MY FIRST CONFESSION.
The sequel is enfolded in mystery. Was I long unconscious? Was I long
ill? Was there any voice among the alarmed nuns lifted in my favour? Or
was the secret kept among the superioress, the lay-sister who thrashed
me, and the doctor? As a Catholic in a strong and bigoted Protestant
centre, in the pay of a Catholic community, it is not unreasonable to
suppose him anxious to avoid a scandal. For outside there was the
roaring lion, the terrible member for Lysterby, seeking the Catholics he
might devour! That satanic creature who dreamed at night of Tyburn, and,
if he could, would have proscribed every priest and nun of the realm!
Picture the hue and cry in Parliament and out of it, if it were known
that a baby girl had been thrashed by strong, virile hands, as with a
Russian knout, with the ferocity of blood-thirsty jailers instead of the
gentleness of holy women striving to inculcate precepts of virtue and
Christian charity in the breast of a tiny reprobate! And ladies, too,
devoted to the worship of mercy and of Mary, the maiden of sorrow, the
mild mother of humanity.
I know I lay long in bed,--that my wounds, deep red open stripes, were
dressed into scars by lint and sweet oil and herbs. The doctor, a cheery
fellow with a Scottish name, came and sat by my bedside, and gave me
almond-drops, and begged me repeatedly "to look up." The pavement
outside was rough, the little city street was narrow, and the flies
rumbling past from the station to the Craven Arms shook my bed. The
noise was novel, and excited me. I thought of my imaginary friend of the
Ivies, the white lady, and wondered if any one had ever thrashed her.
The cook, Sister Joseph, from time to time stole up-stairs and offered
me, by way of consolation, maybe a bribe, a Shrewsbury biscuit, a
jam-tart, a piece of seed-cake.
Once the pain of my lacerated back subsided I was not at all bored. It
was good to lie in a fresh white bed and listen dreamily to the discreet
murmurs of a provincial town in the quiet convent-house, have nothing to
do, no scrapes to get into, hear no scolding voices, and have plenty of
nice things to eat, after the long famine of nine interminable months.
I do not remember when it was she first came to me. She was a slim,
oldish nun, with a white delicate visage and eyes full of a wistful
sadness, neither blue nor grey. Her voice was very low, and gave me the
same intense pleasure with which the soft touch of her thin small hands
thrilled me. She was called Mother Aloysius, and painted pictures for
the chapel and for the convent. Did she know what had happened, and had
she taken the community's debt to me upon her lean shoulders? Or was I
merely for her a sick and naughty little girl, to whom she was drawn by
sympathy?
She never spoke of my whipping, nor did I. Perhaps with the unconscious
delicacy of sensitive childhood I divined that it would pain her. More
probably still, I was only too glad to be enfolded in the mild warmth of
her unquestioning tenderness. Wickedness dropped from me as a wearisome
garment, and, divested of its weight, I trotted after her heels like a
little lapdog. She took me with her everywhere; into the big garden
where she tended the flowers, and where she allowed me to water and dig
myself out of breath, fondly persuaded that the fate of the flowers next
year depended upon my exertions; to her work-room, where in awed
admiration I watched her paint, and held her brushes and colours for
her; to the chapel where she changed the flowers, and where I gathered
the stalks into little hills and swept them into my pinafore. And all
the time I talked, ceaselessly, volubly,--not of past sufferings, nor of
present pain, but of the things that surprised and perplexed me, of the
countless things I wanted to do, of the tales of Tyburn and the white
lady.
When I was well enough to go back to daily woe and insufficient food, I
was dressed in hat and jacket and strong boots, and while I stood in the
hall the awful superioress issued from the community-room and looked at
me coldly.
"You have had your lesson, Angela. You will be a good child in future, I
hope," she said, and touched my shoulder with a lifeless gesture.
The mischievous impulse of saucy speech and wicked glance died when I
encountered the gentle prayer of my new friend's faded eyes. I was only
a baby, but I understood as well as if I had been a hundred what those
kind and troubled eyes said, glancing at me behind the woman she must
have known I hated. "Be good, dear child; be silent, be respectful.
Forgive, forget, for my sake." I swallowed the angry words I longed to
utter on the top of a sob, and went and held up my cheek to Mother
Aloysius.
"You're a brave little girl, Angela," she said, softly. "You'll see, if
you are good, that reverend mother will let you come down and spend a
nice long day with me soon again; and I'll take you to water the flowers
and fill the vases in the chapel, and watch me paint up-stairs.
Good-bye."
She kissed me on both cheeks, not in the fleshless kiss of the nun, but
with dear human warmth of lips, and her fingers lingered tenderly about
my head. Did she suspect the sacrifice I had made to her kindness?--the
fierce and wrathful words I had projected to hurl at the head of the
superioress, and that I had kept back to please her?
At the Ivies I maintained a steadfast silence upon what had happened. I
cannot now trace the obscure reasons of my silence, which must have
pleased the nuns, for nobody ever knew about my severe whipping. Thanks
to the beneficent influences of my new friend, I was for a while a model
of all the virtues. I studied hard, absorbed pages of useful knowledge
in the "Child's Guide," and mastered the abstruse contents of Cardinal
Wiseman's "History of England." At the end of a month, to the amazement
of everybody and to my own dismay, I was rewarded with a medal of good
conduct, and formally enrolled in that virtuous body, the Children of
the Angels, and wore a medal attached to a brilliant green ribbon.
This transient period of grace, felt no doubt by all around me to be
precarious and unstable, was deemed the fitting moment for my first
confession. What a baby of eight can have to confess I know not. The
value of such an institution for the infantine conscience escapes me.
But there can be no question of its enormous sensational interest for us
all. Two new children had made their appearance since my tempestuous
arrival. They belonged to the band, as well as an idiot girl two years
older than I, and now deemed wise enough to crave pardon for sins she
could not possibly commit. We carefully studied the "Examination of
Conscience," and spelt out the particularly big words with a thrill:
they looked nice mysterious sins, the sort of crimes we felt we would
gladly commit if we had the chance.
I went about sombre and dejected, under the conviction that I must have
sinned the sin against the Holy Ghost, and Polly Evans wondered if
adultery figured upon the list of her misdoings. She was sure, however,
that she had not defrauded the labourer of his daily wage, whatever that
might be, for the simple reason that she had never met a labourer. I was
tortured with a fresh sensational doubt. My foster-mother's cousin at
Kildare was a very nice labourer who often had given me sweets. Could I,
in a moment of temporary aberration, have defrauded him of his wage? And
then adultery! If Polly was sure she had committed adultery, might I not
also have so deeply offended against heaven? I had not precisely killed
anybody, but had I not desired to kill Sister Esmeralda the day I threw
the stool at her?
And so we travelled conscientiously, like humble, but, in the very
secret depths of our being, self-admiring pilgrims, over the weary and
profitless road of self-examination, and assured ourselves with a
fervent thrill that we were indeed miserable sinners. "I'll never get
into a passion again," I swore to Polly Evans, like a monstrous little
Puritan, and before an hour had passed was thirsting for the blood of
some offender.
I even went so far as to include Sister Esmeralda and Frank in my offer
of general amnesty to humanity; and indited at some nun's suggestion a
queer epistle to my mother, something in the tone the prodigal son from
afar might have used writing to his father when he first decided to
abandon the husks and swine, etc. I boldly announced my intention of
forsaking the path of wickedness, with a humble confession of hitherto
having achieved supremacy in that nefarious kingdom, and of walking
henceforth with the saints.
I added a practical postscript, that I was always very hungry, and
stated with charming candour that I did not like any of the nuns except
Mother Aloysius, which was rather a modification of the exuberant burst
of virtue expressed on the first page. This postscript was judiciously
altered past recognition, and I was ordered to copy it out: "I am very
happy at Lysterby. All the dear nuns are so kind to me. We shall have a
little feast soon. Please, dear mamma, send me some money."
If the money ever came, it was naturally confiscated by the dear nuns.
It was not money we mites needed, but bread-and-butter and a cup of good
milk, or a plate of simple sustaining porridge. However, for the moment
the excitement of confession sustained us. Having communicated to each
other the solemn impression that we had broken all the Commandments,
committed the seven deadly sins, and made mockery of the four cardinal
virtues, the next thing to decide was to what length of repentance we
were bound to go. Polly Evans' enthusiasm was so exalted that she
yearned to follow the example of the German emperor we had read of who
walked, or crawled on his knees, I forget which, to Rome, and made a
public confession to the Pope. But this we felt to be an immodest flight
of fancy in a little girl who had done nothing worth speaking of. She
was like my Kildare companion Mary Jane, who constantly saw herself in a
personal scuffle with Queen Victoria.
When the great day came we were bidden to stay in the chapel after the
rest, and then were taken down to the town convent, with instructions to
keep our minds fixed upon the awful sacrament of confession as we walked
two and two through the streets.
"Remember, children," said that infamous Sister Esmeralda, prettier than
ever, as she fixed me with a deadly glance, "to tell a lie in the
confessional box is to tell a lie to the Holy Ghost. You may be struck
dead for it."
Did she mean that for me? Oh, why had I so rashly vowed myself to a life
of virtue? Why had I so precipitously chosen the companionship and
example of the saints? Why had I read the lives of St. Louis of Gonzaga,
St. Stanislaus of Kotska, and other lamb-like creatures, and in a fit of
admiration sworn to resemble them?--since all these good resolutions
debarred me from flinging another stool at that lovely hostile visage.
But having elected momentarily to play the part of a shocking little
prig, I swallowed my wrath, with a compunctious sensation, and felt a
glow all over to think I was already so much of a saint.
In the convent chapel, with our throbbing hearts in our mouths, we
knelt, a diminutive row, in our Sunday uniform (I have worn so many
convent uniforms that I am rather mixed about them, and cannot remember
which was blue on Sunday and which was black, but the Lysterby Sunday
uniform I know was black). Polly Evans was the first to disappear,
swallowed up in the awful box. She issued forth, tremulous and
wide-eyed, and I followed her, pallid and quaking. The square grating
was closed, and the green curtain enfolded me in a terrific dusk. I
felt sick and cold with fright. What was going to happen? Could
something spring suddenly out and clutch me? Was the devil behind me?
Had my guardian angel forsaken me? I had read a great deal of late about
"a yawning abyss," "a black pit," a "bottomless hole." Was I going to
tell a lie to the Holy Ghost unknowing, and so be struck dead like,
like----?
The square slid swiftly back, and I saw a dim man's profile through the
grating. Had I seen Father Morris clear before me, my fears would
instantly have been quelled, for he was a graceful, aristocratic,
soft-voiced man, quick to captivate little children by his winning
smile. But that dim formless thing behind the grating, what was it? They
told me the priest in the confessional was God. The statement was not
such that any childish imagination could grasp. The sickness of terror
overcame me, and I, whom the rough sea of the Irish Channel had not
harmed, fell down in a dreadful fit of nausea that left me prostrate for
days.