Perhaps it was reaction from the materialistic atmosphere that
undoubtedly prevailed at the modern and opulent mansion of Cotton
that was responsible for the extreme spirituality which marked Mrs.
Severing’s conversation that Friday afternoon.
Her golden hair shone against darkly splendid furs, and her luminous
gaze strayed continually to some far horizon and was continually
recalled with a start that just contrived not to be imperceptible.
“It is too delightful to be in an atmosphere like this one,” she
murmured to Lady Argent in the hall, and bent over her plate at
luncheon for a long moment with a reverence which far surpassed the
gentle murmur in which her hostess indulged.
When curried eggs were succeeded by cutlets Nina cast a gravely
wondering look around her.
“Friday?” she murmured gently. “I wonder if I might ask--ah! I see you,
too, fast on Fridays.”
“Oh no,” said Lady Argent gently, “I only abstain from meat--really no
privation at all--I’m not very fond of meat, and it’s so much better
for one to have fish and eggs and vegetables and things, quite apart
from what one always feels to be the cruelty of it, though I’m afraid
one doesn’t think about it very often, except just when one actually
_sees_ the lambs playing about in the fields, or the chickens being
killed in that dreadfully cruel way, poor things.”
“We should all be infinitely better physically and mentally if we only
had one meal a day. Just,” said Nina with poignant simplicity, “a
little fruit or uncooked nuts, and a draught of water. I’ve always said
that I should like to live as the old hermits did.”
Frances was aware that Nina had always said so, and wondered vaguely
why she was for the first time rendered slightly uncomfortable by the
aspiration.
“May I give you some fish, Mrs. Severing?” asked Ludovic
matter-of-factly.
“Please do,” she smiled. “I don’t actually belong to your beautiful
Faith, but I love to live up to all the dear old symbols.”
“You couldn’t call turbot a symbol, exactly,” said Lady Argent rather
doubtfully, “and I do hope you’ll give Mrs. Severing a respectable
slice, my dear boy, for she must be very hungry after such a long
drive.”
“No,” said Nina, looking as though a breath would blow her away
altogether. “No.” Her smile repudiated the mere suggestion of hunger
with a delicate completeness.
“I hear you have the most lovely little chapel,” she said softly,
turning to her hostess. “It would be a great pleasure to me to see it.
What a boon one’s little solitary corner for meditation is! Francie may
have told you that I am rather a wanderer on the face of the earth, and
so can appreciate it doubly.”
Frances, who had always looked upon Mrs. Severing as the prosperous
chatelaine of Pensevern and its adjoining acres, looked so naïvely
astonished that Ludovic felt strongly inclined to laugh. Instead,
however, he charitably engaged her in a long conversation which
enabled Nina to carry out the skilled presentment of herself which she
evidently had in mind, unhampered by the startled gaze of her earlier
acquaintance.
“Ludovic had the chapel built for me, as a surprise while I was away
once,” Lady Argent told her proudly. “So very dear and kind of him, and
I shall never forget my astonishment, especially as I thought at first
that it was a new bathroom. Not when I went inside, you know, but we’d
talked about having one for a long time, and when I saw the remains of
the workmen outside, I felt sure it must be that. Ladders and tools
and things, you know, and a great bucket of whitewash, such as one
naturally associates with a bathroom, especially if one has it already
in one’s mind, you know. But that was just because Ludovic thought it
would make it lighter.”
“White walls,” murmured Nina symbolically. “I _do_ so agree. Do you
hold your own little services there?”
“The Bishop most kindly lets his own chaplain come over twice a week
and say Mass. You see, the nearest Catholic Church is some miles away,
and going in early isn’t always possible, although I can always manage
Sundays, but of course it’s the greatest possible blessing to have
the Chaplain. Such a nice man--and not an Irishman,” said Lady Argent
rather thankfully.
“I’m afraid my prejudices are rather against parsons of any
denomination,” Nina said with the air of one making a candid admission.
“I always fancy--perhaps it’s just a fancy peculiar to myself--that one
is so much more easily in tune with the Infinite, without any human
intervention. But then I’m afraid I’m a dreadfully individual person.”
“Of course,” said Lady Argent quietly, “a Catholic looks at that quite
differently.”
“Ah, but don’t speak as though I were not one of you in heart, in
mind,” cried Nina quickly. “I adore the Catholic Church, and when I go
to Church in London, I always go to Farm Street or one of your places
of worship. I always say that there is an _atmosphere_ in a Catholic
Church which one finds nowhere else.”
Ludovic caught the words and glanced hastily at his mother, aware
that this well-worn sentiment is as a red rag to a bull to the devout
Catholic. For the remainder of the meal he firmly directed and
maintained the conversation in undenominational channels.
But after luncheon was over and Nina had smoked two cigarettes, with an
air of detachment that made the act seem almost saintly, Ludovic left
Lady Argent and Frances to entertain their guest unaided.
“Talk to me,” said Nina gently, turning her enormous eyes on her
hostess, “talk to me a little of your wonderful Faith. I have heard so
much of you--and of it--from my little Francie, and I feel she must
have told you that I, too, am a seeker after truth; things of this
world mean so little--oh, so little!--in comparison with the eternal
quest.”
Receiving no immediate response but the slight bewilderment slowly
becoming apparent on Lady Argent’s face, Nina glided on her
conversational way with much discretion:
“Such things are not to be talked about, are they? They go too deep.
One understands. My own reserve has always been rather a proverb; but
somehow in this sort of atmosphere--well, it’s deep calling to deep,
isn’t it, rather?”
She laughed a very little, with a perceptible undercurrent of agitation.
“You’ll let me talk to you quite frankly, won’t you?” she asked,
with an appealing look at Lady Argent. “It’s so seldom one has the
impulse--and my life has been a very lonely one. Oh, I have my boy, of
course--but, then, what does the younger generation _give_? Nothing.
They _can_ give us nothing--in the nature of things. It’s all taking
on their side, and sacrifice on ours. One would hardly have it
otherwise--but---- Little Frances knows that I don’t mean her--she is
my little comfort.” Nina tendered a reassuring, if rather absentminded,
hand to her little comfort, who received it rather perfunctorily, and
released it a good deal sooner than its owner expected.
“My son has always been a companion to me since he was a child,” said
Lady Argent firmly; “and as for sacrifices, I’ve always felt them to be
on his side, if there were any, since he might have been so much more
in touch with things, living in London--he writes, you know--only my
tiresome asthma is so troublesome there, and he won’t hear of leaving
me. Not that it is a sacrifice, since he would much rather be with me
here, than without me anywhere else,” she concluded simply.
“How very, very wonderful and beautiful such a relationship is,”
breathed Nina reverently. “Morris and I are all the world to one
another, but he is very, very young--young for his age, as well--and
perhaps the very young shrink a little from an atmosphere of sadness.
You see I have been all alone for a number of years now. I married
very, very young--a child--and then I was left, with----”
Before Nina had reached the looming allusion to a child with only a
star to guide her, Frances rose quickly and glided from the room,
rather to the relief of Mrs. Severing, who was becoming increasingly
aware of her protégée’s startled eyes at various new aspects of a
recital which she had supposed she knew by heart.
“That is a very pure, sweet little soul,” said Nina as the door shut,
after the invariable rule which causes minds of a certain calibre
instantly to adopt as subject of conversation whoever has most recently
left the room.
The custom not being one which recommended itself to Lady Argent, she
merely replied with a vague, kind murmur indicative of goodwill, but of
nothing else.
“One does so dislike the idea of discussing _les absents_,” said the
responsive Nina, with an atrocious accent of which she was sufficiently
conscious to make her slur the words over rather rapidly, “but I have
somehow felt that perhaps between us we could find out what it is that
the child really _needs_. I don’t know that beloved Bertha Tregaskis
altogether understands her, though I wouldn’t say so for the world.”
“Bertie has been very good to them both,” said Lady Argent loyally.
“So wonderful of her, I always think, and all that dairy work and the
Mothers’ Union and everything as well--simply marvellous.”
“Indeed, yes,” cried Nina, “quite the most practical woman I know, and
my dearest friend in the world. Attraction of opposites, I suppose. I
always think that she and I are the two types--Martha and Mary--active
and contemplative, you know.”
Lady Argent, to whom Nina’s favourite _mot_ was naturally new, looked
more than a little doubtful.
“Dear Bertie is very wonderful altogether,” she murmured. “Her insight
and sympathy, you know, and then her humility--it’s really quite
touching to hear her blame or ridicule herself, when one is so full of
admiration--all her gifts, you know, intellectual as well as practical.”
“Ah, those clever dialect imitations!” cried Nina, with an enthusiasm
that strove subtly to confine Bertha’s mental attainments to dialect
imitations. “She’s so original, isn’t she? And at one time she used
to scribble a little, you know--just trifles for the magazines, but
_quite_ clever. I remember going through one or two of the proof-sheets
for her--Bertie is always so ridiculously determined to think that I
can write myself, you know, and wanted me to polish up some of her
descriptions of travel--not, of course, that I’m really much good,
though I’ve always thought I should _like_ to write, if I could find
the time.”
“Music, of course, has taken up most of your time.”
“Ah yes--my art. It’s been everything, of course.”
“It would be the greatest possible pleasure if you would play to us a
little this afternoon. Ludovic loves music, and really knows a great
deal about it,” said Lady Argent, believing herself to be stating a
fact.
“One can always play to a true lover of music,” murmured Nina. “I often
feel that with little Francie--child though she is.”
“Mrs. Grantham was so very musical, poor thing!” ejaculated Lady
Argent, who would have felt it almost an irreverence to omit the
epithet in the case of one deceased. “It is a pity the girls have not
inherited her gift. They neither of them play, do they, or is Rosamund
musical?”
“Not in the very least,” replied Nina, who rather disliked Rosamund.
“She does not know the meaning of the word. Between ourselves, dear
Lady Argent, Rosamund is not a very taking sort of girl, although she’s
prettier than Frances--in fact,” she added, with the easy generosity
of an extremely and maturely attractive woman, “she is quite unusually
pretty. But that’s all.”
“I thought she was clever.”
Nina shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s not the sort of cleverness that attracts,” she said shrewdly.
“Hazel Tregaskis, before she married, had twice the success that
Rosamund had. Now, of course, with money and clothes and things, and
that romantic story about her marriage, Hazel is too popular for words,
though she’s really not pretty in the least--only very bright and
attractive.”
Lady Argent, who did not think that Hazel Tregaskis’s marriage with Sir
Guy Marleswood was a sufficiently reputable subject to be mentioned,
except to the Almighty, with whom she occasionally pleaded piously for
the first Lady Marleswood’s demise, maintained a rather weighty silence.
Nina rippled lightly through it.
“Rosamund is rather the sort of girl who likes to go about looking
like a tragedy-queen, and for no particular reason, you know. There
was a very foolish and youthful love affair,” said Nina with an air of
extreme detachment, “which only lasted about a week, and meant nothing
at all, but she has quite got over that--so that her air of having a
grievance is really affectation. You know anything which fails to ring
quite true does jar so--one feels it instinctively--in a moment. Don’t
you agree?”
Lady Argent looked as though she were torn between truth and an
unaccountable desire to contradict her visitor, and it was a slight but
distinct relief to them both when Ludovic came into the room.
“Are you going to be kind enough to let us hear you play, Mrs.
Severing?” he asked her. “The piano is an Erard, and though it is not
new, I should very much like you to try it, if you will.”
“Do,” said Lady Argent cordially.
Ludovic wondered whether the cordiality sprang from a certain weariness
which he thought that he could detect in his parent’s expression. It
seemed to him that one might weary rather speedily in Mrs. Severing’s
company. But when she was seated before the Erard, a load of rings
removed from her white supple fingers, and the sound of one of her own
“Preludes” filling the room, Ludovic felt inclined to change his mind.
Nina Severing at the piano interested him. He felt that “meretricious”
was still the word that he would apply to her talent, but her rendering
of her own inspirations struck him as an odd bit of self-revelation.
The “Prelude” was a rapid, highly-technical _tour-de-force_ of
muscular agility, with the merest and most disconnected thread of
melody possible in the treble, and in syncopated time. Ludovic divined
that Nina regarded it as her masterpiece. She played with great
self-confidence and an amount of force that was rather surprising.
Afterwards, at Lady Argent’s request, she played a Chopin Polonaise and
the too well-known Minute-Waltz. Her rendering of neither satisfied
Ludovic’s taste, but he listened with an interest that was almost
profound.
“She is only sincere when she is dealing with her own compositions,”
was his final verdict. “As an interpreter she fails altogether. She
does not attempt to give us Chopin’s Chopin, but Nina Severing’s
Chopin--the Chopin of the author of the ‘Kismet’ songs. And so the
polonaise becomes trivial, almost a little vulgar--it is utterly above
and beyond her personality.” He gave himself up to interested musings,
and listened to Nina’s subsequent performances with his outward ear
only.
But Frances and Lady Argent gave the popular musician her full meed of
applause and congratulation.
“How you can ever have time to practise all those things, and learn
them by heart, I can’t imagine,” said Lady Argent admiringly. “When
I think what difficulty I had as a girl in memorizing a very pretty
thing called ‘The Maiden’s Prayer,’ which I believe is quite out of
date nowadays--but then I was never considered particularly musical.
Ludovic gets it all from his father.”
“Celtic blood,” said Nina, pronouncing the _C_ as though it had been
_S_. “No--memorizing has never been of much difficulty to me. Things
just seem to _come_, you know. As a child I used to spend hours and
hours in an old organ-loft, just playing to myself, you know--always
alone, but never lonely so long as I could make music.” Her eyes
deepened and grew introspective over this pathetic sketch, which
happened to be a fancy one, and it was with a perceptible effort that
she presently shook off her slight appearance of absorption and once
more begged to be shown the chapel.
“Frances will take you, and show you all that there is to be seen. I
know you will forgive me for not undertaking the stairs oftener than I
can help,” said her hostess with a little hesitation.
“But of course!”
Nina followed her guide with a graceful gesture expressive of complete
understanding.
“Ludovic!” cried Lady Argent in a distraught manner, as soon as he had
carefully closed the door. “I am afraid it was really very wrong of me
to tell such a shocking untruth, though I did not say in so many words
that it would bring on my asthma if I went upstairs to the chapel, but
I am sure that is what she understood me to mean, and the worst of it
is that I _meant_ her to take it that way, and that is really just the
same thing as telling a downright lie. Because of course stairs never
affect me in the least, as you very well know, only damp, which the
chapel is far from being, especially with that dear little radiator put
in under Our Lady’s statue. Oh, my dear boy, do you think it was very
wrong of me?”
“Not in the least. Why should you have taken her to the chapel
yourself, tiresome woman that she is?”
“Oh, hush,” said his mother, looking delighted. “Pray don’t call her
names, Ludovic, my dear, it really is most uncharitable. But I am
dreadfully afraid that I have taken a terrible dislike to her.”
“What! When she is so much interested in Catholicism?” asked Ludovic,
with a shade of derision in his tone.
“I did not like her manner about the Church at all,” said Lady Argent
with melancholy emphasis. “I really did _not_, Ludovic. I have no doubt
that it is very uncharitable of me, but it positively struck me once or
twice that she was almost posing about it all. So unlike dear little
Frances, who is so much in earnest.”
“I believe it was Mrs. Severing who first put the idea of Catholicism
into her head, all the same,” said Ludovic rather maliciously.
“My dear boy, how can you say such a thing! It was the grace of God,
neither more nor less, and when you consider that Mrs. Grantham was a
Catholic herself, by birth!--though I’m sure I had no idea of such a
thing till just the other day: but then one was so dreadfully apt to
look upon all foreigners as belonging to some odd fancy religion, or
even nothing at all, in those days. And, of course, poor thing, she
must have given up her religion altogether, or those children would
never have been baptized Protestants, poor little things, when you
think of the promises the non-Catholic party to a marriage always has
to make--but I suppose Mr. Grantham was never even told about them, let
alone asked to make them.”
“Probably not,” agreed her son placidly.
“Dreadful to think of! And so poor Mrs. Grantham died without the Last
Sacraments or anything at all. If one had only known in those days!
However,” said Lady Argent, wisely putting the past away from her, “God
has His own ways of doing things, and I have no doubt that Frances is
His chosen instrument for many things--perhaps she may even bring dear
Bertie herself into the Church, one of these days.”
“And Mrs. Severing, mother?”
“Ludovic! I can’t bear to think of that woman’s first Confession. I can
see her, keeping the poor priest for hours in the confessional, while
she forced all her fancies down his throat,” said Lady Argent, with the
energy that only a really good woman can put into denunciation.
“Mother!”
“Well, my dear boy, I dare say it is very wrong of me to say so, and
if I am giving you scandal I am sorry for it. You know very well that
I would never say such a thing before the servants or anybody, though
what Charles must have thought of her at luncheon, calling the turbot
symbolical and everything, I really don’t know. She will have to have
tea before driving all that way back, but pray ring the bell and let me
order it half an hour earlier.”
This inhospitable manœuvre had hardly been put into execution before
Frances and Nina reappeared. The latter laid her slender, gloveless
hand for a moment on Lady Argent’s sleeve, the blackness of which
formed an admirable foil to extreme whiteness and the flash of
diamonds, and said in tones which almost suggested an emotional
_tremolo_:
“I can’t thank you enough. It’s been a revelation--_Coram
sanctissimum!_”
Ludovic, with some perspicacity, divined that Mrs. Severing supposed
her fragment of Latinity to be some recondite version of “_sanctum
sanctorum_,” and tried to look proportionately gratified, the more so
as his mother’s expression denoted considerable distrust mingled with a
most perfunctory politeness.
“I’m so glad,” she murmured doubtfully. “Do pray let me give you some
tea--they are just bringing it.”
“The little shrine!” said Nina with a sort of soft rapture. “It
reminded me so much of those little wayside shrines one saw everywhere
in Italy. I have always loved them.”
“Do you know Italy well?” asked Ludovic.
“I was there years ago--with my husband. I remember,” said Nina
determinedly turning to Lady Argent, “that we had a private audience
with the Pope--so interesting, and he was the dearest old man. I shall
never forget kneeling there--I was a mere child, I married very, very
young--to receive his blessing, and how impressive it all was. He
gave me some beads, too, that I am sure have all sorts of beautiful
Indulgences attached to them, even for a poor little heretic. Frances
knows them--they always hang over my bed at home. I really could hardly
sleep without them.”
Even Frances felt no regret when Mrs. Severing took her departure.
Neither she nor Lady Argent alluded to the visit that evening, and
Ludovic, on his return from conducting Nina to the Towers, spent the
evening in reading aloud an article on French literature.
But when his mother rose to go to bed, and he handed her the small
heap of miscellanies without which she seldom moved, she looked almost
coldly at the polished brown rosary that crowned the little pile.
“Thank you, my dear boy,” she said rather faintly, taking them from
him, and added, as soon as Frances was out of earshot, “I assure you
that that absurd woman has really almost put me off saying my rosary
for the evening.”