"Don't you wish to go back home with your father?"
"No, sir," I answered.
"And why not, please?"
"Because my father's home is no home to me--because my aunt has always
been unkind to me, and because my father has never cared for me or
protected me, and because . . ."
"Well, what else?"
"Because . . . because I wish to become a nun."
There was silence for a moment, and then my father broke into bitter
laughter.
"So that's it, is it? I thought as much. You want to go into partnership
with the Mother in the nun business, eh?"
"My mother wished me to become a nun, and I wish it myself, sir."
"Your mother was a baby--that's what she was."
"My mother was an angel, sir," I said, bridling up, "and when she was
dying she hoped I should become a nun, and I can never become anything
else under any circumstance."
"Bah!" said my father, with a contemptuous lift of the hand, and then
turning to the Reverend Mother he said:
"Hark here, ma'am. There's an easy way and a hard way in most
everything. I take the easy way first, and if it won't work I take the
hard way next, and then it's stiff pulling for the people who pull
against me. I came to Rome to take my daughter home. I don't feel called
upon to explain why I want to take her home, or what I'm going to do
with her when I get her there. I believe I've got the rights of a father
to do what I mean to do, and that it will be an ugly business for
anybody who aids and abets my daughter in resisting her father's will.
So I'll leave her here a week longer, and when I come back, I'll expect
her to be ready and waiting and willing--ready and waiting and willing,
mind you--to go along with me."
After saying this my father faced about and with his heavy flat step
went out of the room, whereupon the Bishop bowed to the Reverend Mother
and followed him.
My heart was by this time in fierce rebellion--all that the pacifying
life of the convent-school had done for me in ten years being suddenly
swept away--and I cried:
"I won't do it! I won't do it!"
But I had seen that the Reverend Mother's face had suddenly become very
white while my father spoke to her at the end and now she said, in a
timid, almost frightened tone:
"Mary, we'll go out to Nemi to-day. I have something to say to you."