“I don’t understand you, Nina. You don’t mean to become a Roman Catholic, so what’s the fun of dabbling in it?”
Nina understood that the unnecessary bluntness in her friend’s phraseology had been brought there by a certain rapt dreaminess of which she was fully conscious in her own expression.
“Dear Bertie,” she said softly, “it is quite true that I can’t be bound by any of the conventional laws of religion, but mayn’t I seek comfort where I can best find it?”
Bertha became, if possible, more matter-of-fact than before, in antagonistic contrast to this soulful appeal.
“You know they charge for your board and lodging at these places?”
Nina’s tinkling laugh pealed protestingly.
“My dear, how desperately practical you always are! It’s positively comic. Do you know, that I’m sometimes tempted to think that you and I represent the two types.”
“Martha and Mary,” Bertha unkindly forestalled her friend’s seasoned witticism. “I know, dear, though perhaps there’s a good deal more of the Mary in me than you suppose — but I know it’s difficult to judge of people who have the misfortune to be as reserved as I am. However, if you really have taken a fancy to this scheme, by all means let Francie go with you. I shall be only too delighted, and it will be a relief to Minnie.”
“Poor Miss Blandflower! I can’t quite see her in a convent atmosphere, I admit.”
“Qu’ allait-elle faire dans cette galore,” hummed Bertha.
Nina, who did not like Bertha’s admirable French accent, immediately gave a small excruciated shriek, “Out of tune, my dear! You were at least a semitone out — Aid.”
The annoyance which is common to everybody when accused, whether falsely or otherwise, of singing out of tune, was evident on Bertha’s broad, good-humoured face, and went some way towards consoling Nina for a rather impulsive decision.
Some few days later, she and Frances Grantham went together to the convent.
“I’m glad the Retreat doesn’t begin till the day after to-morrow,” said Frances rather nervously, as they waited outside the tall, narrow building, situated at the extreme end of the small provincial town. “It will give us time to get used to everything, and perhaps to know one or two of the nuns.”
“The Superior’s letter to me was charming,” said Nina firmly, “quite charming, and I almost feel as though I knew her already. Somehow one has a sort of awareness of anyone with whom one is in tune, don’t you think so? It’s almost a sense of recognition.”
Mrs. Severing’s recognition of Mere Pauline, however, did not appear likely to progress beyond this initial stage for some time after a very aged lay-sister in a black veil and habit had conducted the travellers into a large and plainly furnished parlour, and left them to await the Superior’s arrival.
“Can we have mistaken the date?” asked Nina, when a quarter of an hour had elapsed and their solitude still remained undisturbed.
“Perhaps she is very busy, if a lot of people are arriving to make the Retreat,” suggested Frances doubtfully.
They exchanged surmises at intervals for another ten minutes.
“Do open the door, Francie,” said Nina at last in annoyed accents. “That stupid old sister must have forgotten us.”
Frances rather unwillingly looked into the dark, narrow passage.
A couple of girls with black lace veils pinned over untidy hair, and falling incongruously across plaid blouses, were skirmishing and giggling at one end of the corridor. They broke off as Frances opened the door and at the same instant one of them exclaimed: “Chut! Notre Mire!”
A very small, black-clad figure advanced through a further door, and Frances, hurriedly retreating, was in time to see the two girls make a sort of subdued dash towards her which the Superior put aside with a gentle but very decided little movement of the hand, and “Pas ici, mes enfants.”
The next moment she came into the parlour.
Mere Pauline was an exceedingly small, upright person, with black eyes to which a pair of large round spectacles gave an air of inquiry, a hooked nose, and a thin, decided little mouth. She spoke English fluently, although with the unmistakable accent and intonation of a Frenchwoman.
“Mrs. Severing?” she inquired of Nina. “I am very glad to see you — and this is Lady Argent’s little friend. I may call you Frances, dear? I ‘ave ‘eard so much about you. ‘Ow nice to see you ‘ere.”
Like the majority of her countrywomen, she altogether ignored the letter H.
After a few moments’ conversation, the nun offered to show her visitors to their bedrooms.
“We have not much room,” she said smilingly, preceding them up a long flight of narrow stairs. “The house is full of ladies who are come for the Retreat, as well as all our permanent lady-boarders.”
“Have you many?” inquired Nina, panting slightly from the ascent, which Mere Pauline was conducting with a sort of businesslike rapidity.
“Six or seven who are permanently at home here, and then a number which is always varying, of young girls whose parents have confided them to us for a time to learn English. They are for the most part Spanish, or French.
They have given up their rooms for the Retreat, and have moved upstairs into the piano-cells,” said Mere Pauline serenely.
She stopped before a door where a neat card was pinned with Mrs. Severing’s name upon it. Just above it, a redbordered scroll proclaimed in Gothic lettering “Ste.
Perpetue.”
“I have put you into Ste. Perpetue as it has a very nice aspect,” announced the Superior, “and Frances is next door — St. Felicitee. You see, you can look out upon our little piece of garden.”
She advanced into the room, which was a very small and narrow one, with distempered green walls, a low iron bedstead, a washing-stand and minute chest-of-drawers combined, a straw-bottomed chair and one strip of faded carpet beside the bed. A plaster crucifix and a blue china holy water stoup hung against the wall. Underneath stood the only concession to worldly requirements that the room contained — a looking-glass framed in wood, placed upon a tall packing-case indifferently disguised by a white and beautifully darned cotton cover.
The slight shade of dismay which had crossed Nina’s face on entering, gave way almost instantly to a suitable expression of enchantment, as she exclaimed in low, heartfelt tones: “A convent cell! Ah, how I have dreamed of finding myself in one.”
If Mere Pauline failed to see the applicability of this description to one of her most cherished guest-chambers, she made no sign of it, but merely proceeded to conduct Frances into the exactly similar room adjoining.
“I hope you will be very happy here, dear child,” she said kindly, “and that we shall have many little talks later on.
The Retreat does not begin till to-morrow night, so you will have time to look about you.”
“I thought it began the day after to-morrow,” said Frances.
“So it does, but you will enter into silence on the previous night,” said the Superior. “But here is our programme awaiting you.”
She picked up a small leaflet, neatly written out in violet ink, from the washing-stand, which also appeared destined to fulfil the ordinary functions of a table, and left her guests to study it, with the warning that a bell would shortly summon them to supper in the dining-room.
“Supper at six o’clock!” exclaimed Nina. “What an extraordinary hour. I wonder if we have it with the nuns.”
“I think the community live in a different part of the house altogether,” said Frances diffidently, “and I’m sure we don’t have meals with them.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been reading one or two lives of nuns lately — Lady Argent lent me some,” murmured Frances, and hastily changed the conversation by beginning to read aloud from the purple leaflet.
“7 a m. Mass for those following the Retreat.
“8 a m. Breakfast.
“8.30 a in to 10 a m. Free time in
the garden.
“10 a m. First Meditation.
“11 a m to 12 a m. Free time for writing.
“12 a m. Dinner.
“1 p m. Exercise in the garden.
“2 p m. Second Meditation.
“3 p in to 5 p m. Free time. Tea [if desired] at 4 o’clock.
“5 p m. Rosary in the Chapel and Benediction.
“5-30 pm- Instruction in the Chapel.
“6 p m. Supper.
“6.30 p in to 7.30 p m. Free time.
“7 30 I’m Way of the Cross and night prayers in the Chapel.”
“I’m not sure how far it will be wise to follow the routine,” said Nina rather languidly. “I certainly can’t meditate to order. But no doubt these rules are only for the girls she was speaking about, and have nothing to do with visitors.”
“Oh, but I like the idea of rules,” said Frances quickly.
“It’s such a help to do things regularly, it seems to me, and all together.”
“Ah, little one, you are still child enough to feel it so.
When one is as tired and heavy-hearted as I am sometimes...”
Perhaps Nina was not altogether sorry that a violent bell-ringing interrupted these mournful reflections without allowing time for their completion.
“How shall we find the dining-room?” said Frances, preparing to descend the stairs.
“There can’t be very many rooms to choose from, in such a small house. I wonder what their idea of dinner may be — or supper, I suppose one ought to call it. Not bread and water, I do trust.”
Nina’s gloomy forebodings were not realized. The meal was abundant and not badly cooked, from potato soup to hashed mutton and cabinet pudding.
A rather formidable-looking old lady of immense size, with the inevitable black veil on her scanty white hair, and a bristling moustache adorning her upper lip, sat at the head of the long table. Opposite her was a stout Spanish girl who might have been of any age between eighteen and thirty-five, with oily-looking plaits of black hair coiled flatly against each ear. The intervening places were for the most part filled with black-clad, creaking ladies of uncertain years, each one of whom was either extremely fat or abnormally thin, and a sprinkling of French and Spanish girls in brightly coloured blouses with the black veil either pinned on to each chignon or flung scarf-wise over the shoulders.
A young English nun greeted the new-comers as they made their rather tardy appearance.
“Mrs. Severing, isn’t it — and Miss Grantham? Just in time for supper. Will you sit here, Mrs. Severing, next to Mrs. Mulholland?”
The mountainous Mrs. Mulholland bowed ceremoniously from her seat at the head of the table.
“And you’ll sit here, dear, next to your friend,” the nun continued to Frances. “Now you must all make acquaintance as quickly as you can, since by this time to-morrow there’ll be no more talking and the opportunity will be gone.”
There was a general laugh at this pleasantry, in which the nun herself joined heartily as she left the dining-room.
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 anaemic-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 Mere 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, “Mere 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 Mere 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, Mere Alphonsine, who was alive then, asked me herself to take the head of the table.
‘Vous dirigeres 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? Mere 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. Mere 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 Mere 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 Mere 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. Mulhollond,’ Mere 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 Mere 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.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 72