Part 5 (1/2)

”Ma Mere Superieure, pour le mois de S. Joseph, elle se corrige de cette vilaine habitude de mordre ses ongles. Elle a fait de vrais efforts....”

”C'est bien. Faites voir.... Venez, ma pet.i.te.”

Up the long room marches Bebee, two freshly washed tiny pink hands thrust out proudly for the Superior's inspection.

”Tres bien, tres bien. Vous ferez bien attention au pouce droit, n'est pas?”

The Superior is quite grave, however, every one laughs, and then the serious part of the proceedings begins.

The very little ones are not nervous. Most of them are good, even the naughty ones only get a very gentle homily from the Superior. Then their cla.s.s-mistress claps her hands smartly and they get up and file out of the room, it not being considered politic to let _les pet.i.tes_ hear the record of that pen of black sheep, _les moyennes_.

The indictments become more serious. Marie Therese, twice impertinent to a mistress, taking no trouble over her lessons, worst of all, taking no trouble to cure that trick of which we have complained so often--sitting with her knees crossed.

”Even in the chapel, Ma Mere Superieure.”

This is very bad! It is unladylike, it is against all rules, it is extremely immodest.... And what an example!

Marie Therese, says the Superior decisively, can abandon all hope of obtaining the green ribbon of an _aspirante enfant de Marie_ until she has reformed her ways. The mention of a premiere in literature gains no approving smile from any one and Marie Therese sits down in tears.

Gabrielle, Marthe, Sadie--all through the three cla.s.ses of the _moyenne_ division of the school, with very few stainless reports and two or three disastrous ones.

Then _les grandes_. The first of these, in the lowest section, is a name to which the reader, a French woman, always takes exception. She finally compresses her lips and renders it as: ”Kevinnie!”

Queenie is always cool and unmoved as she stands up, and Alex always looks at her. At this particular _seance_, the April one, she took her glances more or less surrept.i.tiously, miserably aware that she had not enough self-control to refrain from them and so avoid risking a rebuke later on.

Queenie held no premiere. She was always last in her form, undistinguished at music, drawing, needlework, anything requiring application or talent alike. But her perfectly serene complacency was more or less justified by the exaggerated applause of her companions at her faultless ”conduct” marks and the a.s.surance of her cla.s.s-mistress, always given readily, that she was ”tres docile, tres appliquee.”

Queenie's popularity was independent of anything extraneous to herself.

The Superior leant forward and asked a question in a low voice.

”Non, ma Mere Superieure, non.”

The denial of a possible accusation, of which Alex guessed the purport, was emphatic. She felt glad and relieved, but had no suspicions as to the indictment following on her own name.

”Alexandra Clare,” said Mere Alphonsine sonorously, and Alex stood up.

She no longer felt self-conscious over the ordeal, and was indifferent to the habitual litany of complaints as to her unlearnt lessons, disregard of the rule of silence, and frequent bad marks for disorder and unpunctuality. But to the accusations which she knew by heart, and shared with the majority of the _moyenne cla.s.se_, came a quite unexpected addition, hissed out with a sort of dramatic horror by Mere Alphonsine:

”Alex recherche Kevinnie sans cesse, ma Mere Superieure.”

Only those familiar with the code of _pensionnaire_ discipline in Belgium during the years when Alex Clare and her contemporaries were at school, can gauge the full heinousness of the offence, gravest in the conventual decalogue.

Even Alex, although she had been scolded and punished and made the subject of innumerable homilies, some of them pityingly reproachful, and others explanatorily so, on the same question, felt as though she had never before realized the extent of her own perversion.

She stood up, her hands in the regulation position, pushed under the hideous black-stuff pelerine that fell from her stiff, hard, white collar to the shapeless waistband of her skirt, the whole uniform carefully designed to conceal and obscure the lines of the figure beneath it.

Overwhelmed with uncomprehending misery and acute shame, she heard two or three of the mistresses add each her quota, for the most part regretfully and with an evident sense of duty overcoming reluctance, to the evidence against her.