“I want to leave you,” I sobbed; “I want to go away into the convent,
and be at peace where no one can hate and slander me.”
“Ha!” said Father Pope, moving, and hunching his shoulders, “then
there our wishes jump, and no time like the present. So go collect
your duds.”
“Diana!” whispered madam again, in her stunned way, and made a little
movement towards me. But I shrunk from her, shivering.
“No, don’t touch me--_please_,” I said. “I’ll go to the Sisters,
who’ll be kind to me. I’ll do anything you want--only not stop here.”
I saw her put her hand to her heart as I tottered from the room. Then
I ran upstairs, and hurried to put some little properties together.
I quite acquiesced in the movement--was eager to hasten it, in fact.
The truth is, that, of Wellcot and the convent, the latter appeared to
me by far the less formidable as a present asylum. Any further meeting
here between me and Noel was rendered virtually impossible; nor was it
likely that the outraged spinster would prove so accommodating to our
purposes as the artless little fatties across the valley. One need
have no fear of being buried alive in a dovecot.
While I was hastily collecting a few necessaries, my sweet girl crept
in, and made a little sweet nuisance of herself, distressing and
impeding me.
“There, dearest,” I said, as I wrought preoccupied, “you are the best
of loving chickens, and I shall have plenty of use for you by and by.
Only at present--there, don’t pout--I am too jubilant in the prospect
of escape to cling and kiss and cry with you. I’m not going to Land’s
End, only across the way; and mind, no more communications from a
certain gentleman, miss, unless on my behalf.”
She promised, with new floods of tears.
“Then,” I said, pushing her playfully away, “find me my vinaigrette,
child. Father Pope is going to convey me in the carriage.”
XII.
I AM INFAMOUSLY RETALIATED ON
I remember once dining in Sorrento with the Marquis de P----, a most
exclusive sybarite and dilettante. The table was spread with a flesh
silk damask, whose very touch was a caress. Before each of the
company--a small and appreciative one--was placed one iridescent
Venetian goblet, and a bunch of lavender in a floss silk
napkin--nothing else whatever. The room--vaulted into Moorish
arabesques, and swimming with a slumberous half-penetrable light, in
which the crusted gold of stalactites, high in the groining, alloyed
and confused itself with the stain from purple windows--gave upon a
dusky pillared court, where zithers and the plash of a fountain wedded
in soft music, and the breath of orange blossoms made us a dim
impalpable barrier against the world. The plates were served each
ready charged, and each with a golden spoon only; for knives were not
to be allowed to sever this dream of sensuous rumination. There was
but a single wine--the Château Yquem, which is reserved for the
nobility of its district, and which never goes beyond but in a few
favoured directions. We talked but little and idly, with a mingling of
delicious sighs and happy low laughter. Towards the end the zithers
ceased; the remote fountain tinkled alone; and a girl, a ghost of
loveliness, danced and wreathed herself without in a flood of
moonlight. It was all perfect satisfaction without surfeit. Of such is
the kingdom of heaven. And yet there are times when I wonder if my
host has gone to join Lazarus or Dives. _Mon ami_, I am often full of
such wonders; and then sometimes--when, perhaps, I have not kept the
perfect proportion, and my head aches--I think I will end my days in a
convent, and purify my wicked digestion on lentils and spring water.
Only, where is the convent? I have seen some in my day, and in not one
have they cultivated their little paradise on cabbages. I find myself
standing aghast on that neutral ground between the world and the
Church; and, alas! there are so many other nice people standing there
to keep me company. With such, this desert itself becomes an Eden, and
on either side I cannot escape from it but into another.
The Convent of Perpetual Invocation received me with open arms from my
morose jailer. It conducted me, in the person of its Mother, to the
sunny parlour, and there sleeked and patted me fondly.
“You dear,” she said. “I am so glad we have got you at last.”
Her coif looked as if she had slept in it, and her plump hands were by
no means over clean. She was a stumpy, beaming little woman, moist
with good living. Her skin worked so freely, and in such prosperous
folds, it might have made a dyspeptic sigh with envy. I felt at home
with her directly.
“There, dear,” she said, “you have brought us many good things in your
time, but none so good as yourself; and now we take you in pledge of
better.”
It may have been meant as a little sly spiritual reflection, but she
smacked her ripe lips over it as if she already tasted in me, as
madam’s direct protégée, a very plethora of venison and larded
fowls. For many years, I believe, these good little women had been
secretly looking forward to the term of my novitiate as their
gastronomic millennium. I could laugh, I declare, with remorse to
think how the dear pink little pigs were defrauded.
I had been delivered without directions, but with a surly intimation
that madam would call on the morrow. It was not my business to
enlighten anyone; and so I enjoyed the best of my present favour.
She trotted me out by and by to see her asparagus and strawberry beds,
fat in promise, though tucked now and slumbering under their autumn
blankets of manure; her hives; her mushroom pits; her stewpond thick
with fat carps stuffed up to the neck and something her own shape; her
pigeon cotes and rabbit hutches. There was an odd family likeness, a
general assimilation to the neckless, apoplectic type amongst them
all--Sisters, animals, and vegetables. Perpetual invocation, it was
evident, had an obliterating effect on the individual. I shifted my
own dimpled shoulders. How long would they be rounding to the contour
of these squat little vessels? I thought with a certain terror of my
admirable digestion, and determined as long as I remained here to live
sparely. What if, like the wolf in the fable, I were to eat so many
fat pancakes that I could not escape through the hole in the wall
again!
That evening we had a refection of sweet bread and fruit and prayers,
and a delightful supper (alas for my resolution!) and comfortable
droning prayers again. Then we went each to her cosy cell, which was
like a crib for a fat baby, and slept the round of the clock to
prayers and breakfast. My fellow-sisters delighted me. I never saw
such a community of bow-windows, the most comfortable little parlours
one could imagine for the spirit to be entertained in. They had their
scapulars made very large, and of flannel, so as to serve the double
purpose of tokens and liver pads. At meals we were forbidden to
talk--a most fattening proscription, or prescription. Prayer, at all
seasons or out of them, was the single ordinance of the
society--perpetual invocation on behalf of our unenlightened land. We
were safe, perhaps, in not considering the logical result of its
efficacy, or, indeed, the prospect of a second reformation might have
frightened us into heresy. For, our point once gained, our occupation
would be gone, and our creed of self-content be called upon to
vindicate itself very likely in self-denial. However, England as yet
was far from recanting its heresy of prosperity-worship. Our very
fatness was the best argument in the world to it of our right to
survive; so it showed no tendency to do other than keep us eternally
praying for it.
Madam drove over on the day following my arrival, and was closeted for
a considerable time with the Mother. I was not summoned to her
presence, but I think she did not dare to vent her full heart of
spleen upon me in her report. She could not very well, without
compromising herself. She must have revealed, or intimated, however,
so much as give the poor woman a hopelessly bewildered impression of
my personal contribution to art. For the rest, I think she was
satisfied with having scotched her terrible little snake, and did not
doubt that, having done so, my own sense of final commitment to my
calling would keep me immured out of harm’s way, and hers, to the end
of time. It must have been with a feeling of guilty relief that she
drove back to conclusions with her inamorato.
The Mother, having sent for me on her withdrawal, looked at me with
the most cherubic doubt and dread, and pressed my hand quite
speechless.
“Dear,” she whispered, all of a sudden, “so very _décolletée_! and
think of the draughts!”
“Why more than the angels?” I said, pouting. “They don’t wear
underclothes.”
“They are symbols,” she answered doubtfully. “Besides, we don’t know.”
“O, _ma mère_!” I cried. “What’s the good of being an angel, if one
has to?”
“Hush!” she said. “Anyhow, they may take liberties denied to us.
Besides, this young person was not an angel.”
“There you are wrong,” I cried. “She was an angel of purity.”
“Is that so?” she asked a little curiously. “Well, it makes a
difference, of course. But it would have been more becoming of her to
be painted by a woman. There is the respectable Madame Kauffmann, for
instance, who, I am told, depicts religion and the virtues. But there,
dear, we will say no more about it; only pray to the good Father, now
the naughty little episode’s over, that we may be accepted meekly into
His fold.”
I heard no more from Wellcot after this for a couple of days, and was
beginning already to torment myself with qualms of jealousy of my
sweet little vicegerent there, being at the last almost driven to
break out and precipitate matters, when I was saved by a call from the
darling herself. Our meeting, to which the Mother’s presence gave a
conventual sanction, though fond and cordial, would have been barren
of result had not my friend, with a finesse which delighted me, and
the more because I had thought her incapable of it, rid us of our
incumbrance.
“Good lud!” said she, after the first embrace, twinkling through her
tears, “if I haven’t left my little basket of cream cheeses for the
Sisters melting outside in the sun!”
The bait took instant. The Mother, with a little gentle reproof for
her carelessness, waddled out with such a benevolent glare as though
she had heard the last trump.
“Wait, dears, and I’ll be with you again!” said she.
The moment she was gone, Patty threw herself upon me.
“I hid it under some bushes,” she said, “just to keep her hunting, and
where it wouldn’t melt really.”
Her second reason was characteristic enough. She could never offer the
tiniest hurt from one hand without its remedy from the other. I
foresaw she’d whip her children by and by with a strap of
healing-plaister, the poor little weak creature.
“O, you _naughty_ little thing!” I giggled; but was serious the next
moment, questioning and urging her.
“Quick!” I said. “What’s he going to do? Have you a letter?”
She shook her head.
“He’ll have a postchaise outside in a night or two, and will let you
know; but for the moment he’s watched, and daren’t move, or commit
himself to paper.”
“The hero! He’s still there, then, at Wellcot? If it had been me, I’d
have had my servants flog him out of the house.”
“O, Diana! How can you say such a thing, and you in love with him!”
“Whom I love I chasten. I’m in love, like Mrs. Sophia, with myself
through him. He’s going to make me great. Now, tell me what’s the
state of things there.”
She shook her head rather piteously.
“I don’t know. It’s all very sad and lonely without you. I think she
wants to forgive him; but he’s proud and angry, and holds aloof.”