by A. J. Cronin
‘Did you let me know?’ she asked him, with a faint, wry smile. He flushed deeply, his head still down, his fingers still picking at the quilt.
‘Rose wants you to come out,’ he asserted uncomfortably. ‘Indeed she does. It was the last thing she said to me before I came over.’ He paused, suddenly aggrieved. ‘ Such a mix-up it is, your dashing down like this. And this idea at your time of life – I never heard anything like it. What on earth will people think?’
She looked at him tranquilly, even compassionately. It was natural that he should be engaged by the trivialities of existence. Despite her composure, it stirred her deeply to see him again. All the intimacies of their life together rose up to confront her. He had altered so little: his manner, his very smile, the same, tinged by the same diffident, unconscious charm. She still loved him; but now, of course, her fondness, her whole outlook, was different. She saw things in their proper focus – the minutiae of, existence now relegated to insignificance before the main and eternal purpose of salvation. Her eyes smiled at him. Had she once flogged herself on in a frantic effort to achieve temporal gratification from his success? Amazing folly? No wonder she had been punished. At this moment she saw, acutely, the justice of the punishment she had endured, and, with a sublime realisation, she accepted it as the instrument of her deliverance to grace.
‘I don’t like to think of your burying yourself away there,’ he again protested. ‘It’s not very creditable to me.’
‘I know how you feel, my son,’ she said slowly, and as she spoke her short figure attained majestic stature, ‘ but I am going for all that.’
‘Come and stay with us and think it over. I tell you Rose wants you to come.’
‘What use is it?’ she returned, with a queer, unrecognised hostility. ‘Rose will never see me again. I’m going immediately – tomorrow or the day after.’
He raised his eyes, half appealing, half aggrieved.
‘You don’t blame me for anything? It was only natural.’
‘I blame you for nothing. You don’t understand how happy I am.’
‘I wanted to do so much for you,’ he explained dejectedly. ‘You know what I wrote. It was only a matter of time. I’d do anything for you.’
‘There are some things I require,’ she replied, calmly controlling the situation. ‘The cost is trifling.’
His eye suddenly humid, the possessive instinct overcome by the thought of her departure, he again protested his willingness to help her. In the rush of his feeling his habitual meanness was swamped; he demanded detail, produced his pocket-book, emotionally handed over some notes.
‘Get everything you want,’ he declared feelingly. ‘It’s the least I can do for you.’ He had all the Moore softness in moments of crisis, making his donation with a sort of sublime largesse; drawing from it, indeed, the soothing sense of a duty adequately performed. Nine months ago she would have repudiated this gift scornfully, but now she accepted the money without comment or compunction. It was not really for her, but for God. And, touched more by this composure than by any demonstration of affection, affected now by a sudden tenderness towards her, he made more protestations, promises, exclamations of regret. But her self-command was great. He had the strange feeling that she was eternally remote from him. As he rose to leave he said, unhappily:
‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow.’ Again she smiled at him, and kissed him.
When he had gone, she sat for a moment thinking, then, rising, she put away the money he had given her and went downstairs. There she entered the comfortable, maroon-papered dining-room and began the plain though excellent meal which already was being served. She enjoyed it, but, seated in a quiet corner, she gave no attention to the others in the room. Her eyes, already schooling themselves, it seemed, to meekness and meditation, remained fixed upon the greyish tablecloth. And, immediately she had finished, she arose.
It was not yet eight o’clock, and, impelled by the force within her, she put, on her hat and coat, made an enquiry at the office, and went out of the hotel. The streets, pulsed with life: they were like great veins through which ran a constant vital stream. Hansoms and taxis dashed along. People were going to dine – to the theatres. A private car flashed past. She saw the glint of a white shirt, the gleam of a bare shoulder. Often in the past she had entertained a glowing anticipation of her first visit to London – she had talked it over first with Frank and then, a long: time afterwards, with Peter: a little dinner it was to be, at the Trocadero – they had decided to be smart – with perhaps a little wine; a good play to enthral them or make them laugh; then supper somewhere in Soho for the real Bohemian savour – yes, she had planned it all.
But now all that was gone – ashes in her mouth, unwanted, unregretted. Had she been offered that programme so long ago desired, she would have coldly turned away her head. That was nothing – nothing to what she now possessed. As she walked along she had a longing – a sweet longing that only she could understand. Not during the whole of that day had she had the consolation of a visit to the church, and there was a craving in her heart which cried out to be appeased. She was obliged again to enquire her way, but after some searching she discovered and entered the church to which she had been directed. There she knelt down and signed herself with a sigh of happiness.
It was late when she returned to the hotel, and, fatigued from her journey, she slept soundly – a dreamless sleep of happiness. On the next morning she rose early. She had those necessities of clothing to obtain, and, after breakfast, taking the Mother Superior’s list and the money Peter had given her, she went out.
It was difficult; she tried four shops without success: eyebrows were raised at the coarse material and plain pattern of the garments she desired. But the raising of an eyebrow was nothing to her now, and at last, after much searching – searching which in her eager mood became a veritable pleasure – she came upon a quiet shop in the Edgware Road where they had what she required: a modest black serge dress reaching from neck to ankle, some rough underclothing of a fabric guaranteed eternal, woollen stockings, cotton sheets, and a pair of harsh blankets. The total cost was little enough – the prices were as modest as the establishment – and she could be trusted to secure good value, if not for her own, at least for Jesus’ sake. Later in the day the purchases arrived at the hotel, where she bestowed them carefully in her trunk.
Again, that evening, her son came over to see her, and for an hour they sat together in her small bedroom. It was a curious interview, marked on his side by a curious constraint. Once more she felt the sweep of her affection for him: it could never pass, this love; but now it was an emotion recollected rather than experienced, a feeling still recognised, yet recognised from afar, outspanned by the upward soaring of her spirit. Yet she was concerned by his distress. For he had now had leisure to consider the position, and he was afflicted by the irrevocability of the parting. His selfishness was not proof against that strain of inherited sentiment, nor crass enough to withstand the visible imminence of her departure. Had this happened at a distance had she left directly from Glasgow – all would have been different. He had the happy faculty – so common in the gentle egoist – of inhibiting those matters outside his actual sphere of contact. His marriage, for example, effected in her absence, displayed this tendency in full. Then he had simply banished from his mind the awkward thought of her and her distress. But here – to have the unhappy situation brought home to him by her actual presence in this small bedroom – that evoked a lively, though perhaps a transient, misery.
He persisted in demanding if he had given her money enough; wished, indeed, to offer her more. Here at least was plain evidence of his sincerity! But she almost smiled: of what use to her was money now? He would discharge her small obligation to the Order – that she averred to be sufficient recompense for anything that she had done for him. Strangely, these efforts, once to her so desperate, became, in retrospect, remote and even petty. When endured, they had appeared unforgettable, searing a
s the pangs of childbirth; yet, like those pangs, they had faded now vaguely into a curious insignificance.
But he was very emotional, his eyes filling with tears as he demanded why she was leaving him. Again and again he went over it: he had been making plans for her future; he had meant to do this, and intended to do that; there was, above everything, as she had fully known, always a home for her in his home; even Rose had said –
Yes, though she comforted him, he was vastly upset. No matter that she indicated the visible evidence of her happiness, his dejection deepened. The years dropped from them, back, it seemed to her, to the days of his childhood in Ardfillan. Actually as he took his leave he was almost blubbering – manifestly a grief so boyish it drew from her a mild, compassionate smile. When he had at last departed, she sat thinking of those days, her eyes steady, that faint reminiscent smile still upon her parted lips. She felt, somehow, as though that was how she wished to take farewell of him. And so it was.
He had promised to drive her to Victoria on the following morning. But her intuition had been right; when morning came, a telephone message reached her that he was detained upon a case and would meet her at the station. But he was not at the station: it was no fault of his; he could not leave his case. And in a sense she was glad. All along she had wished her departure to be quiet and unpretentious. No false assumption of renunciation – no melodramatic leave-taking, no monstrous pretence of sentiment upon the threshold of the cloister. The very thought filled her with contempt. Her feeling was within – the love of God; to give herself to God: that was the motive, the force which drove her with a passionate intensity towards this step. And now the last barrier was down, the last earthly obstacle surmounted, the whistle of the speed-gathering engine like a trumpet-blast, shrilling the praise of God.
Seated in her compartment, she directed her eyes out of the window, whilst the gay Kentish countryside – prettier than any picture – spun past her rapt and shining gaze. Silently her lips formed the aspiration: ‘ Blessed be God.’ The very wheels echoed and re-echoed that unspoken hosanna. ‘Blessed be God’; ‘Blessed be God’; ‘Blessed be God’! It swelled within her like a diapason, and from her ascended with soundless ecstasy to the bright blue cupola of the sky.
Yes; God was indeed good to her, even in these minor matters which she had so disdained. In spite of herself, she had dreaded the crossing, but, Dover reached by its chalky cutting, she found the sea flat, and untroubled as a windless pond. All things went well with her. God sat upon His throne within His templed heaven and smiled upon her with benign omnipotence.
The steady throbbing of the even boat replaced the thunder of the wheels, but to her the rhythm was the same. She was going forward – forward to the ultimate object of her being.
This was the spirit of her journey – a happiness, rushing, ardent, soft: a beating within her breast as of the beating of wings. At Calais she passed through the Customs quickly – her baggage was marked for examination at Brussels – and she entered the rapide quite untroubled by the strangeness of the scene or the difficulty of the language. It was all made so easy for her by that divine hand. The train started; again the wheels began their triumphant song. A quick excitement stirred in her, not at the novelty of the landscape: the flat grey country with its long white roads and lines of poplars passed before her like a dream: but at the prospect of her journey’s end. An elation it was almost, a vivid thirsting eagerness. And to think that nine months ago she had thought her life ended. She almost laughed – laughed aloud. Nothing in that life of hers – and it all flashed before her like the fleeting landscape – had ever been like this. How could it be so? Her affections for her husband and for her son – how could those equal this present love for Jesus? And it was, in truth, to give herself to Jesus that she was in this train. Rushing nearer and nearer to Him.
At Tournai her flimsy ticket, now a fragment, was clipped again. Later she ate the sandwiches she had brought from the hotel. An Englishwoman seated opposite began a desultory conversation. Lucy made answer, smiling even at the other’s remarks; but her manner, though agreeable, was detached. How could it be otherwise? They ran through Lille, Baisieux, and Blandain. Did she feel tired? Her back might ache a little; perhaps her eyes were hot and gritty; but, her spirit alert, she was hardly conscious of fatigue. She was aware always of that increasing sensation of approach, and at length, as the level rays of the sun pierced the umbered haze and slanted over a tumbled chaos of roofs and spires, the train slowed and entered the station. She was in Brussels.
At once she stepped out upon the platform, where for a moment she stood, splitting the moving stream of people by her immobility. Then suddenly her eyes lit up; she observed two nuns standing close to the barrier, and they, apparently, though how she knew not, observed her. She moved; so, too, did they; intuitively a flash of recognition passed with arrow swiftness between them; they advanced and met each other. Oh, happy – oh, thrilling encounter, preordained from her nativity.
‘You are from England?’ said the shorter of the two nuns, smiling and nodding her head. She spoke admirable English – another example, on top of this well-timed meeting, of the beneficent encouraging providence.
‘Very soon,’ said the other nun also in English, but this time defectively and, with difficulty, by an accompanying inclination of her head, she indicated her meaning – that the train was up to time.
‘It was good of you to meet me,’ murmured Lucy. If she had entertained vaguely some misgivings as to her arrival unaccompanied in this foreign city, now she deplored them by her gratitude.
‘It is nothing,’ said the first; ‘ we were so instructed.’ She paused, then, by way of introduction, she indicated her companion. ‘Bonne Mère Marie Emmanuel, Mistress of Novitiat; and I – I am Sister Joséphine, Mistress of Postulat.’
Lucy smiled warmly in return.
‘You speak English so well.’
‘It is nothing,’ said Sister Joséphine again. ‘We have some houses in England. Mère Générale speaks also very well.’
‘But we must not remain,’ broke in Mère Marie Emmanuel restively.
‘No, no, we must not remain,’ agreed Sister Joséphine at once. ‘There is the baggage.’ She turned, rather consciously, and led the way to the douane. Here, whilst her trunk was being brought forward, Lucy had a moment to inspect the two nuns.
They wore the long outdoor cloak which, enveloping the habit, concealed the entire figure, and each wore, too, upon her head, the white casque and bandeau surmounted by the black veil of the Order. But here the resemblance ceased.
Sister Joséphine was of medium height, with a dull, muddy complexion, enlarged pores, a blunt nose, small green eyes, mobile, talking eyebrows, and a cheerful, alert, childish manner. Vaguely that manner seemed familiar to Lucy, but where she had met it she could not at the moment recollect.
Bonne Mère Marie Emmanuel, Mistress of Novices, was pale, tall, severe, blue-eyed, with thin, very dry lips, sharp canine teeth which declared themselves prominently on the rare occasions when she smiled, and a bearing so erect and impersonal as to be almost exalted. Towards her Sister Joséphine manifested seemingly an open and obsequious respect, not so much from any difference in rank, as from that deference – the unconscious tribute which a weaker nature pays to one stronger than itself.
Just now Joséphine was moving her hands and speaking very; rapidly in French to the Officer of Customs, who, listening attentively, bowed and bowed again with great respect, and finally lifted his peaked cap stiffly with that same air of deference. Thereafter he made intricate scrawls with blue chalk on the unopened trunk, then yelled suddenly: ‘Porteur!’
In a moment a blue-bloused porter appeared and shouldered the case.
‘It is very agreeable,’ said Joséphine, turning with an expression of great satisfaction. She spoke rapidly, volubly, yet deferentially to her companion, and as the three went down the platform she remarked to Lucy:
‘The father of our Sister
Claire. He is high – very high in the douane.’ She indicated a sublime attitude. ‘Our religious coming to Sentiens pay no duty Truly, it is a great privilege.’
They went out of the station into a large open square, and immediately entered a waiting cab. The porter was dismissed with a small white coin and a stiff bow from Marie Emmanuel; the door snapped shut; then the cab rolled off over the cobbles. Steadying herself against the swinging motion, Lucy kept her eyes down; from the opposite seat she felt the two nuns studying her with a naïve curiosity.
‘You are fatigued?’ said Sister Joséphine suddenly. She was the talkative one.
‘No, no,’ replied Lucy, looking up quickly. Such a sign of weakness she would not so early or so easily admit. ‘The crossing was very quiet.’ Unconsciously she found herself imitating the other’s phraseology.
‘The waves derange me also,’ said Sister Joséphine agreeably.
‘That – it is terminated,’ remarked Marie Emmanuel abruptly. There was a short silence, then in low tones the two began to talk to each other in French.
Lucy had a warm impulse of friendliness towards those two women with whom she felt she would now be associated, but she had no wish to interrupt their conversation; and so she turned her eyes out of the small window of the dark closed cab. It was an animated street which they discovered, filled by open carriages and a little trolley trams that seemed to hurtle themselves along with a gay velocity. Rows, of cafés lined the pavements: she read the names – Café du Pays, Café Belgique, Café du Postillon: dozens of cafés, with men and women seated: outside at little round tables. The people were not animated, but sat with a placid and inanimate content. Their drinks were before them on the glass-topped tables, but never did they seem to drink. They merely sat, and gazed, and took the air.
At length the cab turned out of the main street and ascended a hill, past the vague shapes of statues, a fountain, another square, a large edifice – was it a palace? – then into a quieter quarter, where long dark houses with iron grilles and lattice shutters stood, silently, relieved by an occasional shop. What curious names: Epicerie – Boulanger – Robes – Charcutier – these were the words above the doors. Truly she was in a strange land.
