“Kindly let me.”
“Just what I think. She must go straight ahead and follow her conscience in spite.”
The door-handle turned from outside.
“Who is there?” almost shouted Mrs. Mulholland in truculent accents.
“It is I. Mere Pauline.”
The small, trenchant voice fell like a douche of cold water on the agitation within. Mrs. Mulholland, in some strange way, seemed to Bertha to crumple up under the severely inquiring gaze of the little French Superior.
“What is all this?”
“A most unjustifiable piece of interference on the part of this person,” said Mrs. Tregaskis, in no uncertain accents.
“She appears to think herself called upon to give me advice about the child I’ve brought up.”
The corners of Mere Pauline’s little mouth closed more firmly, and she turned an inquiring gaze through her spectacles on to Mrs. Mulholland, whose face was now suffused.
She had the angry, confused aspect of a child detected in naughtiness.
“Well, well, ma Mere, I may have exceeded my rights a little in what I said. I know very well I’m apt to get ex cited when it’s a question of gaining a soul for God.”
“I think you ‘ave exceeded them very considerably,” said Mere Pauline with perfect candour. “It was not your business.”
The mighty bulk of Mrs. Mulholland seemed to droop under the icy accents of the little Superior.
She gulped loudly two or three times, and then said very humbly, and with obvious effort, to Mrs. Tregaskis: “Then I hope you’ll excuse me. I — I hope you’ll forgive me, Mrs. Tregaskis. I’m afraid my interference may have done more harm than good.”
“Say no more about it,” said Bertha bluntly. “I quite understand.”
She was astounded at the sudden change operated in the redoubtable Mrs. Mulholland, and when the old woman had gone heavily and dejectedly from the room she told Mere Pauline so frankly.
“Oui, oui,” said the imperturbable Superior dispassionately. “Elle a beaucoup de vertu, beaucoup d’humilite, la pauvre. One word is enough. She is very good, in spite of that tongue.”
“Now, is that the effect of her religion — the humility, I mean, not the tongue?”
“But yes, madame, naturally. What else should make her own herself in the wrong, like a child that is scolded? The Catholic religion teaches nothing if not the practice of humility in everyday life.”
“Upon my word,” cried Bertha, half laughing, “if J thought it would have that effect upon Frances, she should do as she liked to-morrow.”
It was perhaps the strategical opening for which she had subconsciously been waiting in order to effect a graceful retreat from a position of resistance rapidly growing untenable.
At all events Frances found that her guardian offered no further definite opposition to her wishes.
“Mind you, my child, I don’t approve of what you’re doing,” Bertha told her gravely, “but neither your Cousin Frederick nor I wish to forbid it definitely. As you know, Im not very much bound by any creed myself, so perhaps I don’t attach as much importance to your leaving the Church of England as other people may. So long as we all keep as straight as we can and play the game it doesn’t seem to me to matter very much what we call ourselves. So I’m going to leave you free to make your own choice, my little Francie.”
“I wish you didn’t mind — I wish I hadn’t got to make you unhappy,” said Frances in tears.
Bertha kissed her.
“My poor little girl, I wish I’d never let these people get hold of you and your poor little conscience.”
Frances immediately drew herself away, colouring.
“What! Mustn’t I even criticize them?” said Bertha, half sadly, half playfully. “Fathers and mothers get left alone in the old nest very quickly, when the young birds first find their wings, Francie. You’ll find that out one day.”
Frances told herself, with a quick pang of compassion, that Cousin Bertie was thinking as much of Hazel as of her.
“It won’t make any difference,” she faltered anxiously, hardly knowing what she said. “At least.”
“Ah! At least “said Bertha, laughing a little.
“Well, my Francie, you’re joining the Church into which your mother was born, and I hope with all my heart that you’ll find all you expect there. And your old heretic guardian will be in a corner in the chapel when you’re received, praying for whatever is best for you.”
The ceremony of Frances’ reception into the Catholic Church took place quietly in the convent chapel a day or two later.
Only Bertha Tregaskis and one or two members of the Community were present, but before the brief ceremony was over Mrs. Mulholland creaked in, with elaborate gestures of silence, sank upon her knees in the bench beside Bertha, and turned upon her a smile in which triumph and compassion were strangely blended.
“The deed is done,” wrote Bertha that evening, in a hasty scrawl addressed to Miss Blandflower. “The child seems happy, and I hope she’ll settle down after this.
Everyone goes through some sort of youthful crisis, and I have a great belief in getting it over early. We shall be back on Friday, after a night spent with Hazel in London.
One hint, Minnie, before I finish this scribble — treat Frances just as though nothing had happened, won’t you? The excitement is over now, and I don’t want her to go on brooding over it, and thinking her own little affairs of enormous importance to the world in general. The best thing now is to let her settle quietly down to everyday life again.”
In the days that immediately ensued, however, Mrs. Tregaskis saw with satisfaction that this aspiration appeared likely to be realized.
Frances was calmly, silently happy.
She was more affectionate towards her guardian than she had ever shown herself before, as though to demonstrate that no added difference should join itself to that new, deeper one of which she was more conscious than was Bertha.
There was also much less exaggeration in her devotion to her new creed than Mrs. Tregaskis had expected. Beyond attending the daily Mass, as did all the lady boarders, and spending a little while in the chapel every evening, Frances appeared willing to spend the whole of the day in Bertha’s company, a certain radiant serenity of outlook that now encompassed her making her a charming companion.
She was delighted at the prospect of staying for one evening with Hazel before the return journey to Cornwall, and when, on the eve of departure, Bertha asked rather curiously whether she minded leaving the convent, Frances replied with a surprised look: “No, not really. Not a bit. I hope I shall see them again one day, and you won’t mind my writing to Mere Pauline from time to time, will you, Cousin Bertie?”
Bertha looked at her sharply.
A desire to test the reality of the steadfast-seeming happiness that shone from the eyes of her ward made her say, rather curtly: “I don’t know, dear. Why this necessity for correspondence?”
“I’d like to write to her, that’s all; but, of course, not if you don’t want me to,” said Frances placidly.
Bertha laughed, her good-humour suddenly restored.
“You can write if you want to, within reason. You are not generally a good correspondent, Frances.”
And Frances said calmly that no, she was afraid she wasn’t, except, perhaps, as regarded Rosamund.
Evidently the crisis was over, thought Bertha, not without relief. There might come a reaction later on, but with that she could trust herself to cope when at Porthlew.
They left the convent amid a crowd of auguries and farewells.
“Vous nous reviendrez, ma petite,” the Superior said as she embraced Frances, and her voice had all the authority of an assertion of fact.
“Oui ma Mere,” said Frances timidly. She was always shy of speaking French, especially in front of her guardian, who was apt to jeer good-humoredly at the schoolroom lingua-franca of her wards.
“Mais oui, mais oui!” crie
d Bertha heartily. “A bientot tout le monde!” In the universal benevolence which always pervades the welcome hour of departure from a boring sojourn, she even added cordially: “Vous nous reveres I’annee prochaine!”
In the cab which was to take them to the station, the last wave exchanged between Frances and the substantial form of old Mrs. Mulholland, who stood agitating her arms like a semaphore in the convent doorway, Frances turned inquiringly to her guardian.
“Do you really think we shall come back next year, Cousin Bertie? Did you mean for the Retreat?”
“Perhaps, Francie. If you’re very keen about it. We’ll see.”
“Oh,” said Frances, with a sudden and most unusual effusion, “you are so kind to me, Cousin Bertie. I don’t feel I can ever be grateful enough to you. I wish I need never — never do anything but just what you liked!”
Bertha was amazed, and also rather touched.
She laid her hand kindly on Frances’.
“Well, my dear little girl, that depends on yourself, doesn’t it? But you’ve always been a good child, my Francie, and I know the poor little conscience is responsible for most of our differences of opinion, eh?”
She laughed a little.
“As long as you’re good and happy, that’s all I want, my darling. One only lives for the younger generation, you know, as one goes on. Hazel — and Hazel’s child, and, I hope, some day, your children and Rosamund’s — that’s all I care about.”
“I’m so glad we’re going to Hazel now,” said Frances sympathetically.
Bertha squeezed her hand suddenly.
“Oh, my dear, think of it! To see her with a baby of her own — to see little Richard Frederick at last!”
She stopped abruptly, as though afraid of her own emotion.
Frances reflected rather mournfully that Cousin Bertie saw pathetically little of her daughter nowadays. On the causes which had led to that estrangement she preferred not to dwell. She had known very little of the difficulties surrounding Hazel’s marriage, and the subject was never discussed at Porthlew. Perhaps Frances, innocent and affectionate, and looking upon Hazel as a sister only less dear to her than Rosamund, unconsciously shrank from applying the standards of her new-found creed to the position held by the second Lady Marleswood.
She had by her a letter from Rosamund that added to her happiness. Her sister had written: “I do understand Francie, and I can’t help being glad that you are a Catholic at last. Cousin Frederick has been nicer about it that you would have supposed. It was he who told Cousin Bertie that as things were they had no right to forbid you, and he suddenly asked me last night if you were happy. So I said you were. Unluckily, Miss Blandflower was in the room, and said it was a case of live and let live, or something of that sort, and you know how angry she always makes him, so he said nothing more.
As a matter of fact, I think that live and let live is rather what Cousin Frederick would like to do... and that’s what made him say you were to do as you liked. As for me, I’m so thankful you really are happy about it all. I think the convent sounds nice, and Mrs. Mulholland. I wish I could see her, and thank her for being so nice to you.
Some day, darlingest, when we can go back home to the Wye Valley and live together, we can ask her to come and stay, can’t we? After all, it may not be so very far off, now I am so nearly of age.”
Frances felt very happy as she gazed from the train window, dreamily absorbed in her own thoughts. The Retreat, the sense of illumination vouchsafed her, the directions and instructions received from Father Anselm, and the present joy of knowing herself in the Church where she had longed to be, filled her mind. She did not want to think of the future. If there was a lurking sense of apprehension, as of some sacrifice that was to be demanded of her in return for all that she had been given, a grievous dread of inflicting pain, far sharper and stranger than any yet, upon those whom she loved best and from whom she felt already separated as though by an invisible gulf, Frances would not dwell upon it.
Everyone was so kind to her, and she was happy, and Cousin Bertie had understood that never, never of her own free will would Frances grieve or disobey her, and had been so good to her — and they were going to see Hazel and the wonderful baby, Dickie.
And besides, had not Father Anselm and Mere Pauline both said that she was to leave the future in God’s hands, and not to look ahead at all, just yet? 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 Maries wood.
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 negligee 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.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 77