CHAPTER XIV.

ANNE AT HOME.

Jack had hoped his explanation with Anne would have cleared up matters between them; but to his sorrow, he found their intercourse was more constrained, and on a more uncomfortable footing, than ever. Anne's treatment of him had heretofore been rather negative than positive. She had avoided all private conversation with her brother, and had kept him at a distance; but that was all. Now, however, she was absolutely unkind and harsh, and that in a very vexatious way. She treated him with that sort of contempt so hard for young persons to bear.

Jack was naturally fond of talking about his life and experiences in the country, and his father and Cicely liked to hear him; but Anne took special pains to show that she felt no interest in the matter. She constantly contradicted him, put wrong constructions on all he said and did, and seemed to find special pleasure in speaking slightingly of his most revered friends, Master Fleming and Sir William Leavett.

Jack turned the tables on her one day by remarking on her inconsistency: "You are shocked at my father for finding fault with the pride and luxury of the prior, and the rapacity of Father Joseph, because, forsooth, you say we ought to reverence the clergy and not to criticise them; but I do not see why you are not just as bad yourself. Sir William is a priest, and an old priest as well; and one whom every one allows to be a man of most saintly life and conversation. Why is it not as irreverent in you to find fault with Sir William as it is in my father to laugh at the prior?"

Anne had no answer ready, but she was not the more amiable on that account. In general, it must be confessed that considering his naturally hasty temper, Jack bore his sister's treatment with wonderful patience. Sometimes, indeed, he would show a flash of the old fire, and turn on Anne sharply enough: but he was always sorry when he was tempted to do so, for it did Anne no good and only burdened his own conscience. Both Master Fleming and Madam Barbara counselled him to patience and forbearance.

"You cannot tell what is working in Anne's mind," said Madam Barbara. "The poor girl is very unhappy, of that I am sure; and it is her unhappiness which makes her so fretful."

"She need not visit her unhappiness on my poor father," said Jack. "That does not make her feel any better."

"No, it is the last way in which to find comfort," replied Madam Barbara; "but it is very common conduct nevertheless."

In truth Anne was very unhappy, and that for more reasons than one. She would have repudiated the charge with indignation, if any one had told her she was jealous and envious of her brother; but such was nevertheless the case. Anne had, in fact, a great conceit of herself. Whether consciously or not, she cherished the idea that she was altogether superior to the other members of her family.

The childish fancy for playing at nun, had been considered as a wonderful instance of a vocation for a religious life in so young a child, and she was praised and petted for it accordingly, not only by her mother and her gossips, but by the nuns in the convent where she was sent to be educated at her mother's express desire. Anne found her convent life exactly suited to her taste. She had a good voice and a fine taste in music. She was naturally religious and had an especial bent toward ceremonial observances; and she was constantly held up as an example to the other pupils in the convent. Her opinion was already appealed to and considered of weight in the matters of decorations and music for festival occasions, and she was always put forward to sing at public services. She was constantly spoken of in her own hearing, as a young person of singular piety and talent, and one likely to rise to a high place in the sisterhood; for her taking the veil was considered by herself and others as a settled matter.

At home, she was only little Anne Lucas, petted, indeed, by her father and Cicely (who came to rule the house after Dame Lucas' death), and indulged in all reasonable matters; but not considered as of any great weight in the family, and now and then set down very gently indeed, but decidedly, by her father, when she transgressed the rules considered proper for the guidance of young women at home. It was no great wonder that with her disposition, she liked the convent best, and quite decided to make a profession when she was old enough.

Then came the death of the old confessor, who loved ease and comfort himself and had no disposition to deny it to other people, and the advent of Father Barnaby, who never spared himself, nor anybody else. The old nuns grumbled, and the prioress now and then rebelled, and successfully too, for she was a woman of spirit and ability and had no notion of being made a cipher in her own house; but the younger sisters, with only few exceptions, were enthusiastic partisans of Father Barnaby, and none more so than Anne. No service was too long for her, no penance too severe. She was bent upon becoming a saint on Father Barnaby's pattern, and the confessor encouraged her in the idea. All this helped to keep alive in her mind the idea of her own superiority. She was a good deal shaken indeed by the incident of her friend's disgrace and disappearance, and for a little time she was thoroughly humbled in her own eyes; but the penances she enjoined upon herself with a view of expiating her own offence and that of her friend, seemed to build her up once more in her own self-esteem. These penances she continued, as we have seen, in her father's house when she was sent home to remain for a year before taking the veil.

Her father with his bustling business habits, his love of moderate good cheer, and his perhaps too outspoken contempt and dislike for the monks and the religious houses generally, was a mere worldly-minded scoffer in her eyes; Cousin Cicely, whose whole life had been one long self-abnegation, but who could hardly read, and write not at all, was a mere housewife fit for nothing but her kitchen and her store-rooms; and Jack was but an insignificant chit of a boy, to be patronized and brought into the right way by his sister's influence. Jack was to become a priest, and perhaps be a bishop, while she was abbess of some great religious house (for already her ambitions soared far beyond the little sisterhood at Nunwood), and he was to owe all to her influence and direction.

It was a great shock to this fine castle in the air, when Jack utterly refused to leave Sir William Leavett's church and teachings for the spiritual guide she had selected for him. Jack declared that Sir William was a good man and kind to him; that he loved him dearly, and would not leave him for any of the fathers at the convent; and his father sustained him in his refusal, adding that in his opinion, Anne would do well to consult Sir William herself.

Anne had performed many "humbling" penances to perfect her in humility, but, strange to say, when it came to a real contradiction, these penances did not seem to help her in the least. She was as angry at Jack for presuming to have an opinion of his own, as if she had never kissed the feet of the sisters or knelt on the floor while they were at dinner.

But the vexation she had felt at Jack for refusing to be governed by her in the matter of a confessor was nothing to the anger which she felt against him at present. Jack presuming to read and decide for himself; pretending to have a higher standard than her own, and above all attempting to instruct her; Jack telling her that all her penances, her enforced works of charity, her bed of boards and ashes, her fasts and vigils, were all worthless and worse than worthless, and that he—he, a schoolboy, and three years younger than herself—had discovered a better and safer way! Anne had always found it hard to have any charity or toleration for those who differed from her, but this was the worst of all.

But this was not all. There was a deeper cause for her disquiet than wounded self-love. Anne had told the truth when she said that she had found it hard to forget the words she had heard from Agnes Harland. They had indeed rung in her ears for days, and a voice in her heart constantly made answer to them, "These things are true! They are no delusion—no modern invention. They are true, and if so all my belief hitherto has been false, all my sanctity wherein I have trusted and for which I have received honor of men is built on a false foundation."

For days and weeks these and such like thoughts tormented her. She confessed them to Father Barnaby; she performed with punctilious accuracy the penances he laid upon her; she tried with all her might to overcome her affection for poor Agnes, and to believe what Father Barnaby told her, that her betrayal of her friend's confidence to him had been a virtue and not a piece of base treachery. She did in some measure quiet her conscience and mind, and recover her self-complacency, by such means; but there yet lingered in the depths of her heart, an uneasy feeling that all was not right with her; that Agnes might after all have been a martyr for truth instead of a stubborn heretic.

She had not intended to tell Father Barnaby of what Jack had said about wanting to read the Bible; but, as Thomas Sprat had once said, she was as wax in the hands of her confessor. The clergy had begun to be exceedingly jealous on the subject of the Scriptures, already spreading among the common people, and to watch on all sides for the least indication of heretical opinions. Anne came away from her confession trying to think that she had done her duty to her brother, though she well knew to what her confession might lead. She felt that she had betrayed her brother's confidence, and it was this which made her so shy of him when he came home from Holford. Still, she said to herself she had done her duty, she had disregarded the ties of the flesh, as she had been told she was bound to do; and if she was made wretched thereby, why, there was only so much the more merit in the action, and that was some comfort.

Just as she had succeeded in attaining some degree of quietness, came Jack, determined to arrive at an explanation, full of the earnestness of a thorough religious conviction, and roused in her heart again all the old rebellious misgivings. In vain, did she strive to forget what he had said. It rung in her ears by night and day. The ghost, which had never been quite laid, came back to haunt her more constantly than ever, with the old whisper, "It is true. It is all true; and with all your efforts you have not made one step toward true holiness; because you have been walking in the wrong direction. You are a miserable sinner, not one whit better, not so good as these people you have been looking down upon all your life."

If Anne had yielded to these convictions, if she had listened to the voice speaking within her, she might indeed have been unhappy for a time; but her sorrow would not have been bitter, and she would soon have found peace. But she would not yield—not one inch. To do her justice, it was no fear of consequences which kept her back. She would have gone to the stake as cheerfully as any martyr that ever died. But her pride rose in arms, that pride which was her strongest characteristic, and which waxed stronger and stronger, because she never acknowledged its existence to herself. Was she to confess that all her life had hitherto been wrong and mistaken? Was she, the pattern to the pupils, and even to the elder sisters, the prospective prioress, the future abbess, perhaps, to own that she had no title to all these honors, that she was no saint, but a miserable sinner, that instead of doing anything to purchase the salvation of others, she could only sue as a beggar for her own?

There is no passion of the human heart harder to deal with than pride, even when we have all the helps which grace can give. It is hard to descend into the valley of humiliation and to catch no slips by the way; if we do chance to fall, our enemy is always ready to take advantage of our fall to disturb our rest; yet, when we are summoned to descend into this valley, there is no peace to be found but in obedience to the call. Anne heard the summons, and in her heart of hearts she felt that it came from God; but she was determined not to obey. She fought against conviction with all her might, but as yet the voice would not be silenced nor leave her, and the combat had to be fought out anew every day. Her life was made wretched by the discord in herself, and in her desperate distress, she visited her own wretchedness on all around her, especially on Jack, whom she looked upon as the cause of all her trouble. She knew that he prayed for her, and tried to be kind and patient with her, and that provoked her worst of all. She redoubled her devotions and penances, but she had lost all comfort in them. She would have eased her mind by confession, but, angry as she was at Jack, she hesitated at putting his life into the hands of Father Barnaby. Besides, the father was very busy preparing for his journey to London, and had no time to hear confessions at present, so she must even bear her burdens alone.

"Here is Father Barnaby asking for you, Jack," said Master Lucas, coming into the sitting-room where Jack was at work with his books. "He is just about to set out on his journey, and wants a word with you at the door."

"With Jack, father?" said Anne, in a tone of uneasiness. "Are you sure?"

"I know only what he said, sweetheart. He asked for Jack. Hurry, my son, and do not keep the father waiting."

Anne would have liked to listen, but she dared not do so, though she came into the shop. She saw the father give Jack a couple of books which Jack received with all due reverence, exchange two or three remarks with her father, and apparently decline politely an invitation to take some refreshment. Then, bestowing his blessing, Father Barnaby rode away as it seemed, in a very good humor; and Master Lucas and his son came back into the shop.

"What did Father Barnaby say?" asked Anne.

"He gave me the books he promised me, and advised me to study them," replied Jack. "I am sure I shall do so with pleasure, for he knows a great deal more about Horace than Master Crabtree does."

"Horace," said Anne in a disappointed tone. "You must be mistaken, Jack. I am sure Father Barnaby does not concern himself about such heathen and secular learning."

"Look for yourself," said Jack, smiling. "Here are the two volumes both of his own writing, one upon the Eleventh Ode of Horace, and the other on the Latin metres. Father Barnaby is a great student of the Latin poets."

Anne was convinced against her will, but she looked very much discomposed.

"Did he leave no message for me?" she asked.

"None," replied Jack. "He asked if all were well, and if Sister Barbara kept on with her school; that was all. Then he bade good-morning and rode away."

And was that all? Anne had much ado to keep back her tears of mortification and disappointment. After all her efforts to please him, he had gone away to be gone for weeks or months without a word. He had distinguished Jack with special favor, notwithstanding what she had told him about her brother, and had apparently forgotten her existence. It was very hard, and it did not tend to make her feel more kindly toward her brother. She went up to her room and cried till she was weary, and then imposed a new penance upon herself, because she had failed in humility. Poor Anne!