Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “Yes, my dear child. What is the life of a religious on earth but the seeking of a closer union with God? And how can the consummation of that union be reached but through death? A religious lives only to die.”

  “Frances! Frances!”

  “Now do cry as much as ever you like,” said Mrs. Mulholland in practical tones that contrasted oddly with the fervour that still illuminated her coarse, plain old face. “It will do you good. God knows very well that you can’t help feeling your sacrifice, even though you make it with your will. And He won’t give you more than you can bear.

  Now, supposing we were to ask Him together to spare your dear sister’s life, if that is best for her?”

  Rosamund’s eyes dilated slowly.

  “Can she want to live?” she half whispered.

  “My dear, I am quite sure she wants only God’s Holy Will, whatever that may be.”

  “Oh,” cried Rosamund, “you don’t understand. We’re talking of different people, you and I. You’re talking of a little prim, unnatural novice, dressed up, and doing a set of actions by routine every day, and saying her set prayers and phrases, and doing her work — and I — I’m talking of my Francie, my little sister who lived at home with me when we were in the Wye Valley, and played and laughed and was happy with me. She must want to come home — she must.”

  Rosamund’s voice held agony, and the shadows round her mouth and under her great eyes were deepening until they seemed carved upon her colourless face.

  Mrs. Mulholand gazed at her uneasily and said: “Now do cry, my dear, it will do you a lot of good, and listen to me. I quite see that this is a most terrible trial for you, and it all seems dreadful and unnatural that your little sister should be leading this sort of life. But you know, she’s chosen it all of her own free will, and I’m sure she’s told you that she’s very happy with us, and only longing for the day of her final vows.”

  “It’s glamour — madness — an enthusiasm — it can’t last.”

  “It couldn’t last if it were only an enthusiasm, as you say, but you know God gives the grace to live up to a religious vocation. Your little sister has had that grace, and so she’s very happy. At first it’s all very difficult — the homesickness, and the obedience, and the hard life — but that’s just Nature. The flesh is weak, you know, though the spirit is willing.”

  “I thought she would come home with me now. I thought I had come to fetch her, and that perhaps we should go home together. When I heard she was ill, I thought it was sure to mean that she would come away then, and give it all up.”

  “She could come away to-morrow if she wanted to.

  Novices are not kept against their will. No, no, dear, your sister’s vocation is a very real one. Tell me, you wish for her happiness, don’t you?”

  “I wish for it so much that if I’d seen her happy and at peace here I would not have said one word — not one, to make her think I wanted her back. But I haven’t even seen her — I’m only told that she’s very ill, and not allowed to go to her. I will go — it’s wicked to keep me from her.”

  “Now, now,” said Mrs. Mulholland soothingly.

  The door opened softly.

  “Here’s Mother Juliana. This poor child is nearly frantic, Mother. She can’t understand not being allowed to go to Sister Frances Mary, you see.”

  Mrs. Mulholland looked almost pleadingly at the tall, gentle old nun who had just entered.

  “Ah,” said Mother Juliana, in a strong, slow voice that came oddly from her slight, bent figure with its habitual stoop. “I have brought you a message, then, that will be of comfort to you. Your sister is awake, and I said to her that you would like a message, but I did not tell her you were here — it was wiser not. She is very weak, la pauvre, but she whispered so softly: ‘Tell her: My love, and I am so happy.’”

  “Thank God for all His mercies,” said Mrs. Mulholland with a sort of matter-of-fact promptness. “Is she better?”

  “I do not think her better,” said the nun quietly. “I do not think she will get better in this world. God wants her for Himself.”

  Rosamund looked dumbly at them both.

  “She does not suffer,” gently said Mother Juliana with the same faint, remote smile. “She is very quiet and peaceful — and, as she said, so happy! She has the smile of a little child, mademoiselle.”

  “There, there,” said Mrs. Mulholland, unconscious of the tears running down her face, “what did I tell you? Come into the chapel, my dear, with me. You shall be quite quiet there, and we mustn’t keep Mother Juliana. Is not the doctor due now?”

  “Yes. I came down to see mademoiselle first, but I must return to my infirmary at once. I will come and tell you what he has said, my child, but do not have false hopes.

  God knows what is best.”

  She turned and glided noiselessly out of the room. Her whole demeanour was one of ageless, passionless aloofness.

  She was very unlike Mere Pauline, quick, alert, human.

  “Ah, I wish that Mere Pauline could have been here to see you, my poor child,” cried Mrs. Mulholland, as though involuntarily struck by the contrast. “But human comfort can do very little for any of us. Now come with me, won’t you?”

  She took Rosamund’s hand as though she had been guiding a child, and led her to the chapel door.

  “Go in there,” she whispered huskily, pointing to the half-open door. “I’ll come and fetch you when the doctor has gone away again.”

  Rosamund went in and heard the door swing to behind her.

  The chapel was very still and hushed in the afternoon sunlight. A tiny purple patch danced and flickered over the wall. Nothing else moved. As Rosamund’s eyes became accustomed to the semi-gloom she saw that the figure of a nun knelt upon an upright carved prie-dieu just in front of the Sanctuary. The black veil and heavy habit hung in motionless folds. It seemed as though nothing could, or would, ever disturb that immovable contemplation again.

  Rosamund knelt mechanically and remained on her knees, thoughts seething without any conscious volition of her own across the upper surface of her mind, and beneath, an abyss of misery toward which she felt herself slowly, slowly slipping. When the surface thoughts failed her, she knew subconsciously that she must touch those yawning depths. She wondered if the nun was praying. Making intercession, perhaps, for the Superior whose illness had flung the community into disarray — asking for the forgiveness of her own half imaginary sins — involuntary infringements of some convent regulation. Was she praying for those whom she loved — those who had perchance been all the world to her, before she chose to renounce all human ties and give herself to God alone? Rosamund slipped a little further towards the abyss with the thought.

  Once upon a time the woman kneeling there in her black draperies had been a little child, living at home with a father and mother, and no doubt other children — the children who had played together — shared the countless associations of a common childhood. Did the one who was a nun remember still, or had it all become unreal to her? Was the only reality her tranquil community life, with its loyalty to the Superior, to the Order, its forgetfulness of the things outside? She had forgotten, perhaps. The children who had played together at home, the mother who had perhaps gathered them round her in the long summer evenings and called them home from their outdoor play when the afternoons grew short and dark, were all part of another life, to the nun. Now if she were dying, her mother would not be allowed to go to her....

  Nearer — nearer still to that bottomless gulf.

  If they came to see her, it would be “un parloir” for our sister — the Superior would send her down as to a duty, the time of her stay would be regulated. There is work to be done — work for the community, for the glory of God.

  Our sister cannot be spared for very long. But the Superior — the Superior herself will come down to the waiting mother and sister. They shall see the building — the Chapel — the Superior will arrange that tea should be brought to them in the parl
our. And our sister is grateful — that the Superior, with so much to do, so much to think of, should yet spare some of her time and of her thought for the anxious visitors waiting in the grim little parlour.

  Why — ah, why? The edge of the precipice is very near now.

  The nun has made her sacrifice — she has given it all up — the life in the world, the love in the world, the homely affections and joys in the world. They say that she has given it all to God. He wanted it then? He gave her all those things only that she might give them back to Him — and in return He gives her Himself.

  They say so.

  They told Francie that.

  Francie has given everything: her innocent youth, the old happy days with Rosamund, the days when they had been little children together in the Wye Valley, the small troubles and small enjoyments that had made up her life — all merged now into one vast reality, one supreme sacrifice.

  What was it the woman who had been kind had said in the parlour? Death is the goal of the religious life.

  If she died it would be all over. Over for Frances, the long separation that the years would widen between her and Rosamund; over, the aching sense of home-sickness that surely the most detached of our sisters must know, the secret wail of “Never more” that is now only a temptation to be met and crushed. Over, the hard daily life — the monotonous early rising, battling with sleep in the cold of the chapel, the heavy day’s work, the inevitable recreation with guard on tongue and senses, the struggle to fix a tired mind on prayer or contemplation; over, the infinite tension, the stretching towards an unattainable ideal — all over in death.

  So near to the abyss now that no more clutching at thoughts and memories can save her, Rosamund prays: “Let her die. Let it all be over for her. Oh God, if there is mercy and pity in You let Frances die now. She has made the sacrifice — she was willing to give up everything for You — let that be enough — let her die now.

  Don’t let her come back to it all. If she dies now, it will be all over. She will be with You in Heaven perhaps, or else it will just be nothing — all over. That would be best — oh, that would be best. Never to know or feel anything any more — to be at rest.

  “Let my Francie die now. I don’t even ask to see her again — it would break her heart to see me like this; let her only remember me as in the old days when we were together — she and I — as we shall never, never be any more.”

  Never.

  The sense of irrevocability has suddenly become poignant and unbearable. There is no going back. There is no solution.

  And with that certainty comes the last failing clutch at the sense of proportion which lies at the back of sanity — and then the abyss.

  “Poor child, poor child,” sobbed Mrs. Mulholland noisily outside the door. “Shall I bring her to you, Mother dear?”

  “Bring her to the little parlour.”

  Mrs. Mulholland creaked into the chapel, mopping at her eyes resolutely with a large handkerchief, and sank heavily on to her knees beside the bench where Rosamund was half kneeling and half crouching.

  “Mother Juliana wants you in the little parlour, my dear.

  Will you come?”

  Rosamund came. Her hands moved with a helpless, groping gesture, and her face, stained and ravaged, was blank of expression.

  “My dear, God’s Holy Will be done, is what I say,” said the old woman beside her, moving along the stone passage with a step that seemed more ponderous than usual.

  “You’ve been making your act of resignation too, haven’t you, poor child — I know it. Come in to Mother Juliana.”

  Mrs. Mulholland was crying openly, but Mother Juliana faced Rosamund with the fixed, remote gaze of one whose standard of values is set elsewhere.

  “God is going to ask a gift from you,” she said quietly to Rosamund.

  Rosamund looked at her with the dilated eyes of a child that cannot understand what is said to it.

  “There is only one solution,” she muttered in an inward voice.

  It was the only conviction that remained to her from out of chaos, and she held to it as to the last link with sanity.

  “There is only one solution. I had to pray for that.”

  “God holds all solutions in His own hands,” said the nun. “Your beloved little sister has done her work for Him on earth, and He has taken her to Himself.”

  “Is Francie dead?” asked Rosamund in that gentle inward voice.

  “Our Lord called her to Heaven, in her sleep, and she went so quietly. She is with Him, dear child.”

  “She is dead,” repeated Rosamund. “I prayed for Francie to die and she’s dead — thank God — oh!” — her voice choked in her throat—” I’m thanking God that Francie is dead.”

  The darkness closed round her and she touched the depths — the very depths — of the abyss.

  And because those depths are deeper than we can plumb with our frail strength, a merciful unconsciousness was vouchsafed to Rosamund even as she reached them.

  XXVII

  ROSAMUND lay in the tiny convent infirmary where she had been for a week.

  She was quite weak, and the tears that had not come to her before streamed irrepressibly now. She could not stop crying.

  They told her of the little novice, Sister Frances Mary, lying in her white habit with her hands folded against her breast, a crucifix between them, and wearing the chaplet of white artificial flowers which she had worn at her prise d’habit, and with which the nuns had garlanded her now over the white veil.

  And Rosamund, the tears pouring down her face, saw only a little girl with soft, flying hair, in a pink sunbonnet, swinging in the orchard above the Wye Valley.

  The infirmarian told her of Mere Pauline’s recovery, and of how, still weak and shaken, she had knelt, toute tremblante, pauvre Mbre, in the chapel where they had placed her child, and prayed beside the black-draped oaken trestles where lay the mortal remains of Sister Frances Mary.

  Rosamund had heard the tolling chapel bell, and Mother Juliana had read her the prayers that had been offered in the hillside cemetery beyond the town, where they had laid Sister Frances Mary. And she had seen another hill, and heard only the sound of two little sisters calling to one another in their play.

  The nuns did not understand. They had only known Sister Frances Mary.

  They were very kind to her, and the infirmarian daily brought her messages from the Superior, promises of an early visit, and assurances that she was not to think of leaving the convent until le medecin had declared her to be remise dit coup.

  Rosamund remained passive. The tears that she could not restrain did not matter here, and they kept her from the lowest of those abysmal depths that she had sounded before something snapped within her, and she had felt herself falling helplessly, in the convent parlour, with Mrs. Mulholland’s large, frightened old face wavering strangely before her eyes.

  Since then, unutterable weariness and yet unutterable relief had taken possession of her. Frances was dead, and Frances was hers again as in the days when they had been children together, and seen all life before them in an illimitable perspective. Of Porthlew, she thought hardly at all.

  Her mind had gone back to the Wye Valley days. Old formulae that had passed between the two, long since forgotten, little trivial memories that had been common to them both, thronged to Rosamund’s mind almost involuntarily in her weakness, and the finality held by Death seemed the only refuge from the far more poignant finality that life had offered.

  In the curious need of dependence which utter physical and mental lassitude induces, Rosamund, scarcely conscious of even a vague surprise, found that she had turned to Mrs. Muholland.

  The old woman toiled heavily up the narrow stairs that led to the infirmary, and spent the spring afternoons sitting by the window in the tiny room, with her work held close to her spectacles, while she talked with her odd matter-of-fact piety to Rosamund, or listened to her few replies and questions.

  One day she brought h
er some flowers, and Rosamund sobbed and cried over them, and tried to tell Mrs. Mulholland why, and could not.

  “Now, my poor dear child, don’t try to talk about it. The fact is you’re still very weak, and the least thing oversets you. But you must remember that your dear little sister has much better flowers to look at where she is now than any this poor old earth can offer. Eye hath not seen” said Mrs. Mulholland, shaking her head. “I often think if this earth is so beautiful with flowers and everything, why, what must Heaven be?”

  Rosamund looked at her.

  “Violets all the year round, most probably,” pursued the old lady cheerfully, “though, to be sure, it’s absurd to talk of all the year round in eternity — but one always thinks of it as being spring or summer in Heaven. But whatever it is, my dear, you may depend upon it that your sister is seeing all the wonderful things that have been promised to those who forsake everything for God.”

  “Can she be happy if she knows that I am still here?” asked Rosamund wistfully.

  “Happy in the Will of God. And I am sure that time seems only a flash to her, though to us it feels so long, and then you’ll be with her and can enjoy it all together. And then, you know, it will be for eternity, and there will be no more parting,” said Mrs. Mulholland earnestly.

  “It will be just like it used to be, and all the years in between will be forgotten,” sobbed Rosamund.

  “That’s it, my dear. Now doesn’t the thought of that meeting give you courage?”

  “Perhaps. It isn’t as real to me as it is to you.”

  “Brought up without very much religion, perhaps,” acquiesced Mrs. Mulholland cheerfully. “Well, well, your dear little sister will do wonders for you. A vocation in a family is a very great grace, and certainly she had done all our Lord wanted of her on earth, and that’s why He took her to Himself in Heaven.”

  The Heaven, beautiful, material, and yet fadeless and endless, presented thus to her brought a strange weary comfort to Rosamund’s mind.

  “We shall be together again, and it will be just like before she went away — only better,” she repeated, like a child.