“The Canon is always in difficulties here, and would be very glad of money for some of the poor people.”
“Oh, my dear,” cried Lady Argent. “I am torn in two as you very well know, and the Canon has been a friend of ours for a number of years, but how can I encourage the spread of Protestantism?”
“You need not, darling. I don’t care a bit about their spiritual welfare, only their temporal,” coolly observed Ludovic, “and I’ve sent him a small cheque for the District Nursing Fund, from both of us.”
“Oh, my dear boy, how can you say such a thing — he doesn’t mean it, Frances — but I’m really very glad you’ve done it, and it will show the poor Canon that one isn’t narrow-minded, and perhaps bring him to see things in another light.” Lady Argent mused thoughtfully over the imaginary portrait, than which nothing could have appeared further from probability to an impartial observer, of a suddenly Catholicized Canon inspiring his flock with views similar to his own, and Ludovic glanced thoughtfully at Frances Grantham.
No hint of humour had disturbed the placid purity of her intent gaze while listening to Lady Argent and plying her with gentle questions. She was manifestly absorbed in the subject, and her natural reverence was in no way shocked or checked by demonstrations which Ludovic in his own mind could only qualify as absurd. “She is a born mystic,” he thought with a sudden conviction that was almost physical in its intensity, “the stuff to make an ideal lady abbess. If she becomes a Catholic, I believe she will be a nun.”
He felt vaguely compassionate at the idea, and said later to his mother: “Wouldn’t it be better to say rather less about religion to that little girl? She is very impressionable.”
“That’s just why I like talking to her, darling,” returned Lady Argent ingenuously. “One feels that it is sowing seed in ground which is all ready for it.”
Ludovic remained silent for a moment, pondering this excellent reason for the conversion of his mother’s youthful guest.
“I love having her here,” said his mother, “she is so sweet. I’m only afraid it’s dull for her. Would she like her sister to come for a few days, or a friend?”
“Ask her.”
Frances frankly disavowed any wish for companionship other than that of her hostess, but a few days later she said to Lady Argent: “Mrs. Severing is staying near here, at the Towers. I should like to see her, if I may. She has written me such a kind little note suggesting that I should go over there, and I am very fond of her.”
“I know you are, my dear,” kindly replied Lady Argent, who had heard many of Nina’s spiritual upliftings from her admiring echo. “I should like you to see her, and I should like to meet her myself. But the fact is — it is a little awkward — I have never called on the people at the Towers.”
“Who are they?” said Frances wonderingly.
“Sir Giles and Lady Cotton, dear. He is the original founder of Cotton and Sons — the big ironmongers in the City. That is really why — not the shop, dear, of course, but the shocking way they treated the poor dear Fathers.
I never could bear to go near them, and I had to give up the shop altogether, though I’d always dealt there for nearly twenty years. So I never called on Lady Cotton.”
“What did they do to the Fathers?” asked Frances with a curiosity unspoilt by the previous recital of many similar outrages.
“Oh, my dear child, it was all about some garden seats that the Prior ordered for the grounds of their house at Twickenham — for visitors, you know, because they naturally have no time to sit on garden seats themselves, as you can imagine, however tired they may get with all that manual labour, and getting up at four o’clock in the morning and everything; and there seems to have been some terrible misunderstanding — with the shop-people, you know, dear, and whether the seats were on approval or not. Anyway, they got left out in the rain all one night, and the paint was spoilt, and the Prior sent them back and said they couldn’t take them after all. But the shop-people were thoroughly unpleasant, and said the seats must be paid for just the same — most grasping and disagreeable, even though the letter of the law may have been on their side. I never quite understood the ins and outs of it all, but as the Prior, who was the most simple soul on earth — a Breton, dear, such a nice man — asked me himself: how they could tell whether they liked the benches or not until they had seen the effect of bad weather on them? Which sounds very reasonable indeed, but Cotton and Sons behaved quite shockingly, and even threatened to go to law about it. All very well for them, you know, dear — it would have been an advertisement in a way, but most unpleasant for the poor Fathers.”
“What was the end of it?”
“They had to pay for the garden-seats, dear, and I never could sit on one with any pleasure, though they are strewn all over the garden at Twickenham. That is to say,” said Lady Argent, colouring faintly, “it was — friends — who actually paid for them, but I never said much to Ludovic about them. To this day he does not know why I have left off going to Cotton and Sons.”
Frances did not dare to make any further suggestion for a rapprochement between Lady Argent and the quondam proprietor of Cotton and Sons. She only looked wistfully and undecidedly at the letter in her hand.
“To be sure, my dear, I was forgetting about your friend.
Of course, I do not suppose she has any idea of all this,” said Lady Argent generously, “since it is not a story that tells well for Cottons, and I do not suppose Sir Giles cares to dwell upon it. I really cannot make up my mind to call upon them — in fact, after all this time I don’t quite see how I could — but I shall be delighted if Mrs. Severing cares to come over any day next week. Ludovic could drive you over to fetch her in time for luncheon. Do write and suggest it, my dear.”
“Thank you so much. I know you will like her, and she would love to see you and the garden — and the chapel,” said Frances rather shyly. “You know she is thinking of becoming a Catholic.”
“How very delightful. But what can she be waiting for, dear? She is a widow, and her son, you tell me, is quite a boy. No doubt she will bring him into the Church too, later on. By all means, Francie, ask her to come over on Friday, or whichever afternoon suits her best.
Frances wrote the invitation gladly.
She was curiously devoid of insight, and it did not occur to her that any two people of whom she was fond could fail to like and admire one another.
“Isn’t Mrs. Severing the ‘Nina Severing’ who composes?” asked Ludovic, as he drove Frances to fetch her friend.
“Yes. Her music is my favourite modern music. Don’t you like the ‘Kismet’ songs?”
“I once heard her play,” said Ludovic, avoiding, clumsily, as he felt, a reply. “Her execution was very brilliant.”
“Meretricious,” was the adjective he had applied to the popular musician’s talent, at the time.
Ludovic wished that the recollection had not occurred to him so opportunely.
XI
PERHAPS it was reaction from the materialistic atmosphere that undoubtedly prevailed at the modern and opulent mansion of Cotton that was responsible for the extreme spirituality which marked Mrs. Severing’s conversation that Friday afternoon.
Her golden hair shone against darkly splendid furs, and her luminous gaze strayed continually to some far horizon and was continually recalled with a start that just contrived not to be imperceptible.
“It is too delightful to be in an atmosphere like this one,” she murmured to Lady Argent in the hall, and bent over her plate at luncheon for a long moment with a reverence which far surpassed the gentle murmur in which her hostess indulged.
When curried eggs were succeeded by cutlets Nina cast a gravely wondering look around her.
“Friday? “she murmured gently. “I wonder if I might ask — ah! I see you, too, fast on Fridays.”
“Oh no,” said Lady Argent gently, “I only abstain from meat — really no privation at all — I’m not very fond of meat, and it’s so much
better for one to have fish and eggs and vegetables and things, quite apart from what one always feels to be the cruelty of it, though I’m afraid one doesn’t think about it very often, except just when one actually sees the lambs playing about in the fields, or the chickens being killed in that dreadfully cruel way, poor things.”
“We should all be infinitely better physically and mentally if we only had one meal a day. Just,” said Nina with poignant simplicity, “a little fruit or uncooked nuts, and a draught of water. I’ve always said that I should like to live as the old hermits did.”
Frances was aware that Nina had always said so, and wondered vaguely why she was for the first time rendered slightly uncomfortable by the aspiration.
“May I give you some fish, Mrs. Severing?” asked Ludovic matter-of-factly.
“Please do,” she smiled. “I don’t actually belong to your beautiful Faith, but I love to live up to all the dear old symbols.”
“You couldn’t call turbot a symbol, exactly,” said Lady Argent rather doubtfully, “and I do hope you’ll give Mrs. Severing a respectable slice, my dear boy, for she must be very hungry after such a long drive.”
“No,” said Nina, looking as though a breath would blow her away altogether. “No.” Her smile repudiated the mere suggestion of hunger with a delicate completeness.
“I hear you have the most lovely little chapel,” she said softly, turning to her hostess. “It would be a great pleasure to me to see it. What a boon one’s little solitary corner for meditation is! Francie may have told you that I am rather a wanderer on the face of the earth, and so can appreciate it doubly.”
Frances, who had always looked upon Mrs. Severing as the prosperous chatelaine of Pensevern and its adjoining acres, looked so naively astonished that Ludovic felt strongly inclined to laugh. Instead, however, he charitably engaged her in a long conversation which enabled Nina to carry out the skilled presentment of herself which she evidently had in mind, unhampered by the startled gaze of her earlier acquaintance.
“Ludovic had the chapel built for me, as a surprise while I was away once,” Lady Argent told her proudly. “So very dear and kind of him, and I shall never forget my astonishment, especially as I thought at first that it was a new bathroom. Not when I went inside, you know, but we’d talked about having one for a long time, and when I saw the remains of the workmen outside, I felt sure it must be that. Ladders and tools and things, you know, and a great bucket of whitewash, such as one naturally associates with a bathroom, especially if one has it already in one’s mind, you know. But that was just because Ludovic thought it would make it lighter.”
“White walls,” murmured Nina symbolically. “I do so agree. Do you hold your own little services there?”
“The Bishop most kindly lets his own chaplain come over twice a week and say Mass. You see, the nearest Catholic Church is some miles away, and going in early isn’t always possible, although I can always manage Sundays, but of course it’s the greatest possible blessing to have the Chaplain. Such a nice man — and not an Irishman,” said Lady Argent rather thankfully.
“I’m afraid my prejudices are rather against parsons of any denomination,” Nina said with the air of one making a candid admission. “I always fancy — perhaps it’s just a fancy peculiar to myself — that one is so much more easily in tune with the Infinite, without any human intervention.
But then I’m afraid I’m a dreadfully individual person.”
“Of course,” said Lady Argent quietly, “a Catholic looks at that quite differently.”
“Ah, but don’t speak as though I were not one of you in heart, in mind,” cried Nina quickly. “I adore the Catholic Church, and when I go to Church in London, I always go to Farm Street or one of your places of worship. I always say that there is an atmosphere in a Catholic Church which one finds nowhere else.”
Ludovic caught the words and glanced hastily at his mother, aware that this well-worn sentiment is as a red rag to a bull to the devout Catholic. For the remainder of the meal he firmly directed and maintained the conversation in undenominational channels.
But after luncheon was over and Nina had smoked two cigarettes, with an air of detachment that made the act seem almost saintly, Ludovic left Lady Argent and Frances to entertain their guest unaided.
“Talk to me,” said Nina gently, turning her enormous eyes on her hostess, “talk to me a little of your wonderful Faith. I have heard so much of you — and of it — from my little Francie, and I feel she must have told you that I, too, am a seeker after truth; things of this world mean so little — oh, so little! — in comparison with the eternal quest.”
Receiving no immediate response but the slight bewilderment slowly becoming apparent on Lady Argent’s face, Nina glided on her conversational way with much discretion: “Such things are not to be talked about, are they? They go too deep. One understands. My own reserve has always been rather a proverb; but somehow in this sort of atmosphere — well, it’s deep calling to deep, isn’t it, rather?”
She laughed a very little, with a perceptible undercurrent of agitation.
“You’ll let me talk to you quite frankly, won’t you?” she asked, with an appealing look at Lady Argent. “It’s so seldom one has the impulse — and my life has been a very lonely one. Oh, I have my boy, of course — but, then, what does the younger generation give? Nothing. They can give us nothing — in the nature of things. It’s all taking on their side, and sacrifice on ours. One would hardly have it otherwise — but Little Frances knows that I don’t mean her — she is my little comfort.” Nina tendered a reassuring, if rather absentminded, hand to her little comfort, who received it rather perfunctorily, and released it a good deal sooner than its owner expected.
“My son has always been a companion to me since he was a child,” said Lady Argent firmly; “and as for sacrifices, I’ve always felt them to be on his side, if there were any, since he might have been so much more in touch with things, living in London — he writes, you know — only my tiresome asthma is so troublesome there, and he won’t hear of leaving me. Not that it is a sacrifice, since he would much rather be with me here, than without me anywhere else,” she concluded simply.
“How very, very wonderful and beautiful such a relationship is,” breathed Nina reverently. “Morris and I are all the world to one another, but he is very, very young — young for his age, as well — and perhaps the very young shrink a little from an atmosphere of sadness. You see I have been all alone for a number of years now. I married very, very young — a child — and then I was left, with.”
Before Nina had reached the looming allusion to a child with only a star to guide her, Frances rose quickly and glided from the room, rather to the relief of Mrs. Severing, who was becoming increasingly aware of her protégée’s startled eyes at various new aspects of a recital which she had supposed she knew by heart.
“That is a very pure, sweet little soul,” said Nina as the door shut, after the invariable rule which causes minds of a certain calibre instantly to adopt as subject of conversation whoever has most recently left the room.
The custom not being one which recommended itself to Lady Argent, she merely replied with a vague, kind murmur indicative of goodwill, but of nothing else.
“One does so dislike the idea of discussing les absents,” said the responsive Nina, with an atrocious accent of which she was sufficiently conscious to make her slur the words over rather rapidly, “but I have somehow felt that perhaps between us we could find out what it is that the child really needs. I don’t know that beloved Bertha Tregaskis altogether understands her, though I wouldn’t say so for the world.”
“Bertie has been very good to them both,” said Lady Argent loyally. “So wonderful of her, I always think, and all that dairy work and the Mothers’ Union and everything as well — simply marvellous.”
“Indeed, yes,” cried Nina, “quite the most practical woman I know, and my dearest friend in the world. At traction of opposites, I suppose
. I always think that she and I are the two types — Martha and Mary — active and contemplative, you know.”
Lady Argent, to whom Nina’s favourite mot was naturally new, looked more than a little doubtful.
“Dear Bertie is very wonderful altogether,” she murmured. “Her insight and sympathy, you know, and then her humility — it’s really quite touching to hear her blame or ridicule herself, when one is so full of admiration — all her gifts, you know, intellectual as well as practical.”
“Ah, those clever dialect imitations!” cried Nina, with an enthusiasm that strove subtly to confine Bertha’s mental attainments to dialect imitations. “She’s so original, isn’t she? And at one time she used to scribble a little, you know — just trifles for the magazines, but quite clever. I remember going through one or two of the proof-sheets for her — Bertie is always so ridiculously determined to think that I can write myself, you know, and wanted me to polish up some of her descriptions of travel — not, of course, that I’m really much good, though I’ve always thought I should like to write, if I could find the time.”
“Music, of course, has taken up most of your time.”
“Ah yes — my art. It’s been everything, of course.”
“It would be the greatest possible pleasure if you would play to us a little this afternoon. Ludovic loves music, and really knows a great deal about it,” said Lady Argent, believing herself to be stating a fact.
“One can always play to a true lover of music,” murmured Nina. “I often feel that with little Francie — child though she is.”
“Mrs. Grantham was so very musical, poor thing!” ejaculated Lady Argent, who would have felt it almost an irreverence to omit the epithet in the case of one deceased.
“It is a pity the girls have not inherited her gift. They neither of them play, do they, or is Rosamund musical?”
“Not in the very least,” replied Nina, who rather disliked Rosamund. “She does not know the meaning of the word. Between ourselves, dear Lady Argent, Rosamund is not a very taking sort of girl, although she’s prettier than Frances — in fact,” she added, with the easy generosity of an extremely and maturely attractive woman, “she is quite unusually pretty. But that’s all.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 69