[CHAPTER IV.]
Feast of St. Catherine, April 29.
THIS is the first time I have been able to write since my watching at our Lady's shrine, at which time I took such a chill and rheum as have kept me laid up ever since. Mother Gertrude was much opposed thereto, but could say nothing against it, seeing that Mother Superior had given her consent.
"If she wants to send the child after her mother, she has taken the next way to do it," I heard her mutter to herself.
"Why, dear Mother, should you have such fears for me," I asked. "I have lately confessed (and so I had the day before), and I am sure I am not false to my vows, because I have never taken any. Why, then, should the demon have power over me?"
"I was not thinking of the demon, child, but of the damp," answered Mother Gertrude, in her matter-of-fact way. "However I say no more. I know how to be obedient, after all these years. And nobody can deny but it is a good daughter's heart which moves thee, my child, and so God and all the Saints bless thee."
Amice would have shared my watch, only it was needful one should go alone; but she promised to watch in her cell. She went with me to the chapel door, as did Mother Gertrude, and we said some prayers together. Then, as the hour of nine tolled, they kissed me and went their way, leaving me to my solitary watch and ward.
Oh, what a lone and long night it was! I did not mind it so much before midnight, for the moon shone fair into the great east window, and two nightingales, in the garden outside, answered each other most melodiously from side to side. My mother ever loved the nightingale above all other birds, because she said its song reminded her of her young days in the midland of England. They are rare visitors with us. But, as I said, dear mother ever loved this bird's song, and now their voices seemed to come as a message from herself, in approval of what I was doing. I knelt on the cold stones, before our Lady's shrine, saying my rosary, and repeating of Psalms, and the first two hours did not seem so very long. But the birds stopped singing. The moon moved on her course, so that the chapel was left almost in darkness. The south-west wind rose and brought with it all kinds of dismal sounds, now moaning and sobbing at the casement, and shaking it as if to gain an entrance; now, as it seemed, whispering in the vaults under my feet, as if the ghosts might be holding a consultation as to the best way of surprising me. Anon, the great heavy door of which I have before spoken, did a little jar on its hinges, and from behind it came, as it seemed, the rustling of wings, and then a thrilling cry as of a soul in pain.
I felt my blood grow cold, and my flesh creep, and my head swim. But 'tis not the custom of our house for the women more than the men to give way to fear, and I was determined I would not be overcome. I said stoutly to myself, "That sobbing and whispering is of the wind—those wings are the wings of bats or owls, which have found refuge in the old tower—that is the cry of the little white owl, which I have heard a hundred times at home—that low roar is the rote of the surf which we ever hear at night when the wind is south-west."