SOUTHWARD
St. Joseph’s School was a pleasant early Victorian house with white
jalousies encircled by a deep verandah of florid ironwork. The garden,
even for the spacious northwest of London, was exceptionally large,
and like all London gardens seemed larger than it really was by the
contrast between its arbours and the houses entirely surrounding them.
There was a mystery about its seclusion that no country garden can
possess, and one could imagine no fitter tenants of its leafy recesses
than these placid nuns and the young girls entrusted to their tutelage.
It seemed that in all those fortunate windows of the houses which
overlooked through the branches of the great lime-trees this serene
enclosure there must be sitting poets in contemplation of the pastoral
of youth being played below. The flash of a white dress, the echo of
a laugh, the flight of a tennis-ball, the glint of tumbling curls,
all these must have held the onlookers entranced as by the murmur and
motion and form and iridescence of a fountain; and this happy valley
among the arid cliffs of London bricks must have appeared to them less
credible than the green mirages in desert lands that tease the dusty
eyelids of travellers.
“I’m glad you have a friend of your own age,” Nancy said to Letizia,
when the morning after her arrival they were walking together along the
convent avenue strewn with October’s fallen leaves.
“Well, she’s not a very great friend,” Letizia demurred.
“But I thought you wrote and told me that she was so very nice?”
“Well, she is very nice. Only I don’t like her very much.”
“But if she’s so very nice, why don’t you like her?”
“Well, I don’t like her, because she _is_ so nice. Whenever I say,
‘Let’s do something,’ she says, ‘Oh, yes, do let’s,’ and then I don’t
want to do it so much.”
“Darling, isn’t that being rather perverse?”
“What’s ‘perverse,’ mother? Do tell me, because I’m collecting
difficult words. I’ve got thirty-eight words now, and when I’ve got
fifty I’m going to ask Hilda Moore what they all mean, and she’s twelve
and it’ll be a disgusting humiliation for her when she doesn’t know.
And that’ll be simply glorious, because she thinks she’s going to be a
yellow-ribbon presently.”
“But don’t you want to be a yellow-ribbon?”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s really worth while. Evelyn Joy who’s much
the nicest girl in the school has never been a ribbon. She said she
couldn’t be bothered. She’s frightfully nice, and I love her one of the
best six people in the world. She can’t be bothered about anything,
and most of the girls are always in a fuss about something. Dorothy
Andrews only wants to do what I want, because she thinks she ought to.
Fancy, she told me she simply longed to be a saint. And she said if
she died young she’d pray for me more than anybody, and I said, ‘Pooh,
St. Maurice is _always_ praying for me and he wears armour and is very
good-looking, so there’s no need for you to die young.’ And then she
cried and said when she was dead I’d be sorry I’d been so cruel.”
Nancy thought that Letizia was not less precocious than she had always
been, and she wondered if she ought to say anything to Sister Catherine
about it. She decided that Sister Catherine was probably well aware of
it and, not being anxious to give her the idea that she was criticising
the wonderful education that the nuns were giving her little daughter,
she resolved to say nothing.
She did, however, discuss with Sister Catherine her own project to go
to Italy and have her voice trained; and she was much relieved when it
was approved.
“It would be wrong not to avail yourself of such an opportunity,” the
nun exclaimed. “Even if it involved breaking into your own savings, I
should still urge you to go; but there seems no likelihood of that, and
there is no reason why you shouldn’t accept this Mr. Kenrick’s offer.
I’d no idea that you had a wonderful voice, and how delightful to be
going to Italy. Do sing for us one evening at Vespers before you go.
Sister Monica would be so pleased, and we shall all enjoy it so much.
We shall feel so grand.”
“But I’m just as much astonished to hear that I’ve got this wonderful
voice as you are,” Nancy said. “Nobody ever told me I had, until this
fairy prince arrived in Bristol.”
“Ah, but I think people are always so afraid to think anybody has a
good voice until somebody else has established the fact for them,”
Sister Catherine laughed. “It was just a piece of good luck that you
should be heard by somebody who understood what good singing is....
I’m glad you think dear little Letizia is looking so well. She is a
great treasure, and we are all very proud of her. She has so much
personality, and I’m doing my best to let her keep it without spoiling
her.”
“I’m sure you are,” Nancy said. “And och, I wish I could ever tell you
how grateful I am to you.”
“There is no need of words, dear child,” said the nun, smiling.
“You prove it to us all the time. I heard from the Reverend Mother
yesterday, and she inquired most affectionately after you.”
That afternoon Nancy went to Mr. Kenrick’s flat in Adelphi Terrace. He
was so kind that she reproached herself for having refused so brusquely
to let him meet her at Paddington.
“Well, it’s all arranged with Maestro Gambone. He’s really the kindest
old man, though he may seem a little fierce before you know him. Should
he, on hearing your voice, decide it’s not worth training, you’ll have
to forgive me for rousing your ambitions and let me see you through any
difficulties you may have about getting another engagement in England.
I have taken a room for you with some people called Arcucci who have a
_pensione_ in the Via Virgilio which is close to Santa Lucia. Arcucci
himself was a singer; but he lost his voice through illness, poor chap.
He never earned more than a local reputation at the San Carlo Opera
House; but he is full of stories about famous singers, and you’ll get
the right atmosphere from him. His wife is a capable and homely woman
who will make you as comfortable as Neapolitans know how, which, to
tell the truth, is not saying much.”
While her patron was speaking, Nancy was gazing out of his study
window at the Thames and letting her imagination drift down on the
fast-flowing ebb with the barges that all seemed like herself bound for
some adventure far from this great city of London. Away on the horizon
beyond Lambeth the domes of the Crystal Palace sparkled in the clearer
sunshine. Even so, on an horizon much farther south than Sydenham
flashed the elusive diamonds of success and fame.
“Tuesday is no day to set out on a journey,” said Kenrick. “So, I’ve
taken your ticket for Wednesday. You’ll leave Paris that night from the
Gare de Lyon in the Rome express, and you’ll be at Naples on Friday
afternoon.”
He went to a drawer in his desk and took out the tickets.
“Good luck,” he said, holding Nancy’s hand.
She was again the prey of an embarrassment against which she tried hard
to struggle, because it seemed to smirch the spirit in which she wanted
to set out. This constraint prevented her from thanking him except in
clumsy conventional phrases.
“Now, will you dine with me to-night?”
She wanted to refuse even this, but she lacked the courage; in the end
she passed a pleasant enough evening, listening to her host expatiate
upon the career for which he assured her again and again she was
certainly destined. He wanted her to lunch and dine with him on the
next day too; but she pleaded the urgency of shopping and packing and
her desire to see something of her daughter.
“Very well then,” he said, as he put her into a hansom outside Verrey’s
where they had dined. “I’ll be at Victoria on Wednesday morning.”
Nancy was glad to be jingling back to St. Joseph’s, alone with her
dreams in the sharp apple-sweet air of the October night.
The next day Mrs. Pottage arrived to say good-bye and help Nancy with
her shopping. By now she had long been an institution at St. Joseph’s,
where her conversation afforded the most intense delight to the nuns.
“Well, when you wrote you was off to Italy I was in two minds if I
wouldn’t suggest coming with you. I don’t know what it is, whether I’m
getting old or ugly or both, but I’ve not had a single proposal for
eighteen months. I suppose it means I’ve got to be thinking of settling
down and giving some of the younger ones a chance. Well, take care
of yourself in Italy, and don’t eat too much ice-cream. Funny thing,
I-talians should eat so much ice-cream and yet be so hot. There was an
opera company came to Greenwich once, and the tenor who was an I-talian
stayed with me. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘what he’ll want is plenty
of macaroni and ice-cream.’ He looked a bit surprised, I’m bound to
say, when I give it him for breakfast on the Sunday morning, but I
thought he was only surprised at any one knowing his tastes so well.
But, will you believe me, when I give it him for dinner again, he used
language that was far from I-talian, very far. In fact, I never heard
any one swear so fluent in English before or since. It quite dazed me
for the moment. But we got on all right as soon as I found he liked
good old roast beef. He gave me two passes for the Friday night, and
Mrs. Bugbird and me thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The opera was called
_Carmen_ and Mrs. B. thought it was going to be all about them, and
when she found it was actually the name of a woman she laughed herself
silly. Every time this Carmen came on she’d whisper to me, ‘a good pull
up,’ and then she’d start off shaking like a jelly. But there, she’s
very quick to see the radiculous side of anything, Mrs. Bugbird is.
Well, good-bye, dear, and take good care of yourself. You know your old
Mrs. Pottage wishes you all the best you can wish for yourself.”
Sister Catherine had repeated her request that Nancy should sing to
them, especially as it was the feast of All Saints. So after practising
with Sister Monica, who had charge of the music, she sang Mozart’s
motet _Ave Verum Corpus_ at Benediction amid the glowing candles and
white chrysanthemums of the little chapel.
“Mother, you don’t often sing in church, do you?” Letizia asked.
“Didn’t I sing well?” said her mother with a smile.
“Yes, I expect you sang very well, but I thought it was a little loud,
didn’t you? Sometimes it sounded like a man singing. I think you ought
to be careful and not sing quite so loud, mother.”
Luckily the nuns themselves enjoyed Nancy’s rich contralto a great deal
more than did their pupils. The warmth of femininity spoke to their
hearts of something that they had lost, or rather of something that
most of them had never won. It was easy to understand and sympathise
with the readiness of the nuns to turn away for a few minutes from the
austere ecstasies of Gothic art to worship some dolorous “Mother” of
Guido Reni. A flush had tinged their cheeks so virginally tralucent, as
if a goblet of water had been faintly suffused by a few drops of red
wine.
Kenrick was at Victoria to see Nancy off next morning. Just as the
train started, she leaned out of the window of her compartment and
exclaimed breathlessly:
“Please don’t think me ungrateful. I do appreciate tremendously what
you are doing for me. Really, I do.”
His long, sombre face lit up with a smile, and he waved his hand as
Nancy withdrew from London into the train again.
France dreamed in a serenity of ethereal blue. In the little
wedding-cake cemeteries black figures were laying wreaths of
immortelles upon the graves. Nancy remembered with a pang that it was
All Souls’ Day and reproached her cowardice for not having laid flowers
on Bram’s grave at Greenwich before she left England. The bunch of
carnations with which Kenrick had presented her became hateful to hold,
and she longed to throw it out of the window. She would have done so,
if two English old maids had not been regarding her curiously from the
other side of the compartment, the one above her Baedeker, the other
above the _Church Times_. Why should elderly English women travelling
abroad look like butterfly-collectors?
“_Parlez vous anglaise?_” said one of them to the ticket-collector,
nodding her head and beaming as if she were trying to propitiate an
orang-utan.
“Yes, I spik English, madame,” he said coldly after punching the
tickets.
The other elderly lady congratulated her companion upon the triumphant
conversation.
“He undoubtedly understood perfectly what you were saying, Ethel.”
“Oh, yes, I think we shall get along capitally after a time. I was
always considered very good at French in my schooldays, and it’s just
beginning to come back to me.”
Her ambition had been kindled by her success with the first
ticket-inspector. With the next one who invaded the compartment she
took a line of bold and direct inquiry.
“_Paris, quand?_”
The inspector stared back, indignation displayed upon his countenance.
“_Comment?_”
“_Non, quand_,” said the elderly lady.
The inspector shrugged his shoulders and slammed the carriage-door as
he retired.
“That man seemed rather stupid, I thought, Ethel.”
“Most stupid,” the ambitious Ethel emphatically agreed.
Nancy felt thankful that Letizia would be taught French properly.
Sister Catherine had already suggested to her that when she was twelve
she should be sent for three years to a convent in Belgium with which
the Sisters of the Holy Infancy had an arrangement of exchanging
pupils. Nancy had been a little alarmed at first by the prospect of
sending Letizia abroad all that time; but after these two absurd
Englishwomen she felt no trouble was too great and no place too far and
no separation too long that would insure Letizia against talking French
like them in public.
But presently Nancy was too much occupied with her own
problems—transferring herself and her luggage from one station in
Paris to another, finding out how the _wagon-lit_ toilet arrangements
worked, how to reply to the Italian examination of baggage in the Mt.
Cenis tunnel, and how to achieve the change at Rome into the Naples
train—either to criticise anybody else or even to dream and speculate
about her own operatic future.
Then Vesuvius loomed above the russet orchards and dishevelled vines on
the left of the railway. Nancy suddenly remembered that when she and
Bram were first married he had one day said how much he should like to
visit Naples with her. He had told her that he had seen a picture of it
when he was a boy and of what a thrill it had given him. Now here it
actually was, and he was not by her side to behold it. Here Naples had
been all these years, and he had never seen it.
Time heals many wounds; but in some he makes a deeper gash every year
with his inexorable scythe.