Down one wall of the chapel were windows, and through these moonlight
fell, somehow changing and distorting the rows of chairs, the altar,
the reading stand. Flip drew in her breath in alarm as she looked at
the organ and saw someone seated at it, crouched over the keys. But it
was neither a murderer lying in wait for her nor a ghost, but a shadow
cast by the moon. She slipped in and sat down on one of the chairs and
she was trembling, but after a while her heart began beating normally
and the room looked familiar again.
She remembered when she was a small girl, before her mother died, she
had had an Irish nurse who often took her into the church just around
the corner from their apartment. It was a small church, full of reds
and blues and golds and the smell of incense. Once her nurse had taken
her to a service and Flip had been wildly elated by it, by the singing
of the choir boys, the chanting of the priest, the ringing of the
bells; all had conspired to give her a sense of soaring happiness. It
was the same kind of happiness that she felt when she saw the moonlight
on the mountain peaks, or the whole Rhône valley below her covered
with clouds and she could lean out over the balcony and be surrounded
by cloud, lost in cloud, with only a branch of elm appearing with shy
abruptness as the mist was torn apart.
Here in the non-denominational chapel at school she felt no sense of
joy; there was no overwhelming beauty here between these stark walls;
but gradually she began to relax. There was no sound but the wind in
the trees; she could almost forget the life of the school going on
above her. She did not try to pray but she let the quiet sink into her,
and when at last she rose she felt more complete; she felt that she
could go upstairs and remain Philippa Hunter who was going to be an
artist; and she would not be ashamed to be Philippa Hunter, no matter
what the girls in her class thought of her.
At last she rose and started out of the chapel, bumping into a row of
chairs with a tremendous clatter. The noise shattered her peace and
she stopped stock still, her heart beating violently; but when nothing
else happened, when no one came running to see who had desecrated the
chapel, she walked swiftly out on tiptoe. She opened the door and
came face to face in the corridor with Miss Tulip in her stiff white
matron's uniform.
"Well! Philippa Hunter!"
Flip felt as though she had been caught in some hideous crime. She
looked wildly around.
"Where have you been?" Miss Tulip asked.
"In the chapel--" she whispered.
"Why?" Miss Tulip snapped on her pince nez and looked at Flip as though
she were some strange animal.
Flip could not raise her voice from a stifled whisper. "I wanted to--to
be alone."
Miss Tulip looked at Flip more curiously than ever. "That's very nice,
I'm sure, Philippa dear, but you must remember that there is a time and
place for everything. You are not allowed in the chapel except during
services."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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