Читать книгу There are Victories - Charles Yale Harrison - Страница 11

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The following Spring, when the northern slope of Mount Royal was stippled with the pointed viridity of newfledged birch and maple, Mrs. Throop, the Major willing, took Ruth home.

It was different outside of the convent: life, speech, dress, manners, the tempo of things, everything was different. It was difficult at first to become accustomed to the new viewpoint. A very simple thing, for example, was the matter of early mass. In the convent, the day started with chapel and gave point and reality to the succeeding hours. Here at home, going to the seven o’clock mass was the cause of irritation and commotion. The servants had to get up an hour earlier, there were little annoying complaints and soon Ruth fell into the slipshod church habits of her parents.

Even Mrs. Throop, now that she was nearing forty-five and leaned rather heavily on the Church, considered an occasional high mass as full payment for a seat on the right hand of God. The attitude of Ruth’s stepfather, Major Throop, towards the Church was as perfunctory as the brushing of one’s teeth; and the Major’s point of view affected the habits of his entire household. This was so altogether different from the brooding quiet of convent devotion, where the ritual (the tolling of the bell on Sunday, the silent genuflecting sisters and girls) seemed to have a special inwrought significance. Now going to church was accompanied with much chatter and grumbling, and when the family arrived at the steps of the cathedral Ruth was bored by the empty gossip and whispered inanities of the black-frocked parishioners. For the first few months she was unhappy; she was lost in this new world and when finally she stammered her thoughts to her mother she was told that this was the world and one had to become accustomed to it.

“After all,” Mrs. Throop said, “you can’t live in a convent all your life, can you?”

“No,” Ruth admitted.

“Perhaps,” her mother went on, “you would like to take the veil.”

“I don’t know,” Ruth said after a long pause.

“If you don’t know then you haven’t a vocation. Besides I have other plans for you.” Then, putting her arm about her daughter’s waist, she said: “You will become used to things soon and then you’ll be much happier.”

“Yes, mother.” (Dutifully and without conviction.)

“You are sixteen now and you’ve got to be thinking about becoming a practical young lady—not a mooning convent girl. Goodness knows I am a devout woman—I hope—but the religion of the world is different from the devotion of a convent.”

Ruth sat silently listening to her mother and nodding her head.

So this was the world, the world of the flesh of which the sisters had repeatedly spoken. Flesh: the word described her new world with pointed aptitude. The Major, fleshy, red-faced and bloated after dinner, sipping his heavy, rich port and smoking his cigar; her mother’s perpetual concern with food and clothes; those interminable suety dinners, the endless dull conversation, the Sunday afternoon stupefaction. ... By four o’clock on the Sabbath, Ruth experienced a profound longing for the convent and its quiet ways; the convent—the antithesis of the world in which she now lived. She wanted to return and yet she knew that this was impossible. Inexperienced as she was, she knew that life lies ahead of one and there is no turning back.

In the summer, fortunately, there was a change of routine. The Throops spent July in the Laurentians and August at Uncle Francis’s seaside estate on the Gaspé peninsula. At the seashore Ruth fell into a happy mood, half brooding, half carefree; at the sea she found an attitude in Nature which was synonymous with the spiritual tone of the convent. There were mornings on the hot beach and in the afternoons she swam until she was exhausted and threw herself on the sand panting for breath. When she returned to Montreal in the fall, she was beginning to revel in her new freedom: there were long walks on the footpaths of the mountain, riding on the bridle paths of a week-end morning. And most fortunate of all, there were new duties, new responsibilities, new faces, new pleasures, new companions....

Early in October she entered the last grade of the Catholic High School.