Part 12

“My dear, I believe it stands for Professed Religious of the Order of St. Anthony. I quite see that it was very stupid of me not to have thought of it at once, but little things like that puzzle one so much at the beginning, and one doesn’t like to ask. That is why I was suggesting,” said Lady Argent, ingeniously finding her way back to her original point of departure, “that it would be a help to you if only you had some Catholic friend to whom you could go--or, if that is quite impossible, to whom you could write.”

“There is always Mrs. Severing,” suggested Frances rather faintly.

Lady Argent looked markedly unenthusiastic, but only remarked in tones of forbearance that Mrs. Severing was not a Catholic.

“I think she will become one, don’t you?” said Frances, but there was no conviction in her voice.

“No doubt it is as it will be, dear,” Lady Argent replied with cryptic charitableness. “But what I had thought of for you, was to put you in touch with the Superior of the Convent at Plymouth. She is a dear friend of mine, and is particularly fond of girls. They have a big school there, I dare say you have heard of it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s very well known, dear, because the girls there always distinguish themselves in all the Oxford locals and examinations and things in the most remarkable manner. It is really very curious indeed, when there is such a prejudice against a convent education, but the girls always do better than the high-school girls. The Superior told me so herself.”

“How nice!” cried Frances in perfect sincerity.

“Yes, dear, and it really is wonderful, because I know the dear children always wear a special medal of the Holy Ghost when they go to their examinations, so it really is quite wonderful,” repeated Lady Argent, who, in common with many other devout souls, would frequently issue meticulous and childlike petitions to Heaven, and then express the greatest astonishment when these requests were acceded to.

“And you see, dear, if you could write quite freely to the Superior it seems to me it would be such a very great help to you, and you needn’t feel that the letters wouldn’t be quite private, because, being the Superior, of course nobody else reads her letters.”

“Thank you very much for thinking of it,” said Frances gratefully. “If Cousin Bertie lets me, I should like it very much. You see, I don’t want to vex her more than I can help, and I don’t think she’ll like my writing to Father Anselm much--but that, of course, is a matter of conscience.”

It seemed to Ludovic that those three words, as uttered by Frances, would probably be responsible for more numerous and deeper dissensions than any that the house of Tregaskis had yet known.

The next morning he drove Frances to the station. Lady Argent kissed her guest very affectionately as she bade her good-bye, gave her a rosary which had been blessed first by Father Anselm and eventually by Pope Leo XIII., and said earnestly:

“Good-bye, my dearest child, and do write to me and let me know how you get on, and what dear Bertie thinks, though kind and understanding I _know_ she’ll be, and the grace of God will do the rest, I feel certain. You must come again whenever you like, for we love having you, though I know it’s a most awkward journey for you, dear, and I only hope you’ll not have too long a wait when you change at Bristol. Have you got your sandwiches, dear?”

Ludovic cut short his parent’s farewells, knowing from experience that they were apt to result in a narrow escape from missing the train altogether, and Frances drove away from the Wye Valley.

“I shall be interested to hear of further developments at Porthlew,” Ludovic said to his mother that evening. “That little girl is a curious mixture of timidity and determination. I wonder what her sister will think of this?”

“There is only one thing anyone can think, darling,” serenely returned Lady Argent, “and that is how very good God has been to that dear child, and I feel sure that He has a number of graces in store for her, for she is so wonderfully good and holy already.”

“I am sure of it,” gently replied Ludovic.

“I shall miss her,” wistfully said Lady Argent, and added after a silence:

“My dearest boy, I do wish you would find some nice Catholic girl and marry her.”

Ludovic had heard this aspiration before, and felt no desire to comply with it.

“I’m quite happy as I am, mother darling,” he told her gently. “Besides, I don’t believe any nice Catholic girl would have me--a bald-headed heretic with a crutch. Now I must do a little writing, and you can say a rosary for my conversion. You know that’s what you always _do_ say it for.”

“Yes, dear, it is, and one of these days when you least expect it, that prayer will be answered,” predicted his mother triumphantly.

“We shall see. You’d better be content with your latest conversion, for the time being. I’m sure it will knock at least five hundred years off your purgatory, as soon as it’s a _fait accompli_.”

But that the reception of Frances Grantham into the Catholic Church was not to become a _fait accompli_ without some previous difficulty, soon became abundantly evident.

Frances did not prove to be a good correspondent, but Lady Argent received one or two letters from her, of which she imparted the contents to Ludovic, and then came a lengthy epistle from Bertha Tregaskis.

“Dearest Sybil, you have been such an angel to my little girl that I make no apology for thrusting her affairs--and my own--upon you. The fact is, the child is perfectly _entichée_ with matters religious at the moment, and declares that only the Roman Catholic faith will do for her. You won’t misunderstand me if I confess that, if Frances were my own child, I should take away all her little holy books and ornaments in the midst of which she sits like a young virgin-martyr, and forbid her to speak of the subject again for at least a year. We should then see how much of it was an emotional craze, and how much genuine stuff. But the facts that she is not _quite_ my own flesh and blood, and that her own mother did, in actual point of fact, belong to your Faith, make rather a difference. As Frederick says, we have no actual authority over the child, and one hesitates as to how far coercion may be desirable in such a case. Frederick, man-like, refuses to discuss the subject with anybody--what cowards men are! ‘’Usbands be proper fules for the most part, and us dü arl the yead work for both,’ as one of my old women said to me the other day!

“Well, my dear, the upshot of it all is, am I to let the child go to this convent at Easter, where she wants to make a Ladies’ Retreat--whatever that may be--and, I suppose, eventually be received into the Catholic Church? Can you tell me anything about this convent, what sort of a woman the Reverend Mother is, and what sort of people she will come across there? I shall send poor Minnie Blandflower with her, if I let her go at all.

“This is a proper ole yarn, isn’t it, but I rely on you to understand that I only want what is best for Francie, and am writing to you, since I know you’re fond of the child, and can probably advise me as to the convent and other particulars.”

“Dear Bertie is most kind-hearted and charitable, isn’t she?” said Lady Argent, “and of course I can write and tell her anything she wants to know about the convent. How very glad I am that dear little Frances is going there! but I wish Bertie would send her sister with her, as well as Miss Blandflower.”

“I don’t think Miss Rosamund is at all inclined to be interested in religion for its own sake, somehow,” returned Ludovic, rightly divining that his mother viewed Miss Blandflower and Rosamund alike in the light of possible fish for the convent net.

Lady Argent murmured that the grace of God was very wonderful, and you couldn’t tell at all, and then returned to her correspondence.

“Father Anselm writes that he is very much pleased with her dispositions,” she presently observed, looking up from a letter.

“H’m!” said Ludovic, feeling oddly out of charity with the members of religious orders generally, and the Prior of Twickenham in particular.

He speculated often during the next few months as to events at Porthlew, and their effect upon Rosamund and Frances Grantham, but he was much in London and heard little news of them.

It was just before Easter-time that his mother triumphantly told him that the date for Frances’ visit to the convent was arranged for the following week.

“And I can’t tell you, my dear boy, what a relief it is to me after all the correspondence there has been with dear Bertie, and Father Anselm, and the poor child herself, who never wavered at all, but one couldn’t help feeling that at any moment she might begin to wonder whether it wasn’t her duty to do as Bertie advised, and wait. So fatal in a question of religion, I always think. And it would have been dreadful to see dear little Frances one of those shilly-shallying souls, never either quite in or quite out of the Church,” said Lady Argent, in a voice which had become, to Ludovic’s perceptions, charged with reminiscences of Nina Severing.

XIII

“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.