CHAPTER LX

THE CONVENT BELL

The slanting rays of the setting sun lay, in golden bands, upon the flags of the Convent cloister.

Complete silence reigned.

The White Ladies had returned from Vespers. Each, in the solitude of her own cell, was spending, in prayer and meditation, the hour until the Refectory bell should ring.

The great door into the cloisters stood wide.

Mother Sub-Prioress appeared in the far distance, moving down the pa.s.sage. As she pa.s.sed between the long line of closed doors, she turned her face quickly from side to side, pausing occasionally to listen, ear laid against the panelling.

Presently she stepped from the cool shadow into the sunny brightness of the cloister.

She did not blink, as old Mary Antony used to blink. Her small eyes peered from out her veil as sharply in sunshine as in shadow.

Yet was there something curiously furtive about Mother Sub-Prioress, when she entered the cloister. Listening at the doors in the cell pa.s.sage, she had been merely official, acting with a precise celerity which bespoke long practice. Now she hesitated; looked around as if to make sure she was not observed, and obviously held, with her left hand, something concealed.

Moving along the cloister, she seated herself upon the stone slab in the archway overlooking the lawn and the pieman's tree; then drew forth from beneath her scapulary, the worn leathern wallet which had belonged to the old lay-sister, Mary Antony.

At the same moment there came a gentle flick of wings, and the robin alighted on the stone coping, not three feet from the elbow of Mother Sub-Prioress.

Very bright-eyed, and tall on his legs, was Mary Antony's little vain man. With his head on one side, he looked inquiringly at Mother Sub-Prioress; and Mother Sub-Prioress, from out the curtain of her veil, frowned back at him.

There was a solemn quality in the complete silence. No naughty tales of bakers' boys or piemen. No gay chirps of expectation. Receiving cheese from Mother Sub-Prioress, bestowed for conscience' sake, partook of the nature of a sacred ceremony. Yet the robin had come for his cheese, and the Sub-Prioress had come to give it to him.

Presently she slowly opened the wallet, took therefrom some choice morsels, and strewed them on the coping.

"Here, bird," she said, grimly; "I cannot let thee miss thy cheese because the foolish old creature who taught thee to look for it, comes this way no more. Take it and begone!"

This was the daily formula.

The "jaunty little layman," undismayed--though the look was austere, and the voice, forbidding--hopped gaily nearer, pecking eagerly. No gaping mouths now waited his return. His nestlings were grown and flown. At last he could afford to feast himself.

Mother Sub-Prioress turned her back upon the coping and stared at the archway opposite. She had no wish to see the bird's enjoyment.

Then a strange thing happened.

Having pecked up all he wanted, the robin turned his bright eye upon the motionless figure, seated so near him, wrapped in the aloofness of an impenetrable silence.

Excepting in her dying moments, Mary Antony's much loved little bird had never adventured nearer to her than to hop along the coping, pecking at her fingers when, to test his boldness, she reached out and with them covered the cheese.

Yet now, with a gentle flick of wings, lo, he alighted on the knee of Mother Sub-Prioress! Then, while she scarce dared breathe, for wonder and amaze, hopped to her arm and pecked gently at her veil.

Whereupon something broke in the cold heart of Mother Sub-Prioress.

Tears ran slowly down the thin face. She would not stir nor lift her hand to wipe them away, and they fell in heavy drops upon her folded fingers.

At length she spoke, in a broken whisper.

"Oh, thou little winged thing," she said, "who so easily could'st fly from me! Dost thou use those wings of liberty to draw yet nearer? In this place of high walls and narrow cells, they who have not full freedom, use to the full what freedom they possess, to turn, at my approach and fly from me. Not one if she could choose, would choose to come to me. . . . Is there any honour so great as that of being feared by all? Is there any loneliness so great as by all to be hated? That honour, little bird, is mine; also that loneliness. Who then hath sent thee thus to essay to take both from me?"

Heavy tears continued to fall upon the clasped hands; the worn face was distorted by mental suffering. The frozen soul of Mother Sub-Prioress having melted, the iron of self-knowledge was entering into it, causing the dull ache of a pain unspeakable. Yet she dared not sob, lest the heaving of her bosom should frighten away the little bird perched so lightly on her arm.

This evidence of the trust in her of a little living thing, was the one rope to which Mother Sub-Prioress clung in those first moments, during which the black waters of remorse and despair pa.s.sed over her head--a rope made of frail enough strands, G.o.d knows: bright eyes alert, small clinging feet, a pair of folded wings. Yet do the frailest threads of love and trust, make a safer rope to which to cling when shipwreck threatens the heart, than the iron chains of obligation and duty.

Presently a sordid doubt seized upon Mother Sub-Prioress. Had the robin finished the cheese, and come to her thus, merely to ask for more?

Very slowly she ventured to turn her head, until the stone coping at her elbow came into her range of vision.

Then a glow of pride and happiness warmed her heart. Three--four--five fragments remained! Not for greed or favour had this little wild thing of his own free will drawn near.

For what, then? . . .

Mother Sub-Prioress whispered the answer; and as she whispered it, her tears fell afresh; but now they were tears without bitterness; a healing fount seemed to well up within her softening heart.

For love? Yea, verily! For love of her, those small brown wings had brought him near, those bright eyes were unafraid.

"For love of me," she whispered. "For love of me."

When at length he chirped and flew, she still sat motionless, listening as he sang his evening song high up in the pieman's tree.

Then she rose and swept the untouched fragments back into the wallet.

There was triumph in the action.

"For love!" she said. "Not of that which I brought and gave, but of that which he thought me to be."

Slowly she left the cloister, moving, with bent head, until she reached the open door of the empty chamber which had been the Reverend Mother's.

Before long this chamber would be hers. At noon she had received word from the Bishop that it was his intention to appoint her to be Prioress, for the years which yet remained of the Reverend Mother's term of office.

She had experienced a sinister pleasure in being thus promoted to this high office by the Bishop, owing to the certainty that had the usual election by ballot taken place, her name would not have been inscribed by a single member of the Community.

Yet now, in this strangely softened mood, she began wistfully to desire that there might be looks of pleasure and satisfaction on at least a few faces, when the announcement should be made on the morrow.

Mother Sub-Prioress pa.s.sed into the cell, and closed the door.

She was drawn, by the glow of the sunset, to the oriel window. But on her way thither she found herself unexpectedly arrested before the marble group of the Virgin and Child.

Mother Sub-Prioress never could see a naked babe without experiencing a feeling of irritation against those who had failed to provide it with suitable clothing. Possibly this was why she had hurriedly looked the other way if her eye chanced to fall upon the beautiful sculpture in the Prioress's cell.

Now, for the first time, she really saw it.

She stood and gazed; then knelt, and tried to understand.

The tenderness reached her heart and shook it. The encircling arms, the loving breast, the watchful mother-eyes; the exquisite human love, called forth by the necessity, the dependence, the helplessness of a little child.