Loveday's history

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

However, I suppose my lady must have been well pleased on the whole, for she tried very hard to make me consent to take the white or novice's veil. This, however, I would not do, pleading my solemn promise to Sir Edward and my uncle Gabriel. My lady declared that such promises made by a child amounted to nothing, and appealed to Father Austin. I don't know what he said to her, but it must have been something conclusive, since she said no more to me on the matter.

I ventured to ask about my old friend and playmate, Walter Corbet. She told me that he was still with Sir John Lambert, at Bridgewater, assisting in the care of the parish, but that he had some prospect of a new field of his own in Devon, not far from my old home.

"'Tis a wild and lonely place, and almost a savage people, so I am told," said my lady. "But Walter seems to think the prospect of burying himself among them a delightful one. Oh, if he would but have taken the vows at Glastonbury, he might come to be abbot in time, instead of living and dying in the gray walls of Ashcombe vicarage."

But those same gray walls are still whole and warm, while Glastonbury is but a stately ruin, wasted by all the airs that blow freely through its deserted halls. This, by the way.

My lady left us, as I have said, at the end of a month, to return to Peckham Hall, though at her first coming she had talked of spending the remainder of her days among us. But I think she was wise. Such a life as ours would not have suited her at all. She liked to rule wherever she was, and had been used many years to almost absolute authority, for Sir Edward rarely interfered in any matter which concerned the household; and she was too old and too set to learn new ways. From something I overheard, I don't think mother assistant favored the notion. I have heard her say myself that a nun ought to be professed before she is twenty. I never saw my lady again, though I heard from her now and then.

Mother assistant was now the real head and ruler of the house, for the prioress grew more and more indolent every day. She excused herself on the score of her health, though I cannot but think she would have been well enough if she had taken more exercise and eaten fewer sweetmeats. She could not have had a better deputy than the mother assistant, who was an excellent woman and well fitted to rule a household. I never saw a woman of a more even temper, and she had that precious faculty of making every one do her best in her own place.

Mother Joanna continued mistress of the novices, though her task was a light one, for we had very few accessions; our elections were regularly gone through with, but they were no more than a form, since the very same officers were elected over and over, save when some one died. Sister Sacristine, who was only a middle-aged woman when I came to Dartford, was growing old and feeble. Two new bursars had been elected. The trees had grown older, and the old Scotch gardener more opinionated. Sister Cicely's hands grew too stiff to manage the organ at times, and I often took her place, and acquitted myself to the satisfaction of my hearers; and these are about all the changes I remember, till the great change of all.

I have said our lives were very quiet, and so they were. But when a storm is raging, it is hard to keep all knowledge or sign of it out of the house. We heard, now and again, rumors of the changes that were going on outside. I remember well when Sister Emma, the stewardess, heard from Dame Hurst, who now and then brought oysters and other sea-fish for sale, that a great English Bible had been chained to a pillar in the parish church at Dartford; where any one who listed could go and hear it read, or read it for themselves, if they pleased. Sister Emma told us this wonderful piece of news when we were all assembled under the grape-arbor, shelling of peas for our fast day mess.

It was received with a degree of horror and amazement, which seems strange as I remember it, now that every householder who can afford it may have a Bible of his own.

"What an indignity!" exclaimed Sister Agnes. "To think that the Holy Scripture should be chained to a pillar, like a man in a pillory, to be thumbed over by every village clown or dirty fisherman who can make shift to spell out a few words."