The White Ladies of Worcester - Florence Louisa Barclay (best classic books of all time txt) 📗

eyeing the Bishop's meditative hand suspiciously, "then betook herself to the outer gates, told the porteress that she had your orders, Reverend Father, to report to you if the Reverend Mother again elected to pass a night in vigil and in fasting, because you and she--you and _she_ forsooth!--were made anxious by the too constant fasting and the too prolonged vigils of the Reverend Mother. Mary Mark very properly refused to allow the old"----

"Lay-sister," interposed the Bishop, sternly.

Mother Sub-Prioress gasped; then made obeisance:--"the old lay-sister to leave the Convent. Whereupon Sister Antony sent Mary Mark to deliver the Reverend Mother's message to me, bribing her, with the promise of a gift from you, my lord, to leave her the key. When the porteress returned, Mary Antony was gone, having left the great doors ajar, and the key within the lock. She has not been seen since. Did she reach the Palace, and speak with you, my lord? Is she now in safety at the Palace?"

"Nay," said the Bishop gravely. "Sister Mary Antony hath not been seen at the Palace."

"Alack-a-day!" exclaimed Sister Abigail; "she will have fallen by the way, and perished! She was too old to face the world or attempt to reach the city."

"Peace, girl!" commanded the Sub-Prioress. "Thy comments and thy wailings mend not the matter, and do but incense the Lord Bishop."

Nothing could have appeared less incensed than the Bishop's benign countenance. But he had spoken sternly to Mother Sub-Prioress, therefore she endeavoured to put herself in the right by charging him, at the first opportunity, with unreasonable irritation.

The Bishop reassured Sister Abigail, with a smile; then, pointing toward the closed door: "Proceed with your recital, Mother Sub-Prioress," he said. "You have as yet given me no proof confirming your belief that the Prioress is within the cell."

"When the absence of Mary Antony became known, my lord," continued Mother Sub-Prioress, "we felt it right to acquaint the Reverend Mother with the old lay-sister's flight. I, myself, knocked upon this door; but the only reply I received was the continuous low chanting of prayers, from within; not so much a clear chanting, as a murmur; and whenever, during the night, nuns listened at the door, or ventured again to tap, the sound of the Reverend Mother's voice, reciting psalms or prayers, reached them. As you may remember, my lord, the ground upon the other side of the building is on a lower level than the cloister lawn. The windows of the Reverend Mother's cell are therefore raised above the shrubbery and it is not possible to see into the chamber. But Sister Mary Rebecca, who went round after dark, noted that the Reverend Mother had lighted her tapers and drawn her curtains. This morning the light is extinguished, the curtains are drawn back, and the casement flung open. Moreover at the usual hour for rising, the Reverend Mother rang the bell, as is her custom, to waken the nuns--rang it from within her cell, by means of this rope and pulley."

"Ah," said the Bishop.

"Sister Abigail, up already, thereupon ran to the Reverend Mother's cell; and, the bell still swinging, tapped and asked if she might bring in milk and bread. Once more the only answer was the low chanting of prayers. Also, Sister Abigail declares, the voice was so weak and faltering, she scarce knew it for the Reverend Mother's. And since then, my lord, there has been silence within the cell, and a sore sense of fear within our hearts; for it is unlike the Reverend Mother to keep her door locked, when the entire community calls and knocks without."

The Bishop lifted his hand.

"In that speak you truly, Mother Sub-Prioress," said he. "Also I must tell you without further delay, that the Prioress is not within her cell."

"_Not_ within her cell!" exclaimed Mother Sub-Prioress.

"Not within her cell!" shrieked a score of terrified voices, like seagulls calling to each other, before a gathering storm.

"The Prioress left the Convent yesterday afternoon," said the Bishop, "with my knowledge and approval; travelling at once, with a sufficient escort, to a place some distance from Worcester, where I also spent the night. I have come to bring you a message from His Holiness the Pope, sent to me direct from Rome. . . . The Holy Father bids me say that your Prioress has been moved on by me, with his full knowledge and approval, to a place where she is required for higher service. Perhaps I may also tell you," added the Bishop, looking with kindly sympathy upon all the blankly disconcerted faces, "that this morning I myself performed a solemn rite, for which I held the Pope's especial mandate, setting apart your late Prioress for this higher service. She grieved that it was not possible to bid you farewell. She sends you loving greetings, her thanks for loyalty and obedience, and prays that the blessing of the Lord may ever be with you."

The Bishop ceased speaking.

At first there was an amazed silence.

Then the unexpected happened. Mother Sub-Prioress, without any warning, broke into passionate weeping.

Never before had Mother Sub-Prioress been known to weep. The sight petrified the Convent. Yet somehow all knew that she wept because, in the hard old nut which did duty for her heart, there was a kernel of deep love for their noble Prioress.

The other nuns wept, because Mother Sub-Prioress wept.

The sobbing became embarrassing in its completeness. Wheresoever the Bishop looked he was confronted by a weeping nun.

Suddenly Mother Sub-Prioress dried her eyes, holding herself once more in control. It had just occurred to her that the Bishop's word could not be taken against the evidence of all their senses! On that very morning, at five o'clock the Convent call to rise had been rung from _within_ the Prioress's cell!

So Mother Sub-Prioress dried her eyes, punished her nose for sharing in the general breakdown, and looking with belligerent eye at the Bishop, said: "_If_ the Reverend Mother _be_ not within her cell, _perhaps_ it will please you, my lord, to _inform_ the Convent who is within it!"

"That point," said the Bishop, "can speedily be settled."

He took from his girdle the Prioress's master-key, handed over to him before he left Warwick.

Fitting it into the lock, he opened the door of the cell, and entered, followed by the Sub-Prioress and a crowd of palpitating, eager nuns.

A few paces from the door the Bishop paused, signing to Mother Sub-Prioress to come forward, but restraining, with uplifted hand, those who pressed in behind her.

The chamber was very still.

The chair of the Prioress was empty.

But, before the shrine of the Madonna, there lay, stretched upon the floor, the unconscious form of the old lay-sister, Mary Antony.


CHAPTER XXXVIII


THE BISHOP KEEPS VIGIL

Old Mary Antony lay dying.

The Bishop had not allowed her to be carried from the cell of the Prioress, to her own.

He had commanded that the Reverend Mother's couch be moved from the inner room and placed before the shrine of the Virgin. On this lay Mary Antony, while the Bishop himself kept watch beside her.

The evening light came in through the open casement, illumining the calm old face, from which the soothing hand of death was already smoothing the wrinkles.

Five hours had passed since they found her.

It had taken long to restore her to consciousness; and so soon as she awoke to her surroundings, and recognised Mother Sub-Prioress, and the many faces around her, she relapsed into silence, refusing to answer any questions, yet keeping her eyes anxiously fixed upon the door.

Seeing which, Sister Teresa slipped from the room and ran secretly to tell the Lord Bishop, who had paid but a brief visit to the Palace and was now pacing the lawn below the cloisters.

The Bishop came at once; when, seeing him enter, Mary Antony gave a cry, striving to raise herself from the pillows.

Moving to the bedside, the Bishop laid his hand upon the shaking hands, which had been clasped at sight of him.

An eager question was in the eyes lifted to his.

The Bishop bent over the couch.

"Yes," he said, and smiled.

The anxious look faded. The eyes closed. A triumphant smile illumined the dying face.

Turning, the Bishop asked a few whispered questions of the Sub-Prioress.

Mary Antony had taken a sip of wine, but seemed to find it impossible to partake of food. She had been so long without, that now nature refused it.

"Undoubtedly she is dying," said Mother Sub-Prioress, not unkindly, but in the matter-of-fact tone of one to whom the hard outline of a fact is unsoftened by the atmosphere of imagination or of sympathy.

"I know it," said the Bishop, in low tones. "Therefore am I come to confess our sister and to administer the final rites and consolations of the Church. I have with me all that is needed. You may now withdraw, and leave me to watch alone beside Sister Mary Antony."

"We sent for Father Peter," began Mother Sub-Prioress, "but she paid no heed to any of his questions, neither would she"----

The Bishop took one step toward Mother Sub-Prioress, with uplifted hand, pointing to the door.

Mother Sub-Prioress hastened out.

The Bishop followed her into the passage, where a waiting crowd of nuns created that atmosphere of excited tension, which seizes certain minds at the near approach of death.

"I bid you all to go to your cells," said the Bishop, "there to spend the next hour in earnest prayer for the passing soul of this aged nun who, during so long a time, has lived and worked in this Convent. Let every door be closed. I keep the final vigil alone. When I need help I shall ring the Convent bell."

Immovable in the passage stood the Bishop, until every figure had vanished; every door had closed.

Then he re-entered the Prioress's cell, and shut the door.

He placed the holy oil on the step, before the shrine of the Madonna, just where old Antony had knelt when she had prayed our blessed Lady to be pleased to sharpen her old wits.

Then he drew forth a tiny flask of rare Italian workmanship, let fall a few drops from it into a spoonful of wine, and firmly poured the liquid between the old lay-sister's parted lips.

One anxious moment; then he heard her swallow.

At that, the Bishop drew the Prioress's chair to the side of the couch, and sat down to await events.

In a few moments the stertorous breathing ceased, the open mouth closed. Mary Antony sighed thrice, as a little child that has wept before sleeping sighs in its sleep.

Then she opened her eyes, and fixed them on the Bishop.

"Reverend Father"--she began, then chuckled, gleefully. Her voice had come back, and with it a great activity of brain, though the hands upon the coverlet seemed to belong to someone else, and she hoped they would not rise up and strike her. Her feet, she could not feel at all; but, seeing that she was most comfortably lying there where she best loved to be, why should she require feet?