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By Agnes Repplier


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IN OUR CONVENT DAYS




  IN OUR
  CONVENT DAYS

  BY

  AGNES REPPLIER, LITT.D.

  [Illustration]

  BOSTON AND NEW YORK

  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

  The Riverside Press, Cambridge

  1905




  COPYRIGHT 1905 BY AGNES REPPLIER

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


  _Published October 1905_




To "Elizabeth" Robins Pennell

  "Thou know'st that we two went to school
  together."

                              JULIUS CÆSAR




Introduction


It has been many years since I went to school. Everything has changed
in the Convent that I loved, and I am asked to believe that every
change is for the better. I do not believe this at all. I am unmoved by
the sight of steam registers and electric lights. I look with disfavour
upon luxuries which would have seemed to us like the opulence of
Aladdin's palace. I cannot wax enthusiastic over the intrusion of Mr.
Matthew Arnold and Mr. Pater upon the library shelves, where Chambers'
Miscellany used to be _our_ nearest approach to the intellectual. The
old order changes, and that unlovely word, modernity, is heard within
the tranquil convent walls. Even the iron hand of discipline has been
relaxed; for the long line of girls whom I now watch filing sedately
in and out of the chapel have been taught to rule themselves, to use
their wider liberty with discretion. I wonder how they like it. I
wonder if liberty, coupled with discretion, is worth having when one is
eleven years old. I wonder if it be the part of wisdom to be wise so
soon.

The friends whom I loved are scattered far and wide. When Tony died,
she took with her the sound of laughter into the silent land, and all
things have seemed more sober since she left. To those who live, these
pages will, I hope, bring back the sentiment of our early days. We made
one another's world then,--a world full of adventures, and imaginings,
and sweet absurdities that no one of us would now wish less absurd.
Our successors to-day know more than we knew (they could not well
know less), they have lectures, and enamelled bathtubs, and "Essays
in Criticism;" but do they live their lives as vehemently as we lived
ours; do they hold the secrets of childhood inviolate in their hearts
as we held them in ours; are they as untainted by the commonplace, as
remote from the obvious, as we always were; and will they have as vivid
a picture of their convent days to look back upon, as the one we look
at now?

                                                               A. R.




Contents



  Marianus                        1

  The Convent Stage              36

  In Retreat                     72

  Un Congé sans Cloche          107

  Marriage Vows                 148

  Reverend Mother's Feast       183

  The Game of Love              220




Marianus


I do not know how Marianus ever came to leave his native land, nor
what turn of fate brought him to flutter the dovecotes of a convent
school. At eleven, one does not often ask why things happen, because
nothing seems strange enough to provoke the question. It was enough for
me--it was enough for all of us--that one Sunday morning he appeared
in little Peter's place, lit the candles on the altar, and served
Mass with decent and devout propriety. Our customary torpor of cold
and sleepiness--Mass was at seven, and the chapel unheated--yielded
to a warm glow of excitement. I craned my white-veiled head (we wore
black veils throughout the week and white on Sundays) to see how
Elizabeth was taking this delightful novelty. _She_ was busy passing
her prayer-book, with something evidently written on the fly-leaf, to
Emily Goring on the bench ahead. Emily, oblivious of consequences,
was making telegraphic signals to Marie. Lilly and Viola Milton knelt
staring open-mouthed at the altar. Tony was giggling softly. Only Annie
Churchill, her eyes fixed on her Ursuline Manual, was thumping her
breast remorsefully, in unison with the priest's "mea maxima culpa."
There was something about Annie's attitude of devotion which always
gave one a distaste for piety.

Breakfast afforded no opportunity for discussion. At that Spartan
meal, French conversation alone was permitted; and even had we been
able or willing to employ the hated medium, there was practically no
one to talk to. By a triumph of monastic discipline, we were placed
at table, at our desks, and at church, next to girls to whom we had
nothing to say;--good girls, with medals around their necks, and
blue or green ribbons over their shoulders, who served as insulating
mediums, as non-conductors, separating us from cheerful currents of
speech, and securing, on the whole, a reasonable degree of decorum. I
could not open my bursting heart to my neighbours, who sat stolidly
consuming bread and butter as though no wild light had dawned upon our
horizon. When one of them (she is a nun now) observed painstakingly,
"J'espère que nous irons aux bois après midi;" I said "Oui," which was
the easiest thing _to_ say, and conversation closed at that point. We
always did go to the woods on Sunday afternoons, unless it rained.
During the week, the big girls--the arrogant and unapproachable First
Cours--assumed possession of them as an exclusive right, and left us
only Mulberry Avenue in which to play prisoner's base, and Saracens
and Crusaders; but on Sundays the situation was reversed, and the
Second Cours was led joyously out to those sweet shades which in our
childish eyes were vast as Epping Forest, and as full of mystery as
the Schwarzwald. No one could have valued this weekly privilege more
than I did; but the day was clear, and we were sure to go. I felt the
vapid nature of Mary Rawdon's remark to be due solely to the language
in which it was uttered. All our inanities were spoken in French; and
those nuns who understood no other tongue must have conceived a curious
impression of our intelligence.

There was a brief recreation of fifteen minutes at ten o'clock, which
sufficed for a rapturous exchange of confidences and speculations.
Only those who have been at a convent school can understand how the
total absence of man enriches him with a halo of illusion. Here we
were, seven absurdly romantic little girls, living in an atmosphere
of devout and rarified femininity; and here was a tall Italian youth,
at least eighteen, sent by a beneficent Providence to thrill us with
emotions. Was he going to stay? we asked with bated breath. Was he
going to serve Mass every morning instead of Peter? We could not excite
ourselves over Peter, who was a small, freckle-faced country boy,
awkwardly shy, and--I should judge--of a saturnine disposition. We had
met him once in the avenue, and had asked him if he had any brothers
or sisters. "Naw," was the reply. "I had a brother wanst, but he
died;--got out of it when he was a baby. He was a cute one, he was." A
speech which I can only hope was not so Schopenhauerish as it sounds.

And now, in Peter's place, came this mysterious, dark-eyed, and
altogether adorable stranger from beyond the seas. Annie Churchill,
who, for all her prayerfulness, had been fully alive to the situation,
opined that he was an "exile," and the phrase smote us to the heart. We
had read "Elizabeth; or the Exile of Siberia,"--it was in the school
library,--and here was a male Elizabeth under our ravished eyes.
"That's why he came to a convent," continued Annie, following up her
advantage; "to be hidden from all pursuit."

"No doubt he did," said Tony breathlessly, "and we'll have