Un Congé sans Cloche
We had only two or three of them in the year, and their slow approach stirred us to frenzy. In the dark ages, when I went to school, no one had yet discovered that play is more instructive than work, no one was piling up statistics to prove the educational value of idleness. In the absence of nature studies and athletics, we were not encouraged to spend our lives out of doors. In the absence of nerve specialists, we were not tenderly restrained from studying our lessons too hard. It is wonderful how little apprehension on this score was felt by either mothers or teachers. We had two months’ summer holiday,—July and August,—and a week at Christmas time. The rest of the year we spent at school. I have known parents so inhuman as to regret those unenlightened days.
But can the glorified little children whose lives seem now to be one vast and happy playtime, can the privileged schoolgirls who are permitted to come to town for a matinée,—which sounds to me as fairy-like as Cinderella’s ball,—ever know the real value of a holiday? As well expect an infant millionaire to know the real value of a quarter. We to whom the routine of life was as inevitable as the progress of the seasons, we to whom Saturdays were as Mondays, and who grappled with Church history and Christian doctrine on pleasant Sunday mornings, we knew the mad tumultuous joy that thrilled through hours of freedom. The very name which from time immemorial had been given to our convent holidays illustrated the fulness of their beatitude. When one lives under the dominion of bells, every hour rung in and out with relentless precision, sans cloche means glorious saturnalia. Once a nervous young nun, anxious at the wild scattering of her flock, ventured, on a congé, to ring them back to bounds; whereupon her bell was promptly, though not unkindly, taken away from her by two of the older girls. And when the case was brought to court, the Mistress General upheld their action. A law was a law, as binding upon its officers as upon the smallest subject in the realm.
The occasions for a congé sans cloche were as august as they were rare. “Mother’s Feast,” by which we meant the saint’s day of the Superioress, could always be reckoned upon. The feast of St. Joseph was also kept in this auspicious fashion,—which gave us a great “devotion” to so kind a mediator. Once or twice in the year the Archbishop came to the convent, and in return for our addresses, our curtsies, our baskets of flowers, and songs of welcome, always bravely insisted that we should have a holiday. “Be sure and tell me, if you don’t get it,” he used to say, which sounded charmingly confidential, though we well knew that we should never have an opportunity to tell him anything of the kind, and that we should never dare to do it, if we had.
In the year of grace which I now chronicle, the Archbishop was going to Rome, and had promised to say good-by to us before he sailed. Those were troubled times for Rome. Even we knew that something was wrong, though our information did not reach far beyond this point. Like the little girl who couldn’t tell where Glasgow was, because she had not finished studying Asia Minor, we were still wandering belated in the third Crusade,—a far cry from united Italy. When Elizabeth, who had read the address, said she wondered why the Pope was called “God’s great martyr saint,” we could offer her very little enlightenment. I understand that children now interest themselves in current events, and ask intelligent questions about things they read in the newspapers. For us, the Wars of the Roses were as yesterday, and the Crusades were still matters for deep concern. Berengaria of Navarre had been the “leading lady” of our day’s lesson, and I had written in my “Compendium of History”—majestic phrase—this interesting and comprehensive statement: “Berengaria led a blameless life, and, after her husband’s death, retired to a monastery, where she passed the remainder of her days.”
It was the middle of May when the Archbishop came, and, as the weather was warm, we wore our white frocks for the occasion. Very immaculate we looked, ranged in a deep, shining semicircle, a blue ribbon around every neck, and gloves on every folded hand. It would have been considered the height of impropriety to receive, ungloved, a distinguished visitor. As the prelate entered, accompanied by the Superioress and the Mistress General, we swept him a deep curtsy,—oh, the hours of bitter practice it took to limber my stiff little knees for those curtsies!—and then broke at once into our chorus of welcome:—
“With happy hearts we now repair
All in this joyous scene to share.”
There were five verses. When we had finished, we curtsied again and sat down, while Mary Rawdon and Eleanor Hale played a nervous duet upon the piano.
The Archbishop looked at us benignantly. It was said of him that he dearly loved children, but that he was apt to be bored by adults. He had not what are called “social gifts,” and seldom went beyond the common civilities of intercourse. But he would play jackstraws all evening with half a dozen children, and apparently find himself much refreshed by the entertainment. His eyes wandered during the duet to the ends of the semicircle, where sat the very little girls, as rigidly still as cataleptics. Wriggling was not then deemed the prescriptive right of childhood. An acute observer might perhaps have thought that the Archbishop, seated majestically on his dais, and flanked by Reverend Mother and Madame Bouron, glanced wistfully at these motionless little figures. We were, in truth, as remote from him as if we had been on another continent. Easy familiarity with our superiors was a thing undreamed of in our philosophy. The standards of good behaviour raised an impassable barrier between us.