ROBERT WILSON.



CONVENT LIFE AND WORK.

To those who have had but little opportunity to examine the inner workings of the Catholic Church the subject of the conventual life has always been something of a puzzle. Of course it has been difficult for them to obtain a personal insight into its details, just as it would be difficult to gain admittance into the mosque of St. Sophia or a Hindu community of religious. Curiosity, unsatisfied, betakes itself to hearsay, and since those who know most are generally most silent about their knowledge, it is to the gossip of ignorance or prejudice that curiosity looks for an answer. Distorted views or imaginary descriptions end by being received into the mill of public opinion, and issue thence ground into gospel truth and invested with mysterious (because fictitious) interest. It is strange that a phase of life which is in constant practice at the present day, often within a stone's throw of our own doors, and which has personal ramifications in the families of our neighbors and acquaintances, should still be so much of a phenomenon to the public mind. In England, France, Italy, Germany and America I have been familiarly acquainted with it, have studied its principles and its details under many varying forms, and never found it less interesting because it was not mysterious. Human, fallible beings are the inhabitants of monasteries either for males or females, with individual peculiarities and different sympathies—by no means machines, but free and intelligent agents, each with a character as individual as that of separate flowers in a large garden—full of personality and of human imperfection.

In Rome, not far from the Fountain of Trevi—of whose waters it is said that they have the power to ensure the return to Rome of any one who has drunk of them in a cup not heretofore devoted to common purposes—is the spacious convent called San Domenico e Sisto. Here the first convent of Dominican friars was established, and the spot is historic ground in the annals of the order of Preachers. In the turbulent thirteenth century, when papal, feudal and democratic parties opposed each other in Rome, and the vigorous sap of half-tamed barbarian life still coursed through the pulses of Italy, Saint Dominic rose like a reformer, a lawgiver and a peace-maker. On the other side of the Tiber, entrenched behind baronial walls and fiercely protected by baronial champions, was a convent of women whose practice of their vows had become too relaxed for such a bad example to be allowed to remain unreproved. The ecclesiastical authorities wished peremptorily to disestablish the convent and filter its inmates through some neighboring religious houses more zealous and more edifying in their conduct. But the nuns, who were mostly of noble families, appealed to their charters, their immunities and exemption from papal jurisdiction. Their fathers and brothers, the formidable barons who held within the papal city many strongholds well garrisoned, took up their quarrel and dared the world to dispossess the refractory sisterhood. Saint Dominic had just brought his friars to the dilapidated house then known as San Sisto, had caused rapid repairs to be made, and in his fervor had created round himself a nucleus of ardent reformers. The Gordian knot was referred to him, and with characteristic abruptness he promised to cut it at once. He came alone to the gates of the convent, presented no credentials from pope or cardinal, and asked an interview with the abbess. He spoke of the holiness of an austere life, the reward of those that "follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth," the merit of obedience, the need of reform, the great work that his order was doing for God, and the call for more laborers in the field: he proposed to the nuns to be his helpers among their own sex, and his coheiresses in the heavenly reward of the future. His eloquence and zeal soon melted the haughty resolve of the rebellious but still noble-minded women. Roused to a new sense of power and responsibility, they embraced his rigid rule, and with the enthusiasm of their sex, that never halts midway in reform, became models of austerity. The better to signify to the world the spiritual change wrought in their temper, they migrated from the abode which they had sworn to make the symbol and palladium of their independence, and went to San Sisto, Saint Dominic taking his monks to repeople the convent across the Tiber left vacant by the submissive sisterhood.

It is with this new house, henceforth called San Domenico e Sisto, that one of my earliest recollections of conventual life is connected. The order is one which enjoins strict enclosure. The dress is of coarse white serge or flannel, consisting of a long, narrow tunic with flowing sleeves drawn over tight ones of linen; a scapular or stole (i.e., a piece of straight stuff half a yard broad worn hanging from the shoulders both behind and before); a leathern girdle round the waist, from which hangs a rosary, large, common and set in steel; strong, thick sandals; a linen wimple enveloping the face and hiding the ears, neck and roots of the hair; a woolen veil, black for the professed nuns, white for the novices, and of white linen for the lay sisters; and over all an immense black cloak, falling around the figure in statuesque folds.

In this order, and almost invariably in every other, a candidate is admitted at first as a postulant for a period of six months—a sort of preliminary trial of her fitness for the religious life. She wears ordinary clothes during this time—plain and black, of course, but not of any prescribed shape. Sometimes, however, she is required by custom to wear a plain black cap. After six months she is admitted as a novice—i.e., she solemnly puts off the secular dress and wears the habit of the order, making the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience for the space of one year only. The details of the ceremony vary in different orders, but the ceremony itself is called in all by the generic name of "clothing" or "taking the white veil." In orders where a white woolen veil is the badge of profession (these are not many) a linen one is equally the mark of the novice and the lay sister. Although there exists for convenience' sake a distinction between choir-nuns and lay sisters—the former paying a dowry to the common fund on the day of their entrance, and the latter bringing their manual service to the house instead of any offering—still, the difference is not spiritual, and beyond the mere distribution of labor is not practically discernible. In orders where the education of youth is the primary object, the lay sisters, under the supervision of the choir-nun to whose charge the housekeeping is directly entrusted, perform all the menial service, which would otherwise make too many inroads on the time of the teaching nuns; but in other orders, the Carmelites for instance, the lowest work, be it of the kitchen, the laundry or the chamber, is undertaken in turn by every member of the community. When Madame Louise, the daughter of Louis XV. of France, became a Carmelite nun, the first task assigned her was the washing of coarse dishes and the sweeping of floors. A parallel case is that of the Cistercian monks, who to this day, at their famous farm-monastery at Mount St. Bernard, England, are bound by their rule to labor with their hands so many hours a day. No exception is made for the abbot himself; and when we visited the establishment a few years ago we had to wait some time for the abbot, who was digging in a distant field. Scholar and savant are not exempt any more than the humblest member of the brotherhood; and as it is a very learned order, and attracts many recent converts to Catholicism, it is not infrequently that one recognizes in the monk-laborer, digging potatoes or hoeing turnips, some Anglican clergyman of delicate nurture and scholarly renown. To this monastery, entirely self-supported by its extensive farm, is attached a boys' reformatory, one of whose products is the most excellent butter known in England. Tailoring, shoemaking, carpentry, turning, etc. are all taught under the supervision of the monks: those among the boys who wish it are helped to emigrate, and others apprenticed at the proper time to the trades they have already been taught at Mount St. Bernard.

To resume our sketch of the Dominican nuns in Rome. It is the custom in Italy for a young lady about to "enter religion" to choose a godmother or madrina, a lady of proper age and mature experience, who acts as her chaperon during the few weeks preceding the "clothing." She comes forth from the convent where she has been a postulant, and, dressed in the garb of the world, makes formal visits to all her relations, friends and patrons, assists at public ceremonies in the local churches, even visits some places of interest, such as museums and galleries. This is her solemn farewell to the world, and she is supposed thus to have another trial given to the steadfastness of her resolve, another chance to abandon it before it is too late. A young girl of an illustrious Roman family, but of very slender fortune, was about to enter the Dominican order at the time to which I allude, in 1853. Her only sister had for some years been a nun of a strictly enclosed order, and Mademoiselle G——, having chosen as her madrina an English Catholic lady who had been enabled to show her some kindness while still in the world, went to bid farewell to this elder sister. The meeting was very affecting: the sisters could not see each other face to face—a thick grating separated them. The elder had long been a spiritual guide to the younger: she had led her mind in the direction of the cloister, and now rejoiced sincerely that God had smoothed away the family difficulties and pecuniary embarrassments which for some time had stood in the way of her vocation. Still, natural affection was not stifled in the generous, unselfish heart of the cloistered nun, and she wept with her sister at the thought that, though the walls of the same city would hold them both till death, and hardly a few blocks of houses separate their convent homes, yet in the flesh they should never meet again. The English godmother sat in a remote corner of the cool, shady parlor, sympathizing in silence with the touching scene, but keeping as much in the background as etiquette and custom allowed, that she might not intrude on this last farewell. At length the curtain behind the grating fell, and the young girl had severed the tenderest link that bound her to the world. Many other visits were paid—some to friends of Mademoiselle G——'s parents (she had long been an orphan), some to ecclesiastical personages who had interested themselves to procure her admission into the Dominican community. With repeated blessings the young girl left their presence, every day advancing nearer to her spiritual bridal.

At last the day came. Early in the morning the madrina arrived at the convent with her two little girls of six and eight years old dressed in white as bridesmaids, or, as the Italian term angiolini has it, little angels. They bore delicate baskets filled with white flowers to strew before the "bride," and their office during the ceremony was to hold the novice's gloves, fan and handkerchief. The young girl herself, looking pale and earnest, walked up the aisle of the convent chapel in bridal robes of white silk, with a veil and wreath on her head, and round her neck a string of pearls, an heirloom in the G—— family. Her brother, the only male representative of her once powerful house, was present in the outer chapel, full of grief at a sacrifice which he had never countenanced, and ready to claim that morning the only legacy of his sister the promise of which he had been able to secure—the thick coils of her black hair when they should have been cut off preparatory to her taking the novice's veil. The scene was very solemn. The nuns sat in their carved stalls within the grating whose black bars divided them from the "bride" and her friends in the ante-chapel: the chant of psalms and versicles came down from a hidden gallery, and the priest in rich vestments stood at the foot of the altar within the railing. The service went on in the midst of a palpable hush; the very air seemed hardly to vibrate; the bride, attended by her two angiolini, left her gorgeous kneeling-chair and advanced to the open door in the grating, where the priest met her. Question and answer were interchanged in Italian, and the young girl vowed that of her own free will she left the world and joined the order of St. Dominic. Prayers in Latin followed, then again a chanted psalm, and Mademoiselle G—— was led away through the iron-grated door, which was then closed. It was not long ere she reappeared in the long close tunic of white serge, her head covered with a temporary veil of coarse linen and her feet shod in sandals. A procession of nuns, each bearing a lighted taper, escorted her to the foot of the altar (everything was visible through the grating), and she knelt before the officiating priest. A white woolen veil was handed to him, which he blessed with holy water, the sign of the cross and the prescribed ejaculations accompanying these rites: he then laid it on her head as a "symbol of the virgin modesty" to which she was now pledged. Two nuns were at hand to pin it into the right folds while a silver ring was being blessed in the same manner as the veil. This was placed on the ring-finger of the left hand as a "symbol of the intimate union and espousal with Christ" signified by her renunciation of the world. The scapular of white serge, similarly blessed, was then laid upon her shoulders as a type of the "yoke of obedience and sacrifice;" and lastly, the black cloak, signifying charity, covering and enveloping the whole person. Then in a loud, firm voice, instinct with passion and resolve, she read, standing, the formal declaration of her religious vows. When this was over the mother-superior led the novice, now Sister Maria Colomba, to a small table on which lay a bridal wreath of white roses and a crown of thorns. She asked her solemnly which was her choice in life, and the novice took up the crown of thorns and placed it on her head. This typical ceremony I never saw performed in any other order. Shortly after the crown of thorns was exchanged for that of roses, the superior saying, "Inasmuch as thou hast chosen the crown which thy Saviour wore, He rewards thee with that which is a shadow of the heavenly crown reserved for His spouses in heaven." This bridal token the new nun wears during the whole day.

To a few ladies and to the angiolini a special permission to enter the enclosure was given in honor of the day: a festive meal was served in the bare, cool refectory, the rule of silence being relaxed for the special occasion, and the nuns wearing a happy, child-like expression that hardly varied in the face of the youngest novice and that of the septuagenarian "mother." The strangers were shown through the dormitories, the kitchen, the laundry, the garden, the community-room, where embroidery, painting and study diversify the labors of the broom and the dishcloth, and everywhere the same exquisite neatness struck the eye. Everything used in the house was of the coarsest description—the linen like sack-cloth, but speckless; the delf as thick and rough as if made for sailors; the floors mostly of brick or stone; the furniture of unpainted deal. Over each bed, which is only a board on trestles covered with heavy sacking, is a common crucifix and a sprig of box or olive blessed on Palm Sunday. The sisters sleep in their tunics. The library is common property, but no one may use or read any book save by permission of the superioress. The rules of fasting and abstinence are not exactly the same in every convent of the order, but the broad rule is that meat should be eaten only on great holidays, vegetables and farinaceous preparations, such as most Italians are not unskilled in, forming the staple of the nuns' food. Fish is almost as rare a luxury as meat. Their bread is coarse and brown, and their drink indifferently water or a wine so sour that it is practically vinegar. Not that these nuns are not good cooks and bakers: witness the delicate sweetmeats, biscuits and pastry they offer to strangers on such festival days as the one just described, the fruit-preserves in blocks sold for their sustenance by the nuns at Funchal, Madeira, and the fairy frostwork of sugar seen on great occasions in French convents. No womanly art is a stranger to the deft fingers of cloistered nuns. Bookbinding is a pursuit well known among them, as is also the mounting in delicate filigree of the "Agnus Dei" or waxen representation of the Lamb of God, blessed by the pope at Easter and distributed throughout Christendom from the papal metropolis. Another convent industry is the preparation of the wafers used in the celebration of mass.

These Dominicanesses rise at four in the morning and dine at eleven, making after that only one slight meal in the evening—bread and vegetables, for instance, or a saucerful of macaroni. At stated times they assemble in the chapel for the singing of the "divine office," and always have an early mass, at which the whole community receives holy communion. This is administered by the priest through a square opening in the iron grating dividing the nuns from the altar. At eight, or at latest nine o'clock in the evening, all are in bed, whence they rise again at midnight (in some orders at two o'clock in the morning, but this custom involves rising somewhat later, generally five o'clock) for matins and lauds.

The duties of separate departments are judiciously divided among the sisters. There is the infirmarian; the econome, or housekeeper, to whose share falls the supplying of the larder; the librarian, the sacristan, the portress (often in cloistered orders this position, which is exceptional in its exemptions, involves the ordering of outside business matters), the care-taker of the garments and linen, the gardener, the secretary, the mistress and sub-mistress of novices. The house is managed like clockwork. Punctually as the bell rings each sister goes to the task appointed for that hour, and leaves it, no matter how important or absorbing it may be, for the duty appointed by the rule for the next division of time. Silence prevails among the sisters at almost all hours: for at most three times a day speech is permitted, and seldom for more than half an hour at a time. During meals one sister reads the Lives of the Saints aloud. Each in her turn takes the place of server at table. The superioress alone has power to dispense with the rule of silence in case of necessity, as she transacts most of the business, social or legal, of her community.

During the year of novitiate the novices are under the direct rule of the mistress of novices, whose authority over them is paramount, though she herself is of course under a vow of obedience to the superior. When a novice receives a visit from one in the world she is accompanied by the "mistress," and if the visitor be a near relation and a woman the curtain behind the grating is withdrawn; if only a friend, the visitor does not even see the nun, as the thick curtain is drawn, and the only communication possible is by speech. It is generally possible, on any necessity arising, to obtain a special permission to break through the rule of enclosure: this is done by applying to the superior-general of the order, or in Rome to the Holy Father, whose authority naturally supersedes all others. Sometimes the power to dispense lies with the local superior, but it is a prerogative seldom used, and wisely so. In every order the internal government of each house is of an elective form, but when once chosen the superiors exercise absolute authority. The community meets every three years (in some orders every year) and chooses by vote a superioress, an assistant superioress and a mistress of novices. Only the professed nuns have a vote, and the majority carry the day. These "officers," once appointed, rule the house and choose all minor deputies themselves. The heads alone of each house assemble at the death of the superior-general (or abbess, as she is styled in some of the more ancient orders) and choose another, equally by vote, the election being sometimes decided by only one vote. This assembly is called a "chapter." The generals of most orders reside in Rome.

The year after the "clothing" of Sister Maria Colomba we witnessed the final ceremony of her "profession"—that is, of her assuming the black veil and renewing her religious vows for life. Hitherto, she had been free to return to the world and marry: henceforth such a return (unless by a dispensation so rarely given that it is practically non-existent) would be sacrilege. The details of the ceremony vary in different orders, and with those which are not cloistered the scene is far less impressive. What we were going to see included the most solemn forms ever used. This time the whole service took place behind the grating: there were no "bridesmaids" now, no shadow of worldly pomp was borrowed to enhance the last and momentous consecration of religion. The novice knelt between the superior and the mistress of novices, each bearing a lighted taper. The white veil was taken from her head, and a black one, previously blessed with holy water sprinkled over it in the form of a cross, substituted: the low chant of the unseen choir of nuns sounded impressively as the echo of another world. Then came the renewal of the dread vows, binding now until death, and the voice of the young girl seemed firm though low: her face wore a calm, peaceful look, subdued by the solemn occasion, yet irrepressibly suggesting a joy unknown in the world, where joy is seldom free from passion. The most interesting ceremony, however, was yet to come. The slow chant shaped itself into the words of the psalm De Profundis, the special prayer which in the Catholic Church is reserved for the dead, and four professed nuns advanced toward their new sister, who was now prostrate at the foot of the altar. Each held the corner of a funeral pall, which they slowly; dropped over the figure of Sister Maria Colomba, and, kneeling, held it over her until the last verse of the psalm had been sung. This suggestive ceremony closed the service. It is a forcible and picturesque type of the complete severance of the nun's future life and interests from the outside world, the death of her heart to all carnal affections, the "dying daily" which Saint Paul calls the "life" of the Christian soul. A long procession accompanied the newly-professed nun to the inner rooms of the convent, and for this one day again she wore over the black veil the bridal wreath, which to-morrow would be put away until required for her last adornment in the coffin.

Ten years after our farewell to Sister Maria Colomba behind the bars of the convent-parlor we saw her again, and, armed with a papal permission, were shown by her over the whole convent. Those rare occasions when a stranger is allowed to penetrate the "enclosure" are always gala-days for the nuns. I remarked the blithe, youthful look that shone on all their faces: Sister Maria Colomba herself, from a pale, nervous girl, had expanded into a strong, hale, buxom woman. The glow of health was on her cheek, the sparkle of innocent mirth shone in her eye. There was one among the sisters who gleefully asked me to guess at her age. She was a sweet, fresh-complexioned, matronly woman. "Not more than fifty, good mother," was the answer.

She laughed and gently clapped her hands. "Add twenty years to that," she answered with an innocent burst of pride. Then she told how she had entered the order while yet in her "teens," had held half the offices of trust in the community, and had never missed any of the most rigid fasts or absented herself once from the midnight office, never having known so much as a day's ill-health. "Ah, a nun's life is a healthy one, child, as well as a happy one," she said in conclusion.

We went over the kitchen, laundry, refectory, dormitories, chapel, garden, etc. Just the same as before—a little "calvary" at one end of the garden and a rough picture of a Madonna in an arbor, the long, echoing corridors spotless as the deck of a man-of-war, and the smiling faces making a very flower-garden of the community-room. We left loaded with specimens of the nuns' work—Agnus Deis in frames of silver filigree dotted with white roses and hanging from white satin ribbon-bows; flake-like biscuits of peculiar flavor; and baskets, pincushions, etc. of delicate workmanship. I do not know whether this convent is still in the hands of the Dominicanesses, so many in Rome having become barracks since the new royal authority superseded that of the pope. But the picture of San Domenico e Sisto as it was in 1853 and 1863 may yet interest many who perhaps will never have the opportunity of seeing such an establishment for themselves.

This is a very fair sample of the convents of the stricter and cloistered orders: there are some exceptional houses, such as that of the Sepolte Vive, where the rule is far more austere. There is but one convent of this description in Rome, and I believe one or two in France. It is a noteworthy fact that most of the strictest observances of penance originated in France, and are continued there to this day. This convent of the Sepolte Vive ("Buried Alive") is not formally sanctioned by the papal authority, but only tolerated. The nuns were forbidden more than ten years ago to admit any more novices, and although the individual zeal of those who started the order was not exactly censured, still a tacit intimation of its being considered excessive and imprudent was given by the highest ecclesiastical court. Among their customs (which much resemble those of the Trappist monks) these nuns have that of digging their own graves, and as the cemetery is small and included in the "enclosure," the oldest graves are opened after a period of forty or fifty years, and the crumbling contents ejected to make room for the lately deceased. The death of a nun's nearest relation, be it father, mother, brother or sister, is made known to the superior alone, and she in her turn announces it, not to the bereaved one, but to the whole sisterhood, in this manner: They are all assembled in the community-room, and admonished to "pray for the soul of the father or mother" (as the case may be) "of one among their number." To the day of her death the nun never knows how near and dear by the ties of Nature may have been the soul for which she has prayed every day since the announcement was made.

The Sepolte Vive, when found guilty of any breach of the rule, are labeled with a ticket attached to their habit, and on which their fault is written in large, conspicuous letters—for instance, "Disobedience," "Curiosity," "Talkativeness"—and this they wear at their ordinary avocations for as many hours as the superioress commands. They never undress on going to bed, and wear the same habit winter and summer, the stuff being too hot for the one and too cold for the other; so that at all times the penance is the same. On the wrists many of them wear iron manacles that graze the skin and cause constant irritation at every turn of the hand: this is sometimes imposed as a penance, but very often is voluntarily inflicted on themselves by zealous members of the sisterhood. Before the prohibition to receive additional novices the sisterhood consisted of a fixed number, and when a vacancy occurred by the death of one the place was filled by the first on the list of postulants. This list was always a large one, and generally contained many names belonging to the noblest families of Rome. These details were gathered from the same lady who acted as madrina to the Dominican nun Sister Maria Colomba; and when she and a friend obtained permission from the pope to penetrate the "enclosure," the nuns told her that it was twenty years since the same privilege had been granted. For almost the space of a generation no stranger had been seen or heard by them, for not even the privilege of a grated and curtained parlor interview is allowed to the Sepolte Vive. And yet with all this unparalleled refinement of austerity they were as blithe and healthy a body of women, as cheerful and youthful in manner, as peaceful and calm in appearance, as could be found among the Sisters of Charity or the lay members of an association of Mercy.

The Carmelites are an order spread wide over the Christian world. The reform of Saint Teresa was sadly needed among these nuns three hundred years ago, and the recital of the vehement opposition made to her efforts shows the merit due to her. At the present day the order is one of the strictest in existence. The habit is of coarse brown serge, including the tunic and scapular, a cord round the waist, sandals (in England and other northern climates shoes are allowed), a black veil and an ample white cloak. They rise at two o'clock, winter and summer alike, to sing matins, and when they retire to rest at night one of their number walks through the corridors—in this order each nun has a cell—springing a rattle and repeating in a clear tone a verse of Scripture to serve as a subject of meditation before going to sleep. In the choir the Carmelites are only permitted the use of three notes, the reason alleged for this restriction being that the service of God must not run the risk of becoming an occasion of temptation to the singers. These nuns are very strictly cloistered, and their rules regarding visitors are much the same as those described at length in the beginning of this paper.

The cloistered orders are less numerous, but also less known, than the communities formed for active duty, such as education and nursing the sick; but in describing their constitution and rules we show the reader the true basis on which the more modern and active orders are constituted. The traditions of the spiritual life came down through them, and they represent the principle of vicarious oblation which animates all the different phases of convent life; i.e. the substitution of a small body of voluntary servants of God for the entire world, which ought to be perpetually engaged in His service and worship. The Benedictines, Capuchins and Visitation nuns are also cloistered, but the last are the only ones of this description who are likewise teachers of youth. Many very superior women belong to this order, which, except for the enclosure, practices no special physical austerities. The principle of the rule is the subduing of the will and the curbing of the spirit. The order is a recent one, and was instituted by Saint Francis of Sales while Beza ruled in Geneva and the Reformation had just disturbed the religious balance of Europe. With consummate prudence the new order was directed to employ the means best understood by the age. Cold calculation had succeeded to ardent zeal: the public mind no longer instinctively revered the old heroic type of dragon-tamers, be they called Roland or Saint Benedict. The new current required a new rudder, and the Visitation nuns supplied the need. At first they were not even meant to be cloistered, but to form a kind of missionary society (as their very name implies) among the Calvinists of Savoy and France. This original intention was soon overruled by the Italian advisers of Saint Francis: the southern European mind has ever been slow to conceive the idea of a more spiritual protection than bolts and bars. But even in their cloistered sphere the Visitation nuns clung to useful, active work, and became a teaching order. They and the Ursulines (who in Italy, at least, are cloistered) shared this task among them till the more modern order of the "Sacred Heart" almost monopolized it. I have myself known women of the most tried virtue and rare learning among the "Visitandines." Their rule is less strict about visitors, and even strangers are admitted to the parlor without a curtain being drawn behind the grating. Their features are thus perfectly visible, and you can even shake hands between the bars.

Even to this day there is hardly a noble family of Catholic Europe that has not one or more representatives among the religious orders. In England, both among "converts" and families of old Catholic stock, there are many girls whose names have been absorbed into those given at the same time as the ring and veil of a novice. In Flanders there are fully half a dozen convents—at Bruges, Antwerp and Louvain—emphatically called "English," and founded by scions of great English families exiled for their adherence to the old faith under Elizabeth and James I. They are mostly Augustinians. The new order of the "Sacred Heart" has drawn to it women from Russia, Spain, America, as well as from its native land of France, and the Sisters of Charity have won a worldwide fame in the hospitals of the East and the recent battle-fields of the West.

I have dwelt chiefly on the life of the old contemplative, cloistered orders, because they are less known to the public and more mistakes are made about their constitution and rules, and also because in these old cradle-institutions are hidden the roots of the whole religious system which to this day crops out so vigorously in works of mercy over every land where the Catholic Church has a foothold. Among the uncloistered orders of religious women—and here we expect to be better understood and more fairly met by those whose knowledge of "religion" is not personal—there are many that fulfill heroic missions, perform useful tasks, or even silent, uncomplaining drudgery. In all large European towns the cornette of the Sister of St. Vincent of Paul is seen in hospital, prison and asylum, in the garret of the dying workman as well as by the bed where the warrior lies in state—in the humble schools of the lowest suburbs and in the creches of the darkest byways.

The creche—so called in remembrance of the crib of Bethlehem—is an institution of the greatest use to poor women obliged to work for their living. They either find their children an insuperable bar to their labor, or else a source of constant anxiety during their absence. To the creche, however, they can take the little ones in the early morning and leave them till late at night, paying only a small sum, such as five cents a day, if they are able, while if circumstances warrant their being exempted even this is not required. The house is supported chiefly by voluntary contributions, and the sisters often have lay assistants eager to share in their labor of love. The children are taken in at all ages, the tiniest, unweaned infant not excepted: there are little cots of all sizes prepared for them, an abundance of milk, toys for the older ones, picture-books, etc. They are fed three times a day, washed and combed before being sent home (although constant applicants are expected to bring their children tidy and neat on first arrival), and if the mother fails to return at night, they are of course housed with the tenderest care. As there would be no room to accommodate permanent baby-boarders without impairing the original intention for which the creche is opened, these little waifs, if not claimed after three nights and days, are sent to the foundling asylum: this, however, does not often occur. There are many of these institutions scattered through France: London has two, and New York will soon have one—perhaps by this time it has already been opened. A woman earning her bread by hard work would have to leave her children in the care of some neighbor, who most likely would fail in her task or teach the children bad things, and demand some compensation all the same. If the eldest child were left in charge of younger infants, as is so often the case with the honest poor, the chances are that it will break or injure its spine by carrying the little ones. All this anxiety is avoided by this beautiful and inviting arrangement, which is generally under the management of the Sisters of Charity. The London creches have a night school for working girls and grown women in connection with the principal part of the institution; also a Sunday school for children. Among the rules is one which forbids the wearing of artificial flowers or any tawdry finery during school-time. But in another part of London artificial flowers in a Sunday bonnet are a sign of a reclaimed female drunkard, as the clergyman has hit on the ingenious method of advising the women to leave off drinking, that they may be able to afford some Sunday finery wherewith to please their husbands' eyes and to hold up their heads with the best in church!

Old age is as helpless as infancy, and less attractive in its helplessness, so that the task undertaken by the Little Sisters of the Poor is still more meritorious when performed in the devoted spirit which characterizes them. They are literally the servants of beggars: they are bound to possess nothing and to hoard nothing; they live on the refuse of refuse, begging the crumbs from rich men's tables to feed the hungry ones under their care, and when these are satisfied sitting down to the scanty remains. They have a large establishment in London, which I once visited, but which has since been divided into two, the aim of both continuing the same. The sisters wear a very unpretending black gown and cap: when out of doors they add to this a poke-bonnet and thick veil, with a large black shawl. They have a little donkey-cart, which they drive themselves, and which makes daily pilgrimages all over town, stopping at the houses of the rich of all denominations and receiving contributions of that which is too often thought below the cook's while to claim as a perquisite. So laden, the Little Sisters return to their old people, and a transformation begins in the vast kitchen. No one would believe what savory dishes they manufacture out of the leavings and parings of great houses: everything is sifted, cleaned, washed, as the case requires; each kind of food is carefully separated and placed in its appointed place; an immense cauldron is continually on the fire, and soups and jellies are in a constant state of fusion and preparation. Puddings of all sorts come out of the renovating oven: joints of roast meat are the only things which are exceptional, and sometimes the more generous charity of some outsider adds even this luxury to the usual fare. The Little Sisters of the Poor clothe as well as feed their charges: for this, too, they trust to charity, and left-off clothes are a great boon to them. They are so ingenious that there is hardly a thing of which they cannot make a deft use. They have houses in New York and Philadelphia, and already do an immense deal of good among the destitute aged poor.

The Order of Sion is a rather peculiar one, its principal object being the conversion to Christianity and subsequent education of young Jewesses. It has been founded within the last forty years by the brothers Ratisbonne, both of them Jews of distinction converted to Christianity. The elder brother (they are both priests now) superintends the order in Europe: the younger resides at the mother-house at Jerusalem. The convent is an educational establishment, where the daughters of Orientals of all kinds are received—Jews, Arabs, Syrians, Armenians, etc. In Europe the houses, of course, do not confine themselves to Jewish pupils, else they would find less work than their many hands could do, but receive boarders and give a solid education like the other and more fashionable convents. As a child I lived nearly a year in one of these houses, a large, roomy, silent villa, two hours from Paris. Behind the house was a garden and grove crossed in all directions by bewildering little paths leading into unexpected hollows where a rustic altar and statuette of Our Lady would be placed, or a crucifix erected in startling loneliness on a little hillock. A wide avenue of lime trees, where the pupils might be seen early in the morning studying their tasks, or in the afternoon eating their luncheon of grapes and brown bread, traversed this grove in a straight line, and here on certain feast-days nuns and pupils would form picturesque processions, with the customary banners, tapers, white veils and swelling hymns. Here the Ratisbonne brothers came to rest from their work of furthering the interests of the order—the elder a fatherly, portly man with white hair and a gentle manner, the younger a bronzed, black-bearded man, a true Oriental, with enthusiasm expressed in every line of his countenance and every flash of his piercing eye. He was only on a visit at that time, and then, as now, made Jerusalem his permanent home. There are one or two convents of this order in England, but I think none as yet in America.

The convent of the Assumption at Auteuil, a suburb of Paris, is one renowned for its excellent educational advantages. I spent a week there one winter on a visit to a near relative among the pupils, and had an opportunity to observe the clock-like life of the place. All the girls I have known to be educated there were better scholars than any brought up elsewhere. There were many English and American girls, besides Poles, Germans and West Indian Creoles. The war of 1860-64 left traces of strange animosity among the Northern and Southern children: it was hardly credible that such a spirit could animate young children so long removed from the immediate home influences that would otherwise have accounted for the feeling. Among the nuns were several English women, clever and deeply read, but softer-hearted than most scholars who have had too much to do with the world. There was also a sister of Pere Hyacinthe among the Assumptionists, and the great orator himself often came to the convent-chapel to preach simple little sermons to the school-girls. His sister was terribly crushed by the news of his defection from the Catholic Church, and, I believe, refused even to see him again.

A very beautiful scene which I witnessed on the 8th of December in this convent was the renewal of the vows. The mass was celebrated in the chapel at five in the morning, of course by gas- and candle-light. The body of the chapel was perfectly clear, the community sat in carved wooden stalls round the altar, the pupils assisted from the galleries above, and hidden under the gallery was the small but very perfect choir of nuns and children. The hymns of Pere Hermann, a famous pianist and composer, a pupil of Liszt, a convert from Judaism, and afterward a Carmelite friar, are very popular in France, and of these the music chiefly consisted. At the communion the superioress stepped forward, wearing the white woolen mantle (which with a purple tunic is the complete dress of this order) and knelt to receive the holy sacrament. A nun in the same costume, bearing a lighted taper and bowing almost to the ground, stood on each side of her as the priest communicated her, and so on till the whole sisterhood had each knelt separately and the bowing figures, like attendant angels, had done homage to each as the tabernacle, for a time, of the blessed sacrament. When the mass was over each professed sister solemnly read over the formula of her religious vows before a table on which lay a crucifix, which each reverently kissed in token of rededication of herself to the divine service.

The order of the Good Shepherd is one that is known throughout the world. It has branch houses in every country. The one to which I shall specially refer is in New York. It stands on the banks of the East River, overlooking Astoria and Long Island, and from its top windows the eye reaches far up the Sound. Like all convents, it is marvelously clean. The order is devoted to the reclaiming of fallen women, and in this instance the house is a government reformatory. A certain annual subsidy is guaranteed by the city authorities, but voluntary contributions and the industry of the inmates give more than half toward the real support of the house. Three sorts of women are under the care of the nuns: (1) those whom the judges send there as criminals for a specified term; (2) those whom their friends send in hope of their being quietly reformed without the intervention of justice; and (3) those who seek of their own accord to do penance and earn forgiveness for their sins. This is of course the most hopeful class, and it frequently happens that these penitents become in time permanent inmates, and even nuns. In the latter case, as the rule of the order does not allow of the reception of any woman with a stain on her reputation, they are clothed in the habit of the Carmelite Third Order (brown serge tunic and black veil), in which the austerities are not very great. They go through the usual novitiate and make their vows in the regular manner: they are then called "Magdalens," and inhabit a portion of the house reserved for them, say their office at stated hours in their own chapel, contiguous to that of the Good Shepherd nuns, and live under obedience to the superioress of the latter. I saw about a dozen of them taking their evening walk in a pretty enclosed garden by the river-side. Other women who do not feel inclined to so full a renunciation of their liberty bind themselves by a promise, good for one year only, to the service of the house, and wear a semi-religious kind of cap and a scarlet badge with the letter P or F: they are divided into two classes, under the patronage of Saint Joseph and Saint Patrick. They renew the promise from year to year, and often spend their lives in this lay sisterhood of penance. Every inmate, be she prisoner or penitent, is taught to sew, first by hand, then on the machine: many on their first entrance are so ignorant that they do not know on which finger to place the thimble, but after a while most are able to do a good day's work on common shirts and linen articles which the order contracts for with the wholesale shops. Another source of profit to the house is the laundry, but this is conducted exclusively by the nuns themselves. They do all the washing of surplices, altar-cloths, etc. for most of the Catholic churches of New York, for the convents and colleges, and for many private families. The fluting on children's frocks and the polish on shirts is something wonderful, and the young nun who superintends the concern seemed to be a real enthusiast in the matter. The nuns' dormitories, as well as those of the prisoners, are miracles of neatness; the refectories likewise. There are various immense airy halls where the nuns and girls sit sewing, and where a stranger sees a spectacle new to most people, certainly unexpected by the greater number—that of an assemblage of ugly faces, each belonging to an unfortunate whose temptations are usually understood to lie originally in her fatal beauty. Many of them are scarcely fourteen, and if once admitted, the melancholy chance is that they will be here again time after time: the sentences are seldom long enough to afford room for thought and conversion. Among the penitents the cases are far more hopeful, but the gentle sisters never forget their kind, conciliatory manner toward all; and unless a perverse demon whispers to their ear that these nuns are their jailers, the poor prisoners see little to remind them that they are not in a voluntarily chosen home.

Nuns are by no means a shiftless, unbusiness-like set of women: they can look after themselves as well as after the poor and forlorn: many of them, were they in the world, would be called strong-minded, blue-stockinged women. At Montreal there is a large establishment of the Sisters of the Congregation de Notre Dame, generally called Congregation Sisters, founded by Margaret Bourgeoys. They are the great educational sisters of Lower Canada. They own St. Paul's Island, some distance above the city: this is their farm, and one of the nuns, called the sister econome, has to visit it frequently and superintend matters, being the stewardess and committee of ways and means and revenue department combined. Of course a good horse is desirable for these drives, and their horses being one source of profit, the econome feels that the reputation of the breed ought not to be depreciated by her own "turnout." The young men of the town often meet her on the road and try to distance her, but this she will never permit, and her horse, faultlessly groomed and in splendid condition, always comes off the winner in these innocent races. One day, however, the bishop, having heard of this rivalry on the road, sent for her and remonstrated, alleging that such "fast" conduct might lend itself to scandalous rumors, and was altogether unbecoming in a religious. The nun smiled, and protested that she was ready to obey her superiors' orders in every particular, as all good Catholics and good religious are bound to do, but slyly insinuated the following cogent argument: "Does not Your Lordship think, however, that, since our convent lives partly on the reputation of this famous breed of trotters, it is hardly for the credit of the house that its representative conveyance should drag along as dejectedly as a street-vendor's donkey-cart?" What the bishop's reply was "the deponent sayeth not," but we may infer that this shrewd woman was at least as capable of controlling a wide meshwork of business details as he was of managing his diocese. Now, there are many such women in convents, for the religious life leads not, as people think, to a renunciation of your own self-dependence, but on the contrary to the highest kind of confidence in your own power when backed by the help of Almighty God. Saint Teresa of Spain once said these memorable words: "Teresa and tenpence are nothing: Teresa, tenpence and God are omnipotent."

LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.



THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.

BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."

CHAPTER XXV.

SMALL CAUSES.

The frost came early this year; and by the second week in December the ponds and shallows in the neighborhood of North Aston were covered with ice that made good sliding-grounds for the children. Presently it grew and spread till the deeper waters were frozen over, and a skating-rink was formed of the Broad that bore the heavier weights without danger. It was a merry time for the North Astonians; and even the elder men strapped on their skates and took colds and contusions in their endeavors to double back on their supple youth and to forget the stiffer facts of time. As for the young people, they were in the full swing of innocent enjoyment; and the girls wished that the frost would last through the whole of the winter, so that they might make up skating-parties with the boys every day, and avoid the unmeaning deadness of "tender" weather.

This ice had been in perfect condition for three days and the Broad had been thronged, but Leam had not appeared. All the other young ladies of the country had come, Adelaide Birkett one of the most diligent in her attendance, for was not Edgar Harrowby one of the most constant in his? But though more than one pair of eyes had looked anxiously along the road that led to Ford House, which some people still continued to call Andalusia Cottage, no lithe, graceful figure had been seen gliding between the frosted hedgerows, and Edgar, like Alick, had skated in disappointment, the former with the feeling of an actor playing to an empty house when he made his finest turns and she was not there to see them; the latter with the self-reproach of one taking enjoyment abroad while the beloved is sitting in solitude and dreariness at home.

At last, on the fourth day, she came down with her father; and to at least two on the ground the advent of a slender-waisted girl with dark eyes and small feet changed the whole aspect of things, and made life for the moment infinitely more beautiful and desirable than it had been. It was a brilliant day, with as fine a sun as England can show in winter—no wind, but a clear air, crisp, dry and exhilarating, Every one was there—Edgar, the most graceful of the skaters; Alick, the most awkward; Dr. Corfield, essaying careful little spurts, schoolboy fashion, along the edges; and the portly rector, proud to show his past superiority in sharp criticism on the style of the present day as a voucher for his own greater grace and skill in the days when he too was an Adonis for the one part and an Admirable Crichton for the other, and carried no superfluous flesh about his ribs. Among them, too, looking on the scene as if it was something in which he had no inherited share, as if these were not men and women to whom he was sib on Adam's side, but cunningly contrived machines whose movements he contemplated with benign indifference, was to be seen the mild philosophic occupant of Lionnet—that Mr. Gryce of whom no one knew more than that he studied dead languages through the day and caught moths and beetles in the twilight, had come without letters of introduction and was never seen at church; hence that he was a man of whom to beware, and a dangerous element among them. The pendulum of acceptance, which had swung so far on one side in the unguaranteed reception of Madame de Montfort, had now gone back to the corresponding extent on the other; and no one, not even Mr. Birkett as the clergyman, nor Mr. Dundas as the landlord, had held out a finger to the new-comer, not to speak of a hand; while all regarded his presence at North Aston as rather a liberty than otherwise. Nevertheless, as time would show, though he had come there without purpose and lived among the people without interest, he would not be found without his uses, and one at least of the threads making up the skein of life at North Aston would be placed in his hands.

As Leam came to the side both Edgar Harrowby and Alick Corfield turned to greet her, the usually sad face of the curate, already brightened by fresh air and exercise, brighter still at seeing her, the handsome head of the squire held a little higher as his figure involuntarily straightened and he put out his best powers in her honor. But Alick's shambling legs carried him fastest, and he was first at the edge, the neighborhood looking on, prepared to build a Tower of Babel heaven high on the foundation of a single brick. Leam Dundas had not yet been fitted with her hypothetical mate, and people wanted to see to whom they were to give her.

"Oh, come on with me!" cried Alick as soon as he came up, speaking with the unconscious familiarity of gladness at the advent for which he had watched so long. He held out his arm to Leam crooked awkwardly at the elbow.

"No," said Leam a little shortly.

She always stiffened when Alick spoke to her before folk with anything like intimacy in his manner. He was her good friend, granted, and she liked him in a way and respected him in a way, though he was still too much after the pattern of her former slave and dog to gain her best esteem. She was one of those women who are arbitrary and disdainful to masculine weakness, and require to be absolutely dominated by men if they are to respect them as men like to be respected by women, and as—pace the Shriekers—the true woman likes to respect men. And Alick, though he had her in his hands and might destroy her at a word—clergyman, too, as he was, and thus possessing the key to higher things than she knew—was always so humble, so subservient, he made her feel as if she was his superior—not, as it should have been, that he was hers. In consequence, girl-like, proud and shy, she treated him with more disdain than she ought to have done, and used the power which he himself gave her without much consideration as to its effect. Besides, she did not wish to let people think he knew too much of her. With the nervous fancy of youth, ever believing itself to be transparent and understood all through, she imagined it would be seen that he had the right to speak to her familiarly—that he had her in his hand to destroy her at a word if so minded. Wherefore she said "No" shortly, and turned away her eyes as her protest against his glad face, crooked elbow and eager offer.

"I will not let you fall, and it is very jolly," cried Alick cheerily, more like the boyish Alick of former days than the ascetic young curate of modern times.

"I do not like it," said Leam.

Alick's countenance fell; and when his face, always long, became longer still, with a congealed-looking skin, sad, red-lidded eyes and a hanging under lip, it was not lovely. Indeed, according to the miserable fatality which so often makes the spiritually best the physically worst—like the gods whom the Athenians enclosed in outer cases of satyrs and hideous masks of misshapen men—Alick's face was never lovely. But his soul? If that could have been seen, the old carved parable of the Greeks would have been justified.

"Nonsense, Leam! Why cannot you do as others do?" cried Mr. Dundas.

He wanted to get rid of her for a while, and he was not unwilling that Alick, whose affection he suspected, should rid him of her for ever if he cared to saddle himself for life with such an uncomfortable companion.

"I do not like it," repeated Leam.

"Nonsense!" said her father again. "Other girls are on. Why should you not join them? I see Adelaide Birkett and the Fairbairns. Why not go to them with Alick?"

"It looks silly balancing one's self on the edge of a knife. And I should fall," said Leam.

"No, you shall not fall," Alick pleaded. "I will undertake that you shall not."

His arm was still held out, always awkwardly crooked.

Leam lifted her eyes. "No," she said with her old calm decision, and moved away. Four years ago she would have supplemented her refusal by the words, "You are stupid. You tease me," Now she contented herself with action and accent.

Alick, very sorry, moist-eyed from disappointment, but not caring to stand there and get chilled—for our good Alick was a little afraid of cold, after the manner of mothers' sons in general—skated off again to keep up his circulation, his knees bent, his chin forward, his arms swinging as balance-weights to his long body, the ends of his white woolen comforter flying behind him, and his legs running anywhere, the clumsiest and most ungraceful skater on the Broad. All the same, he never fell, and he went faster than even Edgar in his perfection of manly elegance.

Edgar had watched the whole of this little scene between Leam and Alick while seeming to be occupied only in executing his spread eagles and outside curves to perfection, and it was no secret to him what it meant. The demon of masculine vanity, never far off where a pretty woman was concerned, entered and took possession of him. He would succeed where Alick Corfield had failed, and Leam, who refused her old friend, should gratify her new. He had been guiding Adelaide over the ice, but she was rather too stiff in her movements, not sufficiently pliant nor yielding to be a very pleasant skating companion. And he had been pushing Josephine along the slide, but Joseph was too stout and short-breathed to be an ideal convoy; also he had been racing and half romping with the Fairbairn girls, who slipped and tumbled and laughed and screamed—more hoydenish than he thought pleasing; but now he intended to reward himself with Leam, whose action he was sure would be all that was delightful, even though unaccustomed, and who would look so well on his arm. Her slight and supple figure against his breadth and height and sense of solidity and strength, her dark hair and his beard of tawny brown, her large dark eyes and his of true Saxon blue, her southern face, oval in shape, cream-colored in tint, and his, square, open, ruddy, Scandinavian,—yes, they would make a splendid pair by their very contrast; and Edgar, narrowing his ambition to his circumstances, was quietly resolved to win the day over Alick Corfield by inducing Leam to cross the Broad with him after she had so manifestly refused her old friend. It was but a small object of ambition, but we must do what we can, thought Edgar; and it is the best wisdom to content ourselves with mice when we have no lions to destroy. He did not, however, rush up to her with Alick's tactless precipitancy. He waited just long enough for her to desire, and not so long as to disappoint; then, speaking to Adelaide by the way, and giving her and Josephine each a helping hand, he came in a series of clean, showy curves to where Leam and her father were standing.

Leam was glad to meet again this handsome man who had seen so much and who talked so well. He was something different from the rest, and so far superior to them all. But, not being one of those instinctive girls who yield without pressure and fall in love at first sight, there were no flushings nor palpitations as Edgar came up; only a grave little smile stole half timidly over her face, and she forgot that he had insulted her mother's country by calling her the prettiest Andalusian he had ever seen.

"Do you skate, Miss Dundas?" asked Edgar after a while, during which he had been talking of different matters, beginning with the weather, that camel of English conversation, and ending with the state of the ice and the chances of a thaw. His five minutes of commonplaces seemed an eternity to Adelaide, watching them jealously from a distance.

"No," said Leam.

"I want her to learn; and this is a good opportunity," put in her father.

"You are right. It is a capital exercise and a graceful accomplishment," said Edgar. "I think a woman never looks better than when she is skating," he added carelessly.

"I think she looks silly," said Leam.

He laughed. "That is because you are not English pur sang," he cried gayly. "If you had only the brave old Norse blood in you, you would take to the frost and ice like second nature."

"No, I am not English pur sang," answered Leam gravely. "I am more than half Spanish," a little proudly.

"Hang it all, you can't make it more than half!" said her father testily.

"And that makes such a splendid combination," said Edgar, slightly lowering his voice as, ignoring his remark, he turned away from Mr. Dundas and gave himself wholly to Leam. "Spanish for art and poetry and all the fervid beauty of the South—English for the courage, the hardihood, the energy of the North. You ought to cultivate the characteristics of both nationalities, Miss Dundas," in a louder tone; "and to do justice to one of them you ought to learn to skate."

"That's right, Edgar; so I say," cried Mr. Dundas, who had heard only the last part.

"I cannot learn," said Leam; but her face became strangely flushed, and she felt her resolution growing limp as her cheeks grew red.

"Yes, you can. I could teach you in half an hour," cried Edgar, pulling down his coat-cuffs with an air.

"Go, Leam: let Major Harrowby give you a lesson," said her father. "Perhaps he is a better teacher than that shambling-looking Alick. Go, child."

"Shall I?" asked Edgar. "At least let me assist you to cross the ice, if without skates at first."

He held out his hand.

"I shall fall," objected reluctant Leam.

"No, you shall not. I will answer for that. Come. Will you not trust me?" This last phrase was said half tenderly, half with an offended kind of remonstrance, and he was still holding out his hand.

"Go, Leam," urged her father.

"It is silly, and I shall fall," repeated Leam.

Nevertheless, she put her hand in Edgar's, and he took her on his arm in triumph.

At first her steps were slow and timid; but as her feet grew more accustomed to the unusual ground, as she gained more confidence in the strong arm that held her like a bar of iron, as her youth began to assert itself in the physical pleasure of the fresh air and the gliding movement, she lost her shyness and timidity, and she found herself almost laughing—she, who never laughed and only so rarely smiled.

"You like it?" he asked, looking down on her with a man's admiration for a pretty woman marked in every line and feature.

"Yes, so much!" she answered, her usual reserved, self-centred manner for the moment lost.

"Now you will know how to trust me in future," he said not very loudly.

She looked up to him, carrying her eyes right into his. "Yes, I will," she answered simply.

At this moment Alick joined them, and Leam suddenly lost her new-found joy.

"I am glad you have come on at last," said her faithful dog, effacing himself and his disappointment with an effort.

"They made me," Leam replied.

"I hope not against your will and not to your displeasure," said Edgar, still looking down into her face with the man's admiration of a woman's beauty so strongly marked in his own.

"No," she answered: "I have liked it."

"Let us take her between us, major, and give her a good spin," said Alick, grasping the upper part of her arm uncomfortably.

Edgar slightly pressed the hand he held crosswise. "Would you like to double your protectors?" he asked. "Shall I share my office?"

"No," said Leam. "I like best to be with one person only."

"And possession being the nine points, let us go on," laughed Edgar, whirling her away. "By the by, would you have preferred my giving you to Mr. Corfield as 'the one person only'?" he asked with affected doubt, making pretence of wishing to know her mind. He was skating rapidly now. It was as good as flying to Leam, and she was happy and very grateful.

"I would rather be with you," she answered.

"Thanks!" said Edgar, and smiled.

"He is awkward, and you are not," continued Leam, anxious to explain. "But I like him very much. He is good and kind; and he cannot help being awkward, can he?"

"No," said Edgar coldly. "So you like him very much, do you?"

"Very much," repeated Leam with loyal emphasis, "He has always been my friend here."

"I hope for the future that I may be included in that sacred place," said Edgar after a pause.

Leam looked at him slowly, fixedly. "You will never be so good to me as he is," she answered.

It was the man's heart that beat now, the man's cheek that flushed. Who could keep his pulses still when those eyes were turned to his with, as it seemed, such maddening meaning? "I will try," he said; and from that moment the die was cast. Edgar put himself in competition with Alick: he lowered his pride to such a rivalry as this, and threw his whole energies into the determination to surpass and supplant a man for whom even the least personable of his own sex need have had no fear.

He kept Leam for a long time after this, laying ground-lines for the future; forgetting Adelaide and the suitability which had hitherto been such an important factor in his calculations; forgetting his horror of Pepita, whose daughter Leam was, and his contempt for weak, fusionless Mr. Dundas, who was her father; forgetting the conventional demands of his class, intolerant of foreign blood; forgetting all but the words which said that Alick was her best friend here, and doubted his (Edgar's) ever being so good to her as that other had been. It was on his heart now to convince her that he could be as good to her as Alick, and, if she would allow him, a great deal better. At last he slackened, and pulled up at the group of which the Fairbairn girls and Adelaide Birkett were the most conspicuous members.

"What a long skate you have had!" said Susy Fairbairn ruefully, for all that she was a good-tempered girl and not disposed to measure her neighbor's wheat by her own bushel. But this was a special matter; for Edgar Harrowby was the pride of the place, and they took count of his doings as of their local prince, and envied the lucky queen of the hour bitterly or sadly according to the mood and the person.

"It was the first time I had tried," said Leam, all aglow with the unwonted exercise and unusual excitement.

"I suppose you began by saying you could not and would not, and then did more than any one else?" said Adelaide in an acrid voice, veiling a very displeased face with a very unpleasant smile; but the veil was too transparent and showed the displeasure with palpable plainness.

Leam looked at her in a half-surprised way. Jealousy was a passion of which she was wholly ignorant, and she did not understand the key-note. She knew nothing of the unspoken affair between Edgar and the rector's daughter, and could not read between the lines. Why was Adelaide cross because she had been a long time upon the ice? Did it hurt her? They had not been near her—not interfered with her in any way: why should she be vexed that they, Major Harrowby and herself, had been enjoying themselves? So she thought, gazing at Adelaide with the serious, searching look which always irritated that young lady, and at this moment almost unbearably.

"I wonder they did not teach you at school that it was rude to stare as you do, Leam," she cried with impolitic haste and bitterness. "What are you looking at? Am I changing into a monster, or what?"

"I am looking at you because you are so cross about nothing," answered Leam gravely. "What does it matter to any one if I have been on the ice long or no? Why should you be angry?" "Angry!" said Adelaide with supreme disdain. "I am not sufficiently interested in what you do, Leam, to be angry or cross, as you call it. I confess I do not like affectation: that is all."

"Neither do I like affectation," returned Leam. "People should say what they feel."

"Indeed! That might not always be agreeable," said Adelaide with her most sarcastic air. "Perhaps it is as well that the laws of politeness keep one's mouth shut at times, and that we do not say what we feel."

"It would be better," insisted Leam.

"I wonder if you would say so were I to tell you what I thought of you now?" Adelaide replied, measuring her scornfully with her eyes.

"Why should you not? What have I done to be ashamed of?" Leam asked.

"And you call yourself natural and not affected!" Adelaide cried, turning away abruptly.—"How wrong," she said in a low voice to Edgar, "turning the head of such a silly child as this!"

Edgar laughed. The vein of cruelty traversing his nature made him find more amusement than chagrin in Adelaide's patent jealousy: he thought she was silly, and he was rather amazed at her want of dignity; still, it was amusing, and he enjoyed it as so much fun.

But when he laughed Leam's discomfiture was complete. "I am sorry I came on the ice at all," she said with a mixture of her old pride and new softness that made her infinitely lovely, the proud little head held high, but the beautiful eyes dewy. "I have offended every one, and I do not know why." Just then Alick came rambling by. She held out her hand to him. Here at least was her friend and faithful follower. He would not jeer at her nor laugh, nor yet look cross and angry, as if she had done wrong. "Take me to papa," she said superbly, making as if to withdraw her other hand from Edgar.

Alick's homely face brightened like the morning. "Certainly," he said.

"Certainly not," flashed Edgar proudly, taking both her hands in his crosswise and grasping them even more firmly than before. "You are in my charge, Miss Dundas, and I can give you up to no one else—not even by your own desire."

Adelaide's slight cast became an unmistakable squint; the Fairbairn girls fluttered, half frightened at the chance of a fracas; Alick looked irresolute; Edgar looked haughty and displeased; Leam tragic and proud, partly bewildered, partly distressed.

Then Edgar cut the whole thing short by taking her away in silence, but like a whirlwind, saying, when half over the ground and well out of hearing, "What have I done to you, Miss Dundas, that you should try to throw me over like that?"

"You laughed at me," said Leam.

"Laughed at you? You are dreaming."

"You did," she persisted.

"Pardon me: I laughed because my little friend Adelaide was so cross at your skating. It was fun to see her so angry."

"I saw no fun in it," Leam returned. "I only saw that she was angry with me, and impertinent, and that then you laughed at me."

"I swear to you I did not," cried Edgar earnestly. "Will you believe me? Tell me, Miss Dundas, that you exonerate me from such a charge. Tell me that you are sure I did not laugh at you."

Leam looked at him with her large luminous eyes serious, questioning. "If you say so, I must believe you," she answered slowly, "but I thought you did."

"If you could read my heart, you would know I did not," he said emphatically.

They were close on the bank now, where Mr. Dundas was walking with the rector.

"Say you believe me," Edgar almost whispered in his rich musical voice, so sweet and tender. "Say it, I beseech you! You do not know how I shall suffer else."

She looked at him again. "I do," she said in the manner of a surrender, the grave little smile which was her most eloquent expression of pleasure stealing over her face.

"Thank you," said Edgar: "now you have made me happy."

"I do not understand why," she answered with serious simplicity.

"Perhaps you will some day," he replied as her father came down to receive her, rather more content with her than he usually was, seeing that Edgar Harrowby—Major Harrowby, the possessor of the Hill and some thousands a year—had singled her out for his special attention, and had made a picture on the ice almost as pretty as an illustrated weekly.

But Edgar, not wishing to go too far in the way of provocation, nor to burn his boats behind him before he had decided on his settlement, skated off to Adelaide so soon as he had deposited Leam, and by a few judicious praises and well-administered tendernesses of voice and look succeeded in bringing her back to her normal condition of quiescent resolve and satisfaction. Then, when she was her smiling self again—for if she had frowns for many others, she had always smiles for the Harrowbys as a race, and specially for Edgar as an individual—he said, in the manner of one wishing to know the truth of a thing, "What made you so savage to Miss Dundas just now?"

"I cannot bear her," said Adelaide with energy.

"No, I see that you dislike her; but why?"

"I can hardly tell you: she has never done anything very bad, but I always feel as if she could, she is so silent, so reserved, so odd altogether."

"A woman's reason!" he laughed, "Dr. Fell over again."

"It may be," returned Adelaide coldly, "but I believe in my own instinctive dislikes. I felt the same kind of mistrust for that wretched woman who called herself Madame de Montfort, about whom papa and mamma and the whole place went mad. And after her death quite odd-enough stories came out to justify my doubts and condemn her faithful friends. Every one said she poisoned herself because she knew that she would be unmasked and she was afraid to face the ordeal. And her debts, I believe, were frightful; though it served that ridiculous Mr. Dundas right for marrying such a creature."

"But granting that this woman was an adventuress, as you say, what has that to do with Miss Dundas?"

"Nothing, of course: I only mentioned her to show you that I have some accuracy of judgment, and that when I say I dislike Leam Dundas my opinion ought to be taken as worth consideration."

Adelaide said this quietly, in the well-bred but absolutely positive manner which she would have when they were married and she differed from him in opinion. It was the moral arbitrariness of the superior being, which, amusing now in the maiden, might become wearisome, not to say oppressive, in the wife.

"Well, I do not know her as you do, of course, but I cannot see why you should dislike her so much," persisted Edgar.

"Trust me, some day it will be seen why," she answered. "I feel confident that before long Leam will show herself in her true colors, and those will be black. I pity the man who will ever be her husband."

Edgar laughed somewhat forcedly, then looked at Leam walking up the road alone, and thought that her husband would not need much pity for his state. Her beauty stood with him for moral qualities and intellectual graces. Given such a face as hers, such a figure, and all the rest was included. And when he thought of her eyes and the maddening way in which they looked into his; of the grave little smile, evanescent, delicate, subtle, the very aroma of a smile, so different from the coarse hilarity of your commonplace English girls; of the reticence and pride which gave such value to her smaller graces; of the enchanting look and accent which had accompanied her act of self-surrender just now—that acceptance of his word and renunciation of her own fancy which had put him in the place and given him the honor of a conqueror,—he accused Adelaide in his heart of prejudice and jealousy, and despised her for her littleness. In fact, he was nearer to loving Leam Dundas because of these strictures than he would have been had the rector's daughter praised her; and Adelaide, usually so politic, had made a horribly bad move by her unguarded confession of distrust and dislike.

The whole episode, however, had been lost in its true meaning to all save one—that one the Mr. Gryce of Lionnet, who already knew what there was to be known of every family in the place, and who had the faculty of dovetailing parts into a whole characteristic of the born detective.



CHAPTER XXVI.

THE GREEN YULE.

The frost broke suddenly, and was succeeded by damp, close, unseasonable weather, continuing up to Christmas, and giving the "green yule" which the proverb says "makes a fat churchyard." That proverb was justified sadly enough at North Aston, for typhus set in among the low-lying cottages, and, as in olden times, when jail-fever struck the lawyer at the bar and the judge on the bench in stern protest against the foulness they fostered, so now the sins of the wealthy landlords in suffering such cottages as these in the bottom to exist reacted on their own class, and the fever entered other dwellings beside those of the peasants.

Two of the gentry were struck down by it—Alick Corfield and the new occupant of Lionnet, that Mr. Gryce who never went to church, and who was assumed in consequence to have neither a soul to be saved by God nor a heart to be touched by man. And these were just the two who, according to the theory of the good or evil of a man's deeds returned to him in kind, had the most reason to expect exemption. For Alick had spent his strength in visiting the sick as a faithful pastor should, and Mr. Gryce had taken them material help with royal abundance. Both together they had to pay the price of principle, always an expensive luxury, and never personally so safe a card to play in the game of life as selfishness. For virtue has not only to be contented with its own reward, as we constantly hear, but has to accept punishment for its good deeds, vice for the most part carrying off the blue ribbons and the gold medals, while poor virtue, shivering in the corner, gets fitted with the fool's cap or is haled into the marketplace to be pelted in the pillory. As was seen now in North Aston.

The rector, who never went into an infected cottage nor suffered a parishioner to stand between the wind and his security, kept his portly strength and handsome flesh intact, but Alick nearly lost his life as the practical comment on his faithful ministry; and Mr. Gryce, who, if he did not carry spiritual manna wherewith to feed hungry souls, did take quinine and port wine, money and comforting substances generally, for half-starved aching bodies, was also laid hold of by that inexorable law which knows nothing about providential immunities from established consequences on account of the good motives of the actors. This would have been called heresy by the North Astonian families, who professed to trust themselves to superior care, but none the less used Condy's Fluid as a means whereby the work of Providence might be rendered easier to it, nor disdained precipitate flight from the protection in which they all said dolefully they believed. But there is a wide difference between saying and doing, and men who are shocked by words of frank unbelief find faithless deeds both natural and in reason.

In spite, then, of that expressed trust in Providence which is part of the garniture of English respectability, a great fear fell on the North Aston gentry when these two of their own circle were attacked. The fever, while it had confined itself to the ill-drained, picturesque little cottages below, was lamentable enough, but not more than lamentable on the broad platform of a common humanity; and those who had lost nothing told those who had lost all that they must bear their cross with patience, seeing that it was the divine will that it should be so. Now, when the fiery epidemic had come upon the gentry face to face in their homes, it was a monster from which they must flee without delay, for no one knew whose house was safe, nor for how long his own might remain uninfected.

Mrs. Harrowby and her daughters went off to Cheltenham two days after Alick was announced as "down," to find there the security of living which had failed them here. They were people of the highest respectability—people who are the very pith and marrow of English social virtue; but they had not been touched with the divine fire of self-sacrifice for humanity, and they had no desire to hush the groans of the afflicted if they thereby ran the risk of having to gnash their own teeth. They could do no good at home. As Mrs. Harrowby said, as one propounding a self-evident paradox, how could they go and see the sick or help to nurse ploughmen and their children? They would only catch the fever themselves, and so spread it still farther. And every one knows what a wicked thing that is to do. Cook had orders to supply a certain amount of soup and wine when asked for, which was more to the purpose than any mere sentimental kindness, of no use to the one and highly dangerous to the other; and as Edgar had a great deal to do in the house and stables, it was as well, she said with the air of one undergoing something disagreeable for high principles, to get out of his way and leave him to his bricks and mortar undisturbed. Gentlemen, she said, as the clamp holding all together, do not like to be interfered with in their own domain. That fever in the bottom was such an admirable lever of womanly good sense! So they went and enjoyed themselves at Cheltenham as much as it was in the Harrowby nature to do, and even Josephine's kind heart consoled itself in the Pump-room while their miserable tenants at home sickened and died as comfortably as circumstances would allow.

The Fairbairns, too, found themselves obliged to pay a long-promised visit to London now on the instant, and swept out of the place with even more than their characteristic promptitude; and the rector would have given up his charge to a substitute if he could. But floating clerical labor was just then scarce, and he could not find any one to take his place in the Valley of the Shadow, though he offered the liberal terms which are dictated by fear. He sent away his wife and daughter, but he himself was bound to his post, and had to make the best of the bad bit of cord that held him. He used to say with his grand manner of martyrdom that, whatever he suffered, he must pull the laboring-oar to the end, and attend to the sheep committed to his charge. And he said it so often that he got at last to believe in his own devotion. All the same, that laboring-oar of his pulled nothing heavier than a cock-boat, and in waters no stormier than a duck-pond; and when his sheep had the rot he was too delicate about the hands to meddle with them. He preached to the living and he buried the dead surrounded by all the protective appliances that science has devised or money can supply. When the epidemic was over he too talked of Providence and his trust therein, and how he had been mercifully spared as his reward.

Mrs. Birkett's native indolence would have kept her at home, well fumigated and isolated, even in such a strait of fear and danger as this in which they all were, and Adelaide was racked with torment at leaving Leam unwatched and unhindered in the same place as Edgar; yet, being more afraid of the fever than even of a potential rival, she agreed with her father that in justice to themselves they ought to go now at once; and Pace, who was to remain to take care of the rector, packed up their best dresses, and sent them off with Adelaide's maid shared between them. She prophesied, however, that their things would all be spoiled before they returned, and then they would know her value. As Mr. Dundas elected to remain at home, not being afraid of infection and being tired of travel, Mrs. Birkett insisted on taking little Fina with her. This was her contribution to the sum of philanthropy and self-sacrifice in the world, and it was not despicable; for Fina was restless and only six years of age, and Mrs. Birkett was indolent and soon tired.

Thus, the whole society of the place was reduced now to the rector, Mr. Dundas and Leam, with Edgar Harrowby left alone at the Hill. The Corfields did not count, because of Alick's illness, by which they were put in quarantine; and if Mr. Gryce at Lionnet had not been the cipher he was, his illness too would have disbarred him.

There was nothing of the saint by nature nor of the instinctive philanthropist about Leam. She was too concentrated for general benevolence, and men and women whom she did not know were little more than symbols to her. When she loved it was with her whole heart, her whole being: failing this kind of love, she had but weak affections and no curiosity, in which much of our ordinary charity consists. When the servants told her of such and such distressing circumstances, she was sorry because they were sorry, not because she realized in her own emotions the troubles she did not share or see. When prompted she sent improper things in the way of diet and useless things in the way of dress for the benefit of the poor fever patients—and she sent generously—but it never occurred to her as possible that she should go to see them in their own homes. When we read of a cyclone in China which has killed half a hundred mandarins and a small army of coolies, we realize the sorrow of the survivors no more than we realize the distress of a disturbed ant-hill; and Leam's attitude of mind toward the poor of her native village was precisely the same as ours toward the Chinese killed in a cyclone or the ants murdered in their hill.

But she went daily to Steel's Corner, because she knew the Corfields and in her own way liked Alick. Mrs. Corfield assured her there was no danger, not a particle, with her free use of disinfectants and her cunning devices of ventilation. And Leam believed her, and acted on her belief, which gave her a false look of heroism and devotion that won the heart of poor Pepita's "crooked stick" for ever. She thought it so good of the girl, so brave and unselfish; and you could scarcely have expected such nice feeling from Leam, now could you? she used to ask her husband half a dozen times a day, ringing the changes on Leam's good qualities as no one in the place had ever rung them before, and disturbing the poor doctor in his calculations on the varying strength of henbane and aconite till he wished that Leam Dundas had never been born. Mrs. Corfield was just as wrong in ascribing heroic qualities to the girl for her daily visits to ask after Alick as she had been when she had credited her with moral faults because of her intellectual ignorance. She was not afraid because she knew nothing about infection, and had therefore the boldness of ignorance, and she went daily to ask after Alick because she somehow slipped into the groove of doing so; and a groove was a great thing to conservative Leam. Nevertheless, she was really concerned at the illness of her first North Astonian friend, and wished that he would soon get well. She never thought that if he died she would be rid of the only person who knew her deadly secret. Leam was not one who would care to buy her own safety at the price of another's destruction; and, more than this, she was not afraid that Alick would betray her.

This, then, was the condition of things at North Aston at this moment: the villagers dying of fever in the bottom, the families seeking safety in flight, Leam going daily to Steel's Corner to ask after Alick and sit for precisely half an hour with Mrs. Corfield, and Edgar not so much taken up with bricks and mortar as not to understand times and habits, and therefore, through that understanding, seeing her for some part of every day. And the more he saw of her the more he yearned to see, and the stronger grew her strange fascination over him. To him, at least, the fever had not been an unmitigated evil; and though he was sometimes inclined to quarrel with the fact that Leam went daily to Steel's Corner to inquire after Alick Corfield, yet, as he got the grain and Alick only the husk, he submitted to the process by which the best was winnowed to his side. As the gain of that winnowing process became more evident he grew philosophically convinced that nothing is so charming in a woman as faithful friendship for a sick man, and that sitting daily for half an hour, always at exactly the same time, with an afflicted mother is the most delightful act of charity to be imagined.



CHAPTER XXVII.

IN THE BALANCE.

Riding was one of the accomplishments brought by Leam from school, though she had never been able to thoroughly conquer either her timidity or her reluctance. Her childish days of inaction and inclusion had left their mark on her for life, and, moreover, she was not of the race or kind whence, by any process of education possible, could have been evolved a girl of the florid, fearless, energetic kind usually held as the type of the English maiden. Hence she was never quite happy on horseback, and always wondered how it was that people could be enthusiastic about riding. Nevertheless, she had learnt to sit with grace, if not with confidence, and she was too proud to show the discomfort she felt. Her father had bought for her use the showiest chestnut to be had in the market; and as he wished her to ride sometimes with him, if oftener with only the groom at her heels, and as, again, she had honestly set herself to please him, she used to mount her Red Coat, as she called her beast, punctually every other day, and carry her dislike to the exercise as the penance it was fitting she should perform. And besides all this, that devouring fever in her blood, that oppressive consciousness rather than active remembrance, lying always at the back of her life, was best soothed by long hours alone in the open air. For when she had only the groom behind her, Leam—to whom all men were as yet powers undesignated, and a man of low degree a mere animal that made intelligible sounds on occasions and was of a little more use than a dog—forgot him altogether, and was as much alone as if he had not been there.

Once or twice before the hegira of the gentry she had chanced to meet Major Harrowby in her rides, and he had turned with her and accompanied her, which was half a pain to' Leam and half a pleasure. The pain was connected with her reins and her stirrups, her saddle and the girths, the restless way in which the chestnut moved his ears, the discomposing toss of his small impatient head, the snorts which frightened her as the heralds of an outbreak, and his inclination to dance sideways into the hedge rather than walk discreetly in the middle of the road, whereby her seat was disturbed and her courage tried, she all the while not liking to show that she was ill at ease. The pleasure was personal, arising from the strange sense of protection that she felt in Edgar's society and the charming way in which he talked to her. He had seen a great deal, and he had a facile tongue, and between fact and color, memory and make-up, his stories were delightful. Also, after the manner of men who seek to influence a young girl's mind and heart, he lent her books to read, and he marked his favorite passages, which he discussed afterward. They were not passages of abstract thought and impersonal sentiment, like the penciled notes in Alick Corfield's literary loans, but scenes of passion or of pathos, going straight to the heart of youth, which feels rather than reflects, or descriptions of places which were equal to pictures of human life. Under Alick's guidance she had fallen asleep over Wordsworth—under Edgar's she dreamed beneath the stars over Byron, and had heartaches without knowing why.

If they had met sometimes, and by chance, before the families went away, they met now continually, and not by chance. But as Edgar's passion and reason were not in accord, he restrained himself, for him marvelously, and neither made love to her in earnest nor flirted with her in jest. Indeed, Leam was too intense to be approached at any time with levity. As well dress the Tragic Muse in the costume of a Watteau shepherdess as ply Leam Dundas with the pretty follies found so useful with other women. She did not understand them, and it seemed useless to try to make her. If Edgar paid her any of the trivial compliments always on his lips for women, Leam used to look at him with her serious eyes and ask him how could he possibly know what she was like—he, who scarcely knew her at all. If he praised her beauty, she used to turn away her head offended and tell him he was rude. He felt as if he could never touch her, never hold her: his ways were not as hers; and if her fascination for him increased, so did his trouble.