The Abbess of Crewe Read Free

Abbess says, the skin of her face
     gleaming like a pearl, and her fresh, white robes falling about her to the floor. That
     Thomas,’ says the Abbess, ‘who tumbles Felicity.’
    ‘Well, someone leaked it to Thomas,’ says Mildred, ‘and that could only
     be one of the three of us here, or Sister Winifrede. I suggest it must be Winifrede, the
     benighted clot, who’s been talking.’
    ‘Undoubtedly,’ says Walburga, ‘but why?’
    ‘“Why?” is a fastidious question at any time,’ says the Abbess.
     ‘When applied to any action of Winifrede’s the word “why” is the
     inscrutable ingredient of a brown stew. I have plans for Winifrede.’
    ‘She was certainly instructed in the doctrine and official version that our
     electronic arrangements are merely laboratorial equipment for the training of our
     novices and nuns to meet the challenge of modern times,’ Sister Mildred says.
    ‘The late Abbess Hildegarde, may she rest in peace,’ says Walburga,
     ‘was out of her mind to admit Winifrede as a postulant, far less admit her to the
     veil.’
    But the living Abbess of Crewe is saying, ‘Be that as it may, Winifrede is in it up
     to the neck, and the scandal stops at Winifrede.’
    ‘Amen’ say the two black nuns. The Abbess reaches out to the Infant of Prague
     and touches with the tip of her finger a ruby embedded in its vestments. After a space
     she speaks: ‘The motorway from London to Crewe is jammed with reporters, according
     to the news. The A51 is a solid mass of vehicles. In the midst of the strikes and the
     oil crises.’
    ‘I hope the police are in force at the gates,’ Mildred says.
    ‘The police are in force,’ the Abbess says. ‘I was firm with the Home
     Office.’
    ‘There are long articles in this week’s
Time
and
Newsweek
,’ Walburga says. ‘They give four pages apiece to
     Britain’s national scandal of the nuns. They print Felicity’s
     picture.’
    ‘What are they saying?’ says the Abbess.
    ‘
Time
compares our public to Nero who fiddled while Rome burned.
Newsweek
recalls that it was a similar attitude of British frivolity and
     neglect of her national interests that led to the American Declaration of Independence.
     They make much of the affair of Sister Felicity’s thimble at the time of your
     election, Lady Abbess.’
    ‘I would have been elected Abbess in any case,’ says the Abbess.
     ‘Felicity had no chance.’
    ‘The Americans have quite gathered that point,’ Walburga says. ‘They
     appear to be amused and rather shocked, of course, by the all-pervading bitchiness in
     this country.’
    ‘I dare say,’ says the Abbess. ‘This is a sad hour for England in
     these, the days of her decline. All this public uproar over a silver thimble, mounting
     as it has over the months. Such a scandal could never arise in the United States of
     America. They have a sense of proportion and they understand Human Nature over there;
     it’s the secret of their success. A realistic race, even if they do eat asparagus
     the wrong way. However, I have a letter from Rome, dear Sister Walburga, dear Sister
     Mildred. It’s from the Congregation of Religious. We have to take it
     seriously.’
    ‘We do,’ says Walburga.
    ‘We have to do something about it,’ says the Abbess,‘because the
     Cardinal himself has written, not the Cardinal’s secretary. They’re putting
     out feelers. There are questions, and they are leading questions.’
    ‘Are they worried about the press and publicity?’ says Walburga, her fingers
     moving in her lap.
    ‘Yes, they want an explanation. But I,’ says the Abbess of Crewe, ‘am
     not worried about the publicity. It has come to the point where the more we get the
     better.’
    Mildred’s mind seems to have wandered. She says with a sudden breakage in her calm,
     ‘Oh, we could be excommunicated! I know we’ll be excommunicated!’
    The Abbess continues evenly, ‘The more scandal there is from this point on the
     better. We