In Our Convent Days

by Agnes Repplier

I slipped on my wrapper,—night-gowns gleam so perilously white,—and with infinite precaution stole behind my sleeping companions, each one curtained safely into her little muslin alcove. At the end of the dormitory I was joined by another silent figure,—it was Marie,—and very gently we pushed open the big doors. The hall outside was flooded with moonlight, and by the open window crouched a bunch of girls, pressed close together,—so close it was hard to disentangle them. A soft gurgle of delight bubbled up from one little throat, and was instantly hushed down by more prudent neighbours. Elizabeth hovered on the outskirts of the group, and, without a word, she pushed me to the sill. Beneath, leaning against a tree, not thirty feet away, stood Marianus. His back was turned to us, and he was smoking. We could see the easy grace of his attitude,—was he not an Italian?—we could smell the intoxicating fragrance of his cigar. Happily unaware of his audience, he smoked, and contemplated the friendly moon, and wondered, perhaps, why the Fates had cast him on this desert island, as remote from human companionship as Crusoe’s. Had he known of the six young hearts that had been given him unbidden, it would probably have cheered him less than we imagined.

But to us it seemed as though our shadowy romance had taken form and substance. The graceless daring of Marianus in stationing himself beneath our windows,—or at least beneath a window to which we had possible access; the unholy lateness of the hour,—verging fast upon half-past nine; the seductive moonlight; the ripe profligacy of the cigar;—what was wanting to this night’s exquisite adventure! As I knelt breathless in the shadow, my head bobbing against Viola’s and Marie’s, I thought of Italy, of Venice, of Childe Harold, of everything that was remote, and beautiful, and unconnected with the trammels of arithmetic. I heard Annie Churchill murmur that it was like a serenade; I heard Tony’s whispered conjecture as to whether the silent serenader really knew where we slept;—than which nothing seemed less likely;—I heard Elizabeth’s warning “Hush!” whenever the muffled voices rose too high above the stillness of the sleeping convent; but nothing woke me from my dreams until Marianus slowly withdrew his shoulder from the supporting tree, and sauntered away, without turning his head once in our direction. We watched him disappear in the darkness; then, closing the window, moved noiselessly back to bed. “Who saw him first?” I asked at the dormitory door.

“I did,” whispered Elizabeth; “and I called them all. I didn’t intend letting Viola know; but, of course, sleeping next to Lilly, she heard me. She ought to be up in the ‘Holy Child’ dormitory with the other little girls. It’s ridiculous having her following us about everywhere.”

And, indeed, Viola’s precocious pertinacity made her a difficult problem to solve. There are younger sisters who can be snubbed into impotence. Viola was no such weakling.

But now the story which we thought just begun was drawing swiftly to its close. Perhaps matters had reached a point when something had to happen; yet it did seem strange—it seems strange even now—that the crisis should have been precipitated by a poetic outburst on the part of Elizabeth. Of all the six, she was the least addicted to poetry. She seldom read it, and never spent long hours in copying it in a blank-book, as was our foolish and laborious custom. She hated compositions, and sternly refused the faintest touch of sentiment when compelled to express her thoughts upon “The First Snow-drop,” or “My Guardian Angel,” or the “Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.” Tony wrote occasional verses of a personal and satiric character, which we held to sparkle with a biting wit. Annie Churchill had once rashly shown to Lilly and to me some feeble lines upon “The Evening Star.” Deep hidden in my desk, unseen by mortal eye save mine, lay an impassioned “Soliloquy of Jane Eyre,” in blank verse, which was almost volcanic in its fervour, and which perished the following year, unmourned, because unknown to the world. But Elizabeth had never shown the faintest disposition to write anything that could be left unwritten, until Marianus stirred the waters of her soul. That night, that moonlit night, and the dark figure smoking in the shadows, cast their sweet spell upon her. With characteristic promptness, she devoted her French study hour the following afternoon to the composition of a poem, which was completed when we went to class, and which she showed me secretly while we were scribbling our dictée. There were five verses, headed “To Marianus,” and beginning,—

“Gracefully up the long aisle he glides,”

which was a poetic license, as the chapel aisle was short, and Marianus had never glided up it since he came. He always—in virtue of his office—entered by the sacristy door.

But realism was then as little known in literature as in art, and poetry was not expected to savour of statement rather than emotion. Elizabeth’s masterpiece expressed in glowing numbers the wave of sentiment by which we were submerged. Before night it had passed swiftly from hand to hand, and before night the thunderbolt had fallen. Whose rashness was to blame I do not now remember; but, thank Heaven! it was not mine. Some one’s giggle was too unsuppressed. Some one thrust the paper too hurriedly into her desk, or dropped it on the floor, or handed it to some one else in a manner too obviously mysterious not to arouse suspicion. I only know that it fell into the hands of little Madame Davide, who had the eyes of a ferret and the heart of a mouse, and who, being unable to read a word of English, sent it forthwith to Madame Bouron. I only know that, after that brief and unsatisfactory glimpse in French class, I never saw it again; which is why I can now recall but one line out of twenty,—a circumstance I devoutly regret.

It was a significant proof of Madame Bouron’s astuteness that, without asking any questions, or seeking any further information, she summoned six girls to her study that evening after prayers. She had only the confiscated poem in Elizabeth’s writing as a clue to the conspiracy, but she needed nothing more. There we were, all duly indicted, save Viola, whose youth, while it failed to protect us from the unsought privilege of her society, saved her, as a rule, from any retributive measures. Her absence on this occasion was truly a comfort, as her presence would have involved the added and most unmerited reproach of leading a younger child into mischief. Viola was small for her age, and had appealing brown eyes. There was not a nun in the convent who knew her for the imp she was. Lilly, gay, sweet, simple, generous, and unselfish, seemed as wax in her little sister’s hands.

There were six of us, then, to bear the burden of blame; and Madame Bouron, sitting erect in the lamplight, apportioned it with an unsparing hand. Her fine face (she was coldly handsome, but we did not like her well enough to know it) expressed contemptuous displeasure; her words conveyed a somewhat exaggerated confidence in our guilt. Of Elizabeth’s verses she spoke with icy scorn;—she had not been aware that so gifted a writer graced the school; but the general impropriety of our behaviour was unprecedented in the annals of the convent. That we, members of the Society of St. Aloysius, should have shown ourselves so unworthy of our privileges, and so forgetful of our patron, was a surprise even to her; though (she was frankness itself) she had never entertained a good opinion either of our dispositions or of our intelligence. The result of such misconduct was that the chaplain’s assistant must leave at once and forever. Not that he had ever wasted a thought upon any girl in the school. His heart was set upon the priesthood. Young though he was, he had already suffered for the Church. His father had fought and died in defence of the Holy See. His home had been lost. He was a stranger in a far land. And now he must be driven from the asylum he had sought, because we could not be trusted to behave with that modesty and discretion which had always been the fairest adornment of children reared within the convent’s holy walls. She hoped that we would understand how grievous was the wrong we had done, and that even our callous hearts would bleed when we went to our comfortable beds, and reflected that, because of our wickedness and folly, a friendless and pious young student was once more alone in the world.