THE TUNNEL
The only other occupant of the railway-carriage was a nun who sat in
the farther corner reading her breviary or some pious book. Letizia
soon fell fast asleep, her head pillowed on her mother’s lap, while
Nancy, watching the flaring chimneys in the darkness without, was
thinking of that old lady who had flared like them in the murk of
Lebanon House. After two hours of monotonous progress Letizia woke up.
“Muvver,” she said, “I fink I’ve got a funny feeling in my tummy.”
“I expect you’re hungry, pet. You didn’t eat a very good tea.”
“It was such a crumby cake; and when I blowed some of the crumbs out of
my mouf, one of those aunts made a noise like you make to a gee-gee,
and I said, ‘Yes, but I’m _not_ a gee-gee,’ and then the plate what I
was eating went out of the room on a tray.”
“Well, I’ve got a sponge cake for you here.”
Letizia worked her way laboriously through half the cake, and then gave
it up with a sigh.
“Oh, dear, everyfing seems to be all crumbs to-day.”
“Try some of the lemonade. Be careful, darling, not to choke, because
it’s very bubbly.”
Letizia made a wry face over the lemonade.
“It tastes like pins, muvver.”
The nun who overheard this criticism put down her book and said, with a
pleasant smile, that she had a flask of milk which would be much better
for a little girl than lemonade. She had, too, a small collapsible
tumbler, from which it would be easier to drink than from a bottle.
“Is that a glass, muvver?” Letizia exclaimed. “I was finking it was a
neckalace.”
“Thank Sister very nicely.”
“Is that a sister?” Letizia asked incredulously.
The various relationships to which she had been introduced this day
were too much for Letizia, and this new one seemed to her even more
extraordinary than the collapsible metal tumbler. Nancy explained to
the nun that they had been making a family visit to hitherto unknown
relations in Brigham, to which the nun responded by saying that she,
too, had been making a kind of family visit inasmuch as she had been
staying in Lancashire at the mother house of the Sisters of the Holy
Infancy.
“Right out on the moors. Such a lovely position, though of course it’s
just a little bleak at this time of year.”
She had laid aside her pious book and was evidently glad to talk for a
while to combat the depression that nocturnal journeys inevitably cast
upon travellers in those days before corridors were at all usual in
trains. In those days a railway compartment seemed such an inadequate
shelter from the night that roared past in torrents of darkness on
either side of it. The footwarmers, glad though one was of them, only
made the chilly frost that suffused the upper portion of the carriage
more blighting to the spirit. The dim gaslit stations through which the
train passed, the clangour of the tunnels, the vertical handle of the
door which at any moment, it seemed, might become horizontal and let it
swing open for the night to rush through and sweep one away into the
black annihilation from which the train was panting to escape, the saga
of prohibitions inscribed above the windows and beneath the rack which
gradually assumed a portentous and quasi-Mosaic significance—all these
menacing, ineluctable impressions were abolished by the introduction of
the corridor with its assurance of life’s continuity.
Nancy told the nun that she was a Catholic, and they talked for a time
on conventional lines about the difficulty of keeping up with one’s
religious duties on tour.
“But I do hope that you will go on trying, my dear,” said the nun.
The young actress felt a little hypocritical in allowing her companion
to presume that until this date she had never relinquished the
struggle. Yet she was not anxious to extend the conversation into any
intimacy of discussion, nor did she want the nun to feel bound by her
profession to remonstrate with her for past neglect. So instead of
saying anything either about the past or the future, she smiled an
assent.
“You mustn’t let me be too inquisitive a travelling companion,” said
the nun, “but I notice that you’re in deep mourning. Have you lost some
one who was very dear to you?”
“My husband.”
The nun leaned over and with an exquisite tenderness laid her white and
delicate hand on Nancy’s knee.
“And you have only this little bright thing left?” she murmured.
Letizia had been regarding the nun’s action with wide-eyed solemnity.
Presently she stood up on the seat and putting her arms round her
mother’s neck, whispered in her ear:
“I fink the lady tied up with a handkie is nice.”
“You have conquered Letizia’s heart,” said Nancy, smiling through the
tears in her eyes.
“I’m very proud to hear it. I should guess that she wasn’t always an
easy conquest.”
“Indeed, no!”
“Letizia?” the nun repeated. “What a nice name to own! Gladness!”
“You know Italian? My husband’s grandmother was Italian. I often wish
that I could speak Italian and teach my small daughter.”
“What is Italian, muvver?” Letizia asked.
“Italian, Letizia,” said the nun, “is the way all the people talk in
the dearest and most beautiful country in the world. Such blue seas,
my dear, such skies of velvet, such oranges and lemons growing on the
trees, such flowers everywhere, such radiant dancing airs, such warmth
and sweetness and light. I lived in Italy long ago, when I was young.”
Nancy looked up in amazement as the nun stopped speaking, for her voice
sounded fresh and crystalline as a girl’s, her cheeks were flushed
with youth, her eyes were deep and warm and lucent as if the Southern
moon swam face to face with her in the cold March night roaring past
the smoky windows of the carriage. Yet when Nancy looked again she saw
the fine lines in the porcelain-frail face, and the puckered eyelids,
and middle-age in those grave blue eyes. In Italy, then, was written
the history of her youth, and in Italy the history of her love, for
only remembered love could thus have transformed her for a fleeting
instant to what she once was. At that moment the train entered a
tunnel and went clanging on through such a din of titanic anvils that
it was impossible to talk, for which Nancy was grateful because she
did not want Letizia to shatter the nun’s rapture by asking questions
that would show she had not understood a great deal about Italy or
Italian. Presently the noise of the anvils ceased, and the train began
to slow down until at last it came to a stop in a profound silence
which pulsed upon the inner ear as insistently as a second or two back
had clanged those anvils. The talk of people in the next compartment
began to trickle through the partition, and one knew that such talk was
trickling all the length of the train, and that, though one could not
hear the words through all the length of the train, people were saying
to one another that the signals must be against them. One felt, too,
a genuine gratitude to those active and vigilant signals which were
warning the train not to rush on through that din of anvils to its doom.
And then abruptly the lights went out in every single compartment. The
blackness was absolute. People put up windows and looked out into the
viewless tunnel, until the vapours drove them back within. Now down the
line were heard hoarse shouts and echoes, and the bobbing light of the
guard’s lamp illuminated the sweating roof of the tunnel as he passed
along to interview the engine driver. In a few minutes he came back,
calling out, “Don’t be frightened, ladies and gentlemen, there’s no
danger.” Heads peered out once more into the mephitic blackness, and
the word went along that there had been a breakdown on the line ahead
and that their lighting had by an unfortunate coincidence broken down
as well. Everybody hoped that the signals behind were as vigilant as
those in front and that the red lamps were burning bright to show that
there was danger on the line.
“I aspeck the poor train wanted a rest, muvver,” said Letizia. “I
aspeck it was sleepy because it was out so late.”
“I know somebody else who’s sleepy.”
“P’r’aps a little bit,” Letizia admitted.
“Dear me, she _must_ be tired,” her mother said across the darkness to
the nun. “Well, then, put your head on my lap, old lady, and go right
off to sleep as soon as ever you can.”
For some time the two grown-ups in the compartment sat in silence while
the little girl went to sleep. It was the nun who spoke first.
“I wonder whether it will disturb her if we talk quietly? But this
utter blackness and silence is really rather dispiriting.”
“Oh, no, Sister, we shan’t disturb her. She’s sound asleep by now.”
“Does she always travel with you when you’re on tour?” the nun asked.
“Until now she has. You see, my husband only died at Christmas and we
were always together with her. I am a little worried about the future,
because I can’t afford to travel with a nurse and landladies vary and
of course she has to be left in charge of somebody.”
“Yes, I can understand that it must be a great anxiety to you.”
Nancy thought how beautiful the nun’s voice sounded in this darkness.
While the train was moving, she had not realised its quality, but in
the stillness now it stole upon her ears as magically as running water
or as wind in pine-tree tops or as any tranquil and pervasive sound
of nature. In her mind’s eye she was picturing the nun’s face as it
had appeared when she was speaking of Italy, and she was filled with a
desire to confide in her.
“That is really the reason I’ve been to Brigham,” Nancy said. “I
thought that I ought to give my husband’s relations the opportunity of
looking after Letizia. Not because I want to shirk the responsibility,”
she added quickly. “Indeed I would hate to lose her, but I did feel
that she ought to have the chance of being brought up quietly. My own
mother died when I was very young, and my father who is on the stage
allowed me to act a great deal as a child, so that really I didn’t go
to school till I was over twelve, and it wasn’t a very good school,
because I was living in Dublin with an aunt who hadn’t much money.
Indeed I never really learnt anything, and when I was sixteen I went
back to the stage for good. I’m only twenty-four now. I look much
older, I think.”
“I shouldn’t have said that you were more than that,” the nun replied.
“But how terribly sad for you, my dear, to have lost your husband so
young. Many years ago before I became a nun I was engaged to be married
to a young Italian, and he died. That was in Italy, and that is why I
still always think of Italy as the loveliest country and of Italian
as the most beautiful language. But you were telling me about your
relations in Brigham.”
Nancy gave an account of her visit, and particularly of the interview
with Letizia’s great-grandmother.
“I think the old lady was quite right. I cannot imagine that bright
little sleeping creature was intended to be brought up in such
surroundings. Besides, I don’t think it is right to expose a Catholic
child to Protestant influences. Far better that you should keep her
with you.”
“Yes, but suppose I cannot get an engagement? As a matter of fact, I
have only a pound or two left, and the prospect is terrifying me. I
feel that I ought to have gone on acting at Greenwich. But to act on
the very stage on which my husband had died in my arms! I couldn’t. I
simply couldn’t have done it.”
“My dear, nobody would ever dream of thinking that you could. It’s
cruel enough that you should have to act on any stage at such a time.
However, I feel sure that you will soon get an engagement. Almighty
God tries us in so many ways—ways that we often cannot understand,
so that sometimes we are tempted to question His love. Be sure that
He has some mysterious purpose in thus trying you even more hardly.
Nobody is worth anything who cannot rise above suffering to greatness
of heart and mind and soul. Do not think to yourself that a foolish old
nun is just trying to soothe you with the commonplaces of religious
consolation. To be sure, they are commonplaces that she is uttering,
but subtleties avail nothing until the truth of the great commonplaces
has been revealed to the human soul. Our holy religion is built up on
the great commonplaces. That is why it is so infinitely superior to
the subtleties of proud and eccentric individuals as encouraged by
Protestantism. What a long time we are waiting in this darkness! Yet we
know that however long we have to wait we shall sometime or other get
out of this tunnel.”
“Yes, but if we wait much longer,” said Nancy, “I will have another
problem to face when we get to London, for I will never dare arrive
back at my present landlady’s too late.”
“I can solve that problem for you, at any rate,” said the nun. “I shall
be met at Euston by a vehicle, and I know that our guest-room is free
to-night. So don’t let your night’s lodging worry you.”
After this they sat silent in the darkness for a long time. The
presence of the nun filled Nancy with a sense of warm security and
peace of mind. Gradually it seemed to her that this wait in the
tunnel was a perfect expression of the dark pause in her life, which,
beginning with the death of Bram, had ended in her visit to Brigham. A
conviction was born in her brain, a conviction which with every minute
of this immersion in absolute blackness became stronger, that somehow
the presence of the nun was a comforting fact, the importance of which
was not to be measured by her importance within the little space of
the railway-carriage, but that the existence of this nun was going to
influence the whole of her life, which must soon begin again when the
train emerged from the tunnel. The curtain would rise once more upon
the pantomime, and, whatever the vicissitudes that she as the heroine
of it might have to endure, there would always be a Fairy Queen waiting
in the wings to enter and shake her silver wand against the powers of
Evil. It was very childish and sentimental to be sitting here in the
dark dreaming like this, Nancy kept telling herself; but then once
more the mystery of the tunnel would enfold her as one is enfolded
by those strange half-sleepy clarities of the imagination that flash
through the midway of the night when one lies in bed and hopes that
the sense of illumination that is granted between a sleep and a sleep
will return with daylight to illuminate the active life of the morning.
Her thoughts about the nun reassumed their first portentousness; the
comparison of her own life to a pantomime appeared once more with the
superlative reality of a symbol that might enshrine the whole meaning
of life. Then suddenly the lights went up, and after a few more minutes
the train was on its way again.
Nancy was glad indeed on arriving at Euston toward two o’clock of a
frore and foggy night to drive away with Sister Catherine in the queer
conventual vehicle like a covered-in wagonette with four small grilled
windows. To have argued with Miss Fewkes about her right to enter the
tall thin house in Blackboy Passage at whatever hour she chose would
have been the climax to the Brigham experience.
The Sisters of the Holy Infancy were a small community which was
founded by one of several co-heiresses to a thirteenth-century barony
by writ, dormant for many centuries. Instead of spending her money on
establishing her right to an ancient title Miss Tiphaine de Cauntelo
Edwardson preferred to endow this small community and be known as
Mother Mary Ethelreda. The headquarters of the community were at
Beaumanoir where Sister Catherine, the right-hand of the now aged
foundress, had been visiting her. This was a Lancashire property which
had formerly been held by Miss Edwardson’s ancestors and repurchased by
her when she decided to enter the religious life. In London the house
of the community was situated in St. John’s Wood where the Sisters
were occupied in the management of an extremely good school. There
was a third house in Eastbourne which was used chiefly as a home for
impoverished maiden ladies.
Sister Catherine was head-mistress of St. Joseph’s School, and it was
there that she took Nancy and Letizia from Euston. The porteress was
overjoyed to see her, having been working herself up for the last two
hours into a panic over the thought of a railway accident. The white
guest-room was very welcome to Nancy after the fatigue of this long
day, so long a day that she could not believe that it had only been
fifteen hours ago that she set out from Euston to Brigham. She seemed
to have lived many lives in the course of it—Bram’s life as a boy
with his brother, old Mrs. Fuller’s eighty years of existence, Sister
Catherine’s bright youth in Italy, and most wearingly of all, Letizia’s
future even to ultimate old age and death. And when she did fall
asleep she was travelling, travelling all the time through endless
unremembered dreams.
In the morning Letizia greatly diverted some of the nuns by her
observations on the image of the Holy Child over the altar, which was a
copy of the famous image of Prague.
“Muvver, who is that little black boy with a crown on His head?”
“That is the baby Jesus, darling.”
“Why is He dressed like that? Is He going out to have tea with one of
His little friends?”
Nancy really did not know how to explain why He was dressed like that,
but hazarded that it was because He was the King of Heaven.
“What has He got in His hand, muvver? What toy has He got?”
“That’s a sceptre, and a thing that kings hold in their hands.”
“Are you quite sure that He is the baby Jesus, muvver?” Letizia pressed.
“Quite sure, darling.”
“Well, I don’t fink he is. I fink he’s just a little friend of the baby
Jesus, who He likes very much and lets him come into His house and
play with His toys, but I don’t fink that little black boy is the baby
Jesus. No, no, no, no, no!” she decided, with vigorous and repeated
shakes of the head.
Nancy was sorry when they had to leave St. Joseph’s School and return
to Blackboy Passage.
“I fink here’s where the little friend lives,” Letizia announced.
“Oh, darling, you really mustn’t be so terribly ingenious. You quite
frighten me. And what am I going to do about you next week when the
dear Kinos will be gone?”