SISTER MARY ANTONY DISCOURSES
As Mary Antony shuffled slowly from the shadow into the sunshine, a gay
little flutter of wings preceded her, and a robin perched upon the
parapet behind the stone seat upon which it was the lay-sister's custom
to await the sound of the turning of the key in the lock of the heavy
door beneath the cloisters.
"Thou good-for-nothing imp!" exclaimed Mary Antony, her old face
crinkling with delight. "Thou little vain man, in thy red jerkin!
Beshrew thine impudence, intruding into a place where women alone do
dwell, and no male thing may enter. I would have thee take warning by
the fate of the baker's boy, who dared to climb into a tree, so that he
might peep over the wall and spy upon the holy Ladies in their garden.
Boasting afterward of that which he had done, and making merry over
that which he pretended to have seen, our great Lord Bishop heard of
it, and sent and took that baker's boy, and though he cried for mercy,
swearing the whole tale was an empty boast, they put out his bold eyes
with heated tongs, and hanged him from the very branches he had
climbed. They'd do the like to thee, thou little vain man, if Mary
Antony reported on thy ways. Wouldst like to hang, in thy red doublet?"
The robin had heard this warning tale many times already, told by old
Mary Antony with infinite variety.
Sometimes the tongue of the baker's boy was cut out at the roots;
sometimes he lost his ears, or again, he was tied to a cart-tail, and
flogged through the Tything. Often he became a pieman, and once he was
a turnspit in the household of the Lord Bishop himself. But, whatever
the preliminaries, and whether baker, pieman, or turnspit, his final
catastrophe was always the same: he was hanged from a bough of the very
tree into which, impious and greatly daring, he had climbed.
This was an ancient tale. All who might vouch for it, saving the old
lay-sister, had passed away; and, of late, Mary Antony had been
strictly forbidden by the Reverend Mother, to tell it to new-comers, or
to speak of it to any of the nuns.
So, daily, she told it to the robin; and he, being neither baker's lad,
pieman, nor turnspit, and having a conscience void of offence, would
listen, wholly unafraid; then, hopping nearer to Mary Antony, would
look up at her, eager inquiry in his bright eyes.
On this particular afternoon he flew up into the very tree climbed by
the prying and ill-fated baker's lad, settled on a bough which branched
out over the Convent wall, and poured forth a gay trill of song.
"Ha, thou little vain man, in thy brown and red suit!" chuckled Mary
Antony, leaning her gnarled hands on the stone parapet, as she stood
framed in one of the cloister arches overlooking the garden. "Is that
thy little 'grace before meat'? But, I pray thee, Sir Robin, who said
there was cheese in my wallet? Nay, is there like to be cheese in a
wallet already containing five-and-twenty holy Ladies on their way back
from Vespers? Out upon thee for a most irreverent little glutton! I
fear me thou hast not only a high look, thou hast also a proud stomach;
just the reverse of the great French Cardinal who came, with much pomp,
to visit us at Easter time. He had a proud look and a-- Come down
again, thou little naughty man, and I will tell thee what the Lord
Cardinal had under his crimson sash. 'Tis not a thing to shout to the
tree-tops. I might have to recite ten Paternosters, if I let thee
tempt me so to do. For whispering it in thine ear, I should but say
one; for having remarked it, none at all. Facts are facts; and, even
in the case of so weighty a fact, the responsibility rests not upon the
beholder."
Mary Antony leaned over the parapet, looking upward. The afternoon
sunlight fell full upon the russet parchment of her kind old face,
shewing the web of wrinkles spun by ninety years of the gently turning
wheel of time.
But the robin, perched upon the bough, trilled and sang, unmoved. He
was weary of tales of bakers and piemen. He was not at all curious as
to what had been beneath the French Cardinal's crimson sash. He wanted
the tasty morsels which he knew lay concealed in Sister Mary Antony's
leathern wallet. So he stayed on the bough and sang.
The old face, peering up from between the pillars, softened into
tenderness at the robin's song.
"I cannot let thy little grace return unto thee void," she said, and
fumbled at the fastenings of her wallet.
A flick of wings, a flash of red. The robin had dropped from the
bough, and perched beside her.
She doled out crumbs, and fragments of cheese, pushing them toward him
along the parapet; leaving her fingers near, to see how close he would
adventure to her hand.
She watched him peck a morsel of cheese into five tiny pieces, then
fly, with full beak, on eager wing, to the hidden nest, from which five
gaping mouths shrieked a shrill and hungry welcome. Then, back
again--swift as an arrow from the archer's bow--noting, with bright
eye, and head turned sidewise, that the hand resting on the coping had
moved nearer; yet brave to take all risks for the sake of those yellow
beaks, which would gape wide, in expectation, at sound of the beat of
his wings.
"Feed thyself, thou little worldling!" chuckled old Antony, and covered
the remaining bits of cheese with her hand. "Who art thou to come here
presuming to teach thy betters lessons of self-sacrifice? First feed
thyself; then give to the hungry, the fragments that remain. Had I
five squealing children here--which Heaven forbid--I should eat mine
own mess, and count myself charitable if I let them lick the dish. The
holy Ladies give to the poor at the Convent gate, that for which they
have no further use. Does thy jaunty fatherhood presume to shame our
saintly celibacy? Mother Sub-Prioress did chide me sharply because, to
a poor soul with many hungry mouths to feed, I gave a good piece of
venison, and not the piece which was tainted. Truth to tell, I had
already made away with the tainted piece; but Mother Sub-Prioress was
pleased to think it was in the pot, seething for the holy Ladies'
evening meal; and wherefore should Mother Sub-Prioress not think as she
pleased?
"'Woman!' she cried; 'Woman!'--and when Mother Sub-Prioress says
'Woman!' the woman she addresses feels her estate would be higher had
God Almighty been pleased to have let her be the Man, or even the
Serpent, so much contempt does Mother Sub-Prioress infuse into the
name--'Woman!' said Mother Sub-Prioress, 'wouldst thou make all the
Ladies of the Convent ill?'
"'Nay,' said I, 'that would I not. Yet, if any needs must be ill,
'twere easier to tend the holy Ladies in their cells, than the Poor, in
humble homes, outside the Convent walls, tossing on beds of rushes.'
"'Tush, fool!' snarled Mother Sub-Prioress. "'The Poor are not easily
made ill.'
"Tush indeed! I tell thee, little bright-eyed man, old Antony, can
'tush' to better purpose! That night there were strong purging herbs
in the broth of Mother Sub-Prioress. Yet she did but keep her bed for
one day. Like the Poor, she is not easily made ill! . . . Well, have
thy way; only peck not my fingers, Master Robin, or I will have thee
flogged through the Tything at the cart-tail, as was done to a certain
pieman, whose history I will now relate.
"Once upon a time, when Sister Mary Antony was young, and fair to look
upon--Nay, wink not thy naughty eye----"
At that moment came the sound of a key turning slowly in the lock of
the door at the bottom of the steps leading from the crypt to the
cloister.