For some time after the exit of Soeur Ursule, the English girl retains
her seat, with the same demure look she had worn in the presence of the
nun; while before her face the book is again open, as though she had
returned to reading it. One seeing this might suppose her intensely
interested in its contents. But she is not even thinking of them!
Instead, of a sharp skinny ear, and a steel grey eye--one or other of
which she suspects to be covering the keyhole.
Her own ear is on the alert to catch sounds outside--the shuffling of
feet, the rattle of rosary beads, or the swishing of a dress against the
door.
She hears none; and at length satisfied that Sister Ursule's suspicions
are spent, or her patience exhausted, she draws a free breath--the first
since the _seance_ commenced.
Then rising to her feet, she steps to a corner of the cell, not
commanded by the keyhole; and there dashes the hook down, as though it
had been burning her fingers!
"My first scene of deception," she mutters to herself--"first act of
hypocrisy. Have I not played it to perfection?"
She draws a chair into the angle, and sits down upon it. For she is
still not quite sure that the spying eye has been withdrawn from the
aperture, or whether it may not have returned to it.
"Now that I've made a beginning," she murmurs on, "I must think what's
to be done in continuance; and how the false pretence is to be kept up.
What will _they_ do?--and think? They'll be suspicious for a while, no
doubt; look sharply after me, as ever! But that cannot last always; and
surely they won't doom me to dwell for ever in this dingy hole. When
I've proved my conversion real, by penance, obedience, and the like, I
may secure their confidence, and by way of reward, get transferred to a
more comfortable chamber. Ah! little care I for the comfort, if
convenient,--with a window out of which one could look. Then I might
have a hope of seeing--speaking to some one--with heart less hard than
Sister Ursule's, and that other creature--a very hag!"
"I wonder where the place is? Whether in the country, or in a town
among houses? It may be the last--in the very heart of a great city,
for all this death-like stillness! They build these religious prisons
with walls so thick! And the voices, I from time to time hear, are all
women's. Not one of a man amongst them! They must be the Convent
people themselves! Nuns and novices! Myself one of the latter! Ha!
ha! I shouldn't have known it if Sister Ursule hadn't informed me.
Novice, indeed--soon to be a nun! No! but a free woman--or dead! Death
would be better than life like this!"
The derisive smile that for a moment played upon her features passes
off, replaced by the same forlorn woe-begone look, as despair comes back
to her heart. For she again recalls what she has read in books--very
different from that so contemptuously tossed aside--of girls, young and
beautiful as herself--high-born ladies--surreptitiously taken from their
homes--shut up as she--never more permitted to look on the sun's light,
or bask in its beams, save within the gloomy cloisters of a convent, or
its dismally shadowed grounds.
The prospect of such future for herself appals her, eliciting an
anguished sigh--almost a groan.
"Ha!" she exclaims the instant after, and again with altered air, as
though something had arisen to relieve her. "There are voices now!
Still of women! Laughter! How strange it sounds! So sweet! I've not
heard such since I've been here. It's the voice of a girl? It must
be--so clear, so joyous. Yes! Surely it cannot come from any of the
sisters? They are never joyful--never laugh."
She remains listening, soon to hear the laughter again, a second voice
joining in it, both with the cheery ring of school girls at play. The
sound comes in with the light--it could not well enter otherwise--and
aware of this, she stands facing that way, with eyes turned upward. For
the window is far above her head.
"Would that I could see out! If I only had something on which to
stand!"
She sweeps the cell with her eyes, to see only the pallet, the frail
chairs, a little table with slender legs, and a washstand--all too low.
Standing upon the highest, her eyes would still be under the level of
the sill.
She is about giving it up, when an artifice suggests itself. With wits
sharpened, rather than dulled by her long confinement--she bethinks her
of a plan, by which she may at least look out of the window. She can do
that by upending the bedstead!
Rash she would raise it on the instant. But she is not so; instead
considerate, more than ever cautious. And so proceeding, she first
places a chair against the door in such position that its back blocks
the keyhole. Then, dragging bed clothes, mattress, and all to the
floor, she takes hold of the wooden framework; and, exerting her whole
strength, hoists it on end, tilted like a ladder against the wall. And
as such it will answer her purpose, the strong webbing, crossed and
stayed, to serve for steps.
A moment more, and she has mounted up, and stands, her chin resting on
the window's ledge.
The window itself is a casement on hinges; one of those antique affairs,
iron framed, with the panes set in lead. Small, though big enough for a
human body to pass through, but for an upright bar centrally bisecting
it.
She balancing upon the bedstead, and looking out, thinks not of the bar
now, nor takes note of the dimensions of the aperture. Her thoughts, as
her glances, are all given to what she sees outside. At the first _coup
d'oeil_, the roofs and chimneys of houses, with all their appurtenances
of patent smoke-curers, weathercocks, and lightning conductors; among
them domes and spires, showing it a town with several churches.
Dropping her eyes lower they rest upon a garden, or rather a strip of
ornamental grounds, tree shaded, with walks, arbours, and seats, girt by
a grey massive wall, high almost as the houses.
At a glance she takes in these inanimate objects; but does not dwell on
any of them. For, soon as looking below, her attention becomes occupied
with living forms, standing in groups, or in twos or threes strolling
about the grounds. They are all women, and of every age; most of them
wearing the garb of the nunnery, loose flowing robes of sombre hue. A
few, however, are dressed in the ordinary fashion of young ladies at a
boarding school; and such they are--the _pensionnaires_ of the
establishment.
Her eyes wandering from group to group, after a time become fixed upon
two of the school girls; who linked arm in arm are walking backward and
forward, directly in front. Why she particularly notices them, is that
one of the two is acting in a singular manner; every time she passes
under the window looking up to it, as though with a knowledge of
something inside in which she feels an interest! Her glances
interrogative, are at the same time evidently snatched by stealth--as in
fear of being observed by the others. Even her promenading companion
seems unaware of them.
She inside the cloister, soon as her first surprise is over, regards
this young lady with a fixed stare, forgetting all the others.
"What can it mean?" she asks herself. "So unlike the rest! Surely not
French! Can she be English? She is very--very beautiful!"
The last, at least, is true, for the girl is, indeed, a beautiful
creature, with features quite different from those around--all of them
being of the French facial type, while hers are pronouncedly Irish.
By this the two are once more opposite the window, and the girl again
looking up, sees behind the glass--dim with dust and spiders' webs--a
pale face, with a pair of bright eyes gazing steadfastly at her.
She starts; but quickly recovering, keeps on as before. Then as she
faces round at the end of the walk, still within view of the window, she
raises her hand, with a finger laid upon her lips, seeming to say, plain
as words could speak it--
"Keep quiet! I know all about you, and why you are there."
The gesture is not lost upon the captive. But before she can reflect
upon its significance the great convent bell breaks forth in noisy
clangour, causing a flutter among the figures outside, with a scattering
helter skelter. For it is the first summons to vespers, soon followed
by the tinier tinkle of the _angelus_.
In a few seconds the grounds are deserted by all save one--the
schoolgirl with the Irish features and eyes. She, having let go her
companion's arm, and lingering behind the rest, makes a quick slant
towards the window she has been watching; as she approaches it
significantly exposing something white, she holds half hidden between
her fingers!
It needs no further gesture to make known her intent. The English girl
has already guessed it, as told by the iron casement grating back on its
rusty hinges, and left standing ajar. On the instant of its opening the
white object parts from the hand that has been holding it, and like a
flash of light passes through into the darksome cell, falling with a
thud upon the floor.
Not a word goes with it; for she who has shown such dexterity, soon as
delivering the missile, glides away; so speedily she is still in time to
join the _queue_ moving on towards the convent chapel.
Cautiously reclosing the window, Soeur Marie descends the steps of her
improvised ladder, and takes up the thing that had been tossed in; which
she finds to be a letter shotted inside!
Despite her burning impatience she does not open it, till after
restoring the bedstead to the horizontal, and replacing all as before.
For now, as ever, she has need to be circumspect, and with better
reasons.
At length, feeling secure, all the more from knowing the nuns are at
their vesper devotions, she tears off the envelope, and reads:--
"Mary,--Monday night next after midnight--if you look out of your
window you will see friends; among them:--
"Jack Wingate."
"Jack Wingate!" she exclaims, with a look of strange intelligence
lighting up her face. "A voice from dear old Wyeside! Hope of delivery
at last!"
And overcome by her emotion she sinks down upon the pallet; no longer
looking sad, but with an expression contented, and beatified as that of
the most _devotee_ nun in the convent.
Volume Three, Chapter XXIII.