The Guests Of Hercules. C. N. Williamson
Читать онлайн книгу.
said Mary, rather dryly. "I have no idea of going to Monte Carlo."
"Thank goodness! Well, I only wanted to be sure. I couldn't help worrying. Because, if anything had drawn you there, it would have been my fault. You would hardly have heard of Monte Carlo if it hadn't been for my stories. A cloistered saint like you!"
"Is that the way you think of me in these days?" The novice blushed and smiled, showing her friendly dimples. "I wish I felt a saint."
"You are one. And yet"—Peter gazed at her with sudden keenness—"I don't believe you were made to be a saint. It's the years here that have moulded you into what you are. But, there's something different underneath."
"Nothing very bad, I hope?" Mary looked actually frightened, as if she did not know herself, and feared an unfavourable opinion, which might be true.
"No, indeed. But different—quite a different You from what any of us, even yourself, have ever seen. It will come out. Life will bring it out."
"You talk," said Mary, "as if you were older than I."
"So I am, in every way except years, and they count least. Oh, Mary, how I do wish I were going with you!"
"So do I. And yet perhaps it will be good for me to begin alone."
"You won't be alone."
"No. Of course, there will be Lady MacMillan taking me to London. And afterward there'll be my aunt and cousin. But I've never seen them since I was too tiny to remember them at all, except that my cousin Elinor had a lovely big doll she wouldn't let me touch. It's the same as being alone, going to them. I shall have to get acquainted with them and the world at the same time."
"Are you terrified?"
"A little. Oh, a good deal! I think now, at the last moment, I'd take everything back, and stay, if I could."
"No, you wouldn't, if you had the choice, and you saw the gates closing on you—forever. You'd run out."
"I don't know. Perhaps. But how I shall miss them all! Reverend Mother, and the sisters, and you, and the garden, and looking out over the lake far away to the mountains."
"But there'll be other mountains."
"Yes, other mountains."
"Think of the mountains of Italy."
"Oh, I do. When the waves of regret and homesickness come I cheer myself with thoughts of Italy. Ever since I can remember, I've wanted Italy; ever since I began to study history and look at maps, and even to read the lives of the saints, I've cared more about Italy than any other country. When I expected to spend all my life in a convent, I used to think that maybe I could go to the mother-house in Italy for a while some day. You can't realize, Peter—you, who have lived in warm countries—how I've pined for warmth. I've never been warm enough, never in my life, for more than a few hours together. Even in summer it's never really hot here, never hot with the glorious burning heat of the sun that I long to feel. How I do want to be warm, all through my veins. I've wanted it always. Even at the most sacred hours, when I ought to have forgotten that I had a body, I've shivered and yearned to be warm—warm to the heart. I shall go to Italy and bask in the sun."
"Marie used to say that, too, that she wanted to be warm," Peter murmured in an odd, hesitating, shamefaced way. And she looked at the novice intently, as she had looked before. Mary's white cheeks were faintly stained with rose, and her eyes dilated. Peter had never seen quite the same expression on her face, or heard quite the same ring in her voice. The girl felt that the different, unknown self she had spoken of was beginning already to waken and stir in the nun's soul.
"Marie!" Sister Rose repeated. "It's odd you should have spoken of Marie. I've been thinking about her lately. I can't get her out of my head. And I've dreamed of seeing her—meeting her unexpectedly somewhere."
"Perhaps she's been thinking of you, wherever she is, and you feel her mind calling to yours. I believe in such things, don't you?"
"I never thought much about them before, I suppose because I've had so few people outside who were likely to think of me. No one but you. Or perhaps Marie, if she ever does think of old times. I wish I could meet her, not in dreams, but really."
"Queerer things have happened. And if you're going to travel you can't tell but you may run across each other," said Peter. "I've sometimes caught myself wondering whether I should see her in New York, for there it's like London and Monte Carlo—the most unexpected people are always turning up."
"Is Monte Carlo like that?" Mary asked, with the quick, only half-veiled curiosity which Peter had noticed in her before when relating her own adventures on the Riviera.
"Yes. More than any other place I've ever been to in the world. Every one comes—anything can happen—there. But I don't want to talk about Monte Carlo. You really wouldn't find it half as interesting as your beloved Italy. And I shouldn't like to think of poor Marie drifting there, either—Marie as she must be now."
"I used to hope," Mary said, "that she might come back here, after everything turned out so dreadfully for her, and that she'd decide to take the vows with me. Reverend Mother would have welcomed her gladly, in spite of all. She loved Marie. So did the sisters; and though none of them ever talk about her—at least, to me—I feel sure they haven't forgotten, or stopped praying for her."
"Do you suppose they guess that we found out what really happened to Marie, after she ran away?" Peter wanted to know.
"I hardly think so. You see, we couldn't have found out if it hadn't been for Janet Churchill, the one girl in school who didn't live in the convent. And Janet wasn't a bit the sort they would expect to know such things."
"Or about anything else. Her stolidity was a very useful pose. You'd find it a useful one, too, darling, 'out in the world,' as you call it; but you'll never be clever in that way, I'm afraid."
"In what way?"
"In hiding things you feel. Or in not feeling things that are uncomfortable to feel."
"Don't frighten me!" Mary exclaimed. They had walked to the end of the path, and were standing by the sundial. She turned abruptly, and looked with a certain eagerness toward the far-off façade of the convent, with its many windows. On the leaded panes of those in the west wing the sun still lingered, and struck out glints as of rubies in a gold setting. All the other windows were in shadow now. "We must go in," Mary said. "Lady MacMillan will be coming soon, and I have lots to do before I start."
"What have you to do, except to dress?"
"Oh!—to say goodbye to them all. And it seems as if I could never finish saying goodbye."
Peter did not meet her friend again after they had gone into the house until Mary had laid away the habit of Sister Rose the novice and put on the simple gray travelling frock in which Mary Grant was to go "out into the world." Peter had been extremely curious to see her in this, for it was three years ago and more since she had last had a sight of Mary in "worldly dress." That was on the day when Molly Maxwell had left the convent as a schoolgirl, to go back to America with her father; and almost immediately Mary Grant had given up such garments, as she thought forever, in becoming a postulant.
Not since then had Peter seen Mary's hair, which by this time would have been cut close to her head if she had not suddenly discovered, just in time, that she had "lost her vocation." Mary had beautiful hair. All the girls in school had admired it. Peter had hated to think of its being cut off; and lately, since the sudden change in Mary's mind, the American girl had wondered if the peculiar, silvery blond had darkened. It would be a pity if it had, for her hair had been one of Mary's chief beauties, and if it had changed she would not be as lovely as of old, particularly as she had lost the brilliant bloom of colour she had had as a schoolgirl, her cheeks becoming white instead of pink roses.
It seemed to Peter that she could not remember exactly what Mary had been like, in those first days, for the novice's habit had changed her so strangely, seeming to chill her warm humanity, turning a lovely, glowing young girl