Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.
More needs she the divine, than the physician.
MACBETH
On the following evening, the view of the convent towers, rising among the shadowy woods, reminded Emily of the nun, whose condition had so much affected her; and, anxious to know how she was, as well as to see some of her former friends, she and the Lady Blanche extended their walk to the monastery.At the gate stood a carriage, which, from the heat of the horses, appeared to have just arrived;but a more than common stillness pervaded the court and the cloisters, through which Emily and Blanche passed in their way to the great hall, where a nun, who was crossing to the stair-case, replied to the enquiries of the former, that sister Agnes was still living, and sensible, but that it was thought she could not survive the night.In the parlour, they found several of the boarders, who rejoiced to see Emily, and told her many little circumstances that had happened in the convent since her departure, and which were interesting to her only because they related to persons, whom she had regarded with affection.While they thus conversed the abbess entered the room, and expressed much satisfaction at seeing Emily, but her manner was unusually solemn, and her countenance dejected.
'Our house,' said she, after the first salutations were over, 'is truly a house of mourning--a daughter is now paying the debt of nature.--You have heard, perhaps, that our daughter Agnes is dying?'
Emily expressed her sincere concern.
'Her death presents to us a great and awful lesson,' continued the abbess; 'let us read it, and profit by it; let it teach us to prepare ourselves for the change, that awaits us all! You are young, and have it yet in your power to secure "the peace that passeth all understanding"--the peace of conscience.Preserve it in your youth, that it may comfort you in age; for vain, alas! and imperfect are the good deeds of our latter years, if those of our early life have been evil!'
Emily would have said, that good deeds, she hoped, were never vain;but she considered that it was the abbess who spoke, and she remained silent.
'The latter days of Agnes,' resumed the abbess, 'have been exemplary;would they might atone for the errors of her former ones! Her sufferings now, alas! are great; let us believe, that they will make her peace hereafter! I have left her with her confessor, and a gentleman, whom she has long been anxious to see, and who is just arrived from Paris.They, I hope, will be able to administer the repose, which her mind has hitherto wanted.'
Emily fervently joined in the wish.
'During her illness, she has sometimes named you,' resumed the abbess; 'perhaps, it would comfort her to see you; when her present visitors have left her, we will go to her chamber, if the scene will not be too melancholy for your spirits.But, indeed, to such scenes, however painful, we ought to accustom ourselves, for they are salutary to the soul, and prepare us for what we are ourselves to suffer.'
Emily became grave and thoughtful; for this conversation brought to her recollection the dying moments of her beloved father, and she wished once more to weep over the spot, where his remains were buried.During the silence, which followed the abbess' speech, many minute circumstances attending his last hours occurred to her--his emotion on perceiving himself to be in the neighbourhood of Chateau-le-Blanc--his request to be interred in a particular spot in the church of this monastery--and the solemn charge he had delivered to her to destroy certain papers, without examining them.--She recollected also the mysterious and horrible words in those manuscripts, upon which her eye had involuntarily glanced; and, though they now, and, indeed, whenever she remembered them, revived an excess of painful curiosity, concerning their full import, and the motives for her father's command, it was ever her chief consolation, that she had strictly obeyed him in this particular.
Little more was said by the abbess, who appeared too much affected by the subject she had lately left, to be willing to converse, and her companions had been for some time silent from the same cause, when this general reverie was interrupted by the entrance of a stranger, Monsieur Bonnac, who had just quitted the chamber of sister Agnes.
He appeared much disturbed, but Emily fancied, that his countenance had more the expression of horror, than of grief.Having drawn the abbess to a distant part of the room, he conversed with her for some time, during which she seemed to listen with earnest attention, and he to speak with caution, and a more than common degree of interest.
When he had concluded, he bowed silently to the rest of the company, and quitted the room.The abbess, soon after, proposed going to the chamber of sister Agnes, to which Emily consented, though not without some reluctance, and Lady Blanche remained with the boarders below.
At the door of the chamber they met the confessor, whom, as he lifted up his head on their approach, Emily observed to be the same that had attended her dying father; but he passed on, without noticing her, and they entered the apartment, where, on a mattress, was laid sister Agnes, with one nun watching in the chair beside her.Her countenance was so much changed, that Emily would scarcely have recollected her, had she not been prepared to do so: it was ghastly, and overspread with gloomy horror; her dim and hollow eyes were fixed on a crucifix, which she held upon her bosom; and she was so much engaged in thought, as not to perceive the abbess and Emily, till they stood at the bed-side.Then, turning her heavy eyes, she fixed them, in wild horror, upon Emily, and, screaming, exclaimed, 'Ah!
that vision comes upon me in my dying hours!'