Rosamund, though unhappy, was not as unhappy as she would have liked to
think herself. The defection of Morris Severing, although gaining in
poignancy by contrast with Hazel’s serene happiness, was a sorrow of
the emotions only, and a certain fierce sincerity of outlook prevented
Rosamund from rating it otherwise.
But she felt that she could have borne it better had the disappearance
of her quondam lover touched the mainsprings of her life, and left
that life dignified by a lasting grief, instead of merely rendered
unprofitable and savourless from an unrecognized sense of vague
discontent.
“I don’t know what Rosamund’s grievance _is_!” her guardian was
exasperated into exclaiming, nearly a year after Hazel’s marriage. “I
don’t believe she knows herself.”
And, in so saying, diagnosed the case.
Rosamund Grantham, after the manner of the modern generation, had yet
to find herself, and suffered accordingly.
It need scarcely be added that she did not confine her sufferings to
herself.
Frances, overwhelmed by the difficulties of reconciling responsiveness
to Cousin Bertie’s bracing councils of self-reliance, with submission
to Rosamund’s intensely protective and rather overpowering solicitude,
sought more frequently than ever the soothing society of Nina Severing.
That gentle soul was passing through a period of storm of which she
presently confided the outline to Frances.
“Sometimes, darling, as I sit here alone through the long evenings,
I wonder if my life might have been different if I’d been a more
religious woman. You see, Francie, I married very, very young. I
wasn’t much older than you are now. My husband was not a man who
believed in any very definite creed, and I was young enough to be
altogether influenced by him.”
It was ever Nina’s custom to lay the errors and omissions of her past
at the door of Geoffrey Severing and her youthful marriage.
“Should you like to be a Roman Catholic?” asked Frances suddenly.
“It’s a very beautiful religion, and of course beauty is a religion in
itself, to an artist,” said Nina thoughtfully. “Why do you ask?”
“I’ve often thought,” said Frances very shyly, “that I should like it
myself. It seems such a thorough-going sort of religion. When we were
little, my mother had a Catholic maid--an Irish girl--and she used to
tell us a lot about it. And she was so particular about not eating meat
on certain days and going to Mass every Sunday. She had to walk quite a
long way, but I don’t believe she ever missed going. Of course she was
very superstitious, and used to want us to wear medals and charms and
things, but some of the prayers she taught us were nice. My mother was
a Catholic by birth, too, though she never went to church or anything.”
“If I were anything, I should certainly be a Catholic,” said Nina with
extreme conviction in her tone. “It’s the only creed which appeals to
me in the slightest degree. It is so beautiful--all that music and
those touching ideas about the Virgin and everything.”
“But--don’t you believe?--isn’t the Church----?” murmured Frances,
embarrassed.
“Dear child, I am afraid the orthodox forms mean very little to me. I
would never wilfully cause pain to any human being, and I try to help
the sadness of the world with my little songs, but that is all. But I
would never shatter the innocent faith of another soul, although I have
outgrown the need of form and ritual myself.”
“Does one outgrow it?” wistfully asked Frances, whose whole nature
unconsciously craved the discipline which is inseparable from any
creed, faithfully followed out in practice.
“Not all of us,” tenderly said Nina, conscious of the exquisite
contrast between the matured, self-reliant soul, made strong through
suffering, and the innocent, inquiring child at her knee. “Not all
of us, dear. Some plants need a support round which to cling, whilst
others stand alone--always alone.” Her voice deepened slightly as
she mused broodingly for a moment on the pathos and beauty of this
horticultural parable. It came as a slight shock when Frances,
generally the most sympathetic of listeners, observed in unmistakably
self-absorbed accents:
“I think that I shall always want a support. It seems to me that I am
meant to live by rule--not by my own judgment at all. That’s why I like
the Roman Catholic idea of the Church being infallible. It would be
such a guide.”
Nina was aware that to no one else would Frances have spoken so
unreservedly, and the reflection was soothing, but it did not prevent a
slight stiffening of tone in her reply.
“Really, dear? But the surest guide in the world is the golden rule
which I have tried to live up to all my life--_Never think of yourself
at all_. Somehow, if one gives all one’s thoughts and time to other
people, one finds that God takes care of the rest.”
Nina was herself rather surprised at the beauty of the sentiment as she
put it into words, and it served to restore her not very deeply ruffled
serenity.
“I will lend you some books, Frances, if you really want to know
something about various creeds. The religion of Buddha is, to my mind,
the most beautiful of them all,” reflectively said Nina, who had once
read portions of Sir Edwin Arnold’s translation of the “Light of
Asia,” and was persuaded that she had studied it deeply. “It was the
foundation of the Roman Catholic religion, of course--they borrowed a
great deal from it.”
“I should like to read it very much.”
Frances wanted to read anything which spoke, however indirectly, of
Roman Catholic doctrines. If Nina guessed as much, however, she did not
impart her surmise to the vigorously orthodox Bertha Tregaskis.
That this discreet reticence had been justified was made
superabundantly evident when Mrs. Tregaskis first became aware of the
Romanistic tendencies of her ward.
“People of seventeen must do what they’re told,” she said serenely, but
with an undercurrent of severity. “When you’re one-and-twenty, Francie,
we’ll talk about it again, and meanwhile I strongly advise you not to
think about the subject. You are much too young to decide such a matter
without knowing a great deal more about it, and from your own showing
all this simply arises from restlessness and desire for excitement.
Religion is too serious a matter to be played with, my dear little
girl.”
A certain look of flintlike impenetrability came over Frances’ young
face as she looked at her guardian, and she said nothing more. But
Mrs. Tregaskis was much too acute to suppose that her silence denoted
submission.
“Take her to London,” growled Frederick, when his wife, in her
perplexity, put the case before him. “You ought to get her away from
that silly woman’s influence.”
Bertha did not ask “What silly woman?” since she rightly recognized
that her husband thus denoted her dearest friend, but she decided to
follow his advice.
“We’ll have a month in London, and see all the sights,” she cried.
“Just you and I and Rosamund, Francie, and be regular country cousins,
and go to the National Gallery and British Museum, and a theatre or two
from the dress-circle. Never mind about planting the bulbs, dear--no,
I don’t mind leaving them to Grant, and the garden must just get on
without me for a week or two.”
She stifled a sigh heroically.
“This trip is absolutely for the sake of the girls,” she told Nina
Severing. “Neither of them takes any natural healthy interest in
gardening or in the animals and things, as Hazel used to do, so I must
try what London will do for them. Really, girls _are_ a problem.”
“Nothing to a boy,” sighed Nina. “There’s Morris wandering half over
Europe, in the most unsatisfactory manner, pretending that he is
studying languages, and really doing nothing at all except loaf. I’ve
told him he ought to come back and look after the place in earnest, but
he makes one excuse after another----”
“It’s too bad,” said Bertha sympathetically. “Perhaps if he came back,
now that he and Rosamund are a little older and have rather more
sense....”
“Oh, my dear! he’s got over that nonsense long ago. I always told you
it wouldn’t last. ‘Weak and unstable as water,’ that’s what my poor
Morris is.”
Bertha did not remind Mrs. Severing that everything had been done to
insure the instability of Morris in this particular case. She only said
affectionately:
“Well, good-bye, Nina darling. Don’t forget to take pity on my old man,
since I can’t drag him to London.”
“He must come and cheer me up some afternoon, if he will,” cordially
responded Nina. Both ladies were perfectly aware that Frederick
Tregaskis would do nothing of the sort, and that there were few things
less conducive to the cheering up of either than an encounter between
him and Mrs. Severing. But they exchanged their fallacious hopes with
an air of affectionately reassuring one another.
“I’ve one comfort,” declared Bertie, “I’m hoping to see a very old
friend of mine in town: Sybil Argent. I believe she and her son are
there for a few weeks.”
“Didn’t she become a Catholic?” asked Nina, with a sudden air of
intense interest, which provoked Bertha to a display of extreme
nonchalance instantly.
“Let me see--did she? Oh yes. I believe she _has_ become a Roman. Silly
woman! Got under the influence of some priest or other, I fancy. She
was never over-wise, though a dear, sweet thing.”
“There is a wisdom which is not of this world,” said Nina, upraising
her eyes, and with an air of quotation.
Bertha laughed heartily.
“My dear Nina! It’s really too funny to hear you quoting Scripture. Or
is it only some mystical poet of the new set? Anyhow, poor Sybil Argent
has been a Romanist for some years now, I fancy, and of course one
wouldn’t say anything about it, though I quite expect to have it all
poured out to me--my friends have the quaintest knack of confiding in
me. I rather fancy I know more secrets than most people.”
“That comes of always having your eyes and ears open,” declared Nina
with playful sweetness, “instead of keeping your head in the clouds, as
I’m afraid mine too often is.”
“I shall have to tell you not to get the stares, as I do the children
when they sit gaping at vacancy,” pleasantly replied her friend, and
took her departure under this agreeable analogy.
“Poor dear Nina’s affectation of mysticism is really _too_ absurd,”
she told herself, and added quite illogically: “No wonder Francie
is infected by it. It will be a comfort to talk to a rational woman
again--which I suppose Sybil still is, in spite of having allowed
herself to be bitten by the Romanist craze.”
But Mrs. Tregaskis was not destined to probe the measure of her
friend’s rationality. Lady Argent had already left London when she
arrived, and she was obliged to be content with inviting Ludovic Argent
to dinner.
“Can you remember him, Rosamund?” she inquired with kindly interest.
“Of course,” curtly retorted her ward, with the offended intonation
which implied that Cousin Bertie had forgotten the number of Rosamund’s
years.
“We weren’t so very little when we went over to Lady Argent’s,”
apologetically said Frances. “I was nine, and I can remember her and
the son quite well.”
“Of course,” said her guardian. “I wonder if he will have forgotten
you.”
Ludovic had not forgotten Rosamund and Frances. He looked forward
curiously to seeing what the years had made of the little girl whom he
had found crouching outside the door of the library.
His first impression was of pleasure at her undeniable beauty, and
he was glad to find himself placed between her and Mrs. Tregaskis at
dinner. Frances and a couple of negligible young men completed the
party.
The whole-hearted virility of Mrs. Tregaskis dominated the
conversation, which at first was general, but Ludovic noted with a
certain surprise that she no longer provoked in him anything but a
detached amusement. That it was far otherwise with Rosamund he felt
convinced. There was latent hostility in her every glance and gesture,
and she diffused an atmosphere of discontent that affected Ludovic
strangely.
“She gives one a sense of unrest,” he reflected disappointedly. “The
little sister, now, though she, too, is self-centred, has stability
and a certain amount of poise. But Rosamund is unbalanced.” He tried
to translate the impression into physical terms. “It’s as though the
chemical ingredients in a retort had been carelessly flung together,
regardless of power or proportion, and the solution in consequence is
a mere seething chaos--fine material wasted. But what a fool I am--she
can’t be more than twenty. The solution is still to come.”
They talked about books, and he saw her grey eyes light up with
eagerness. When she became impersonal she seemed to him wholly charming.
“It is her relation to humanity that is at fault,” reflected the
psychologist.
“You have never been back to the Wye Valley since you were a child,
have you?” he asked her.
“No,” she said briefly, and added with a candid impulse of unreserve,
“I don’t want to go back there until I go back for good. The cottage
is ours, you know, and one day Francie and I will go back there to
live.”
“Is that your ideal?” he asked gently.
“Yes,” she answered, in the tone of one who seeks to convince herself.
Ludovic found himself wondering whether it was also the ideal of
Frances. There was something which struck him as remote, almost
austere, in her young personality, and it was almost with the sense of
a presentiment confirmed that he heard from Bertha Tregaskis, later in
the evening, of the disquieting tendencies of her ward.
“She’s a dear little kiddie,” were the words, striking Ludovic as
singularly inappropriate, which prefaced the recital of Bertha’s
perplexities, “but this religious phase is very tiresome. One knows
that all young things go through it, like measles, but this seems to be
a particularly violent attack.”
“Would there be any very vital objection to her joining the Roman
Catholic Church?”
Bertha hesitated.
“No-o--only on general principles. I believe her mother was a Roman
Catholic, as far as baptism went, but Dick was quite firm about having
the children brought up in his own faith, and I don’t fancy poor Rose
cared either way. The children knew precious little when they came
to me, but of course they learnt their catechism and all the rest of
it with my Hazel. I believe in giving children a thoroughly orthodox
grounding, at all events. Frances was always more inclined to be ‘pi,’
as my schoolboy friends call it, than either of the other two.”
“Temperamentally religious?”
“Yes, I suppose so. That’s generally the sort that suffers from the
worst reaction. Poor mite, she told me quite gravely that she needed an
intellectual discipline.”
“I have seldom heard a better reason for joining the Church of Rome,”
said Ludovic gravely.
“She’s picked up the phrase from some book, I suppose. Poor little
thing! It makes one smile, and at the same time sigh, to hear anything
so very, very young. One went through it all oneself so many years ago,
and eventually came back to just the old way of thinking--as one’s
parents before one. But I’m talking as though you were a contemporary,”
said Bertha laughing, “and forgetting that you belong to the younger
generation yourself.”
Ludovic became aware that this forgetfulness implied a compliment. He
tried to appear gratified, but was no longer young enough to feel so in
reality.
“I am at all events able to sympathize with Miss Frances in her
outlook,” he said slowly. “I do not like what I know of the Catholic
religion, but it would give her the discipline she craves.”
“I dare say, but as I told her, it’s much easier to be obedient to
anyone and everything, sooner than to those to whom obedience is due,”
said Bertha smartly. “If she is so anxious to submit her own judgment,
she can submit it to mine. But that, of course, is exactly what my
young lady doesn’t choose to do.” There was an acerbity in her tone
that struck Ludovic as over-personal.
“If she really wishes it, I suppose you would not oppose it a little
later on?” he suggested.
“I suppose not,” said Bertha wearily. “I’ve never been hide-bound by
any creed myself. One learns to be extraordinarily tolerant, as time
goes on. Fresh air, laughter, sunshine, plenty of work and plenty of
friends--that’s my religion.”
Ludovic had met this breezy, simple creed before, and it had always
failed oddly to carry any conviction to him. It failed again now.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “You know my mother became a Catholic some years
ago?”
“Yes--she wrote to me. It seems to have made her very happy.”
“I think it has,” said Ludovic simply. Thereafter their talk turned
upon Lady Argent and the Wye Valley.
It was, however, directly attributable to the foregoing conversation
that Mrs. Tregaskis shortly after her return to Porthlew received an
invitation for Frances.
“Do let Frances come to me for a nice long visit,” wrote Lady Argent;
“and Rosamund, too, if she likes, but Ludovic thinks that perhaps she
would not care to be so near her old home. But I should love to have
either, or both, and if Frances is really thinking of adopting her
mother’s religion, it seems only fair that she should see something
of a Catholic atmosphere. I will not let her do anything rash, dear
Bertie, and I am sure it will be a real rest for you to have no young
things on your hands for a little while.”
“It would indeed!” quoth Bertha, rather grimly, as she imparted
portions of her correspondence to Frederick, who was rather
ostentatiously not listening.
“After all, the best way to get the whole thing out of her head is to
treat it as a matter of course. A persecution would only make her more
determined to be a little martyr--Frederick, are you listening to me?”
“I am reading--or endeavouring to read--my evening paper,” replied
Frederick with unvarnished candour.
Mrs. Tregaskis had recourse to a stratagem by which she was frequently
obliged to compel her husband’s attention.
She addressed her next remark, in a mysteriously lowered voice,
exclusively to the attentive Miss Blandflower.
“The fact is, Minnie, that the child fancies there is more difference
between the English Church and the Roman one than there is. She is
very ignorant, and so imagines a great deal. If she saw rather more of
Romanism, I fancy it would be a case of either kill or cure.”
“You mean,” returned Miss Blandflower acutely, “that she would either
want to become a Roman Catholic at once, or else see through the whole
thing and give up the idea altogether.”
“Exactly--probably the latter. There’s nothing in the Roman Catholic
religion, once you get over the preliminary glamour.”
“To be or not to be,” said Minnie with thoughtful irrelevance.
“With the exceptions of the Pope, and the worship of the Virgin Mary,
they have nothing that we haven’t got--Frances can be as High Church as
she pleases.”
“Not in _my_ house,” said Frederick unexpectedly.
“Why not, dear? It’s a great deal better than turning Roman Catholic
outright.”
“You’ve just said that it came to exactly the same thing.”
Bertha looked rather nonplussed for an instant, but recovered herself
by exchanging a glance of good-humoured intelligence with Minnie,
expressing very distinctly, “How like a man!”
“Anyhow, Frederick,” she returned in soothing accents, “it will
probably all end in smoke. That’s my object in letting her go to Sybil
for a bit. She will see that there’s nothing in it, so to speak.”
“An aching void,” was Minnie’s further contribution to the discussion.
Frederick retired behind his paper again.
“What a rest it would be to you if you could have the house to yourself
for a bit!” said Miss Blandflower, looking fondly at Bertha.
“Well, I own that it would. This last year has been a trying one, for
various reasons.”
Miss Blandflower, who knew as well as Bertha herself that these various
reasons were all embodied in Mrs. Tregaskis’s only daughter, preserved
a discreet silence.
“Well! that’s that,” was Bertha’s summing up. “I’ll see what the girls
say. No doubt Rosamund will raise difficulties, poor child”--she
laughed a little--“I’ve never yet known her fall in with any plan one
suggested.”
“She’s very contr_a_ry,” sighed Minnie, shaking her head.
Their forebodings proved to be well-founded. Rosamund did not wish to
accept Lady Argent’s invitation.
“I’m not going to ask her _why_,” said Bertha exasperatedly, “I know
too well that that’s exactly what she wants--tiresome child! No,
Minnie, I’d rather you don’t discuss it with her. The whole thing is
pose, ‘pour faire s’occuper d’elle,’ and the less notice one takes of
her the sooner she may get over this silly phase of always wanting to
differ from everybody else.”
“Couldn’t I point out to her that it might give you something of a rest
if they were both away for a little while?” asked Minnie mournfully.
“I’d really rather you didn’t, dear old Minnie. I know how nicely you’d
put it,” said Bertha untruthfully, “but I don’t want to give her any
excuses for trumping up a grievance--thinking one wanted to get rid of
her, or anything of that sort. Oh no, my dear--I shall jog along all
right. There’s plenty of life in the old dog yet!”
“There’s no rest for the wicked,” groaned Miss Blandflower, with no
uncomplimentary intent.
“Not this side of the grave,” agreed Bertha cheerfully. “But--well, I
will own to you, Minnie, that I sometimes wish those two were rather
more like other people. It seems so extraordinary that they can’t lead
the normal lives of ordinary girls--but one of them must take a week’s
silly flirtation as though it were a tragedy, and the other gives me
no rest because she wants ‘the intellectual discipline of the Catholic
Church’!”
She laughed as she spoke, but Minnie exclaimed almost tearfully:
“Dear Mrs. Tregaskis, it _does_ seem hard, when you’ve been so
unutterably good to them. If only they’d been your own daughters they
would have turned out very differently, I feel sure.”
This rather infelicitous example drove Mrs. Tregaskis silently from the
room.
A week later saw Frances’ departure from Porthlew.
“I wish you were coming too, Rosamund,” she said, unaware how cordially
her guardian was endorsing the wish.
Rosamund said: “Write and tell me all about everything. Good-bye,
darling.”
Not even to her sister would she admit the mixture of defiance and
sentimentality which had prompted her refusal to visit the Wye Valley.
“Not until I go there for good,” she told herself dreamily.
It was the expression of a perfectly unconscious egotism.
X
Frances and her hostess found themselves in perfect harmony. It did
not occur to Frances that the eight years which had transformed her
from a child to a young girl had changed Lady Argent a great deal more.
Discursive she had always been, but her talk had now become almost
wandering, and her always gentle volubility had increased surprisingly.
The amusement, tempered by slight dismay, with which Ludovic listened
to his parent’s verbal flights, was quite unshared by Frances. Lady
Argent talked about the Catholic Church, about which Frances wanted to
learn all that she could, and each was serenely content.
“I haven’t any scruples, dear, about telling you all that you want to
know,” Lady Argent unnecessarily informed her guest, “because dear
Bertie is so broad-minded and honest herself that I know she wouldn’t
mind. And it seems only fair to counteract all those dreadful years
that you’ve spent with Protestants, poor child, who have such very
strange ideas about the Faith. Like Indulgences, you know--so terribly
misunderstood, I always think--paid permission to commit sin for a
hundred days, I’ve even heard people suggest--ignorant Protestants, you
know.”
“They are not all as ignorant as that,” justice compelled Frances to
observe.
“I never _can_ remember that you are still a Protestant, poor child.
You don’t mind being called so, I hope?”
Frances was much too embarrassed to reply, but fortunately Lady Argent
did not wait for a disclaimer.
“To think that I once held those shocking notions myself, dear. I
really can hardly believe it now.”
“How long is it since you became a Catholic?”
“Six years, dear child. It all seems like a dream--the time before one
had the Faith, you know. It all happened in such a wonderful way. I was
staying at the seaside with a poor old Catholic aunt of mine who was
dying, and she had a great friend who was a nun in a convent there. So
she used to ask me to go and give this old nun news of her from time
to time, and I went. Mother Serafina her name was, and I always think
it’s such a beautiful name, though I dare say that’s just association,
since, of course, one couldn’t exactly call one’s daughter Serafina,
and in any case I don’t think nuns are allowed to be godmothers even if
one asked her to---- Where was I, dear?”
“You were telling me how you went to the convent to give the nun news
of your aunt.”
“Oh yes, and the little parlour was so dreadfully bare and cold, _as it
seemed to me then_,” mysteriously interpolated Lady Argent as though
some concealed source of heat in the little fireless room had since
been revealed to her; “but there she sat, always smiling away, and that
great brown rosary at her side. So sympathetic always, and the whole
community praying every day for my poor aunt; and I remember one day
she told me that she would pray every day for me, too, because of the
anxiety and everything, you know, dear. So charitable and broad-minded,
I always think, because I hadn’t any idea of being a Catholic at all
then. But the Church always prays for those outside the Fold in the
most touching way.”
“I always like when we say the prayer for Jews and Roman Catholics,
once a year,” said Frances thoughtfully.
Lady Argent flushed in a most agitated way.
“Pray don’t talk of it, my dear. It makes me very angry indeed. The
idea of their praying for us as heretics! and calling us _Roman_
Catholics, too! Such impertinence, I always think.”
Frances wisely forbore to say anything further. “Tell me some more
about Mother Serafina,” she pacifically suggested.
“Well, dear, I went to see her very frequently, and quite as much
for my own sake as for poor Aunt Charlotte’s, who was quite past
understanding things by that time--a sort of senile paralysis the
doctor said it was, though I think myself it was only second childhood,
as they call it; and of course she was very weak, and sinking a little
every day. Nothing but beef-tea and milk, dear, and her rosary always
in her hand, though I’m sure she couldn’t say a bead. She was a most
devout Catholic, and the priest used to come and see her every day--and
I remember I couldn’t bear him, which shows what a dreadful thing
prejudice is. He was an Irishman, and very stout--I remember the stairs
were such a trial to him--and really I could hardly understand a word
he said, he spoke with such a brogue. I am afraid,” said Lady Argent
with unutterable melancholy, “that I was far from looking upon him as
I should have done, with the reverence due to a priest. He always used
snuff, which seemed to me such a disgusting habit, and his hair wanted
cutting so dreadfully. I am afraid I was most dreadfully narrow-minded
about him, and I’m sure he was a very holy man.”
“It was a pity he was--untidy,” said Frances delicately.
“Yes, dear, but one is especially taught by the Church not to make rash
judgments. I dare say I missed many graces by not talking to poor old
Father O’Leary.
“However, poor Aunt Charlotte died, and I had to stay on after the
funeral, sorting her things--such a collection, my dear! and I found
so many references in her old letters and papers to my dear husband
and myself, and wishing so much we might become Catholics. Not that
dear Ludovic’s father would ever have dreamed of such a thing, though,
of course, God can do anything he pleases; but dear Fergus was a
Scotchman, and if he had one prejudice stronger than any other, it was
against Romanists, as he always called them. Of course, if the Lord had
willed it....” said Lady Argent very doubtfully, and shaking her head
at the memory of the late Sir Fergus Argent’s determination, as opposed
to Divine Omnipotence.
“But dear Fergus had been dead a long while, even then, and no doubt
he views things very differently now. It’s such a comfort to feel that
he _must_ thoroughly approve, now, whereas if he’d been alive I’m very
much afraid, dear, shocking though it is to say so, that he would have
disliked my becoming a Catholic quite dreadfully--in fact, I really
don’t know what might have happened.”
Lady Argent devoted a moment to the consideration of her spouse’s
probable attitude towards her adoption of the Catholic faith, and
hastily abandoned the _tableau_ thus conjured up with a slight shudder.
“God certainly knows what He is about, dear,” she said thankfully.
“Did you go on seeing Mother Serafina at the Convent?”
“Oh yes. I had grown very fond of her by that time--and talked to her a
great deal, and I shall never forget what a shock it was when I found
I couldn’t ask her to stay with me here. She told me the nuns had all
made vows of perpetual enclosure, you know, dear, and couldn’t move a
yard out of the grounds except for the most serious reasons and with
a dispensation from the Holy Father himself. And it wasn’t at all
like the sort of old convent gardens one reads about, with alleys and
box-hedges and cedars and things, but quite a tiny little gravel court
at the back of the house, and only a plane-tree in one corner. In fact,
I don’t know how all the community and the plane-tree and everything
ever fitted into it at all, when they were out there for the midday
recreation, though some of them did walk backwards, but I think that
was only so as to see the Superior and hear what she was saying. But
I’m sure they must all have bumped into the plane-tree a number of
times. However, they all seemed very happy, and Mother Serafina always
told me she had never known what happiness was until she became a nun.”
“It must be wonderful,” breathed Frances.
“Yes, dear, quite wonderful, but that’s what the grace of a vocation
is. Quite supernatural, I always think, to leave one’s home and
everything and live such a life--detachment, you know, dear.”
“Of course,” ventured Frances, “it must be rather sad for the father
and mother of a nun--to let her go, I mean.”
“Dreadful, my dear. But one would always feel so glad and thankful,
though so dreadfully sorry--you know what I mean,” lucidly returned
Lady Argent. “I really don’t know what one would do if one had a
daughter a nun--say one’s only child--though, of course, even as a
girl, I can hardly imagine dear Ludovic a nun, but one never knows----”
Lady Argent looked distractedly into the fire.
“Sometimes,” she murmured, “I am afraid that I idolize Ludovic. I lie
awake at night, you know, dear, wondering what I should do if he were
ever to be burnt to death.”
“But why should he be burnt to death?” said the literal Frances fixing
horrified eyes on her hostess.
“At the stake, you know, dear, just as so many martyrs have been, even
in England--you know what Tyburn is, dear: so dreadful, I always think;
and though one ought not to look upon any soul as being outside the
pale of God’s grace, that terrible Queen Elizabeth, with Mary Stuart’s
blood upon her head and everything---- So that if persecution _should_
begin again--and, after all, dear, look at France, and all those poor
good Dominicans turned out of their holy monastery--and if Ludovic was
by that time a Catholic, as one prays and hopes, should I be able to
let him go? Let alone being like the Mother of the Maccabees, though I
always felt certain, even when I was a Protestant, that that was a sort
of miracle, because one knows what one would feel about one, let alone
seven--though really I dare say by the time those frightful tortures
had begun on the youngest she had almost ceased to feel anything at
all, except thankfulness that there were no more to come. But when I
think how often I have wickedly rebelled at my poor Ludovic’s being
lame----”
“Was he always?” gently inquired Frances.
“From the time he was a few weeks old, dear, and I’ve often thought
that if I’d been a Catholic then, and put a pair of scapulars round my
poor little darling’s neck, the accident would never have happened.”
On this melancholy reflection the door opened, and Lady Argent’s poor
little darling came into the room.
“Don’t you want the lights, mother? It’s nearly dark, and I’ve brought
you the second post.”
Ludovic turned on the light as he spoke, and gave a small packet of
letters and newspapers into his mother’s hands, shaking his head
reproachfully as he did so.
She looked up guiltily.
“There’s nothing much, darling--only a little magazine called _Beads_,
and _The Catholic Fireside_ and a--a few letters.”
Ludovic laughed gently.
“And how many of those are begging letters, dear?”
Lady Argent looked through the little heap, appearing rather distraught.
“This is a receipt,” she declared triumphantly, waving a sheet of cheap
glazed notepaper closely covered with neat, angular writing.
“It’s a very long one,” said Ludovic suspiciously.
“Those poor French sisters at Coleham-on-Sea! The Superior has actually
taken the trouble to write herself, and I only sent them the most
dreadful old things: not clothes only, Francie, dear--though some of
Ludovic’s old vests, not fit to give to the poor people here--but
hair-brushes without any bristles--and even that seems a mockery,
since their hair is all cut off when they take their first vows, I
believe--so unwise not to wait till the final ones, I always think,
though no doubt the Church has her reasons; and books with half the
leaves torn out; and even a dreadful little half-empty pot of rouge,
which my maid actually put in though she never told me till afterwards.
No, Ludovic, you really shouldn’t laugh. I can’t think where such a
thing came from, for I’ve certainly never used it in my life, and I
can’t bear to think of the scandal it may have given those dear good
Sisters of the Poor.”
“Do they make any allusion to it?” asked Ludovic, with boyish amusement
in his laughing eyes.
Lady Argent scanned the closely-written sheets.
“No, dear. ‘Those good and useful gifts, such joy for poor
people’--that _can’t_ be the hair-brush, can it?--‘we can never thank
you enough for your generosity to us’--dear, dear, it does make one
feel so dreadfully mean. ‘We shall have the wherewithal to decorate a
Christmas-tree for our little ones’--Ludovic! they can’t give the poor
children my broken air-cushion or that torn mackintosh of yours--or
the old dog-collar. ‘You will certainly be rewarded for this great
generosity and our poor prayers....’ Oh dear, dear, this is very
touching,” said poor Lady Argent, folding up her letter with an air of
remorse.
“Perhaps they can get money by selling the things after they’ve mended
them up,” whispered Frances consolingly. Ludovic heard her, and looked
at her very kindly, but he only said:
“Now, mother, tell me what your next correspondent means by putting
‘Sag’ in the corner of the envelope? Is it the same sort of thing as
Mizpah or Swastika, or whatever the thing is that housemaids have on
their brooches?”
“No, dear,” said Lady Argent with an air of great reserve. “Quite
different. It isn’t ‘Sag’ at all.”
Ludovic held out a corner of the envelope to Frances.
“I appeal to you. If that isn’t ‘Sag,’ what is it?”
She looked, half-laughing, towards Lady Argent.
“Ludovic, dear, pray don’t be so ridiculous. It’s S.A.G., my dear
boy, and stands for ‘St. Anthony guide,’ just to make sure the letter
doesn’t go astray. I don’t say I put it on my own letters but it’s a
very pious little custom--and letters _might_ get lost, you know.”
“I do not think that this one would have been any great loss,” rather
grimly replied her son. “It’s a begging-letter, isn’t it?”
Lady Argent took out sundry enclosures, glanced through them and
exclaimed triumphantly:
“Not at all! In fact it’s just the contrary. It’s from those Sisters
in Dublin, offering me tickets in their great charity lottery, and
with a list of the prizes. It’s really quite wonderful--a wonderful
opportunity,” repeated Lady Argent, with more wistfulness than
conviction in her tone.
Ludovic took the badly typewritten strip of paper from her hand.
“A live pig, six months old. A harmonium in perfect repair. A
table-centre for the parlour--I should certainly have a try for that,
mother, it would improve the drawing-room; coloured statue of St.
Joseph standing four feet high, etc., etc. Tickets sixpence, ninepence,
or a shilling.”
“It’s to pay off the debt on their new church, dear,” replied his
mother. “You remember the account of the opening ceremony that I read
you from _The Tablet_ the other day? So very nice and edifying, but I’m
afraid they spent rather more than they meant to. At any rate they are
some eight hundred pounds in debt over it, I believe, and no doubt this
charity bazaar is to clear some of it off.”
“Raffles are illegal,” quoth Ludovic severely, “and I don’t think you
should encourage them, mother. Please help me to persuade my mother
that charity begins at home, Miss Frances.”
The modern fashion by which any man becomes entitled to use the
Christian name of any girl spending a week in his mother’s house,
failed altogether to commend itself to Ludovic Argent.
“The Canon is always in difficulties here, and would be very glad of
money for some of the poor people.”
“Oh, my dear,” cried Lady Argent. “I am torn in two as you very well
know, and the Canon has been a friend of ours for a number of years,
but how can I encourage the spread of Protestantism?”
“You need not, darling. I don’t care a bit about their spiritual
welfare, only their temporal,” coolly observed Ludovic, “and I’ve sent
him a small cheque for the District Nursing Fund, from both of us.”
“Oh, my dear boy, how can you say such a thing--he doesn’t mean it,
Frances--but I’m really very glad you’ve done it, and it will show
the poor Canon that one isn’t narrow-minded, and perhaps bring him to
see things in another light.” Lady Argent mused thoughtfully over the
imaginary portrait, than which nothing could have appeared further from
probability to an impartial observer, of a suddenly Catholicized Canon
inspiring his flock with views similar to his own, and Ludovic glanced
thoughtfully at Frances Grantham.
No hint of humour had disturbed the placid purity of her intent gaze
while listening to Lady Argent and plying her with gentle questions.
She was manifestly absorbed in the subject, and her natural reverence
was in no way shocked or checked by demonstrations which Ludovic in
his own mind could only qualify as absurd. “She is a born mystic,”
he thought with a sudden conviction that was almost physical in its
intensity, “the stuff to make an ideal lady-abbess. If she becomes a
Catholic, I believe she will be a nun.”
He felt vaguely compassionate at the idea, and said later to his mother:
“Wouldn’t it be better to say rather less about religion to that little
girl? She is very impressionable.”
“That’s just why I like talking to her, darling,” returned Lady Argent
ingenuously. “One feels that it is sowing seed in ground which is all
ready for it.”
Ludovic remained silent for a moment, pondering this excellent reason
for the conversion of his mother’s youthful guest.
“I love having her here,” said his mother, “she is so sweet. I’m only
afraid it’s dull for her. Would she like her sister to come for a few
days, or a friend?”
“Ask her.”
Frances frankly disavowed any wish for companionship other than that
of her hostess, but a few days later she said to Lady Argent: “Mrs.
Severing is staying near here, at the Towers. I should like to see her,
if I may. She has written me such a kind little note suggesting that I
should go over there, and I am very fond of her.”
“I know you are, my dear,” kindly replied Lady Argent, who had heard
many of Nina’s spiritual upliftings from her admiring echo. “I should
like you to see her, and I should like to meet her myself. But the fact
is--it is a little awkward--I have never called on the people at the
Towers.”
“Who are they?” said Frances wonderingly.
“Sir Giles and Lady Cotton, dear. He is the original founder of Cotton
and Sons--the big ironmongers in the City. That is really why--not the
shop, dear, of course, but the shocking way they treated the poor dear
Fathers. I never could bear to go near them, and I had to give up the
shop altogether, though I’d always dealt there for nearly twenty years.
So I never called on Lady Cotton.”
“What did they do to the Fathers?” asked Frances with a curiosity
unspoilt by the previous recital of many similar outrages.
“Oh, my dear child, it was all about some garden seats that the Prior
ordered for the grounds of their house at Twickenham--for visitors,
you know, because they naturally have no time to sit on garden
seats themselves, as you can imagine, however tired they may get
with all that manual labour, and getting up at four o’clock in the
morning and everything; and there seems to have been some terrible
misunderstanding--with the shop-people, you know, dear, and whether the
seats were on approval or not. Anyway, they got left out in the rain
all one night, and the paint was spoilt, and the Prior sent them back
and said they couldn’t take them after all. But the shop-people were
thoroughly unpleasant, and said the seats must be paid for just the
same--most grasping and disagreeable, even though the letter of the law
may have been on their side. I never quite understood the ins and outs
of it all, but as the Prior, who was the most simple soul on earth--a
Breton, dear, such a nice man--asked me himself: how they could tell
whether they liked the benches or not until they had seen the effect of
bad weather on them? Which sounds very reasonable indeed, but Cotton
and Sons behaved quite shockingly, and even threatened to go to law
about it. All very well for them, you know, dear--it would have been an
advertisement in a way, but most unpleasant for the poor Fathers.”
“What was the end of it?”
“They had to pay for the garden seats, dear, and I never could sit on
one with any pleasure, though they are strewn all over the garden at
Twickenham. That is to say,” said Lady Argent, colouring faintly, “it
was--friends--who actually paid for them, but I never said much to
Ludovic about them. To this day he does not know why I have left off
going to Cotton and Sons.”
Frances did not dare to make any further suggestion for a
_rapprochement_ between Lady Argent and the quondam proprietor of
Cotton and Sons. She only looked wistfully and undecidedly at the
letter in her hand.
“To be sure, my dear, I was forgetting about your friend. Of course,
I do not suppose she has any idea of all this,” said Lady Argent
generously, “since it is not a story that tells well for Cottons, and I
do not suppose Sir Giles cares to dwell upon it. I really cannot make
up my mind to call upon them--in fact, after all this time I don’t
quite see how I could--but I shall be delighted if Mrs. Severing cares
to come over any day next week. Ludovic could drive you over to fetch
her in time for luncheon. Do write and suggest it, my dear.”
“Thank you so much. I know you will like her, and she would love to
see you and the garden--and the chapel,” said Frances rather shyly.
“You know she is thinking of becoming a Catholic.”
“How very delightful. But what can she be waiting for, dear? She is
a widow, and her son, you tell me, is quite a boy. No doubt she will
bring him into the Church too, later on. By all means, Francie, ask her
to come over on Friday, or whichever afternoon suits her best.”
Frances wrote the invitation gladly.
She was curiously devoid of insight, and it did not occur to her that
any two people of whom she was fond could fail to like and admire one
another.
“Isn’t Mrs. Severing the ‘Nina Severing’ who composes?” asked Ludovic,
as he drove Frances to fetch her friend.
“Yes. Her music is my favourite modern music. Don’t you like the
‘Kismet’ songs?”
“I once heard her play,” said Ludovic, avoiding, clumsily, as he felt,
a reply. “Her execution was very brilliant.”
“Meretricious,” was the adjective he had applied to the popular
musician’s talent, at the time.
Ludovic wished that the recollection had not occurred to him so
opportunely.