Rosamund lay in the tiny convent infirmary where she had been for a
week.
She was quite weak, and the tears that had not come to her before
streamed irrepressibly now. She could not stop crying.
They told her of the little novice, Sister Frances Mary, lying in
her white habit with her hands folded against her breast, a crucifix
between them, and wearing the chaplet of white artificial flowers
which she had worn at her _prise d’habit_, and with which the nuns had
garlanded her now over the white veil.
And Rosamund, the tears pouring down her face, saw only a little girl
with soft, flying hair, in a pink sunbonnet, swinging in the orchard
above the Wye Valley.
The infirmarian told her of Mère Pauline’s recovery, and of how, still
weak and shaken, she had knelt, _toute tremblante, pauvre Mère_, in
the chapel where they had placed her child, and prayed beside the
black-draped oaken trestles where lay the mortal remains of Sister
Frances Mary.
Rosamund had heard the tolling chapel bell, and Mother Juliana had read
her the prayers that had been offered in the hillside cemetery beyond
the town, where they had laid Sister Frances Mary. And she had seen
another hill, and heard only the sound of two little sisters calling to
one another in their play.
The nuns did not understand. They had only known Sister Frances Mary.
They were very kind to her, and the infirmarian daily brought her
messages from the Superior, promises of an early visit, and assurances
that she was not to think of leaving the convent until _le médecin_
had declared her to be _remise du coup_.
Rosamund remained passive. The tears that she could not restrain did
not matter here, and they kept her from the lowest of those abysmal
depths that she had sounded before something snapped within her, and
she had felt herself falling helplessly, in the convent parlour, with
Mrs. Mulholland’s large, frightened old face wavering strangely before
her eyes.
Since then, unutterable weariness and yet unutterable relief had taken
possession of her. Frances was dead, and Frances was hers again as in
the days when they had been children together, and seen all life before
them in an illimitable perspective. Of Porthlew, she thought hardly
at all. Her mind had gone back to the Wye Valley days. Old formulæ
that had passed between the two, long since forgotten, little trivial
memories that had been common to them both, thronged to Rosamund’s mind
almost involuntarily in her weakness, and the finality held by Death
seemed the only refuge from the far more poignant finality that life
had offered.
In the curious need of dependence which utter physical and mental
lassitude induces, Rosamund, scarcely conscious of even a vague
surprise, found that she had turned to Mrs. Mulholland.
The old woman toiled heavily up the narrow stairs that led to the
infirmary, and spent the spring afternoons sitting by the window in the
tiny room, with her work held close to her spectacles, while she talked
with her odd matter-of-fact piety to Rosamund, or listened to her few
replies and questions.
One day she brought her some flowers, and Rosamund sobbed and cried
over them, and tried to tell Mrs. Mulholland why, and could not.
“Now, my poor dear child, don’t try to talk about it. The fact is
you’re still very weak, and the least thing oversets you. But you must
remember that your dear little sister has much better flowers to look
at where she is now than any this poor old earth can offer. Eye hath
not seen----” said Mrs. Mulholland, shaking her head. “I often think if
this earth is so beautiful with flowers and everything, why, what must
Heaven be?”
Rosamund looked at her.
“Violets _all_ the year round, most probably,” pursued the old lady
cheerfully, “though, to be sure, it’s absurd to talk of all the year
round in eternity--but one always thinks of it as being spring or
summer in Heaven. But whatever it is, my dear, you may depend upon it
that your sister is seeing all the wonderful things that have been
promised to those who forsake everything for God.”
“Can she be happy if she knows that I am still here?” asked Rosamund
wistfully.
“Happy in the Will of God. And I am sure that time seems only a flash
to her, though to us it feels so long, and then you’ll be with her and
can enjoy it all together. And then, you know, it will be for eternity,
and there will be no more parting,” said Mrs. Mulholland earnestly.
“It will be just like it used to be, and all the years in between will
be forgotten,” sobbed Rosamund.
“That’s it, my dear. Now doesn’t the thought of that meeting give you
courage?”
“Perhaps. It isn’t as real to me as it is to you.”
“Brought up without very much religion, perhaps,” acquiesced Mrs.
Mulholland cheerfully. “Well, well, your dear little sister will do
wonders for you. A vocation in a family is a very great grace, and
certainly she had done all our Lord wanted of her on earth, and that’s
why He took her to Himself in Heaven.”
The Heaven, beautiful, material, and yet fadeless and endless,
presented thus to her brought a strange weary comfort to Rosamund’s
mind.
“We shall be together again, and it will be just like before she went
away--only better,” she repeated, like a child.
“Yes--much, much better. Nothing to end it, and then God’s holy
presence, you know. It will all be merged in that.”
“And the people we’ve loved on earth?” urged Rosamund, as though she
needed reassurance from her companion’s robust certainties.
“Yes, yes, all of them. We may have to wait a little while for some,
you know, because they’ve purgatory to go through--and so have we for
the matter of that--but Sister Frances is safe enough, my dear. Nuns
have their purgatory on earth, is what I always say. And a little pure
soul like that--why, she’s waiting up there now, for you, I expect. I
shall get there before you, my dear, please God, and you may be quite
sure I shall give you better prayers there than I can here.”
“Do you want to die, Mrs. Mulholland?”
“Only when God pleases, my dear. A year or two more or less won’t make
very much difference, except that it gives one more time to try and get
ready. But of course I look forward to getting to Heaven--naturally I
do.”
“And do you think you will find the people you love there?”
“Yes, dear, yes,” Mrs. Mulholland patiently reiterated. “I often think
how very strange it will be to meet Michael again--that’s my husband,
who died more than forty years ago, after we’d been married five years.
A very bad husband he was to me--I married a non-practising Catholic,
my dear, and a terrible mistake it was, too--but thank God he made a
very good confession at the last, and died in a state of grace. But of
course he must be very much changed, since he was just a bad man when
I knew him--neither more nor less--except for that little while at the
end. But with all the prayers and the Masses that have been offered,
and God’s good mercy, I can’t help hoping that poor Michael is a
blessed spirit in Heaven by this time.”
She nodded her head, and Rosamund thought that her lips moved as in
some intercession that had grown habitual through long use.
“I’ve had a lot of trouble, my dear--always have had--and but for the
Faith I should be an unhappy old woman. But look at what God has done
for me,” cried Mrs. Mulholland triumphantly; “brought me here, to
the convent, with all these good nuns, so that I shall probably end
my days amongst them, and get all their prayers to shorten my time
in purgatory. Nearly twenty years I’ve been here, my dear, and my
position quite established, I assure you. I live by rule, you know,
though I’m not a nun--follow the office, have my own little corner in
the chapel--and then the Superior likes me to keep an eye on the lady
boarders. ‘_La mère des dames pensionnaires_’ the lay-sisters call me.
I look after them, you know. ‘Come to me if you want anything,’ is what
I always tell them. ‘The nuns are very busy--spare them all we can.
Come to me instead,’ I always say. ‘If I can’t help you, well and good,
I’ll refer you to the proper quarter,’ says I, ‘but come to me first.’
That spares the nuns a little, and I generally find that trifling
difficulties can be put right without troubling them. _That’s_ the
advantage of my position here.”
Rosamund listened passively. She liked Mrs. Mulholland to talk. Her
deep, rather hoarse voice seemed to make a link between reality and
that abyss into which one had fallen, where nothing was real or solid
but thick tangible darkness and endless despairing pain. While Mrs.
Mulholland went on talking, it was as though a faint ray of light
filtered down, reminding one that above the abyss there still lay solid
ground with the sky overhead.
Then, very slowly, Rosamund realized that she had left the worst depths
behind her. Never again would she know the blighting, searing agony of
those first moments, and never again would she be as though she had not
known them.
The initiation which life holds for most of us varies as strangely in
its character as does the intensity of its effect upon us.
Rosamund said to Mrs. Mulholland one day:
“I feel as though this was the first time I’d ever felt anything--as
though other things in my life had been only a sort of pretence. And
yet they weren’t. My mother’s death, when I was a little girl, and
leaving home, and other things--which happened at Porthlew--I minded
them all. I fell in love with somebody, and thought that must be the
realest thing in the word. And it made me very unhappy--it really did.”
She looked at Mrs. Mulholland, not expecting her to offer any solution,
but feeling a sort of weary solace in putting her confused thoughts
into words.
“But, you know, it doesn’t seem at all real now. It never touched
bedrock. In a sort of way--_I_ brought unhappiness to _it_--not it to
me.”
“It’s very often so, my dear,” said Mrs. Mulholland placidly.
“Sometimes we need a very sharp lesson to take us out of ourselves.
That’s where God’s wisdom is so far above ours. He sees what we need,
and orders all things for the best. The loss of your dear sister will
bring you nearer to God.”
The words might hold a simple direct interpretation for Mrs. Mulholland
that could never be Rosamund’s, but their truth was destined to abide
with her in an ever expanding certainty.
“You are very, very kind to me,” she said wistfully; “everyone is.”
“You’re one of us, as Sister Frances Mary’s sister. The convent tie is
a very real one, you know, though people in the world like to think
it’s not. But you have a number of friends, my dear, outside, as well
as here. I have a lot of letters for you, only Mother Juliana suggested
that you might be better without them just at first. Would you like
them now?”
Rosamund took the little sheaf gently.
The writers seemed strangely remote to her, but she read with a faint
stirring of gratitude her guardian’s long letter.
Bertha offered to come to her, would have done so instantly, but
for the illness of Cousin Frederick, who, they terribly feared, was
threatened with pneumonia.
“But come to me as soon as you are able to, dearest child. I feel torn
in two, as you can imagine, and only wish I could be in both places
at once. If poor Minnie would be of any comfort, telegraph to me and
I’ll send her. I can easily manage the sitting up at nights for a time;
anyhow, if this is going to be the long illness the doctor fears, we
shall have to get a trained nurse. Remember there’s _home_ waiting
for you, my Rosamund, and an old woman who’s been through a good deal
herself one way and another, and only longs to help and comfort you.
One finds out, as one goes along, that nothing matters except to lend a
hand.”
“I ought to go back,” said Rosamund. “I am quite well now. But I don’t
know what my life is going to be. Porthlew doesn’t seem to be right for
me, somehow. It never did--and I thought that Francie and I would go
back to the Wye Valley together. The cottage is ours.”
“Now don’t look too far ahead,” urged Mrs. Mulholland. “One step at a
time, is what I always say.
“‘Lord, for to-morrow and its needs I do not pray,
But help me, teach me, guide me, Lord, just for to-day.’
Have you never heard that before? Dear me, dear me, I don’t believe you
Protestant girls are ever taught anything at all. Excuse me for saying
so, my dear, but really it’s true. Now before you settle anything I
should like you to have a good talk with Mère Pauline.”
The Superior saw Rosamund in the parlour, but the understanding which
she was ready to extend as to one of her own daughters in religion,
failed oddly to touch any responsive chord. It was as though the two
spoke different languages.
Rosamund did not want to talk with the convent chaplain, as Mère
Pauline suggested, and felt merely a faint distaste at the suggestion
that “_cette épreuve_” might be meant to guide her into the way of the
true Faith.
Mère Pauline did not pursue the subject, but she appeared uneasy at
Rosamund’s listless suggestion of returning to Porthlew.
“Je n’aime pas cette atmosphère-là,” she remarked with an air of
omniscience that sat oddly on her little spectacled countenance.
The direct act of God therefore appeared to Mère Pauline solely
responsible for the next letter from Mrs. Tregaskis, which again
altered Rosamund’s plans.
Frederick Tregaskis was very ill with pneumonia.
“I don’t leave him day or night,” wrote Bertha, “and the house would
be utterly dreary for you just now. Stay on at the convent, my dear,
if you’re finding peace and shelter there, and when I’ve battled
through the worst of this we must look forward to meeting. It’s a sad
world, Rosamund, my dear, but there’s nothing for it but to keep a
stiff upper lip. I’ll write when I can.
“Your ever loving old
“B. H. T.”
“Poor Cousin Bertie,” said Rosamund.
“_Il faut prier_,” said Mère Pauline. “But you, my child. Will you stay
on with us, as one of our lady boarders?”
“If there were some work that I might do--it is so difficult to do
nothing.”
“Yes. I will reflect. A good Catholic family life is the atmosphere
that I should wish for you at present, poor little one. But I will
reflect.”
That Mère Pauline’s reflections were apt to take a practical turn was
demonstrated three days later by a letter from Lady Argent begging
Rosamund to come to her.
She wrote that she was alone.
So Rosamund went back to the Wye Valley.
“God bless you, my dear child,” said Mrs. Mulholland heartily. “Come
back and see us again, and don’t forget that there’s God’s good purpose
behind everything, whether we can see it or not.”
“Will there be some sort of definite solution to it all, in time?”
Rosamund asked.
She had come to have a curious reliance on Mrs. Mulholland’s
opinionative statements.
“To be sure, my dear. You haven’t been through all this for nothing,
you know,” said Mrs. Mulholland, shaking her head wisely. “Now I’m
going into the garden to say my office, and you know that I shall
always give you and dear little Sister Frances a special intention.
I’ve put you in together.”
She kissed Rosamund warmly, then kilted her skirts in her accustomed
fashion and took her old black manuals out into the spring sunshine
and began her slow, steady pounding walk round and round the small
enclosure.
The years would see little change for Mrs. Mulholland, until that last
one which she contemplated with such matter-of-fact anticipation.
Something in that certainty sent Rosamund away with a strange lessening
of the tension at her heart.
She went back to the Wye Valley, and after a little while she went
across to the cottage.
Afterwards, Rosamund thought that it was on that day that she received
the first hint of the solution that she had been seeking. But at the
time she was conscious only of a blurred, aching pain, that yet held
the strange solemnity of final peace.
The spring rain was driving against the window-panes and the outlines
of the hills were dimmed.
Rosamund wept wildly and uncontrollably, but after that afternoon she
bade farewell to the stormy tears of her girlhood, and they came to her
no more.
There is a certain sort of weeping that, when it has once been wrung
from a woman’s eyes, precludes the easy relief of trivial tears for
almost all the rest of her life.
Rosamund went over the small house and found it strangely unchanged.
Through it all, the sense of coming home was strong upon her.
“I could come back and live there very soon, couldn’t I?” she asked
that same evening of Lady Argent. “You know I always meant to.”
“Yes, indeed, and one knows that if that poor dear little angel had
been spared to us, you could have gone there together, except, of
course, that it was perfectly obvious from the very beginning that she
had a true religious vocation, and couldn’t have been anywhere but
where she was. But girls can do almost anything nowadays, and I’ve no
doubt that you could find some very suitable person to live with you,
since you’re of age, and have your own money; and then you know, my
dear, you’re sure to marry. But I quite see that what you want now
is just the quiet of it all, and then being fond of the place and
everything. Only if you won’t mind my asking, and, indeed, dear, you
know it’s not from curiosity, are you quite sure that you don’t want to
go back to Porthlew?”
“Yes. I know how good Cousin Bertie’s been, but indeed I don’t see
any object in our living together. I worried her dreadfully when I
was there, and it was quite decided that when I came of age some
other arrangement would be made. You know, she has such hundreds of
interests--all her work and her charities and everything--and Miss
Blandflower gives her all the help she ever wants. I don’t think I was
much use there, ever.”
There was a silence.
“I know it sounds as though I were ungrateful,” said Rosamund
desperately, “but I’m trying so hard to get at the truth of things. I
don’t feel a bit that my place is at Porthlew--I don’t know where it
is. I want to come home--but I don’t feel even that to be a solution.”
“Poor child! If only you and dear Bertie----” said Lady Argent
helplessly. “But I know what that sort of thing is--so hopeless, I
always think, when two people are both willing and ready and tolerant
as can be, and yet they don’t seem able to understand one another. And,
of course, as you say, Bertie always has her hands full, and I know
that very capable people don’t much like being helped--I shall never
forget poor Fergus--my husband, you know, dear--over his telescope and
things, even when one only wanted to clean the lenses or some tiny
little thing like that. But that was only one thing, and he was quite
ready to ask for help about anything else. At least, almost anything
else.”
Lady Argent’s expression became rather pensively reminiscent.
Rosamund remained vaguely wondering.
She felt during those days in the Wye Valley as though she were seeking
for a conviction, latent in her mind, but that yet delayed formation
and continued to evade consciousness. Once grasped, she would be in
touch with reality and in some strange way closer to Frances.
She questioned herself helplessly.
“Am I sincere? Is my place really back at Porthlew, with Cousin Bertie?
Is it perhaps an easy evasion to say that I am of no use to her? She
gave us a home when mother died, and she has lost Hazel. Frances left
her--there is only me now. Self-sacrifice--is that the key? But it all
seems useless--pointless.”
She remained, seeking the solution.
Even when the hand of circumstance flung her against it, it still
failed to awaken her inner certainties.
Frederick Tregaskis died of pneumonia within a fortnight.
Rosamund made her preparations for a hurried departure, and found time
to return once more to the cottage on the hill.
“Is it good-bye again?” she asked dumbly of her surroundings.
“Certainly there is no doubt now that I have to go to Porthlew again.
The solution has come, I suppose.”
She felt oddly disconcerted and at variance with herself.
At all events, there was more sense of blankness than of acute
bitterness in her farewell to the cottage. The renunciation, if
renunciation there was, remained strangely devoid of pain.
She reflected dimly that all that for which the cottage in the Wye
Valley stood was hers still, and would remain hers, and in the days at
Porthlew which followed, when Bertha frankly outfaced bitterness and
loss with a courage that did not shrink from reference to their divided
sorrows, Rosamund told herself passionately that to her, and her alone,
belonged the deepest memory of Frances.
Since her solution was to come from within, and not from without, it
was almost with the sense of puzzled acceptance that is brought to
an anticipated situation, that she heard Bertha’s decision to leave
Porthlew.
“The house is too big for me, alone with poor old Minnie, and for the
matter of that I simply can’t afford it now. My dear old man’s pension
went with him, and has made a big hole in the exchequer. Besides, I
don’t know that I could altogether stand it. No, no, some rich American
shall buy Porthlew. Hazel doesn’t want it now, and there’s no one to
make a home for. One must just strike fresh roots somewhere, that’s
all, and hope for work. It’s the only thing, Rosamund, my dear, for
an old woman left by herself. Find a lame dog that wants helping over
stiles.”
But both Rosamund and Bertha were sufficiently awake to the obvious
course for it to come to life between them without even any very
definite suggestion or discussion.
“Could I leave Cornwall?” said Bertha wistfully. “I be a Carnish woman
thrü and thrü, ma dear.”
It was Rosamund’s need of Bertha that clinched it. Rosamund, strangely,
felt it to exist, and the sincerity of her urgency broke down Bertha’s
indifferent defences. The deepest craving that Mrs. Tregaskis knew was
that of being needed, and for that she left Cornwall and went with
Rosamund to the Wye Valley.
It was there, with her halved memories and strangely shared sanctities,
that Rosamund’s quest suddenly and consciously came to an end.
In the last and most subtle renunciation, she found the solution to
which that final relinquishment held the only key, and at the same time
the one enduring link that was to bring her nearest to Frances.