Yes; but why then did Soeur Séraphine’s heart sink at thought of Vivette’s having a vocation for the cloister? Well, because the little Sister desired that everybody might be happy; and in her heart of hearts she would have liked to see every young girl blissfully married to a young man without fault, of marvelous beauty, large fortune and irreproachable lineage. That was all. Of course, where a young person had a real vocation, it was another matter. Vivette had hitherto shown no signs of special piety, but what would you? She was yet young. If even an unuttered thought should in any mysterious way turn her from heavenly paths, that would be grievous sin on the part of the thinker. Satan was very watchful, and her own heart, Soeur Séraphine reflected, was desperately wicked. The Sister did penance for this, and fasted on a feast day, to the amazement of the girls and the great distress of Madame Madeleine.
She need not have disturbed her sweet self; Vivette had no vocation whatever, except for teaching. She was a very practical girl, and had, at the age of fifteen, mapped out her life methodically. She explained it all to Honor: somehow they all explained things to la Moriole; she was sympathetic, you understood.
“I also shall bee-come an orphanne!” she said in her careful English. “For you, my all-dear, this was unattended,—hein? ‘Unexpected?’ Merci bien, chèrie!—your honored parents being still in the middle ages. Ainsi—hein? I have again made fault?”
Honor explained patiently; “middle ages” meant something wholly different; it meant Charlemagne and Lorenzo de Medici and all that kind of thing; in short, the Feudal System! Besides, she said, Maman was really young, but quite young for an old person; nor was Papa so old as many.
“But go on, Vivi! Why should you become an orphan?”
Vivette explained in turn. Her parents had married late; her father was already bald as a bat, her mother in feeble health. What would you? They had told her all simply that it would be necessary for her to earn her own living when they joined the Saints, or else to make an advantageous marriage.
“It is like that!” said Vivette, simply. “I assure thee, Moriole, I have observed, but with a microscope, every desirable parti in Vevay. There is not one with whom I would spend a day, far less my life. Enough! I desire to teach. To master the English tongue, to go to Amérique, to instruct the young in my own language—voilà! it is my secret, chérie! I confide it to thee as to the priest.”
Honor, with shining eyes, promised to keep the secret, which, by the way, half the school knew. It was very noble of Vivette, she thought. How strange, how incomprehensible, to be able to teach! To write, now, that was different. That was as natural as breathing.
It was noble also of Jacqueline de La Tour de Provence to accept the lot which Fate had in store for her. This also was confided to Honor, in a twilight hour in the garden. Jacqueline was a slender, lily-like girl, too pale and languid, perhaps, for real beauty, but graceful and highbred, aristocrat to her fingertips. She was a Royalist, she told Honor. How could it be otherwise with one of her House.
“What is your house?” asked Honor innocently. “Is it in Vevay? Is it one of the chateaux on the hill?”