Thunder On The Right Read Online Free PDF Page A

came the feeling that she was being silently watched. From behind.
    She turned her head over her shoulder, to meet the bright brown stare of St.
    Anthony, smiling down at her from his niche with its immortelles and its nest of dead candles; St. Anthony, who found that which was lost . . . there was nothing in that fixed and plaster smile which could have caused the little frisson of goose flesh a moment ago. She turned further, and met the gaze of a still, black figure standing, like yet another statue, in an open doorway. But the door had been shut when she passed it a moment ago. And the eyes of this statue were alive.
    So effectively had the silence and the strangeness of the place done their work that, for half a moment, Jennifer's mind failed to register the simple fact; that here at last was one of the inmates of the place who could tell her what she wanted to know.
    Instead, at the sudden sight of the black-robed nun standing behind her, she experienced a sharp sense of shock; that sickening contraction of the stomach muscles, the swift, chilly emptying of the blood from the heart that momentarily cancels normality of reason and action. Here, in the sun-glaring corridor of the convent, one might surely expect to meet a nun, robed as this one was robed? But such had been the magic of the high valleys, the charged strangeness of the silence and the inexplicable demeanor of the girl at the gate, that Jennifer stared at the black-habited figure before her with all the horror and apprehension that she might have accorded to a supernatural being fresh from the medieval mysteries of the Inquisition.
    Then the figure spoke, and moved from its doorway, shedding as it did so its ghostly anonymity, and becoming instead a tall woman with a coolly authoritative voice.
    " Buenos dias, senorita. The Reverend Mother is at present occupied, but perhaps you can discuss your business just as well with me? Will you please come in?"
    The room into which Jennifer followed her bore the same evidence of poverty as did the rest of the convent. It was small and square and, beyond the scanty furnishing provided by the flat bed, single chair, chest of drawers and prie-dieu , it held nothing. The floor, of scrubbed white boards, was innocent of polish, and the plain uncarved prie-dieu was placed, deliberately it seemed, so that the kneeler's gaze was turned away from the sun-drenched prospect of meadow and mountain, and directed toward a crudely carved crucifix—an effigy that made it only too plain that the cross was an instrument of torture. The odor of sanctity here, thought Jennifer, as she passed into the sterile sunlessness of the room, was too clearly the odor of sackcloth. If this was the rule that directed the Sisterhood of Our Lady of the Storms, then less and less could it be the place for Gillian. The owner of the room closed the door softly, and turned.
    Seen here, in the clear unshadowed light from the small window, her appearance seemed as Spanish as her first words had suggested. Somewhere, a score of times, Jennifer had seen those high-bred, fine-boned features, on faces gazing proudly from ruffed and jeweled canvases. The longish nose and arched nostrils, the clean angles of cheek and jawbone, the thin line of a once passionate mouth—here was the breeding and arrogance of old Spain, starved, as it were, into submission. Only the eyes, large and dark, spoke still of what fire had been there once, and they were hooded hawkwise, under lids no longer smooth, but crinkled and bistered like fading poppy petals. Their once deep luster had shallowed and flattened, so that they showed as unreadable, as expressionless, as the obsidian gaze of a sphinx.
    She remained standing just inside the door, with her hands folded and hidden traditional fashion, in the long sleeves of her robe. Robe and headdress were alike of black, unrelieved by any delicate contrast of white frill or wimple to frame the face. Over the heavy floor length robe she