Holy Guard might have served a demon, by the fierce and pitiless humour of its heart. Its nuns were as mutes, rough, raw-boned, and sullen. Rosamunde, with her rich soul, was as a queen in a charnel house, mocked by mere skeletons. The Abbess had received her, portioned her a cell, given her a black gown in place of the blue. She had solemnised her novitiate in the cold grey chapel, whose walls seemed to shut out the warmth of heaven. Toil and travail became her lot. She laboured with the rest in the sour, stony garden, washed the linen, drew water at the well. Her white hands grew rough and red apace; her cheeks became hollow, her bright eyes dim. There were fasts and vigils, penitences galore. The nuns’ tongues were bridled save for one hour in the day, and no laughter or joy ever echoed through Holy Guard.
Rosamunde had sought peace there; she discovered shame and bitterness of spirit. Her ways were not the ways of those about her, for these ashy people had forgotten the world with its throes of passion, its pathos, its tears. There were no humble poor to need their alms, no sick and palsied to be cheered and fed. Their creed was narrow and selfish as their lives. The sea and the wilderness hemmed them in; they had grown hard and savage, coarse beyond belief.
A great change came over Rosamunde’s heart those months. She began to think much of Tristan and the love he had shown her, how she had tried him and found him a man. These new thoughts solaced her those winter months as she toiled at the well-winch or dug in the garden. Hallowed by memory, Tristan’s face had lost its ugliness, gained even a rough beauty as the past sped back. She recalled his great strength, his manliness and honour. Even in the incredulous deeps of her heart, she began to believe that she would have found a finer haven within Tristan’s arms than in the wind-swept towers and courts of Holy Guard.
The change was very subtle that worked in her that winter. She disbelieved her own heart at times, scoffed at her imaginings, yet found that they remained. Her mood towards Samson had altered also. It was as the melting of a dream for the passionate reality of life, a fancy that seemed as frail as a spider’s gossamer hung with dew. She had worshipped Samson in her impulsive way, even because he had bulked a god among men, a martyr and a prophet.
Moreover, she had been lonely, lonely to death those years in Joyous Vale, and had yearned for the love that had never come. Ronan, her husband, had sickened her soul with his feeble body, his pusillanimous mind. Out of the bitterness of solitude she had conceived romance, and cheated her heart with vain imaginings. Now in Holy Guard she had come by the truth, that a woman’s brain was but the vassal of her heart.
Before long she began to curse the day when she had abandoned Tristan for the cloisters of Holy Guard. She had found no comfort within its walls, and though her heart cried out there was no one to comfort her, no one to speak with concerning the past. The place seemed full of desolation and death and the voice of the wind. She yearned for liberty, even for the troublous and sinful lap of the world. Life, desperate and bitter though it might prove, was fairer far than a living grave.
One evening she stood and watched the sun sinking over the sea as she leant against the parapet of the topmost platform of the place, with the chapel behind her, dark and dim, the cliffs plunging sheer to the sands beneath. Holy Guard was built wall on wall upon the rock, its towers and roofs climbing the rugged slopes. Thus from its heights Rosamunde watched the fires dwindle, the red glow elapse. Blue gloom descended and overarched the sea. The wind gathered and moaned as the stars began to shine in the darkening sky.
An eternal melancholy seemed to cover the world. The clouds lost their crimson shrouds, grew grey and colourless, hurried fast before the wind. There were tears in Rosamunde’s eyes as she gazed towards the sea, for she was growing old and her youth was flying; soon she would be as these nuns, haggard, hard-featured, cold of eye. Her heart cried out for some great love. Lacking such love, what was life worth that she should strive to husband it? Even God seemed far from her on that lonely crag, and Christ’s face was dark within the walls of Holy Guard.
As she stood brooding, gazing out towards the sea, where the breakers foamed dimly under the deepening night, Julia, Mistress of the Novices, passed by from the chapel with a chain lamp swinging in her hand. It was contrary to the rules for nuns to loiter; when not at work or in chapel or refectory, they were packed in their cells to pray and meditate. Sister Julia was a woman of obscure birth, a coarse, brown-faced scold with the tongue of a Xanthippe. She took much pride in her post as Mistress of the Novices, since she could often hector women of nobler birth. Feminine malice was alive in Holy Guard. Rosamunde had been subjected to a goodly share thereof by reason of her estate and the mere insolence of beauty.
Thus the sister accosted her with no great kindness, glad of an excuse to use her tongue.