What ailed poor sister Emma to bring her to this sad pass? When she was young she was something of a religious enthusiast, and because enthusiasm was rare in the cloister, she was promoted by her sisters to high station. When they made her Sacrist she had her one and dearest wish. To have the charge of the beautiful church, of the books, vestments and jewels of the sanctuary, to live in the holy place, with holy thoughts for companions, and in the unfailing round of holy duties—was not that a happy lot? Dignified too the office was; for in the little cloister world the Prioress herself was scarcely a greater lady than the Sacrist. The Sacrist did not sleep with the other nuns in the dormitory; her constant duties did not allow her ordinarily to take her meals in the refectory. Like the Prioress, she had her own servant to attend her, her own house to dwell in. Her habitation was built against the northern chancel wall, and consisted of two chambers. From the upper room, through a hole pierced in the wall, she watched the never-dying light that hung before the High Altar.
But it was not good to be Sacrist for long. The unvarying routine of duty produces torpidity; holy thoughts uncommunicated end in cessation of thought; the solitude was deadly. The office was not coveted by the sisterhood, and was seldom held for more than a year or two together. Wherefore they rejoiced when Emma Denton held it for nine years. For nine years she trimmed the sacred lamp. During nine years her own light dwindled out, and at last the world became dark to sister Emma.
The crazy belfry rocked with the swaying of the bell, which, being cracked, was doubly dolorous. The sound of it roused old sister Emma to a dim consciousness of what was passing, and she spoke to nobody in particular.
“The bell,” she said, “the bell again! Last week it tolled, and we buried two. Now there are two more in the dead-house.”
“The saints protect us!” said sister Joan; “she is at her old talk of the pestilence year.”
“It was Assumption Day,” continued the old nun, “when we buried them. We had no Mass that day. To-day it is the cellaress and sister Margery Cailly—God pardon her for a sinful woman. No; Margery is sick, not dead; and I forget, I forget.”
“Margery Cailly,” cried Joan Sudbury, “what quoth she of Margery Cailly, that goes to her grave to-day? Margery Cailly, that has been our most religious Sacrist ever since yonder poor thing fell beside her wits.”
“Religious you may call her,” said Elizabeth Daveys, “but God knows, and sister Emma knows, that of her which we know not. Thirty years have I lived in St Radegund’s, and I remember not the time when any but Margery was our Sacrist, and well I know that the sacristy has been her prison all those days. But I have heard sister Emma say in her dull way that Margery once knew the convent prison too.”
“Well, twelve years I have spent here, and never had speech with the Sacrist. Once I was alone in the church when it was dark, and the daylight only lingered aloft in the roof, and of a sudden I lighted on her in the chancel, busied in her office. Her pale face in her black hood showed like a spirit’s, and I thought it was the blessed Radegund that had come down from her window, and I was horribly afraid.”
“I think that from the sacristy window her eye followed me about the garden as I walked there,” said Elizabeth. “It follows me still, and it makes my flesh creep. What good woman would shun her sisters so? Heaven rest her soul, for be sure she has much to answer for. If she has confessed herself, it is not to our confessor or the Prioress, for I think she has hardly spoken these many years to any but Alice Portress that waits on her.”