“Rest beyond all grief and pain,
Death to thee is truest gain.”
KEBLE.
ANGELA’S nearest and best friends had anticipated that the peaceful
climax of all her cares would be a relief to her; and so indeed in the
long run it would be to her higher sense, and she would be thankful. But
even those who knew her most thoroughly had not estimated the pangs of
personal affection and deprivation of the child she had fostered with a
mother’s tenderness for seven years, and the absolute suffering of the
sudden parting, even though it was to security of bliss, instead of doubt
and uneasiness.
She was quite broken and really ill with neuralgia and exhaustion, unable
to attend the funeral, which the Merrifields wished to have at Stokesley,
and unfit for anything but lying still with the pink parrot on the rail
below, kindly watched over by good Marilda. The strain of many disturbed
nights, the perplexities, the struggle for resignation, all coming after
a succession of trying events in Australia, had told heavily upon her.
Indeed, no one guessed how much she had undergone, physically as well as
spiritually, till Marilda would not be denied the consulting Dr.
Brownlow, who questioned her closely, and extorted confessions of the
long continued strain of exertion. Rest was all she needed; and Marilda
took care that she had it, bringing Robina up from Minsterham to make it
more effectual, and letting her have visits from her Bishop and from
Bernard as they could afford the time, both being very and variously
busy.
Angela had made up her mind to go out to Australia again, and to make
Carrigaboola an endowment for the Sisterhood; but the means of doing this
could best be arranged there, and she intended to go out when her Bishop
should return in the autumn, feeling that her vocation was there, though
there was a blank in all she had most cared for on earth in that home.
As soon as she had recovered, she wished to spend a fortnight at
Dearport, beginning with a retreat that was held there. Remembering her
old career there, and the abrupt close of her novitiate, she felt and
spoke as if she was to be received as in penitence, but to the Sisters
who surrounded her it was more as if they were receiving a saint.
When she came back to Vale Leston, she had recovered cheerfulness, more
equable than it had ever been, and Cherry and Alda found her a charming
companion. There was much going on at Vale Leston just then. Miss
Arthuret and Dolores were at Penbeacon, seriously considering of the
scheme of converting the old farm house into a kind of place of study for
girls who wanted to work at various technicalities, and to fit themselves
for usefulness or for self-maintenance. There was to be more or less of
the Convalescent Home or House of Rest in combination, and it had
occurred to Dolores that there could hardly be a better head of such an
establishment than Magdalen Prescott.
Magdalen had been asked to the Priory to meet Angela, to whom it was now
a comfort and pleasure to talk of her treasure, so much less lost to her
than in the uncongenial surroundings threatened at Coalham. And the
invitation, followed by the proposal, came at a not unpropitious moment.
A railway company, after much surveying, much disputing, and many
heartburnings, were actually obtaining an Act of Parliament, empowering
it to lay its cruel hands upon the Goyle, running its viaducts down the
ravine of Arnscombe, and destroy all the peace and privacy! It did much,
as Agatha had said, to make the new scheme of Penbeacon acceptable
though.
“That comes of making one’s nest,” she sighed, “and thinking one’s self
secure in it for life! Oh! it is worse and more changeable in this
latter century than in any other! Does the world go round faster?”
“Of course it does,” said Geraldine. “Think how many fashions, how many
styles, how many ways of thinking, have passed away, even in our own
time.”
“And what have they left behind them?”
“Something good, I trust. Coral cells, stones for the next generation of
zoophytes to stand upon to reach up higher.”
“Is it higher?”
“In one sense, I hope. The same foundation, remember, and each cell
forms a rock for the future—a white and beautiful cell, remember, as it
grows unconsciously, beneath this creature.”
Magdalen smiled, delighted with the illustration.
“It forms into the rocks, the strong foundations of the earth,” she said.
“When it has undergone its baptism beneath the sea,” added Geraldine.
“But practically and unpoetically, perhaps—how the young folk mount upon
all our little achievements in Church matters, and think them nearly as
old-fashioned and despicable as we did pews and black gowns! Or how
attempts like the schools that brought up Robina and Angela have shot out
into High Schools, colleges, professions, and I know not what besides.”
“Ah! we come to my old notions for my sisters. I thought they would have
been governesses like myself, but they married; and now tell me, what do
you think of this scheme of Miss Mohun and Agatha?”
“You know Dolores is going to her father first. I never saw him, but
Lady Merrifield and Jane tell me he is a very wise, highly-principled
person, perfectly to be trusted; and they like all that they have heard
of his young wife. I should think if Agatha is to become a scientific
lecturer, she could not begin her career under better training.”
“Career, exactly! People used not to talk of careers.”
“Life and career! Tortoise and hare, eh? But the hare may and ought
still to reach the goal, and have her cell built, even if she does have
her _wander yahr_, like the young barnacles, before becoming attached!
No! she need not become the barnacle goose. That is fabulous,” said Mrs.
Grinstead, laughing off a little of her seriousness, and adding, “Tell me
of the other girls. I think Vera did not come home last year.”
“No; nor the year before. She has a good many pretty little talents, and
is very obliging. Mrs. White seems to be very fond of her, and did not
want to spare her when they went to Gastein for the summer. And this
year, when there was so much infection about, I could not press it.”
“Is it true that there is anything between her and Petros White?”
“I know Miss Mohun—Jane—infers it, but I don’t like to build upon it.”
“I should build on most inferences that Jane Mohun ventured to make
known,” said Geraldine, smiling; “and Paulina’s fate is pretty well
fixed, I suppose!”
“Dear child, she has never had any other purpose since I first knew her
thoroughly, and I do not think her present stay at Dearport will
disenchant her. I think she is really devoted, not to the theoretical
romance of a Sisterhood, but to the deeper full purpose of
self-devotion.”
“I can fully believe it of her. Hers have not been the ups and downs of
my Angela, though indeed, after all she has gone through, there is
something in her face that brings to my mind, ‘After that ye have
suffered awhile, stablish, strengthen, settle you.’”
“It is a lovely countenance—so patient, and yet so bright.”
“I do not think anything in all her life has tried her so much as the
distress about little Lena; and after knowing her wildness—to use a weak
word for it—under other troubles, I see what grace and self-control have
done for her. You still keep your Thekla!” she added, as the girl
flashed by, in company with a coeval Vanderkist.
“For a few years to come, though I am beginning to feel like the old hens
who do but bring their children up to launch them on the waters.”
“Well, it is happy if the launch can be made with hope present as well as
faith; and to see what Angel has become after many vicissitudes, not
confined to her first years of youth, is an immense encouragement.”
To Angela’s great delight, the affairs of Brown and Underwood were found
to require inspection at San Francisco, as well as at Colombo, where
Bernard was to put the firm into the hands of one of the Browns, who was
to meet him there, and he would then be able to come home to the central
office in England.
It was not expedient for Phyllis to make the voyage for so brief a stay,
so it was decided that she should remain with her mother, and she
declared that she should be happy about Bernard being taken care of if
Angela, before settling in at Carrigaboola, would go and stay with him at
Ceylon. “No one can tell the pleasure it is,” she said to Magdalen, “to
borrow one’s own especial brother from his wife for a little while. Oh,
yes, I know it goes against the grain with him, and it is right it
should; but the poor old sister enjoys her treat nevertheless and
notwithstanding.”
There was a great family gathering at Vale Leston, including both the
Harewoods; and the Bishop of Albertstown came to spend that last
fortnight in England with Clement, the boy who had been committed to him
as a chorister, then trained as a young deacon, and almost driven out in
his inexperience to the critical charge of the neglected parish and the
old squire, only to be recalled after seven years to the more important
charge in London on the Bishop’s appointment, there to serve till
strength gave way, and he must perforce return to his former home. There
was a farewell picnic of the elders at Penbeacon, merry and yet wistful
in its hopeful auguries that the loved play place would be a glad and
beneficial home.
It was a strange retrospect, talked over by the two old friends in deep
thankfulness, yet humility over their own shortcomings and failures, and
no less strange were the recollections of the wild noisy insubordinate
schoolgirl whom the Bishop’s sister had failed to tame, and who had to
both seemed to live only on sensation, whether religious or secular, and
who had been one continual care and perplexity to each. By turns they
had thought that the full Church system acted as a hotbed on her peculiar
temperament, and at others they had thought it only an alternative to the
amusements of vanity and flirtation. Each had felt himself a failure
with regard to her, and had hoped for a fresh start from each crisis of
repentance, notably, from the death of Felix, only to be disappointed by
some fresh aberration.
However, in Queensland, her work had been noble, and thoroughly effective
in many cases; it had involved much self-denial and even danger, and
though these might agree with her native spirit of adventure, there had
likewise been not fitful, but steadily earnest devotion in her convent
life, as well as the tenderest reverent care of Mother Constance in a
long and painful decline, and therewith a steady cheerful influence which
had immensely assisted the growth of Fulbert’s character. For some years
past, Sister Angela had been not a care, but a trusty helper to the
Bishop; and the later trials and difficulties, especially the sore
rending of the tie with the being she had come to love with all the force
of her strong nature, had been borne in a manner that bore witness to the
subduing of that over-rebellious and vehement spirit.
And, as she said to Geraldine on the last evening as they bade
good-night, “This has been the very happiest time I ever spent here—yes,
happier than in those exultant days of new possession and liberty. Oh,
yes, all experiments, as it were, bold ventures, self-reproach and
failure, defiance and fun, and then—oh, the ache I would not confess, the
glory of being provoking, and, oh, the final anguish I brought on myself
and on you all; and I went on, when it began to wear away, still stifling
the sting which revived whenever I came home, and all was renewed!
Really, whenever I shammed it was only remorse. I don’t think that real
repentance, and the peace after it, began till those quiet days with dear
Mother Constance.”
“And is it peace now?”
“Yes, I think so. Even the parting with my child has not torn me up. I
can say it is well—far better than leaving her, far better, indeed! And
Felix is what he meant to be, my treasure, not my accuser. Oh, I am glad
to have been at home, and made it all up, to bear away—and leave with you
the sense of Peace.”
All who had loved and feared for her were very happy over her when all
joined in that farewell service on her own birthday, St. Michael and All
Angels’ Day.
The party were joined by Dolores and Wilfred at Liverpool; Bernard having
undertaken to establish the latter at Colombo in hands as safe as might
be.