I happened to look at Sister Gaillarde, and I saw the beginning of one of her grim smiles: but she did not speak.
“Some of you do seem happy and peaceful,” said Joan (she says I am to call her Joan). “But is it so with all?”
Sister Gaillarde gave her little Amen nod.
“Oh dear, yes!” answered Sister Ada. “Of course, where the will is not perfectly mortified, there is not such unbroken bliss as where it is. But when the rule of holy obedience is fully followed out, so that we have no will whatever except that of our superiors, you cannot imagine what sweet peace flows into the soul. Now, if Father Benedict were to command me any thing, I should be positively delighted to do it, because it was a command from my superior. It would not in the least matter what it was. Nay, the more repugnant it was to my natural inclinations, the more it would delight me.”
Joan’s eyes wandered to two or three other faces, with a look which said, “Do you agree to this?”
“Don’t look at me!” said Sister Gaillarde. “I’m no seraph. It wouldn’t please me a bit better to have dirty work to do because Father Benedict ordered it. I can’t reach those heights of perfection—never understood them. If Sister Ada do, I’m glad to hear it. She must have learned it lately.”
“I do not understand it, as Sister Ada puts it,” said I, as Joan’s eyes came to me. “I understand what it is to give up one’s will in any thing when it seems to be contrary to the will of God, and to have more real pleasure in trying to please Him than in pleasing one’s self. I understand, too, that there may be more true peace in bearing a sorrow wherein God helps and comforts you, than in having no sorrow and no comfort. But Sister Ada seems to mean something different—as if one were to be absolutely without any will about any thing, and yet to delight in the crossing of one’s will. Now, if I have not any wall, I do not see how it is to be crossed. And to have none whatever would surely make me something different from a woman and a sinner. I should be like a harp that could be played on—not like a living creature at all.”
Two or three little nods came from Sister Gaillarde.
“People who have no wills are very trying to deal with,” said Margaret.
“People who have wills are,” said Sister Philippa.