The White Lie Part 20

With her was another sister, also a probationer in the white dress, big ap.r.o.n, and cap with strings, proclaiming her to be a nurse.

The two sisters who had found the poor girl introduced her to the Mother Superior, who at first looked askance at her and whose manner was by no means cordial.

She heard all in silence, gazing coldly at the girl seated in the chair.

Then she questioned her in a hard, unmusical voice.

"You have been brought up in London--eh?"

"Yes, madame. I was a modiste, and my father was a restaurant keeper."

"You speak English?"

"Quite well, madame. I have lived there ten years."

"We have a branch of the sisterhood in England--near Richmond. Perhaps you know it?"

"Yes, madame. I remember my father pointing the convent out to me."

"Ah, you know it!" exclaimed the elder woman. "I was there last year."

Then she reverted to Jean's husband, asking where they were married, and many details concerning their life since that event.

To all the questions Jean replied frankly and openly. All she concealed was the fact that Ralph and Adolphe had committed a burglary on the night when she had taken her departure.

"I could not stand it any longer, madame," she a.s.sured the Mother Superior, with hot tears in her big eyes. "He tried to strike me, but his friend prevented him."

"His friend sympathised with you--eh?" remarked the woman, who had had much experience of the wrongs of other women.

"Yes, madame."

"In love with you? Answer me that truthfully!" she asked sternly.

"I--I--I really don't know," was the reply, and a hot flush came to her pale cheeks.

The questioner's lips grew harder.

"But it is plain," she said. "That man was in love with you! Did he ever suggest that you should leave your husband?"

"No--never--never!" she declared very emphatically. "He never made such a suggestion."

"He did not know your intention of leaving your home?"

"No. He knew nothing."

The Mother Superior was silent for a few moments, surveying the pale, despairing little figure in the huge carved chair; then, with a woman's sympathy, she advanced towards her and, placing her hand upon her shoulder, said:

"My child, I believe your story. I feel that it is true. The man who was a criminal deceived you, and you were right to leave him to his own devices, if he refused to listen to your appeal to him to walk in the path of honesty. To such as you our Order extends its protection. Remain here with us, child, and your home in future shall be a home of peace, and your life shall be spent in doing good to others, according to the Divine command."

At her words the three sisters bent to her enthusiastically, calling her by her Christian name; while Jean, on her part, raised the thin, bony hand of the Mother Superior and kissed it in deep grat.i.tude.

From that moment she became a probationer, and joined the peaceful, happy circle who kept their religious observations so rigidly, and who, during the hours of recreation, chattered and made merry together as women will.

In her white dress, linen ap.r.o.n, and flat cap with strings, her first duties were in the linen-room, where she employed her time in sewing, with three other probationers as companions, while each day she attended a cla.s.s for instruction in first aid in nursing.

Thus the weeks went on until, in the month of November, the Mother Superior came to her one afternoon with the news--not altogether welcome--that as she spoke English so well, it had been arranged that she should be transferred to the branch in London, and that she was to leave in two days' time.

So attached had she become to them all that she burst into tears and appealed to be allowed to remain. The matter, however, had been decided by the Council of the Order, therefore to stay was impossible. The only hope that the Mother Superior held out was that she might come back to Paris at frequent intervals as a visitor.

Long and many were the leave-takings, but at last came the hour of her departure.

Then, with a final farewell to the Mother Superior, she entered the taxi with her small belongings and drove to the Gare du Nord, where, in the black habit of the Order, she took train for London.

The journey by way of Calais and Dover had no novelty for her. She had done it several times before. But on the arrival platform at Charing Cross she saw two sisters of her Order awaiting her, and was quickly welcomed by them.

Then, hailing a taxi, the three drove at once away through Kensington, across Hammersmith Bridge, along Castlenau, across Barnes Common, and at last into Roehampton Lane, that long, narrow thoroughfare which, even to-day, retains a semi-rural aspect, its big, old-fas.h.i.+oned houses surrounded by s.p.a.cious grounds, and its several inst.i.tutions which have been built on sites of mansions demolished during the past five years or so.

The Convent of Saint Agnes was a big building, constructed specially by the Order some twenty years ago. Shut off from the dusty, narrow roads by a high, grey wall with a small, arched door as the only entrance, it stood about half-way between the border of Barnes Common and Richmond Park, a place with many little arched windows and a niche with a statue of the Virgin over the door.

Here the Mother Superior--a woman slightly older than the directress in Paris, but with a face rather more pleasant--welcomed her warmly, and before the next day had pa.s.sed Jean had settled down to her duties--the same as those in Paris, the mending of linen, at which she had become an adept.

In the dull November days, as she sat at the window of the linen-room overlooking the frost-bitten garden with its leafless trees and dead flowers, she fell to wondering how Ralph fared. She wondered how all her friends were at the Maison Collette, and who was now proprietor of her dead father's little restaurant in Oxford Street.

Through the open windows of her little cubicle, in the silence of night, she could see the red glare over London, and could hear the distant roar of the great Metropolis. Oft-times she lay thinking for hours, thinking and wondering what had become of the man she so unwisely loved--the man who had destroyed all her fondest hopes and illusions.

December went on, a new year dawned--a year of new hopes and new resolutions.

She had settled down in her new home, and, among the English sisters, found herself just as happy as she had been at Enghien. No one in the whole sisterhood was more attentive to her instruction, both religious and in nursing, for she was looking forward with hope that by March she would pa.s.s from the grade of probationer to that of nurse, and that she would soon go forth upon her errands of mercy among the poor and afflicted.

And so, after the storm and stress of life in the underworld of Paris, Jean Ansell lived in an atmosphere of devotion, of perfect happiness, and blissful peace.

CHAPTER XIV.

JEAN LEARNS THE TRUTH.

Months--months of a quiet, peaceful, uneventful life--went by, and Jean had become even more popular among the English sisters than she had been in Paris.

Though her life had so entirely changed, and she had naught to worry her, not a thought nor a care beyond her religious duties and her nursing, in which she was now growing proficient, she would sometimes sit and think over her brief married life, and become filled by wonder.

Where was her husband? Where, too, was the low-born thief who had taken her part and prevented the blow upon that never-to-be-forgotten night?

Sometimes when she reflected upon it all she sat horrified. And when she recollected how shamefully she had been deceived by the man she so implicitly trusted and so dearly loved, tears would well in her great, big eyes. Sister Gertrude, one of the nurses, a tall, fair woman, who was her most intimate friend, often noticed the redness of her eyes, and guessed the truth.

Seldom, if ever, Jean went out farther than across Barnes Common or into Richmond Park for exercise, and always accompanied by Sister Gertrude, the latter wearing the black habit of the Sisterhood, while Jean herself was in a distinctive garb as a nurse of the Order of Saint Agnes.