menu_book Chapter 16

chapter sixteen of consequences by e m delafield this librivox recording is in the public domain mother gertrude alex felt strangely comforted for some time after that visit to the convent it seemed to her that in appealing to the god who dwelt in the chapel shrine she had found a human friend secretly she thought very often of the superior wondering if mother gertrude remembered her and thought of her too once or twice when she was out with holland or even with her mother she manoeuvred a little in order to go past the tall undistinguished-looking building and look up curiously at its shrouded windows but she did not actually enter the convent again until three weeks later after she had said rather defiantly to lady isabel do you mind my going to see the superior of the convent near bryanston square mother it's the new house they've opened a branch of the lige house you know if you like said lady isabel indifferently what's put it into your head holland told me about it she went there for some ceremony or other when they opened the chapel and-and she knew i had been at school at lige alex answered she was conscious that the reply was evasive

but she was afraid of admitting that she had already made acquaintance with this superior with that innate sense peculiar to the period in which she lived that anything undertaken upon the initiative of a child would ipso facto be regarded as wrong or dangerous by its parents but mind added lady isabel suspiciously i won't have your name used by them i mean that you're not to promise that you'll patronise all sorts of dowdy impossible charities very well i won't alex was glad to have permission to visit the convent under any conditions and she secretly resolved that she would make an elastic use of the sanction given her during the short time that remained before the usual exodus from london she felt half afraid that mother gertrude might have forgotten her but the nun greeted her with a warmth that fanned to instant flame the spark of alex's ready infatuation she quickly fell into one of the old enamoured enthusiasms that had cost her so much in her childish days mother gertrude did not speak of religion to her or touch upon any religious teaching but she encouraged alex to speak much about herself and to admit that she was very unhappy

have you no one at home they don't understand me alex said with conviction that is hard to bear and you are very sensitive and with very great capabilities for either good or evil alex thrilled to the echo of a conviction which she had hardly dared to admit to herself my dear child do you mind my calling you so oh no no i wish you would call me by my name alex what the superior said smiling as though you were one of my own children in spite of being a young lady of the world oh yes if you'll let me breathed alex looking up at the woman who had fascinated her with all the fervour of her ardent unbalanced temperament in her gaze my poor lonely little alex you shall be my child then the grave lingering kiss on her forehead came like a consecration alex went home that day in ecstasy the whole force of her nature was once more directed into one channel and she was happy one day she told mother gertrude with the complete luxury of unreserve always characteristic of her reckless attachment the story of her brief engagement to noel cardew the nun looked strangely at her

so you had the courage to go against the wishes of your family and break it all off little alex it seemed wonderful to alex that the action which had been so condemned and which she had long ceased to regard as anything but folly should be praised as courageous i wasn't happy she faltered i used always to think that love which one read about made everything perfect when it came but from the first moment of our engagement i knew it was all wrong somehow so you knew that the superior said smilingly you have been given very great gifts me how faltered alex it is not every one who would have had the courage to withdraw before it was too late "'You mean it would have been much worse if I'd actually married him?' "'Much, much worse.

"'A finite human love will never satisfy that restless heart of yours, Alex. "'Tell me, have you ever found full satisfaction in the love of any creature yet? "'Hasn't there always been something lacking, something to grieve and disappoint you?' "'Alex looked back. "'She thought of the stormy loves of her childhood,

"'of Queenie, on whom she had lavished such a passion of devotion. of her vain thwarted longing to bestow all where the merest modicum would have sufficed lastly she thought of noel cardew noel did not want all that i could have given him she faltered he never knew the realest part of me at all and yet he loved you alex he wanted you for his wife but the closest of human intercourse the warmest and dearest of human sympathy will never be enough for a temperament like yours she spoke with such authority in her voice that alex was almost frightened shall i always be lonely then she asked feeling that whatever the answer she must accept it unquestioningly for truth until you have learnt the lesson which i think is before you said the nun slowly i am not lonely now that i have you alex asserted clinging passionately to her hand

mother gertrude did not answer she never contradicted such assertions but her steady light eyes gazed outward with a strange pale flame as though at some unseen bourne destined both to be her goal and that of alex no one has ever understood me like you do poor little child i think i understand you you have told me a great deal and your confidence has meant very much to me besides the superior paused a nun does not often tell her own story but i am going to tell you a little of mine it is not so very unlike your own when i was seventeen i wanted to be a nun i told my parents so and they refused their permission they loved me very very dearly and i was the only child my father told me that it would break his heart if i left them and my mother was delicate almost an invalid i held out for a little time but their grief nearly broke my heart and i persuaded myself that it was my duty to listen to them and to stay at home so i stifled the voice of god in my heart and when i was two-and-twenty a man much older than i was whom i had known all my life asked me to marry him the nun spoke with difficulty i have not spoken of this to any human being for over twenty years

but i believe that i am right in telling you a little of what i went through i will gladly bring myself to speak of it if it is going to be of any help to you i hesitated for a long while he told me that he loved me dearly and i knew it was true i knew that his wife would have the happiest of homes and the most faithful and devoted of husbands a hundred times alex i was on the verge of telling him that i would marry him it would have been the greatest happiness to my father and mother and it would have done away once and for all with that lurking dread of a convent which i knew was always at the back of their minds they were growing old too they had neither of them been young people when i was born and i knew that a time would come when i should find myself all alone i had no very great friends and very few relations none with whom i could have found a home and in those days a woman left by herself had very little freedom very few outlets indeed i had given up the thought of being a nun altogether i thought that god had taken away the gift of my vocation because i had wilfully neglected it even at my blindest i could never persuade myself that it had never existed that vocation which i had tried so long to ignore

and then alex god in his great love again took pity on me and showed me where my treasure really was i had tried hard to cling to human love and happiness to find my comfort there but just think of it alex a divine love was waiting for me it was a very hard struggle alex i knew that he wanted all of me unworthy as i was and i was so weak and so cowardly and so selfish that i shrank from giving all i knew that no half measures would be possible like you i knew that it would have to be with me all or none to whom much is given from him will much be asked alex and one night i could hold out no longer i resolved that it should be all after that there was no drawing back i wrote and said that i should never marry that my mind was made up less than a year afterwards i was in the convent but it was a terrible year it was not for a long long while that god let me feel any consolation time after time i felt that he had forsaken me and i could only cling to the remembrance of the certainty that i had felt at the time of following his will for me but he spared me the greatest sacrifice of all knowing perhaps that i should have failed again in courage

my father and mother died within three months of one another that same year and when my father lay dying he gave me his blessing and consent and after he died i went straight to the mother-house in paris where it was then and a few months after i became an orphan they received me into the novitiate there the superior had flushed very deeply and her voice was shaken but there were no tears in her steady eyes alex trembling with passionate sympathy and with a gratitude so intense as to be almost painful for the confidence bestowed upon her asked the inevitable question of youth have you been happy haven't you ever regretted it oh tell me if you are really and truly happy absolutely said mother gertrude unhesitatingly but not with happiness such as the world knows the word has acquired a different meaning i hardly know how to convey what i mean grief and joy mean something so utterly different to the soul in religious life and to the soul still in the world but this much i can say that i have never known one instant of regret never anything but the deepest most intense gratitude that i was given strength to follow my vocation there was a long silence alex watching the nun's fervent flame-like gaze in which her young idolatry detected none of the resolute fanaticism built up in instinctive self-protection from a temperament no less ardent than her own

so you have the story of god's great mercy to one poor soul said the nun at last and the story of every vocation is equally wonderful the more i see of souls alex and a superior hears many things the more i marvel at the ways of god's love as for the paths by which he led me to the shelter of his own house i shall only know the full wonder of it all when i see him face to face i have only given you the barest outlines but you understand a little yes breathed alex her whole being shaken by an emotion to the real danger of which she was entirely blind she went home that day in a state of exultation and could not have told had she been obliged to analyze it how far her uplifted condition was due to the awakening of religious perceptions hitherto undreamed of to her increasing worship of the woman who had roused those perceptions or to her exultant sense of having been made the repository of a confidence shared with no other human being it was small wonder that lady isabel traced the rapt look on alex's face to its source but most girls go through this sort of thing at school she said hopelessly of course i know it's only a phase alex whatever you may think now but why can't you be more like other people

why insist all of a sudden on making poor holland get up early and go out to church with you on sunday when i always like the maids to have a rest holland doesn't mind said alex sulkily she could not explain to her mother that the superior had asked a promise of her that she would not again willingly miss going to mass on sundays if it was a reasonable hour i shouldn't object so much i know heaps of very devout catholics who always do go to farm street or somewhere every sunday and i wouldn't forbid that alex though why you should suddenly get frantic about religion i can't imagine i suppose it is the influence of that woman you've been seeing at the convent alex grew scarlet to her own dismay i thought so said lady isabel looking annoyed i don't want to prevent your doing anything that does give you pleasure heaven knows it's difficult enough to find anything you seem to care about in the very least but i'm not going to let you infect barbara oh no said alex with sincere horror in her voice the last thing she wanted was to take barbara to the convent she instinctively dreaded both her sister's shrewd cynical judgment and the misrepresentations that she always somehow contrived to make of all alex's motives and actions alex clung to the thought of her exclusive claim on mother gertrude's interest and sympathy as she had never yet clung to any other possession well we shall be leaving town next week and there'll be an end of it when i said you might go to the convent alex i never meant you to rush off there three or four times a week as you know

but if you've taken a fancy to this nun i suppose nothing will stop you lady isabel sighed and alex from the glow of contentment that possessed her felt able to speak more warmly and natural than usual i don't want to do anything to vex you mother truly i don't but the superior is very kind to me and i do like going to see her you know you always say you want me to do whatever makes me happiest she spoke urgently and coaxingly like the impulsive impetuous child alex who had been used to beg for favours and privileges with all the confidence of a favourite lady isabel sighed again but her voice wore a touched softened look and she said resignedly so long as you cheer up and don't vex your father by seeming doleful and uninterested in things of course girls nowadays do take up good works and slumming and all that sort of thing but not till they're older than you are darling and then it's generally because they haven't married at least added lady isabel hurriedly people are sure to say it is that

i don't mind if they do said alex proudly her mind full of mother gertrude's story well i suppose you must do as you like girls do nowadays alex almost instinctively uttered the cry that with successive generations has passed from appeal to rebellion then to assertion and from the defiance of that assertion to a calm statement of facts it is my life can't i live my own life a woman who doesn't marry and who has eccentric tastes doesn't have much of a life i could never bear thinking of it for any of you alex was rather startled at the sadness in her mother's voice but mother why lots of girls don't marry and just live at home as long as there is a home but things alter alex your father and i in the nature of things can't go on living for ever and then this house goes to cedric there is no country place as you know your great-grandfather sold everything he could lay his hands on and we none of us have ever had enough ready money to think of buying even a small place in the country but i thought we were quite rich lady isabel flushed delicately we are not exactly poor but such money as there is mostly came from my father and there will not be much after my death she confessed most of it will be money tied up for archie poor little boy because he's the younger son and your grandfather thought that was the proper way to arrange it

it was all settled when you were quite little children in fact before pamela was born or thought of and your father naturally wanted all he could hope to leave to go to cedric so that he might be able to live on here whatever happened but what about barbara and me wasn't it rather unfair to want the boys to have everything your father said the girls will marry of course there will be a certain sum for each of you on your wedding-day but there's no question of either of you being able to afford to remain unmarried and live decently you won't have enough to make it possible said lady isabel very simply but one of us might want to marry a very poor man a man in your own rank of life my dear child could hardly propose to you unless he had enough to support you of course we don't wish either of you to feel that you must marry for money ever but at the same time i think you ought to be warned girls very often go gaily on thinking it will be time enough to settle later and then something happens and they find they have no money of their own and perhaps no home left for a few years perhaps it's possible to go on paying visits and staying with other people but it's never very pleasant to feel one has no alternative and the sort of environment where a man looks for his wife is in her own sheltered home said lady isabel with emphasis

alex felt rather dismayed though less so than she would have done before her intimacy at the convent had given her glimpses of another possible standard she paid one more visit to mother gertrude before leaving london this time she was kept waiting for a while in the parlour so that she began to wish that she had not told holland to call for her in an hour's time she never dared stay any longer partly from a vague impression that mother gertrude had a good deal to do and partly from a very distinct certainty that lady isabel always noted the length of her visits to the convent no less than their frequency she looked round the ugly room rather disconsolately and fingered the books on the table they seemed very uninteresting and were mostly in french one slim volume more attractively bound than the others drew her attention for a moment and she turned idly to the title-page notre mère fondatrice excuse de alex smiled at the wording which she read in the imperfect literal translation of an indifferent french scholar and turned to the next leaf two photographs facing one another were reproduced on either page

the first portrait was of a young woman standing by a table in a stiffly artificial attitude with enormously wide skirts billowing round her decked with elaborate and to alex's eyes meaningless trimmings of some dark narrow ribbon that might have been velvet she wore long dangling earrings and her abundant plaits of dark hair were gathered into the nape of her neck confined by a coarse-fibred net the face turned over one shoulder was heavy rather than handsome with strongly marked features and big sombre dark eyes it was with a little thrill approaching to awe that alex recognized her again on the next page in the veil and habit of the order the girth of the figure had increased and the face showed traces of having been heavily scored by the passing of some twenty or thirty years but this time the strong mouth was smiling frankly and the eyes had lost their brooding look and were directed upwards with an ardent and animated expression the hands so plump as to show mere indents in place of knuckles across their remarkable breadth grasped a small crucifix under the first portrait alex read the inscription angele prdoux at dix-huit ans beneath the picture of the nun angele's not very distinguished patronymic had been replaced by the title of mre candide de sacr

and still supplemented by the announcement fondatrice et supérieure de son ordre old-fashioned though the dress in the photograph looked to alex's eyes she was yet astonished that any woman so nearly of her own time should have founded a religious order she had always supposed vaguely that the educational variety of religious orders which she knew flourished in europe had taken their existence from the old-established dominican or benedictine communities but it seemed now that a new foundation might come into being under the auspice of so youthful and plebeian seeming a pioneer as angele alex wondered how she had set about it a grotesque fancy flitted through her mind as to the fashion in which sir francis and lady isabel might be expected to receive an announcement that alex or barbara felt called upon to found a new religious order alex could not help dismissing the imaginary situation thus conjured up with a slight shudder and the conviction that angele prdoux if her position had been in any degree tenable must have been an orphan wishing all the time that mother gertrude would come to her she glanced through the first few pages of the book it somehow slightly amazed her to read of the founder of a religious order as a little girl who had like herself passed through the successive phases of babyhood school-days and the society of her compeers in the world

and to what end inquired the author of the esquisse when angele prdoux had celebrated her twenty-first birthday at a ball given on her behalf by an adoring grandfather to what end alex repeated the question to herself and marvelled rather vaguely as various replies floated through her mind life all led to something she supposed and for the first time it occurred to her that she herself had never aimed at anything save the possession of that which she called happiness what had been angele prdoux's aim what was that of mother gertrude certainly not human happiness life was disappointing enough alex reflected drearily one was always waiting always looking forward to the next stage as though it must reveal the secret solution to the great question of why alex's thoughts turned to noel cardew and the sick misery and disappointment engendered by her engagement the door opened and she sprang up oh i'm so glad you've come at last were you getting impatient i'm sorry but you know our time is not our own the nun sat down and alex flung rather than sat herself in her favourite position on the floor her arms resting on the superior's knee what is the matter asked mother gertrude what was troubling you just before i came in alex

you always know said alex in quick passionate recognition of an intuition that it had hitherto been her share to exercise on behalf of another never to receive your face is not so very difficult to read and i think i know you pretty well by this time better than any one said alex in all good faith and unaware that certain aspects of herself such as she showed to barbara or to her father and mother when they angered or frightened her had never yet been called forth in the superior's presence and probably never would be well what was it was it her mother foundress how did you know gasped alex unseeing of the still open book lying on the table mother gertrude did not refer to it she passed her hand slowly over the upturned head alex had thrown off her hat i was looking at the picture of her it seemed so difficult to realize that any one who actually formed a new religious order could live almost nowadays and be a girl just like myself god bestows his gifts where he pleases sometimes the call sounds where one might least expect to hear it in the midst of the world and worldly pleasure sometimes in the midst of the disappointment and grief of the world

alex did not speak but continued to gaze up at the nun mother gertrude went on speaking slowly you see alex sometimes it is necessary for a soul a loving and undisciplined one especially to learn the utter worthlessness of human love in order that it may turn and see the divine love waiting for it but all human love isn't worthless said alex almost pleadingly her eyes dilating surely a finite love is worthless compared to an infinite said the nun gently we can hardly imagine it alex with our little limited understanding but there is a love that satisfies the most exacting of us asking indeed all and yet willing to accept so little and above all giving with a completeness to which no human sympathy however deep and tender can ever attain alex heard only the ring of utter conviction permeating every word uttered in that deep ardent voice and listening to the mystic heard nothing of the fanatic but not every one she stammered

the nun did not pretend to misunderstand her many are called she said but few are chosen do you want me to tell you a little of all that is promised to those who leave all things for his sake yes said alex her heart throbbing strangely chapter