Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “Anyhow, Frederick,” she returned in soothing accents, “it will probably all end in smoke. That’s my object in letting her go to Sybil for a bit. She will see that there’s nothing in it, so to speak.”

  “An aching void,” was Minnie’s further contribution to the discussion.

  Frederick retired behind his paper again.

  “What a rest it would be to you if you could have the house to yourself for a bit!” said Miss Blandflower, looking fondly at Bertha.

  “Well, I own that it would. This last year has been a trying one, for various reasons.”

  Miss Blandflower, who knew as well as Bertha herself that these various reasons were all embodied in Mrs. Tregaskis’s only daughter, preserved a discreet silence.

  “Well! that’s that,” was Bertha’s summing up. “I’ll see what the girls say. No doubt Rosamund will raise difficulties, poor child” — she laughed a little—” I’ve never yet known her fall in with any plan one suggested.”

  “She’s very contrary,” sighed Minnie, shaking her head.

  Their forebodings proved to be well-founded. Rosamund did not wish to accept Lady Argent’s invitation.

  “I’m not going to ask her why,” said Bertha exasperatedly, “I know too well that that’s exactly what she wants — tiresome child! No, Minnie, I’d rather you don’t discuss it with her. The whole thing is pose, ‘pour faire s’occuper d’elle,’ and the less notice one takes of her the sooner she may get over this silly phase of always wanting to differ from everybody else.”

  “Couldn’t I point out to her that it might give you something of a rest if they were both away for a little while?” asked Minnie mournfully.

  “I’d really rather you didn’t, dear old Minnie. I know how nicely you’d put it,” said Bertha untruthfully, “but I don’t want to give her any excuses for trumping up a grievance — thinking one wanted to get rid of her, or anything of that sort. Oh no, my dear — I shall jog along all right.

  There’s plenty of life in the old dog yet!”

  “There’s no rest for the wicked,” groaned Miss Blandflower, with no uncomplimentary intent.

  “Not this side of the grave,” agreed Bertha cheerfully.

  “But — well, I will own to you, Minnie, that I sometimes wish those two were rather more like other people. It seems so extraordinary that they can’t lead the normal lives of ordinary girls — but one of them must take a week’s silly flirtation as though it were a tragedy, and the other gives me no rest because she wants ‘the intellectual discipline of the Catholic Church’!”

  She laughed as she spoke, but Minnie exclaimed almost tearfully: “Dear Mrs. Tregaskis, it does seem hard, when you’ve been so unutterably good to them. If only they’d been your own daughters they would have turned out very differently, I feel sure.”

  This rather infelicitous example drove Mrs. Tregaskis silently from the room.

  A week later saw Frances’ departure from Porthlew.

  “I wish you were coming too, Rosamund,” she said, unaware how cordially her guardian was endorsing the wish.

  Rosamund said: “Write and tell me all about everything. Good-bye, darling.”

  Not even to her sister would she admit the mixture of defiance and sentimentality which had prompted her refusal to visit the Wye Valley.

  “Not until I go there for good,” she told herself dreamily.

  It was the expression of a perfectly unconscious egotism.

  X

  FRANCES and her hostess found themselves in perfect harmony. It did not occur to Frances that the eight years which had transformed her from a child to a young girl had changed Lady Argent a great deal more.

  Discursive she had always been, but her talk had now become almost wandering, and her always gentle volubility had increased surprisingly. The amusement, tempered by slight dismay, with which Ludovic listened to his parent’s verbal flights, was quite unshared by Frances. Lady Argent talked about the Catholic Church, about which Frances wanted to learn all that she could, and each was serenely content.

  “I haven’t any scruples, dear, about telling you all that you want to know,” Lady Argent unnecessarily informed her guest, “because dear Bertie is so broad-minded and honest herself that I know she wouldn’t mind. And it seems only fair to counteract all those dreadful years that you’ve spent with Protestants, poor child, who have such very strange ideas about the Faith. Like Indulgences, you know — so terribly misunderstood, I always think — paid permission to commit sin for a hundred days, I’ve even heard people suggest — ignorant Protestants, you know.”

  “They are not all as ignorant as that,” justice compelled Frances to observe.

  “I never can remember that you are still a Protestant, poor child. You don’t mind being called so, I hope?”

  Frances was much too embarrassed to reply, but fortunately Lady Argent did not wait for a disclaimer.

  “To think that I once held those shocking notions myself, dear. I really can hardly believe it now.”

  “How long is it since you became a Catholic?”

  “Six years, dear child, It all seems like a dream — the time before one had the Faith, you know. It all happened in such a wonderful way. I was staying at the seaside with a poor old Catholic aunt of mine who was dying, and she had a great friend who was a nun in a convent there. So she used to ask me to go and give this old nun news of her from time to time, and I went. Mother Serafina her name was, and I always think it’s such a beautiful name, though I dare say that’s just association, since, of course, one couldn’t exactly call one’s daughter Serafina, and in any case I don’t think nuns are allowed to be godmothers even if one asked her to Where was I, dear?”

  “You were telling me how you went to the convent to give the nun news of your aunt.”

  “Oh yes, and the little parlour was so dreadfully bare and cold, as it seemed to me then,” mysteriously interpolated Lady Argent as though some concealed source of heat in the little tireless room had since been revealed to her; “but there she sat, always smiling away, and that great brown rosary at her side. So sympathetic always, and the whole community praying every day for my poor aunt; and I remember one day she told me that she would pray every day for me, too, because of the anxiety and everything, you know, dear. So charitable and broadminded, I always think, because I hadn’t any idea of being a Catholic at all then.

  But the Church always prays for those outside the Fold in the most touching way.”

  “I always like when we say the prayer for Jews and Roman Catholics, once a year,” said Frances thoughtfully.

  Lady Argent flushed in a most agitated way.

  “Pray don’t talk of it, my dear. It makes me very angry indeed. The idea of their praying for us as heretics! and calling us Roman Catholics, too! Such impertinence, I always think.”

  Frances wisely forbore to say anything further. “Tell me some more about Mother Serafina,” she pacifically suggested.

  “Well, dear, I went to see her very frequently, and quite as much for my own sake as for poor Aunt Charlotte’s, who was quite past understanding things by that time — a sort of senile paralysis the doctor said it was, though I think myself it was only second childhood, as they call it; and of course she was very weak, and sinking a little every day. Nothing but beef-tea and milk, dear, and her rosary always in her hand, though I’m sure she couldn’t say a bead.

  She was a most devout Catholic, and the priest used to come and see her every day — and I remember I couldn’t bear him, which shows what a dreadful thing prejudice is. He was an Irishman, and very stout — I remember the stairs were such a trial to him — and really I could hardly understand a word he said, he spoke with such a brogue. I am afraid,” said Lady Argent with unutterable melancholy, “that I was far from looking upon him as I should have done, with the reverence due to a priest. He always used snuff, which seemed to me such a disgusting habit, and his hair wanted cutting so dreadfully. I am afraid I was most dreadfully narrow
-minded about him, and I’m sure he was a very holy man.”

  “It was a pity he was — untidy,” said Frances delicately.

  “Yes, dear, but one is especially taught by the Church not to make rash judgments. I dare say I missed many graces by not talking to poor old Father O’Leary.

  “However, poor Aunt Charlotte died, and I had to stay on after the funeral, sorting her things — such a collection, my dear! and I found so many references in her old letters and papers to my dear husband and myself, and wishing so much we might become Catholics. Not that dear Ludovic’s father would ever have dreamed of such a thing, though, of course, God can do anything he pleases; but dear Fergus was a Scotchman, and if he had one prejudice stronger than any other, it was against Romanists, as he always called them.

  Of course, if the Lord had willed it...” said Lady Argent very doubtfully, and shaking her head at the memory of the late Sir Fergus Argent’s determination, as opposed to Divine Omnipotence.

  “But dear Fergus had been dead a long while, even then, and no doubt he views things very differently now. It’s such a comfort to feel that he must thoroughly approve, now, whereas if he’d been alive I’m very much afraid, dear, shocking though it is to say so, that he would have disliked my becoming a Catholic quite dreadfully — in fact, I really don’t know what might have happened.”

  Lady Argent devoted a moment to the consideration of her spouse’s probable attitude towards her adoption of the Catholic faith, and hastily abandoned the tableau thus conjured up with a slight shudder.

  “God certainly knows what He is about, dear,” she said thankfully.

  “Did you go on seeing Mother Serafina at the Convent?”

  “Oh yes. I had grown very fond of her by that time — and talked to her a great deal, and I shall never forget what a shock it was when I found I couldn’t ask her to stay with me here. She told me the nuns had all made vows of perpetual enclosure, you know, dear, and couldn’t move a yard out of the grounds except for the most serious reasons and with a dispensation from the Holy Father himself. And it wasn’t at all like the sort of old convent gardens one reads about, with alleys and box-hedges and cedars and things, but quite a tiny little gravel court at the back of the house, and only a plane-tree in one corner. In fact, I don’t know how all the community and the plane-tree and everything ever fitted into it at all, when they were out there for the midday recreation, though some of them did walk backwards, but I think that was only so as to see the Superior and hear what she was saying. But I’m sure they must all have bumped into the plane-tree a number of times. However, they all seemed very happy, and Mother Serafina always told me she had never known what happiness was until she became a nun.”

  “It must be wonderful,” breathed Frances.

  “Yes, dear, quite wonderful, but that’s what the grace of a vocation is. Quite supernatural, I always think, to leave one’s home and everything and live such a life — detachment, you know, dear.”

  “Of course,” ventured Frances, “it must be rather sad for the father and mother of a nun — to let her go, I mean.”

  “Dreadful, my dear. But one would always feel so glad and thankful, though so dreadfully sorry — you know what I mean,” lucidly returned Lady Argent. “I really don’t know what one would do if one had a daughter a nun — say one’s only child — though, of course, even as a girl, I can hardly imagine dear Ludovic a nun, but one never knows “Lady Argent looked distractedly into the fire “Sometimes,” she murmured, “I am afraid that I idolize Ludovic. I lie awake at night, you know, dear, wondering what I should do if he were ever to be burnt to death.”

  “But why should he be burnt to death?” said the literal Frances fixing horrified eyes on her hostess.

  “At the stake, you know, dear, just as so many martyrs have been, even in England — you know what Tyburn is, dear: so dreadful, I always think; and though one ought not to look upon any soul as being outside the pale of God’s grace, that terrible Queen Elizabeth, with Mary Stuart’s blood upon her head and everything So that if persecution should begin again — and, after all, dear, look at France, and all those poor good Dominicans turned out of their holy monastery — and if Ludovic was by that time a Catholic, as one prays and hopes, should I be able to let him go? Let alone being like the Mother of the Maccabees, though I always felt certain, even when I was a Protestant, that that was a sort of miracle, because one knows what one would feel about one, let alone seven — though really I dare say by the time those frightful tortures had begun on the youngest she had almost ceased to feel anything at all, except thankfulness that there were no more to come. But when I think how often I have wickedly rebelled at my poor Ludovic’s being lame.”

  “Was he always?” gently inquired Frances.

  “From the time he was a few weeks old, dear, and I’ve often thought that if I’d been a Catholic then, and put a pair of scapulars round my poor little darling’s neck, the accident would never have happened.”

  On this melancholy reflection the door opened, and Lady Argent’s poor little darling came into the room.

  “Don’t you want the lights, mother? It’s nearly dark, and I’ve brought you the second post.”

  Ludovic turned on the light as he spoke, and gave a small packet of letters and newspapers into his mother’s hands, shaking his head reproachfully as he did so.

  She looked up guiltily.

  “There’s nothing much, darling — only a little magazine called Beads, and The Catholic Fireside and a — a few letters.”

  Ludovic laughed gently.

  “And how many of those are begging letters, dear?”

  Lady Argent looked through the little heap, appearing rather distraught.

  “This is a receipt,” she declared triumphantly, waving a sheet of cheap glazed notepaper closely covered with neat, angular writing.

  “It’s a very long one,” said Ludovic suspiciously.

  “Those poor French sisters at Coleham-on-Sea! The Superior has actually taken the trouble to write herself, and I only sent them the most dreadful old things: not clothes only, Francie, dear — though some of Ludovic’s old vests, not fit to give to the poor people here — but hair-brushes without any bristles — and even that seems a mockery, since their hair is all cut off when they take their first vows, I believe — so unwise not to wait till the final ones, I always think, though no doubt the Church has her reasons; and books with half the leaves torn out; and even a dreadful little half-empty pot of rouge, which my maid actually put in though she never told me till afterwards. No, Ludovic, you really shouldn’t laugh. I can’t think where such a thing came from, for I’ve certainly never used it in my life, and I can’t bear to think of the scandal it may have given those dear good Sisters of the Poor.”

  “Do they make any allusion to it?” asked Ludovic, with boyish amusement in his laughing eyes.

  Lady Argent scanned the closely-written sheets.

  “No, dear. ‘Those good and useful gifts, such joy for poor people ‘ — that can’t be the hair-brush, can it?—’ we can never thank you enough for your generosity to us’ — dear, dear, it does make one feel so dreadfully mean. ‘We shall have the wherewithal to decorate a Christmas-tree for our little ones ‘ — Ludovic! they can’t give the poor children my broken air-cushion or that torn mackintosh of yours — or the old dog-collar. ‘You will certainly be rewarded for this great generosity and our poor prayers...’ Oh dear, dear, this is very touching,” said poor Lady Argent, folding up her letter with an air of remorse.

  “Perhaps they can get money by selling the things after they’ve mended them up,” whispered Frances consolingly.

  Ludovic heard her, and looked at her very kindly, but he only said: “Now, mother, tell me what your next correspondent means by putting ‘Sag’ in the corner of the envelope? Is it the same sort of thing as Mizpah or Swastika, or whatever the thing is that housemaids have on their brooches?”

  “No, dear,” said Lady Argent with an air of
great reserve. “Quite different. It isn’t’ Sag’ at all.”

  Ludovic held out a corner of the envelope to Frances.

  “I appeal to you. If that isn’t ‘Sag,’ what is it?”

  She looked, half-laughing, towards Lady Argent.

  “Ludovic, dear, pray don’t be so ridiculous. It’s S.A.G., my dear boy, and stands for ‘St. Anthony guide,’ just to make sure the letter doesn’t go astray. I don’t say I put it on my own letters but it’s a very pious little custom — and letters might get lost, you know.”

  “I do not think that this one would have been any great loss,” rather grimly replied her son. “It’s a begging-letter, isn’t it?”

  Lady Argent took out sundry enclosures, glanced through them and exclaimed triumphantly: “Not at all! In fact it’s just the contrary. It’s from those Sisters in Dublin, offering me tickets in their great charity lottery, and with a list of the prizes. It’s really quite wonderful — a wonderful opportunity,” repeated Lady Argent, with more wistfulness than conviction in her tone.

  Ludovic took the badly typewritten strip of paper from her hand.

  “A live pig, six months old. A harmonium in perfect repair. A table-centre for the parlour — I should certainly have a try for that, mother, it would improve the drawing-room; coloured statue of St. Joseph standing four feet high, etc., etc. Tickets sixpence, ninepence, or a shilling.”

  “It’s to pay off the debt on their new church, dear,” replied his mother. “You remember the account of the opening ceremony that I read you from The Tablet the other day? So very nice and edifying, but I’m afraid they spent rather more than they meant to. At any rate they are some eight hundred pounds in debt over it, I believe, and no doubt this charity bazaar is to clear some of it off.”

  “Raffles are illegal,” quoth Ludovic severely, “and I don’t think you should encourage them, mother. Please help me to persuade my mother that charity begins at home, Miss Frances.”

  The modern fashion by which any man becomes entitled to use the Christian name of any girl spending a week in his mother’s house, failed altogether to commend itself to Ludovic Argent.