – any real vocation," said Alex, whitening from the effort of an admission that she knew he must regard as degrading.

"And how long have ye thought ye had no real vocation?"

There was the slightest possible discernible tinge of kindly derision in the inquiry.

It gave the final touch to her disconcertment.

"I don't know."

She felt the folly of her reply even before the priest's laugh, tinged with a sort of vexed contempt, rang through the room.

"Now, me dear child, this is perfect nonsense, let me tell ye. Did ye ever hear the like of such folly? No real vocation, and here ye've been a professed religious for – how long is it?"

"Nearly four years since I was finally professed, but – "

"There's no but about it, Sister. A vow made to Our Blessed Lord, I'd have ye know, is not like an old glove, to be thrown away when ye think ye're tired of it. No, no, Sister, that'll not be the way of it. Ye'll get over this, me dear child, with a little faith and perseverance. It's just a temptation, that ye've perhaps been giving way to, owing to fatigue and ill health. Ye feel it's all too hard for ye, is that it?"

"No," said Alex frantically, "that's not it. It's nothing like that. It's that I can't bear this way of living any longer. I want a home, and to be allowed to care for people, and to have friends again – I can't live by myself."

She knew that she had voiced the truth as she knew it, and covered her face with her hands in dread lest it might fail to reach his perceptions.

She heard a change in Father Farrell's voice when next he spoke.

"Ye'd better tell me the whole tale, Sister. Who is it ye want to go back to in the world?"

She looked up, bewildered.

"Any one – home. Where I can just be myself again – "

"And how much home have ye got left, after being a nun ten years? Is your mother alive?"

"No."

"Your father?"

"No," faltered Alex.

"They died after ye left home, I daresay?"

"Yes."

"Then, in the name of goodness, who do ye expect is going to make a home for ye? Have ye sisters and brothers?"

"Yes." Alex hesitated, seeing at last whither his inquiries were tending.

"Yes, and I'm thinking they're married and with homes of their own by this time," said the priest shrewdly. "Let me tell ye, ten years sees a good many changes in the world, and it isn't much of a welcome ye'd get by breaking your holy vows and making a great scandal in the Church, and then planting yourself on relations who've lost touch with ye, more or less, and have homes of their own, and a husband or wife, as the case may be, and perhaps little children to care for. A maiden aunt isn't so very much thought of, in the best of circumstances, let me tell ye.

"Now isn't there reason in what I'm saying, Sister?"

Sick conviction shot through her.

"Yes, Father."

"Well, then, ye'll just give up that foolish notion, now."

He looked at her white, desperate face, and began to take long strides up and down the room.

"Have ye confidence in your Superior? Do ye get on with her?" he asked suddenly.

"Our present Superior has only been here a little while – the one before that – "

"I know, I know," he interrupted impatiently. "It's the Superior-General I mean, of course – everything must come to her in the long run, naturally. Have you full confidence in her, now?"

Alex felt as incapable of a negative reply as of an affirmative one. She knew that she did not understand the term "full confidence" as he did, and she temporized weakly.

"But our Mother-General is away in South America – she keeps delaying, and that's one reason why nothing has been settled about me. She hasn't even left America yet."

"I'm well aware of that. Don't waste time playing with me that way, Sister, ye'll get no further. Ye know very well what I mean. Now, tell me now, will it do for ye if I arrange for your transfer to another house – maybe to the one in London, or somewhere in your own country?"

The instinct of the imprisoned creature that sees another form of the same trap offered it under the guise of freedom, made her revolt.

"No," she cried. "No! I want to get right away – I want to stop being a nun."

The priest suddenly hit the table with his clenched fist, making it rock, and making his auditor start painfully.

"That's what you'll never do, not if ye got release from the holy vows ten times over. Once a nun always a nun, Sister, although ye may be false and faithless and go back into the very midst of the world ye've renounced. But ye'll find no comfort there, no blessing, and God'll remember it against ye, Sister. A soul that spurns His choicest graces need expect no mercy, either here or hereafter. I tell ye straight, Sister, that ye'll be deliberately jeopardizing your immortal soul, if ye give in to this wicked folly. Ye've to choose between God and the Devil – between a little while of suffering here, maybe, and then Eternity in which to enjoy the reward of the faithful, or a hideous mockery of freedom here, followed by Hell and its torments for ever and ever. Which is it to be?"

Alex was terrified, but it was the priest's anger that terrified her, not the threats that he uttered. At the back of her mind, lay the dim conviction that no Hell could surpass in intensity of bitterness that which her spirit was traversing on earth.

Father Farrell looked at her frightened, distorted face, and his voice sank into persuasiveness.

"This'll pass, me dear child. Many a poor soul before ye has known what it is to falter by the wayside. But courage, Sister, ye can conquer this weakness with God's help. You're in no trouble about your faith, now are ye?"

Had Alex been able to formulate her thoughts clearly, she might have told him that it had long since become a matter of supreme unimportance to her whether or no she still possessed that which he termed her faith. As a fact, the beliefs which could alone have made the convent life endurable to her, had never struck more than the most shallow of roots into her consciousness. Perhaps the only belief which had any real hold upon her was the one that she had gradually formed upon her experience of the living – that God was a Superior Being who must be propitiated by the sacrifice of all that one held dear, lest He strike it from one.

She looked dimly at Father Farrell, and shook her head, because she was afraid of his anger if she owned to the utter insecurity of her hold upon any religious convictions.

"That's right, that's right," he said hastily. "I felt sure ye were a good child at bottom. Now would ye like to make a good general Confession, and I'll give ye absolution, and ye can start again?"

Some hint of inflexibility in the last words roused Alex to a final, frantic bid for liberty.

"It's no use – it won't do for me to begin again. I can't stay on. If I can't get released from my vows I'll – I'll run away."

Then there was a long silence.

When the priest spoke again, however, his voice held more of meditative speculation than of the anger which she feared.

"Supposing I could arrange it for ye – I don't say I could, mind, but it might be done, if good reasons were shown – what would ye say to another religious order altogether? It may be that this life is unsuited to ye – there have been such cases. I know a holy Carmelite nun who was in quite another order for nearly fifteen years, before she found out where the Lord really wanted her. Are ye one of those, maybe?"

"No," spoke Alex, almost sullenly. The conflict was wearing her out, and she was conscious only of a blind, unreasoning instinct that if she once gave ground, she would find herself for ever bound to the life which had become unendurable to her.

"What d'ye mean, No?"

"I want to go away. I want to be released from my vows."

The formula had become almost mechanical now. The Jesuit for the first time dropped the brusqueness of manner habitual to him.

Pacing the length of the big parlour with measured, even strides, his hands clasped behind his shabby cassock, he let his deep, naturally rhetorical voice boom out in full, rolling periods through the room.

"Why did ye come to me at all, Sister? It wasn't for advice, and it wasn't for help. I've offered both, and ye'll take neither. Having put your hand to the plough, you've looked back. Ye say that sooner than remain faithful ye'll run away – ye'll make a scandal and a disgrace for the Community that's sheltered ye, and bring shame and sorrow to the good Mothers here. What did ye expect me to answer to that? If your whole will is turned to evil, it was a farce and a mockery to come to me – I can do nothing.

"But one thing I'll tell ye, Sister. If ye do this thing – if it goes up to Rome, and the vows ye took in full consciousness and free will on the day ye were professed, are dissolved – so far as they ever can be, that is, and let me tell ye that it's neither a quick nor an easy business – if it comes to that, Sister, there'll be no going back. No cringing round to the convent afterwards, when ye find there's no place and no welcome for ye in the world, asking to be taken back. They'll not have ye, Sister, and they'll be right. If ye go, it's for ever."

It seemed to Alex that he was purposely seeking to frighten her – that he wanted to add fresh miseries and apprehensions to those already piled upon her, and a faint resentment flicked at her in questioning acceptance of such an assumption.

The shadow of spirit thus restored to her, just enabled her to endure the seemingly endless exposition hurled at her in the priest's powerful voice.

When it was all over, she crawled out of the room like a creature that had been beaten.

Stunned, she only knew that yet another fellow-creature had entered the league of those who were angered against her.

XXII

Rome

The crisis passed, as all such must pass, and Alex found herself in the position openly recognized as that of waiting for the dissolution of her religious vows.

It was as Father Farrell had said, neither a short nor an easy business, nor was she allowed to pass the months of her waiting at the Liège Mother-house.

They sent her to a small house of the Order in Rome, thinking, with the curious convent instinct for misplaced economy, to save the petty cost of incessant passing to and fro of correspondence and documents, between the convent in Belgium and the Papal Secretariat at the Vatican.

Alex went to Italy in a dream. It struck her with a faint sense of irony that she and Barbara, long ago, had entertained an ambition to visit Italy, standing for all that was romantic and picturesque in the South. After all, she was to be the first to realize that girlish dream, the fulfilment of which brought no elation.

At first she lived amongst the nuns, and led their life, but when it became evident beyond question that she was eventually to obtain release from her vows, the Community held no place for her any longer.

Her religious habit was taken away, and a thick, voluminous, black-stuff dress substituted, which the nuns thought light and cool in comparison with their own weighty garments, but of which the hard, stiff cuffs and high collar, unrelieved by any softening of white, made Alex suffer greatly.

The house was too small to admit of a pensionnat, but the nuns took in an inconsiderable number of lady boarders, and an occasional pupil. Alex, however, was not suffered to hold any intercourse with these. After her six months spent in Community life a final appeal was made to her, and when it failed of its effect she passed into a kind of moral ostracism.

She had a small bedroom, where her meals were served by the lay-sister who waited on the lady-boarders, and a little prie-dieu was put in a remote corner of the chapel for her use, neither to be confounded with the choir-stalls, nor the benches for visitors, nor the seats reserved for the ladies living in the house. The librarian Sister, in charge of the well-filled book-case of the Community-rooms, had instructions to provide her with literature. Beyond that, her existence remained unrecognized.

She often spent hours doing nothing, gazing from the window at the Corso far below, so curiously instinct with life after the solitude of the Liège grounds, encompassed by high walls on every side.

She did not read very much.

The books they gave her were all designed to one end – that of making her realize that she was turning her back upon the way of salvation. When she thought about it, Alex believed that this was, in truth, what she was doing, but it hardly seemed to matter.

Her room was fireless, and the old-fashioned house, as most Roman ones, had no form of central heating. She shivered and shivered, and in the early days of February fell ill. One abscess after another formed inside her throat, an unspeakably painful manifestation of general weakness.

One evening she was so ill that there was talk of sending for the chaplain – the doctor had never been suggested – but that same night the worst abscess of all broke inside her throat, and Alex saw that there was no hope of her being about to die.

The bright winter cold seemed to change with incredible rapidity into glowing summer heat, and a modicum of well-being gradually returned to her.

She even crept slowly and listlessly about in the shade of the great Borghese gardens, in the comparative freshness of the Pincio height, and wondered piteously at this strange realization of her girlhood's dream of seeing Italy. She never dared to go into the streets alone, nor would the nuns have permitted it.

Her difficult letters to England had been written.

Cedric had replied with courteous brevity, a letter so much what Sir Francis might have written that Alex was almost startled, and her father's man of business had written her a short, kind little note, rejoicing that the world was again to have the benefit of Miss Clare's society after her temporary retirement.

The only long letter she received was from Barbara.

"Hampstead,"March 30, 1908.

"DEAREST ALEX,

"Your letter from Rome was, of course, a great surprise. I had been wondering when I should hear from you again, but I did not at all guess what your news would be when it came, as we had all quite grown to think of you as completely settled in the convent.

"I am afraid that, as you say, there may be complications and difficulties about your vows, as I suppose they are binding to a certain extent, and they are sure not to let you off without a fuss.

"Your letters aren't very explicit, my dear, so I'm still somewhat in the dark as to what you are doing and when you mean to come to London, as I suppose you will eventually do. And why Italy? If you're going to get out of the whole thing altogether, it seems funny that the convent people should trouble to send you to Italy, when you might just as well have come straight to England. However, no doubt you know your own affairs best, Alex, dear, and perhaps you're wise to take advantage of an opportunity that may not come again!

"Travelling has always been my dream, as you know, but except for that time I had at Neuilly, when you came out – Heavens, what ages ago! – and then our honeymoon in Paris, which was so terribly broken into when dear mother died, I've never had any chance at all, and I suppose now I never shall have. Everything is so expensive, and I'm really not a very good traveller unless I can afford to do the thing comfortably, otherwise I should simply love to have run over to Rome for Easter and got you to show me all the sights.

"I suppose your time is quite your own now? Of course, when you really do leave the Sisters, I hope you'll come straight to my wee cottage here – at any rate while you look about you and think over future plans.

"Cedric has written to you, I know, and if you feel you'd rather go to Clevedon Square, needless to say, my dear, I shall more than understand. Please yourself absolutely.

"But, of course, one's always rather chary of unknown sisters-in-law, and Violet quite rules the roost now-a-days. She and Cedric are a most devoted couple, and all that sort of thing, but as she's got all the money, one rather feels as if it was her house. I daresay you know the kind of thing I mean.

"She's quite a dear, in many ways, but I don't go there tremendously.

"Pamela adores her, and lives in her pocket. Pam tells me she hasn't seen you since she was about fifteen – I could hardly believe it. My dear, I don't know what you'll think of her! She's quite appallingly modern, to my mind, and makes me feel about a hundred years old.

"When I think of the way we were chaperoned, and sent about everywhere with a maid, and only allowed the dullest of dinner-parties, and tea-parties, and then those stiff, solemn balls! Pamela is for ever being asked to boy-and-girl affairs, and dinner dances and theatre-parties – I must say she's a huge success. Every one raves about her, and she goes in for being tremendously natural and jolly and full of vitality and she's had simply heaps of chances, already, though I daresay some of it has to do with being seen about everywhere with Violet, who simply splashes money out like water. She paid all Archie's debts, poor boy – I will say that for her. The result is that he's quite good and steady now, and every one says he'll make a first-rate Guardsman.

"I'm writing a long screed, Alex, but I really feel you ought to be posted up in all the family news, if you're really going to come and join forces with us again, after all these years. It seems quite funny to think of, so many things have happened since you left home for good – as we thought it was going to be. Do write again and tell me what you think of doing and when you're coming over. My tiny spare-room will be quite ready for you, any time you like.

"Your loving sister,"BARBARA MCALLISTER."

Barbara's letter was astounding.

Even Alex, too jaded for any great poignancy of emotion, felt amazement at her sister's matter-of-fact acceptance of a state of affairs that had been brought about by such moral and physical upheaval.

Had Barbara realized none of it, or was she merely utterly incurious? Alex could only feel thankful that no long, explanatory letter need be written. Perhaps when she got back to England it would be easier to make her explanation to Barbara.

She could hardly imagine that return.

The affair of the release from her vows dragged on with wearisome indefiniteness. Documents and papers were sent for her signature, and there were one or two interviews, painful and humiliating enough.

None of them, however, hurt her as that interview in the parlour at Liège with Father Farrell had done, for to none of them did she bring that faint shred of hope that had underlain her last attempt to make clear the truth as she knew it.

She knew that money had been paid, and Cedric had written a grave and short note, bidding her leave that side of the question to his care, and to that of her father's lawyers.

Then, with dramatic unexpectedness, came the end.

She was told that all the necessary formalities had been complied with, and that her vows were now annulled. It was carefully explained to her that this did not include freedom to marry. The Church would sanction no union of hers.

Alex could have laughed.

She felt as though marriage had been spoken of, for the first time, to an old, old woman, who had never known love, and to whom passion and desire alike had long been as strangers. Why should that, which had never come to her eager, questing youth, be spoken of in connection with the strange, remote self which was all that was left of her now?

She reflected how transitory had been the relations into which she had entered, how little any intimacy of spirit had ever bound her to another human being.

Her first love – Marie-Angèle:

"I love you for your few caresses,I love you for my many tears."

Where was Marie-Angèle now? Alex knew nothing of her. No doubt she had married, had borne children, and somewhere in her native Soissons was gay and prosperous still.

Alex dimly hoped so.

Queenie Torrance.

Her thoughts even now dwelt tenderly for a moment on that fair, irresponsive object of so much devotion. On Queenie as a pale, demure schoolgirl, her fair curls rolled back from her white, open brow, in her black-stuff dress and apron. On Queenie, the blue ribbon for good conduct lying across her gently-curving breast, serenely telling fibs or surreptitiously carrying off the forbidden sweets and dainties procured for her by Alex, or gazing with cold vexation on some extravagant demonstration of affection that had failed to win her approval.

In retrospect Alex could see Queenie again, the white, voluminous ball dresses she had worn, the tiny wreath of blue forget-me-nots, once condemned as "bad form" by Lady Isabel.

On Queenie Goldstein her thoughts dwelt little. She had heard long ago from Barbara of Queenie's divorce, in an action brought by her husband, which had afforded the chief scandal of the year 1899, and then no one had heard or even seen anything of Queenie for a long while, and Barbara had said that she was reported to be abroad with her father.

Five years later Barbara had written excitedly:

"You remember that awful Queenie Goldstein? and how full the papers were of her pictures, when that dreadful divorce case of hers was on, and the five co-respondents and everything? You'll hardly believe it, but she's in London again, having succeeded in marrying an American whom every one says is the coming millionaire. I saw her at the theatre myself, in a box, absolutely slung with diamonds. She's taken to making up her face tremendously, but she hasn't altered much, and she's received everywhere. They say her husband simply adores her."