Part 78 (2/2)
”Somebody dropped this down the ladder-hole as I came by with my kettle,”
said Sister Tobias. ”It's the first letter-box I ever knew that was as wide as the door. Maybe 'twill bring in a new fas.h.i.+on, for all we know.”
She made her homely joke with a sore heart for the sorrow she read in the Mother's beloved face, and trotted away to fetch clean towels, saying--a favourite saying with Sister Tobias--that her head would never save her heels.
The Mother opened the letter. It was anonymous, and utterly vile. Had the pen been dipped in liquid ordure, the thing written could not have been more defiling to the touch than its meaning was to this pure woman's chaste eyes. Had a puff-adder writhed out of the envelope, and struck its fangs into her beautiful hand, it would have poisoned her less certainly.
And every beat of the obscene words upon her brain, strangely enough, awakened an echo of those long padding footsteps that had followed in the dark. And the writer knew of all that had happened at the tavern on the veld, when a human brute had triumphed in his b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, and a girl-child had been helpless, and the great white stars had looked down unmoved and changeless upon Innocence destroyed.
The Mother read the letter from the loathly beginning to the infamous end.
She had been sorely wrought upon of late. She tried to pray, but she knew the Ear Above must be averted from one who had lied and was in deadly sin.... When Sister Tobias came back she found her lying in a swoon.
The little old crooked, nimble Sister, with the long, pale sheep-face, dropped on her knees beside that p.r.o.ne column of stately womanhood, removed the Mother's hooded mantle, loosened the _guimpe_ and habit, and worked strenuously to revive her, dropping tears.
”My beautiful, my poor lamb!” she crooned. ”What's come to her? What wicked shadow's black on all of us? What's brooding near us--Mary be our guardian!--that's struck at _her_ to-night!”
The letter lay upon the floor, where it had dropped from the unconscious hand. It lay there for Sister Tobias, and might lie. If the Mother willed to tell its contents, she would tell. If not, the little old nun, her faithful daughter, would never ask or seek to know.
She opened her great eyes at last, and smiled up at the tender, wrinkled ugliness of the long, sheep-like face in the close white linen wimple.
”Say nothing to anybody. I was overdone,” she said, and rose. Sister Tobias picked up the letter, and gave it to her. There was a Boer mutton-fat candle flaring draughtily in an iron sconce upon the wall. The Mother moved across the little room, and burned the letter to the last blank corner, and trod the fallen ashes into impalpable powder. Then she helped Sister Tobias to remove every trace left, and obviate every danger that might result from her late toil, and rejoined her quiet family of daughters as though nothing had happened.
They recalled afterwards how cheerful and how placid she had seemed that night. Her smile had a heart-breaking sweetness, and her voice made wonderful melody even in their accustomed ears.
They supped on the little that they had, and chatted, said the night-prayers, and went, aching, all of them, with unsatisfied hunger, to bed. You may conjecture the orderly, modest method of retiring, each Sister vanis.h.i.+ng in turn behind a curtained screen to disrobe, lave, and vest herself for sleep, emerging in due time in the loose, full conventual night-garment of thick white twilled linen, high-throated, monkish-sleeved, and girdled with a thin cotton cord, her face, plain or pretty, young or elderly, framed in the close little white drawn cap of many tucks.
Then, the ladder having been removed, and the tarpaulin pulled over its hole, the lights were extinguished, and only the subdued crimson glow of the tiny lamp that burned before the silver Crucifix that had stood above the Tabernacle on the altar of the Convent chapel burned ruby in the thick, hot dark, where, upon the little iron beds, each divided by a narrow, white-cotton-covered board into two constricted berths, the row of quiet figures lay outstretched, her Breviary upon every Sister's pillow, and her beads about her wrist.
The Mother lay very still, seeing the hideous sentences of the anonymous letter written in h.e.l.lish characters of mocking flame on the background of the dark. She prayed as the wrecked may when the s.h.i.+p beneath their feet is going down. Beside her Lynette, not daring to disturb the silence, suddenly grown rigid and awful, lay aching with the loneliness of living on the other side of the wide gulf of division that had suddenly yawned between.
She had spent the day at the Hospital with Sister Hilda-Antony and Sister Cleophee. She had not seen Beauvayse. But a note had come from him, that had warmed the heart she hid it near. His dearest, he called her--his own beautiful beloved. He could not s.n.a.t.c.h a minute from duty even to kiss his darling's sweetest eyes, but on Sunday they would be together all day. And would she not meet him at the Convent on Thursday, at twilight, when the sh.e.l.ling stopped, and it would be safe for his beloved to venture there?
She must not come alone. Dear old Sister Tobias would bring her, and play Mrs. Grundy's part. And, with a thousand kisses, he was hers in life and death.
Lynette's first love-letter, and it seemed to her so beautiful. It laid a hand upon her heart that thrilled, and was warm and strong. The hand said ”Mine!”
His. She would be his one day--soon; and there would be no more mysteries between the man and the woman welded by G.o.d's ordinance into husband and wife. She s.h.i.+vered a little at the thought of that intimate, peculiar, utter oneness. And then, with a sickening, horrible sinking of the heart, she realised that, however well such a secret as that she guarded might be hidden before the priest and the clergyman made they twain One, it must be known of both afterwards, or else be for ever threatening to start through the burying earth, crying, ”I am here. How came you to forget?”
She had been cold in the sultry heat of that long noon, and deaf when voices spoke to her. She was thinking.... How if she might be mistaken in Beauvayse, even now? He was beautiful and brave and alluring to her woman's sense in what she knew of him and what was yet to know. He called her and drew her. Nothing n.o.ble awakened in her at the smile on the gay, bold lips and in the grey-green, jewel-bright eyes. When he had held her to his heart, she had not felt her soul merge with another, its fellow, and yet stronger and greater, in that embrace. He and she were not bodiless spirits floating in pure ether, but an earth-made girl and boy, very much athirst for the common cup of human rapture, hungry for the banquet of mortal bliss.
It was sweet, but how if he were another, and not the one? How if her hasty gift of herself robbed both in the long end? How if his headlong pa.s.sion and tempestuous love should be torn from him like rags in the first instant of that discovery that must almost inevitably be made? She heard his boyish voice crying, ”Hateful!... You have deceived me!” and was stabbed with quick anguish, knowing him in the right.
Men did not enter into marriage pure. By some unwritten code of that strange lawgiver, the World, they were absolved of the necessity of spotlessness. They might slake their thirst at muddy sources unrebuked.
And the more each wallowed, the more he demanded of the woman he wedded that she should be immaculate in thought and deed--if in knowledge, that was all the better.
What a cloud of doubts a.s.sailed her, swarming like bees, settling in every blossomed branch of her mind, and blotting out the sweetness with angry buzzing, furry bodies, armed with sharp stings for punishment or revenge.
She had seen a little peach-tree weighed down and bowed to the red earth at its roots with the weight of such a swarm. She felt at this juncture very like the tree. A little more, only a slight increase of the burden, and the slender trunk would have snapped. When the native bee-master came and shook the double swarm into a couple of hives, the little tree stayed crooked. It did not regain its beautiful, healthful uprightness for a long time.
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