Agnes Repplier

“ Rehearsals were, on the whole, not an unmixed delight. A large circle of amused critics is hardly conducive to ease, and the free expression of dramatic force,—at least, not when one is eleven years old, and painfully shy. I envied Marie her fervour and pathos, her clasped hands and uplifted eyes. I envied Elizabeth her business-like repose, the steady, if somewhat perfunctory, fashion in which she played her part. I envied Lilly, who halted and stammered over her three words, but whose beauty made amends for all shortcomings. ”

“ I detested Madame Bouron, and loved Madame Rayburn. Elizabeth detested Madame Bouron, and loved Madame Dane. Emily detested Madame Bouron, and loved Madame Duncan. These were emotions, amply nourished, and easily understood. We were capable of going to great lengths to prove either our aversion or our love. But to give up chocolate custard for Reverend Mother was like suffering martyrdom for a creed we did not hold.
“It’s because Reverend Mother is so fond of geography that we’re going to have the competition,” said Lilly. “Madame Duncan told me so.” ”

“ We, at least, refused to accept her estimate of her own well-spent life.
“Making an act” was the convent phraseology for doing without something one wanted, for stopping short on the verge of an innocent gratification. If I gave up my place in the swing to Viola Milton, that was an act. If I walked to the woods with Annie Churchill, when I wanted to walk with Elizabeth, that was an act. If I ate my bread unbuttered, or drank my tea unsweetened, that was an act. It will be easily understood that the constant practice of acts deprived life of everything that made it worth the living. ”

“ What is more, she would do these things at rehearsals, in her short school frock, with unabated fervour, and without a shade of embarrassment. We recognized her as a Heaven-sent genius, second only to Julia Reynolds and Antoinette Mayo (who I still think must have been the greatest of living actresses) , yet in our secret souls we despised a little such absolute lack of self-consciousness. We were so awkward and abashed when brought face to face with any emotion, so incapable of giving it even a strangled utterance, that Marie’s absorption in her parts seemed to us a trifle indecent. ”

“ Tony wrote occasional verses of a personal and satiric character, which we held to sparkle with a biting wit. Annie Churchill had once rashly shown to Lilly and to me some feeble lines upon “The Evening Star.” Deep hidden in my desk, unseen by mortal eye save mine, lay an impassioned “Soliloquy of Jane Eyre,” in blank verse, which was almost volcanic in its fervour, and which perished the following year, unmourned, because unknown to the world. But Elizabeth had never shown the faintest disposition to write anything that could be left unwritten, until Marianus stirred the waters of her soul. ”

“ Marianus I do not know how Marianus ever came to leave his native land, nor what turn of fate brought him to flutter the dovecotes of a convent school. At eleven, one does not often ask why things happen, because nothing seems strange enough to provoke the question. It was enough for me—it was enough for all of us—that one Sunday morning he appeared in little Peter’s place, lit the candles on the altar, and served Mass with decent and devout propriety. Our customary torpor of cold and sleepiness—Mass was at seven, and the chapel unheated—yielded to a warm glow of excitement. ”

“ Dark whispers of assassination fill the air. The plot is touching in its simplicity. Inez, a captive of rank, is to be sent as a peace offering to the Spanish lines. Ayesha and Zoraiya (Elizabeth) accompany her as pledges of good faith. Zara, disguised as a serving woman, goes with them,—her soul inflamed with hate, her dagger [Pg 62] hidden in her breast. Ayesha is kept in ignorance of the conspiracy; but Zoraiya knows,—knows that the queen is to be murdered, and that her own life will help to pay the penalty. ”

“ What made it singularly hard to sacrifice our young lives for the swelling of a spiritual bouquet was that Reverend Mother, who was to profit by our piety, had so little significance in our eyes. She was as remote from the daily routine of the school as the Grand Lama is remote from the humble Thibetans whom he rules; and if we regarded her with a lively awe, it was only because of her aloofness, of the reserves that hedged her majestically round. She was an Englishwoman of good family, and of vast bulk. There was a tradition that she had been married and widowed before she became a nun ”

“ She herself, having first choice, elected England for her dwelling-place, and Emily for her spouse. She took Emily, I am sure, because that silent and impassive child was the only one of the five who didn’t particularly covet the honour. Elizabeth, protecting herself instinctively from our affection and admiration, found her natural refuge in this unresponsive bosom. Because Emily would just as soon have married Lilly or me, Elizabeth wisely offered her her hand. She also insisted that Emily, being older, should be husband. Mere surface ambition was alien to her character. ”

“ Behind the scenes, despite the frenzy of suppressed excitement, there reigned outward order and tranquillity. The splendid precision of our convent training held good in all emergencies. We revolved like spheres in our appointed orbits, and confusion was foreign to our experience. I am [Pg 60] inclined to think that the habit of self-restraint induced by this gentle inflexibility of discipline, this exquisite sense of method and proportion, was the most valuable by-product of our education. There was an element of dignity in being even an insignificant part of a harmonious whole. ”

“ So it was that Marianus came to the convent, and we gave him our seven young hearts with unresisting enthusiasm. Viola’s heart, indeed, was held of small account, she being only ten years old; but Elizabeth was twelve, and Marie and Annie were thirteen,—ages [Pg 8] ripe for passion, and remote from the taunt of immaturity. It was understood from the beginning that we all loved Marianus with equal right and fervour. We shared the emotion fairly and squarely, just as we shared an occasional box of candy, or any other benefaction. ”

“ Elizabeth came and squeezed herself on the bench beside me, to propose a private search for the white violets that grew in the marshy ground beyond the lake, and that bloomed long after the wood violets had gone. Tony shouted across two intervening benches that she didn’t see why we could not secure the boat, and have a row,—as if the Second Cours girls were at all likely to get possession of the boat when the First Cours girls were around. “We can, if we try,” persisted Tony, in whom four days of peaceful meditation had bred the liveliest inclination for a brawl. ”

“ We hardly needed the additional excitement provided by Eloise Didier’s slipping into the marsh, and being fished out, a compact cake of mud; or by Tony’s impiously hiding in the organ loft of the chapel, and being caught [Pg 136] red-handed by Madame Duncan,—a nun whom, thank Heaven! it was possible, though difficult, to cajole.
We played all morning and all afternoon, played until our strength and our spirits were alike exhausted; and then, when the shadows began to lengthen, and our vivacity to wane, we made ready for the mad carousal which was to close our day. ”

“ Elizabeth, indeed, had her merits. She never forgot her lines, never was frightened, never blundered. But her absolutely unemotional rendering of the most heroic sentiments chilled her hearers’ hearts. Marie was fervid and impassioned. Her r-r’s had the true Gallic roll. Her voice vibrated feelingly. She was tall for thirteen, without being hopelessly overgrown as Emily and I were. Strangest of all, she did not seem to mind the foolish and embarrassing things which she was obliged to do upon the stage. She would fling her arms around an aged parent, and embrace her fondly. ”

“ It enabled me, at least, to bear the sight of Annie Churchill’s tears, when, ten minutes later, that weak-minded girl slid into my alcove (as if we were not in trouble enough already) , and, sitting forlornly on my bed, asked me in a stifled whisper, “did I think that Marianus was really homeless, and couldn’t we make up a sum of money, and send it to him?”
“How much have you got?” I asked her curtly. The complicated emotions through which I had passed had left me in a savage humour; and the peculiar infelicity of this proposal might have irritated St. Aloysius himself. ”

“ The Spanish army, [Pg 61] encamped in splendour, awaits her inevitable fall. Her ruler is weak and vacillating. Her people cry for bread. But Zara’s spirit is unbroken. She finds Inez—in whom every virtue and every grace conspire to exasperate—distributing her own portion of food to clamorous beggars, and sweeps her sternly aside: “Dare not again degrade a freeborn Moslem into a recipient of thy Christian charity.” She vows that if the city cannot be saved, its fall shall be avenged, and that the proud Queen of Castile shall never enter its gates in triumph. ”

“ If it be well for Granada that this Spanish queen should die, then Zara’s niece, being of Zara’s blood, thinks neither of pity nor precaution. She says she deals with the Castilian’s life as with her own, and both are forfeited.”
The scene shifts—by the help of our imagination, for scene-shifters we had none—to Santa Fe, that marvellous camp, more like a city than a battlefield, where the Spaniards lie entrenched. It is an hour of triumph for Inez, and, as might be expected, she bears herself with superlative and maddening sanctity. She is all the Cardinal Virtues rolled into one. ”

“ It was the last social event of our long social day, and we welcomed it as freshly as if we had not been in close companionship since seven [Pg 200] o’clock in the morning. Elizabeth, scrubbing her teeth with ostentatious vigour, found a chance to tell me, between scrubs, that Bessie Treves had been summoned home for a week, and that she, as the only other bearer of Reverend Mother’s honoured name, had been chosen to make the address. “It’s the feast of St. Elizabeth,” she whispered, “and the operetta is about St. Elizabeth, and they want an Elizabeth to speak. ”

“ The congé, the competition, the address, the operetta, the spiritual bouquet, the candy fair,—were they, too, sailing away into the land of lost things? To have asked one of the questions that trembled on our lips [Pg 210] would have been an unheard-of liberty. We listened in respectful silence, our eyes riveted on Madame Rayburn’s face.
“You will all go to the chapel now,” she said. “To-night we begin a novena to Mater Admirabilis for Reverend Mother’s safe voyage. She dreads it very much, and she is sad at leaving you. Pray for her devoutly. Madame Dane will bring you down to the chapel.” ”

“ We to whom the routine of life was as inevitable as the progress of the seasons, we to whom Saturdays were as Mondays, and who grappled with Church history and Christian doctrine on pleasant Sunday mornings, we knew the mad tumultuous joy that thrilled through hours of freedom. The very name which from time immemorial had been given to our convent holidays illustrated the fulness of their beatitude. When one lives under [Pg 109] the dominion of bells, every hour rung in and out with relentless precision, sans cloche means glorious saturnalia. ”

“ As I knelt breathless in the shadow, my head bobbing against Viola’s and Marie’s, I thought of Italy, [Pg 22] of Venice, of Childe Harold, of everything that was remote, and beautiful, and unconnected with the trammels of arithmetic. I heard Annie Churchill murmur that it was like a serenade; I heard Tony’s whispered conjecture as to whether the silent serenader really knew where we slept;—than which nothing seemed less likely;—I heard Elizabeth’s warning “Hush!” whenever the muffled voices rose too high above the stillness of the sleeping convent ”

“ An acute observer might perhaps have thought that the Archbishop, seated majestically on his dais, and flanked by Reverend Mother and Madame Bouron, glanced wistfully at these motionless little figures. We were, in truth, as remote from him as if we had been on another continent. Easy familiarity with our superiors was a thing undreamed [Pg 114] of in our philosophy. The standards of good behaviour raised an impassable barrier between us.
Frances Fenton made the address. It was an honour once accorded to Elizabeth, but usually reserved as a reward for superhuman virtue. ”

“ Adelaide was not popular in our community.
“Three coronets, a sceptre, and a globe,” said Elizabeth.
“Children,” began Madame Chapelle; but her voice was lost in the scurrying of feet, as girl after girl darted across the polished floor to claim her possessions, or to rid herself of some one else’s. They were, I well [Pg 146] knew, devoutly grateful for this benign confusion, and were making the most of it. Fate did not often throw such chances in their way. ”

“ Such a round of pleasures filled us with the happiest anticipations; but—on the same principle that the Church always prefaces her feast days with vigils and with fasts—the convent prefaced our congé with a competition in geography, and with the collection of a “spiritual bouquet,” which was to be our offering to Reverend Mother on her fête.
[Pg 184] A competition in anything was an unqualified calamity. It meant hours of additional study, a frantic memorizing of facts, fit only to be forgotten, and the bewildering ordeal of being interrogated before the whole school. ”

“ There was a straightforwardness about her methods which commended itself to our sense of justice no less than to our sense of humour. She dealt with us after fashions of her own; and, if she [Pg 232] were constitutionally incapable of distinguishing between wilful murder and crossing one’s legs in class, she would have scorned to carry any of our misdemeanours to Madame Bouron’s tribunal. We felt that she had companionable qualities, rendered in some measure worthless by her advanced years; for, after all, adults have but a narrow field in which to exercise their gifts. ”