At last I went into the community room, where I knew I should find the Mother-mistress. On seeing her, I approached her and put my arms round her neck, and was about to kiss her, when she shook me off as if I had been a viper. Had she spoken but one kind word then, my courage to leave might have been seriously shaken. But now hot tears rushed to my eyes. I looked straight into her face, and knew I had made no mistake. A few minutes after this she sent me a note:
Dear Child,
I could not wish you good-bye; the reverend Mother had forbidden me to do so, or even to come near you.
It was a cold, clear, bright frosty morning, when I left the monastery at 7 o’clock. I was driven down that beautiful valley, and how I enjoyed that drive! To my surprise, my conscience did not accuse me of sin in thus leaving. The morning air seemed to clear my brain, and I knew with a happy certainty that I was not mad; a feeling of peace with God seemed to fill my soul. Such a peace I had not experienced for a very, very long time—so calm, so soft and sweet, so free!
It was sixteen years and a month since I took my first journey to a convent, and I had not taken a journey since, except when we went to Devonshire, and from Devonshire to Llanthony, and then we saw nothing, being in closed carriages, and having strict orders not to raise our veils from our faces. Those veils were thick and heavy, covering our faces, and reaching down far below the chin.
But I must return to my narrative. I have explained elsewhere, I think, that the Prioress would not allow any of my letters to be sent to my sister, in which I had asked for journey-money, and requested that she would meet me, and give me instructions as to my best way of finding her. None of my letters were ever sent. When I left home to go for the first time to the convent, my sister was about seventeen years of age. Since then she had married, and was living near Gloucester. Knowing so little about the world outside a convent, I fancied that if I only asked for a ticket to Gloucester, I was certain to find my sister. Accordingly, when we arrived at Llanfihangel, in Wales, I booked to Gloucester. On my arrival I asked the first man I saw with a fly to drive me to the post office, as I thought my sister lived near it. Just as I was getting into the fly I thought I had better tell the driver the name of the place where my sister lived. He replied that he had never heard of such a place; so I inquired at the booking-office, and found I must take the train to a place some miles beyond Gloucester. On my arrival at this place I went outside the station (it was now dusk) and saw what seemed to me a stage-coach, and requested that I might be driven to the post office. When I told the driver the name of the place, he said he could not take me all the way there. “I will take you,” he said, “as near to it as I can, and you will then have to walk a few miles farther on.” My readers may imagine what a terror I was in. I began to fancy myself put down in a lonely country road, with no house near, darkness reigning, and all this experience coming to one who had been shut up in convents for so many years. What was I to do? I was frightened at every one I met, and as to a man, I feared the whole race. As I was thinking that my best plan would be to try and take the next train back to Wales, I saw a carriage passing near me, in which was a sweet, gentle, pale-faced lady in mourning. I ran to the carriage, and said to the lady, tears streaming down my cheeks:
“Oh, will you please take care of me for a night, for I am looking for my sister, and cannot find her?”
She said: “Dear child, you cannot come with us. Who are you?”
I replied: “I cannot tell you who I am.”
I was so afraid of saying I was one of Father Ignatius’s nuns, knowing that the newspapers might be full of it shortly, and that I should be bringing trouble on Ignatius, and scandal on religion.