The Knight, without saying what Albert proposed, showed Ava’s letter to Dame Margaret. She was horrified.
“What! a professed nun break her vows?” she exclaimed. “A bride of Christ forsake her bridegroom! Horrible profanity! No. I love Ava as my daughter, but I can never receive one who is so utterly neglectful of all her religious obligations. You must write and tell her that is impossible to comply with her request. I am sure Father Nicholas will agree with me.”
“Dear wife,” said the Knight, calmly, “When I allowed our little Ava to become a nun, it was to secure, as I thought, her happiness in this life and the next. She tells us that, in one respect, our object has signally failed, and there is a book I have been reading which convinces me that it will not advance in one single respect our object with regard to the other. Therefore, let our dear Ava come home, and do you and Laneta receive her as should her mother and sister. I mean what I say, Margaret, and advise Father Nicholas to hold his tongue about the matter.”
The Lady Margaret, watching her lord’s eye, and being a discreet woman, came to the conclusion that it would be wise to keep silent, but she secretly resolved to use every exertion to prevent so terrible a scandal taking place in her family. The Knight, however, was an old soldier, and suspecting what was passing in the mind of his better half, determined to be beforehand with her.
“She will be writing to that Sister Ursula to keep the poor little dove under double lock and key,” he said to himself. “Eric will have a difficulty even to get a sight of her. I must tell him what I suspect, and leave it to him to foil the plans of his lady mother; she is a good woman though, an excellent woman in her way, but she would have been much the better it we had never been saddled with Father Nicholas. I will make him go the right-about one of these days, when he least expects it, if he does not reform his system. And here, Eric you will want money. Don’t stint in the use of it. It will accomplish many things. Silver keys open locks more rapidly than iron ones, and I would give every coin I possess to get our dear little Ava back again.”
Eric and his friend, meantime, were making preparations for their journey, and as soon as their horses could be got ready they rode off. They were, however, seen by Dame Margaret, who immediately suspected where they were going. Unfortunately, Father Nicholas had just then entered the Castle. She forthwith told him all she knew and thought, and urged him to find a quick messenger, who would outstrip the young men and warn the lady abbess. Father Nicholas hurried off with a purse which the lady put into his hand, to find a person to carry his message, resolving to take the credit to himself of the information he was sending.
Ava Lindburg and her companions in the monastery of Nimptsch were eagerly awaiting the reply to the letters they had written to their homes requesting permission to return. They were all young, and several of them pretty; but as they had been among the most sincere of the sisterhood, so they had the most rigidly performed all the fasts, penances, vigils, imposed on them, and already the bloom of youth had departed, and the pallor or the ascetic had taken its place.
Poor girls! they had sought peace, but found none; they desired to be holy, but they had discovered that fasts, penances, and vigils—the daily routine of formal services—long prayers, oft repeated, had produced no effect; that their spirits might be broken by this system, but that it could change their hearts.
“We are shut out from the great world, certainly,” wrote one of them, “but we have one within these walls, and a poor miserable, trivial, life-frittering, childish, querulous, useless, hopeless set of inhabitants it contains. This is not the house of Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus—this is not such an abode as Jesus would desire to lodge in. If He were to visit us, it would be to tell us to go forth into the world to fulfil our duties as women, not, like cowards, to shrink from them, to fight the good fight of faith, to serve Him in the stirring world into which He came, in which He walked, in which He lived, that He might be an example to us. Though He has not come to our convent, He has sent us a message full of love and compassion—His Testament, the Gospel—and it has given us fresh life, fresh hopes, fresh aspirations; and through its teaching we are sure of the Holy Spirit which He promised. Other books have been sent us to assist in opening our eyes. We are convinced that this mode of life is not the one for which we were born; that it is a life, not of holiness, but of sin, for it is useless, for it is aimless, for it is against the teaching of the Gospel.”
The answers came at length. Tears flowed from the eyes of some, sobs burst from the bosoms of others, while several turned paler even than before, and their hands hung hopelessly by their sides. Many of the letters were full of kind expressions, while other parents chided their daughters harshly for contemplating the possibility of breaking their vows, and abandoning the life of holiness to which they were devoted; but one and all wound up by declaring that they would not allow such a stigma to rest on their noble families as would arise were they to encourage a daughter to abandon her holy calling. Little Ava received no answer to her epistle sent by the colporteur, and she was eagerly looking out for his return. He had told her how eagerly her father had bought his books, and she had still some hopes that the reply would be favourable. She could not, however, fail to observe the severe look with which the lady abbess regarded her, and she was still more alarmed when she found that her Testament, and several books by Drs. Melancthon and Luther, had been taken out of her cell. In truth, the lady abbess had received the communication sent by Father Nicholas, and was on the watch, expecting to see the gay young student, Eric of Lindburg, and his companion arrive, intending afterwards to commence a system of severe punishment on the offending Ava. The lady abbess was not aware that Ava was only one of many whose eyes had been opened, and who desired their freedom.