Part 4 (2/2)

”I don't see that!” Queenie exclaimed. ”If I were in the wrong I should have deserved it.”

”But that would make it all the worse for you. It's always the people who are in the wrong who need most to have their part taken,” Alex explained confusedly, yet voicing an intimate conviction.

”I don't think you have much idea of justice, Alex,” said Queenie drily.

The conversation made Alex very miserable. It was characteristic of her want of logic that while she reproached herself secretly for her own impiety in setting the objects of her affection far above what she conceived to be the abstract standard of right and wrong, yet she never questioned but that any love bestowed upon herself would be measured out in direct proportion to her merits.

And despairingly did Alex sometimes review the smallness of her deserts.

She was disobedient, untruthful, quarrelsome, irreligious. It seemed to Alex that there was no fault to which she could not lay claim. Her lack of elementary religious teaching put her at a disadvantage in the convent atmosphere, and made its frequent religious services and instructions so tedious to her, that she was in constant disgrace for her weary, inattentive att.i.tudes, not unjustly designated as irreverent, in the chapel.

She was not at all popular with the nuns. The ”influence” which her cla.s.s-mistress wielded over so many of the pupils, or the ”interest”

which the English a.s.sistant Superior would so willingly have extended to her youthful compatriot were alike without effect upon Alex. She was not drawn to any of these holy, black-clad women, to one or other of whom almost all her French and Belgian and American contemporaries devoted a rather stereotyped enthusiasm.

Had the vagrant fancy of Alex lighted upon any one of the elder nuns charged with the direction of the school, the attraction would have been discreetly permitted, if not admittedly sanctioned, by the authorities.

It would almost inevitably have led Alex to an awakening of religious sensibilities and the desirability of this result would have outweighed, even if it did not absolutely obscure in the eyes of the nuns, the excessive danger of obtaining such a result by such means.

But the stars in their courses had designed that Alex should regard the Mesdames Marie Baptiste and Marie Evangeliste of her convent days with indifference, and devote her ardent temperament and precocious sensibilities to the wors.h.i.+p of Queenie Torrance.

The enthusiasm was smiled upon by no one, and thereby became the more inflamed.

”Je n'aime pas ces amities particulieres,” said the cla.s.s-mistress of Queenie Torrance severely, to which Miss Torrance replied with polite distress that she was powerless in the matter. It made her ridiculous, she disliked the constant infringement of rules to which Alex' pursuit exposed her, but--one could not be unkind. She did not know why Alex Clare showed her especial affection--she herself had done nothing to encourage these indiscreet displays. Of course, it was pleasant to be liked, but one wished only to do right about it. Queenie mingled candour with perplexity, and succeeded in convincing every one with perfect completeness of her entire innocence of anything but a too potent attraction.

”Ce n'est donc meme pas une amitie? C'est Alex qui vous recherche malgre vous!” exclaimed the cla.s.s-mistress.

Under this aspect the question soon presented itself alike to the _pensionnat_ and its authorities, rendering Alex ridiculous. In a system of _surveillance_ which admitted of no loophole for open defiance or outspoken rebuke, Alex' evasions of that law of detachment which is the primary one in convent legislation, became the mark of every blue-ribboned _enfant de Marie_ who wished to obtain a reputation for zeal by reporting the defection of a companion to her cla.s.s-mistress.

It was always Alex who was reported. Queenie never sought opportunities to s.n.a.t.c.h a hurried colloquy during recreation, or manoeuvred to obtain Alex as companion at _la ronde_, or when they played games in the garden. She never infringed one of the strictest rules of the establishment, by giving presents unpermitted, or purchasing forbidden sweets and chocolate to be given away at the afternoon _gouter_.

Queenie accepted the presents, wrote tiny notes to Alex and skilfully gave them to her unperceived, and cut Alex to the heart by telling her sometimes that she made it very hard for one to try and be good and keep all the rules and perhaps get one's blue ribbon next term.

These speeches were to Queenie's credit, and made Alex cry and wors.h.i.+p her more admiringly than ever, but they did not tend to lower the transparent, doglike devotion with which Alex would gaze at Queenie's bent profile in the chapel, utterly unconscious of the scandal which her manifest idolatry was creating for the severe nun in the carved stall opposite. She was scolded, placed under strict observation, and every obstacle placed in the way of her exchanging any word with Queenie, until she grew to see herself as a martyr to an affection which every fresh prohibition increased almost to frenzy.

One day she was made the victim of a form of rebuke much dreaded by the _pensionnaires_. A monthly convocation of the school and mistresses, officially known as _la reclame du mois_, and nicknamed by the children ”the Last Judgment,” was held in the _Grande Salle_ downstairs, with the Superior making her state entry after the children had been decorously seated in rows at the end of the long room, and all the other nuns who had anything to do with the school had placed themselves gravely and with folded hands against the walls.

They all stood when the Superior came in, followed by the First Mistress, carrying a sheaf of notes and a great book, which each pupil firmly believed to be devoted princ.i.p.ally to the record of her own progress through the school.

Then the Superior, with inclined head and low, distinct voice, spoke a few words of prayer, and settled herself in the large chair behind which the nuns cl.u.s.tered in orderly rows.

The children sat down at the signal given, and listened, at first with smiles as the record of the baby cla.s.s were read aloud and each mite stood up in her place for all the universe to gaze at her, while the a.n.a.lysis of her month's work, mental and moral, sounded with appalling distinctness through the silence.

”Bebee de Lalonde! premiere en catechisme, premiere en geographie ...

calcul, beaucoup mieux ... elle y met beaucoup de bonne volonte!”

”A la bonne heure!”

The Superior is smiling, every one is smiling, Bebee de Lalonde, her brown curls bobbing over her face, is pink with gratification. Her young cla.s.s-mistress leans forward, the white veil of novice falling over her black habit.

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