Part 17

Frances thought that it was nice to be told just what one ought to do, and to feel such perfect confidence that the advice given came, even though through human agency, from a Divine source. It simplified everything very much. Later on, perhaps, that simplification might be terribly needed.

She resolutely put the thought from her.

“Wake up, Francie,” said Mrs. Tregaskis’ voice, tense with excitement; “we’re just in. Of course, she won’t have been able to meet us herself, I don’t suppose--just at lunch-time----”

But she scanned the platform eagerly, all the same, even as she spoke.

The next moment there was a double exclamation of joy, as Hazel’s charming, laughing face appeared at the window and her hands tugged at the stiff handle of the door.

XVIII

Hazel had not changed.

That much was evident in the first instant, and even after Frances had seen her, laughing and triumphant, playing with her baby son or, securely radiant, seated at the head of her husband’s table, she still felt Lady Marleswood to be very much one with the little Hazel Tregaskis of Porthlew days.

Her relations with Bertha, even, were singularly unaltered. Frances knew that her guardian’s imperious rule had weighed far more lightly on Hazel, in their nursery days, than on either of her wards. She had opposed to it a certain joyous pagan insensitiveness, for the most part too indifferently good-humoured to resist, but quite capable of overruling, lightly, merrily, yet more or less decisively, her mother’s most trenchant bidding by her own calm quality of self-reliance.

Now, in such security of happiness as Frances had never dreamed of, her own way so amply justified as to need no further explanation, Hazel could afford to listen with the smiling surface docility that had always been hers, to Bertha’s dictatorially-worded counsels for the welfare of Dickie and her tempered approval of his nursery arrangements.

But Frances did not think that Hazel meant to follow Cousin Bertie’s wise advice about not spoiling the little darling, and making him learn at once that he must go to sleep at the proper times without being coaxed. Hazel only shook her tawny curls, and said in a tone of comical resignation that she was sure Dickie was going to be dreadfully spoiled, and she only hoped he would have a little brother to help keep him in order, and not an adoring sister.

Sir Guy was very polite to Mrs. Tregaskis, and very kind to Frances. It was he, Hazel eagerly told her cousin, who had suggested that Frances should stay with them in the summer and be taken through her first season by Lady Marleswood.

Frances was impressed and almost overawed by such kindness. Sir Guy had hardly appeared to notice her existence at Porthlew, but he seemed quite different now, under his own roof, with no atmosphere of strain and disapproval to contend against.

“Does he know about me?” Frances asked Hazel rather timidly that evening.

Hazel had come into her cousin’s bedroom in a blue silk négligée and sat on the floor, just as she used to do in her blue cotton kimono at Porthlew.

“What about you, except that you’re a darling, and just like my very own sister?” demanded Lady Marleswood.

“Being a Catholic.”

“Oh yes, of course, and we both think it perfectly splendid,” declared Hazel lightly.

Frances felt relief at the very lightness of her tone.

“Was there a lot of difficulty about it? Were they all very vexed?” asked Hazel sympathetically.

“Rather vexed. Cousin Bertie was very, very kind, of course--and Rosamund understood, and didn’t think I wanted to be separate or--or different or anything--you know what I mean, though I can’t explain it at all well. But, of course, they didn’t like it. Naturally.”

“Now why ‘naturally’? What had it got to do with anyone but yourself? If it makes you any happier, why on earth shouldn’t you be a Roman Catholic to-day and a Primitive Methodist to-morrow, if you want to? I’ve no patience with this never letting people run their own show,” declared Lady Marleswood.

“It was very difficult to know what to do,” rather solemnly said Frances.

“That’s so like you, Francie dearest. _I_ shouldn’t have seen the least difficulty in it. Do whatever you want to do, and whatever you think best. Then you take your own risks and have nobody but yourself to blame if things go wrong. But I don’t believe they do go wrong. Look at me!”

Frances looked--at the radiant blooming face of little Dickie’s mother.

“I’ve never,” said Hazel earnestly, “never for one single minute, regretted that I took my own way, Frances. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life, and even if I lost Guy and the baby to-morrow, I should still think it had been worth while.”

Frances looked at her.

“You’ve not changed a bit, Hazel. I feel just as if you and Rosamund had been to some grown-up party and then you’d come into my room at Porthlew to tell me all about it.”

“I’m so glad,” cried Hazel delightedly. “I should hate it if you all thought I’d changed and become quite different just because I’m so happy. Francie, I _do_ want Rosamund and you to be as happy as I am. It seems unfair that you shouldn’t be, when you’re both so much better than I am. Is Rosamund going to marry Morris Severing?”

“Oh no, I don’t think so.”

“That’s all right. He’s not nearly good enough for her. We’ll find someone much nicer--a very clever man who writes books or something, I think--and when they’re married you can live with her most of the time, till you marry yourself. Oh, Francie, I can’t help it--I want to see _all_ the people I love married now--it’s so much the nicest thing to be!”

“It depends,” faltered Frances, colouring.

Hazel looked at her with her shrewd, sympathetic gaze. She had that odd degree of intuition that the most frankly self-absorbed natures often display.

“Francie,” she said slowly, “do you want to become a nun?”

Frances coloured helplessly under the unexpected bit of penetration.

“I don’t know--oh, Hazel--what made you think that? I haven’t said one word--not for a long time yet,” she stammered incoherently.

“I’m not exactly surprised,” remarked her cousin calmly. “You were always much too good for this world, darling; but do you think you’d be happy in a convent?”

“_Of course_ I should be happy. But I don’t know if--if they’d even have me. Oh, Hazel, it makes it all seem so much more real when we talk about it like this. I’ve not told anybody at all--not even Rosamund.”

“I won’t tell a soul,” promised Hazel. “I don’t know anything about convents at all, but there are some sisters who call for subscriptions sometimes at Marleswood, and they always look very nice and happy.”

“Nuns are always happy,” said Frances seriously.

“Are they? I wish I knew more about them, and what sort of life they have to lead. I suppose it’s nice and peaceful and holy, if you like that sort of thing. Do you feel as though you had a vocation, or whatever it is, Frances?”

Frances said nothing, only looked at Hazel with large, distressed eyes.

“I’m talking of what I know nothing about,” declared Lady Marleswood, kissing her affectionately. “I won’t bother you about it, but if they worry you at Porthlew, when they know, you can come to us just whenever you like and for as long as you like. Nobody shall say anything to you, and you can go to church all day if you want to.”

“Oh, Hazel, how nice you are!”

“Good-night, Francie darling. Do remember that the only thing is to follow one’s own convictions _quite_ regardless of anything and everyone. I know it sounds dreadful, but look at me! I’m a living example of the advantages of self-will. Now I must go and say good-night to mother.”

Hazel left Frances to the realization that her hitherto unspoken desire had gained the strangest degree of life and substance from the mere facts of having been put into words, and received almost as a matter of course.

“Hazel seemed to think it quite natural, and not at all dreadful,” Frances thought to herself. “Perhaps Cousin Bertie won’t mind as much as I think she’s going to. I know I’m a moral coward, because I’m more afraid of telling her, for fear she should be angry, than of telling Rosamund, who’ll only be dreadfully unhappy. But I needn’t think of it yet. Father Anselm said I was not to think of the future at all, or to make plans....”

She lost herself in surmises, that almost amounted to certainties, as to the interpretation her confessor had put upon her timidly vague references to her own future. That the shrewd little French Superior had penetrated her scarcely apprehended secret, Frances felt hardly any doubt.

“They’ll tell me what to do when the time comes,” she thought with a quickly beating heart, and remembered thankfully her new-found allegiance.

The day following, Mrs. Tregaskis and Frances went down to Cornwall.

Frances felt as though she had been away for a lifetime, and had to combat an unreasonable tendency to astonishment at finding her surroundings utterly unchanged.

It was a relief to her that no allusion was made at first to that change in herself of which she felt so acutely conscious.

Frederick, rather as though the words were dragged out of him under protest, asked for news of Hazel, and Miss Blandflower squeaked ecstatic inquiries about the baby.

“Is the dear little man like Hazel?”

“Not very like her,” said Bertha rather slowly. “His eyes are dark blue, for one thing.”

Everyone remembered Sir Guy’s remarkably dark blue eyes, with the apparent exception of the unfortunate Minnie, who exclaimed in a high-pitched key of astonishment:

“Now where can he get that from? Yours are so very brown, dear Mrs. Tregaskis, and Hazel’s, as we know, match her name.”

“By some extraordinary coincidence,” said Frederick’s disagreeable voice, “the child has inherited his father’s eyes.”

Miss Blandflower looked confused, laughed a good deal in a nervous way, and made a characteristic attempt to retrieve her verbal footing by embarking upon a disastrous quotation:

“Ah well, it’s a wise child that----”

“Give me a bun, Minnie,” said Bertha in loud, commanding tones. “I be starvin’ for my tay. Why, Francie and I haven’t had a blow-out like this for I don’t know how long. Tea at the convent consisted of stewed twigs and a Marie biscuit, eh, Frances? that is to say, when we got any all.”

“There wasn’t very much,” Frances admitted reluctantly, and without smiling.

“There was not indeed! And that Mrs. Mulholland has the appetite of a cormorant, positively.”

Few feminine indictments can be much more virulent than the charge of “having an appetite,” and there was a distinct quality of venom in Mrs. Tregaskis’ tone.

“Is that the one Mrs. Severing talked about?” asked Rosamund.

“Yes, as though she were her dearest friend. Poor Nina’s gush is sometimes apt to be misleading,” laughed Bertha tolerantly. “Has she been over here, Rosamund?”

“She came yesterday, to see if you were back.”

“Any news?”

“There’s to be a concert at Polwerrow on the twentieth, and she wants to take us all. She’ll call for us in the car and bring us back.”

“Excellent. A deep draught of music is just what I want. Anyone good coming down? I suppose so, or Nina wouldn’t condescend.”

“Some violinist--I can’t remember his name.”

“You wouldn’t!” laughed Bertha. “Well, my dear, that’ll be very jolly. I love an outing, and there’ll be plenty of room in the car for all of us.”

“Mrs. Severing was kind enough to suggest my coming too--room for a small one,” said Minnie agitatedly. “Of course I said it wasn’t to be thought of for a moment.”

“Minnie, you know you like music, and you always go with us to any decent concert at Polwerrow,” said Bertha patiently. “Of course you’ll come.”

Under cover of the protests, incoherent objections, and final yielding, which were always part and parcel of any invitation issued to and accepted by Miss Blandflower, Rosamund and Frances made their escape.

Their long talk together left Frances very happy. She gave Rosamund no such confidence as that sudden, unpremeditated one which had been drawn from her by Hazel’s matter of fact suggestion, but nevertheless she was all but unconscious of any reticence.

It was to Rosamund that she could best pour out the story of her new experiences, and the fullness of Rosamund’s sympathy gave no hint of any sense of exclusion.

If a division of the ways had been reached neither was conscious of it. To Rosamund, her sister’s happiness, in itself unintelligible, became merely a subject for rejoicing, and the ready congratulations she gave out of her affection needed no deeper source to fill Frances with tender gratitude.

They drew nearer together in the very difference that might have separated them for a time.

XIX

Only the Polwerrow concert broke the monotony of the months that followed. It was not a very great event, but it was on that evening that Rosamund, by one of the agonized intuitions that are among the penalties borne by the too highly-strung, first began to suspect what Frances had in mind.

They drove to Polwerrow in Mrs. Severing’s car, and made their way into the reserved stalls selected by Nina.

“Don’t push, as the elephant said to the flea when the animals went in two by two,” Miss Blandflower muttered to herself, but, as usual, no one paid any attention to her.

They listened to much inferior singing: Bertha with a look of well-bred tolerance, Nina with closed eyes and a small, excruciated frown.

Rosamund sat next to Frances.

She wondered idly what dreams her little sister wove into the playing of the famous violinist. Frances’ face was absorbed, and her eyes quite unseeing. Rosamund thought that she looked very happy, as though her dreams were pleasant ones. Was she thinking of the ideals and aspirations newly revealed to her in the Catholic Church, Rosamund wondered. That Frances was finding the greatest happiness that her short life had as yet known, she felt no doubt, but she also wondered with quite unconscious cynicism how long that happiness would continue. Once received into the Church, it seemed to Rosamund, there appeared to be nothing further to which her sister could aspire, except, perhaps, to live quite near a Catholic church.

“There isn’t one anywhere very near in the Wye Valley,” Rosamund reflected. “I wonder if Francie will mind that, when we live there together. But she can go to her convent sometimes and stay there for a little while, if she wants to. They were kind and nice to her. She likes the convent.”

And it was then that there flashed across Rosamund’s consciousness the first sickening, unreasoning suspicion, carrying with it all the anguish of certainty, that Frances would want to go and be a nun.

Shocked, as from a physical pang, she held on to the arms of her stall as though afraid of falling.

There was a pause in the music, and a faint sound or two as of uncertain applause. Rosamund saw Miss Blandflower begin to clap her hands enthusiastically, then turn doubtful eyes on Mrs. Severing, who had not moved, and begin to fumble with her gloves as though she had never meant to do anything else. The plaintive, poignant strains of the violin began again.

Rosamund suddenly felt that she dared not look at Frances, for fear of seeing in her face some mysterious confirmation of her own thoughts.

For a little while she argued with herself. It was absurd to jump at conclusions. Frances had never spoken, or given any hint, of wishing to become a nun. And even supposing she were infatuated with the idea for a time, her guardian would be the last person to encourage such a step. It would all be stopped and forbidden, and Frances would never be wilfully disobedient.

Such a thing could not happen--no one entered a convent nowadays. It was in medieval times that girls of one’s own class became nuns--not nowadays. A convent had been a refuge from the world, then. Involuntarily Rosamund wondered whether it would not present itself in exactly that light to Frances, now. “But she’s not going to--she can’t. Why, it would mean shutting herself up away from me--for the whole of her life,” thought Rosamund wildly.

She tried to look at it reasonably, to tell herself that this full-grown certainty which had suddenly sprung into being within her, was without any foundation in fact. She reminded herself of Cousin Bertie’s favourite advice, not to cross bridges before they were reached. But Rosamund happened to possess that fundamental form of sincerity which cannot blind itself to its own inner vision, and not all the wisdom of common sense and of Cousin Bertie’s optimistic philosophy, weighed against that one unreasoning flash of intuition.

A sudden craving for reassurance seized her uncontrollably.

She looked at Frances.

The last notes of the violin died away, and this time everyone broke into applause at once, and Miss Blandflower was able to clap fearlessly and noisily with the others.

Under cover of it all Rosamund leant towards her sister.

“Francie,” she said urgently, “you wouldn’t ever want to be a nun, would you? Promise me you wouldn’t.”

Perhaps there was some faint ray of hope underlying the wording of Rosamund’s sudden appeal. For it was with a new and even more bitter pang that the last certainty came to her, as Frances, without a single word of answer, raised startled, almost terrified eyes to hers, and as their looks met, blushed a deep, painful scarlet.

Words between them were unnecessary, nor could either have spoken.

The concert went on, and Rosamund wished that it could never stop. In the blur of sound which seemed to surround her, she did not think that she would ever realize what had happened. It would all remain chaotic and unreal.

There was a little movement beside her, and Frances’ small, soft hand sought hers, like that of a child seeking reassurance.

They did not look at one another, but for a moment their hands clung together.

“Shall we make a move now, before the crush?” said Mrs. Severing wearily. “Some of these renderings are really rather more than I can stand.”

Bertha shrugged her shoulders very slightly, and looked at Rosamund and Frances.

“Come out of the moon, Rosamund. You don’t look half awake, my child. We want to get out of this before everyone begins to crowd. Come along, Minnie, come along.”

Rosamund, in a dream, followed the wide, efficient figure of her guardian. Miss Blandflower had jammed a small rabbit-skin tie into the back of her stall, and, wrestling with it in an agony, was blocking the exit for both Frances and Mrs. Severing.

“Oh, my fur--dear me, _isn’t_ that tiresome, now! So sorry--do excuse me....”

It was not difficult to conjecture that Miss Blandflower was trampling recklessly over the feet on either side of her in her endeavours to rescue the rabbit skin.

As she left the hall with Mrs. Tregaskis, Rosamund heard the last glee begin, and exclamations issuing in the penetrating husky falsetto which was peculiar to Miss Blandflower when whispering:

“Don’t wait for me--but I’m afraid you can’t get out--or could you squeeze past? This wretched fur of mine. Simply beyond the beyonds, isn’t it? Wait a minute--the deed is done--no, it isn’t--false alarm. Oh, how dreadful of me this is ... you’ll never forgive me, I’m afraid. Now then, a long pull and a strong pull....”

The door swung to behind Rosamund.

“Where are the others?” asked her guardian.

Cousin Bertie always made her way through any crowd without any difficulty at all, partly because her bulk was considerable, and partly from a certain pleasant authoritative way she had of saying, “Thank you--if you’ll just let me get past, please--thank you so much.” Rosamund had noticed long ago that very few people were ever proof against that firm civility.

“Aren’t they coming?” said Mrs. Tregaskis, when they were in the outer hall.

“Miss Blandflower’s fur got caught into her chair or something, and the others couldn’t get past.”

“Wretched Minnie! Now they’ll have to wait until the end of that chorus--Nina will never come out in the middle of it. How cross she’ll be. Well, Rosamund, you and I may as well sit down and wait for them here.”

Mrs. Tregaskis established herself on the red plush sofa underneath an enlarged photograph of Mme. Clara Butt, and made room for Rosamund beside her.

“You look rather tired, old lady,” she said kindly. Rosamund felt suddenly grateful for the kindness of her voice and said:

“A little, Cousin Bertie.”

“A real deep draught of music always gives _me_ a fresh lease of life,” remarked Mrs. Tregaskis, drawing a deep breath that expanded her broad chest yet more. “Not that we heard very much to-night, but the violin was good, of course. Funny that music doesn’t mean more to you two children, Rosamund. Your mother was wonderful. But still, I hope you and Frances enjoyed this evening.”

“Oh yes,” said Rosamund colourlessly.

Her guardian looked rather dissatisfied.

“Why so down in the mouth, eh?” she asked genially.

Mrs. Tregaskis was always very quick to detect an atmosphere.

Rosamund hesitated.

She partly shared Frances’ old childish feeling that Mrs. Tregaskis must always get just that answer which she expected to get, to her kindly, peremptory questionings, and she was partly actuated by an intense, miserable need of reassurance that made her turn even to a source which she felt to be unlikely.

“I’m feeling rather worried about Frances,” she said rather nervously, knowing that it was not a propitious beginning. Her tendency to torment herself and the whole household on the subject of imaginary anxieties about Frances’ health or spirits had been genially but quite implacably combated by Mrs. Tregaskis ever since their first arrival at Porthlew.

She gave a half-humorous sigh.

“Well, darling, I’m sorry to hear that. But it isn’t anything so very new, is it? You’ve pulled a long face over Frances ever since I can remember you both, when she was a little scared thing who didn’t dare call her soul her own. I don’t mean you ever bullied her, my dear--but there is such a thing as over-solicitude, you know.”

Accustomed though Rosamund was to her guardian’s kindly banter on the subject of Frances, she had never ceased to resent it with the wounded fury of an over-sensitive child.

Instantly she resolved that it would be impossible to tell Cousin Bertie of her new-born dread.

“Well,” said Mrs. Tregaskis, “what is it this time? Is she tired, or has she got a cold, or has Nina been hurting her feelings? Out with it.”

Rosamund asked herself desperately: “_Why_ was I such a fool as to begin this?” and aloud said in a sort of uncertain tone which to her own ears sounded very unconvincing:

“I was just thinking of her having become a Catholic, and all that. Whether--whether she’ll be happier now, or--want anything more.”

It was the nearest she could get to the sudden terror that had lain like lead at her heart ever since that silent interchange of looks with Frances.

“Want anything more!” Mrs. Tregaskis repeated rather derisively. “Are you afraid of her asking to join the Salvation Army next? Upon my word, Rosamund, I think better of the child than you do. She was very silly and wrong-headed about it, but at least it was all perfectly genuine, and she’s in earnest about the religious part of it.”