but she was really a virtuous and nobly spoken outlaw in a story called
"Wild Times," which was the most exciting book--the only madly exciting
book--the convent library contained. It dealt with the religious
persecutions of Elizabeth's glorious but stringent reign, and was a
good, thorough-going piece of partisan fiction, like Fox's "Book of
Martyrs," or Wodrow's "Sufferings of the Church of Scotland." I cannot
now remember why Ulrica's brow was banded,--I believe she had some
dreadful mark upon it,--but she was always alluding to its screened
condition in words of thrilling intensity. "Seek not to know the secret
of my shame. Never again shall the morning breeze nor the cool breath
of evening fan Ulrica's brow."--"Tear from my heart all hope, all
pity, all compunction; but venture not to lift the veil which hides
forever from the eye of man the blighting token of Ulrica's shame." We
loved to picture this mysterious lady--whose life, I hasten to say,
was most exemplary--as tall, high-shouldered, and stern, like Madame
Dane; and we merged the two characters together in a very agreeable and
convincing way. It enraptured us to speak of the mistress of the Second
Cours as "Ulrica," to tell one another that some day we should surely
forget, and call her by that name (than which nothing was less likely),
and to wonder what she would say and do if she found out the liberty we
had taken.
A little private diversion of this kind was all the more necessary
because the whole business of loving was essentially a public affair.
Not that we were capable of voicing our affections,--Marie alone
had the gift of expression,--but we ranged ourselves in solid
ranks for and against the favourites of the hour. The system had
its disadvantages. It deprived us of individual distinction. I was
confirmed that winter, and, having found out that Madame Dane's
Christian name was Theresa, I resolved to take it for my confirmation
name, feeling that this was a significant proof of tenderness.
Unfortunately, three other children came to the same conclusion,--Ellie
Plunkett was one of them,--and the four Theresas made such an
impression upon the Archbishop that he congratulated us in a really
beautiful manner upon our devotion to the great saint whose name we had
chosen, and whose example, he trusted, would be our beacon light.
As for my deeper and more absorbing passion for Julia Reynolds, I
could not hope to separate it, or at least to make her separate it,
from the passions of her other satellites. She regarded us all with a
cold and impartial aversion, which was not without excuse, in view of
our reprehensible behaviour. Three times a day the Second Cours filed
through the First Cours classroom, on its way to the refectory. The
hall was always empty, as the older girls preceded us to our meals;
but at noon their hats and coats and shawls were laid neatly out upon
their chairs, ready to be put on as soon as dinner was eaten. Julia
Reynolds had a black and white plaid shawl, the sight of which goaded
us to frenzy. If Madame Dane's eyes were turned for one instant from
our ranks, some daring child shot madly across the room, wrenched a
bit of fringe from this beloved shawl, and, returning in triumph with
her spoil, wore it for days (I always lost mine) pinned as a love-knot
to the bib of her alpaca apron. Viola Milton performed this feat so
often that she became purveyor of fringe to less audacious girls, and
gained honour and advantages thereby. Not content with such vandalism,
she conceived the daring project of stealing a lock of hair. She hid
herself in a music room, and, when Julia went by to her music lesson,
stole silently behind her, and snipped off the end of one of her
long brown braids. This, with the generosity of a highwayman, she
distributed, in single hairs, to all who clamoured for them. To me she
gave half a dozen, which I gummed up for safe-keeping in an envelope,
and never saw again.
It was a little trying that Viola--certainly, as I have made plain,
the least deserving of us all--should have been the only child who
ever obtained a word of kindness from our divinity. But this was the
irony of fate. Three days after the rape of the lock, she was sent to
do penance for one of her many misdemeanours by sitting under the
clock in the corridor, a post which, for some mysterious reason, was
consecrated to the atonement of sin. In an hour she returned, radiant,
beatified. Julia Reynolds had gone by on her way to the chapel; and
seeing the little solitary figure--which looked pathetic, though it
wasn't--had given her a fleeting smile, and had said "Poor Olie," as
she passed.
This was hard to bear. It all came, as I pointed out acrimoniously
to Tony, of Viola's being at least a head shorter than she had any
business to be at ten years old, and of her having such absurdly thin
legs, and great, melancholy eyes. Of course people felt sorry for her,
whereas they might have known--they ought to have known--that she was
incapable of being abashed. She would just as soon have sat astride the
clock as under it.
One advantage, however, I possessed over all competitors. I took
drawing lessons, and so did Julia Reynolds. Twice a week I sat at
a table near her, and spent an hour and a half very pleasantly and
profitably in watching all she did. I could not draw. My mother seemed
to think that because I had no musical talent, and never in my life was
able to tell one note--nor indeed one tune--from another, I must, by
way of adjustment, have artistic qualities. Mr. James Payn was wont to
say that his gift for mathematics consisted mainly of distaste for the
classics. On precisely the same principle, I was put to draw because I
could not play or sing. An all-round incapacity was, in those primitive
days, a thing not wholly understood.
The only branch of my art I acquired to perfection was the sharpening
of pencils and crayons; and, having thoroughly mastered this
accomplishment, I ventured in a moment of temerity to ask Julia if I
might sharpen hers. At first she decisively refused; but a week or two
later, seeing the deftness of my work, and having a regard for her own
hands, she relented, and allowed me this privilege. Henceforward I felt
that my drawing lessons were not given in vain. Even Dr. Eckhart's
unsparing condemnation of my sketches--which were the feeblest of
failures--could not destroy my content. Love was with me a stronger
emotion than vanity. I used to look forward all week to those two happy
afternoons when I was graciously permitted to waste my time and blacken
my fingers in humble and unrequited service.
Julia drew beautifully. She excelled in every accomplishment, as in
every branch of study. She sang, she played, she painted, she danced,
with bewildering ease and proficiency. French and Latin presented no
stumbling-blocks to her. The heights and abysses of composition were
for her a level and conquered country. Logic and geometry were, so
to speak, her playthings. We were bewildered by such universality of
genius,--something like Michael Angelo's,--and when I remember that,
in addition to these legitimate attainments, she was the most gifted
actress on our convent stage, I am at a loss now to understand why the
world is not ringing with her name.
Certain it is that she was the pride of Dr. Eckhart's heart, the one
solace of his harassed and tormented life. He was an elderly German,
irascible in disposition, and profane in speech. His oaths were
Teutonic oaths, but were not, on that account, the less thunderous. He
taught music and drawing,--those were not the days of specialists,--so
all the time that his ears were not vexed with weak and tremulous
discords, his eyes were maddened by crippled lines, and sheets of
smutty incompetence. The result of such dual strain was that his
spirit, which could hardly have been gentle at the outset, had grown
savage as a Tartar's. When Christopher North ventured to say that the
wasp is the only one of God's creatures perpetually out of temper, it
was because he never knew Carlyle or Dr. Eckhart.
This irate old gentleman was an admirable teacher,--or at least he
would have been an admirable teacher if we could have enjoyed eternal
youth in which to profit by his lessons, to master step by step the
deep-laid foundations of an art. As it was, few of us ever got beyond
the first feeble paces, beyond those prolonged beginnings which had no
significance in our eyes. Yet we knew that other children, children
not more richly endowed by nature than we were, made real pictures
that, with careful retouching, were deemed worthy of frames, and of
places upon parental walls. Adelaide Harrison had a friend who went
to a fashionable city school, and who had sent her--in proof of wide
attainments--a work of art which filled us with envy and admiration.
It was a winter landscape; a thatched cottage with wobbly walls, a bit
of fence, and two quite natural-looking trees, all drawn on a prepared
surface of blue and brown,--blue on top for the sky, brown underneath
for the earth. Then--triumph of realism--this surface was scraped away
in spots with a penknife, and the white cardboard thus brought to light
presented a startling resemblance to snow,--snow on the cottage roof,
snow on the branches of the trees, patches of snow on the ground. It
seemed easy to do, and was beautiful when done,--a high order of art,
and particularly adapted, by reason of its wintriness, for Christmas
gifts. I urged Adelaide to show it to Dr. Eckhart, and to ask him if we
might not do something like it, instead of wasting our young lives, and
possibly some hidden genius, in futile attempts to draw an uninspiring
group of cones and cylinders. Adelaide, who was not without courage,
and whose family had a high opinion of her talents, undertook this
dangerous commission, and at our next lesson actually proffered her
request.
Dr. Eckhart glared like an angry bull. He held the landscape out at
arm's length, turning it round and round, as if uncertain which was
earth and which was heaven. "And that," he said, indicating with a
derisive thumb a spot of white, "what, may I ask, is that?"
"Snow," said Adelaide.
"Snow!" with a harsh cackle. "And do we then scratch in the ground like
hens for snow? Eh! tell me that! Like hens?" And he laughed, softened
in some measure by an appreciation of his own wit.
Adelaide stood her ground. But she thought it as well to have some one
stand by her side. "Agnes wants to do a picture, too," she said.
Dr. Eckhart gasped. If I had intimated a desire to build a cathedral,
or write an epic, or be Empress of India, he could not have been more
astounded. "L'audace, l'audace, et toujours l'audace." Words failed
him, but, reaching over, he picked up my drawing-board, and held it
aloft as one might hold a standard; held it rigidly, and contemplated
for at least three minutes the wavering outlines of my work. Most of
the class naturally looked at it too. The situation was embarrassing,
and was made no easier when, after this prolonged exposure, my board
was replaced with a thump upon the table, and Dr. Eckhart said in a
falsetto imitation of Adelaide's mincing tones: "Agnes wants to do a
picture, too." Then without another word of criticism--no more was
needed--he moved away, and sat down by Julia Reynolds's side. She alone
had never lifted her eyes during this brief episode, had never deemed
it worthy of attention. I felt grateful for her unconcern, and yet
was humbled by it. It illustrated my sterling insignificance. Nothing
that I did, or failed to do, could possibly interest her, even to the
raising of an eyelid. At least, so I thought then. I was destined to
find out my mistake.
It was through Elizabeth that the new discovery was made. All our
inspirations, all the novel features of our life, owed their origin to
her. The fertility of her mind was inexhaustible. A few days after
this memorable drawing lesson she drew me into a corner at recreation,
and, rolling up her sleeve, showed me her arm. There, scratched on the
smooth white skin, bloody, unpleasant, and distinct, were the figures
150.
I gazed entranced. A hundred and fifty was Madame Dane's number (the
nuns as well as the girls all had numbers), and for months past it had
been the emblem of the cult. We never saw it without emotion. When it
stood at the head of a page, we always encircled it in a heart. When
we found it in our arithmetics, we encircled it in a heart. We marked
all our books with these three figures set in a heart, and we cut them
upon any wooden substance that came to hand,--not our polished and
immaculate desks, but rulers, slate borders, and the swings. And now,
happiest of happy devices, Elizabeth had offered her own flesh as a
background for these beloved numerals.
The spirit of instant emulation fired my soul. I thought of Julia's
number, twenty-one, and burned with desire to carve it monumentally
upon myself. "What did you do it with?" I asked.
"A pin, a penknife, and a sharpened match," answered Elizabeth proudly.
I shuddered. These surgical instruments did not invite confidence; but
not for worlds would I have acknowledged my distaste. Besides, it is
sweet to suffer for those we love. I resolved to out-herod Herod, and
use my hand instead of my arm as a commemorative tablet. There was a
flamboyant publicity about this device which appealed to my Latin blood.
It did not appeal to Elizabeth, and she offered the practical
suggestion that publicity, when one is not a free agent, sometimes
entails unpleasant consequences. My arm was, so to speak, my own, and
I might do with it what I pleased; but my hand was open to scrutiny,
and there was every reason to fear that Madame Dane would disapprove
of the inscription. Her arguments were unanswerable, but their very
soundness repelled me. I was in no humour for sobriety.
I did the work very neatly that night in my alcove, grateful, before it
was over, that there were only two figures in twenty-one. The next day
Viola followed my example. I knew she would. There was no escaping from
Viola. Tony cut seventy-seven, Ella Holrook's number, upon her arm.
Annie Churchill and Lilly heroically cut a hundred and fifty on theirs.
The fashion had been set.
In three days half the Second Cours bore upon their suffering little
bodies these gory evidences of their love. And for four days no one
in authority knew. Yet we spent our time delightfully in examining
one another's numerals, and freshening up our own. Like young savages,
we incited one another to painful rites, and to bloody excesses. That
Viola's hand and mine should for so long have escaped detection seems
miraculous; but Madame Dane, though keenly observant, was a trifle
near-sighted. She may have thought the scratches accidental.
On the fifth morning, as I came out from Mass, Madame Rayburn's eye
lighted by chance upon the marks. She was not near-sighted, and she
never mistook one thing for another. A single glance told her the
story. A single instant decided her course of action. "Agnes," she
said, and I stepped from the ranks, and stood by her side. I knew
what she had seen; but I did not know what she proposed doing, and my
heart beat uneasily. We waited until the First Cours filed out of the
chapel. Last, because tallest, came Ella Holrook and Julia Reynolds.
"Julia," said Madame Rayburn, and she, too, left the ranks and joined
us. No word was spoken until the long line of girls--burning with
futile curiosity, but too well trained even to turn their heads--had
passed through the corridor. Then Madame Rayburn took my hand in her
firm grasp and held it up to view. "Look at this, Julia," she said.
I had supposed it impossible to move Julia Reynolds to wrath, to arouse
in her any other sentiment than the cold contempt, "la fierté honorable
et digne," which she cultivated with so much care. But I had not
calculated on this last straw of provocation following upon all she had
previously endured. When she saw her number on my hand, she crimsoned,
and her eyes grew dark. She was simply and unaffectedly angry,--what
we in unguarded conversation called "mad."
"I won't have it," she said passionately. "I won't! It's too much to be
borne. I won't put up with it another hour. Why should I be tormented
all my life by these idiotic children? Look at my shawl,--how they have
torn off half the fringe. It isn't fit to be worn. Look at my desk! I
never open it without finding it littered with their trash. Do I want
their old flannel penwipers? Do I want their stupid pincushions and
needle-cases? Can I possibly want book-markers of perforated cardboard,
with 'Julia' worked on them in blue sewing silk? I've had three this
week. Do they think I don't know my own name, and that I have to be
reminded of it by them? They have no business to go near my desk.
They have no business to put anything in it. And I don't want their
candy. And I don't want them to darn my stockings in hard lumps. I've
never encouraged one of them in my life." (Alas! Julia, this was your
undoing.) "I've never spoken to one of them. I did let her" (a scornful
nod at me) "sharpen my crayons in drawing class, and I suppose this
impertinence is the result. I suppose she thinks she is a favourite.
Well, she isn't. And this is going a good deal too far. My number
belongs to me personally, just as much as my name does. I won't have it
paraded around the Second Cours. It stands for me in the school, it's
mine, and she has no right to cut it on her horrid little hand."
There was a moment's silence. Julia's breath was spent, and Madame
Rayburn said nothing. She only looked at me.
Now I possessed one peculiarity which had always to be reckoned with.
Timid, easily abashed, and reduced to nothingness by a word that hurt,
I was sure, if pushed too far, to stand at bay. Nor had nature left me
altogether defenceless in a hard world. Julia's first glance had opened
my eyes to the extravagance of my behaviour (Oh, that I had followed
Elizabeth's counsel!), her first reproaches had overwhelmed me with
shame. But the concentrated scorn with which she flung her taunts in
my face, and that final word about my horrid hand, stiffened me into
resistance. My anger matched her own. "All right," I said shortly;
"I'll scratch it out."
Madame Rayburn laughed softly. She had brought upon me this dire
humiliation because she thought my folly merited the punishment; but
she was not ill-pleased to find me undismayed. As for Julia, she bent
her keen eyes on my face (the first time she had ever really looked at
me), and something that was almost a smile softened the corners of her
mouth. It was evident that the idea of scratching out what was already
so deeply scratched in pleased her wayward fancy. When she spoke again,
it was in a different voice, and though her words were unflattering,
her manner was almost kind. "If you are not altogether a fool," she
said, "and that sounds as if you were not, why do you behave like one?"
To this query I naturally made no reply. It was not easy to answer,
and besides, at the first softening of her mood, my wrath had melted
away, carrying my courage with it. I was perilously near tears. Madame
Rayburn dropped my hand, and gave me a little nod. It meant that I
was free, and I scudded like a hare through the corridor, through the
First Cours classroom, and down into the refectory. There the familiar
aspect of breakfast, the familiar murmur of "Pain, s'il vous plait,"
restored my equanimity. I met the curious glances cast at me with that
studied unconcern, that blankness of expression which we had learned
from Elizabeth, and which was to us what the turtle shell is to the
turtle,--a refuge from inquisitors. I had no mind that any one should
know the exact nature of my experience.
That night I made good my word, and erased the twenty-one after a
thorough-going fashion I hardly like to recall. But when the operation
was over, and I curled up in my bed, I said to myself that although I
should never again wear this beloved number upon hand or arm, it would
be engraved forever on my heart. As long as I lived, I should feel for
Julia Reynolds the same passionate and unalterable devotion. Perhaps,
some time in the future, I should have the happiness of dying for
her. I was arranging the details of this charming possibility, and
balancing in my mind the respective delights of being bitten--while
defending her--by a mad dog, or being drowned in mid-ocean, having
given her my place in the life-boat, and was waving her a last farewell
from the decks of the sinking ship, when I finally fell asleep.
The next morning was Sunday, the never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, when
Marianus for the first time served Mass. And as I watched him,
breathless with delight, Julia's image grew pale, as pale as that of
Isabel Summers, and faded quietly away. I looked at Elizabeth and Tony.
They, too, were parting with illusions. Their sore little arms might
now be permitted to heal, for their faithless hearts no longer bore a
scar. The reign of our lost loves was over. The sovereignty of Marianus
had begun.
The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been
standardized.