ASHCLIFFE HALL (continued 7)
Reading edition
It is on that summer day, the 11th of June 1727, that I take leave of the Passmores. A quiet family party—Lucy growing into another and a livelier Celia; Charley toning down into a second Harry; Isabella, when she condescends to shine upon Ashcliffe in her glories of carriage and Nero, being the only discordant element. She and John Rowe get on very well, by reason of the lady being mistress, and John her obedient servant. Squire and Madam Passmore have grown more white and infirm; and on one quiet summer night in the preceding year, without sound or forewarning, the angels of God came down from heaven to bear Cicely Aggett home to the Father's house. But Patient lives on, for her work is not yet over.
On that afternoon Celia and Harry had rung the bell at the gate of Sainte Marie de Chaillot, and had asked for an interview with Soeur Marie Angélique. And in the guest-chamber there came to them a pale, slender, worn-looking woman in a nun's garb, who assured them, as she had done before on several occasions, that she was making her salvation; that she trusted she had by this time nearly expiated all her sins, and that a very short time in Purgatory would suffice to purify her. Only once during the interview did her stoic calmness give way, and that was when she said of the Purgatory she anticipated, "And there I shall see Philip!" And Celia felt that nearly all she could do was to pray earnestly that this wandering sheep might see Philip elsewhere. Then they took leave of Claude Ingram, and she went back to the convent chapel, and tried to make a little more of her salvation by kneeling on the cold stones and repeating interminable Litanies and Ave Marias. So we leave her to her hard task—hardest of tasks in all the world—to stand before God without a Mediator, to propitiate the Judge by the works of the law. For "without shedding of blood is no remission."[13]
The summer evening is drawing to a close, as outside the convent Harry and Celia pause to watch the sunset.
"How beautiful God has made this world!" says one of the travellers. "How much more beautiful it must be in that other land very far off,[14] the Heavenly Jerusalem, where is no need of the sun,[15] for the Lord is their everlasting light."[16]
And the answer, associated to her with the dead lips of Edward, comes in Celia's quietest and softest tones—
"For 'the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.'"[17]