understanding and fell into dreams of a varied and complex, if
unimportant, nature. She was to be professed alone, on the day after
Christmas. No novice had entered the convent within three months of her,
and, moreover, her birth and position made it desirable that she should
be surrounded by a little extra pomp; for, although Laure did not know
it, she was much looked up to by the nuns of humbler birth, and
universally regarded as a future prioress of the house. During the last
days of her novitiate the young girl was treated with peculiar reverence
and consideration, and she was given a good deal of time for solitary
reflection and prayer. Every day she was summoned to the cell of the
Prioress, who herself gave the girl good counsel and instruction upon
the higher life; while so much general attention was paid her that Laure
became a little astonished at her own importance.
In the first three weeks of December Madame Eleanore did not come at all
to see her daughter, and Laure grew lonely for her. She suspected
nothing of her mother’s heart-sickness over the approaching ceremony
that was to cut her child off from her forever; and, indeed, had Laure
been told of the mother-feeling, she could not have understood it.
On the afternoon of the twenty-third day of December the novice was
kneeling in her cell, supposedly at prayer, in reality indulging in a
rather forlorn and melancholy reverie. It was the hour of recreation;
and the convent was very quiet, for most of the nuns were sleeping, in
preparation for the strain of the forty-eight-hour Christmas service.
The stillness brought a chill to Laure’s heart, and she was near to
tears, when her door was suddenly pushed open, and some one halted
there. Laure turned quickly enough to see the white-robed Prioress
disappear, closing the door behind a figure that remained motionless
inside the threshold.
“My mother!” cried Laure, springing to her feet.
“Laure,” was the quivering response, as Eleanore held out her arms.
The dreamer, suddenly become a little child, went into the mother-clasp,
her pristine home, and was half carried over to the only seat in the
room,—a wooden tabouret, large enough for only one. Upon this Eleanore
seated herself, while Laure sank to the floor beside her, huddling close
to the human warmth of her mother, her head lying in that mother’s lap,
both hands held tightly in the larger, stronger, older ones.
“Laure—my Laure—my little Laure!” was all that, at this time, madame
could force her lips to say. And hearing it, the girl, suddenly
overwrought and overswept with repressed yearning for home love, all at
once burst into a convulsive flood of tears.
Some moments passed, and the sobs, instead of diminishing, began to
increase in violence, till Eleanore became alarmed. Certain unexpressed
fears took possession of her. She made no effort to bring them into
definite order in her mind. They merely joined themselves to a shadow
that had long since come upon her in the form of a question: What, in
bare reality, was this vast monster called “the Church”? Why had it a
right to step thus between mother and child? How could such a thing be
called holy? Filled with this idea, and realizing to the full how
desperately short was her chance, Eleanore set herself to work, through
every means known to her, to quiet Laure, to stop her tears, and to gain
her earnest attention.
Under madame’s determined calm, it was not long before Laure was brought
back to self-control. And when she was quiet, the mother, sitting very
straight in her place, drew the girl to her feet, and, holding her fast
by the hand, while she looked steadily into the clear, brown eyes, she
asked, slowly, with an emphasis born of her desperation,—
“Laure, is it indeed in thy heart to remain, of thy free will and
desire, forever in this house, forsaking all that was dear to thee of
youth and love, and freedom, in thy home, Le Crépuscule?”
Laure, while she looked at her mother, gave a sudden sigh, and her face
became staring pale. Eleanore strove to fathom her daughter’s look, but
could know nothing of the flood of natural desire and youth that was
oversweeping the girl. Laure’s resistance against it was silence. She
sat still, cowed and bent, while the noise of the waters filled her ears
and her heart was near to bursting with suffocation and yearning. Before
this silence, however, these passionate moments gradually ebbed away.
The wave retreated, and her heart shut tight. Words and phrases from
Holy Scriptures, books of prayer, and St. Benedict’s Rule, came crowding
to her, and she considered to herself how she might show her mother the
sin of her suggestion. But, as she had kept silence one way, so now she
practised it in the other. After the long pause her voice found itself
in three words only,—
“My mother!—madame!”
Eleanore’s eyes fell. Her hope was gone. For the thousandth time her
religion rose to shame her, before her child, for the absorbing love of
her motherhood. Presently Laure, standing before her, more like her
judge than like the disconsolate creature she had so lately comforted,
spoke again,—
“Madame, here in this place have I found contentment. There is no sorrow
and no desire when one lives but to pray and sleep, and wake and pray
again. God lives here continually in our hearts and He begets in us the
love that we bear for each other. Moreover, after my profession and
consecration, much freedom will be added to my life. I shall have no
more long hours of instruction, nor shall I be called on to do the
bidding of any one save perhaps that of the Reverend Mother. And whereas
thou ridest hither to me each fortnight, I, after my vow, may go instead
to thee, to see thee and mine ancient home.—Nay, mother, forgive me that
I rebuke thy words; but thou must not urge me thus, for my spirit is not
as yet very strong or very much tried, and is like to break under
temptation.”
Dry-eyed and straight-lipped, Eleanore rose from her place and kissed
her daughter, saying,—
“This is farewell, dear child, till thou shalt come home to me for the
first time after thy wedding with Heaven. My humble and earthly blessing
be upon thee,—and mayst thou find thy spirit strong, my Laure, when thou
shalt have need of it; as, in God’s time, thou surely wilt.”
Once again the mother kissed her girl—kissed her in final renunciation.
Laure felt a burning upon her brow long after madame had left the room.
Eleanore’s last words also somewhat affected the novice,—brought her a
dim sense of uneasiness and foreboding. But it was in silence that she
saw the black-robed figure leave the cell, and in silence she remained
for a long time after she was left alone, thinking over what had passed.
Laure had acted in such perfect sincerity that the wound she inflicted
on her mother, and the mortification she put upon her, were neither of
them realized. It was not wonderful that the impulses of the girl’s
heart had been stilled by the unceasing precept of the past months. Her
years were naturally powerless to fathom her mother’s heart, the heart
of her who sees herself completely separated in every interest from the
one that has always been nearest and dearest. And so the argument that
she conducted within herself after her mother’s going was not one of
justification of her own act, but—oh, ye gods!—an attempted
justification of Eleanore’s impiety.
Laure passed the next two days in an odor of extreme sanctity, and
hailed with deep inward joy the beginning of the long vigil of the birth
of the Saviour, on Christmas Eve. She was excused from keeping steadily
in church through this protracted service, for the reason that she would
be obliged, according to the Rule, to spend the night after her
consecration alone in the church, at prayer. Throughout Christmas Day
Laure was in a state of repressed nervous excitement. Was not to-morrow
to be her wedding-day? Was she not to become what the first Magdalen had
never been,—the bride of Christ? Her prayers throughout this day were
mingled with thoughts of the highest purity, the most refined spiritual
ecstasy, the most shining, uplifted innocence. Tears of joy and of proud
humility flowed readily from her eyes, while her mouth was filled with
heavenly praises that welled up from her heart.
In the afternoon she was sent away to rest; for the Mother-prioress was
considerate of her strength. Laure did not, however, lie down. Instead,
she stood for more than an hour at the window of her cell, looking out
over the world, and watching the fine feathery snowflakes float down
through the clear blue air. The earth was wrapped in a mantle whiter
than her consecration robe and veil. Perhaps it was a shroud. Laure
shivered at the thought, while she contemplated the unutterable
stillness of all things. Not a sound disturbed this vast scene of death.
The tree-boughs bent low under the weight of their pure burden; and when
the early evening fell, and vespers chimed out over the valley, the
tiny, frozen tears of Heaven still floated through the dark with
ever-increasing softness.
It was seven o’clock when Sœur Celeste, the chaplain, came to summon the
bride-elect to confession and interrogation with Monseigneur the Bishop
of St. Nazaire. As the two women passed together down the long corridor
of novices, through the cold cloister and empty refectory and along the
passage leading to the chapter, Laure’s heart was struck with a chill of
fear. How terribly empty the convent was! No one in the refectory, the
corridors scarcely lighted, the whole convent utterly silent; for the
drone of prayers in the church was inaudible here. She wondered how the
terrible vigil progressed, how many nuns had fainted in their fatigue.
She thought of anything but the matter before her, and was still
unprepared when the chaplain left her alone at the door of the chapter.
The Bishop of St. Nazaire was alone in this room, and at Laure’s
appearance he rose and went to her, taking her by the hand, and not
amazed to find her icy cold.
“My daughter!” he said gently; and Laure, looking into his face, was
suddenly filled with an ineffable comfort.
She had known the Bishop all her life, for he was her mother’s close
friend and a constant visitor at Le Crépuscule. But never before had she
seen him in this fulness of his office, so replete with magnetic
spirituality. If the unswervingly narrow tenets of his creed made St.
Nazaire too arbitrary where his religion was concerned, and if the
geniality of his own nature had, at times, brought upon him in his own
home reactions that afterwards rendered necessary the severest penances,
at least these two extremes of his life had brought him to a remarkable
intermediate balance. Irrespective of his state, he could be defined as
a man of the world, of large sympathies, having a broad understanding of
human frailty, because of the unconquerable weaknesses of his own
nature. His ethical code was one of high severity and strict purity; and
he strove with all the power of his spirit to follow it himself, never
failing, the while, to excuse the eternal failures of others. And now,
as Laure looked up into his large, smooth-shaven face, framed in long
fair hair, and lighted by a pair of bright blue eyes that generally
regarded the world with a surprising air of trustful innocence, the
young novice lost all her sense of desolation, and felt herself suddenly
introduced into a secure and unhoped-for haven.
St. Nazaire himself, examining the young girl’s face, and searching her
soul therein, knew that at this moment he was nearer to the inmost being
of the daughter of Le Crépuscule than he should ever be again; and he
felt that no one ever yet had been in a position to probe the depths of
her nature as he was going to probe them now. She gave herself up to him
as completely as Eleanore had given her once long ago, when, as a
new-born infant, she had wailed in his arms at her baptism before the
altar in the chapel of the Twilight Castle.
With this strong feeling of mutual confidence, Laure and the Bishop
seated themselves in the chapter of the convent. Confession and
stereotyped interrogation were gone through with dutifully, and then
followed what Laure had begun to wish for at the first moment of their
meeting,—a long and intimate talk upon the life that she should lead as
a professed nun. It was a life with which St. Nazaire was as fully
conversant as a man could ever be, and he pictured it to Laure as
faithfully as he was accustomed to picture Heaven—a heaven of flying men
and women carrying in their hands small golden harps—to those that
received the last sacrament at his hands. Laure had a vision of long
years filled ever fuller of transcendent joy and peace, in which she
should never know a wish that her life could not fill, nor a desire
beyond more earnest prayers, or a fast a little longer and more rigorous
than heretofore. And so skilful was the Bishop in the manipulation of
his sombre material, that he got from it remarkable beauties which,
impossible as it seems, were as convincing to him as to Laure.
It was late in the evening when the young girl received the episcopal
blessing and retired through the still nunnery to her cell. But her mind
was at perfect rest that night; and she went to sleep to dream of
nothing but the happiness and beauty of a consecrated life.
At ten o’clock on the morning of the twenty-sixth day of December, the
whole convent assembled in church for high mass, which was to be
celebrated by the Bishop of St. Nazaire. To-day the novices were
separated from the professed nuns, and the two companies knelt on
opposite sides of the church, leaving a broad space between them. The
choir was in its place. In the lower choir-stalls sat the
Mother-prioress, the sub-prioress, the chaplain and the deacons; while
his Grace was in the great chair of honor used by none but him. The only
member of the nunnery not present was Laure, who made her appearance
just as the bell began to ring for the opening of the mass. She came in
from the chapter-house at the far end of the church, and moved slowly up
the aisle. Her white robe and full mantle hid her figure and trailed
around her on the floor, and her head was crowned with the bridal veil,
which covered her face and fell to the ground all around her. In one
hand she carried a parchment scroll on which her vow was inscribed; and
in the other hand she bore the wedding ring.
As she advanced toward the altar every head was turned toward her, and
it was seen that she was white as death. But she was also very calm.
Indeed she was acting quite mechanically, like one under a hypnotic
spell; and there was no expression whatever on her face as she made her
genuflection to the cross, and then turned aside and knelt among the
company of novices. She took her usual part in the mass that followed,
making no slip in the service, and joining as usual in the singing, with
her full contralto voice.
When the benediction had been pronounced from the chancel, there was a
pause. No one in the church moved from her knees, and the Bishop
remained before the company with his right hand uplifted. Laure raised
her eyes, and her body trembled slightly, for her heart was palpitating
like running water. When the silence had lasted a seemingly unbearable
while, St. Nazaire turned his face to Laure, who rose and went up to
him, kneeling again in the chancel. And now, as she spoke, her quiet,
impressive voice was heard by every nun in the church,—
“_Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum et vivam. Et non confundas
me in expectatione mea._”
As she finished, Laure’s throat contracted, and she gasped convulsively.
Her head swam in a mist, but she knew that the Bishop was questioning
her from the catechism,—knew that she was answering him; and then,
afterwards, she heard, as from a great distance, the voice of the Bishop
praying. At the Amen, St. Nazaire signed to her again, and she rose and
stepped forward to his side. Then, turning till she faced the church,
she said quite distinctly, though in a low tone,—
“I, Sister Angelique, promise steadfastness, virginity, continuance in
virtue, and obedience before God and all His saints, in accordance with
the Rule of St. Benedict, in this Priory of Holy Madeleine, in the
presence of the Reverend Father Charles, Lord Bishop of St. Nazaire, of
the Duchy of Brittany, Lord under the most Christian Duke, Jean de
Montfort.”
Thereafter she went up to the altar, and there signed her scroll with
her new name and the sign of the cross. And there the ring of Heaven was
placed upon her finger, and she was declared a bride. For the last time
she knelt before the father, who lifted up his hands and consecrated
her, after the ancient formula, to the love of her Saviour, the blessing
of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. And then Laure, a
professed nun, came down from the holy place, and was received among her
sisters and reverently saluted by them.
The ceremony over, all the convent adjourned to the refectory, where a
little feast of rejoicing was held in honor of the newly consecrated
one. And after this, at an early hour of the afternoon, Laure was
conducted to her cell, and her ten days of retirement began. All that
afternoon, overcome with the strain of the past few days, the young girl
slept. She woke only when the Sœur Eloise, a stout and stupid little
nun, but a few weeks since made a lay sister, came up to her with bread
and milk. When she had eaten and was alone again, she sat for a long
time in her dark cell, looking out upon the starry night, and wondering
vaguely over her long future. Presently the bell for the end of
confession rang out, and, knowing that it was time, she rose and went
through the convent, and into the vast church. The last of the nuns had
left it and gone to seek her rest. Only the sub-prioress remained,
waiting for Laure. Seeing her come, the older nun saluted her silently,
and then moved away toward the dimly lighted chapter. In the doorway of
this room she turned to look back at the white figure standing in the
dimly lighted, incense-reeking aisle; and then, with a faint sigh of
memory, she extinguished all the chapter lights, bowed to the little
crucifix hanging in that room, and went her way to bed.
Laure was left alone in the great, dusky House of God. Where she knelt,
before the shrine of St. Joseph, two candles burned. All around her was
darkness—silence—solitude. Awed and wide-eyed, she forced herself to
kneel upon the stones, and her mind vaguely sought a prayer. But
thoughts of Heaven refused to come. Her Bridegroom was very far away.
She felt a cold weight settling slowly down upon her heart, and she
trembled, and her brows grew damp with chilly dew. Many thoughts came
and went. She remembered afterwards to have had a very distinct vision
of Alixe, standing alone upon a great cliff a mile from Le Crépuscule,
with a wild sea-wind blowing her hair and her mantle, and white gulls
veering about her head. For an instant, a wild longing flamed up through
her soul. Setting her lips, she tried to force her mind back again to
God. One—two—three faltering, reverent words were uttered by her. Then
Laure du Crépuscule started wildly to her feet.
“God! Oh, God! I am imprisoned! I am captive! I am captive forever! God!
Oh, God!”
As these wild cries echoed through the vaulted roof, she threw herself
passionately to the floor and lay there helpless, while the wave of
merciless realization swept over her. Then her hands wandered along the
stones of the floor, and her cheek followed them, and she clutched at
the cold, damp granite, in a vain, vague search for her mother’s breast.
[Illustration]
_CHAPTER THREE_
FLAMMECŒUR
[Illustration]
The New Year had come: a time of highest festival in Brittany, when the
land was alive with merriment and gifts and legends and grewsome tales.
It was St. Sylvester’s Eve, when, as all men knew, the waves of the
Atlantic for once defied their barriers and struggled up the towering
cliffs, eager to meet, halfway, the descending dolmens, permitted once
in the year to leave unguarded the deep earth-treasures, that they might
quench their furious thirst in the sea. And on that night half the
peasants of Brittany lay awake, speculating on the vast wealth that
might be theirs if they were but to arise and seek out some monster
dolmen and wait beside it till the immense rock rolled away from its
hole, leaving a pit of gold and gems open to the clutching hands of the
world-man. But fear of the demoniac return of these same rolling rocks
kept most of the dreamers safe within their beds during the fateful
midnight hour, though of the luck of the few daring ones, there were,
nay, still are, many veracious tales.
Le Crépuscule, no less than the surrounding countryside, participated in
the interest of these supernatural matters; but the old Chateau had real
affairs of feast and frolic to occupy it also. The great New Year’s
dinner was the most lavish that the Castle gave in the twelve-month, and
this year, in spite of its depleted household, there was no exception
made to the general rule. The great tables were set in the central hall
and loaded with every sort of food and drink, while kitchen fires roared
about their juicy meats, and in the chimney-piece of the hall an ox was
roasted whole before the flames. Ordinarily the dinner hour at the
Castle was half-past eleven in the morning; but on feast days it was
changed to four in the afternoon, and the merriment was then kept up
till the last woman had retired, and the last man found a pillow on the
rushes that strewed the floor.
On this New Year’s eve there were, as usual, two great tables set; for
to-night not only all the retainers of the Castle, but also half a
hundred of the tenantry from the estates, claimed the privilege of their
fealty and came to eat at the house of their lord, sitting below his
salt, breaking his bread, supping his beer, and talking and laughing and
drinking each till he could no more.
Madame Eleanore was always present at this feast, as a matter of duty
and of graciousness. She sat to-night at the head of the board, with an
empty place beside her for Gerault. Alixe was upon her right hand, and
one of the young squires-at-arms upon her left; and in the general
hubbub of the feast none of the peasant boors noticed how persistent a
silence reigned at that end of the table, nor how wearily sad was the
expression of their lady’s face.
This was the first feast in many years at which the Bishop of St.
Nazaire had not been present; but he had not come to Le Crépuscule since
Laure’s consecration, and madame had given up hoping for his arrival.
Darkness had fallen some time since, and the hour was growing late. This
could be told from the increased noise at the table. Puddings and
crumcakes had been finished, and the men of the company were turning
their attention exclusively to the liquor—beer and wine—which had been
brought up to the hall in great casks, from which each might help
himself. David le petit, the jester, ran up and down on the table,
waving a black wand and shouting verses at the company. There was a
universal clamor and howling of laughter and song, which madame heard
with ever-increasing weariness and displeasure, though the demoiselles
showed no such signs of fatigue.
Suddenly, through the tumult, madame caught a sound that made her lift
her head and half rise from her chair, listening intently. There had
been a sound of horses’ hoofs on the courtyard stones.
“’Tis St. Nazaire at last,” she whispered to Alixe. “Now we shall hear
of—Go thou thyself, Alixe, and fetch hither fresh meat and a pasty and a
flagon of the best wine. Monseigneur must be weary. He shall sit here at
my side—”
Alixe rose obediently and hurried away on her errand; and while she was
gone there came a clamor at the door. A burly henchman sprang up and
lurched forward to open it, peering out into the darkness. Those in the
room heard a little ejaculation, and then there entered a new-comer with
some one else beside him. Neither was the Bishop of St. Nazaire. Both of
them were young,—one, indeed, no more than a boy, wearing an esquire’s
jerkin, hosen, cap, and mantle, and carrying only a short dirk in his
belt. The other, who came forward into the full light of the lamps and
torches, was a young man of six and twenty or thereabouts, lean and tall
and graceful, clad in half armor, but clean-shaved, like a woman. His
face had the look of the South in it, his eyes were piercingly dark, and
his waving hair as black as the night. In their first glance at the
new-comer, most in the room took notice that his spurs were not gilt;
but soon a maid spied out that the little squire carried on his back a
lute, strung on a ribbon, and then the stranger’s profession was plain.