“We were always frightened when the bell rang during the German occupation. One never knew what might happen. And we were afraid for Miss O’Connor’s sake.”
“Why?” asked Brand.
The little nun laughed.
“She did dangerous work. They suspected her. She came here after her arrest. Before then she had rooms of her own. Oh, messieurs, her courage, her devotion! Truly, she was heroic!”
She led us into a long corridor with doors on each side, and out of one door came a little group of nuns with Eileen O’Connor.
The Irish girl came towards us with outstretched hands which she gave first to Brand. She seemed excited at our coming and explained that the Reverend Mother and all the nuns wanted to see us to thank England by means of us, to hear something about the war and the chance of victory from the first English officers they had seen.
Brand was presented to the Reverend Mother, a massive old lady with a slight moustache on the upper lip and dark luminous eyes, reminding me of the portrait of Savonarola at Florence. The other nuns crowded round us, eager to ask questions, still more eager to talk. Some of them were quite young and pretty, though all rather white and fragile, and they had a vivacious gaiety so that the building resounded with laughter. It was Eileen O’Connor who made them laugh by her reminiscences of girlhood when she and Brand were “enfants terribles,” when she used to pull Brand’s hair and hide the pipe he smoked too soon. She asked him to take off his field-cap so that she might see whether the same old unruly tuft still stuck up at the back of his head, and she and all the nuns clapped hands when she found it was so, in spite of war-worry and steel hats. All this had to be translated into French for the benefit of those who could not understand such rapid English.
“I believe you would like to give it a tug now,” said Brand, bending his head down, and Eileen O’Connor agreed.
“And indeed I would, but for scandalising a whole community of nuns, to say nothing of Reverend Mother.”
The Reverend Mother laughed in a curiously deep voice, and a crowd of little wrinkles puckered at her eyes. She told Miss O’Connor that even her Irish audacity would not go as far as that, which was a challenge accepted on the instant.