She nodded her head, and Rosamund thought that her lips moved as in some intercession that had grown habitual through long use.
“I’ve had a lot of trouble, my dear—always have had—and but for the Faith I should be an unhappy old woman. But look at what God has done for me,” cried Mrs. Mulholland triumphantly; “brought me here, to the convent, with all these good nuns, so that I shall probably end my days amongst them, and get all their prayers to shorten my time in purgatory. Nearly twenty years I’ve been here, my dear, and my position quite established, I assure you. I live by rule, you know, though I’m not a nun—follow the office, have my own little corner in the chapel—and then the Superior likes me to keep an eye on the lady boarders. ‘La mère des dames pensionnaires’ the lay-sisters call me. I look after them, you know. ‘Come to me if you want anything,’ is what I always tell them. ‘The nuns are very busy—spare them all we can. Come to me instead,’ I always say. ‘If I can’t help you, well and good, I’ll refer you to the proper quarter,’ says I, ‘but come to me first.’ That spares the nuns a little, and I generally find that trifling difficulties can be put right without troubling them. That’s the advantage of my position here.”
Rosamund listened passively. She liked Mrs. Mulholland to talk. Her deep, rather hoarse voice seemed to make a link between reality and that abyss into which one had fallen, where nothing was real or solid but thick tangible darkness and endless despairing pain. While Mrs. Mulholland went on talking, it was as though a faint ray of light filtered down, reminding one that above the abyss there still lay solid ground with the sky overhead.
Then, very slowly, Rosamund realized that she had left the worst depths behind her. Never again would she know the blighting, searing agony of those first moments, and never again would she be as though she had not known them.
The initiation which life holds for most of us varies as strangely in its character as does the intensity of its effect upon us.
Rosamund said to Mrs. Mulholland one day:
“I feel as though this was the first time I’d ever felt anything—as though other things in my life had been only a sort of pretence. And yet they weren’t. My mother’s death, when I was a little girl, and leaving home, and other things—which happened at Porthlew—I minded them all. I fell in love with somebody, and thought that must be the realest thing in the word. And it made me very unhappy—it really did.”
She looked at Mrs. Mulholland, not expecting her to offer any solution, but feeling a sort of weary solace in putting her confused thoughts into words.
“But, you know, it doesn’t seem at all real now. It never touched bedrock. In a sort of way—I brought unhappiness to it—not it to me.”
“It’s very often so, my dear,” said Mrs. Mulholland placidly. “Sometimes we need a very sharp lesson to take us out of ourselves. That’s where God’s wisdom is so far above ours. He sees what we need, and orders all things for the best. The loss of your dear sister will bring you nearer to God.”