“If Mary were out of the way… if Mary died,” she thought, her needle pushing carefully into the stiffness of the calico, her finger, where she had pushed the needle with it instead of with the covering thimble, springing red, “grandfather would not be tempted… he would have to leave me the money… there isn’t anybody else…”
After needlework came French with Mother Dominic, and, following French, in which she always shone—but why was the verb “tuer” that morning, and why did Mother Dominic ask her to give a sentence in the past tense, and why did she begin “J’ai tu—” and then stop and suddenly burst into tears?—there came history with Mother Lazarus.
Mother Lazarus was small, white-faced and uncannily energetic. She reported upon King Henry VIII as though he were a personal enemy, and upon Martin Luther as upon a man who had cheated her at cards. She was a Frenchwoman, and had all the logic and sentimentality of an extraordinarily gifted race, so that usually Ulrica came away from a history lesson in tears, much as some Irishmen will cry at the mention of Ireland—or would, before the days of Home Rule—for history caught at all that was romantic in her nature, and with historical persons, especially the martyrs to religion, she completely identified herself. But on this particular morning she heard scarcely a word of the lesson, was all abroad when pounced on suddenly by Mother Lazarus for an answer, and achieved another Little Penance, which this time she took to her bosom with a smile as being simple, easy and near. It was to translate back into Latin and learn in the recreation hour to recite at supper that evening, a Lenten hymn. It was to Ulrica’s taste to do this, and she remained in the room to tell Mother Lazarus so. But the aged nun, with a chuckle, declined to alter the gift, and gave her a comfit out of a small tin box. It was extraordinary, Ulrica thought, as she walked sedately after her classmates to put away her books in her own form-room, that people should be so kind.
Having put away her history books, she tidied the desk meticulously against Mother Dominic’s daily inspection of lockers, put her hymnbook into the pocket of her overall so that she need lose no time after dinner in commencing her task for Mother Lazarus, and went along to the refectory. Seated next to Mother Francis, who presided, was the little old woman whom Ulrica had conducted round the grounds on the previous afternoon. ( 2 )
Tuesday
Mary Maslin ate slowly, and talked, in the low-voiced convent tones, to her neighbours. She was hungry; she was always hungry, and the discipline of eating slowly was for her a real one. At home she gobbled her food and talked very fast, about school. At school she conformed to the rules, because that was the easiest plan and led to the fewest complications.
After the meal was over, grace was said, and the girls went out for games. Mary played defending centre in netball, played well, and enjoyed herself. A sixth-form girl umpired the game, and two nuns, Mother Simon-Zelotes and Mother Cyprian, watched, with austere detachment, from the side-lines. That the religious took it in turns and always in pairs to supervise games and physical training lessons was a thorn in the flesh of Miss Bonnet, who regarded it as approximating to a vote of No Confidence in her, but, although she had made, at the beginning, a vigorous protest to Mother Francis upon the subject, the system of supervision was continued.
“We think it best,” Mother Francis had replied to every spirited argument. Against the rock of the headmistress’ invincible faculty of never engaging in controversy, Miss Bonnet’s protestations hammered in vain. Whatever the weather, so long as the children could be out in it at play, the two nuns on duty, stout in their habits like black birds with feathers ruffled against the cold, stood on the touch-line and watched, or appeared to watch, everything that went on.
When the netball practice was over, the girls went off to wash, and then followed half an hour’s reading in the classroom, or the time could be given to a hobby or to sewing, whilst the choir nuns were at Vespers. Mary was no reader; she took out of her locker a pillow-case which she was hemstitching for her stepmother, sat down and got on with the work. As she sewed she thought, for most of the form were reading and the room was comparatively quiet, although there was no rule of silence. She thought about Mrs. Bradley, and wondered why she had come to lunch in the refectory when she might have had more interesting food at the guest-house. She also thought about tea, which would not be served for another two hours and a half. There would be, of course, currant buns. She always looked forward to tea-time. She licked the end of her cotton and re-threaded her needle; the action recalled to her her cousin Ursula. Ursula had been hemstitching pillow-cases, too. Each was to finish a pair for Mrs. Maslin’s birthday. Ursula, Mary remembered, had kept her work cleaner than she had, and had done it a good deal more quickly. She thought, with a shiver, of the night that was to come. For four or five nights now she had dreaded to be left alone in the dark. It was a chance remark overheard on the Wednesday evening succeeding Ursula’s death which had opened, as it were, a chasm in her imagination up which crawled dreadful things, shapeless, black and evil. One of the sixth-form girls had made it to another during the time, which the children spent as they pleased, between tea and preparation.
“She wouldn’t have gone there unless she’d been enticed…”
Enticed … it was the most sinister, horrid word that Mary had ever encountered. There was an unmistakable smack of the devil about it. It was serpentine, sinuous, plausible, coaxing, sensuously soft-handed and impure. Gilded vice was in it, and something terrifying, like a nightmare begun as a pleasant dream and suddenly slipping into horror.
Who had enticed the mild Ursula? Mary remembered trying to tempt her to eat a sweet in Mother Mary-Joseph’s English hour, whilst the serious young nun read them stories and a surreptitious sucking, so long as it remained inaudible, was indulged in fairly generally by the class. The sweets had come from Mrs. Maslin and were confiscated promptly, as soon as the postman delivered them. Then they were given out to Mary once a week on Saturday afternoons. Mary hoarded them sometimes. They helped a little to stay the pangs on days when prunes and custard were on the menu. But Ursula was firm, and did not appear to fight with temptation at all. Enticed . . . Mary’s mental reactions to the idea, especially after nightfall, were compounded of horror and fear. ( 3 )
Wednesday
Miss Bonnet cast an approving eye on the Lower Fourth at Kelsorrow High School for Girls. She was proud of the Lower Fourth. Bequeathed to her slack and disorderly, with a tendency to stand, graceful but insolent, with one knee bent, whilst requesting to be allowed to sit out of the physical training lesson because they were not very well, they were now, she felt, a credit to themselves, to her, to the school and to one another. She had worked very hard for this. Once she had boxed a girl’s ears.
Her superior, the full-time instructor in the subject, always handed to her the rottenest classes—got them in a mess and then got rid of them, was Miss Bonnet’s private judgment on this behaviour—and the present Lower Fourth was a case in point. Now, to see them, under their leaders, at practice in the four corners of the big hall, doing group work of an advanced and difficult kind, was to see the fruits of last term’s terrible grind and lengthy warfare.