She often told me to do or say what was not true, and I could not, and often I used to cry and say:
“Mother mistress, I really do want to be obedient; but that is not true, and I cannot write it.”
“No,” she would tauntingly reply, “I know you cannot. You have plenty of sense, you are quick and clever, etc.; but there is one thing you cannot do. You cannot give up your will, you cannot do as you are told. Therefore you cannot be a nun.”
The truth was, that they did not want me to become a fully professed nun, because, as such, I should have had a voice in the community; and having been with Father Ignatius so long, I was not afraid of him, and used to speak about everything to him, and let him know what otherwise he would not have known. In order, then, to gain their own ends, they must first lower me in his eyes, and prove by all manner of intriguing that I had “no vocation.” After four years they succeeded in convincing him of it, and he finally told me I had no vocation for the “religious life.” He must have been very slow of discernment not to have found that out before, considering that I had been a sister for seventeen years.
I trust all this will not appear wearisome to my readers. I hope that this book will be read by many who may possibly have very little idea of what convent life is. On the surface convent life has a great attraction for some minds. When we were in Devonshire, a girl of the name of Lily W., who lived just opposite the convent, was desperately in love with it, having seen all the glitter and outside show, and heard the sweet music and singing, and having seen the bridal ceremony of Sister Ermenild taking the white veil, and observed the peaceful looks of the nuns whom she watched walking in the garden. I would observe here, that what appears a peaceful look is simply an attitude that rule drills us into. Now, Lily W. thought that convent life must be heaven upon earth. This girl came to us at Llanthony, but she received a very cold welcome. She was given plenty of hard work, was taken no notice of, and had to keep silence all day, like the professed novices and nuns, except during recreation hour. When she had been there three days, she said to me:
“Oh, dear! it is all so different from what I thought.”
She spent her days and nights in sighing and crying, and seemed so miserable that I remarked to the Prioress:
“Poor Lily seems so miserable, and she is always crying and sighing, more or less, day and night.”
The Prioress replied, “Serve her right; she should not have pushed herself into a hornet’s nest. If people will push themselves into a hornet’s nest, they must expect to be stung.”