“I’m an impulsive creature,” declared Bertha, in despite of the
protesting eyebrows which Mrs. Severing instantly erected at the
assertion. “It was an impulse that made me allow Francie to accept
Sybil Argent’s invitation, and I don’t mind owning that it was a
mistaken one. The child came back more tiresomely self-righteous than
she went, and now--as you know--we’ve practically consented to the
whole business.”
“Of course, darling,” said Nina tenderly, “I do _not_ look upon it in
the light that you do, but at the same time, you know, if I had once
said _no_ to a child of mine, _no_ it should remain. Nothing is more
fatal than a half-consent, to my mind.”
“Indeed, Nina. And when does Morris come home, may I ask?” said Bertha
acidly, and had the satisfaction of seeing her friend colour faintly,
as she replied with what both of them knew to be more spirit than
sincerity:
“Any time, now. I expect him from day to day, practically. But a young
man is a very different matter to a little girl, Bertie, though perhaps
only we mothers of sons really appreciate that.”
Bertha changed the subject.
“Frances goes to this convent next week, when they appear to be giving
a Retreat of some sort, and after that I suppose she’ll become an R.C.
outright. As Frederick says, we’re not in a position actually to forbid
it, so we may as well make the best of it. I hate making a compromise,
and yet, since the children grew up, I’ve been doing nothing else, it
seems to me.”
“Poor dear! But I’m sure it’ll be better for everyone when the child’s
actually taken a decisive step. She’ll be much more settled afterwards.”
“Settled in the wrong direction!” sighed Bertha. “However, she’s always
been a good little thing, and except for this unfortunate fancy, we’ve
never had any difficulties. So unlike poor Rosamund! As Frederick says,
it’s the only form of self-will Frances has ever shown, and though she
is obstinate, it isn’t quite the same thing as Rosamund’s constant
perversity.”
“A fit of religion might be no bad thing for _her_.”
“I quite agree--but there isn’t a sign of it. Frances suggested
her making this Retreat affair too, but she wouldn’t hear of
it--fortunately enough, perhaps, since I should certainly have had to
put my foot down. I shall have to send poor Minnie with Frances, I
suppose.”
“Let me take her!” suddenly exclaimed Nina, with an air of
self-abnegation. “I have been thinking of making a Retreat for some
time.”
Bertha was as well aware as Nina herself that “some time” only covered
the last five seconds of time, but the advantages of Nina’s suggestion
were too obvious for her to point out any flaws in the proposal.
“But, my dear, should you like it? A whole week at a place of that
sort, and nothing on earth to do!”
“To ‘make my soul,’ Bertie. It would be such a rest--such a help. Not
the teachings and sermonizings, you know, but quiet hours to myself in
the garden and the chapel, a little time to read and meditate....”
“I don’t understand you, Nina. You don’t mean to become a Roman
Catholic, so what’s the fun of dabbling in it?”
Nina understood that the unnecessary bluntness in her friend’s
phraseology had been brought there by a certain rapt dreaminess of
which she was fully conscious in her own expression.
“Dear Bertie,” she said softly, “it is quite true that I _can’t_ be
bound by any of the conventional laws of religion, but mayn’t I seek
comfort where I can best find it?”
Bertha became, if possible, more matter-of-fact than before, in
antagonistic contrast to this soulful appeal.
“You know they charge for your board and lodging at these places?”
Nina’s tinkling laugh pealed protestingly.
“My dear, how desperately practical you always are! It’s positively
comic. Do you know, that I’m sometimes tempted to think that you and I
represent the two types----”
“Martha and Mary,” Bertha unkindly forestalled her friend’s seasoned
witticism. “I know, dear, though perhaps there’s a good deal more of
the Mary in me than you suppose--but I know it’s difficult to judge of
people who have the misfortune to be as reserved as I am. However, if
you really have taken a fancy to this scheme, by all means let Francie
go with you. I shall be only too delighted, and it will be a relief to
Minnie.”
“Poor Miss Blandflower! I can’t quite see her in a convent atmosphere,
I admit.”
“_Qu’ allait-elle faire dans cette galère_,” hummed Bertha.
Nina, who did not like Bertha’s admirable French accent, immediately
gave a small excruciated shriek.
“Out of tune, my dear! You were at least a semitone out--_Aie!_”
The annoyance which is common to everybody when accused, whether
falsely or otherwise, of singing out of tune, was evident on Bertha’s
broad, good-humoured face, and went some way towards consoling Nina for
a rather impulsive decision.
Some few days later, she and Frances Grantham went together to the
convent.
“I’m glad the Retreat doesn’t begin till the day after to-morrow,”
said Frances rather nervously, as they waited outside the tall, narrow
building, situated at the extreme end of the small provincial town. “It
will give us time to get used to everything, and perhaps to know one
or two of the nuns.”
“The Superior’s letter to me was charming,” said Nina firmly, “quite
charming, and I almost feel as though I knew her already. Somehow one
has a sort of _awareness_ of anyone with whom one is in tune, don’t you
think so? It’s almost a sense of recognition.”
Mrs. Severing’s recognition of Mère Pauline, however, did not appear
likely to progress beyond this initial stage for some time after a very
aged lay-sister in a black veil and habit had conducted the travellers
into a large and plainly furnished parlour, and left them to await the
Superior’s arrival.
“Can we have mistaken the date?” asked Nina, when a quarter of an hour
had elapsed and their solitude still remained undisturbed.
“Perhaps she is very busy, if a lot of people are arriving to make the
Retreat,” suggested Frances doubtfully.
They exchanged surmises at intervals for another ten minutes.
“Do open the door, Francie,” said Nina at last in annoyed accents.
“That stupid old sister must have forgotten us.”
Frances rather unwillingly looked into the dark, narrow passage.
A couple of girls with black lace veils pinned over untidy hair, and
falling incongruously across plaid blouses, were skirmishing and
giggling at one end of the corridor. They broke off as Frances opened
the door and at the same instant one of them exclaimed:
“_Chut! Notre Mère!_”
A very small, black-clad figure advanced through a further door, and
Frances, hurriedly retreating, was in time to see the two girls make a
sort of subdued dash towards her which the Superior put aside with a
gentle but very decided little movement of the hand, and “_Pas ici, mes
enfants_.”
The next moment she came into the parlour.
Mère Pauline was an exceedingly small, upright person, with black
eyes to which a pair of large round spectacles gave an air of inquiry,
a hooked nose, and a thin, decided little mouth. She spoke English
fluently, although with the unmistakable accent and intonation of a
Frenchwoman.
“Mrs. Severing?” she inquired of Nina. “I am very glad to see you--and
this is Lady Argent’s little friend. I may call you Frances, dear? I
’ave ’eard so much about you. ’Ow nice to see you ’ere.”
Like the majority of her countrywomen, she altogether ignored the
letter H.
After a few moments’ conversation, the nun offered to show her visitors
to their bedrooms.
“We have not much room,” she said smilingly, preceding them up a long
flight of narrow stairs. “The house is full of ladies who are come for
the Retreat, as well as all our permanent lady boarders.”
“Have you many?” inquired Nina, panting slightly from the ascent, which
Mère Pauline was conducting with a sort of businesslike rapidity.
“Six or seven who are permanently at home here, and then a number which
is always varying, of young girls whose parents have confided them to
us for a time to learn English. They are for the most part Spanish, or
French. They have given up their rooms for the Retreat, and have moved
upstairs into the piano-cells,” said Mère Pauline serenely.
She stopped before a door where a neat card was pinned with Mrs.
Severing’s name upon it. Just above it, a red-bordered scroll
proclaimed in Gothic lettering “Ste. Perpétue.”
“I have put you into Ste. Perpétue as it has a very nice aspect,”
announced the Superior, “and Frances is next door--St. Félicitée. You
see, you can look out upon our little piece of garden.”
She advanced into the room, which was a very small and narrow one,
with distempered green walls, a low iron bed-stead, a washing-stand
and minute chest-of-drawers combined, a straw-bottomed chair and one
strip of faded carpet beside the bed. A plaster crucifix and a blue
china holy-water stoup hung against the wall. Underneath stood the
only concession to worldly requirements that the room contained--a
looking-glass framed in wood, placed upon a tall packing-case
indifferently disguised by a white and beautifully darned cotton cover.
The slight shade of dismay which had crossed Nina’s face on entering,
gave way almost instantly to a suitable expression of enchantment, as
she exclaimed in low, heartfelt tones:
“A convent cell! Ah, how I have dreamed of finding myself in one.”
If Mère Pauline failed to see the applicability of this description
to one of her most cherished guest-chambers, she made no sign of it,
but merely proceeded to conduct Frances into the exactly similar room
adjoining.
“I hope you will be very happy here, dear child,” she said kindly, “and
that we shall have many little talks later on. The Retreat does not
begin till to-morrow night, so you will have time to look about you.”
“I thought it began the day after to-morrow,” said Frances.
“So it does, but you will enter into silence on the previous night,”
said the Superior. “But here is our programme awaiting you.”
She picked up a small leaflet, neatly written out in violet ink, from
the washing-stand, which also appeared destined to fulfil the ordinary
functions of a table, and left her guests to study it, with the warning
that a bell would shortly summon them to supper in the dining-room.
“Supper at six o’clock!” exclaimed Nina. “What an extraordinary hour. I
wonder if we have it with the nuns.”
“I think the community live in a different part of the house
altogether,” said Frances diffidently, “and I’m sure we don’t have
meals with them.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been reading one or two lives of nuns lately--Lady Argent lent
me some,” murmured Frances, and hastily changed the conversation by
beginning to read aloud from the purple leaflet.
“7 a.m. Mass for those following the Retreat.
“8 a.m. Breakfast.
“8.30 a.m. to 10 a.m. Free time in the garden.
“10 a.m. First Meditation.
“11 a.m. to 12 a.m. Free time for writing.
“12 a.m. Dinner.
“1 p.m. Exercise in the garden.
“2 p.m. Second Meditation.
“3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Free time. Tea [if desired] at 4 o’clock.
“5 p.m. Rosary in the Chapel and Benediction.
“5.30 p.m. Instruction in the Chapel.
“6 p.m. Supper.
“6.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. Free time.
“7.30 p.m. Way of the Cross and night prayers in the Chapel.”
“I’m not sure how far it will be wise to follow the routine,” said Nina
rather languidly. “I certainly can’t meditate to order. But no doubt
these rules are only for the girls she was speaking about, and have
nothing to do with visitors.”
“Oh, but I like the idea of rules,” said Frances quickly. “It’s such a
help to do things regularly, it seems to me, and all together.”
“Ah, little one, you are still child enough to feel it so. When one is
as tired and heavy-hearted as I am sometimes....”
Perhaps Nina was not altogether sorry that a violent bell-ringing
interrupted these mournful reflections without allowing time for their
completion.
“How shall we find the dining-room?” said Frances, preparing to descend
the stairs.
“There can’t be very many rooms to choose from, in such a small house.
I wonder what their idea of dinner may be--or supper, I suppose one
ought to call it. Not bread and water, I do trust.”
Nina’s gloomy forebodings were not realized. The meal was abundant and
not badly cooked, from potato soup to hashed mutton and cabinet pudding.
A rather formidable-looking old lady of immense size, with the
inevitable black veil on her scanty white hair, and a bristling
moustache adorning her upper lip, sat at the head of the long table.
Opposite her was a stout Spanish girl who might have been of any age
between eighteen and thirty-five, with oily-looking plaits of black
hair coiled flatly against each ear. The intervening places were for
the most part filled with black-clad, creaking ladies of uncertain
years, each one of whom was either extremely fat or abnormally thin,
and a sprinkling of French and Spanish girls in brightly coloured
blouses with the black veil either pinned on to each _chignon_ or flung
scarf-wise over the shoulders.
A young English nun greeted the new-comers as they made their rather
tardy appearance.
“Mrs. Severing, isn’t it--and Miss Grantham? Just in time for supper.
Will you sit here, Mrs. Severing, next to Mrs. Mulholland?”
The mountainous Mrs. Mulholland bowed ceremoniously from her seat at
the head of the table.
“And you’ll sit here, dear, next to your friend,” the nun continued
to Frances. “Now you must all make acquaintance as quickly as you
can, since by this time to-morrow there’ll be no more talking and the
opportunity will be gone.”
There was a general laugh at this pleasantry, in which the nun herself
joined heartily as she left the dining-room.
Mrs. Mulholland turned to Nina Severing.
“This is the first time you’ve been here, isn’t it?”
“Yes. We’ve just come for the Retreat.”
“I have followed the Retreat here every year,” said Mrs. Mulholland
triumphantly, “for the last eighteen years. I haven’t missed one of
them. Poor Monseigneur Miller, who used always to give it, used to say
that he couldn’t have given out the points for the meditations if he
hadn’t seen me at my own _prie-dieu_, in my own corner of the Chapel.
Did you ever meet Monseigneur Miller?”
“No, I’m afraid not. You see I’m not----”
“Ah well! he’s been dead more than ten years, and we’ve had several
priests for the Ladies’ Retreat since then. Last year we had Father
Aloysius Paxton--a Jesuit. His note was _Repentance_--the whole Retreat
was Repentance--based on that, practically. Now I hear that this man,
who is coming to-morrow, takes quite a different line. Wasn’t it you,
Miss Benjafield, who told me that Father Anselm preaches his retreats
altogether in the spirit of Hope?”
“So my sister tells me, Mrs. Mulholland,” replied an anæmic-looking
woman from the other side of the table. “My Carmelite sister, you know,
not the Poor Clare one. Pass the potatoes, if you please. Thank you.
Yes, he gave them a Retreat which they liked very much, I believe.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Mulholland condescendingly. “The Carmelites make a
longer Retreat than ours, I know. I dare say it’s quite in accordance
with the spirit of the Order, but I must say, what’s good enough for
_our_ Order is good enough for me. I always tell Mère Pauline that an
eight-day Retreat wouldn’t be at all too much for us--it’s what the
nuns make themselves.”
“Oh, Mrs. Mulholland! _I_ think five days is quite enough to keep
silence for!” cried a merry-looking French girl, with an air of saying
something audacious.
“Ah, we have to make allowances for you young things. But I always
make up for it later in the year, by coming to the meditations in the
chapel given for the nuns’ Retreat, you know. Of course,” said Mrs.
Mulholland, slightly lowering her voice and turning towards Nina, “Mère
Pauline doesn’t allow the ladies to follow the nuns’ Retreat _at all_
as a rule; it’s quite an exception. But, of course, I’ve been here a
number of years, and am almost like one of themselves in a way. I
have a very regular rule of life--under direction, of course, under
direction.”
The other ladies, who were evidently well used to the recital of Mrs.
Mulholland’s spiritual privileges, resumed conversation briskly among
themselves and speculations as to the coming Retreat mingled with the
emphatically related anecdotes of the younger girls as to sudden and
disconcerting encounters with Mère Pauline--“_Just_ as I was saying
that I didn’t think I’d go to Vespers to-day. _Do_ you think she heard,
my dear?”
“I must introduce you all round after supper,” said Mrs. Mulholland,
looking amiably at Nina. “You see, I’m quite the oldest inhabitant
here--in point of stay. I’ve sat at the head of this table, Mrs.
Severing, for the past fifteen years--ever since poor old Miss O’Malley
died. She used to sit here when I first came--she’d been here for
twenty years, and was a sister of one of the old nuns--but she took to
her own room some six months before she died, and I was asked to come
to the head of the table in her place, and there I’ve been ever since.
I was asked to take it, mind you. The Superior before this one, Mère
Alphonsine, who was alive then, asked me herself to take the head of
the table. ‘_Vous dirigerez un peu la conversation_,’ she said to me. I
like the conversation at the ladies’ table to be edifying--as cheerful
as you please--but edifying. No grumbling--no gossip--no uncharitable
speaking. So that’s my little task--_one_ of my little tasks--to keep
up the tone of the conversation at meals. Now a few years ago, Mrs.
Severing, we had Lady O’Hagan here--a very nice woman indeed--widow
of Sir Patrick O’Hagan, of whom you may have heard--a very well-known
Catholic family. Well, the lay-sister who waits on us here, put Lady
O’Hagan at the head of the table, and moved my place to the side. An
ignorant lay-sister, you see, very well-meaning, but thought that
because of the title this good woman should be put at the head. ‘Now,’
I said, ‘Lady O’Hagan is only here for a few days’--just for a Retreat
she’d come--‘and it doesn’t matter to me--I’ve got my position here,
have had for years--it _doesn’t matter to me_. But it is what it ought
to be? Mère Alphonsine asked me to take the head of the table--well and
good--I took it. I’ve had it ever since. If you ask me, I don’t think
I ought to give it up. Mère Alphonsine had her reasons for putting me
there, and there I consider I ought to stay until I’m told otherwise.
Of course, one word from the Superior and I move at once. That’s
obedience. I’m not under vows, Mrs. Severing, but I consider myself
just as much bound to obedience as any postulant in the house. Well, I
spoke to Mère Econome--she’s by way of looking after the ladies--and
she, being Spanish, didn’t quite understand the case. Thought it
didn’t matter--only a question of a few days--and so on. ‘That’s not
right,’ said I. ‘That’s not the point,’ I said. ‘The point is, _what
ought to be_.’ So I went straight to Mère Pauline. Straight to the
Superior--that’s my motto, Mrs. Severing. Always go straight to the
Superior. I said: ‘It’s not a question of minding--I’ll move my place
to-morrow if that’s what you think best,’ I said, ‘but let it be under
obedience. A question of obedience,’ I said, ‘and you’re given the
grace to carry it out.’ That’s all I said: ‘A question of obedience,’ I
said.
“‘Mrs. Mulholland,’ Mère Pauline said, ‘I should be very much
distressed indeed to think of your moving. Please stay where you’ve
always been, and remember that we look to you to raise the tone of
conversation and render it all it should be.’ Now, after that, Mrs.
Severing, do you wonder that I look upon my place here as a duty--as a
positive responsibility?”
“No, indeed,” said Nina rather faintly.
“We’ve always been very careful, of course, as to the ladies we receive
here,” continued Mrs. Mulholland, as usual identifying herself with the
community. “There’s never any question of gossip, you know--anything
of that sort. But, of course, with so many young people--foreigners
too--one must keep a lookout--just a lookout. There’s sometimes a
little criticizing--a remark or two passed: ‘I don’t like Mother
So-and-So’--‘Sister this or Sister the other is too sharp in her manner
for me.’ Now that’s what I am here to stop. ‘That’ll do, my dear,’ I
say. ‘That’s enough.’ Never more than that, you know--only ‘That’ll do,
my dear,’ just like that. ‘We don’t find fault with the nuns here,’ I
say. ‘You must go somewhere else if you want a spirit of disloyalty. We
don’t stock it here.’ Passing it off, you see, with a joke. That’s all
I ever say, and I assure you it’s always been efficacious.”
“I’m sure it has,” began Nina again. “Do you----”
“We’re quite a large party here for the moment owing to the Retreat,
but, of course, at other times it’s more like a family--there’s not the
same necessity,” pursued Mrs. Mulholland, warming to her theme, “for
keeping a sharp eye open--or perhaps I ought to say a sharp ear.” She
paused to laugh heartily. “I don’t want to give you the impression that
I am a sort of policeman, waiting to pounce, Mrs. Severing, or you’ll
be afraid to open your lips. We’re all very glad, on the contrary,
to see a new face now and then, and hear something fresh. Though I
always tell Mère Pauline that I think we ladies ought to have a rule
of silence at meals, just as the community has. That’s what _I_ should
like.”
The fervour of this aspiration was only equalled by the intensity with
which it was inwardly echoed by Mrs. Severing.