Part 47 (2/2)

”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 grat.i.tude to G.o.d 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 ap.r.o.n with both hands, and after looking at the nun silently for a moment, she showed her that it contained two tiny, struggling kittens. ”Les pet.i.ts 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 a.s.signed 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 pa.s.sed far beyond her own control.

It was as though she could never stop crying again.

XXI

Father Farrell

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.

n.o.body asked her any questions. One or two of the nuns looked at her compa.s.sionately, 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 of _bouillon_ for dinner, but it was n.o.body'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 ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mference of her right arm.

It seemed incredible.

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