by A. J. Cronin
She slept little, and that a restless, intermittent sleep. Her flock mattress of the Postulat was gone, and she had now the usual bed of the religious – sacking, it was, loosely filled with straw. Marie Emmanuel had said one day, impersonal and exalted as ever:
‘It is now two months since your clothing. You shall lie in the straw tonight, like our Blessed Lord in the manger.’
It was right and fitting. What was good enough for the Saviour was too good for her. That was no sacrifice. But, though her spirit valiantly accepted the sacrifice, her body refused to cede itself to sleep upon that pallet. Moreover, they had lately changed her cell – again according to the Rule: to remain in any cell too long stamped it with the forbidden quality of possession – and she was not yet accustomed to that change. She craved for that sleep which still eluded her.
During those wakeful hours of darkness and deadly stillness, unrelieved even by the ticking of a clock, whilst she nervously awaited the first paling of the dawn, then it was that her tired brain fastened upon the threads of thought and wove from them the concept of espionage. Not merely the everlasting watching of Marie Emmanuel’s omniscient eye, but an observation more reticent and secret, stretching beyond the enclosure of the novitiate. Little colloquies behind locked doors; Joséphine, Marie Emmanuel, and Bonne Mère Générale in earnest conversation; suddenly an illuminating glance flashed upon her by the Superior as she emerged from church. Was this merely her imagining? It must be so; and yet there was that concrete fact which could not be ignored: that strange interview!
It came one day at the recreation, and then, confronting her, Bonne Mère Générale had said:
‘The community remark that you get thinner. Is it that you are ill?’
She at once denied the charge that she was ill.
‘It is necessary to have health to follow the common Rule. No exceptions can be made. Health too feeble and a heart to haughty cannot make a good religious.’
Was her heart haughty? She who made ignominious and causeless reparations upon her knees? She remained silent.
‘I am told you are truly favoured in the matter of prayer, so surely our good Lord will give you grace to continue the life.’
To continue the life! Those were the words which Lucy took back with her, which persisted uneasily, confronting her suddenly, especially at nights, with a burning intensity. They held, with torturing uncertainty, the threatening implication of her failure: she who had never failed, who could not now fail in this last vital enterprise. Though her present period was, in effect, probationary, she had never so regarded it, but from the first had taken the convent as her haven – a refuge permanent and ultimate.
And, unaccountably, although she found the life so strange, so rigorous and incomprehensible, with all the passionate intensity of her nature she willed violently to continue it. In an illuminating flash she remembered with what supreme assurance she had entered the convent; was she a creature of enfeebled will to lose her fortitude and her faith so easily? God had led her here in all His love for her; that was the rock to which she clung.
Despite her inward doubts and struggles, and the frightful toll exacted by these struggles, she was utterly determined to persist to the bitter end. It was a paradox; but it was she.
And now, like a deeper shadow overcasting all those other shadows, came this fear of failure which she must always guard against; that perhaps was why there grew on her this sense of universal vigilance. She it was who spied perpetually upon herself.
This insistent dread of the impending and unknown was like a thin, sustained note plucked from her overstrung nerves. It droned in her ears and mingled with the singing silence. She became keyed unconsciously to a tense anxiety, her thin face listening, drawn, attuned to a strained expectancy. A fine network of wrinkles grew into the corners of her dark eyes, and spasms of an uncontrollable tic frequently affected her lax cheek. Sometimes, when she walked, she had the strange sensation of treading upon cushions of air – a light and almost buoyant progress which ended in a wave of giddiness. Yet she went on, moulding herself to this shape by the exercise of her will, sustained through everything by the burning purpose of her love.
She was doing it for Jesus. Jesus, her dear Lord, who had, for her, been scourged and crowned with thorns and crucified to an anguished death. Why, when He had suffered so for her, should she refuse to suffer thus for Him? ‘All for Jesus! All for the love of Him’ – that was the eternal purpose of her soul. Immured within her cell during those long dark hours, she was consumed by this love. Like a tongue of flame it was, leaping inside her. Often, too, in the sombre blackness, she saw vividly the Sacred Heart of Jesus surrounded by leaping, answering, passionate flames – loving her, awaiting her adoration. Before that vision she wished to leap from her straw and fall upon her knees, offering herself body and soul to Jesus. Restrained only by the mandate of this Rule, she waited in wide-eyed eagerness till the first clangour of the morning bell should permit her to arise and go to him. ‘Blessed be God. For ever.’
Then, in the darkness, she hurriedly arose, nervously habited her wasted body, and hastened to the church, where, before the actuality of God, she humbly prostrated herself in adoration.
There, in the dim chapel, making pale the steady candle-flames, she saw again around the tabernacle thin tongues of fire. Thus she knew, the Holy Ghost had come upon the Apostles, thus the blaze had leaped from many a martyr’s pyre – in flames like that, each a devouring symbol which kindled the ardour of her spirit and lifted her upwards in an ecstasy of love.
True, at nights, in her snatches of sleep, she was distressed often by a frightful dream: a wild incitement – flames rising at her behest – the convent burning as an offering to God. And she would awaken in an icy, dripping sweat of horror. That, of course, was but a nightmare – a phantasy without reason or relation to her love for Christ.
‘Blessed be God.’
‘For ever.’
How often had she made that fervent answer? Only for a few short months – yet to her those months were vast – each a wide desert of time. The peaches were ripe now in the mellow garden, hanging large and luscious, bursting with their own juice, exhaling a subtle perfume under the warm sun. It was pleasant to admire for a moment, during recreation, the fruits of the good God’s bounty, to observe the lay sisters as they plucked those fruits, with coarse yet gentle hands, then packed the big flat panniers for market. But naturally no more than observation was permitted. Already they had heard that story related, and again related – as it had been through the years, to the exclamations and little shrugs of horror – of the novice, not a professed religious – that was unthinkable! – not in this Order – that was absurd! – but a novice of some other Order – perhaps a Carmelite; yes, it might indeed be a Carmelite – who had fallen to the twin-headed monster of disobedience and gluttony. She it was who, coveting a nectarine in the garden of her enclosure, had, with incredible folly, abandoned her virtue to pluck it secretly and to greedily consume it. – A little cry of consternation from Thérèse! – But one did not trifle with the good God. No! There had been a stone within that nectarine. And the novice, in all the hurry of her hidden gluttony, had swallowed that stone, and so embarrassed her gorge that she had choked herself.
Another little outburst of awe and terror!
‘Ma bonne mère –’
‘Moi, je ne –’
But, lovely as they were. Lucy had no desire for these fruits. Perhaps she had been different once – a long time ago; the thought of a peach might then have wooed her pleasantly; now she did not care. Still, she loved the garden, entering it always, at the recreation, with a sense of strange relief. There, too, she had lately been favoured by a strange and unexpected companionship, which made her more eagerly anticipate that single hour spent beneath those sweetly burdened trees.
It was Sister Adrienne who had spoken to her – old Sister Adrienne, who had worn the habit of the Order for close on sixty of those eighty years
of life that lay so lucidly behind her. A shrivelled, wispy form and a toothless, puckered face had Adrienne, an eye rheumy and ringed like a dove’s, yet somehow clear and gentle as her smile. Saying an interminable rosary which dangled from her sleeve, she tottered about the garden in the hours of sunshine. And one day she had stumbled and, when Lucy had assisted her, suddenly she had spoken. Only by virtue of her age – she was the oldest of the community – had she the privilege to address a novice.
‘It is my sixtieth anniversary on the feast of the Twelve Holy Martyrs,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘Is it not remarkable?’
The gentle simplicity of her manner had drawn a wry smile from Lucy’s impassive face.
‘Thereon, if you are good,’ continued Adrienne, ‘you shall have coffee to dinner and a little gâteau glacé.’ Already Lucy knew about this little cake for each: for days it had been the joyful subject of discussion at the recreation of novices.
‘I must felicitate you,’ she said awkwardly.
Adrienne had smiled again without reply, and, tucking her nodding head into her breast, had wandered off along the path. But next day she returned and again had speech with Lucy.
‘I remarked you yesterday,’ she said. ‘Did you not felicitate me upon my anniversary, which comes on the feast of the Twelve Holy Martyrs? Accept, then, this little picture for your missal.’
She preferred a small gilded card bearing a painting of the Infant Jesus, and, as she gazed at it, slowly Lucy’s eyes moistened.
‘It is too kind,’ she stammered, moved beyond her understanding at this trifling act of human kindness.’
‘It is the Baby Jesus,’ said the other, and her old head went nodding on. ‘So sweet – so gentle. How blessed the Virgin, to be mother to a Child like that. You are pleased?’
‘Yes, I am pleased,’ said Lucy in a low voice.
‘To hold in the arms that Baby,’ went on Adrienne. ‘Truly I am envious of the good Mother.’
Lucy could not help herself. A sudden rush of emotion tore at her breast; she gave a short, suppressed sob. A veil was rent, and suddenly she saw herself nursing her infant son upon the shore at Ardfillan. Overwhelmed by a mingling emotion, indescribable, a pain that ravaged her being, that yearning which was the essence of her life sweeping across her in a spiritual orgasm, she stood unconsciously clutching the card. Then, without a word, she began stiffly to walk away. The old nun observed her with mild, regretful eyes, then stirred herself slowly:
‘Je vais la suivre,’ she mumbled. ‘ Je vais la suivre.’
It was a strange and fitful companionship that followed – one not strictly according to the Rule; yet at this moment in her life Adrienne’s friendship – if it could be called a friendship – was like a reprieve, a sudden intervention in the face of approaching disaster. She seemed to cling, almost, to the old woman; and she tried to draw from her something of that tranquillity which now so desperately she craved.
Sixty years a professed religious! Surely to plumb the depths of this old woman’s heart was to solve for ever the eternal enigma which beset her. And she pressed Adrienne towards that revelation.
‘Yes, sixty years on the feast of the Twelve Holy Martyrs I shall have worn the habit.’
‘And you have great happiness – great contentment now?’ pressed Lucy.
‘It is happiness to bask my old bones in the sun,’ replied Adrienne complacently: ‘and, moreover, there is my anniversary, which approaches on the feast of the Twelve Holy Martyrs! You understand!’
‘But –’
‘Ah, I entered with great fervour,’ mumbled the old woman reminiscently. ‘Still I remember. And how my poor mother wept at my clothing – in effect she was not agreeable to that. But after – this fervour – I do not know.’ She paused, and a fly crawled unmolested over her gentle, drowsy face.
‘You see,’ she resumed, ‘in this life you make yourself to do – do all the time. I have read some time of a great saint – I forget where; now I so easily forget – who not once in his life as religious has the blessing of real fervour, and has prayed for this all the time. But in spite of that he goes on and on, making himself to do what he does not wish for the good God. He says, “I believe.” Then he must believe. It is the faith. It is understandable.’ Again she paused dreamily. ‘Myself, I am not a saint, but so it is with me.’
Lucy gazed at her anxiously.
‘But the reward, sister,’ she murmured, ‘when you die.’
‘I do not wish to die,’ answered Adrienne with unusual briskness, so that the fly started and flew off her nose as at the distasteful thought. ‘Myself, I find life very agreeable – to bask my old bones in the sun. It is sufficient at present. And there are memories so sweet.’
Her smile was tinged with those memories as her mind – the mind of the very aged – flew easily to her distant childhood.
‘At my home in Liège, it was agreeable. There was the fig-tree in the corner of the court where I would play. Once I was taken to the great fair – for a fortnight the gipsies came – and their children received instruction. It was a blue dress I wore, and my hair had many curls. “ Mon petit chou frisé” – thus my papa addressed me always.’ She rambled on gently for a moment; then Lucy, with a growing perplexity, demanded:
‘But surely – surely you desire to be with our Lord?’
There was a long silence, then slowly the old nun declared:
‘It is very curious. Yes, it is very curious: at one time in Italy – where I have spent many years in our Order – an incident takes place. In retirement from age there was the Archbishop – a man very old, very saintly. Suddenly he becomes ill. What takes place? He does not exclaim: “I am old. I believe. Let me die for the great happiness of being with God.” No, no! He demands a doctor and specialists. An operation is decided. Yes, he agrees to get himself better. He recovers. And he is pleased – so pleased; and there is much prayer in thanksgiving. It is curious, is it not?’
The bell rang for the end of the recreation, and with a baffling disarrangement of her mind Lucy went towards the church – to pray for her place in that heaven which Adrienne had no urgency to achieve.
She did not obtain from the old nun the solution which now so restlessly she sought, yet she found a soothing tranquillity in her society. She became strangely, immensely devoted to her. To escape at the recreation from the piercing eye of the mistress, from that eternal: ‘Oh, ma bonne mère’; ‘Look, ma bonne mère, regard the first chestnut’; ‘Has not the pony grown so rapidly?’; it was unutterable relief.
When a rebuke from Marie Emmanuel set her quivering and on edge, when that weary suspense overhung her like a pall, she would force herself to think of that aged, stoic face. It was a singular solace. Unconsciously the knowledge that she could speak to Adrienne at the recreation seemed to tide her over, to strengthen her endurance. Old Adrienne became unconsciously the antidote to Marie Emmanuel. But for the almost miraculous comfort of this assuagement she felt she must have lost herself in a morass of hatred. For Marie Emmanuel’s dislike seemed to increase, between them that silent antipathy to grow. Still she constrained herself in brooding introspection to suffer and obey. She would go on. She would make herself go on.
Then came the eve of the feast of the Twelve Holy Martyrs. Because of the great occasion of the morning’s anniversary she had talked with Adrienne something longer than usual. The old woman had given her another picture, and, when the bell rang, a faint smile lingered on Lucy’s lips as she traversed the garden, holding the card loosely in her hand. Then, all at once, she felt upon her the fixed gaze of Marie Emmanuel. Instantly the smile faded from her face and she placed the card hastily within her pocket. No word was spoken. Yet she shivered, lowered her head, as though a sudden wind had struck her. It was nothing, she told herself – nothing! Still, the memory of that look persisted uneasily through the afternoon. Again, without seeing, she felt those eyes upon her in a coldly speculative gaze, and again she shivered. All her dislike for the other
returned with a torturing insistency, and would not be denied. It was true, then! With all the force of her enfeebled nature she hated and despised Marie Emmanuel. Yet this she could not, must not admit. She must love her and submit to her. To turn the other cheek was now the precept which governed her life. In a rushing turbulence of mind and spirit she entered the church for evening prayers. She must conquer this feeling of revolt. She must – must submit.
With a straining intensity she fixed her eyes upon the glinting tabernacle, praying silently, with a vibrant intensity. Oh, how she prayed! She prayed for grace to continue – for a sign, perhaps, some sign of mercy and peace.
She came out of the church uplifted, her eyes humid and still lit with an afterglow of fervour. Now she was braced with greater fortitude to face the restless night.
Last of all the novices to leave the chapel, she did not immediately ascend the stairs, but made to advance along the corridor towards a small side door which it was her nightly duty to secure: a simple task, and one of many assigned to the novitiate. But, before she could proceed, a figure moving from the shadow at the foot of the staircase abruptly detained her. It was Marie Emmanuel.
‘A moment, if you please,’ said the mistress in a low voice.
Lucy started. The Rule proclaimed a universal silence following the night prayers, a resolution broken rarely and that with circumspection upon the gravest circumstance. Astonishment tinged her rising apprehension as she paused, facing the other in the dim corridor. The dimness of that corridor was contained, and echoed, it seemed, with silence.
‘I omitted to inform you,’ continued Marie Emmanuel in her cold, precise tones, ‘of what you must know before tomorrow.’ She paused, erect, a figure dim and shrouded, almost inhuman in that light. Then she said coldly: ‘It concerns Sister Adrienne.’
Lucy felt her heart contract. Was this the sign she had demanded? She grew chilled, and her limbs turned suddenly listless.
‘I have observed,’ went on the other, frigid as a judge, ‘that you are much together at the hour of recreation. It is not just, such intimacy. To Sister Adrienne are the privileges of the aged, but they are not to you. You understand?’
