Part 15

“So I perceive, and I really can’t blame you, Nina dear. I never thought you in the least suited to that sort of place--one can’t fancy you happy in such silent, austere surroundings,” Bertha said affectionately. “But the question is, whether I’m to let my little girl stay on alone, or send Minnie down to join her--or I might even go myself.”

“I’m sure you’d be like a fish out of water, darling! Don’t dream of it. The whole thing is _such_ an atmosphere of ‘Plain living and high thinking,’” cried Nina.

Bertha laughed good-humouredly.

“The very doctrine I’m always preaching myself! so I don’t know why you should think it wouldn’t suit me. But, as a matter of fact, I don’t quite see how I could get away just now--I’ve a committee meeting to-morrow, and the Mothers’ Union coming here on Saturday--and I want to keep an eye on that child of Farmer Trigg’s. I’m pretty sure the parents are letting it go to chapel with some of the Dissenters’ children.”

Nina looked profoundly bored.

“Surely that’s a matter for the parson, my dear.”

“If I didn’t tell the parson whose children are Church and whose Chapel,” cried Bertha warmly, “I don’t believe he’d ever find out. He’s over seventy, and as blind as a bat. It’s a perfect shame he doesn’t resign--as I said to the Bishop----”

Nina had heard her friend discourse before upon the deficiencies of that friend’s spiritual pastor and master and felt no slightest interest in the subject. So she exclaimed with an air of sudden inspiration:

“Bertie! Forgive me for interrupting you, darling--it doesn’t mean that I’m not interested, for I am, and I _entirely_ think with you--but I’ve just had an idea. There’s quite a nice woman at the convent, to whom I should have recommended Frances most particularly, if only I hadn’t been in such a hurry, with simply no time to think of anything. But if I sent her one line----”

Nina’s pause implied boundless devotion on the part of the quite nice woman.

“Is she a Sister?” asked Bertie, not unsuspiciously.

“Dear me, no, nothing of that sort. Just making the Retreat, like myself,” said Nina vaguely. “A Mrs. Mulholland--rather a talker, but _quite_ to be depended on, I should think.”

“Well,” said Bertha doubtfully. “It would be very inconvenient to let Minnie go just now, and she’d hate it, poor thing. And I suppose the child is all right really--it’s only that one’s old-fashioned notions don’t like the idea of her being there under nobody’s charge but her own.”

“I’ll write to-night,” said Nina effusively, “and put her under Mrs. Mulholland’s charge. I quite meant to do it when I found myself obliged to rush away, but something prevented it at the last moment. Don’t dream of worrying for an instant, dearest.”

“I don’t worry, as you know. I’m a practical woman, Nina,” said Bertha bluntly. “Just write a line to this friend of yours, then, will you? and it can go to the post with the letters at once.”

Mrs. Severing had hardly contemplated so prompt an action, but she was relieved at shifting the onus of her responsibility so lightly, and sat down willingly enough to transfer it on to the substantial shoulders of Mrs. Mulholland.

Two days later she triumphantly confronted Mrs. Tregaskis with the reply.

“Why four pages?” curtly demanded Bertha, elevating her eyebrows.

“She gives me many little convent details which would hardly, of course, interest an outsider, but which mean something to me,” said Mrs. Severing, with the air of a lady-abbess.

“May I read it?”

“I can read you the bit which refers to Frances.”

“Dear me, is it private? After two days’ acquaintance! I always say, Nina, that you dash into intimacies quicker than any woman I’ve ever known.”

“How preposterous you are, Bertie. Of course there’s nothing private in Mrs. Mulholland’s letter. I merely thought it might bore you. Please do read it, if you are so insatiably curious. It always amuses me to see the delightful way in which you poke and ferret about into everything, like a beloved bloodhound.”

“Bloodhounds don’t ferret,” remarked Mrs. Tregaskis, taking Mrs. Mulholland’s voluminous epistle from her friend’s hand with an air of great annoyance.

The air of annoyance was merged into astonishment, not unmixed with amusement, as she perused the four large pages covered with thick, black writing:

“THE CONVENT, “_Friday_.

“MY DEAR MRS. SEVERING,

“You must forgive me not answering your little note at once, but we only came out of Retreat this morning. I was sorry to hear of your sudden departure, and also not to have said good-bye, but perhaps we shall see you down here again one of these days. Your little friend has been very happy, and has edified us all during the Retreat. I am sure she must be very pleasing to our dear Lord. I hear that the Prior is very much pleased with her indeed, and hopes to receive her very soon now. What a joy that must be to you! since I could not help feeling, dear Mrs. Severing, that you were very much with us _in spirit_.

“Mère Pauline has told me of the great joy which has come to you in your dear son’s return, and you must please accept my very warmest congratulations. There may still be dark days ahead of you, but _while there’s life there’s hope_.

“Miss Grantham will no doubt write to you of the Retreat. It was quite beautiful, and the discourse this morning which came before the bestowal of the Papal Blessing was most moving. I feel that we have all derived great benefit and many graces, and you may be sure that I remembered my promise to say many a little prayer for you _and yours_.

“Mère Pauline sends many kind thoughts, and will not forget you in her good prayers. And now, with most earnest wishes for the future, dear Mrs. Severing, I must close.

“Most cordially yours, “MARY-TH- MULHOLLAND, “_E. de M._”

Bertha returned the letter without a word to its owner.

But the goaded Mrs. Severing was not yet free to take her departure from Porthlew.

She was waylaid in the very hall by Rosamund.

“Wretched child!” thought Nina, who had by this time educated herself into thinking of Miss Grantham solely as the destroyer of Morris’s peace of mind. “However, I suppose she’s miserable by this time, and wants to know if there’s any chance of patching up a meeting or something with him.”

With this in mind, Mrs. Severing advanced with an air of guilelessness, and a sense of diplomacy.

“I’m _just_ off, dear,” she said sweetly to Rosamund. “Your beloved guardian has really tempted me to stay on longer than I ought--it _is_ such a joy to spend an hour with her.”

“I won’t keep you one minute,” said Rosamund, “but I had to ask you--I do so want to hear....”

Nina’s expressive eyebrows mounted.

“About Frances,” said Rosamund eagerly, quite unaware that she was disconcerting the diplomatic Mrs. Severing considerably. The shock of finding her discernment at fault, almost equally with her annoyance at being once more asked to render an account of her shifted responsibilities, caused Mrs. Severing to reply with considerably less than her usual suavity:

“Frances! What about her? I’ve left her in charge of a most delightful woman, and she’s perfectly happy. Just as the young,” said Nina viciously, “always are.”

XVI

Shrewd as Mrs. Tregaskis was, it was not until after Nina had departed, serene and triumphant, that she suddenly exclaimed, pondering over the ingenuous epistle of Mrs. Mulholland:

“It’s all very well, but that woman never answered one word about looking after Frances. She wrote about everything else under the sun, but not a single definite assurance in the whole caboodle. What an unpractical lot these holy females are! It’s enough to drive a plain common-sense Cornish body to distraction.”

She laughed in humorous deprecation of her own harassed tones, and Miss Blandflower remarked sympathetically:

“Fancy that, now. Dear Mrs. Tregaskis, wouldn’t you like me to join the fray? I could run down there, have a look at Francesca, and trot back to report progress. Or bring her home in my pocket.”

Bertha looked at her proposed deputy with rather a doubtful expression.

“You’d hate it, Minnie, wouldn’t you? The very bosom of the Scarlet Woman, you know!”

“England expects every man to do his duty,” replied Miss Blandflower courageously, but she looked infinitely relieved when Mrs. Tregaskis laughed again, and said tolerantly:

“No, no, Minnie, I don’t think we’ll expose you to contamination. If anyone goes, I’ll go myself--but we’ll see what the next letters are like.”

The next letters, however, from the Porthlew point of view were far from satisfactory.

“This tone of little Frances’ won’t do at all,” declared Bertha very decidedly, at breakfast. “Quite a new departure! Talking about being ‘received into the Church at once,’ and ‘discussing further plans’ when she gets home. I never heard of such a thing--what are little girls coming to, pray?”

“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and all that’s nice,” muttered Minnie in the inward voice which she reserved for her frequent and irrelevant quotations.

“Nice, indeed!” retorted Mrs. Tregaskis crisply, “anything but, my poor Minnie. This won’t do at all. Miss Frances must be popped back into her little place again, I’m afraid. You needn’t scowl at me, Rosamund. Nobody is going to be at all unkind or brutal, but if this is the effect that Roman Catholicism is going to have on Frances, why, the sooner she’s taken away from the convent the better. In any case I never gave her leave to stay for more than a few days’ Retreat, and now she writes quite calmly that she is to be ‘received’ at the end of the week, without so much as with your leave or by your leave.”

“If she’s made up her mind, Bertha--and I conclude that she has--you can’t stop her, and you’d better leave her alone,” growled Frederick.

“Nonsense, dear. She’s not so emancipated as all that, yet. Besides, we _have_ given a sort of consent, in a way, by letting her go to this place--though it was against my better judgment, as you know.”

“Your better judgment, Bertha, is only less to be relied on than your original impulse.”

Mrs. Tregaskis invariably treated these speeches of her lord and master as a recondite form of pleasantry. She therefore laughed valiantly at the epigrammatic insult, and merely told Minnie to give her the marmalade.

“Ma-me-laid, as the chicken said,” lugubriously and quite absent-mindedly remarked Miss Blandflower, neither she nor anyone else paying the slightest heed to the historic jest, which she repeated almost every morning of her life.

“Well,” Bertha said at last, “I suppose I must sacrifice the poor Mothers’ Union and trot after my stray lamb. I’ve a very good mind to pay her a surprise visit, and see what she’s really up to.”

“Frances would never deceive you, Cousin Bertie,” indignantly said Rosamund.

“I dare say, my dear; but Frances is with people whom I know very little about, and I can’t tell what nonsense they may be stuffing into her little head. Anyway, I’m going to find out.”

“Better send Rosamund,” was the observation of her Cousin Frederick, uttered in tones which conveyed at one and the same time the impressions that he was making the suggestion sarcastically, and that he knew it would be displeasing to his wife.

Rosamund looked at Mrs. Tregaskis. She had not the slightest expectation of accompanying her to the convent, and was not even sure that she wanted to do so.

“Rubbish,” said Mrs. Tregaskis briskly. “No use glowering at me, Rosamund. You’d be dreadfully in my way, darling, and in Frances’, too, little though you may believe it. She’s never quite natural and open when you’re there to try and tell her what she must say and what she mustn’t.”

This observation, partly from the substratum of truth which it contained, always roused in Rosamund a fury of pain and resentment.

She told herself vehemently that Cousin Bertie never understood anything, and hated the quick, angry flush that denoted her feelings plainly to that amused, observant eye.

Her retaliation she knew, with all the impotent anger of youth at its own inadequacy, to be as awkward and ineffectual as it was fierce.

“I shall certainly write and tell Francie that you are coming, Cousin Bertie.”

“Oho! You think she wouldn’t appreciate a surprise visit, is that it? It doesn’t speak very well for your theory that Frances would never deceive me, does it?” laughed Bertha. “Very well, my dear, write to her by all means, and say that I’ll be there on Saturday. I can’t possibly get away to-morrow.”

“Dear me, no,” said Minnie anxiously. “There’s your dairy class in the morning, and then Nurse Watkins wants to come and talk to you about that poor woman with the twins, and isn’t it the third Friday of the month? because that’s your committee meeting out at Polwerrow, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I shall have my hands full. You’ll have to take the mothers on Saturday afternoon, Minnie. I’ll give you the leaflets to distribute, and they must have tea as usual, and you or Rosamund might read them a little something afterwards. I’ll look out something or other that will do.”

“They’ll be dreadfully disappointed at not seeing you,” sighed Miss Blandflower.

“Tell them how sorry I am to be away. It’s not often I’ve missed one of the meetings, is it? The fact is, it does me good to talk to them all and hear all about baby’s croup and Old Man Granfer’s rheumatism and the rest of it. I revel in a gude old clackit o’ wummin, as we say down here.”

“They all adore you,” said the faithful Minnie.

“Rubbish, my dear! It’s only that one has a knack of understanding them, and then they’ve known me all my life. Why, I’m still ‘Miss Bertie’ to most of them!”

Bertha laughed, finished her breakfast, and told Minnie to come and help her get ready for the dairy class.

Helping Mrs. Tregaskis never meant anything more than the more mechanical jobs that she herself had not time to undertake, but Minnie followed her obediently, and spent the intervening time until Saturday toiling blindly and ineffectively in her wake.

“I’m so dreadfully afraid that I shall forget something or other,” she sighed, watching Mrs. Tregaskis drive away from the hall door. “I’ve not got her head for organization, you know. Ah well! it takes all sorts to make a world, as they say.”

It must be admitted that Miss Blandflower’s distrust of her own capability as a substitute was not unshared by Mrs. Tregaskis.

“Poor old Minnie! She always does her best,” Bertha said to her husband as he drove her to the station. “But I’m afraid there’ll be a big accumulation by the time I get back. However, it’s all in the day’s work, and the main point just now is to see what Frances is up to.”

Frederick remained silent, and she added hastily:

“Now, not another word till we get to the station. I’ve promised myself the luxury of this quiet half-hour to go over the blanket-club accounts.”

She pulled out of her bag a little red notebook and was immersed in figures until they reached the station.

Nor did Mrs. Tregaskis’ activities cease when she had established herself in the corner-seat of a third-class railway-carriage.

There was a woman seated opposite to her whose baby was fractious and crying, and only howled the louder at Bertha’s kind, broad smiles and dangled watch-chain. She gave the mother a few words of advice as to its feeding, and laughed away her stammered apologies at the baby’s ungracious reception of the lady’s kindness.

At the first stop a young girl whom Mrs. Tregaskis knew by sight as the daughter of a distant farmer, got into the carriage, her head muffled in a shawl, and immediately shut both windows with a timid, “Excuse me--I have the toothache.”

“No, no, no!” cried Bertha with jovial decision, and lowering the window furthest from the girl’s swollen face. “Sit over there, Nellie, and you won’t feel it. It _is_ Nellie Jewell, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Mrs. Tregaskis.”

“Well, Nellie, I’m very sorry you’ve got toothache, but we’re--let me see--one, two, three, _four_ people in here besides yourself! Five, if we count this little man,” she added, with a laughing nod at the unresponsive baby, “and I don’t see why he shouldn’t have his share of fresh air. You wouldn’t want five people to do without God’s lovely fresh air that’s so good for us all, just because you’ve got toothache, Nellie?”

“I don’t want to catch cold in ’un, Mrs. Tregaskis,” muttered the girl sullenly.

But she left the window open.

Presently Mrs. Tregaskis asked her if she’d been to the dentist.

“Yes, Mrs. Tregaskis. I’m just on my way back. But her culdn’t du nothin’ for me while ’tis swollenlike.”

“No, I see that. You silly girl, you ought to have gone before it got so bad. If only you girls ate fewer sweets, you wouldn’t have such bad teeth--but at any rate, if you _must_ give yourself toothache, you ought to be brave and go to see the dentist before getting to this stage. Now I don’t suppose you’ve been able to do much towards helping your mother for the last week, have you, with your mouth in that state?”

“No, Mrs. Tregaskis.”

There was a suspicion of a flounce in Nellie Jewell’s movements as she rose to get out at the next station.

“Good-bye, Nellie. I hope you’ll have had that tooth right out next time I see you,” said Bertha, with unperturbed good-humour.

She made a mental note to the effect that she must call on Nellie Jewell’s mother when she got back and see if they couldn’t persuade the girl to become an Associate of the G.F.S. She seemed to be a silly girl, but no doubt something could be done for her.

For the rest of the journey Mrs. Tregaskis dismissed parochial concerns from her mind, and allowed herself the luxury of an uninterrupted hour’s reading of “La vie des Abeilles.” She enjoyed, quite consciously, the sense that this was the first time she had had spare time in which to read it at leisure during the six months she had had the book in hand.

The journey was a long one, and packets of sandwiches were produced on either side of her, but Mrs. Tregaskis always grudged time given to food, and only at the last junction put her head out of the window and allowed herself to drink two cups of very strong tea from the station refreshment-room.

It was nearly six o’clock before she reached, by means of the slowest of cabs, the convent door.

She looked at the unimposing building, high and narrow like the buildings on either side of it, with some contempt. It was not at all picturesque, like the charming convents or monasteries of her experience in Italy and Southern France. Only a modest brass plate on the door and a blue and white figure cut out of what used to be called “transparencies” and pasted against the inside of the glass fan-light, proclaimed the house to be a convent.

Once inside, however, Bertha thought that her surroundings left small room for doubt. The small, dark parlour was hung with highly-coloured devotional pictures, a cheap coloured statuette stood on the mantelpiece and another one on a bracket over the door.

Contrary to the conventual wont, however, Mrs. Tregaskis was not kept waiting. Frances came into the room almost immediately. She did not greet her guardian with any of the timidity which she often displayed, and which Mrs. Tregaskis had half expected.

“Cousin Bertie, I _am_ so glad you’ve come! It was so much easier to talk than to write--you know how bad I am at letters.”

“Your last letter was rather explicit, Francie, my child,” said Bertha drily. “We’ll have a long talk about it to-morrow, but just at present I want to know whether these good nuns are expecting me. I suppose you asked them if I could have a room?”

“Yes. You’ve got the one Mrs. Severing had. You see, the Retreat was over two or three days ago, so most of the visitors have gone. There are only the usual lady boarders left now.”

“The Retreat was over two or three days ago, was it? I see.”

Frances flushed at her guardian’s tone.

“Oh, Cousin Bertie, if Rosamund hadn’t said that you were coming here I meant to have written you a long letter, and told you why I was staying on, and everything.”

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Tregaskis, still dryly. “I hope you did. I feel sure you did. Now show me where my room is, will you?”

Frances, the look of pleasure on her face altogether dashed, preceded Mrs. Tregaskis to the room next to her own.

Mrs. Tregaskis, as usual, was appreciative and observant, was charmed at having a window that looked out on to the garden, and thanked Frances delightedly for the little vase of flowers arranged upon the tiny dressing-table. Frances reflected remorsefully that Cousin Bertie never failed in recognition of any effort, however small, to give her pleasure. Joined to the thought, however, was the subconscious conviction that neither did Cousin Bertie ever fail to mark and remember any infringement, however trivial, of the wide, easy, and yet inflexible discipline which she was apt to wield over all her surroundings.

It was perhaps this unacknowledged certainty which drove Frances, as soon as breakfast was over on the following morning, to withdraw herself and her guardian, with unwonted decision, from the voluble overtures of Mrs. Mulholland, to the comparative privacy of the small garden. It was only nine o’clock, and they both shivered a little in the raw morning air.

“Tut! This won’t do,” exclaimed Bertha. “Come along, Francie--in step, now.”

She began to chant with a sort of martial ardour, keeping time as she stepped out gallantly:

“I had a good place and I _left_--_left_--_left_; I’m out of work now and it serves me jolly well _right_--_right_--_right_! Soon be warm at this rate! Don’t shiver like that, Francie. Why, bless me! it’s good to be alive on a day like this.”

Frances was guiltily conscious that her shivers were not altogether due to defective circulation.

She made a great effort, clenching her small fists unseen, and said valiantly:

“Cousin Bertie, you know that I’m staying on here because I want to be received as a Catholic next week. They are--quite willing.”

She felt uncomfortably breathless, and her voice caught in her throat once or twice.

None of Hazel’s valour in opposition would ever be Frances’.

Bertha’s voice was most reassuringly kind.

“Well, darling, we must talk it over a little bit. Why so much haste?”

“I--I don’t quite know what there is to wait for,” faltered Frances, conscious of the lack of conviction in her voice.

That Cousin Bertie was also conscious of it was evident in the tone of smooth good-humour in which she replied:

“I might perhaps answer that you could wait to be a little older and wiser and more experienced, or that later on you may reproach me bitterly for having allowed you to take a decisive step in a fit of enthusiasm.”

“Oh no!” breathed Frances.