“Kindness, indeed! Before I’d have given in to such nonsense!”
“Sister Gaillarde, maybe some matters that you and I would weep over may seem full as foolish to the angels and to God. And to Him it may be of more import to comfort a little child in its trouble than to pass a statute of Parliament. Ah, me! if God waited to comfort us till we were wise, little comforting should any of us have. But it is written, ‘Like whom his mother blandisheth, thus I will comfort you,’—and mothers do not wait for children to be discreet before they comfort them. At least, my mother did not.”
Such a soft, sweet, tender light came into her eyes as made my heart ache. My mother might have comforted me so.
Just then I caught Margaret’s look. I do not know what it was like: but quite different from Mother Alianora’s. Something strained and stretched, as it were, like a piece of canvas when you strain it on a frame for tapestry-work. Then, all at once, the strain gave way and broke up, and calm, holy peace came instead. If I might talk with Margaret!
Mother Alianora is ill in the Infirmary. And I may not go to her.
I pleaded hard with Mother Ada to appoint me nurse for this week.
“Why?” she said in her coldest voice.
I could not answer.
“Either thou deceivest thyself, Sister,” she added, “which is ill enough, or thou wouldst fain deceive me. Knowest thou not that to attempt to deceive thy superiors is to lie to the Holy Ghost as Ananias and Sapphira did? How then dost thou dare to do it? I see plainly enough what motive prompts thee: not holy obedience—that is thoroughly inconsistent with such fervent entreaties—nor a desire to mortify thy will, but simply a wish for the carnal indulgence of the flesh. Thou knowest full well that particular friendships are not permitted to the religious, it is only the lust of the flesh which prompts a fancy for one above another: if not, every Sister would have an equal share in thy regard. It is a carnal, worldly heart in which such thoughts dwell as even a wish for the company of any Sister in especial. And hast thou forgotten that the very purpose for which we were sent here was to mortify our wills?”
I thought I was not likely to forget it, so long as nothing was allowed me save opportunities for mortifying mine. But one more word did I dare to utter.