“I do remember her, Mother, if it please you. She was tall, and had very black hair, and dark flashing eyes, and she moved like a queen.”
“I think of her,” saith Mother Alianora, “rather as she was in her last days, when those flashing eyes flashed no longer, and the queen was lost in the saint.”
“If it please you, Mother,” I said, “had she not an enamelled cross that she wore? I recollect something about it.”
Mother Alianora smiled, somewhat amusedly.
“She had; and perchance thy memory runneth back to a battle over that cross betwixt her and Sister Sayena, who laid plaint afore my Lady Prioress that Mother Guendolen kept to herself an article of private property, which should have gone into the treasury. It had been her mother’s, a marriage-gift from the Queen that then was. Well I remember Mother Guendolen’s words—‘I sware to part from this cross alone with life, and the Master granted me to keep it when I entered the Order.’ Then the fire died out of her eyes, and her voice fell low, and she added—‘ah, my sister! dost thou envy me Christ’s cross?’ Ay, she had carried more of that cross than most. She came here about the age thou didst, Annora—a little child of six years.”
“Who was she in the world, Mother?” quoth Sister Nora.
I was surprised to see Mother Alianora glance round the room, as if to see who was there, afore she answered. Nor did she answer for a moment.
“She was Sister Guendolen of Sempringham: let that satisfy thee. Maybe, in the world above, she is that which she should have been in this world, and was not.”
And I could not but wonder if Mother Guendolen’s life had held a might have been like mine.
I want to know what ‘carnal’ and ‘worldly’ mean. They are words which I hear very often, and always with condemnation: but they seem to mean quite different things, in the lips of different speakers. When Mother Ada uses them, they mean having affection in one’s heart for any thing, or any person, that is not part of holy Church. When Mother Gaillarde speaks them, they mean caring for any thing that she does not care for—and that includes everything except power, and grandeur, and the Order of Saint Gilbert. And when Mother Alianora says them, they fall softly on the ear, as if they meant not love, nor happiness, nor any thing good and innocent, but simply all that could grieve our Lord and hurt a soul that loved Him. They are, with her, just the opposite of Jesus Christ.