THE CONVENT OF ST. MARGUERITE.
"Paradise is always where love dwells."
—Richter.
Tingle, tingle, tingle, chimes the tiny silver bell, and down the pretty newly swept gravel path file the pupils, two and two; the plain black dresses, and black hoods looking strangely quaint on the smiling faces of the girls going to early service. The sisters, with folded hands and devout downcast eyes, follow. Suddenly a moan or gasping sound makes sister Christine pause in her silent march behind the others. She looks about, then her eyes take a startled, anxious expression; she steps hurriedly forward to kneel beside a woman lying among the fragrant mignonette. With sister Christine to think is to act. She felt the faintly beating pulse; her first anxiety is over; the woman has but fainted. At first the sister, glancing at the set, white face, feared she could render no assistance on earth to this creature flung on her path. A tiny silver whistle hangs at her side; lifting it to her lips she blows a shrill toot; a mulatto boy, in a coat bright with silver buttons, runs down to her.
"Oh massey," exclaims this little black diamond, standing off, with his mouth open so wide that sister Christine fears he will have the lock-jaw.
"Woolly, run quickly to the house and ask the Mother Superior to come here to me. Now hurry; and Woolly! shut your mouth." There was a sudden scamper, a vision of bright shining buttons, and Woolly was gone.
A few minutes later the still unconscious figure was borne into the house, tenderly attended by the mother and good sisters.
The first face Jantie Mackeith saw when she awoke was the tender, pitiful face of Mother St. Marguerite.
"Where am I? Who are you? Ah, yes, I remember, they told me this was a convent, where there was rest for all who were weary. I crept in by the gate, to ask if I might stay here—stay where my heart would find peace; then I grew dizzy, everything seemed black; I tried to call some one, then all was dark. May I stay here—may I?"
Mother St. Marguerite's eyes are full of tears; she takes the pretty small white hand, stretched out so imploringly, into hers. Sister Christine, just entering, has never seen the mother so moved before.
"Yes, poor lamb, stay—stay; no questions will be asked you. If evil has come, no doubt punishment has followed; if you are wronged, Heaven will give you a free, light conscience to know that you are doing what your God would approve. Heaven bless you! We are all weak, erring sheep."
The school was dull that bright, cheery morning; rumors have got afloat about the strange lady; the pupils wanted to know all about it. The sisters' lips were sealed; the only speakable person on the premises was Woolly. He was bribed by every imaginable luxury, all the way from a bright yellow handkerchief—the color which was dear to Woolly's eyes—to a lump of barley candy—dear to the lad's mouth. He drove enough bargains that morning, during recreation, to last a boy of his age a whole year. Meanwhile the patient up stairs, in sister Christine's room, was improving. As was promised, she was asked no questions, and she gave no information. The name Sister Jean was given her. No one ever regretted the care bestowed upon the stranger, so eagerly did she strive to please. The school was large; many pupils occupied the attention of the sisters sister Jean was given charge of the smaller girls, and right loyally did they love the pale, quiet, gentle teacher. Mother St. Marguerite, a wonderful woman herself, took a particular interest in the new found sister. The sick were visited, the poor watched over, by the mother's watchful eye and helpful hand. Many homes learned to bless the good, angelic work of sister Jean.
Over a month after sister Jean's admission into the convent of St. Marguerite, a note was received by Sir Barry Traleigh, at Castle Racquette, Scotland.
"I have given up ambition for the future. Do not try to find me; I am leading a peaceful, useful, happy life. My heart, though broken, is as peaceful as is possible again in this world. Jantie."
But in her haste she forgot the name of the convent was stamped on the paper. However, Sir Barry's mind was set at rest by those few words; he knew the more than headstrong, pretty daughter of one of his tenants was safe. Pretty, foolish Jantie Mackeith had been persuaded into a secret marriage with a young man, a stranger to Scotland—Cyril Fanchon. He was a nice, gentlemanly looking fellow; and Jantie—silly child—her head was turned by his attentions. However, the deed was done, and a week later Cyril Fanchon suddenly left Scotland, without a word of leave-taking. In a fit of remorse the girl confessed her marriage to Sir Barry, and Sir Barry, who had teased and petted the pretty child since she was out of her baby frocks, was shocked and surprised.
"You should not have done it, Jantie; you know anything secret is bad, child. What will your mother say?"
Sir Barry feels almost a paternal interest in this girl, and her own father, were he alive, could feel no deeper pity for her than he does now.
"Oh sir, mother must never know. You, who know her, can see it would be madness to say anything to her about it. I expert he grew tired of me, and yet he used to tell me he would never tire of his pretty Jantie. Oh yes, my punishment has quickly fallen."
The girl, standing by Sir Barry, folds her white hands behind her back, and the honest, truthful brown eyes look vacantly into the distance. The warm breeze lifts the curly locks from her low white forehead; the sunbeams kiss the cheeks once so blooming, now pale with anxiety.
"But, Sir Barry, mark what I say. I shall move all creation but what I shall find him. Stay here and be talked to death by mother, and mocked by all? No, I won't! Heaven help me to make him endure just the anguish that is tormenting me to death. Can you blame me, Sir Barry, can you?" And Sir Barry, leaning against the arched gateway, looking at the pale, drooping face, from out of which all the pretty rose bloom has fled, cannot blame Jantie for what she says.
Mrs. Mackeith loved this, her only daughter, passionately—the only one she had to love; mother and daughter were inseparable. As passionately as she loved, so could she hate; if her love turned to displeasure it was bitter as death. Her own husband, to whom she was devotedly attached, displeased her by selling a farm without her consent. He took cold one morning, while swimming across a swollen ford where the bridge had been swept away; she took excellent care of him, did all in her power to save his life, and failed; he died; but she never forgave him. Sir Barry knew, and so did Jantie, only too well, that her mother's reproaches would be more bitter than anything else to bear. So Mrs. Mackeith never knew what had taken place. She wondered, even grieved with motherly anxiety, over Jantie's pale face and strange freaks of listlessness. But one morning it all broke upon her unawares. Without a word of farewell, Jantie left her safe, quiet home among the Scottish hills, to seek for him who had left her so basely. Cyril Fanchon had gone; Jantie was gone. Mrs. Mackeith put two and two together, and it slowly but surely dawned upon her mind that Jantie—her Jantie, of whom she was so proud—had run away with that fellow Fanchon. The neighbors thought it a just judgment upon her, for her hard words to her husband on his death bed. But they offered their consolation with warm, hearty sympathy. Every one was fond of cheerful Jantie, whose pretty lips always had a pleasant word and smile for everybody. Her daughter's conduct, to all outward appearances, seemed to make no difference whatever to the tall, bony, hardy Scotch woman. Her step was just as elastic, her eye as keen, as though no trouble had crossed her path in life. She went about her daily duties the same as when Jantie blithely sang and cheerfully worked about the house. Mrs. Mackeith showed herself to be a woman of well-controlled feelings; she told her sorrow to none, and none knew how nearly broken her faithful, loving heart was.
Had Sir Barry been home, things might have been different; she trusted him implicitly; why would she not? She had known the lad all his life; had she not nursed him in her arms when he was a tiny infant, and watched the little bonnie laddie grow up to be the fine, good, generous gentleman she was proud to see he had become? Ah, no; there were few men who could come as near perfection in Mrs. Mackeith's eyes as brave Sir Barry Traleigh.