Emily Sarah Holt

“ This also I will ask Father Mortimer.
Lack-a-day! this world is full of puzzles, or rather it is this life. I would one might see the way a little clearer—might have, as it were, a thread put into one’s hand to guide one out of the labyrinth, like that old Grecian story which we teach the children. Some folks seem to lose their way easier than others; and some scarcely seem to behold any labyrinth at all—they walk right through those matters which are walls and hedges to others, and look as though they never perceived that any such things were there. ”

“ Mother Alianora seemed weary when she had said this, and lay still a while: and Margaret did not answer. I think the Mother dropped asleep; I sat beside her and watched. But Margaret stood still at the foot of the bed, not sitting down, and in the dim light of our one little lamp I could scarcely see her face as she stood, only that it was turned toward the casement, where a faint half-moon rode in the heavens, and the calm ancient stars looked down on us. Oh, how small a world is ours in the great heavens! yet for one soul of one little babe in this small world, the Son of God hath died. ”

“ Ay me! Maybe men are happier lower down. Who should love thee, my floweret, if not thine own mother? Kiss me, and say thou wilt be good maid till I see thee again.”
I managed to whisper, “I will try, Dame.”
“How long will it be?” cries Jack.
“I cannot tell thee, Jack,” she saith. “Some months, I fear. Not years—I do trust, not years. But God knoweth—and to Him I commit you.” And as she bent her head low over the mantle wherein I was lapped, I heard her say—“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, Jesu!” ”

“ Ah, Mother Ada, but is not love worth knowing? or must they have that only from their happy mothers, who not being holy women are permitted to love, and not from a poor, crushed, hopeless heart like mine?
There is nothing in our life to look forward to. “Till death” is the vow of the Sisterhood. And death seems a poor hope.
I know, of course, what Mother Ada would say: that I have no vocation, and my heart is in the world and of the world. But God sent me to the world: and man—or rather woman—thrust me against my will into this Sisterhood. ”

“ At last I have been to confession to Father Mortimer, and I think I understand better what Margaret means, when she speaks of confessing to Father Benedict such things as he expects to hear. I never could see why it must be a sin to eat a lettuce without making the holy sign over it. Surely, if one thanks God for all He gives us, He will not be angered because one does not repeat the thanksgiving for every little separate thing. Such thoughts of God seem to me to be bringing Him down, and making Him seem full of little foolish details like men—and like the poorest-minded sort of men too. ”

“ Is it the case, that we could all be perfect, if only we tried, and entreated the grace of our Lord to enable us to be so?”
“Did your Ladyship ever know any who was?” asked Margaret.
The Lady Joan shook her head. “Never—not perfect. My mother was a good woman enough; but there were flaws in her. She was cleverer than my father, and she let him feel it. He was nearer perfection than she, for he was humbler and gentler—God rest his sweet soul! Yet she was a good woman, for all that: but—no, not perfect!” ”

“ Snappishly as she spoke, yet—I hardly know why,—I did not feel the appeal to her as hopeless as to Mother Ada. To entreat the latter was like beseeching a stone wall. Mother Gaillarde’s very peevishness (if I dare call it so) showed that she was a woman, and not an image.
“Mother Gaillarde,” I said, suddenly—for something seemed to bid me speak out—“be not angry with me, I pray you. I am afraid of letting things alone. My heart seems to be like a dry bough, and my soul withering up, and I want to keep them alive and warm. Surely death is not perfection!” ”

“ And I have some concern for the thoughts of them that look on, that day, rather than this. Many a time—ay, many a time twice told—in early morn or in evening twilight, have I looked up into heaven, and the thought hath swept o’er me like a fiery breeze—‘What if our Lord be coming this minute?’ Dost thou reckon, Sissot, that man to whom such thoughts be familiar friends, shall be oft found sitting in the alebooth, or toying with frothy vanities? I trow not.”
“But, Jack!” cried I, letting all else drop, “is that all real to thee?”
“Real, Sissot? There is not another thing as real in life.” ”

“ But will bolts and bars, walls and gates, keep it out? Is it a thing to be found in one city, which man can escape by journeying to another? Is it not rather in his own bosom, and ever with him? They say much of carnal affections that are evil, and creep not into religious houses. As if man should essay to keep Satan and his angels out of his house by painting God’s name over the door! But all love, of whatsoever sort, say they, is a filthiness of the flesh. Ah me! how about the filthiness of the spirit? Is there no pride and jealousy in a religious house? ”

“ It was at Hereford, the eve of Saint Katherine, that he died. I thank the saints I was not there; but I heard dread stories of them that were. Dame Isabel de Lapyoun was in waiting that day; I think she was fittest for it.
I ween it was on that morrow, of the eve of Saint Katherine, that mine eyes first began to ope to what the Queen was in very deed. Wherefore was she present at that deed of blood? Dame Tiffany reckoned she deemed it her duty: and truly, to behold what man can deem his duty, is of the queerest things in this queer world. ”

“ But one more word did I dare to utter.
“Is obedience so much better than love, Mother?”
“What hast thou to do with love, save the love of God and the blessed Mother and the holy saints? The very word savoureth of the world. All the love thou givest to the creature is love taken from God.”
“Is love, then, a thing that can be measured and cut in lengths, Mother? The more you tend a plant, the better it flourishes. If I am to love none save God, will not my heart dry and wither, so that I shall not be able to love Him? ”

“ I said with a sigh, “I suppose I never had one.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Sister Gaillarde. “If you mean you never had a liking for the life, that may be true—you know more about that than I; but if you mean you do not fill your place well, and do your duty as well as you know how, and a deal better than most folks—why, again I say, stuff and nonsense! You are not perfect, I suppose. If you ever see any body who is, I should like to know her name. It won’t be Gaillarde—that I know!”
I wonder whose daughter the Lady Joan is! ”

“ I laid my head down on the coverlet, my cheek upon her hand, and in answer I poured forth all that had been so long shut close in mine own heart—that longing cry within me for some real, warm, human love, that ceaseless regret for the lost happiness which was meant to have been mine.
“O Mother, Mother! is it wicked in me?” I cried. “You, who are so near God, you should see with clearer eyes than we, lost in the tangled wilderness of this world. Is it wicked of me to dream of that lost love, and of all that it might have been to me? Am I his true wife, or is she—whoever that she may be? ”

“ If thou gild a piece of wood, doth it become gold? Religious women are not women that wear black and white, cut in a certain fashion: they are women that set God above all things. And have I not done that? Have I not laid mine heart upon His altar, a living sacrifice, because I believed He called me to break that poor quivering thing in twain? And will He judge me that did His will, to the best of my power and knowledge, because now and then a human sob breaks from my woman-heart, by reason that I am not yet an angel, and that He did not make me a stone? ”

“ That it is sin in me to love Roland shall I never own. But lest we should love each other better than we love Him, we journey apart for this lower life. And I do not think our Lord is angry with me when at times the longing pain and the aching loneliness seem to overcome me, for a little while. I think He is sorry for me. For since I learned—from Roland—that He is not dead, but the Living One—that He is not darkness, but the Light—that He is not cold and hard, but the incarnate Love—since then, I can never feel afraid of Him. ”

“ Thou dost, Ellen?”
“Ay, Dame Isabel, that do I, but too well.”
“They have easier lives, methinks, that are but one. You look on me, Dame Hilda, as who should say, What nonsense doth this maid talk! But if you knew what it was to have two natures within you, pulling you diverse ways, sometimes the one uppermost, and at times the other; and which of the twain be you, that cannot you tell—I will tell you, I have noted this many times”—Isabel’s voice sank as if she feared to be overheard—“in them whose father and mother have been of divers dispositions. ”

“ Sister Ada as Prioress would have been a sore infliction.
But now Sister Gaillarde herself came forward. I do not think Sister Ada had known she was there, to judge from her change of colour.
“Sister Ada,” said she, “you are one of those surface observers who always fancy people do not feel what they do not say. Let me answer you once for all, and any who think with you. As a sinner before God, I do feel mine unworthiness, even to the lowest depth: and I am bound to humble myself for all my sins, and not least for the pride which would fain think them few and small. ”

“ And I hate that, and so doth Jack.
At that time I loved and hated instinctively, as I think children do; and at seventeen years, I was a child in all things save by the almanac. I could rarely tell why I did not love people—only, I did not love them. I knew oftener why I did. I never thought much of Sir Piers de Gavaston, that the King so dearly affected, but I never hated him in a deadly fashion, as some did that I knew. I loved better Sir Hugh Le Despenser, that was afterwards Earl of Gloucester, for he—
“Sissot,” saith a voice behind me, “what is the name of that chronicle?” ”

“ I had no idea Sister Philippa was so difficult to manage: and as to Sister Roberga, I pity any one who tries to do it.
“You see, Sister Annora,” said Sister Gaillarde, smiling rather grimly, “official life is not all flowers and sunshine. I don’t pity my Lady, just because she shirks her duties: she merely reigns, and leaves us to govern; but I can tell you, no Prioress of this convent would have an easy life, if she did her duty. I remember once, when I was in the world, I saw a mountebank driving ten horses at once. ”

“ But Sister Ada seems to mean something different—as if one were to be absolutely without any will about any thing, and yet to delight in the crossing of one’s will. Now, if I have not any wall, I do not see how it is to be crossed. And to have none whatever would surely make me something different from a woman and a sinner. I should be like a harp that could be played on—not like a living creature at all.”
Two or three little nods came from Sister Gaillarde.
“People who have no wills are very trying to deal with,” said Margaret.
“People who have wills are,” said Sister Philippa. ”

“ We are all poor old sinners, we Sisters. And as to perfection—my belief is that any woman may be perfect in any life, so far as that means having a true heart towards God, and an honest wish to do His will rather than our own—and I don’t believe in perfection of any other sort. As to all that rubbish men talk about having no will at all, and being delighted to mortify your will, and so forth—my service to the lot of it. Why, what you like to have crossed isn’t your will; what you delight in can’t be mortification. It is just like playing at being good. ”

“ For I think she had given them up,—not to King Edward, but to Christ our Lord, who is her King.
Ay, I never knew woman like her in that. There are many that will say prayers, and there are some that will pray, which is another thing from saying prayers: but never saw I one like her, that seemed to do all her work and to live all her living in the very light of the Throne of God. Just as an impassioned musician turns every thing into music, and a true painter longs to paint every lovely thing he sees, so with her all things turn to Jesu Christ. ”

“ I cannot bear to see a child cry—and for no cause!—Nay, my little one,” saith he to Jack, “all in this Castle now belongs to the King, as aforetime to thy father: but thy father took not thy balls and battledores from thee, nor will he. Cheer up, for thou hast nought to fear.”
“Please, Sir,” saith Kate, “shall all our brothers and sisters be made monks and nuns, whether they like or no?” ”

“ I dare say old Gaillarde’s as bad as any body. But I cannot stand Sister Ada’s talk, when she wants to make every creature of us into stones and stocks. She just inveighs against loving one another because she loves nobody but Ada Mansell, and never did. Oh! I knew her well enough when we were young maids in the world. She was an only child, and desperately spoiled: and her father joined in the Lancaster insurrection long ago, and it ruined his fortunes, so she came into a convent. That’s her story. Ada Mansell is the pivot of her thoughts and actions—always will be. ”

“ Jack and I were always fellows. We children had paired ourselves off, not altogether according to age, but rather according to tastes. Edmund and Meg should have gone together, and then Hodge and Joan, and so forth: whereas it was always Nym and Joan, and Meg and Hodge. Then Geoffrey and Isabel made the right pair, and Kate, Jack, and I, went in a trio. Maud was by herself; she paired with nobody, and nobody wanted her, she was so cross. Blanche was every body’s pet while she was the baby, and Beatrice came last of all. ”

“ And now, these weeks past, my poor, dry, withered heart seems to have a little faint pulsation in it, and goes out to Margaret—my sister Margaret with the strange dark eyes, my own sister who is an utter stranger to me. Must I crush the poor dry thing back, and hurt all that is left to hurt of it? Oh, will no saint in Heaven tell me why it is, that God, who loveth men, will not have monks and nuns to love each other? The Lord Prior saith He is a jealous God, and demands that we give all our love to Him. ”

“ Was not my Lady Joan Cobham’s mother daughter to my Lady of Devon, whose mother was daughter unto King Edward of Westminster—so thou art akin to the King himself? I cry thee mercy, my Lady Princess, that I set thee to scrub boards.—Sister Annora, prithee, let this princely damsel go to school for a bit—she’s short of heraldry. The heiress of Wingfield, the Lady Katherine, forsooth! and the daughter of Sir John de Norwich a ‘Lady’ at all! Why, child, we only call the King’s kinswomen the Lord and Lady. ”

“ Ah, children—for we are children to an aged woman like me—life looks different indeed, seen from a deathbed, to what it does viewed from the little mounds of our human wisdom as we pass along it. Here, there is nothing great but God; there is nothing fair save Christ and Heaven; there is nothing else true, nor desirable, nor of import. Every thing is of consequence, if, and just so far as, it bears on these: and all other things are as the dust of the floor, which ye sweep off and forth of the doors into the outward. Life is the way upward to God, or the way down to Satan. ”

“ I sat a while silent, setting red eyes and golden claws to my green wyvern, and Joan ran the white dots along her griffin’s tail. When she came to the fork of the tail, she laid down her brush.
“Mother,” she saith—the dear grey eyes looking up into my face—“shall we read together the holy Scripture, and beseech God to lead us into all truth?”
“Dear child, we will do so,” said I. “Joan, didst thou ever read in holy Scripture that it was wicked to kiss folks?” ”