The Guests of Hercules | Page 2

given up her home, and all the kind women who
had made the place home for her, from the time when she was a child
eight years old until now, when she was twenty-four. Sixteen years! It
was a lifetime. Memories of her child-world before convent days were
more like dreams than memories of real things that had befallen her,
Mary Grant. And yet, on this her last day in the convent, recollections
of the first were crystal clear, as they never had been in the years that
lay between.
Her father had brought her a long way, in a train. Something dreadful
had happened, which had made him stop loving her. She could not
guess what, for she had done nothing wrong so far as she knew: but a
few days before, her nurse, a kind old woman of a comfortable fatness,
had put her into a room where her father was and gently shut the door,
leaving the two alone together. Mary had gone to him expecting a kiss,
for he was always kind, though she did not feel that she knew him
well--only a little better, perhaps, than the radiant young mother whom
she seldom saw for more than five minutes at a time. But instead of
kissing her as usual, he had turned upon her a look of dislike, almost of
horror, which often came to her afterward, in dreams. Taking the little
girl by the shoulder not ungently, but very coldly, and as if he were in a

great hurry to be rid of her, he pushed rather than led her to the door.
Opening it, he called the nurse, in a sharp, displeased voice. "I don't
want the child," he said. "I can't have her here. Don't bring her to me
again without being asked." Then the kind, fat old woman had caught
Mary in her arms and carried her upstairs, a thing that had not
happened for years. And in the nursery the good creature had cried over
the "poor bairn" a good deal, mumbling strange things which Mary
could not understand. But a few words had lingered in her memory,
something about its being cruel and unjust to visit the sins of others on
innocent babies. A few days afterward Mary's father, very thin and
strange-looking, with hard lines in his handsome brown face, took her
with him on a journey, after nurse had kissed her many times with
streaming tears. At last they had got out of the train into a carriage, and
driven a long way. At evening they had come to a tall, beautiful
gateway, which had carved stone animals on high pillars at either side.
That was the gate of the Convent of Saint Ursula-of-the-Lake, the gate
of Mary's home-to-be: and in a big, bare parlour, with long windows
and a polished oak floor that reflected curious white birds and dragons
of an escutcheon on the ceiling, Reverend Mother had received them.
She had taken Mary on her lap; and when, after much talk about school
and years to come, the child's father had gone, shadowy, dark-robed
women had glided softly into the room. They had crowded round the
little girl, like children round a new doll, petting and murmuring over
her: and she had been given cake and milk, and wonderful preserved
fruit, such as she had never tasted.
Some of those dear women had gone since then, not as she was going,
out into an unknown, maybe disappointing, world, but to a place where
happiness was certain, according to their faith. Mary had not forgotten
one of the kind faces--and all those who remained she loved dearly; yet
she was leaving them to-day. Already it was time. She had wished to
come out into the garden alone for this last walk, and to wear the habit
of her novitiate, though she had voluntarily given up the right to it
forever. She must go in and dress for the world, as she had not dressed
for years which seemed twice their real length. She must go in, and bid
them all goodbye--Reverend Mother, and the nuns, and novices, and
the schoolgirls, of whose number she had once been.

She stood still, looking toward the far end of the path, her back turned
toward the gray face of the convent.
"Goodbye, dear old sundial, that has told so many of my hours," she
said. "Goodbye, sweet rose-trees that I planted, and all the others I've
loved so long. Goodbye, dear laurel bushes, that know my thoughts.
Goodbye, everything."
Her arms hung at her sides, lost in the folds of her veil. Slowly tears
filled her eyes, but did not fall until a delicate sound of light-running
feet on grass made her start, and wink the tears away. They rolled down