Alex, in nervous despair, saw her bend her head in acquiescence.
The lay-sister retired as noiselessly as she had come, and Mother Gertrude closed her book.
The concluding versicles and prayers were spoken kneeling, and Alex was compelled to turn towards the High Altar.
She was quivering from head to foot, and gripped the arms of her stall in order to restrain herself from turning her head. Every nerve was strained in her attempt to hear any movement at the back of the chapel, but she could distinguish nothing.
The few minutes that elapsed before the bell sounded for rising, seemed to her interminable.
She had grown accustomed lately to the grip of these nervous agonies, to which she became a prey for the most trivial of causes.
The modern exploitation of hysteria, however, was still in its embryo stage, half-way between the genteel hysterics of the 'sixties and the suppressed neuroticism of the new century. She did not diagnose her complaint. With the sensation, familiar to her, of blood pumping from her heart to her head, making her face burn, while her hands and feet remained dead and cold, she rose from her knees.
Although she had expected nothing else, a feeling of sick disappointment invaded her as she saw that the Superior's place had been noiselessly vacated.
With leaden feet, she moved out of the chapel and slowly resumed the black apron and the stuff sleeves that protected her habit.
In the absence of any direct order to the contrary, she knew that she must take her accustomed place in the class-room of themoyennes, and that the English lesson must proceed as usual.
"A vos places."
She had long ago learnt to speak French fluently, but never without an unmistakable British accent and intonation.
Subconsciously she was always rather relieved, on that account, when the preliminaries were done with, and the lesson could be given, according to the rules, in the English tongue.
"Simone! Begin, please."
Sister Alexandra, seated at the desk, held the book open in front of her, and her eyes rested upon the page, but her mind took in neither the meaning of the printed words nor the sense conveyed by Simone's droning, inexpressive voice.
She wondered whether some one would come to take her place at the desk and tell her that Mother Gertrude was waiting for her downstairs.
A sudden, stealthy opening of the class-room door made her look up with a flash of hope, but it was only a little girl late for her lesson and sidling in, hoping to escape notice.
Alex did not even trouble to give her the accustomed bad mark.
It would have meant opening her desk, and pulling out the mistress's note-book, and looking for a pencil, and she felt too tired. In her earlier days at the convent she would have felt ashamed at the thought of yielding to such slothful unconcern, and would have magnified the omission into a sin, to be confessed with shame to Mother Gertrude.
Now, she was too tired to care, and besides, she never saw Mother Gertrude. Even the poor little half-hour that had been held out to her was not to be hers, after all. She brooded in resentment over the thought.
A titter going round the room roused her.
"What are you saying, Simone?"
Simone stared back at her stupidly, but another keen-faced girl in the front row of desks spoke eagerly:
"She's said nearly all through the lesson, there's nothing left for any one else to say."
"You can repeat it afterwards," said Alex coldly.
She was vexed that her inattention should have been betrayed to the class, and presently she gave her full attention to the recital.
Just as it was over, the young novice, Sister Agnes, came into the room and, approaching the desk, spoke to Alex in a lowered voice:
"Mother Gertrude sent me, Sister. Will you go down to her and wait in her room? She will come in a moment. I am to take the children back to the study-room for you."
"Thank you," said Alex, trembling. The revulsion of feeling was so strong that she felt the chords tightening in her throat, which denoted approaching tears, such as she often shed for no adequate reason. She left the room.
The Assistant Superior's room on the ground floor was vacant.
Alex sat down on the low, rush-bottomed chair drawn close to the Superior's table, and closed her eyes. Now that her agony of suspense was ended, she became even more overwhelmingly conscious of fatigue, and began to wonder, almost against her will, whether Mother Gertrude would not notice it, and perhaps tell her that she was to go to bed after supper and not come to the recital of Office in the chapel.
She wondered whether she looked tired. There were no looking-glasses in the convent, but sometimes she had seen her own reflection in the big, full-length mirror of the sacristy, and she knew that she had lost her colour, and that her face had grown thin, with heavy, black circles underneath her eyes. She knew, too, that her step had lost any elasticity, and that she stooped far more than in the days when Lady Isabel had implored her to "hold up" so that her pretty frocks might be seen to advantage.
Waiting in the small room, with its carefully-closed window, and the big writing-table stacked with papers, and a great crucifix standing upright in the midst of them, she began for the first time to speculate as to the reason of her summons.
It occurred to her, with a slight sense of shock, that such a summons, in the case of nun or novice, had very often been the prelude to an announcement of bad news, such as the death of a relative at home.
Hastily she pulled out Barbara's letter and glanced through it.
There was no hint of approaching disaster in the rather set little phrases, and the four small sheets were mostly concerned with the fact that Barbara was finding it necessary to move into a still smaller house than the one that she and Ralph had taken at Hampstead after their improvident marriage.
Pamela was at Clevedon Square with Cedric and his wife. She was going to heaps of parties, and every one thought her very pretty and amusing.
There was no mention of Archie, and Alex hastily ransacked her memory as to his whereabouts.
Since the first year of her novitiate in London she had never seen her youngest brother, and although she felt a fleeting sorrow at the thought of harm having befallen him, her tenderness was for the little, curly-haired boy in a sailor suit with whom she had played and quarrelled in the Clevedon Square nursery, and not for the unknown youth of later years.
As she speculated, the well-known tread of the Assistant Superior sounded down the corridors—a hasty, decisive footstep. Alex sprang to her feet as the door opened.
"Oh, what is it?" she cried, at the first sight of the Superior's face.
The strong, lined countenance, suffused with agitation, bore every mark of violent disturbance.
Her deep voice, however, was as well under control as ever, although strong emotion underlay its vibrant quality.
"My little Sister, you have a big sacrifice before you. I cannot pretend to think that it will not cost you dear, as it will me. But we know Who asks it of us."
"What?" gasped Alex again, utterly at a loss, but feeling the blood ebb from her face.
"Our Mother-General has appointed me as Superior to the new house in South America. The boat sails at the end of this week."
Alex could not believe the extent of the calamity that had befallen her, nor did she realize at first that the very mainspring of her life in the convent was attacked.
It astounded her to perceive that to the rest of the community the news brought no overwhelming shock.
Such sudden uprootings and transfers were not uncommon, and the notice given was generally a twenty-four hour one. Mother Gertrude had nearly a week in which to make her few preparations for an exile that almost certainly was for life, and to prepare herself as far as possible for new and heavy responsibilities.
The Superior-General was herself proceeding to South America with the little band of chosen pioneers, representative of almost every European house of the Order, and after inaugurating the establishment of the new venture, was to return to Liège, with one lay-sister only as companion.
In the general concern for her welfare and admiration of her courage in undertaking such a journey on the eve of her sixty-third birthday, it seemed to Alex that all other considerations were overlooked or ignored entirely.
She was aware that the convent spirit of detachment, so much advocated, and the consciousness of that vow of obedience made freely and fully, would alike preclude the possibility of any spoken protest or lamentation over the separation.
The severing of human ties was part and parcel of a nun's sacrifice, and her life was in the hands of her spiritual superiors.
There was no discussion possible.
Mother Gertrude, although the look of strain was deepening round her eyes and mouth, went steadily about her duties and spared herself in nothing.
Her place was to be taken temporarily by a French nun who had been for many years at Liège, and the charge was handed over with the least possible dislocation.
It was on a Tuesday night that Mother Gertrude had been told of the destiny in store for her, and on the following Saturday she was to proceed with her Superior to Paris, and thence to Marseilles to the boat.
Wednesday and Thursday Alex never saw her.
She had expected it, and was, moreover, far too much stunned to realize anything beyond the immediate necessity for taking her habitual place in the Community life without betraying the sense of utter despair that was hovering over her.
On Friday afternoon Mother Gertrude said to her:
"I have not had one spare moment to give you, my poor child. But I think you know everything that I would say to you? Be very, very faithful, Sister, and remember that these separations may be for life, but all Eternity is before us."
Alex could capture nothing of the rapt assurance that lay in the upraised eyes and vibrant voice.
"What shall I do without you?" she asked despairingly, feeling how inadequate the words were to voice her sense of utter deprivation.
The light, watchful eyes of the Superior seemed to pierce through her.
"Don't say that, dear child. You do not depend in any sense upon another creature. I have been nothing to you but a means to an end. It was given to me to help you a little, years ago, to find your holy vocation. You know that human friendships in themselves mean nothing."
Something in Alex seemed to be crying and protesting aloud in heart-broken repudiation of the formula to which her lips had so often subscribed, but her own tacit acquiescence of years rose to rebuke her, and the dread of vexing and alienating the Supervisor at this eleventh hour.
Dumbly she knelt down on the floor beside the Superior's chair.
Mother Gertrude looked at her compassionately enough, but with the strange remoteness induced by the long cultivation of an absolutely impersonal relation towards humanity.
"My poor little Sister, sometimes lately I have wondered whether I have been altogether wise in my treatment of you, and whether I have not allowed you to give way to natural affection too much. Perhaps this break has come in time. You must remember that you have renouncedallearthly ties, even the holiest and most sacred ones, and therefore you must be ready to make any sacrifice for the sake of your one, supreme Love. There is so much I should like to say to you, but time is getting short now, and there is a great deal to be done. God bless you, my child."
The Superior laid her hand on Sister Alexandra's bent head.
Alex clasped it desperately.
"I shall still be your child always?" she almost wailed, with a weight of things unspoken on her heart, and in a last frantic attempt to carry away one definite assurance.
The slightest possible severity mingled in Mother Gertrude's clear gaze, bent downwards as she rose to her full height, her carriage as upright and as dignified as it had been ten years before.
"No, Sister," she said very distinctly. "You will be the child of whatever Superior God may send you in my place."
"You know that we in the convent have no human ties, only spiritual ones. You will see your Divine Master, and Him only, in the person of your Superior in religion. Remember that, little Sister. You must learn detachment if you are to be truly faithful. That is my last and most earnest counsel to you. I shall pray daily that you may be given strength to follow it."
"Don't go!" gasped Alex, hardly knowing what she said, as she saw the Superior's hand upon the door. "Don't go away like that. Oh, Mother, Mother, how shall I bear it? I've only got you and now you're going away for ever."
She broke into tearless sobs.
"Sister Alexandra! Has it come to this? I am indeed to blame if you are still so undisciplined and so weak as to cling to a mere creature—you that have been chosen by God to love Him, and Him only! I could not have believed it." Mother Gertrude's tone held bitter remorse and shame.
Alex' old, pitiful instinct of propitiating the being she loved best sprang to life within her.
"No, no, I didn't really mean it. I know I mustn't."
The nun gazed at her in compassionate perplexity.
"You are overstrung, and tired; you don't know what you are saying. When you come to yourself, my poor child, you will hardly believe that you could have proved so disloyal, even for a moment."
"Now calm yourself, and do not attempt to join the recreation tonight. You are not fit for it. I will tell our Mother-General that I have told you to go to your cell as soon as supper is over. Good-night, and again good-bye."
Sheer terror at the bare thought of being left there alone forced Alex to her feet, although she could scarcely stand, and was trembling violently. "You won't forget me?" she entreated almost inaudibly.
"I shall always remember you in my prayers, as I do all those who have been under my direction. Indeed, you will have a special place in them," said the Superior gravely, "since I can never forget that, by the grace of God, I was instrumental in bringing you into His holy house. But never forget thatnohuman relation, however precious it may be, can have any completeness in itself. It all has to lead on to the one supreme thing, Sister, the 'one thing necessary.'
"Now you must detain me no longer." She freed herself from the convulsive grasp that Alex had unconsciously fastened on to the folds of her habit and moved unhesitatingly to the door.
Alex followed her with eyes that stared blankly from a blanched face. She felt as though she was under a spell and could neither move nor speak. She could not believe that Mother Gertrude would really leave her in that way. The Superior opened the door and passed out, closing it behind her without pausing or looking back.
Alex heard her steps receding, rapid and measured, along the uncarpeted corridor outside.
She stayed on and on in the little cold room, the winter dusk deepening rapidly outside, the silence only broken by the occasional clanging of a bell, to the sound of which she was so much inured that it hardly struck upon her senses. She thought that Mother Gertrude would come back to her.
There must be some other last words between them than those few impersonal counsels of perfection, that repudiated any more intimate link such as Alex' exclusive jealousy, stifled, but never stronger than after those ten years of repression, now claimed with such frantic yearning.
She waited, scarcely moving. She grew colder and colder, but she was unconscious of her icy feet and leaden hands. She was not even aware of consecutive thought.
Her whole body was absorbed in the supreme act of awaiting the Superior's return for the word, the look, that should at least break the dreadful darkness that encompassed her soul at the sudden deprivation of that one outlet which had, unaware, served as a safety-valve for the whole craving dependence of her spirit.
Mother Gertrude did not come back.
Dusk turned rapidly to night, and the distant cries and laughter of the children's evening recreation fell into a quiet that was only shattered by the single note of the deep-toned bell that proclaimed the hour of silence and the final gathering of the Community for the last recital of the Office in the chapel.
There was the flicker of a light along the passage outside, and the door opened at last.
Alex did not move.
She turned anguished eyes, that held scarcely any comprehension in the immensity of their fatigue, towards the entering figure.
It was that of the old Infirmarian, who put down the lighted candle and threw up her hands of dismay as her gaze met that of the younger nun. Mindful of the hour of silence, she asked no question, but she took Alex away to the convent infirmary, and placed her in a bed of which the mattress seemed strangely and wonderfully soft after thepaillassein her cell, and gave her a hot, sweet, strongly scentedtisaneand bade her sleep.
"Mais demain?" whispered Alex.
She was thinking of the early departure in the raw morning cold, when the convoy that was leaving for South America would be driven away from the convent. But the Infirmarian shook her head and shuffled slowly away, leaving the room in darkness.
She was old and very tired, and for her there was nodemain, except the glorious dawn that should herald the day of Eternity.
Alex lay awake in the merciful darkness and envisaged the culmination of long years of stifled repression and self-deception.
She knew now, as she had never let herself know before, what had sustained her through the dragging years after the final objective of her vows had been left behind.
She knew that she had thought herself to be answering to a call of God, when she had been hearing only the voice of Mother Gertrude, and had been craving only for Mother Gertrude's tenderness and approbation.
Physical pangs of terror shot through her and shook her from head to foot as she realized to what she had bound herself, which now presented itself to her overstrung perceptions only in the crudest terms.
To live without earthly affection, to relinquish love as she understood it, in terms of human sympathy, for an ideal to which she knew, with tardy and unerring certainty, that nothing within her would ever conform.
She knew now, with that appalling clear-sightedness to which humanity is mercifully a stranger until or unless the last outposts of sanity are almost reached, that the vocation of which they all spoke so glibly had never been hers.
She had entered a life for which her every instinct declared her to be utterly unfitted, in search of that which her few short years in the outside world had denied her. The convent instinct, engrained in her at last, added to the anguish of startled horror at the wickedness of her own state of mind.
God is not mocked, she thought. Alex had tried to cheat God, and for ten years He had stayed His hand and had allowed her deception to go on.
And now it had all fallen on her—shame and punishment and despair, and nowhere any human help or consolation to turn to. She prayed frenziedly in the darkness, but no comfort came to her. She stifled in the pillow the imploring crying aloud of Mother Gertrude's name that sprang to her lips, but with a pang that sickened her, she recalled the Superior's parting from her that evening, her undeviating fidelity to an austere ideal which should also have been Alex'.
There was nothing anywhere.
And with that final certainty of negation came a rigidity of despair that no terms of time or space could measure.
Alex fell into exhaustion, then into a state of coma that became heavy, dreamless sleep enduring far into the next day. She woke to instant, stabbing recollection. It was a grey, leaden day, with rain lashing the window-panes, and at first Alex thought that it might be still early morning, but there was all the far-away, indescribable stir that tells of a household when the day's work is in full swing, and presently she realized that it must be the middle of the morning.
"They have gone," she thought, but the words conveyed no meaning to her. The Infirmarian came in to her and spoke, and asked whether she felt fit to get up, and although on the day before Alex had so craved for rest, she heard her own voice replying indifferently that she thought she was quite well, and that she was ready to rise at once.
"You are sure you have taken no chill? You must have been there in Mother Gertrude's room for a long time after you were taken faint.... Can you remember?" The nun looked at her, puzzled and anxious.
"Did I faint?"
"I think so, surely. You were almost unconscious when I came in, quite by chance, and found you there, almost frozen, poor little Sister! Now tell me—?" The old Infirmarian put a few stereotyped questions such as she addressed to all those of her patients whose ailments could not be immediately diagnosed at sight.
Alex' matter-of-fact replies, for the most part denials of the suggested ills, left her no wiser. Finally she decided on arefroidissement. "Put a piece of flannel over your chest," she said gravely, "and you had, perhaps, better spend recreation indoors until the spell of cold is over."
"Thank you," said Sister Alexandra lifelessly. "What time is it?"
"Nearly eleven. Have you any duties for which you should be replaced this morning?"
"There are a lot of things, I think," said Alex vaguely, "but I can get up."
"Very well," the Infirmarian acquiesced unemotionally. "There is much work to be done, as you say, and we nuns cannot afford to be ill for long."
Alex did not think that she was ill—she was quite able to get up and to dress herself, although her head was aching and her hands shook oddly.
She reflected with dull surprise that all the poignant misery of the days that had gone before seemed to have left her. Evidently this was what people meant by "getting over things." One suffered until one could bear no more, and then it was all numbness and inertia.
She felt a sort of surprised gratitude to God at the cessation of pain, as one who had undergone torture might feel towards the torturers for some brief respite.
Her thankfulness made tears come into her eyes, and she forced them back with a sort of wonder at herself, but that odd disposition to weep still remained with her.
As she went downstairs, rather slowly and cautiously, because her knees were shaking so strangely, she met a very little girl, the pet and baby of the whole establishment, climbing upwards. She was holding up the corners of her diminutive black apron with both hands, and after looking at the nun silently for a moment, she showed her that it contained two tiny, struggling kittens. "Les petits enfants de Minet," she announced gravely, and went on climbing, clasping her burden tenderly.
Alex could never have told what it was that struck her with so unbearable a sense of pathos in the sight of the little childish figure.
Quite suddenly the tears began to pour down her face, and she could neither have checked them nor have assigned any reason for them.
She went on downstairs, wiping the blinding tears from her sight, and amazed at the violence of the uncontrollable sobs that were noiselessly shaking her.
Something had suddenly given way within her and passed far beyond her own control.
It was as though she could never stop crying again.
For what seemed a long while afterwards—a period which, indeed, covered three or four weeks—Alex learnt to be intensely and humbly grateful for the convent law that would not allow any form of personalities in intercourse.
She was utterly unable to cease from crying, and in spite of her shame and almost her terror, the tears continued to stream down her face in the chapel, in the refectory, even at the hour of recreation.
Nobody asked her any questions. One or two of the nuns looked at her compassionately, or made some kindly, little, friendly remark; a lay-sister now and then offered her an unexpected piece of help in her work, and the Infirmarian occasionally sent her a cup ofbouillonfor dinner, but it was nobody's business to offer inquiries, and had any one done so, the rule would have compelled Sister Alexandra to reply by a generality and to change the conversation without delay.
Only the Superior was entitled to probe deeper, and at first the Frenchwoman who was temporarily succeeding Mother Gertrude was too much occupied by her new cares to see much of her community individually.
Alex was relieved when the Christmas holidays began, and she had no longer to fear the notice of the sharp-eyed children, but in the reduction of work surrounding the festive season, it became impossible that her breakdown should continue to pass unnoticed. She did not herself know what was the matter, and could scarcely have given a cause for those incessant tears, except that she was unutterably weary and miserable, and that they had passed far beyond her own control.
The idea that that continuous weeping could have any connection with a physical nervous breakdown never occurred to her.
It was with surprise, and very little thought of cause and effect, that she one night noticed her own extraordinary loss of flesh. She had never been anything but thin and slightly built, but now she quite suddenly perceived that her arms and legs in the last two months had taken on an astounding and literal resemblance to long sticks of white wood. All the way up from wrist to armpit, her left hand, with thumb and middle finger joined, could span the circumference of her right arm.
It seemed incredible.
Her mind went back ten years, and she thought of Lady Isabel, and how much she had lamented her daughter's youthful angularity.
"If she could have seen this!" thought Alex. "But, of course, it only mattered for evening dress—she wouldn't have thought it mattered for a nun."
Instantly she began to cry again, although her head throbbed and her eyes burned and smarted. There was no need now to wonder if she looked tired. Accidentally one day, her hand to her face, she had felt the sort of deeply-hollowed pit that now lay underneath each eye, worn into a groove.
She had ceased to wonder whether life would ever offer anything but this mechanical round of blurred pain and misery, these incessant tears, when the Superior sent for her.
"What is the matter with you, Sister? They tell me you are always in tears. Are you ill?"
Alex shook her head dumbly.
"Sister, control yourself. You will be ill if you cry like that. Don't kneel, sit down."
The Superior's tone was very kind, and the note of sympathy shook Alex afresh.
"Tell me what it is. Don't be afraid."
"I want to leave the convent—I want to be released from my vows."
She had never meant to say it—she had never known that such a thought was in her mind, but the moment that the words were uttered, the first sense of relief that she had felt surged within her.
It was the remembrance of that rush of relief that enabled her, sobbing, to repeat the shameful recantation, in the face of the Superior's grave, pitiful urgings and assurance that she did not know what she was saying.
After that—an appalling crisis that left her utterly exhausted and with no vestige of belief left in her own ultimate salvation—everything was changed.
She was treated as an invalid, and sent to lie down instead of joining the community at the hour of recreation, the Superior herself devoted almost an hour to her every day, and nearly all her work was taken away, so that she could walk alone round the bigvergerand the enclosed garden, and read the carefully-selected Lives and Treatises that the Superior chose for her.
Gradually some sort of poise returned to her. She could control her tears, and drink the soups andtisanesthat were specially prepared and put before her, and as the year advanced, she could feel the first hint of Spring stirring in her exhaustion. She was devoid alike of apprehension and of hope.
No solution appeared to her conceivable, save possibly that of her own death, and she knew that none would be attempted until the return of the Superior-General from South America.
As this delayed, she became more and more convinced, in despite of all reason, of the immutable eternity of the present state of affairs.
It shocked her when one day the Superior said to her:
"You are to go to the Superior of the Jesuits' College in the parlour this afternoon. Do you remember, he preached the sermon for your Profession, and I think he has been here once or twice in the last year or two? He is a very wise and clever and holy man, and ought to help you. Besides, he is of your own nationality."
Alex remembered the tall, good-looking Irishman very well. He had once or twice visited the convent, and had always told amusing stories at recreation, and preached vigorous, inspiring sermons in the chapel, with more than a spice of originality to colour them.
The children adored him.
Alex wondered.
Perhaps Father Farrell, the clever and educated priest, would really see in some new aspect the problem that left her baffled and sick of soul and body.
She went into the parlour that afternoon trembling with mingled dread, and the first faint stirrings of hope that understanding and release from herself and her wickedness might yet be in store for her.
Father Farrell, big and broad-shouldered, with iron-grey, wavy hair and a strong, handsome face, turned from the window as she entered the room.
"Come in, Sister, come in. Sit down, won't you? They tell me ye've not been well—ye don't look it, ye don't look it!"
His voice, too, was big and bluff and hearty, full of decision, the voice of a man accustomed to the command of men.
He pushed a chair forward and motioned her, with a quick, imperious gesture that yet held kindness, to sit down.
He himself stood, towering over her, by the window.
"Well, now, what's all the trouble, Sister?"
There was the suspicion of a brogue in his cultivated tones.
Alex made a tremendous effort. She told herself that he could not help her unless she told him the truth.
She said, as she had said to the French Superior:
"I am very unhappy—I want to be released from my vows as a nun."
The priest gave her one very quick, penetrating look, and his thick eyebrows went up into his hair for an instant, but he did not speak.
"I don't think I have ever had any—any real vocation," said Alex, whitening from the effort of an admission that she knew he must regard as degrading.
"And how long have ye thought ye had no real vocation?"
There was the slightest possible discernible tinge of kindly derision in the inquiry.
It gave the final touch to her disconcertment.
"I don't know."
She felt the folly of her reply even before the priest's laugh, tinged with a sort of vexed contempt, rang through the room.
"Now, me dear child, this is perfect nonsense, let me tell ye. Did ye ever hear the like of such folly? No real vocation, and here ye've been a professed religious for—how long is it?"
"Nearly four years since I was finally professed, but—"
"There's nobutabout it, Sister. A vow made to Our Blessed Lord, I'd have ye know, is not like an old glove, to be thrown away when ye think ye're tired of it. No, no, Sister, that'll not be the way of it. Ye'll get over this, me dear child, with a little faith and perseverance. It's just a temptation, that ye've perhaps been giving way to, owing to fatigue and ill health. Ye feel it's all too hard for ye, is that it?"
"No," said Alex frantically, "that's not it. It's nothing like that. It's that I can't bear this way of living any longer. I want a home, and to be allowed to care for people, and to have friends again—Ican'tlive by myself."
She knew that she had voiced the truth as she knew it, and covered her face with her hands in dread lest it might fail to reach his perceptions.
She heard a change in Father Farrell's voice when next he spoke.
"Ye'd better tell me the whole tale, Sister. Who is it ye want to go back to in the world?"
She looked up, bewildered.
"Any one—home. Where I can just be myself again—"
"And how much home have ye got left, after being a nun ten years? Is your mother alive?"
"No."
"Your father?"
"No," faltered Alex.
"They died after ye left home, I daresay?"
"Yes."
"Then, in the name of goodness, who do ye expect is going to make a home for ye? Have ye sisters and brothers?"
"Yes." Alex hesitated, seeing at last whither his inquiries were tending.
"Yes, and I'm thinking they're married and with homes of their own by this time," said the priest shrewdly. "Let me tell ye, ten years sees a good many changes in the world, and it isn't much of a welcome ye'd get by breaking your holy vows and making a great scandal in the Church, and then planting yourself on relations who've lost touch with ye, more or less, and have homes of their own, and a husband or wife, as the case may be, and perhaps little children to care for. A maiden aunt isn't so very much thought of, in the best of circumstances, let me tell ye.
"Now isn't there reason in what I'm saying, Sister?"
Sick conviction shot through her.
"Yes, Father."
"Well, then, ye'll just give up that foolish notion, now."
He looked at her white, desperate face, and began to take long strides up and down the room.
"Have ye confidence in your Superior? Do ye get on with her?" he asked suddenly.
"Our present Superior has only been here a little while—the one before that—"
"I know, I know," he interrupted impatiently. "It's the Superior-General I mean, of course—everything must come to her in the long run, naturally. Have you full confidence in her, now?"
Alex felt as incapable of a negative reply as of an affirmative one. She knew that she did not understand the term "full confidence" as he did, and she temporized weakly.
"But our Mother-General is away in South America—she keeps delaying, and that's one reason why nothing has been settled about me. She hasn't even left America yet."
"I'm well aware of that. Don't waste time playing with me that way, Sister, ye'll get no further. Ye know very well what I mean. Now, tell me now, will it do for ye if I arrange for your transfer to another house—maybe to the one in London, or somewhere in your own country?"
The instinct of the imprisoned creature that sees another form of the same trap offered it under the guise of freedom, made her revolt.
"No," she cried. "No! I want to get right away—I want to stop being a nun."
The priest suddenly hit the table with his clenched fist, making it rock, and making his auditor start painfully.
"That's what you'll never do, not if ye got release from the holy vows ten times over. Once a nun always a nun, Sister, although ye may be false and faithless and go back into the very midst of the world ye've renounced. But ye'll find no comfort there, no blessing, and God'll remember it against ye, Sister. A soul that spurns His choicest graces need expect no mercy, either here or hereafter. I tell ye straight, Sister, that ye'll be deliberately jeopardizing your immortal soul, if ye give in to this wicked folly. Ye've to choose between God and the Devil—between a little while of suffering here, maybe, and then Eternity in which to enjoy the reward of the faithful, or a hideous mockery of freedom here, followed by Hell and its torments for ever and ever. Which is it to be?"
Alex was terrified, but it was the priest's anger that terrified her, not the threats that he uttered. At the back of her mind, lay the dim conviction that no Hell could surpass in intensity of bitterness that which her spirit was traversing on earth.
Father Farrell looked at her frightened, distorted face, and his voice sank into persuasiveness.
"This'll pass, me dear child. Many a poor soul before ye has known what it is to falter by the wayside. But courage, Sister, ye can conquer this weakness with God's help. You're in no trouble about your faith, now are ye?"
Had Alex been able to formulate her thoughts clearly, she might have told him that it had long since become a matter of supreme unimportance to her whether or no she still possessed that which he termed her faith. As a fact, the beliefs which could alone have made the convent life endurable to her, had never struck more than the most shallow of roots into her consciousness. Perhaps the only belief which had any real hold upon her was the one that she had gradually formed upon her experience of the living—that God was a Superior Being who must be propitiated by the sacrifice of all that one held dear, lest He strike it from one.
She looked dimly at Father Farrell, and shook her head, because she was afraid of his anger if she owned to the utter insecurity of her hold upon any religious convictions.
"That's right, that's right," he said hastily. "I felt sure ye were a good child at bottom. Now would ye like to make a good general Confession, and I'll give ye absolution, and ye can start again?"
Some hint of inflexibility in the last words roused Alex to a final, frantic bid for liberty.
"It's no use—it won't do for me to begin again. I can't stay on. If I can't get released from my vows I'll—I'll run away."
Then there was a long silence.
When the priest spoke again, however, his voice held more of meditative speculation than of the anger which she feared.
"Supposing I could arrange it for ye—I don't say I could, mind, but it might be done, if good reasons were shown—what would ye say to another religious order altogether? It may be that this life is unsuited to ye—there have been such cases. I know a holy Carmelite nun who was in quite another order for nearly fifteen years, before she found out where the Lord really wanted her. Are ye one of those, maybe?"
"No," spoke Alex, almost sullenly. The conflict was wearing her out, and she was conscious only of a blind, unreasoning instinct that if she once gave ground, she would find herself for ever bound to the life which had become unendurable to her.
"What d'ye mean,No?"
"I want to go away. I want to be released from my vows."
The formula had become almost mechanical now. The Jesuit for the first time dropped the brusqueness of manner habitual to him.
Pacing the length of the big parlour with measured, even strides, his hands clasped behind his shabby cassock, he let his deep, naturally rhetorical voice boom out in full, rolling periods through the room.
"Why did ye come to me at all, Sister? It wasn't for advice, and it wasn't for help. I've offered both, and ye'll take neither. Having put your hand to the plough, you've looked back. Ye say that sooner than remain faithful ye'll run away—ye'll make a scandal and a disgrace for the Community that's sheltered ye, and bring shame and sorrow to the good Mothers here. What did ye expect me to answer to that? If your whole will is turned to evil, it was a farce and a mockery to come to me—I can do nothing.
"But one thing I'll tell ye, Sister. If ye do this thing—if it goes up to Rome, and the vows ye took in full consciousness and free will on the day ye were professed, are dissolved—so far as they ever can be, that is, and let me tell ye that it's neither a quick nor an easy business—if it comes to that, Sister,there'll be no going back. No cringing round to the convent afterwards, when ye find there's no place and no welcome for ye in the world, asking to be taken back. They'll not have ye, Sister, and they'll be right. If ye go, it's for ever."
It seemed to Alex that he was purposely seeking to frighten her—that he wanted to add fresh miseries and apprehensions to those already piled upon her, and a faint resentment flicked at her in questioning acceptance of such an assumption.
The shadow of spirit thus restored to her, just enabled her to endure the seemingly endless exposition hurled at her in the priest's powerful voice.
When it was all over, she crawled out of the room like a creature that had been beaten.
Stunned, she only knew that yet another fellow-creature had entered the league of those who were angered against her.
The crisis passed, as all such must pass, and Alex found herself in the position openly recognized as that of waiting for the dissolution of her religious vows.
It was as Father Farrell had said, neither a short nor an easy business, nor was she allowed to pass the months of her waiting at the Liège Mother-house.
They sent her to a small house of the Order in Rome, thinking, with the curious convent instinct for misplaced economy, to save the petty cost of incessant passing to and fro of correspondence and documents, between the convent in Belgium and the Papal Secretariat at the Vatican.
Alex went to Italy in a dream. It struck her with a faint sense of irony that she and Barbara, long ago, had entertained an ambition to visit Italy, standing for all that was romantic and picturesque in the South. After all, she was to be the first to realize that girlish dream, the fulfilment of which brought no elation.
At first she lived amongst the nuns, and led their life, but when it became evident beyond question that she was eventually to obtain release from her vows, the Community held no place for her any longer.
Her religious habit was taken away, and a thick, voluminous, black-stuff dress substituted, which the nuns thought light and cool in comparison with their own weighty garments, but of which the hard, stiff cuffs and high collar, unrelieved by any softening of white, made Alex suffer greatly.
The house was too small to admit of apensionnat, but the nuns took in an inconsiderable number of lady boarders, and an occasional pupil. Alex, however, was not suffered to hold any intercourse with these. After her six months spent in Community life a final appeal was made to her, and when it failed of its effect she passed into a kind of moral ostracism.
She had a small bedroom, where her meals were served by the lay-sister who waited on the lady-boarders, and a littleprie-dieuwas put in a remote corner of the chapel for her use, neither to be confounded with the choir-stalls, nor the benches for visitors, nor the seats reserved for the ladies living in the house. The librarian Sister, in charge of the well-filled book-case of the Community-rooms, had instructions to provide her with literature. Beyond that, her existence remained unrecognized.
She often spent hours doing nothing, gazing from the window at theCorsofar below, so curiously instinct with life after the solitude of the Liège grounds, encompassed by high walls on every side.
She did not read very much.
The books they gave her were all designed to one end—that of making her realize that she was turning her back upon the way of salvation. When she thought about it, Alex believed that this was, in truth, what she was doing, but it hardly seemed to matter.
Her room was fireless, and the old-fashioned house, as most Roman ones, had no form of central heating. She shivered and shivered, and in the early days of February fell ill. One abscess after another formed inside her throat, an unspeakably painful manifestation of general weakness.
One evening she was so ill that there was talk of sending for the chaplain—the doctor had never been suggested—but that same night the worst abscess of all broke inside her throat, and Alex saw that there was no hope of her being about to die.
The bright winter cold seemed to change with incredible rapidity into glowing summer heat, and a modicum of well-being gradually returned to her.
She even crept slowly and listlessly about in the shade of the great Borghese gardens, in the comparative freshness of the Pincio height, and wondered piteously at this strange realization of her girlhood's dream of seeing Italy. She never dared to go into the streets alone, nor would the nuns have permitted it.
Her difficult letters to England had been written.
Cedric had replied with courteous brevity, a letter so much what Sir Francis might have written that Alex was almost startled, and her father's man of business had written her a short, kind little note, rejoicing that the world was again to have the benefit of Miss Clare's society after her temporary retirement.
The only long letter she received was from Barbara.
"Hampstead,"March30, 1908.
"DEAREST ALEX,"Your letter from Rome was, of course, a great surprise. I had been wondering when I should hear from you again, but I did not at all guess what your news would be when it came, as we had all quite grown to think of you as completely settled in the convent."I am afraid that, as you say, there may be complications and difficulties about your vows, as I suppose they are binding to a certain extent, and they are sure not to let you off without a fuss."Your letters aren't very explicit, my dear, so I'm still somewhat in the dark as to what you are doing and when you mean to come to London, as I suppose you will eventually do. And why Italy? If you're going to get out of the whole thing altogether, it seems funny that the convent people should trouble to send you to Italy, when you might just as well have come straight to England. However, no doubt you know your own affairs best, Alex, dear, and perhaps you're wise to take advantage of an opportunity that may not come again!"Travelling has always been my dream, as you know, but except for that time I had at Neuilly, when you came out—Heavens, what ages ago!—and then our honeymoon in Paris, which was so terribly broken into when dear mother died, I've never had any chance at all, and I suppose now I never shall have. Everything is so expensive, and I'm really not a very good traveller unless I can afford to do the thingcomfortably, otherwise I should simply love to have run over to Rome for Easter and got you to show me all the sights."I suppose your time is quite your own now? Of course, when you really do leave the Sisters, I hope you'll come straight to my wee cottage here—at any rate while you look about you and think over future plans."Cedric has written to you, I know, and if you feel you'd rather go to Clevedon Square, needless to say, my dear, I shall more than understand. Please yourselfabsolutely."But, of course, one's always rather chary of unknown sisters-in-law, and Violet quite rules the roost now-a-days. She and Cedric are a most devoted couple, and all that sort of thing, but as she's got all the money, one rather feels as if it washerhouse. I daresay you know the kind of thing I mean."She's quite a dear, in many ways, but I don't go there tremendously."Pamela adores her, and lives in her pocket. Pam tells me she hasn't seen you since she was about fifteen—I could hardly believe it. My dear, I don't know what you'll think of her! She's quite appallingly modern, to my mind, and makes me feel about a hundred years old."When I think of the waywewere chaperoned, and sent about everywhere with a maid, and only allowed the dullest of dinner-parties, and tea-parties, and then those stiff, solemn balls! Pamela is for ever being asked to boy-and-girl affairs, and dinner dances and theatre-parties—I must say she's a huge success. Every one raves about her, and she goes in for being tremendously natural and jolly and full of vitality and she's had simply heaps of chances, already, though I daresay some of it has to do with being seen about everywhere with Violet, who simply splashes money out like water. She paid all Archie's debts, poor boy—I will say that for her. The result is that he's quite good and steady now, and every one says he'll make a first-rate Guardsman."I'm writing a long screed, Alex, but I really feel you ought to be posted up in all the family news, if you're really going to come and join forces with us again, after all these years. It seems quite funny to think of, so many things have happened since you left home for good—as we thought it was going to be. Do write again and tell me what you think of doing and when you're coming over. My tiny spare-room will be quite ready for you, any time you like.
"DEAREST ALEX,
"Your letter from Rome was, of course, a great surprise. I had been wondering when I should hear from you again, but I did not at all guess what your news would be when it came, as we had all quite grown to think of you as completely settled in the convent.
"I am afraid that, as you say, there may be complications and difficulties about your vows, as I suppose they are binding to a certain extent, and they are sure not to let you off without a fuss.
"Your letters aren't very explicit, my dear, so I'm still somewhat in the dark as to what you are doing and when you mean to come to London, as I suppose you will eventually do. And why Italy? If you're going to get out of the whole thing altogether, it seems funny that the convent people should trouble to send you to Italy, when you might just as well have come straight to England. However, no doubt you know your own affairs best, Alex, dear, and perhaps you're wise to take advantage of an opportunity that may not come again!
"Travelling has always been my dream, as you know, but except for that time I had at Neuilly, when you came out—Heavens, what ages ago!—and then our honeymoon in Paris, which was so terribly broken into when dear mother died, I've never had any chance at all, and I suppose now I never shall have. Everything is so expensive, and I'm really not a very good traveller unless I can afford to do the thingcomfortably, otherwise I should simply love to have run over to Rome for Easter and got you to show me all the sights.
"I suppose your time is quite your own now? Of course, when you really do leave the Sisters, I hope you'll come straight to my wee cottage here—at any rate while you look about you and think over future plans.
"Cedric has written to you, I know, and if you feel you'd rather go to Clevedon Square, needless to say, my dear, I shall more than understand. Please yourselfabsolutely.
"But, of course, one's always rather chary of unknown sisters-in-law, and Violet quite rules the roost now-a-days. She and Cedric are a most devoted couple, and all that sort of thing, but as she's got all the money, one rather feels as if it washerhouse. I daresay you know the kind of thing I mean.
"She's quite a dear, in many ways, but I don't go there tremendously.
"Pamela adores her, and lives in her pocket. Pam tells me she hasn't seen you since she was about fifteen—I could hardly believe it. My dear, I don't know what you'll think of her! She's quite appallingly modern, to my mind, and makes me feel about a hundred years old.
"When I think of the waywewere chaperoned, and sent about everywhere with a maid, and only allowed the dullest of dinner-parties, and tea-parties, and then those stiff, solemn balls! Pamela is for ever being asked to boy-and-girl affairs, and dinner dances and theatre-parties—I must say she's a huge success. Every one raves about her, and she goes in for being tremendously natural and jolly and full of vitality and she's had simply heaps of chances, already, though I daresay some of it has to do with being seen about everywhere with Violet, who simply splashes money out like water. She paid all Archie's debts, poor boy—I will say that for her. The result is that he's quite good and steady now, and every one says he'll make a first-rate Guardsman.
"I'm writing a long screed, Alex, but I really feel you ought to be posted up in all the family news, if you're really going to come and join forces with us again, after all these years. It seems quite funny to think of, so many things have happened since you left home for good—as we thought it was going to be. Do write again and tell me what you think of doing and when you're coming over. My tiny spare-room will be quite ready for you, any time you like.
"Your loving sister,"BARBARA MCALLISTER."
Barbara's letter was astounding.
Even Alex, too jaded for any great poignancy of emotion, felt amazement at her sister's matter-of-fact acceptance of a state of affairs that had been brought about by such moral and physical upheaval.
Had Barbara realized none of it, or was she merely utterly incurious? Alex could only feel thankful that no long, explanatory letter need be written. Perhaps when she got back to England it would be easier to make her explanation to Barbara.
She could hardly imagine that return.
The affair of the release from her vows dragged on with wearisome indefiniteness. Documents and papers were sent for her signature, and there were one or two interviews, painful and humiliating enough.
None of them, however, hurt her as that interview in the parlour at Liège with Father Farrell had done, for to none of them did she bring that faint shred of hope that had underlain her last attempt to make clear the truth as she knew it.
She knew that money had been paid, and Cedric had written a grave and short note, bidding her leave that side of the question to his care, and to that of her father's lawyers.
Then, with dramatic unexpectedness, came the end.
She was told that all the necessary formalities had been complied with, and that her vows were now annulled. It was carefully explained to her that this did not include freedom to marry. The Church would sanction no union of hers.
Alex could have laughed.
She felt as though marriage had been spoken of, for the first time, to an old, old woman, who had never known love, and to whom passion and desire alike had long been as strangers. Why should that, which had never come to her eager, questing youth, be spoken of in connection with the strange, remote self which was all that was left of her now?
She reflected how transitory had been the relations into which she had entered, how little any intimacy of spirit had ever bound her to another human being.
Her first love—Marie-Angèle:
"I love you for your few caresses,I love you for my many tears."
Where was Marie-Angèle now? Alex knew nothing of her. No doubt she had married, had borne children, and somewhere in her native Soissons was gay and prosperous still.
Alex dimly hoped so.
Queenie Torrance.
Her thoughts even now dwelt tenderly for a moment on that fair, irresponsive object of so much devotion. On Queenie as a pale, demure schoolgirl, her fair curls rolled back from her white, open brow, in her black-stuff dress and apron. On Queenie, the blue ribbon for good conduct lying across her gently-curving breast, serenely telling fibs or surreptitiously carrying off the forbidden sweets and dainties procured for her by Alex, or gazing with cold vexation on some extravagant demonstration of affection that had failed to win her approval.
In retrospect Alex could see Queenie again, the white, voluminous ball dresses she had worn, the tiny wreath of blue forget-me-nots, once condemned as "bad form" by Lady Isabel.
On Queenie Goldstein her thoughts dwelt little. She had heard long ago from Barbara of Queenie's divorce, in an action brought by her husband, which had afforded the chief scandal of the year 1899, and then no one had heard or even seen anything of Queenie for a long while, and Barbara had said that she was reported to be abroad with her father.
Five years later Barbara had written excitedly:
"You remember that awful Queenie Goldstein? and how full the papers were of her pictures, when that dreadful divorce case of hers was on, and the five co-respondents and everything? You'll hardly believe it, but she's in London again, having succeeded in marrying an American whom every one says isthecoming millionaire. I saw her at the theatre myself, in a box, absolutely slung with diamonds. She's taken to making up her face tremendously, but she hasn't altered much, and she's received everywhere. They say her husband simply adores her."
Alex still remembered the rebuke with which Mother Gertrude had handed her that letter, bidding her remind her sister that things of the world, worldly, had no place in the life of a nun.
Nevertheless, although she had put the thought from her, she knew that in her heart she had felt a certain gladness that her erstwhile playmate, given over though she might be to the world, the flesh and the Devil, had yet not found those things that she coveted to have failed her.
Queenie, at least, had known what she wanted, and Alex' thoughts of her held no condemnation.
From Queenie, her mind went to the memory of Noel Cardew, and she was faintly surprised at the unvivid presentment of him which was all that she could evoke.
Noel had held no real place in her life at all.
Nothing that would endure had ever passed between him and her. It was years since she had thought of their ill-starred engagement, and then it had always been in connection with Sir Francis and Lady Isabel—their brief pride and pleasure in it, and the sudden downfall of their hopes.
Of Noel himself she had scarcely a recollection. Perhaps her clearest one was that of the earnest young egoist, only made attractive by a certain simplicity, who had taken her to sit in a disused ice-house one hot summer day, and had talked about photography. Of the later Noel, Alex was astounded to find that she retained no impression at all.
She could not even remember whether it was he or his brother Eric who had married red-haired Marie Munroe in the same year that she herself had taken her first vows as a nun.
Perhaps it was Noel.
At all events, he had probably married long ago, and Alex could believe that some corner of land in Devonshire was the better for the earnest supervision that he would accord to it, both in his own person and in that of the generation that would doubtless succeed him.
Mother Gertrude.
At the last and most worshipped of the shrines before which Alex had offered the sad, futile, unmeasured burnt-offerings of her life, her thoughts lingered least.
It had all been a mistake.
She had given recklessly, foolishly, squandering her all because life had cheated her of any outlet for a force of the strength of which she had had no measure given her, and now she had to pay the bitter penalty for a folly which had not even been met by answering human affection.
She wrote no letter to Mother Gertrude, and received no word from her.
As the days crept on, Alex, without volition of her own, found that her journey to England had been arranged for—that money was to be advanced to her for her expenses, that she was expected to supplement with it her utter penury of worldly possessions. One day she went out, frightened and at a loss, and entered some of the first shops she saw, in a street that led down from the Pincio Gates.
They were not large shops, and she had difficulty in making herself understood, but she purchased a ready-made blue-serge skirt, with a coat that she called a jacket, and an ugly black toque, that most resembled in shape those that she remembered seeing in London ten years earlier. She wore these clothes, with a white cotton blouse that fastened at the back and came high up under her chin, for some days before she left Rome, so as to grow accustomed to them, and to lose the sense of awkwardness that they produced in her.
The heavy boots and a pair of black-cotton gloves that she had brought from Belgium, still served her. The day of her departure was fixed, and she wrote to Barbara, but she knew neither by what route she was going nor how long the journey would take.
Her companions, selected by the Superior of the convent, proved to be an old lady and her daughter who were going to Paris. Evidently they knew her story, for they looked at her with scared, curious faces and spoke to her very little. Both were experienced travellers, and on the long, hot journey in the train, when it seemed as though the seats of the railway carriage were made of molten iron, they extended themselves with cushions and little paper fans, and slept most of the way. At Genoa the daughter, timidly, but with kindness, pressed Alex to eat and drink, and after that she spoke to her once or twice, and gave her a friendly invitation to join them at the smallpensionin Paris to which they were bound, for a night's halt before she proceeded to Boulogne and thence to England. Alex accepted with bewildered thankfulness.
She was weak and exhausted, and the old lady and her daughter were pitiful enough, and saw her into the train next day, and gave her the provision of sandwiches which she had not thought to make for herself.
The train sped through flat, green country, with tall poplars shading the small, narrow French houses that dotted the line on either side. Her eye dilated as she gazed on the sea, when at last Boulogne was reached.
She remembered the same grey expanse of rolling waves tipped with foam on the morning, eight years ago, when the girl Alex Clare had crossed to Belgium, tearful, indeed, and frightened, but believing herself to be making that new beginning which should lead to the eventual goal which life must surely hold in store for her.
Only eight years, and the bitterness of a lifetime's failure encompassed her spirit.
Alex got off the boat at Folkestone, dazed and bewildered. She had been ill all through the crossing, and her head was still swimming. She grasped her heavy, clumsy suit-case and was thankful to have no luggage, when she saw the seething crowd of passengers, running after uniformed porters in search of heavy baggage that was being flung on to trucks to an accompaniment of noise and shouting that frightened her.
She made her way to the train and into a third-class carriage, too much afraid of its starting without her to dare to go in search of the hot tea which she saw the passengers drinking thankfully. It was a raw, grey day, and Alex, in her thin serge coat and skirt, that had been so much too hot in Italy, shivered violently. Her gloves were nearly thread-bare and her hands felt clammy and stiff. She took off her little black-straw toque and leant her head against the back of the seat, wishing that she could sleep.
It seemed to her that the other people in the carriage were looking at her suspiciously, and she closed her eyes so as not to see them.
After a long while the train started.
Alex tried to make plans. In the shabby purse which she had clasped in her hand all the way, for fear of its being stolen, was a piece of paper with Barbara's address. She would not go to Clevedon Square, for fear of Cedric's unknown wife. Cedric with a wife and child! Alex marvelled, and could not believe that she might soon make the acquaintance of these beings who seemed to her so nearly mythical.
The thought of Barbara as a widow living in a little house of her own in Hampstead, seemed far less unfamiliar. Barbara had always written regularly to Alex, and had twice been to see her when she was in the English house and once in her early days in Belgium.
Barbara had often said in her letters that she was very lonely, and that it was terrible having to live so far out of town because of expenses. Ralph, poor dear, had left her very, very badly off, and there had been very little more for her on the death of Sir Francis. Alex supposed that Downshire Hill must be a very unfashionable address, but she did not connect "N.W." with any particular locality.
She was always very stupid at finding her way about, and, anyhow, her bag was heavy. She decided that she would take a cab.
At Charing Cross it was raining, and the noise was deafening. Alex had meant to send Barbara a telegram from Folkestone, but had not known where to find the telegraph office, and she now realized with a pang of dismay that her sister would not be expecting her.
"How stupid I am, and how badly I manage things," she thought. "I hope she won't be out."
The number of taxis at the station bewildered Alex, who had only seen one or two crawling about the streets in Rome, and had heard of them, besides, as ruinously expensive. She found a four-wheeled cab and put her bag on the floor. The man did not get down from his box to open the door for her, as she expected. He leant down and asked hoarsely.
"Where d'you want to go, Miss?"
"Downshire Hill," said Alex. "No. 101."
"Downshire 'Ill? Where's that?"
"I don't know," said Alex, frightened. She wondered if the man was drunk, and prepared to pull her bag out of the cab again.
"'Alf a minute."
He called out something unintelligible to another driver, and received an answer.
"Downshire 'Ill's N.W.," he then informed her. "Out 'Ampstead w'y."
"Yes," said Alex. "Can't you take me there?"
He looked at her shabby clothes and white, frightened face.
"I'd like to see my fare, first, ifyouplease," he said insolently.
Alex was too much afraid of his making a scene to refuse.
"How much will it be?"
"Seven and sixpence, Miss."
She pulled two half-crowns out of her purse. It was all she had left.
"This is all the change I have," she told him in a shaking voice. "They will pay the rest when I get there."
He muttered something dissatisfied, but put the coins into his pocket.
Alex climbed into the cab.
It jolted away very slowly.
The rain was falling fast, and dashing against the windows of the cab. Alex glanced out, but the streets through which they were driving were all unfamiliar to her. It seemed a very long way to Downshire Hill.
She began to wonder very much how Barbara would receive her, and how she could make clear to her the long, restless agony that had led her to obtain release from her vows. Would Barbara understand?
Letters had been very inadequate, and although Barbara had written that Alex had better come to her for a while if she meant to return to England, she had given no hint of any deeper comprehension.
"We must make plans when we meet," she had written at the end of the letter.
Alex wondered with a sense of apprehension what those plans would be. She had for so long become accustomed to being treated as a chattel, without volition of her own, that it did not occur to her that she would have any hand in forming her future life.
Presently she became conscious that the rain had stopped, and that the atmosphere was lighter. She let down the glass of the window nearest her, and saw, with surprise, that there was a rolling expanse of green, with a number of willow-trees, on one side of the road. It did not look like London.
Then the cab turned a corner, and Alex saw "Downshire Hill" on a small board against the wall.
This was where Barbara lived, then.
The little houses were small and compact, but of agreeably varying height and shape, with a tiny enclosure of green in front of each, protected by railings and a little gate. No. 101, before which the cab drew up, had a bush that Alex thought must be lilac, and was covered with ivy. There were red blinds to the windows.
She got out, pulling her heavy bag after her, and timidly pushed open the little gate, glancing up at the windows as she did so.
There was no one to be seen.
Still clutching at her suit-case, Alex pulled the bell faintly.
"There's half my fare owing yet," said the cabman gruffly.
Thus reminded, Alex rang again.
An elderly parlour-maid with iron-grey hair and a hard face opened the door.
"Is—is Mrs. MacAllister at home?" faltered Alex.
"I'll inquire," said the maid, with a lightning glance at the suit-case.
She left the door open, and Alex saw a little flight of stairs. A murmured colloquy took place at the top, and then Barbara, slight and severely black-clad, came down.
"Alex, that's not you?"
"Yes. Oh, Barbara!"
"My dear—I've been expecting to hear from you every day! I've been imagining all sorts of awful things. Why didn't you wire? Do come in—you must be dead, and have you been carrying that huge bag?"
"I came from the station in a cab."
"A cab!" echoed Barbara in rather a dismayed voice. "What a long way to come, when you could have done it so easily by the underground railway but I suppose you didn't know?"
"No," repeated Alex blankly. "I didn't know."
"What's he waiting for? Will he carry your trunk upstairs?"
"That is all the luggage I have, and I can carry it up quite well, and it isn't heavy. But I hadn't quite enough money for the fare—he ought to have another half-crown."
"Oh, dear," said Barbara. "Wait a minute, then, Alex."
She disappeared up the stairs, leaving Alex alone with the severe parlour-maid, who still held open the front door.
She leant against the wall in the tiny passage, wondering what she had expected of her actual arrival, that the reality should give her such a sense of misery.