LA RECOGIDA

Sister Chucha, the nun who took first charge of newcomers to the Penitentiary, was fat and kindly, and not very discreet. It was her business to measure Manuela for a garb and to see to the cutting of her hair. She told the girl that she was by far the most handsome penitent she had ever had under her hands.

“It is a thousand pities to cut all this beauty away,” she said; “for it is obvious you will want it before long. So far as that goes you will find the cap not unbecoming; and I’ll see to it that you have a piece of looking-glass though, by ordinary, that is forbidden. Good gracious, child, what a figure you have! If I had had one quarter of your good fortune I should never have been religious.”

She went on to describe the rules of the Institution, the hours and nature of the work, the offices in Chapel, the recreation times and hours for meals. Manuela, she said, was not the build for rope and mat work.

“I shall get Reverend Mother to put you to housework, I think,” she said. “That will give you exercise, and the chance of an occasional peep at the window. You don’t deserve it, I fancy; but you are so handsome that I have a weakness for you. All you have to do is to speak fairly to Father Vicente and curtsey to the Reverend Mother whenever you see her. Above all, no tantrums. Leave the others alone, and they’ll let you alone. There’s not one of them but has her scheme for getting away, or her friend outside. That’s occupation enough for her. It will be the same with you. Your friends will find you out. You’ll have a novio spending the night in the street before to-morrow’s over unless I am very much mistaken.” She patted her cheek. “I’ll do what I can for you, my dear.”

Manuela curtseyed, and thanked the good nun. “All I have to do,” she said, “is to repent of my sin which has become very horrible to me.”

“La-la-la!” cried Sister Chucha. “Keep that for Father Vicente, if you please, my dear. That is his affair. Our patroness led a jolly life before she was a saint. No doubt, you should not have stabbed Don Bartolome, and of course the Ramonez would never overlook such a thing. But we all understand that you must save your own skin if you could that’s very reasonable. And I hear that there was another reason.” Here she chucked her chin. “I don’t wonder at it,” she said with a meaning smile.

The girl coloured and hung her head. She was still quivering with the shame of her public torture. She could still see Manvers’ eyes stare chilly at the wall before them, and believe them to grow colder with each stave of her admissions. Her one consolation lay in the thought that she could please him by amendment and save him by a conviction; so it was hard to be petted by Sister Chucha. She would have welcomed the whip, would have hugged it to her bosom the rod of Salvation, she would have called it; but compliments on her beauty, caresses of cheek and chin was she not to be allowed to be good? As for escape, she had no desire for that. She could love her Don Osmundo best from a distance. What was to be gained, but shame, by seeing him?

Her shining hair was cut off; the cap, the straight prison garb were put on. She stood up, slim-necked, an arrowy maid, with her burning face and sea-green eyes chastened by real humility. She made a good confession to Father Vicente, and took her place among her mates.

It was true, what Sister Chucha had told her. Every penitent in that great and gaunt building was thrilled with one persistent hope, worked patiently with that in view, and under its spell refrained from violence or clamour. There was not one face of those files of grey-gowned girls which, at stated hours, entered the chapel, knelt at the altar, or stooped at painful labour through the stifling days, which did not show a gleam. Stupid, vacant, vicious, morose, pretty, sparkling, whatever the face might be, there was that expectation to redeem or enhance it, to make it human, to make it womanish. There was, or there would be, some day, any day, a lover outside to whom it would be the face of all faces.

Manuela had not been two hours in the company of her fellow-prisoners before she was told that there were two ways of escape from the Recogidas. Religion or marriage these were; but the religious alternative was not discussed.

Sister Chucha, it transpired, had chosen that way “But do you wonder?” cried the girl who told Manuela, with shrill scorn. Most of the sisters had once been penitents “Vaya! Look at them, my dear!” cried this young Amazon, conscious of her own charms.

She was a plump Andalusian, black-eyed, merry, and quick to change her moods. Love had sent her to Saint Mary Magdalene, and love would take her out again.

That Chucha, she owned, was a kind soul. She always put the pretty ones to housework “it gives us a chance at the windows. I have Fernando, who works at the sand-carting in the river. He never fails to look up this way. Some day he will ask for me.” She peered at herself in a pail of water, and fingered her cap daintily. “How does my skirt hang now, Manuela? Too short, I fancy. Did you ever see such shoes as they give you here! Lucky that nobody can see you.”

This was the strain of everybody’s talk in the House of Las Recogidas in the whitewashed galleries where they walked in squads under the eye of a nun who sat reading a good book against the wall, in the court where they lay in the shade to rest, prone, with their faces hidden in their arms, or with knees huddled up and eyes fixed in a stare. They talked to each other in the hoarse, tearful staccato of Spain, which, beginning low, seems to gather force and volume as it runs, until, like a beck in flood, it carries speaker and listener over the bar and into tossing waves of yeasty water.

Manuela, through all, kept her thoughts to herself, and spoke nothing of her own affairs. There may have been others like her, fixed to the great achievement of justifying themselves to their own standard: she had no means of knowing. Her standard was this, that she had purged herself by open confession to the man whom she loved. She was clean, sweetened and full of heart. All she had to do was to open wide her house that holiness might enter in.

Besides this she had, at the moment, the consciousness of a good action; for she firmly believed that by her surrender to the law she had again saved Manvers from assassination. If Don Luis could only cleanse his honour by blood, he now had her heart’s blood. That should suffice him. She grew happier as the days went on.

Meanwhile it was remarked upon by Mercedes and Dolores, and half a dozen more, that distinguished strangers came to the gallery of the chapel. The outlines of them could be descried through the grille; for behind the grille was a great white window which threw them into high relief.

It was the fixed opinion of Mercedes and Dolores that Manuela had a novio.