Chapter VII: St. John Baptist's Day, June 24

TO my great surprise, I myself was summoned to the Bishop's presence last evening. He was sitting in a great chair in the parlor, and received me graciously and kindly.

"Be not alarmed, my daughter," said he, seeing that I trembled, for indeed I was frightened, not knowing what to think or expect. "I only wish to ask you a few questions. I dare say there is nothing wrong."

And then to my surprise, he began questioning me about my father's visit, and the motives which had led me to the convent. I told him all, not knowing any reasons for concealment. Then he asked me whether I had seen my cousin since I left home. Very much surprised, I answered, "No, my Lord, I have had no chance to see him. He hath been in London, with my Lord, his uncle, and I have not stirred outside these walls since I came hither."

"And you have held no communication with him by letter or otherwise?" asked the Bishop.

I told him how I had sent him a book of prayers by my father, with Mother Superior's approbation.

"And did he send nothing to you—no lock of hair or other love token?"

I was vexed enough, but I could not forbear a smile. "My Lord," said I, "my father did assuredly bring me a lock of hair, taken from the head of a very young gentleman, which I will show you." And I took from my pocket my little Latin Psalter and showed him the babe's little curl fastened to one of the blank leaves. My Lord looked at it and smiled also.

"A very young gentleman indeed, I should say," he remarked. "Surely, it is the hair of a young infant."

"Yes, my Lord, of my sister's first child, about six weeks old. She sent it me by my father, and I thought no harm in keeping it."

"And was there naught else?"

"Truly, my mother's rosary," I answered; and then seeing his manner so kind, I ventured to ask him if there was anything wrong in my keeping and using it. He told me "none at all, but that I should strive to disengage my heart from earthly affections, as became a good religious."

Then he questioned me about my vigil in the Chapel and my motives therefor, to all of which I returned him clear and plain answers, having naught to conceal. Finally he asked me "whether I thought I had a true vocation?"

"Do not be fluttered," said he, kindly. "Take time, and tell me what you think."

I told him I did not know how to answer, because I had never fairly considered the subject. I had been brought up to think of the convent as my home, and most of my life had been passed within its walls. I had promised my mother to become a nun, and I meant to keep my word, and to do my duty as well as I could; but I could not pretend to say that I felt or ever had felt any such strong drawing toward the cloister as some of the other Sisters professed, and as I had read of in the lives of the Saints.

"Well, well! That will perhaps come," said my Lord, kindly. "Meantime, daughter, I am pleased with your frankness, and the simplicity with which you have answered my questions. Father Fabian and the Superior both speak well of you, and I doubt not you will be a credit to this house and to your order; specially if you use your knowledge as you have begun. See, I am going to give you this reliquary as a remembrance, and to increase your devotion. It contains a small fragment of the true cross, and once belonged to a very holy Abbess, who understood the Latin tongue as well as yourself, or perhaps better. But, my child, do not you let your gifts puff you up or lead you to look down on others. Any one who uses knowledge in that way had far better be without it. Remember that you have nothing which you did not receive, and that any gifts you have belong not to yourself to serve or exalt yourself withal, but to your God and your order."

And with that, he gave me his blessing in the kindest manner, and dismissed me, well pleased with the interview. It is very odd that he should have asked me such questions, however. As if I would send love tokens to any one, let alone poor Dick, with whom I have played all my life.

As I came out from the parlor into the passage, and from thence to the cloister door, I saw Sister Catherine and Sister Mary Paula whispering together. They stopped talking when I came out, and looked eagerly towards me.

"So you have been confessing to the Bishop?" says Sister Mary Paula.

"Not exactly confessing!" said I. "My Lord did me the honor to send for me, and asked me some questions. He has been very kind, and has given me a precious relic."

And I showed them the reliquary. I may be mistaken, but it seemed to me that Sister Catherine looked positively disappointed.

"That's the way things go in this world!" said Sister Mary Paula. "I have been in this house twelve years, and nobody can say I ever missed a fast or a service, and yet nobody gives me a relic or takes any notice of me, or puts me into any office. Well, well, 'kissing goes by favor,' is an old saying, as true here as anywhere else!"

"You ought to be thankful, Sister, that you have such humiliations put upon you," answered Sister Catherine. "You know nothing is so precious as humility. Come, let us go to our duty, dear Sister, and be thankful that we dwell in the dust and are trampled on by the foot of pride. 'Tis a far safer and more blessed place, and we ought to rejoice to be despised."

With that, before I could hinder, she knelt down and kissed my feet, and walked away, looking, I am sure, anything but humble. I don't see either why one should rejoice in being despised, since 'tis a wicked thing to despise people.

I heard Sister Catherine summoned to the parlor, as were several other Sisters, and Mother Gertrude as well.

This morning his Lordship called the whole family together, and made them one of the very best discourses I ever heard in all my life. I wish I could hear such an one every day. I am sure I should be the better. He began by commending highly the order and neatness of the house, the garden, and specially the library and sacristy. Then he said he had discovered some things which gave him pain, and of which he must needs speak. Here I saw Sister Catherine and Sister Mary Paula exchange glances. He went on to remark that he had discovered a spirit of jealousy and detraction, of fault-finding and tattling, which ought to exist in no family, least of all in a religious house, and one specially vowed to holy poverty, as we were. Then warming up—

"One would think, my children, that you should rejoice in each other's gifts and achievements. Instead thereof I find murmurs and complaints one of another, as if one Sister were injured because another is chosen to execute some special office or piece of work to which she is judged specially fitted. Sisters should be more ready to hide each other's faults than to betray them; but here a perfectly harmless and even religious act is reported to me as a flagrant breach of discipline."

Here again I saw an exchange of glances, quite of another kind.

"Ah, my daughters (the Bishop went on to say, as near as I can remember), these things ought not to be. Believe me, it is not the coarse habit, nor the sandals, nor the veils—no, nor the seclusion, nor the enclosure, nor even the watchings, and fastings, and many prayers, which make a true religious. All these things are good and holy, when well used; but they may all exist in company with many things utterly hateful to God and our blessed Lady. Let me show you in what true charity consisteth."

Then he repeated a description of charity so noble, so full, that methinks all Christian perfection was contained therein—as how a man might give all his goods in alms, and perform miracles, and even become a martyr, and yet be nothing better than a bit of sounding brass. Then showing what made true charity—even kindness, and patience, and gentleness, and humbleness, and thinking no evil, but hoping and believing the best at all times.

['Twas the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul, his first Epistle to the Corinthians which he recited, but I, who had never seen a New Testament at that time, did not know it.]

Then with a deep shade of sadness on his kind old face, such as I never saw before, he besought us to dwell in unity and love, that our prayers be not hindered, but that we might strive together for our house, our order, and the whole Church. He said we had fallen on evil times, and there was no telling what might happen; and he advised a special devotion to our Lady and our blessed founder, for the averting of judgments which even now threatened us; and so at last dismissed us with his blessing. I am sure I shall remember the discourse as long as I live, and I hope I shall be the better for it. I know very well I am altogether too prone to judge and to impute evil, or at the least foolish motives to good actions, and specially to judge hardly of those who in any way offend my taste.

[I know now, what I did not then, that our house was threatened with total destruction. Not long before Cardinal Wolsey had founded his college at Oxford, and he had obtained a bull from the Pope for suppressing some thirty of the small religious houses and to endow his said college with their revenues; and now there was talk of another suppression. We have in our West country a pithy proverb about showing the cat the way to the cream, which his Eminence might have remembered, if he ever chanced to hear it.]

After mass and sermon, it being a great feast day, we had a better dinner than ordinary, with abundance of sweetmeats and cakes, and recreation all the afternoon till vespers, for which I was very glad. I was cheered by the Bishop's discourse, and yet humbled by it, and I wanted time to think it over: so I slipped away from the rest, and with a garment I was making for Mary Dean's babe, betook myself to the garden chapel, where, having first said my prayers before the shrine, I sat down on a low and roughly hewn stone bench outside the door, and began to think and work at the same time.

I know not how it is, but I can always meditate to better purpose when I have something else to do. In our set hours of meditation I am always possessed to think of any and everything but the subject given us by Mother Superior. It is just then that all my working patterns come into my head. Well, I was sitting sewing a long seam, now working diligently, now stopping to listen to the birds and watch them feeding their young ones (now fully fledged and clamorously following their patient parent from tree to tree), when Amice came and sat down beside me.

"Methinks you spend your holiday soberly," said she, after a little silence, "working away in recreation time."

"I have not done work enough to spoil my recreation," I answered, gayly, "but you know my way of always liking something in my hands. I did not see that any one wanted me, so I came to this solitary place to think about the Bishop's sermon. 'Twas a noble discourse, was it not?"

"Yes, I suppose so," said Amice, and she sighed deeply.

"I thought you would have liked it," I said.

"It just added to my troubles, like everything else. Rosamond, I wish I had never been born, or else that I had been born a milkmaid."

"I don't fancy life is easier to milkmaids than to any one else," I answered. "I think it is as easy here as anywhere, don't you?"

"No!" said she, with a kind of vehemence. "I think it is hard, intolerable, all but impossible. It is all a mass of contradictions from first to last."

"Hush, hush!" I said, alarmed. "Say what you like to me, but don't speak so loud. Remember what we heard this morning about eavesdropping. I do wish you would tell me what troubles you so, dear. Perhaps it would not seem so bad, if you talked it over."

She laid her head on my lap and cried as if her heart would break.

"O Rosamond, I shall never be a Saint—never!" said she, sobbing. "The more I try the worse I am."

"What now?" said I.

"You know how I have fasted and prayed, lately," she continued. "I have denied myself everything—even converse with you, Rosamond. I have striven to put down all affection for one more than another, and have associated with those I liked the least—"

"I wondered what made you so intimate with Sister Frances, and Sister Mary Paula, and so cold to me," I said. "I was afraid I had offended you."

"I know you were, and I made up my mind to bear the unjust suspicion and not justify myself in your eyes, as another means of humiliation. I have eaten only the coarsest food, and worn sackcloth next my skin, and lain all night upon the floor—and it is all—of no use—I only feel—just as cross as I can be!" Here she cried afresh, and I soothed her as well as I could. "I read in the life of St Francis how the Saint requested the bird to stop singing, and tamed the wolf," she continued, presently, "and I thought I would try to tame Sultan our peacock; but when I kindly requested him to leave his corn for the hens, he wouldn't; and when (first asking the intercession of St. Francis) I tried to induce him to give it up to me—he—he pecked me," sobbed Amice, with another burst of grief, and she showed me her hand, all raw and sort in the palm where the ugly creature had wounded her.

"Amice," said I, when she was a little calmer, "why don't you tell all these things to Father Fabian?"

"I did, last night," said she; "and he told me I was making myself ill to no purpose, and that the exercises appointed were enough for me. But St. Clare and the other Saints used a great many more austerities than these."

"I suppose their spiritual superiors allowed them," I said.

"Then why can't mine allow me? Unless I can be a Saint I don't care to be a religious at all. I wish I could go somewhere else—to some of the strict houses which Sister Catherine and Mother Mary Monica tell us of—and then I might have a chance, perhaps."

"And would you leave Mother Gertrude—the only relation you have in the world?" I asked her.

"A religious has naught to do with family affection, Rosamond. Ought I not to disregard every earthly tie, if thereby I can advance toward holiness?"

The bell sounded for vespers just then, so we could talk no more; but I am very much puzzled. I am sure my father and my own relations must always be more to me than any one else can be. It does not seem to me either as if Amice were going to work in the right way to be a Saint. I think a real Saint would be the last person to know that he was one.

When we met at supper, Sister Catherine remained on her knees in a corner all the time we were eating, and when we had finished, she kissed the feet of each of us as we went out, and begged our pardon for her many offences.

"See how humble dear Sister Catherine is," said Sister Mary Paula. "She begged to be allowed to perform this public penance because she said she had sinned against charity."

I suppose it was very good of her, but I can't help thinking it would have been more really humble if she had repented and apologized in private. It seems to me that such a show of humility might make one proud of being humble. But I dare say she is right and I am wrong.