“Have we not all, amid earth’s petty strife,
Some pure ideal of a nobler life?
We lost it in the daily jar and fact,
And now live idly in a vain regret.”
ADELAIDE PROCTER.
AGATHA was so much absorbed in her preparation for St. Robert’s that she
did not pay very much heed to her younger sisters or their relations with
Magdalen. She had induced them to submit to the regulation of their
studies with her pretty much as if she had been Mrs. Best, looking upon
her, however, as something out of date, and hardly up to recent opinions,
not realising that, of late, Magdalen’s world had been a wide one.
Perhaps, in Agatha’s feelings, there was an undercurrent inherited from
her mother, who had always felt the better connected, better educated
step-daughter, a sort of alien element, exciting jealousy by her
companionship to her father, and after his death, apt to be regarded as a
scarcely willing, and perhaps censorious pay-master.
“Your sister might call it too expensive.” “I must ask your sister.”
“No, your sister does not think she can afford it. I am sure she might.
Her expenses must be nothing.” All this had been no preparation for full
sisterly confidence with “Sister,” even when a sort of grudging gratitude
was extracted, and Agatha had been quite old enough to imbibe an
undefined antagonism, though, being a sensible girl, she repressed the
manifestations, kept her sisters in order and taught them not to love but
to submit, and herself remained in a state of civil coolness, without an
approach beyond formal signs of affection, and such confidence.
It was the more disappointing to Magdalen, because Agatha and Paulina
both showed so much unconscious likeness to their father, not only in
features, but in little touches of gesture and manner. She longed to pet
them, and say, “Oh, my dears, how like papa!” but the only time she
attempted it, she was met by a severe, uncomprehending look and manner.
And Agatha went away to Oxford without any thawing on her part.
The only real ground that had been gained was with little Thekla, who was
soon very fond of “Sister,” and depended on her more and more for
sympathy and amusement. Girls of seventeen and sixteen do not delight in
the sports of nine-year-olds, except in the case of special pets and
_protégées_, and Thekla was snubbed when a partner was required to assist
in doll’s dramas, or in evening games. Only “Sister” would play
unreservedly with her, unaware or unheeding that this was looked on as
keeping up the _métier_ of governess. Indeed, Thekla’s reports of
schoolroom murmurs and sneers about the M.A. had to be silenced. Peace
and good will could best be guarded by closed ears. Yet, even then,
Thekla missed child companionship, and, even more, competition, the lack
of which rendered her dull and listless over her lessons, and when
reproved, she would beg to be sent to school, or, at least, to attend the
High School on her bicycle. Not admiring the manners or the attainments
of the specimens before her, Magdalen felt bound to refuse, and the
sisters’ pity kept alive the grievance.
She had, however, decided on granting the bicycles. She had found plenty
of use for her own, for it was possible with prudent use of it, avoiding
the worst parts of the road, to be at early celebration at St. Andrew’s,
and get to the Sunday school at Arnscombe afterwards; and Paulina, with a
little demur, decided on giving her assistance there.
At a Propagation of the Gospel meeting at the town hall, the Misses
Prescott were introduced to the Reverend Augustine Flight, of St.
Kenelm’s, and his mother, Lady Flight, who sat next to Magdalen, and
began to talk eagerly of the designs for the ceiling of their church, and
the very promising young artist who was coming down from Eccles and
Beamster to undertake the work.
The church had not yet been seen, and the conversation ended in the
sisters coming back to tea, at which Paula was very happy, for the talk
had something of the rather exclusive High Church tone that was her
ideal. She had seen it in books, but had never heard it before in real
life, and Vera was in a restless state, longing to hear whether the
promising young artist was really Hubert Delrio, and hoping, while she
believed that she feared, that she should blush when she heard his name.
However, she did not, though Mr. Flight unfolded his rough plans for the
frescoes, which were to be of virgin and child martyrs, Magdalen
hesitating a little over those that seemed too legendary; while old Lady
Flight, portly and sentimental, declared them so sweet and touching.
After tea, they went on to the church. Just at the entrance of the
porch, Vera clutched at Paula, with the whisper, “Wasn’t that Wilfred
Merrifield? There, crossing?”
“Nonsense,” was Paula’s reply, as she lingered over the illuminated list
of the hours of services displayed at the door, and feeling as if she had
attained dreamland, as she saw two fully habited Sisters enter, and bend
low as they did so.
The church was very elaborately ornamented, small, but showing that no
expense had been spared, though there was something that did not quite
accord with Magdalen’s ideas of the best taste; so that when they went
out she answered Paula’s raptures of admiration somewhat coldly, or what
so appeared to the enthusiastic girl.
The next day, meeting Miss Mohun over cutting out for a working party,
Magdalen asked her about the Flights and St. Kenelm’s.
“He is an excellent good man,” said Jane Mohun, “and has laid out immense
sums on the church and parish.”
“All his own? Not subscription?”
“No. He is the only son of a very rich City man, a brewer, and came here
with his mother as a curate, as a good place for health. They found a
miserable little corrugated-iron place, called the Kennel Chapel, and
worked it up, raising the people, and doing no end of good till it came
to be a district, as St. Kenelm’s.”
“Very ornamental?”
“Oh, very,” said Jane, warming out of caution, as she felt she might
venture showing city gorgeousness all over. “But it is infinitely to his
credit. He had a Fortunatus’ purse, and was a spoilt child—not in the
bad sense—but with an utterly idolising mother, and he tried a good many
experiments that made our hair stand on end; but he has sobered down, and
is a much wiser man now—though I would not be bound to admire all he
does.”
“I see there are Sisters? Do they belong to his arrangements?”
“Yes. They are what my brother calls Cousins of Mercy. The elder one
has tried two or three Sisterhoods, and being dissatisfied with all the
rules, I fancy she has some notion of trying to set up one on her own
account at Mr. Flight’s. They are both relations of his mother, and are
really one of his experiments—fancy names and fancy rules, of course. I
believe the young one wanted to call herself Sister Philomena, but that
he could not stand. So they act as parish women here, and they do it
very well. I liked Sister Beata when I have come in contact with her,
and I am sure she is an excellent nurse. They will do your nieces no
harm, though I don’t like the irregular.”
Of this assurance Magdalen felt very glad, when at the door of the parish
room, where the ladies were to hold a working party for the missions,
Carrigaboola Missions at Albertstown, she and her nieces were introduced
to the two ladies in hoods and veils; and Paula’s eyes sparkled with
delight as she settled into a chair next to Sister Mena. She looked as
happy as Vera looked bored! Conversation was not possible while a
missionary memoir was being read aloud, but the history of Mother
Constance, once Lady Herbert Somerville, but then head at Dearport, and
founder of the Daughter Sisterhood at Carrigaboola. To the Merrifields
it was intensely interesting, and also to Magdalen; but all the time she
could see demonstrations passing between Paula and Sister Mena, a
nice-looking girl, much embellished by the setting of the hood and veil,
as if the lending of a pair of scissors or the turning of a hem were an
act of tender admiration. So sweet a look came out on Paula’s face that
she longed to awaken the like. Vera meantime looked as if her only
consolation lay in the neighbourhood of a window, whence she could see up
the street, as soon as she had found whispers to Mysie Merrifield treated
as impossible.
The party at the Goyle had begun to fall into regular habits, and
struggles were infrequent. There was study in the forenoon, walks or
cycle expeditions in the afternoon, varied by the lessons in music and in
art, which Vera and Paula attended on Wednesdays and Fridays, the one in
the morning, the other after dinner. It was possible to go to St.
Andrew’s matins at ten o’clock before the drawing class, and to St.
Kenelm’s at five, after the music was over. Magdalen, whenever it was
possible, went with her sisters on their bicycles to St. Andrew’s, and
sometimes devised errands that she might join them at St. Kenelm’s, but
neither could always be done by the head of the household. And she could
perceive that her company was not specially welcome.
Valetta, the only one of the Clipstone family whose drawing was worth
cultivating, used to ride into Rockstone, escorted by her brother
Wilfred, who was in course of “cramming” with a curate on his way to his
tutor, and Vera found in casual but well-cultivated meetings and
partings, abundant excitement in “nods and becks and wreathed smiles,”
and now and then in the gift of a flower.
Paula on the other hand found equal interest and delight in meetings with
Sister Mena, especially after a thunderstorm had driven the two to take
refuge at what the Sisters called “the cell of St. Kenelm,” and tea had
unfolded their young simple hearts to one another! Magdalen had called
on the Sisters and asked them to tea at the Goyle, and there had come to
the conclusion that Sister Beata was an admirable, religious, hardworking
woman, of strong opinions, and not much cultivated, with a certain
provincial twang in her voice. She had a vehement desire for
self-devotion and consecration, but perhaps not the same for obedience.
She sharply criticised all the regulations of the Sisterhoods with which
she was acquainted, wore a dress of her own device, and with Sister Mena,
a young cousin of her own, meant to make St. Kenelm’s a nucleus for a
Sisterhood of her own invention.
Sister Mena had been bred up in a Sisterhood’s school, from five years
old and upwards, and had no near relatives. Mr. Flight was Saint, Pope
and hero to both, and Mena knew little beyond the horizon of St.
Kenelm’s, but she and Paula were fascinated with one another; and
Magdalen saw more danger in interfering than in acquiescing, though she
gave no consent to Paulina’s aspirations after admission into the perfect
Sisterhood that was to be.