Tales of the Cloister/Saint Ernesta and the Imp
Saint Ernesta and the Imp
Saint Ernesta and the Imp
AY IVERSON took one long, appraising look at the child and dubbed her "The Imp." It was the Imp's first day at St. Mary's, but the obvious fitness of the name was realized before the week had passed, and the pupils adopted it enthusiastically, regardless of the stern disapproval of the nuns.
The Imp was just ten. According to May Iverson, who seriously asserted that she had analyzed it, the blood that flowed in the Imp's veins was in equal parts French, Russian, Spanish, Tartar, and Indian. There was some color for this extravagant statement in the Imp's appearance, which was overwhelmingly foreign. Her great, dark eyes illumined a very olive skin, and the mass of hair that waved above them in riotous confusion was jet black and fiercely curly. The strict rule of the convent demanding smooth hair was violated by these flamboyant spirals, but even as the nuns noticed them the Imp was violating so many more important rules that they held their breath and gave thought and prayer to the human problem before them.
The Imp arrived at St. Mary's late Saturday evening and was at once put to bed. The strangeness of her surroundings kept her quiet that night, much to the surprise of the nuns as they afterwards recalled the fact. But in chapel Sunday morning, during the eminently elevating discourse by Father Fabian, this unnatural self-control of the Imp gave way, and within half an hour five fat little girls lifted their voices and wept aloud, and were ignominiously led down the middle aisle in full view of the scandalized congregation. Two of the victims were observed to cling close to each other and walk with a peculiar, side-long motion. It was subsequently revealed that the new pupil had tied their blond braids together with a dexterity and unyielding strength evidently due to long practice. Her attentions to the others were less original, but no less obnoxious. She had merely thrust a hat-pin into the plump arm of one, dropped a slate-pencil down the back of another, and made a face of such awful ferocity at the third that she shrieked aloud in terror from the rude shock to her nervous system. The Imp had selected plump victims because their rotund and placid appearance irritated her. She was herself excessively thin and abnormally restless.
These incidents, all of which occurred within one brief but exciting half-hour, brought home to the nuns the fact that little Mercedes Centi, the new pupil, might be an element of discord in their peaceful retreat. They discussed her with forebodings during the interval between high mass and the noon meal. It seemed rather soon to adopt stringent measures of punishment; she had not been with them twenty-four hours. They decided to try moral suasion; and so for an hour and a half that afternoon two of the Sisters pointed out to the Imp the error of her ways while she watched, with the strained interest of one lost to all else, the gyrations of a large "blue-bottle" that buzzed about the window-panes. It is to be feared that she lost some of the edifying discourse directed to her, but the nuns afterwards felt that some of it must have found a place in her consciousness; for later in the day Mercedes called the other pupils around her while she unpacked her trunks and generously gave them most of her earthly possessions. These gifts were afterwards recalled by the nuns, and it was intimated to Mercedes that she might need her own dresses, lingerie, and books; but the incident was an encouraging one, suggesting that the Imp was not all bad. She might have, must have, redeeming qualities.
The correctness of this view was demonstrated as the weeks went by. During the most exciting days the quiet community had known in years, the nuns added to their store of information concerning the nature and characteristics of Mercedes Centi. It was a difficult lesson they were learning, for the experience of each day upset the carefully formed theories based on that of the day before. But out of it all, in the end, one truth loomed large. Never in the history of St. Mary's had so bad a little girl been sheltered in its walls—and never in the history of the world had a bad little girl shown so many fascinating qualities. These latter glowed tenderly, like a rainbow after a storm, but, unlike that curve of promise, they had no fixed time for their appearance, nor were they subject to any law. The manners of Mercedes, when she chose to be good, were those to make one weep with joy. Her generosity was proverbial; she scorned a lie; she loved animals; she was the friend of all helpless things—except her teachers! For the rest, there were periods when for weeks the Imp went about like a small human Vesuvius, breeding desolation by her fiery eruptions.
It is not the purpose of this story to tell the things the Imp did: this is a moral tale. But one nun after another succumbed in the struggle with her until throughout the length of the great building there was a demand, without one dissenting voice, that the Imp be removed. There were reasons, however, as the Superior knew, that made her removal a difficult matter. Her father had frankly declared his offspring's failings, and had warned the Sisters that her presence would not add to their comfort. They had quieted his doubts with suave assurances, strong through memory of other small tartars conquered and reclaimed. Then he had paid a year's tuition in advance and departed for South America, both he and his daughter bearing their farewell with suspicious cheerfulness. He was a widower, and there were no relatives, so far as the nuns knew, to take the child in his absence. She was on their hands!
The Imp's class teacher had a mild attack of hysteria when this ultimatum was announced to her, and her despair was shared, though less wildly, by the other Sisters whose duties brought them into daily association with Mercedes. The pupils openly rejoiced. The Imp was trying at times even to them, but there was no denying that since her arrival life had taken on fuller, richer tones. They suffered frequently, but soon learned to do it with no more complaint than was strictly necessary.
A puzzling feature of the Imp's case was her entire lack of human affection. Not one pupil, not one Sister, had ever touched the stormy heart of Mercedes Centi. Other little girls went about with their arms around each other's waists and wrote notes to each other, and then quarrelled and sat for hours in a stricken grief that all might see. Every little girl had some favorite nun on whose desk she laid her offering whenever a box came from home, and whom she followed about as constantly and as devotedly as circumstances and the Sister would permit. But the Imp stood ostentatiously aloof and showed open scorn for these fine feelings she could not share. Nun after nun tried her blandishments in vain. Small girl after small girl made friendly advances, only to be spurned. In cold self-exile from the isle of friendship, the Imp followed what May Iverson called "her career of danger and daring."
On one occasion only did she show a temporary interest in human companionship. She had met Sister Ernesta in the garden—Saint Ernesta, as the girls called the oldest and most venerated Sister in the convent. Sister Ernesta was almost eighty, an age few nuns attain. Her active share in the work of the community was over, but her benign influence permeated the place like perfume, and pupils and nuns alike worshipped at her shrine. Saint Ernesta had grown more collected in herself with the passing of the years: the long life of which she was so near the end seemed like a dream as she looked back at it. Few things except her devotions were vital to her now, yet there was something very beautiful in her face as she sat waiting for the final summons. When she took her rare walks down the long halls or through the garden paths, her gentle smile was unfailingly given to every pupil she met, but few of the girls could boast of the honor of a word from her. Universally loved and venerated though she was, Saint Ernesta's aloofness from the community was almost as marked as that of the Imp, though from so different a cause. So, when she one day stopped and spoke to the latter in the garden, even the Imp was conscious of the greatness of the moment and of a swelling of the chest. The Imp had captured a tadpole from the tiny lake in the convent garden, and was watching its development with the zest of the born naturalist, It and some caterpillars she had also separated from their kind furnished material for an instructive discourse, but Saint Ernesta was too wise for that. The child hardly realized how much she was learning from the simple words that fell from the nun's lips, but she herself was at her best in the half-hour that followed, and several times Sister Ernesta looked at her with an unusual gleam of interest in her old eyes.
With some other than Mercedes the episode might have been the beginning of one of the strong friendships so often formed between pupil and Sister. Not so with the Imp. If she felt the human impulse, she crushed it, and made herself unusually obnoxious for several days to make up for it. She even took care at first to disappear when she saw Sister Ernesta approaching; but this tendency wore off after a time, and the two had several meetings, during which the Imp was confessedly on her guard. The talk between them was entirely impersonal and had to do with any living thing but Man. The subject of obstreperous little girls and their obvious duties was carefully avoided. From the first Sister Ernesta seemed to have a strange insight into the heart and mind of the Imp. She showed this, too, during the discussion about the child so often held in Open Council. For years Saint Ernesta had spoken there but rarely, and only when the special weight of her age and long experience seemed required. Now, to the surprise of the convent community, her voice was suddenly raised in defence of the Imp, and she showed an understanding of the little girl's nature which awed her associates. The Imp, whose mental processes none had been able to follow, seemed an open book to the venerable nun. Again and again she did the things Sister Ernesta had said she would do under given conditions. Again and again the problems which her complex nature suggested were solved by the nun through some instinct which she could not, or would not, reveal. She herself saw little of the child, but she grew to know her better and better from the nuns daily recital of her escapades. And several times, when certain sad tales were told of the Imp's misdoings, the awe-struck Sisters distinctly saw Saint Ernesta's lips twitch, and once her thin old shoulders shook with something that seemed like, but obviously could not be, amusement. The nuns marvelled, but not long; for reflection needs a quiet atmosphere, and the Imp chose this time to crown her career at St. Mary's with a more audacious exploit than any of which she had yet been guilty.
High in the tower of the many-sided convent building hung an old bell whose tones for fifty years had called the nuns to mass each morning at five o'clock. It was rung only once again during the day—for vespers in the afternoon. During the remainder of the day smaller bells were sounded to remind the Sisterhood of the duties allotted to the passing hours. The bell-ringer was Sister Harmonia, a gentle nun who had climbed to her lofty post twice every twenty-four hours during the fifteen years she had dwelt in the cloister. It was a long journey to the top, in the dark, up the spiral staircase that wound like a narrow corkscrew to the platform just below the bell. A great key on Sister Harmonia's belt unlocked the small door that led to the tower, but the hinges of that door were rusty and the lock was old and loose. No precautions were taken to guard the place, for the darkness, the loneliness, the dust, and the suggestion of the presence of mice and bats offered few attractions even to inquisitive school-girls.
The Imp passed the door one day on one of her various tours of inspection, and noticed the sagging lock and the absence of a sentinel. It would have been a simple matter for her clever fingers to pick the lock. A glance proved this, and even as she looked the Imp's hands instinctively reached forth to do it. But a second thought made her pause. She could not lock it again, and the act would be at once discovered. Was it worth while—now? Was there not perhaps a better time? Mercedes Centi reflected, and, having done so, turned her back on the little door and went away with light, buoyant steps. For several days thereafter the Imp was observed to feel a strong but discreet interest in candles. The inspector of the dormitory, Sister Italia, noticed this, and her heart sank. Something was in the wind, but what? She carefully confiscated the candle-ends the Imp had concealed under her little bureau, but even as she did so she felt she was but deferring for a time some new and deadly move.
The Imp discovered her loss a few hours later, but it did not disturb her. She had another candle-end in a second hiding-place, and it was her distinct purpose to use it that night as soon as the dormitory was silent and Sister Italia, in her distant corner, was asleep. Nights were trying times for the Imp, who did not sleep well; it was an exceptional occasion when she did not rouse the long-suffering Sister Italia by some startling and absurd demand. But to-night she was so quiet that the tired nun, who should have known better, thought she was asleep, and dropped off herself with a sigh of exhaustion.
It was just midnight when the Imp arose. The great dormitory was very still. Not a sound came from any of the small, white-curtained beds snowily outlined by the dim light that burned at the far end of the room near Sister Italia's curtained retreat. The Imp threw her little woollen wrapper over her night-gown, thrust her bare feet into the woollen slippers by the bed, grasped firmly her candle and three precious matches she had secured, and, with movements as lithe and noiseless as those of a cat, stole along the wall, opened the door, and found herself in the wide corridor outside. There, too, a light burned dimly, and there was a chance that the Sisters who formed the convent watch and patrolled the wings of the great building at night as a guard against fire or other calamity might see her. Fortune favored her. The long hall was deserted, and the Imp flashed through it like a meteor, then down a side extension, and finally to the wing where the tower was situated. It was a February night and bitterly cold, but what was physical discomfort to Mercedes Centi, sustained by her lofty mission? A little work with a pen-knife, and her fingers opened the door that led to the tower, and in another moment she 
"SHE RANG SLOWLY AND STEADILY"
There was a strong draught in the tower, and the feeble flame flickered perilously. Her wrapper caught under her feet as she toiled up the narrow, crooked stairs, and it seemed to her that the sleeping nuns, in their distant wing of the building, must hear the creak of the old boards under even her light weight. But she kept on until she reached the top. There, still clinging to her precious candle with her left hand, she seized the bell-rope in her right. In another moment the solemn clang of the great bell filled every corner of the silent building. She rang slowly and steadily, with a careful imitation of Sister Harmonia's systematic and painstaking method.
Far below, in the cloister wing of the convent, the nuns turned sleepily in their narrow beds. Five o'clock! The night seemed strangely short, and they felt unrefreshed. But no doubt disturbed them. Every morning at five o'clock during all the years of their cloister lives they had risen at the summons of that bell. They dressed drowsily and filed slowly along the halls to the dark, cold convent chapel. Even Sister Italia was among them.
The Imp did not defeat the purpose of her work by overdoing. She was too artistic for that. The bell tolled exactly the usual number of strokes. Then she crept down the stairs and along the corridors and, softly, into her own dormitory and her little bed. The girls still slept peacefully, for the five o'clock summons meant nothing to them. It was not till agitated footsteps sounded in the halls outside, and voices were heard, and the door of the dormitory opened to admit an excited band of nuns that any of them awakened. Then they sat up with a pleasant thrill of expectation. Of course it was the Imp. What had she been doing now?
In the minds of the entire community the same culprit had been unerringly arraigned. It must be the Imp. Who else would have called them up at midnight for five o'clock mass. Who else would have dared to break open the door of the tower? Sister Harmonia, the first to see the fraud, had hastened to give the alarm that something was wrong, and a number of the Sisters had gone with her to the tower and found the candle-grease and the burned matches and the open door.
The majority of the Sisters went humiliatedly back to bed. The matter was serious, of course, but nothing could be done that night. A few came with Sister Italia to the dormitory and turned their steps to the bed where the Imp lay. Had there ever been before such sweet and restful slumber? Nestled cosily in her cot was Mercedes, her long, black lashes resting on her olive cheeks, her dainty hands sweetly clasped outside of the cover, the counterpane rising and falling with her regular breathing. The nuns were not touched by this spectacle of helpless innocence further than to look at each other, baffled. They dared not wake the child, yet who but she could have done this thing? They stole silently away.
The next morning the Imp, decorously intent upon her task in the class-room, was summoned into the presence of the directors. Even her dauntless spirit quailed when she faced the three nuns who sat awaiting her—a solemn conclave, called together only for cases of paramount importance. It was by no means the Imp's first appearance before them, but that reflection did not cheer her. She shot one keen glance at them out of her black eyes, then fastened those eyes upon the floor, and fell back upon her strongest defence, absolute silence. Not a question would she answer, not a word would she say. They accused, they pleaded, they reasoned—all in vain. Mercedes was silent. Several times before she had taken this stand. In one surprising case she was afterwards discovered to be innocent of the special charge made against her, and the memory of this sadly complicated the present situation. Everything pointed to her guilt, but her silence might mean injured innocence—the silence of one too proud to deny a baseless charge. They dismissed her for a time, with no outward indication of the bewildered dismay that filled their hearts, and she strolled back to her classroom to take up the congenial and temporary rôle of little sunbeam and bright, studious child.
A general sigh went up in the council-room that afternoon when the case of Mercedes Centi again came up for discussion. This time the problem was a really vital one. Should they punish her for an act not proven, or should they let her go unpunished and thus demoralize the school and encourage her to fresh outbreaks? The circumstantial evidence was against her. She had been secreting candle-ends for several days before the escapade. Sister Italia testified to finding and confiscating a number of them. But—and here at once was a point in favor of the defendant—she had taken them the very night of the bell-ringing, leaving, so far as she knew, no others in the child's possession. Again, though the steps leading to the tower showed traces of 
"THE NUNS DRESSED DROWSILY"
One of the nuns rose and spoke. The guilt of Mercedes seemed so established, she said, as to need little discussion. In their hearts all knew she had done this thing. She should be punished, and in a way that would make a lasting impression. She suggested, as a just penalty, that Mercedes be forbidden to attend the great annual holiday entertainment given by the pupils to the nuns in the large hall of the institution. It was, next to the commencement, the event of the year, and to be kept away from it would be a severe punishment, even to the Imp, who had recently taken a deep interest in the rehearsals and had herself a small part in the musical programme. There was a murmur of approval and a little buzz of comment which the quiet voice of Sister Ernesta silenced. She had risen from her chair and stood looking around the circle of faces in which she saw only dark distrust of the Imp. There was an unusual erectness in her pose, and her soft, low voice was very steady as she addressed the Superior.
"May I speak a few words?" she said, gently. "I am interested in this child, as you may have seen. I have met her many times; we have had little talks in the garden. I have begun to think that I know her a little—that I perhaps understand her. It may be that we have not studied her carefully enough to find the soft spot that must be in her."
She hesitated a moment. At her last words the eyebrows of Mercedes' class teacher rose on a very human impulse, but she quickly controlled them. It was Saint Ernesta who was speaking, and who continued now, a little brokenly.
"I agree with you that some notice should be taken of this child's act—or her evident association with it. But it should be done in an unusual way. The situation is novel. It should be met in an effective fashion. I have a suggestion with which I hope you will agree. Let me act as proxy for my little friend. Let her go to the entertainment; let me remain away. Let her understand that I am taking the punishment for her—that I will continue to take it from now on until she publicly confesses or denies her share in this affair of the tower. If she can be made to realize the spirit in which I am doing this, and I think she will, for she is very clever, we may touch her wayward little heart."
She sank wearily into her chair. She had spoken more than in years in defence of the small outlaw who had put herself beyond the pale of interest and affection. She must feel a strong inclination toward the child, the nuns reflected. But why? What could these two—Saint Ernesta and the Imp—have in common? They puzzled over the problem even as they unanimously assented to the venerable nun's plea. They were not at all sure it would succeed, but harder hearts than the Imp's might well be touched by it, and, on the whole, they were sanguine as they separated.
To May Iverson was given the delicate task of informing the Imp of the important decision reached in her case. It is due Miss Iverson to add that none of the dramatic features of the situation were lost sight of in the interview she had that afternoon with the silent culprit. She pictured to the child the scene in the council-room, where the old nun had risen in her defence. She reminded the Imp of Saint Ernesta's age and increasing feebleness. On that dear, venerable back were laid the heavy burdens of the Imp's misdoing. How long must it bear them?
Mercedes followed her discourse with acute working of her alert mind and Southern imagination, but, if she was touched, she made no sign. She merely looked at May oddly out of her black eyes and intimated that she had no personal interest in the conversation. May watched her with more annoyance than surprise as she walked away. "Has that child a heart?" she mused. "Never. There isn't a symptom of one—the little wretch! What can dear Saint Ernesta see in her?" She pondered gloomily over the Imp's unregenerate attitude as she went to consult Sister Cecilia concerning her own share in the musical programme of the entertainment to be given the next week.
During the days that followed the Imp went her way in icy aloofness from her associates. She did nothing out of the common, for which grace her teacher devoutly gave thanks in her nightly orisons, but neither did she show signs of the regeneration they had hoped to see. Several times she met Saint Ernesta in the halls and passageways, and once the old nun stopped. But her remarks were on the subject of an injured bird the Imp was carefully treating in the conservatory, and her friendly inquiries after the health of the pet were very civilly answered by Mercedes. Then the two went their separate ways, and the Imp sought diversion from the nervous strain of virtue by carefully cutting off the yellow curls of the girl in front of her in the French class. The teacher was near-sighted, the victim engrossed in her book, and the other pupils silent from sheer ecstasy. The child who always sounded the alarm when the Imp began operations was ill that day.
Those who felt that the Imp might relent before the entertainment were disappointed. She was present, and Sister Ernesta was not. The nun's large empty chair was there, however, conspicuously placed at the end of the first row of Sisters, and Mercedes saw it as she stood with a band of little girls singing with glad hearts the class song, "In Heaven We Hope to Meet." The Imp went through her part of the exercise with suave self-possession. Nothing could have been more exemplary than her behavior. She was modest, graceful, conspicuously courteous to her associates. Every grace of manner she possessed, and they were many, was in evidence throughout the after noon. But there was absolutely no indication that she realized her melancholy position until one of the older pupils, in a brief address of affection for the Sisters, mentioned several by name, and at the close of her remarks glanced toward the empty chair.
"We feel a deep regret," she said, "that one of our beloved Sisters is not with us to-day, yet we give thanks that her absence is due to no failing of her health or strength. She has remained away as an expression of her affection for one of us, now here. We miss her very much, for as long as we can remember she has been with us on these occasions. Yet her influence is with us as vividly as if she herself sat in that empty chair, smiling on us as she has smiled for years—as we pray she may smile on us for many years to come."
That was all. Sister Cecilia raised her baton and the convent orchestra burst into the jubilant strains of the Spring Song. A few of the smaller girls were ostentatiously wiping their wet eyes, but the Imp preserved an unruffled immobility. She held her programme very tightly, and her olive skin had taken on a lighter hue, but her black eyes looked down at the faces below her with merely polite interest in their glance.
May Iverson stole away from the hall as soon as she could escape unnoticed and went to Sister Ernesta's room. The nun sat by a window gazing past the snow-covered garden into the blue-gray winter sky that hung above it. She smiled at the young girl as she entered, and looked questioningly into her glowing face. To May there was deep pathos in the lonely vigil and the hope that brightened it.
"I came to tell you, dear Sister Ernesta," she said, sadly, "about that extraordinary child. She is quite unmoved and is having a very pleasant time—" She stopped abruptly. 
"THE IMP CONQUERED AND REPENTANT"
"Oh, Sister," it said, "dear Sister, I am sorry. Forgive me. I will be good. I will always be good."
May Iverson hurried back to the Commencement Hall. Mingled with her satisfaction at the outcome of Sister Ernesta's experiment was her wonder at the sympathy and understanding that lay behind it.
"How did she know?" she asked herself. "For years she has not taught, and she has not seemed to notice us. Yet now she takes a child that has baffled the entire convent and promptly finds the key to her nature. I wonder why?"
She ventured to ask Sister Ernesta in the evening. The nun was tired, for an hour's talk with the Imp in an absolutely new phase of feeling had exhausted a vitality none too great at best. And after it they had gone together to the great hall and, side by side before the large audience of Sisters and pupils, had stood together as the Imp made her public confession and apology. It was a picture not to be forgotten—the venerable nun and the child facing their little world, hand in hand, while Mercedes Centi, never again the Imp, laid the white foundation-stone of her future admirable career at St. Mary's. The Saint was very pale and looked older and more feeble than ever before in the fading light of the late afternoon. The erstwhile Imp seemed very small and very moist and sadly pathetic, but the courage of her ancestors was still in her, and she uttered her confession in a clear voice, with her head and shoulders well back. Subsequently she kissed several little girls who seemed to wish this demonstration—and this was the capstone of the monument of self-abasement she so gallantly raised that day.
May Iverson still seemed to see the picture as she hazarded her question that evening. Saint Ernesta looked up at her from the low chair in which she was resting, and a twinkle appeared in her faded brown eyes, as a sudden spark flashes out in the twilight. She hesitated a moment, and then she laughed—such a spontaneous, natural, gay laugh as no one had heard from her for years. She wiped her eyes after it, with a staid and distinctly apologetic smile.
"Inquisitive May," she said, "I will tell you. I know that child—every impulse in her, every oddly twisted side of her—as well as I know my breviary. Why? Well, that is a secret, but you shall have it. Because, a little matter of seventy years ago, I was as exactly like her as this bead is like its mate. I—was—just—as—bad—as—I—could—be!"
She observed May Iverson's awe-struck look, and a smile of reminiscent glee lit her sweet old face.
"Remember, though," she added, encouragingly, "we have both reformed!"
THE END