I went about sombre and dejected, under the conviction that I must have sinned the sin against the Holy Ghost, and Polly Evans wondered if adultery figured upon the list of her misdoings. She was sure, however, that she had not defrauded the labourer of his daily wage, whatever that might be, for the simple reason that she had never met a labourer. I was tortured with a fresh sensational doubt. My foster-mother's cousin at Kildare was a very nice labourer who often had given me sweets. Could I, in a moment of temporary aberration, have defrauded him of his wage? And then adultery! If Polly was sure she had committed adultery, might I not also have so deeply offended against heaven? I had not precisely killed anybody, but had I not desired to kill Sister Esmeralda the day I threw the stool at her?
And so we travelled conscientiously, like humble, but, in the very secret depths of our being, self-admiring pilgrims, over the weary and profitless road of self-examination, and assured ourselves with a fervent thrill that we were indeed miserable sinners. "I'll never get into a passion again," I swore to Polly Evans, like a monstrous little Puritan, and before an hour had passed was thirsting for the blood of some offender.
I even went so far as to include Sister Esmeralda and Frank in my offer of general amnesty to humanity; and indited at some nun's suggestion a queer epistle to my mother, something in the tone the prodigal son from afar might have used writing to his father when he first decided to abandon the husks and swine, etc. I boldly announced my intention of forsaking the path of wickedness, with a humble confession of hitherto having achieved supremacy in that nefarious kingdom, and of walking henceforth with the saints.
I added a practical postscript, that I was always very hungry, and stated with charming candour that I did not like any of the nuns except Mother Aloysius, which was rather a modification of the exuberant burst of virtue expressed on the first page. This postscript was judiciously altered past recognition, and I was ordered to copy it out: "I am very happy at Lysterby. All the dear nuns are so kind to me. We shall have a little feast soon. Please, dear mamma, send me some money."
If the money ever came, it was naturally confiscated by the dear nuns. It was not money we mites needed, but bread-and-butter and a cup of good milk, or a plate of simple sustaining porridge. However, for the moment the excitement of confession sustained us. Having communicated to each other the solemn impression that we had broken all the Commandments, committed the seven deadly sins, and made mockery of the four cardinal virtues, the next thing to decide was to what length of repentance we were bound to go. Polly Evans' enthusiasm was so exalted that she yearned to follow the example of the German emperor we had read of who walked, or crawled on his knees, I forget which, to Rome, and made a public confession to the Pope. But this we felt to be an immodest flight of fancy in a little girl who had done nothing worth speaking of. She was like my Kildare companion Mary Jane, who constantly saw herself in a personal scuffle with Queen Victoria.
When the great day came we were bidden to stay in the chapel after the rest, and then were taken down to the town convent, with instructions to keep our minds fixed upon the awful sacrament of confession as we walked two and two through the streets.
"Remember, children," said that infamous Sister Esmeralda, prettier than ever, as she fixed me with a deadly glance, "to tell a lie in the confessional box is to tell a lie to the Holy Ghost. You may be struck dead for it."
Did she mean that for me? Oh, why had I so rashly vowed myself to a life of virtue? Why had I so precipitously chosen the companionship and example of the saints? Why had I read the lives of St. Louis of Gonzaga, St. Stanislaus of Kotska, and other lamb-like creatures, and in a fit of admiration sworn to resemble them?—since all these good resolutions debarred me from flinging another stool at that lovely hostile visage. But having elected momentarily to play the part of a shocking little prig, I swallowed my wrath, with a compunctious sensation, and felt a glow all over to think I was already so much of a saint.
In the convent chapel, with our throbbing hearts in our mouths, we knelt, a diminutive row, in our Sunday uniform (I have worn so many convent uniforms that I am rather mixed about them, and cannot remember which was blue on Sunday and which was black, but the Lysterby Sunday uniform I know was black). Polly Evans was the first to disappear, swallowed up in the awful box. She issued forth, tremulous and wide-eyed, and I followed her, pallid and quaking. The square grating was closed, and the green curtain enfolded me in a terrific dusk. I felt sick and cold with fright. What was going to happen? Could something spring suddenly out and clutch me? Was the devil behind me? Had my guardian angel forsaken me? I had read a great deal of late about "a yawning abyss," "a black pit," a "bottomless hole." Was I going to tell a lie to the Holy Ghost unknowing, and so be struck dead like, like——?
The square slid swiftly back, and I saw a dim man's profile through the grating. Had I seen Father Morris clear before me, my fears would instantly have been quelled, for he was a graceful, aristocratic, soft-voiced man, quick to captivate little children by his winning smile. But that dim formless thing behind the grating, what was it? They told me the priest in the confessional was God. The statement was not such that any childish imagination could grasp. The sickness of terror overcame me, and I, whom the rough sea of the Irish Channel had not harmed, fell down in a dreadful fit of nausea that left me prostrate for days.