Part 13

Mrs. Mulholland turned to Nina Severing.

“This is the first time you’ve been here, isn’t it?”

“Yes. We’ve just come for the Retreat.”

“I have followed the Retreat here every year,” said Mrs. Mulholland triumphantly, “for the last eighteen years. I haven’t missed one of them. Poor Monseigneur Miller, who used always to give it, used to say that he couldn’t have given out the points for the meditations if he hadn’t seen me at my own _prie-dieu_, in my own corner of the Chapel. Did you ever meet Monseigneur Miller?”

“No, I’m afraid not. You see I’m not----”

“Ah well! he’s been dead more than ten years, and we’ve had several priests for the Ladies’ Retreat since then. Last year we had Father Aloysius Paxton--a Jesuit. His note was _Repentance_--the whole Retreat was Repentance--based on that, practically. Now I hear that this man, who is coming to-morrow, takes quite a different line. Wasn’t it you, Miss Benjafield, who told me that Father Anselm preaches his retreats altogether in the spirit of Hope?”

“So my sister tells me, Mrs. Mulholland,” replied an anæmic-looking woman from the other side of the table. “My Carmelite sister, you know, not the Poor Clare one. Pass the potatoes, if you please. Thank you. Yes, he gave them a Retreat which they liked very much, I believe.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Mulholland condescendingly. “The Carmelites make a longer Retreat than ours, I know. I dare say it’s quite in accordance with the spirit of the Order, but I must say, what’s good enough for _our_ Order is good enough for me. I always tell Mère Pauline that an eight-day Retreat wouldn’t be at all too much for us--it’s what the nuns make themselves.”

“Oh, Mrs. Mulholland! _I_ think five days is quite enough to keep silence for!” cried a merry-looking French girl, with an air of saying something audacious.

“Ah, we have to make allowances for you young things. But I always make up for it later in the year, by coming to the meditations in the chapel given for the nuns’ Retreat, you know. Of course,” said Mrs. Mulholland, slightly lowering her voice and turning towards Nina, “Mère Pauline doesn’t allow the ladies to follow the nuns’ Retreat _at all_ as a rule; it’s quite an exception. But, of course, I’ve been here a number of years, and am almost like one of themselves in a way. I have a very regular rule of life--under direction, of course, under direction.”

The other ladies, who were evidently well used to the recital of Mrs. Mulholland’s spiritual privileges, resumed conversation briskly among themselves and speculations as to the coming Retreat mingled with the emphatically related anecdotes of the younger girls as to sudden and disconcerting encounters with Mère Pauline--“_Just_ as I was saying that I didn’t think I’d go to Vespers to-day. _Do_ you think she heard, my dear?”

“I must introduce you all round after supper,” said Mrs. Mulholland, looking amiably at Nina. “You see, I’m quite the oldest inhabitant here--in point of stay. I’ve sat at the head of this table, Mrs. Severing, for the past fifteen years--ever since poor old Miss O’Malley died. She used to sit here when I first came--she’d been here for twenty years, and was a sister of one of the old nuns--but she took to her own room some six months before she died, and I was asked to come to the head of the table in her place, and there I’ve been ever since. I was asked to take it, mind you. The Superior before this one, Mère Alphonsine, who was alive then, asked me herself to take the head of the table. ‘_Vous dirigerez un peu la conversation_,’ she said to me. I like the conversation at the ladies’ table to be edifying--as cheerful as you please--but edifying. No grumbling--no gossip--no uncharitable speaking. So that’s my little task--_one_ of my little tasks--to keep up the tone of the conversation at meals. Now a few years ago, Mrs. Severing, we had Lady O’Hagan here--a very nice woman indeed--widow of Sir Patrick O’Hagan, of whom you may have heard--a very well-known Catholic family. Well, the lay-sister who waits on us here, put Lady O’Hagan at the head of the table, and moved my place to the side. An ignorant lay-sister, you see, very well-meaning, but thought that because of the title this good woman should be put at the head. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘Lady O’Hagan is only here for a few days’--just for a Retreat she’d come--‘and it doesn’t matter to me--I’ve got my position here, have had for years--it _doesn’t matter to me_. But it is what it ought to be? Mère Alphonsine asked me to take the head of the table--well and good--I took it. I’ve had it ever since. If you ask me, I don’t think I ought to give it up. Mère Alphonsine had her reasons for putting me there, and there I consider I ought to stay until I’m told otherwise. Of course, one word from the Superior and I move at once. That’s obedience. I’m not under vows, Mrs. Severing, but I consider myself just as much bound to obedience as any postulant in the house. Well, I spoke to Mère Econome--she’s by way of looking after the ladies--and she, being Spanish, didn’t quite understand the case. Thought it didn’t matter--only a question of a few days--and so on. ‘That’s not right,’ said I. ‘That’s not the point,’ I said. ‘The point is, _what ought to be_.’ So I went straight to Mère Pauline. Straight to the Superior--that’s my motto, Mrs. Severing. Always go straight to the Superior. I said: ‘It’s not a question of minding--I’ll move my place to-morrow if that’s what you think best,’ I said, ‘but let it be under obedience. A question of obedience,’ I said, ‘and you’re given the grace to carry it out.’ That’s all I said: ‘A question of obedience,’ I said.

“‘Mrs. Mulholland,’ Mère Pauline said, ‘I should be very much distressed indeed to think of your moving. Please stay where you’ve always been, and remember that we look to you to raise the tone of conversation and render it all it should be.’ Now, after that, Mrs. Severing, do you wonder that I look upon my place here as a duty--as a positive responsibility?”

“No, indeed,” said Nina rather faintly.

“We’ve always been very careful, of course, as to the ladies we receive here,” continued Mrs. Mulholland, as usual identifying herself with the community. “There’s never any question of gossip, you know--anything of that sort. But, of course, with so many young people--foreigners too--one must keep a lookout--just a lookout. There’s sometimes a little criticizing--a remark or two passed: ‘I don’t like Mother So-and-So’--‘Sister this or Sister the other is too sharp in her manner for me.’ Now that’s what I am here to stop. ‘That’ll do, my dear,’ I say. ‘That’s enough.’ Never more than that, you know--only ‘That’ll do, my dear,’ just like that. ‘We don’t find fault with the nuns here,’ I say. ‘You must go somewhere else if you want a spirit of disloyalty. We don’t stock it here.’ Passing it off, you see, with a joke. That’s all I ever say, and I assure you it’s always been efficacious.”

“I’m sure it has,” began Nina again. “Do you----”

“We’re quite a large party here for the moment owing to the Retreat, but, of course, at other times it’s more like a family--there’s not the same necessity,” pursued Mrs. Mulholland, warming to her theme, “for keeping a sharp eye open--or perhaps I ought to say a sharp ear.” She paused to laugh heartily. “I don’t want to give you the impression that I am a sort of policeman, waiting to pounce, Mrs. Severing, or you’ll be afraid to open your lips. We’re all very glad, on the contrary, to see a new face now and then, and hear something fresh. Though I always tell Mère Pauline that I think we ladies ought to have a rule of silence at meals, just as the community has. That’s what _I_ should like.”

The fervour of this aspiration was only equalled by the intensity with which it was inwardly echoed by Mrs. Severing.

XIV

As the meal drew towards a close two or three of the girls began to push back their chairs, murmuring to their neighbours: “Well--if you’ll excuse me,” and left the room after a rapid Sign of the Cross, apparently directed at the centre of the table. Mrs. Mulholland inclined her monumental bulk over her empty plate for a few seconds, crossed herself devoutly two or three times, and then said rather majestically to Nina Severing:

“If you care to go over the house and garden a little later on, you must come to my room. On the ground floor, the first door you see at the end of that passage. It’s been my room for eighteen years. It’s a great joke in the community that I’ve been here longer than Mère Pauline has--several years longer. I was here in the time of Mère Alphonsine--a great saint, Mère Alphonsine--ah, yes, indeed. Not that I mean to say Mère Pauline isn’t a saint in her own way, you know, but of course there it is. I remember her arrival here as a young nun who’d not yet taken her final vows. I was here for her profession fifteen years ago. I often chaff her about it, you know, ‘Ah, notre Mère,’ I say, ‘remember I was here before you were.’ It’s quite a household joke, I assure you. ‘Mrs. Mulholland was here before you were,’ the nuns say. I believe it’s quite a catchword at the community recreations. Now let me show you my room, Mrs. Severing; you must learn to find your way here, you know. _La mère des Dames--pensionnaires_, the lay-sisters call me. That’s right, Miss Grantham--come right in.”

Mrs. Mulholland waved a hospitable hand at Frances, who accepted the invitation with the more diffidence that the small room appeared strangely crowded already.

A little table in the window was laden with books grouped at the foot of an immense crucifix, devotional pictures, and slender brackets on which were balanced perilously-poised statuettes plastered the wall, a holy-water stoup slung with rosaries decorated the door, and fragments of dried palm tied with red ribbon hung crosswise over the bed. Below this came yet another crucifix and a large framed scroll-work announcing the reception of Mary-Theresa Aloysia Leaky into the Sodality of the Children of Mary some fifty odd years ago. A bulging curtain in an angle of the wall evidently sheltered Mrs. Mulholland’s wardrobe, of which the surplus appeared to be housed in variously shaped and sized card-board boxes with defective lids, that could be seen under the bed and stacked in corners.

“Sit down,” cried the owner of the room cordially, and thrust upon Mrs. Severing’s notice the small rush chair which was the only one she appeared to possess.

“Miss Grantham won’t mind a seat on the bed.”

“I’m afraid we really mustn’t stay,” began Nina, who had been wearing her celebrated resemblance to a hothouse flower buffeted by rude winds for some time, and was not best pleased at its utter absence of effect.

A bell clanged two strokes and then three. Mrs. Mulholland, who had just sunk heavily on to the foot of the bed, heaved herself up again with an air of startled attention and stood listening.

“There! What did I tell you?” she peremptorily inquired of Frances. “That’s Mother Juliana’s bell, and she won’t be able to hear it. I happen to know that she’s in the chapel at this very moment. I suppose she’s wanted for the parlour again, but evidently the sister doesn’t know she’s in the chapel.”

The bell, regardless of Mrs. Mulholland, inexorably clanged out a second summons similar to the first.

“What’s the use of ringing like that? She _can’t_ hear it if she’s in the chapel. I see what it is--I shall have to go and tell her myself. Dear, dear, this _is_ a business,” said Mrs. Mulholland, opening the door with a careworn expression of importance.

Nina instantly took the opportunity of escaping, and imperatively signed to Frances to do likewise. They followed Mrs. Mulholland down the passage, still listening to the confidences which she imparted over her shoulder in a hoarse, sibilant whisper.

“Mother Juliana is the infirmarian--regular as clockwork as a rule--one always knows just where to find her at this hour. But I happen to know that to-day’s an exception. I happen to know she’s had to make her spiritual reading now, instead of at four o’clock. Nothing very serious, you know, but just a little alteration in the routine, of which I happened to know. Just hark at that bell! Evidently no one knows where to find her. Fortunately, as it chanced, I just happen to know she’s here....”

Mrs. Mulholland paused with evident enjoyment outside the green baize door leading to the chapel, gathered her ample black skirts tightly round her with one hand, and advanced with elaborate creakings, on the tips of her toes, leaving the swing-door open behind her.

Frances and Nina both gazed into the pretty softly-lighted chapel, with the low carven stalls where knelt an occasional black-robed figure. Rows of light oak benches occupied the back half of the little church, and were evidently destined for the occupation of visitors to the convent.

Mrs. Mulholland, on the threshold, startled them both by wheeling abruptly round and proffering a liberally-splashed finger from the marble shell containing holy water at the door.

Neither Nina nor Frances had presence of mind to avail themselves of the opportunity thus suddenly thrust upon them, and Mrs. Mulholland, erecting her eyebrows with an expression of regret, resumed her cautious progress in the direction of a devoutly-bent form kneeling in the first stall.

As she sank heavily on her knees on to the floor and began a rapid and hoarsely whispered conversation, which the black veil punctuated by an occasional inclination, Nina murmured hastily to Frances:

“Come upstairs again before she gets out. I can’t stand any more of this!”

They fled noiselessly.

“Well!” said Nina in the sanctuary of her own room, which now appeared to her as a veritable haven of refuge, “if this is what they call the peace of convent life....”

“It will be silence after to-morrow,” said Frances consolingly.

“I long for it,” murmured Mrs. Severing, who had never before made the aspiration with such perfect sincerity.

“You look so tired. Do lie down and let me unpack for you.”

“Darling child!” cried Nina, sinking on to the bed, “I shouldn’t dream of letting you do such a thing. Why should you? Oh, don’t pull at the straps like that, dearest. My keys are in that little bag there.”

Frances unpacked.

Towards the close of this operation there was a knock at the door, and a smiling old lay-sister remarked triumphantly:

“Mère Pauline is waiting to see you in the little parlour downstairs, dear. Come along.”

Nina rose with languid grace.

“No, no, dear,” said the lay-sister, still smiling. “It’s this child.” She laid her hand on Frances’ arm. “You’re the little one that’s to be received into Holy Church after Easter, aren’t you?”

“I hope so,” stammered Frances.

“Come along, dear, then. I dare say,” she added consolingly over her shoulder to Nina, “that Mère Pauline will be able to spare you a little while of her time during the Retreat, you know.”

The outraged Mrs. Severing was left to her own reflections for the next two hours.

“What _have_ you been doing?” she demanded plaintively of Frances on her return.

Frances’ colour was heightened and her eyes shining.

“Mère Pauline stayed with me in the parlour for quite a long time, and was so very kind and understanding--I’d never met anyone who understood things so well--and then she took me into the chapel. And then, just as I was coming up again, a sister told me that Father Anselm Windsor was here, and had asked to see me. You know I met him at the Twickenham Monastery when Lady Argent took me there, and he is instructing me.”

“So you had an extra catechism lesson!”

“It wasn’t exactly that,” said Frances simply. “He just talked to me very kindly, and explained a little about the Retreat, and I asked him if I couldn’t be received into the Church now. I think they will let me, at the end of the Retreat.”

Frances went to her own room that evening in a sort of dreamy happiness that was yet more poignant than any her short life had yet known. A sense of security, of having found some long-sought atmosphere of rest, pervaded her.

She was only roused from the lengthy and ardent thanksgiving which she was offering upon her knees when Mrs. Severing softly opened the door, retreating again as she perceived Frances’ attitude of devotion, but murmuring as she went:

“A most amusing thought has just struck me, Francie. These sweet nuns live so much out of the world, and are so much wrapped up in their prayers and things, that I dare say poor Mère Pauline doesn’t even know _who I am_.”

If Mrs. Severing, however, supposed that the revelation of her identity with the composer of the “Kismet” series would operate a startling change in Mère Pauline’s outlook, she was doomed to disappointment.

That imperturbable woman, when confronted next day with the casual announcement that Nina had composed “a certain amount of church music, as well as the more or less well-known songs, which had really made one’s name, of course,” merely replied with perfect placidity, and a smile that was rather encouraging than admiring:

“_Aha? C’est gentil!_”

“That dear nun is really positively medieval!” was Mrs. Severing’s exasperated inward ejaculation after receiving this commentary upon her life-work.

But it was not Nina’s way to leave any possible stone unturned in the direction of obtaining that sympathetic admiration which she felt her nature to require.

“I came here to seek a little peace--a little forgetfulness,” was her next effort, this time in the vein of resigned pathos. “Ah, mother, you who live such a sheltered life--so free from trouble and temptation, can hardly guess what sorrows there are in the world.”

“Every life has its trials,” rather austerely replied Mère Pauline, not improbably reckoning the dissection of Mrs. Severing’s soul amongst these latter.

“I married very, very young--a child--and was left alone so early, with another child to guide and bring up. I have a son, you know.”

“Indeed? That must be a great consolation to you, madame.”

“Not altogether,” sighed Nina truthfully. “There are sorrows of which a mother does not speak.”

Mère Pauline appearing more nearly disposed to conform to this axiom than was altogether desirable, Nina was obliged to add hastily:

“But you will let me speak freely to you? Mine is a terribly reserved nature, and for so many years I have kept everything to myself.”

“Speak, madame, speak. Tell me all that you will,” said Mère Pauline in accents which custom and virtue alike prevented from sounding too markedly resigned.

Nina embarked upon the story of her grief. Morris was the prodigal son--wild, undisciplined, ungrateful, straying in far foreign lands and leaving an adoring--and still youthful--parent to deplore his want of affection and of consideration in the solitude of a country retreat. Only Mrs. Severing’s Creator shared with her the knowledge of what such a desertion meant to the heart of a mother.

“_Il faut prier._”

Pray! Did not Nina spend the long, lonely watches of the night in prayers and supplications for the erring one? Was not this very Retreat to be the occasion of further petitions on his behalf? Mère Pauline would join with her in storming Heaven for this object?

“But certainly.” Mère Pauline’s tone was gravely compassionate. She spoke of trust, patience, and sacrifices to be offered, and the little homily was accompanied by a pressure of the hand and softened glance that caused Nina inwardly to retract, or at least modify as far as she herself was concerned, the accusation of medievalism.

“After all,” she told herself, retiring in some satisfaction from the interview, “she is beginning to understand that one came here from a _motive_. It’s probably a relief to listen to something, _real_, after the endless chatter of that terrible Mulholland woman.” A heavy step hastening up the stairs behind her caused Mrs. Severing to glance round with an apprehension that proved to be only too well founded.

“Mrs. Severing! Mrs. Severing! Just wait one minute. The stairs try me a little, you know, but I was determined to catch up with you,” panted Mrs. Mulholland. “I just want to say one word.”

Nina paused reluctantly, one foot upon the step above that on which she was standing, and one hand determinedly grasping the banisters. Mrs. Mulholland stood just below, heaving from her exertions, and evidently only pausing for sufficient breath to continue the ascent.

“You escaped me somehow at the chapel door yesterday, and I’ve been looking for you ever since--just one word I wanted to say, before we all go into silence. I looked for you this morning, but I don’t join the ladies at breakfast, you know, I just have a cup of tea at seven o’clock. A cup of tea--that’s all I ever take. The fact is, I always go to the Community Mass at six o’clock. It isn’t the custom for all the ladies to hear Mass then--they have their own Mass, at a later hour, as you know. But I always go to the six o’clock, and stay on for Office afterwards. And then I have just a cup of tea. Doesn’t give any real trouble to anyone, you know, not if it’s done regularly.”

“No,” said Nina in tones which hitherto had invariably proved sufficient, from the talented Mrs. Severing, to discourage any attempt at over-familiarity on the part of her social inferiors. “Do I understand that you want to speak to me, Mrs.--er----?”

But even the transparent and insulting manœuvre of appearing to find Mrs. Mulholland’s name beneath her powers of recollection, served Mrs. Severing nothing.

“Not here--not here,” said Mrs. Mulholland rebukefully. “Talking on the stairs is quite against our convent rules, you know. Mère Pauline doesn’t like it at all. One or two of the French girls now, you know--I sometimes find them chattering to one another as they go up or come down--and I always say, ‘Not here, my dears. Not here,’ I say. ‘Talk as much as ever you like in the parlour or the dining-room, but not here. Not on the stairs. Mère Pauline doesn’t like it,’ I say. But of course you’re a stranger here, and can’t be expected to know all our little regulations. That’s why I am making an exception of you. But it doesn’t do if we make a practice of it, or give a bad example.”

Nina was so far from wishing to make a practice of conversing on the stairs with Mrs. Mulholland, that she was goaded into saying faintly:

“Perhaps we could come into one of the parlours for a moment--if you wish to speak to me. I don’t want to break any rules, and if it would annoy Mère Pauline to find anybody talking on the stairs----”

“That’s right, Mrs. Severing, that’s right. Why, you’re quite an example to our younger generation!” was the unfortunate comment selected by Mrs. Mulholland to express her admiration for this docility. “But you’re all right under my wing, you know--Mère Pauline wouldn’t say a word if she found you with me. Now come along into the parlour. I think there’s one vacant.”

Mrs. Mulholland, hurrying downstairs again, consulted her watch.