‘Indeed, indeed, you are mistaken! I—I am not a Sister—you mistake me,’ said Agnes, in agitation. ‘It is only the dress——’
‘You are doing just what you condemn,’ he said; ‘setting me down as a superficial person able to judge only by the outside. I have superior pretensions. Is my friend Sister Mary Jane the Superior of the convent? But I suppose you don’t call it a convent? I have only known them in France.’
‘We call it only “the House”; but I have never been in France—never out of England at all. Is it not like going into a different world?’ Agnes took up this subject eagerly, to escape the embarrassment of the other; and fortunately the House itself was already in sight.
‘The very same world, only differently dressed. I suppose there is something harmonious in a uniform. All the nuns have a kind of beauty, not the pensive kind one expects; or perhaps it is the white head-dress and the calm life that give the Sisters such pretty complexions, and such clear eyes. Sister Mary Jane, for instance—you will allow that the Sisters are calm——’
‘But not indifferent!’ said Agnes, moved to an answering smile, as they reached the safe door of the House. She threw that smile at him as a farewell defiance as she went up to the locked door which opened to her with an alarming sound of keys turning, like the door of a true convent of romance, though it was in a London street. He lingered, but she did not look back. She was very thankful to reach that safe shelter, and find herself delivered from the doubtful privilege of his attendance. And yet somehow the afternoon darkened suddenly, the sky clouded over as she went in, and her heart sank she could not tell how. Why should her heart sink? She had scarcely got indoors before she was met by Sister Mary Jane, who asked for little Emmy with business-like brevity; then, just pausing for a reply, went on to talk of work, the subject which filled all her thoughts.
‘Go, please, and take care of the middle girls at relaxation; they are in St. Cecilia; and keep your eye on Marian Smith, who has already lost five marks for untidiness; and Araminta Blunt, who is in punishment for talking. And see that relaxation is ended, and they all begin learning their lessons at 6.30. I must take the elder girls myself for an hour before evensong. Have you had tea?’ said Sister Mary Jane. ‘No? Then go quickly, please, my dear, and have some. It is not cleared away yet. The infants have been rather unruly, and I mean to speak to the Vicar about it this evening. We want someone else to help with the infants. In St. Cecilia, yes. Make haste, my dear.’
Agnes went into the large room which was called the refectory—the banqueting-hall of the establishment—where the air was heavy with tea and bread and butter, and the long tables, partially cleared, still bore traces of the repast. It was a large room; the walls enlivened with Spiritual pictures, and rich with lines of coloured bricks unplastered. The servants of the House were not of a very superior class, as may be supposed, and to see them pushing about the cups and saucers, rattling down the heavy trays full of fragments, and hustling each other about the tables, was not exhilarating. How closed in and confined everything looked, how dreary the atmosphere, the evening so much more advanced than out of doors! Agnes tried to drink with contentment her lukewarm cup of tea, and to think with satisfaction of the middle girls who awaited her in St. Cecilia. But it was astonishing how difficult she felt it to do this. The summer afternoon skies, the soft breathing of the spring air, the long distances—though they were but lines of streets—and wide atmosphere—though it was tinged with London smoke—which lay outside these walls, had suggested sentiments so different. The sentiments which they would have suggested to Sister Mary Jane would have been quite unlike those that filled the mind of Agnes. She would have said it was a sweet evening, and hurried in to work. The smell of the tea did not sicken her, nor the sight of the used cups and the stains here and there on the cloth, where an unruly child (doomed to lose her marks for neatness) had pulled over her cup. She thought that to superintend the middle girls at relaxation was as pleasant an occupation as could be found—and that a walk through the streets was a weariness to the flesh. As for Mr. Oswald Meredith, except that it was very nice of him to have given such a good subscription to the House, she would not have considered him worthy a glance—her mind was busy about other things. She had to take the girls for an hour before evensong, and afterwards had to look over their exercises and inspect the books, and hear the reports of the teachers. Araminta Blunt, who was in punishment for talking, and Marian Smith, who had lost five marks for untidiness, were of more interest to her than all the ideals in the world. She was very kind to fanciful Agnes, as well as to everybody else, but she had no time to indulge in fancies for her own part. She gave her directions to one and another as she went along the passage. There was not a minute of her valuable time which she could afford to lose. Agnes thought of all this with a sigh as she went to St. Cecilia, where the middle girls awaited her. Would she ever be as satisfied with her work, as pleased with her surroundings, as Sister Mary Jane? And was it not her duty to endeavour to make herself so? For she could not say to herself as she had done at home that this was mere carelessness and apathetic resignation to the common course of events. Here, on the contrary, it was self-sacrifice that was the rule, and consecration to the service of the helpless. The poor girl was young; perhaps that was the chief drawback in her way. The softness of the skies, the speculative delights of conversation, the look of Oswald Meredith as he spoke of ‘the snowy heights so near the sky,’ what had these mere chance circumstances, which she had encountered unawares, to do with the serious life which she had herself selected as the best? And, alas! was St. Cecilia, with the girls at relaxation, anything like those ‘snowy heights?’ The little squabbles, the little fibs, the little jealousies which the children indulged in none the less for being in the interesting position of orphans, helpless and friendless children, with no father but God, jarred upon her more and more as this poetical imagination of her life came back to her mind. Surely he must be a poet. This was her concluding thought.
CHAPTER XXVI.
IN THE ‘HOUSE.’
Roger had not renewed his visit to Cara for some weeks. He had been too much cast down and discouraged by that first Sunday for which he had prepared so elaborately, and looked forward to with so much eagerness. But discouragement, like everything else, wears out, and when he had gone round the circle from anger to disapproval, from disapproval to contempt, from contempt to pity, Roger found himself with some surprise back at his original point, longing to see Cara, and ready to believe that anything that had come between them had been accidental. The two Merediths would not be there for ever, and Cara no doubt, poor girl, must be pining for someone from her old home, and would be glad to see him, and hear all that everybody was doing. He was sorry he had said a word to his mother about what happened in the Square; indeed he had done nothing but regret ever since the indiscretion which tempted him to complain; for Mrs. Burchell was one of those inconvenient persons who never forget the indignant criticisms of injured feeling, but continue to repeat and harp upon it long after that feeling has sunk into oblivion or changed into contempt. Very soon the softening influences of his early love, and the longing he had after the object of it, made Roger forgive Cara all her imagined sins against him; but his mother could not forget that he had been slighted, and punished his betrayal of his wound by incessant reference to the evils in the Square. This of itself helped on his recovery, since to find fault yourself with those to whom you are attached is a very different thing from hearing them assailed by others. The process ended by a serious quarrel with Mrs. Burchell, who would not give up this favourite subject, and taunted her son with his want of proper pride, and inclination to put up with anything, when she heard of his intention to go back. ‘If I had been so treated anywhere, I would never go near them again. I would not invite people to trample upon me,’ cried the Rector’s wife. ‘I might forgive, but I should never forget.’ ‘My dear,’ the Rector had said, ‘Roger has himself to look to: we are not able to do very much for him; and Cara will be a kind of heiress. I should not mind any trifle of that sort, if he has serious views.’ ‘What do you call serious views?’ cried Roger, ashamed and wretched, and he plunged out of the house without waiting for an answer, and betook himself to those wintry woods of which Agnes was thinking at the ‘House,’ and which even in winter were sweet. Roger had no sordid intentions, which was what his father meant by ‘serious’ views; and though he was well enough satisfied with his daily work, and not, like Agnes, troubled by any ideal, yet he felt, like his sister, the wretched downfall of existence into misery and meanness, between his mother’s prolonged and exaggerated resentment and his father’s serious worldliness. That boyish love of his was the highest thing in the young man’s mind. If nothing else that was visionary existed in his nature, his semi-adoration of Cara, which had lasted as long as he could recollect, was visionary, a touch of poetry amid his prose, and to hear it opposed, or to hear it sordidly encouraged alike shocked and revolted him. He resolved never to mention Cara’s name again, nor to make any reference to the Square, to shut up his sentiments about her in his own bosom, whether these were sentiments of admiration or of offence. Supposing she was cold to him—and it would be very natural that she should be cold, as he had never gone back to her, nor visited her but once—he would bear it and make no sign; never again would he subject her name to comments such as these. Fathers and mothers do badly by their children when they force them to such a resolution. Roger kept his word all through the weary Sunday, and did not say even that he would not return home for the next; but he made his arrangements all the same.