The Abbess of Crewe Read Online Free Page A

from our
     midst to labour for the ecumenical Faith. By river, by helicopter, by jet and by camel,
     Sister Gertrude covers the crust of the earth, followed as she is by photographers and
     reporters. Paradoxically it was our enclosed community who sent her out.’
    ‘Gertrude,’ says Mildred, ‘would be furious at
     that. She went off by herself.’
    ‘Gertrude must put up with it. She fits the rhetoric of the occasion,’ says
     the Abbess. She bends once more over her work. But the bell for Lauds chimes from the
     chapel. It is three in the morning. Faithful to the Rule, the Abbess immediately puts
     down her pen. One white swan, two black, they file from the room and down to the waiting
     hall. The whole congregation is assembled in steady composure. One by one they take
     their cloaks and follow the Abbess to the chapel, so softly ill-lit for Lauds. The nuns
     in their choirs chant and reply, with wakeful voices at three in the morning:
    O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful
    is thy name in all the earth:
    Thou who hast proclaimed thy
    glory upon the heavens.
    Out of the mouths of babes and
    sucklings thou hast prepared praise
    to confuse thy adversaries:
    to silence the enemy and the revengeful.
    The Abbess from her high seat looks with a kind of wonder at her
     shadowy chapel of nuns, she listens with a fine joy to the keen plainchant, as if upon a
     certain newly created world. She contemplates and sees it is good. Her lips move with
     the Latin of the psalm. She stands before her high chair as one exalted by what she sees
     and thinks, as it might be she is contemplating the full existence of the Abbess of
     Crewe.
    Et fecisti eum paulo minorem Angelis:
    Gloria et honore coronasti eum.
    Soon she is whispering the melodious responses in other words of
     her great liking:
    Every farthing of the cost,
    All the dreaded cards foretell,
    Shall be paid, but from this night
    Not a whisper, not a thought,
    Not a kiss nor look be lost.
     
Chapter 2
     
    I N the summer before the autumn, as God
     is in his heaven, Sister Felicity’s thimble is lying in its place in her
     sewing-box.
    The Abbess Hildegarde is newly dead, and laid under her slab in the chapel.
    The Abbey of Crewe is left without a head, but the election of the new Abbess is to take
     place in twenty-three days’ time. After Matins, at twenty minutes past midnight,
     the nuns go to their cells to sleep briefly and deeply until their awakening for Lauds
     at three. But Felicity jumps from her window on to the haycart pulled up below and runs
     to meet her Jesuit.
    Tall Alexandra, at this time Sub-Prioress and soon to be elected Abbess of Crewe, remains
     in the chapel, kneeling to pray at Hildegarde’s tomb. She whispers:
    Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed
    Never to be disquieted.
    My last goodnight! Thou wilt not wake
    Till I thy fate shall overtake:
    Till age, or grief, or sickness must
    Marry my body to that dust
    It so much loves, and fill the room
    My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
    She wears the same black habit as the two asters
     who wait for her at the door of the chapel.
    She joins them, and with their cloaks flying in the night air they return to the great
     sleeping house. Up and down the dark cloisters they pace, Alexandra, Walburga and
     Mildred.
    ‘What are we here for?’ says Alexandra. ‘What are we doing
     here?’
    ‘It’s our destiny,’ Mildred says.
    ‘You will be elected Abbess, Alexandra,’ says Walburga.
    ‘And Felicity?’
    ‘Her destiny is the Jesuit,’ says Mildred.
    ‘She has a following among the younger nuns,’ Walburga says.
    ‘It’s a result of her nauseating propaganda,’ says lofty Alexandra.
     ‘She’s always talking about love and freedom as if these were attributes
     peculiar to herself. Whereas, in reality, Felicity cannot love. How can she truly love?
     She’s too timid to hate well, let alone love. It takes courage to practise love.
     And what does she know of freedom? Felicity has never been in bondage,