The Castle of Twilight

by Margaret Horton Potter

Laure had acted in such perfect sincerity that the wound she inflicted on her mother, and the mortification she put upon her, were neither of them realized. It was not wonderful that the impulses of the girl’s heart had been stilled by the unceasing precept of the past months. Her years were naturally powerless to fathom her mother’s heart, the heart of her who sees herself completely separated in every interest from the one that has always been nearest and dearest. And so the argument that she conducted within herself after her mother’s going was not one of justification of her own act, but—oh, ye gods!—an attempted justification of Eleanore’s impiety.

Laure passed the next two days in an odor of extreme sanctity, and hailed with deep inward joy the beginning of the long vigil of the birth of the Saviour, on Christmas Eve. She was excused from keeping steadily in church through this protracted service, for the reason that she would be obliged, according to the Rule, to spend the night after her consecration alone in the church, at prayer. Throughout Christmas Day Laure was in a state of repressed nervous excitement. Was not to-morrow to be her wedding-day? Was she not to become what the first Magdalen had never been,—the bride of Christ? Her prayers throughout this day were mingled with thoughts of the highest purity, the most refined spiritual ecstasy, the most shining, uplifted innocence. Tears of joy and of proud humility flowed readily from her eyes, while her mouth was filled with heavenly praises that welled up from her heart.

In the afternoon she was sent away to rest; for the Mother-prioress was considerate of her strength. Laure did not, however, lie down. Instead, she stood for more than an hour at the window of her cell, looking out over the world, and watching the fine feathery snowflakes float down through the clear blue air. The earth was wrapped in a mantle whiter than her consecration robe and veil. Perhaps it was a shroud. Laure shivered at the thought, while she contemplated the unutterable stillness of all things. Not a sound disturbed this vast scene of death. The tree-boughs bent low under the weight of their pure burden; and when the early evening fell, and vespers chimed out over the valley, the tiny, frozen tears of Heaven still floated through the dark with ever-increasing softness.

It was seven o’clock when Sœur Celeste, the chaplain, came to summon the bride-elect to confession and interrogation with Monseigneur the Bishop of St. Nazaire. As the two women passed together down the long corridor of novices, through the cold cloister and empty refectory and along the passage leading to the chapter, Laure’s heart was struck with a chill of fear. How terribly empty the convent was! No one in the refectory, the corridors scarcely lighted, the whole convent utterly silent; for the drone of prayers in the church was inaudible here. She wondered how the terrible vigil progressed, how many nuns had fainted in their fatigue. She thought of anything but the matter before her, and was still unprepared when the chaplain left her alone at the door of the chapter.

The Bishop of St. Nazaire was alone in this room, and at Laure’s appearance he rose and went to her, taking her by the hand, and not amazed to find her icy cold.

“My daughter!” he said gently; and Laure, looking into his face, was suddenly filled with an ineffable comfort.

She had known the Bishop all her life, for he was her mother’s close friend and a constant visitor at Le Crépuscule. But never before had she seen him in this fulness of his office, so replete with magnetic spirituality. If the unswervingly narrow tenets of his creed made St. Nazaire too arbitrary where his religion was concerned, and if the geniality of his own nature had, at times, brought upon him in his own home reactions that afterwards rendered necessary the severest penances, at least these two extremes of his life had brought him to a remarkable intermediate balance. Irrespective of his state, he could be defined as a man of the world, of large sympathies, having a broad understanding of human frailty, because of the unconquerable weaknesses of his own nature. His ethical code was one of high severity and strict purity; and he strove with all the power of his spirit to follow it himself, never failing, the while, to excuse the eternal failures of others. And now, as Laure looked up into his large, smooth-shaven face, framed in long fair hair, and lighted by a pair of bright blue eyes that generally regarded the world with a surprising air of trustful innocence, the young novice lost all her sense of desolation, and felt herself suddenly introduced into a secure and unhoped-for haven.

St. Nazaire himself, examining the young girl’s face, and searching her soul therein, knew that at this moment he was nearer to the inmost being of the daughter of Le Crépuscule than he should ever be again; and he felt that no one ever yet had been in a position to probe the depths of her nature as he was going to probe them now. She gave herself up to him as completely as Eleanore had given her once long ago, when, as a new-born infant, she had wailed in his arms at her baptism before the altar in the chapel of the Twilight Castle.

With this strong feeling of mutual confidence, Laure and the Bishop seated themselves in the chapter of the convent. Confession and stereotyped interrogation were gone through with dutifully, and then followed what Laure had begun to wish for at the first moment of their meeting,—a long and intimate talk upon the life that she should lead as a professed nun. It was a life with which St. Nazaire was as fully conversant as a man could ever be, and he pictured it to Laure as faithfully as he was accustomed to picture Heaven—a heaven of flying men and women carrying in their hands small golden harps—to those that received the last sacrament at his hands. Laure had a vision of long years filled ever fuller of transcendent joy and peace, in which she should never know a wish that her life could not fill, nor a desire beyond more earnest prayers, or a fast a little longer and more rigorous than heretofore. And so skilful was the Bishop in the manipulation of his sombre material, that he got from it remarkable beauties which, impossible as it seems, were as convincing to him as to Laure.

It was late in the evening when the young girl received the episcopal blessing and retired through the still nunnery to her cell. But her mind was at perfect rest that night; and she went to sleep to dream of nothing but the happiness and beauty of a consecrated life.