by A. J. Cronin
‘I’ll write at once.’ she assured him; then, after a moment, ‘How soon may I expect –’
‘The Mother General will write to you. If you are accepted – perhaps a month; it will be in her hands.’
A month! It was what she had hoped. At the thought, a strange insurgent ardour suffused her like an intoxication.
‘You’ve been good to me, father,’ she murmured. ‘I want to to thank you.’
‘It is nothing.’ His tone held almost a rebuke, deploring all human feeling. Then he was silent, a significant silence which terminated the short interview.
‘Go in peace,’ he said, as she moved towards the door.
She was happy. Voluntarily she had made the step. These few moments of conversation, so restrained and unemotional, would lead her to the haven she desired. She went out into the church. Already in the falling light the echoing nave was blurred to a sombre monotone, relieved only by the waving red gleam of the sanctuary lamp. For a moment she knelt down, filled by a moving sense of gratitude. If only she might be accepted! She prayed that she might be acceptable to God as His servant; that all her coldness, her early indifference, might be forgotten. But she would be accepted. Already she felt her life shaped towards that one end.
The quiet, the solitude, and the darkness encompassed her. Rapt by an unseen vision, her eyes glowed towards the obscurity behind that flickering light; her body, suppliant, strained towards the blankness of the altar in a passion of surrender.
‘All – all for Jesus!’ – with her there could be no half-measures. Yes, she must give all. How blind were they who rejected the sweet beatitude of the love of God! It was everything. It was the light towards which that strange fusion of instincts – her soul – fluttering moth-like in the darkness, was drawn with a blind and irresistible yearning.
Strange, strange thought that she, Lucy Moore, should be actually upon the verge of entering a convent. Only she could understand the true meaning of that step. ‘All – all for Jesus!’ That was it – she was giving herself to Him with all the passioniate ardour of a bride!
Chapter Three
Following the advice of her spiritual adviser, she had written to Edward, and on the following Saturday she was astounded by the manner of his reply. No letter was that response, but, veritably, a visit, a personal visit from the Canon.
‘I had to come, Lucy,’ he asserted without delay, rather breathlessly after a hurried greeting. ‘I am busy. I am exceedingly busy. I have a diocesan meeting at four, but I simply had to come.’ His manner had altered subtly in those last few years – his diffidence masked by dignity, his suavity merged towards a higher pomp. ‘ What’s all this you’re saying in your letter?’ he went on, elevating his brows in genial reproof and pulling the written evidence from his pocket. ‘You’re surely not serious?’
‘Perfectly serious,’ she assured him, observing him calmly as he seated himself in the rocker, now the only secure seat in her back room. She was surprised at his call, but not dismayed by it. The days when the poverty of her house had drawn a blush of shame to her cheek were no longer here. Nay, she now embraced this poverty – the poverty preached by Christ.
‘But you cannot be in earnest, my dear Lucy,’ protested the Canon, fanning his face with the letter – he had ascended the stairs too quickly, and lately his liver had been rather turgid – ‘or at least you are not fully aware of what – excuse me – you are contemplating. Do you know what it means – the hardship of it all?’
‘It’s no greater hardship than I’ve been used to. The Rule has been explained to me. Besides, I offer the hardship to God.’ She was tranquil – tranquil and remote.
‘Very laudable indeed.’ He looked at her indulgently. ‘But honestly, Lucy, at your time of life you must not dream of it.’
Time of life! Did he imply some aberrant impulse by that suggestive phrase? And she was only forty-two. Frowning, she made as though to speak; but he hurriedly went on.
‘Now I want to say a few things to you. You’ve had a very stiff time lately, my dear. But the way you’ve come through it does you credit. Peter’s marriage, almost a runaway match – well, it was a surprise even to me. So young, too! But there – it’s only the natural law. What does St Paul say: “Better to marry than to burn” – you’d have had to lose him some day in any case. Sooner or later – what does it matter? And it’s not so very soon. In Spain, now’ – he flashed backwards a reminiscent eye – ‘in Spain they marry very young. They mature quickly, especially the women. Why, I’ve seen them married at fourteen. Besides, such a splendid match, he’s made. A fine Catholic girl – yes, a lovely girl – lovely’ – he let the adjective slip seductively over his tongue – ‘and wealthy, too – what a start for the boy in that fine London practice. He writes me that he’s getting on splendidly – actually attending the nobility, the pushing young sprig. In a few months or so he’ll be able to provide for you. You’ve done a great deal for him – yes, of course you have – but you’ll get it all back if you’re patient.’ He leaned back and threw out his soft white hand. ‘Pax vobiscum!’ His air said plainly:
There! what cause for regret is there in that?
‘I don’t think the question of what is past comes into this,’ she said with quite astounding mildness. ‘It’s the future I’m concerned with.’
‘Yes, yes, my dear. But a natural resentment, a pique, might cause you to rush into some step like this. I mean, the marriage behind your back, so to speak. Though, goodness knows, I had no hand in it.’
She shook her head slowly, offering her unanswerable argument.
‘You don’t know me, Edward, even yet! This means everything to me now. I’ve found happiness, inexpressible happiness, in our Lord.’
Ironic fact; yet the prelate shied at her words like a startled horse; then along his fine nose he considered her dubiously.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said again, this time soothingly. He paused. ‘Well, admitted that you want to go – have you considered the sacrifice?’ He pursed his lips. ‘You can’t give up the world so easily as you think.’
She considered, with a faint indrawing of her lips, ‘ the world’: the slums, this house, the drab drudgery of her life.
‘I can give it up,’ she answered, more shortly than she meant. ‘And I will give it up.’
‘The life of the cloister, then,’ he persisted reasonably. ‘ It’s a life you must be moulded to gradually when you’re young. You’ll find, at your age – yes, you’ll find humiliation there.’
‘Have I not found enough here?’ she retorted, without bitterness. ‘Have I not found that life holds nothing but the love of God?’
‘You can serve God outside, in the world,’ he suggested, flushing slightly. ‘ We priests do that.’
‘It’s all or nothing with me,’ she rejoined at once, firmly. ‘I’ve had the call.’
He hummed and hawed behind his pressed finger-tips, thinking of those days when, so smartly dressed, so glowing and content, she had some to see him with her little son. How could he shake her from this – yes, this stupidity?
‘What’s taken you?’ he said at length, studying her closely; then his long upper lip twitched with a sudden complacent humour; and, remembering that she had always like his little anecdotes, he added: ‘ You haven’t had a vision, I hope – like the old lady that came to me the other day. Miss MacTara it was – you may remember her.’ He paused, moistened his lips in his best – manner. ‘She’s well-to-do, one of my best parishioners, and as pious as you could wish. “ Canon,” said she in a great flutter, “I’ve had a blessed vision. God the Father and God the Son have I seen. After supper last night I saw them as plain as I’m looking at your reverence now.” “Oh,” I said – I know her well, you understand, and she’s fond of her wine in the evening. “After supper, was it? And how much port did you have?” “ Only two glasses, Canon. I never have more. Tell me, is it a miracle?” “Two glasses,” I replied. “ Go home, my dear good soul. Have three glasses t
onight, and no doubt you’ll see the Blessed Trinity entirely.”’
He laughed benignantly at his own joke – most excellently related; but her face remained so unsmiling that gradually his merriment ran dry. There was a short pause whilst he looked at her askance, discomposed by the failure of his good intention.
‘Be sensible now, Lucy,’ he declared at length in a conciliatory tone. ‘I haven’t interfered with you ever; but now I’m a priest – I know all this from the inside, and I advise you strongly against it.’
She looked at him sitting there, well-fed, plump of hand and cheek, smooth with good living and his own consequence, then swiftly her thoughts flew to Talbot’s figure; gaunt, hungry, worn with its own intensity. Her brow creased. Did these two men profess the same faith? She knew, at any rate, the example which she wished to follow.
‘Father Talbot tells me I have the vocation,’ she answered coldly. ‘He advises me to go.’
His face flushed deeply.
‘Talbot!’ he exclaimed. ‘ He’s, a zealot – a firebrand; the – the bishop has an eye on him. You mustn’t count too much on what he says. We have a duty to life and to ourselves.’ He paused, his sacerdotal suavity swiftly recovered, and went on with considered gravity: ‘ No! It doesn’t improve our prestige here to walk about in old clothes, with our heads shaved; we must be in keeping. Why, only yesterday I interested a man in religion over a game of golf—’ He spoke with a certain satisfaction, and not without a certain authority – his handicap was now eighteen.
She looked at him directly, with eyes which seemed to pierce him.
‘You of all people – you’re really not trying to put me off devoting myself to the service of God!’
His flush, still lingering, rose quickly; he moved restlessly; really her bluntness was not in the best of taste.
‘I only want to save you from being stupid. You’re rather obstinate – I won’t say wrong-headed, but you do take the bit between your teeth. Every logical person will tell you as I do. Even Miss O’Regan thinks –’ He dismissed the sentence with an explanatory shrug.
So he had discussed her with Miss O’Regan – with that pale custodian of his fleece-lined comfort! Again that feeling of bitter injustice flared up in her.
‘I am as I am,’ she declared, swiftly, ‘and that’s how God made me. But I would never discuss you behind your back. And, more than that, from the way you talk you would think I was going to the devil instead of to a convent.’
Outraged, he drew back, hand raised – a figure almost apostolic.
‘Lucy – Lucy,’ he protested, ‘ that tongue of yours!’
She controlled herself, letting her hands fall into her lap.
‘I’m sorry, Edward,’ she said firmly, yet professing her new humility by lowering her head. ‘But I am going. Nothing you can say will alter that. I am going to offer myself to Jesus!’
A long pause succeeded those last words, which seemed to come from the bottom of her soul.
‘Well, well,’ he said, with a movement expressive of pained resignation – whether genuine or false it was impossible to tell – ‘you will go your own way. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ He looked round the room with the air of a man who has done his duty. There was a silence, then she raised her eyes.
‘Can I give you a cup of tea?’ she asked, quite mildly. ‘It would be no trouble at all.’
‘No, no,’ he interposed, rising. ‘ I’m dining with the Archbishop after the meeting. I’ll take nothing till then.’
His duty done, he seemed anxious to get away.
They shook hands in the little hall, and he imparted a high solemnity to the puffy pressure of his fingers.
‘Good-bye, Lucy; and God bless you. Perhaps, after all, you may be given the grace to succeed. For we are in God’s hands – each and every one of us.’
He seemed to darken her doorway, but, for all his increased bulk, he had a soft and fleshy tread as he went sedately down the stairs.
Quickly she closed the door after him and went back into the room. Edward warning against giving herself entirely to God! Could she have conceived a situation more farcical? But she was not moved to laughter. Instead, her lips firmed; her eyes softened and shone with their one-time lustre; nothing could separate her from the joy and glory of her surrender. It was simply – simply that he did not understand. She would go to Jesus despite him. Slowly her gaze became remote, and into the compass of her vision came the Christ figure, bleeding, pierced by five wounds, with arms extended towards her.
Chapter Four
She had known, inevitably, with all the conviction of that inner light, that she was going, but when word came definitely of her acceptance, she experienced a sudden gush of happiness. Bonne Mère Générale in a fine angular hand, and in English of surprising excellence, expressed herself as ‘ much struck’ by the terms of Lucy’s letter and by the good Father Talbot’s recommendation. She was, therefore, despite madame’s age, agreeable to receive her as postulante of the Order on the conditions specified. Thanks be to God! With eye of faith Lucy saw the gates opening to her; opening to peace and the happiness of prayer.
Gladly and at once she began to make arrangements for her departure from an environment which for years had immeasurably oppressed her. She had a strange sense of freedom, a feeling of release, and an energy, a glowing energy, which came from that fire within. It was no hardship for her to think of quitting the country. She embraced it. ‘Leave all that thou hast and follow Me,’ the Master had commanded. And what indeed had she to leave?
She had arranged for the removal of her things, purchased by a dealer in the second-hand from her district – none else would have touched them – for the sum of forty-five shillings. Forty-five shillings – something at least towards her expenses. She must rely upon her son for the rest – a paltry sum which it was impossible for him to refuse her. Yet it was like her that she did not write him. In London she would explain herself. She had her own way of doing things. Yes, she had decided to make no stir about her going. Who, indeed, was there to care? Richard and Eva, Joe, Polly, even Edward? The event would not cause a ripple on the surface of their lives. So narrowed had her life become through circumstances of her own making that she felt already isolated, strangely detached. Father Talbot she did see several times, formal interviews whose very restraint seemed to fan the fire of her zeal. It gave her a momentary wrench to say good-bye to Miss Tinto, but to her other acquaintances she made her leave-taking casual, cheerful, giving no indication of her purpose. She wanted to give up her work; she was going south for a rest, for a holiday, for anything that came into her head. She desired no spectacular valediction. It was enough that she was going. And how gladly was she going!
And so, on the morning of the first day of March, she was in the train for London, a pale-faced, plainly dressed, middle-aged woman with a steadfast eye and a faintly furrowed forehead, the battered trunk that had been her son’s – could she then have foretold its present use? – packed with a few things and bestowed upon the rack above her. In her gloved hand was her ticket, in her purse something short of three pounds, and in her heart, passionately treasured, the priceless possession of the love of God.
Perhaps from her eagerness the journey seemed to her lengthy beyond her imagining. She had travelled little – never, in fact, although Frank had one time toyed in his indeterminate fashion with the idea of a Continental trip, had she been out of Scotland. She had brought no lunch; she desired no papers; she had no wish for conversation. She simply sat quite still in her corner of the compartment, silent, absorbed by secret meditation, filled by a thrilling exaltation.
At Crewe she had a cup of tea and a bun, a hurried meal partaken of standing in the refreshment-room.
At Euston, attained at last at six, she got out upon the crowded platform and immediately summoned a porter, who, in turn, summoned a cab. Amidst the bustle she was quite calm, and she had her plan quite calmly in her head. She was not going to her son’s
. No. She harboured neither rancour nor resentment, she had now no jealousy of Rosie, but still she would not intrude herself upon them. She went instead to a small private hotel in Gower Street, highly recommended by Miss Tinto, who, on a memorable visit with her sister, had found it ‘decent and reasonable’. Here, though she had given no notice of her arrival, she experienced no difficulty. Quiet and contained, undismayed by the rattle of the streets and the strange experience of entering a strange hotel, she obtained her room with a factitious appearance of experience. Then she went down at once to telephone her son. His name was in the book, and his number, she found it easily, and without delay she rang up that number. And it was he who immediately answered in a voice brisk, pleasant, definitely professional and expectant; but when she announced herself and her whereabouts, the voice flattened out in a manner almost ludicrous. After a long, astounded silence, it came back, rather huskily:
‘What – what on earth are you doing here?’
‘Come and see me,’ she returned; ‘I’ll tell you then.’ There was a potent pause; she could see him overwhelmed by astonishment.
‘But you’d better come here, mother’; and another pause. ‘ Why didn’t you say you were coming? Yes – you must come over.’
Her lips smiled faintly into the mouthpiece.
‘I’ll expect you some time this, evening,’ she said. Then, she put down the receiver and came out of the box.
Half an hour later he arrived, effusive, dismayed, concealing the one by the exercise of the other. And now in her room they faced each other – he lounging upon the bed, she upright upon the single cane-bottomed chair which the apartment contained – both affected by the memory of all that had passed since their last meeting.
‘You can’t mean it, mother,’ he said for the third time, still rather breathless and put out. ‘ Really, it’s the biggest shock I’ve had since—’ He broke off and began to pick at the thin red quilt. ‘I don’t see why you couldn’t have let me know.’
