The White Ladies of Worcester | Page 2

in her own cell after
Vespers, dispensing with the evening meal; thus her absence was not
discovered until the following morning when Mary Antony, finding the
cell empty, hastened to report that Sister Agatha having long, like
Enoch, walked with God, had, even, as Enoch, been translated!
The nuns who flocked to the cell, inclining to Mary Antony's view of
the strange happening, kneeled upon the floor before the empty couch,
and worshipped.
The Prioress of that time, however, being of a practical turn of mind,
ordered the immediate lighting of the lanterns, and herself descended to
search the underground way.
She did not need to go far.
The saintly spirit of Sister Agatha had indeed been translated.
They found her frail body lying prone against the door, the hands
broken and torn by much wild beating upon its studded panels.
She had run to and fro in the dank darkness, beating first upon the door
beneath the Convent cloisters, then upon the door, a mile away, leading
into the Cathedral crypt.
But the nuns were shut into their cells, beyond the cloister; the good
people of Worcester city slept peacefully, not dreaming of the
despairing figure running to and fro beneath them--tottering, stumbling,
falling, arising to fall again, yet hurrying blindly onwards; and the
Cathedral Sacristan, when questioned, confessed that, hearing cries and
rappings coming from the crypt at a late hour, he speedily locked the

outer gate, said an "Ave," and went home to supper; well knowing that,
at such a time, none save spirits of evil would be wandering below, in
so great torment.
Thus, through much tribulation, poor Sister Agatha entered into rest;
being held in deepest reverence ever after.
More than fifty years had gone by. The Prioress of that day, and most
of those who walked in that procession, had long lain beside Sister
Agatha in the Convent burying-ground. But Mary Antony, now oldest
of the lay-sisters, never failed to make careful count, as each veiled
figure passed, nor to impart the mournful reason for this necessity to all
new-comers. So that the nun whose turn it was to walk last in the
procession, prayed that she might not hear behind her the running feet
of Sister Agatha; while none went alone into the cloisters after dark,
lest they should hear the poor thin hands of Sister Agatha beating upon
the panels of the door.
Thus does the anguish of a tortured brain leave its imperishable impress
upon the surroundings in which the mind once suffered, though the
freed spirit may have long forgotten, in the peace of Paradise, that
slight affliction, which was but for a moment, through which it passed
to the eternal weight of glory.
Of late, the old lay-sister, Mary Antony, had grown fearful lest she
should make mistake in this solemn office of the counting. Therefore,
in the secret of her own heart, she devised a plan, which she carried out
under cover of her scapulary. Twenty-five dried peas she held ready in
her wallet; then, as each veiled figure, having mounted the steps
leading from the crypt doorway, moved slowly past her, she dropped a
pea with her right hand into her left. When all the holy Ladies had
passed, if all had returned, five-and-twenty peas lay in her left hand,
none remained in the wallet.
This secret dropping of peas became a kind of game to Mary Antony.
She kept the peas in a small linen bag, and often took them out and
played with them when alone in her cell, placing them all in a row, and
settling, to her own satisfaction, which peas should represent the

various holy Ladies.
A large white pea, of finer aspect than the rest, stood for the noble
Prioress herself; a somewhat shrivelled pea, hard, brown, and wizened,
did duty as Mother Sub-Prioress, an elderly nun, not loved by Mary
Antony because of her sharp tongue and strict fault-finding ways; while
a pale and speckled pea became Sister Mary Rebecca, held in high
scorn by the old lay-sister, as a traitress, sneak, and liar, for if ever tale
of wrong or shame was whispered in the Convent, it could be traced for
place of origin to the slanderous tongue and crooked mind of Sister
Mary Rebecca.
When all the peas in line upon the floor of her cell were named, old
Mary Antony marked out a distant flagstone, on which the sunlight fell,
as heaven; another, partially in shadow, purgatory; a third, in a far
corner of exceeding darkness, hell. She then proceeded, with
well-directed fillip of thumb and middle finger, to send the holy Ladies
there where, in her judgment, they belonged.
If the game went well, the noble Prioress landed safely in heaven,
without even the most transitory visit to