Shrewd as Mrs. Tregaskis was, it was not until after Nina had departed,
serene and triumphant, that she suddenly exclaimed, pondering over the
ingenuous epistle of Mrs. Mulholland:
“It’s all very well, but that woman never answered one word about
looking after Frances. She wrote about everything else under the sun,
but not a single definite assurance in the whole caboodle. What an
unpractical lot these holy females are! It’s enough to drive a plain
common-sense Cornish body to distraction.”
She laughed in humorous deprecation of her own harassed tones, and Miss
Blandflower remarked sympathetically:
“Fancy that, now. Dear Mrs. Tregaskis, wouldn’t you like me to join the
fray? I could run down there, have a look at Francesca, and trot back
to report progress. Or bring her home in my pocket.”
Bertha looked at her proposed deputy with rather a doubtful expression.
“You’d hate it, Minnie, wouldn’t you? The very bosom of the Scarlet
Woman, you know!”
“England expects every man to do his duty,” replied Miss Blandflower
courageously, but she looked infinitely relieved when Mrs. Tregaskis
laughed again, and said tolerantly:
“No, no, Minnie, I don’t think we’ll expose you to contamination. If
anyone goes, I’ll go myself--but we’ll see what the next letters are
like.”
The next letters, however, from the Porthlew point of view were far
from satisfactory.
“This tone of little Frances’ won’t do at all,” declared Bertha very
decidedly, at breakfast. “Quite a new departure! Talking about being
‘received into the Church at once,’ and ‘discussing further plans’ when
she gets home. I never heard of such a thing--what are little girls
coming to, pray?”
“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and all that’s nice,”
muttered Minnie in the inward voice which she reserved for her frequent
and irrelevant quotations.
“Nice, indeed!” retorted Mrs. Tregaskis crisply, “anything but, my
poor Minnie. This won’t do at all. Miss Frances must be popped back
into her little place again, I’m afraid. You needn’t scowl at me,
Rosamund. Nobody is going to be at all unkind or brutal, but if this
is the effect that Roman Catholicism is going to have on Frances, why,
the sooner she’s taken away from the convent the better. In any case I
never gave her leave to stay for more than a few days’ Retreat, and now
she writes quite calmly that she is to be ‘received’ at the end of the
week, without so much as with your leave or by your leave.”
“If she’s made up her mind, Bertha--and I conclude that she has--you
can’t stop her, and you’d better leave her alone,” growled Frederick.
“Nonsense, dear. She’s not so emancipated as all that, yet. Besides,
we _have_ given a sort of consent, in a way, by letting her go to this
place--though it was against my better judgment, as you know.”
“Your better judgment, Bertha, is only less to be relied on than your
original impulse.”
Mrs. Tregaskis invariably treated these speeches of her lord and master
as a recondite form of pleasantry. She therefore laughed valiantly
at the epigrammatic insult, and merely told Minnie to give her the
marmalade.
“Ma-me-laid, as the chicken said,” lugubriously and quite
absent-mindedly remarked Miss Blandflower, neither she nor anyone else
paying the slightest heed to the historic jest, which she repeated
almost every morning of her life.
“Well,” Bertha said at last, “I suppose I must sacrifice the poor
Mothers’ Union and trot after my stray lamb. I’ve a very good mind to
pay her a surprise visit, and see what she’s really up to.”
“Frances would never deceive you, Cousin Bertie,” indignantly said
Rosamund.
“I dare say, my dear; but Frances is with people whom I know very
little about, and I can’t tell what nonsense they may be stuffing into
her little head. Anyway, I’m going to find out.”
“Better send Rosamund,” was the observation of her Cousin Frederick,
uttered in tones which conveyed at one and the same time the
impressions that he was making the suggestion sarcastically, and that
he knew it would be displeasing to his wife.
Rosamund looked at Mrs. Tregaskis. She had not the slightest
expectation of accompanying her to the convent, and was not even sure
that she wanted to do so.
“Rubbish,” said Mrs. Tregaskis briskly. “No use glowering at me,
Rosamund. You’d be dreadfully in my way, darling, and in Frances’, too,
little though you may believe it. She’s never quite natural and open
when you’re there to try and tell her what she must say and what she
mustn’t.”
This observation, partly from the substratum of truth which it
contained, always roused in Rosamund a fury of pain and resentment.
She told herself vehemently that Cousin Bertie never understood
anything, and hated the quick, angry flush that denoted her feelings
plainly to that amused, observant eye.
Her retaliation she knew, with all the impotent anger of youth at its
own inadequacy, to be as awkward and ineffectual as it was fierce.
“I shall certainly write and tell Francie that you are coming, Cousin
Bertie.”
“Oho! You think she wouldn’t appreciate a surprise visit, is that it?
It doesn’t speak very well for your theory that Frances would never
deceive me, does it?” laughed Bertha. “Very well, my dear, write to her
by all means, and say that I’ll be there on Saturday. I can’t possibly
get away to-morrow.”
“Dear me, no,” said Minnie anxiously. “There’s your dairy class in the
morning, and then Nurse Watkins wants to come and talk to you about
that poor woman with the twins, and isn’t it the third Friday of the
month? because that’s your committee meeting out at Polwerrow, isn’t
it?”
“Yes, I shall have my hands full. You’ll have to take the mothers on
Saturday afternoon, Minnie. I’ll give you the leaflets to distribute,
and they must have tea as usual, and you or Rosamund might read them a
little something afterwards. I’ll look out something or other that will
do.”
“They’ll be dreadfully disappointed at not seeing you,” sighed Miss
Blandflower.
“Tell them how sorry I am to be away. It’s not often I’ve missed one of
the meetings, is it? The fact is, it does me good to talk to them all
and hear all about baby’s croup and Old Man Granfer’s rheumatism and
the rest of it. I revel in a gude old clackit o’ wummin, as we say down
here.”
“They all adore you,” said the faithful Minnie.
“Rubbish, my dear! It’s only that one has a knack of understanding
them, and then they’ve known me all my life. Why, I’m still ‘Miss
Bertie’ to most of them!”
Bertha laughed, finished her breakfast, and told Minnie to come and
help her get ready for the dairy class.
Helping Mrs. Tregaskis never meant anything more than the more
mechanical jobs that she herself had not time to undertake, but Minnie
followed her obediently, and spent the intervening time until Saturday
toiling blindly and ineffectively in her wake.
“I’m so dreadfully afraid that I shall forget something or other,” she
sighed, watching Mrs. Tregaskis drive away from the hall door. “I’ve
not got her head for organization, you know. Ah well! it takes all
sorts to make a world, as they say.”
It must be admitted that Miss Blandflower’s distrust of her own
capability as a substitute was not unshared by Mrs. Tregaskis.
“Poor old Minnie! She always does her best,” Bertha said to her husband
as he drove her to the station. “But I’m afraid there’ll be a big
accumulation by the time I get back. However, it’s all in the day’s
work, and the main point just now is to see what Frances is up to.”
Frederick remained silent, and she added hastily:
“Now, not another word till we get to the station. I’ve promised
myself the luxury of this quiet half-hour to go over the blanket-club
accounts.”
She pulled out of her bag a little red notebook and was immersed in
figures until they reached the station.
Nor did Mrs. Tregaskis’ activities cease when she had established
herself in the corner-seat of a third-class railway-carriage.
There was a woman seated opposite to her whose baby was fractious and
crying, and only howled the louder at Bertha’s kind, broad smiles and
dangled watch-chain. She gave the mother a few words of advice as to
its feeding, and laughed away her stammered apologies at the baby’s
ungracious reception of the lady’s kindness.
At the first stop a young girl whom Mrs. Tregaskis knew by sight as the
daughter of a distant farmer, got into the carriage, her head muffled
in a shawl, and immediately shut both windows with a timid, “Excuse
me--I have the toothache.”
“No, no, no!” cried Bertha with jovial decision, and lowering the
window furthest from the girl’s swollen face. “Sit over there, Nellie,
and you won’t feel it. It _is_ Nellie Jewell, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Mrs. Tregaskis.”
“Well, Nellie, I’m very sorry you’ve got toothache, but we’re--let me
see--one, two, three, _four_ people in here besides yourself! Five,
if we count this little man,” she added, with a laughing nod at the
unresponsive baby, “and I don’t see why he shouldn’t have his share of
fresh air. You wouldn’t want five people to do without God’s lovely
fresh air that’s so good for us all, just because you’ve got toothache,
Nellie?”
“I don’t want to catch cold in ’un, Mrs. Tregaskis,” muttered the girl
sullenly.
But she left the window open.
Presently Mrs. Tregaskis asked her if she’d been to the dentist.
“Yes, Mrs. Tregaskis. I’m just on my way back. But her culdn’t du
nothin’ for me while ’tis swollenlike.”
“No, I see that. You silly girl, you ought to have gone before it got
so bad. If only you girls ate fewer sweets, you wouldn’t have such bad
teeth--but at any rate, if you _must_ give yourself toothache, you
ought to be brave and go to see the dentist before getting to this
stage. Now I don’t suppose you’ve been able to do much towards helping
your mother for the last week, have you, with your mouth in that state?”
“No, Mrs. Tregaskis.”
There was a suspicion of a flounce in Nellie Jewell’s movements as she
rose to get out at the next station.
“Good-bye, Nellie. I hope you’ll have had that tooth right out next
time I see you,” said Bertha, with unperturbed good-humour.
She made a mental note to the effect that she must call on Nellie
Jewell’s mother when she got back and see if they couldn’t persuade
the girl to become an Associate of the G.F.S. She seemed to be a silly
girl, but no doubt something could be done for her.
For the rest of the journey Mrs. Tregaskis dismissed parochial concerns
from her mind, and allowed herself the luxury of an uninterrupted
hour’s reading of “La vie des Abeilles.” She enjoyed, quite
consciously, the sense that this was the first time she had had spare
time in which to read it at leisure during the six months she had had
the book in hand.
The journey was a long one, and packets of sandwiches were produced
on either side of her, but Mrs. Tregaskis always grudged time given to
food, and only at the last junction put her head out of the window and
allowed herself to drink two cups of very strong tea from the station
refreshment-room.
It was nearly six o’clock before she reached, by means of the slowest
of cabs, the convent door.
She looked at the unimposing building, high and narrow like the
buildings on either side of it, with some contempt. It was not at
all picturesque, like the charming convents or monasteries of her
experience in Italy and Southern France. Only a modest brass plate on
the door and a blue and white figure cut out of what used to be called
“transparencies” and pasted against the inside of the glass fan-light,
proclaimed the house to be a convent.
Once inside, however, Bertha thought that her surroundings left small
room for doubt. The small, dark parlour was hung with highly-coloured
devotional pictures, a cheap coloured statuette stood on the
mantelpiece and another one on a bracket over the door.
Contrary to the conventual wont, however, Mrs. Tregaskis was not kept
waiting. Frances came into the room almost immediately. She did not
greet her guardian with any of the timidity which she often displayed,
and which Mrs. Tregaskis had half expected.
“Cousin Bertie, I _am_ so glad you’ve come! It was so much easier to
talk than to write--you know how bad I am at letters.”
“Your last letter was rather explicit, Francie, my child,” said Bertha
drily. “We’ll have a long talk about it to-morrow, but just at present
I want to know whether these good nuns are expecting me. I suppose you
asked them if I could have a room?”
“Yes. You’ve got the one Mrs. Severing had. You see, the Retreat was
over two or three days ago, so most of the visitors have gone. There
are only the usual lady boarders left now.”
“The Retreat was over two or three days ago, was it? I see.”
Frances flushed at her guardian’s tone.
“Oh, Cousin Bertie, if Rosamund hadn’t said that you were coming here I
meant to have written you a long letter, and told you why I was staying
on, and everything.”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Tregaskis, still dryly. “I hope you did. I feel
sure you did. Now show me where my room is, will you?”
Frances, the look of pleasure on her face altogether dashed, preceded
Mrs. Tregaskis to the room next to her own.
Mrs. Tregaskis, as usual, was appreciative and observant, was charmed
at having a window that looked out on to the garden, and thanked
Frances delightedly for the little vase of flowers arranged upon the
tiny dressing-table. Frances reflected remorsefully that Cousin Bertie
never failed in recognition of any effort, however small, to give
her pleasure. Joined to the thought, however, was the subconscious
conviction that neither did Cousin Bertie ever fail to mark and
remember any infringement, however trivial, of the wide, easy, and
yet inflexible discipline which she was apt to wield over all her
surroundings.
It was perhaps this unacknowledged certainty which drove Frances,
as soon as breakfast was over on the following morning, to withdraw
herself and her guardian, with unwonted decision, from the voluble
overtures of Mrs. Mulholland, to the comparative privacy of the small
garden. It was only nine o’clock, and they both shivered a little in
the raw morning air.
“Tut! This won’t do,” exclaimed Bertha. “Come along, Francie--in step,
now.”
She began to chant with a sort of martial ardour, keeping time as she
stepped out gallantly:
“I had a good place and I _left_--_left_--_left_; I’m out of work now
and it serves me jolly well _right_--_right_--_right_! Soon be warm at
this rate! Don’t shiver like that, Francie. Why, bless me! it’s good
to be alive on a day like this.”
Frances was guiltily conscious that her shivers were not altogether due
to defective circulation.
She made a great effort, clenching her small fists unseen, and said
valiantly:
“Cousin Bertie, you know that I’m staying on here because I want to be
received as a Catholic next week. They are--quite willing.”
She felt uncomfortably breathless, and her voice caught in her throat
once or twice.
None of Hazel’s valour in opposition would ever be Frances’.
Bertha’s voice was most reassuringly kind.
“Well, darling, we must talk it over a little bit. Why so much haste?”
“I--I don’t quite know what there is to wait for,” faltered Frances,
conscious of the lack of conviction in her voice.
That Cousin Bertie was also conscious of it was evident in the tone of
smooth good-humour in which she replied:
“I might perhaps answer that you could wait to be a little older and
wiser and more experienced, or that later on you may reproach me
bitterly for having allowed you to take a decisive step in a fit of
enthusiasm.”
“Oh no!” breathed Frances.
“Oh yes!” cried Bertha cheerfully. “I can assure you that people _do_
change their minds, astonishing though it may seem to you, my darling,
and that even ten years hence you’ll feel quite differently about
nearly everything under the sun. Tell me, don’t you see for yourself
that you’ve changed a good deal since you were a little girl of
fourteen or fifteen, even? Aren’t almost all your opinions, and values,
and ambitions quite different?”
Frances reflected conscientiously and then replied rather timidly:
“No, Cousin Bertie. I don’t think they are.”
Bertha broke into her ringing laugh, her head flung back.
“Oh, my dear little girl! You’re even younger than I thought you were.
It’s a shame to laugh at you when you’re so much in earnest--but you’ll
laugh at yourself in a very little while. Oh, Francie, Francie!”
She laughed again, irrepressibly.
At last she became serious.
“Now, Frances, bar all joking. Tell me exactly why you want to join the
Catholic Church.”
Frances noted gratefully that her guardian, speaking to her of the
Catholic Church, did not use the prefix “Roman.”
She gave a stammering, halting summary of reasons, which sounded
curiously unconvincing even to her own ears, for wishing to become a
Catholic as soon as possible. Even the attentive silence, punctuated by
quiet movements of the head, in which Bertha listened to her, seemed to
add to the sense of pitiful inadequacy overwhelming her.
She knew that her uneloquent, shakily-spoken sentences gave no hint of
the passionate convictions and determinations seething within her.
“Will you talk to Father Anselm--the Prior, you know--or to Mère
Pauline?” she ended desperately.
“Certainly I will,” said Bertha promptly. “I had already meant to do
so, my child, since these people have taken a very big responsibility
on themselves in persuading you to leave your own Church before you’re
even old enough to know what you’re doing. They’ve got to render a very
strict account of it to me, too.”
“Cousin Bertie, there’s one thing,” said Frances, flushing scarlet.
“By rights, the Catholic Church _ought_ to be my own Church, because
my mother was one, and if--if the rules and things had been as strict
then as they are now, Rosamund and I would have _had_ to be baptized
Catholics.”
Bertha responded instantly:
“That’s quite true, Francie, and it’s because of that, and because
we know that your dear mother belonged to that Faith, that Cousin
Frederick and I are allowing you so much latitude. You see, darling,
if _Hazel_ had taken this turn, we should have forbidden it outright
until she was at least twenty-one--but it’s not quite the same thing
where you’re concerned.”
“Oh, Cousin Bertie, how kind and understanding you are!”
“Ah, the dull old people with Experience behind them do sometimes
understand, don’t they?” asked Bertha playfully. “Well, now, what about
a chat with the Reverend Mother Superior and all these good people? Can
I see any of them?”
“I expect so,” said Frances, glad to think that her cause should be
transferred to better hands than her own.
They went indoors again.