Mother Gertrude only wrote when she could find a little spare time, and left by far the greater number of Alex’ daily outpourings to her unanswered, but she read them all — she understood, Alex told herself in a passion of pure gratitude — and she thought of her child and prayed daily for her.
Her letters began, “My dearest child,” and Alex treasured the words, and the few earnest counsels and exhortations that the letters contained.
It was much easier to carry out those exhortations at Windsor than it had been in London. Alex went almost every day to a small Catholic church, of which Holland had discovered the vicinity, and sometimes spent the whole afternoon in the drowsy heat of the little building, that was almost always empty.
Her thoughts dwelt vaguely on her own future, and on the craving necessity for self-expression, of which Mother Gertrude had made her more intensely aware than she knew. Could it be that her many failures were to prove only the preliminary to an immense success, predestined for her out of Eternity? The allurement of the thought soothed Alex with an infinite sweetness.
When Sir Francis and his wife joined the Windsor party, Lady Isabel exclaimed with satisfaction at her daughters’ looks. “Only a fortnight, and it’s done such wonders for you both! Barbara was like a little, washed-out rag, and now she’s quite blooming. You’ve got more colour too, Alex, darling, and I’m so thankful to see that you’re holdin’ yourself rather better. Evidently country air and quiet was what you both needed.”
Nevertheless, Lady Isabel lost no time in issuing and accepting various invitations that led to luncheons, tennis-parties and occasional dinners with the innumerable acquaintances whom she immediately discovered to be within walking or driving distance.
It annoyed Alex unreasonably that her liberty should be interfered with thus by entertainments which afforded her no pleasure. She ungraciously conceded her place to Barbara as often as possible, and went off to seek the solitude of the chapel with an inward conviction of her own great unworldliness and spirituality.
Barbara showed plenty of eagerness to avail herself of the opportunities thus passed on to her. She had sedulously cultivated a great enthusiasm for tennis, and by dint of sheer hard practice had actually acquired a certain forceful skill, making up for a natural lack of suppleness that deprived her play of any grace.
Her rather manufactured displays of enjoyment, which had none of the spontaneous vitality of little Pamela’s noisy, bounding high spirits, were always in sufficient contrast to Alex’ supine self-absorption to render them doubly agreeable to Sir Francis and Lady Isabel.
“I like to take my little daughter about and see her enjoying herself,” Sir Francis would say, with more wistfulness than pleasure in his voice sometimes, as though wishing that Barbara’s gaiety could have been allied to Alex’ prettier face and position as his eldest daughter.
It was only in his two sons — Cedric, with his sort of steady brilliance, and idle, happy-go-lucky Archie, by far the best-looking of the Clare children — that Sir Francis found unalloyed satisfaction.
Pamela was the modern child in embryo, and disconcerted more than she pleased him.
It was principally to gratify Cedric that Lady Isabel arranged a tennis tournament for the end of the summer, on a hot day of late September that was to remain in Alex’ memory as a milestone, unrecognized at the time, marking the end of an era.
“Thank Heaven it’s fine,” piously breathed Barbara at the window in the morning. “I shall wear my white piqué.”
Alex shrugged her shoulders.
Neither she nor Barbara would have dreamed of inaugurating a new form of toilette without previous reference to Lady Isabel, and Barbara’s small piece of self-assertion was merely designed to emphasize the butterfly rôle which she was embracing with so much determination.
“Of course, you’ll wear your piqué. Mother said so,” Alex retorted, conscious of childishness. “You’ve worn a piqué at every tennis party you’ve been to.”
“Well, this is a new piqué,” said Barbara, who invariably found a last word for any discussion, and she went downstairs singing in a small, tuneful chirp made carefully careless.
“Who is coming?” Alex inquired, having taken no part whatever in the lengthy discussions as to partners and handicaps which had engrossed Cedric and Barbara for the past ten days.
Cedric looked up, frowning, from the list on which he was still engaged. He did not speak, however; but Barbara said very sweetly, and with an emphasis so nearly imperceptible that only her sister could appreciate it:
“Oh, nobody in whom you’re at all specially interested, I’m afraid.”
Alex did not miss the implication, and coloured angrily.
“I’m going to play with that artist, the one staying with the Russells. He isn’t at all a good player,” said Barbara smoothly.
“Then why are you playing with him?”
Barbara smiled rather self-consciously. “It would hardly do to annex the best partners for ourselves, would it?” she inquired. “And we’re trying to equalize the setts as far as possible. Cedric has to play with the youngest Russell girl, who’s too utterly hopeless.”
“I shall take all her balls,” said Cedric calmly, “so it’ll be all right. She doesn’t mind any amount of poaching. We shall lose on her serves, of course, but that may be just as well.”
“Why, dear?” innocently inquired Lady Isabel.
“I don’t think it looks well to carry off a prize at one’s own show,” Cedric said candidly.
“I should rather love the Indian bangles,” owned Barbara, glancing enviously at the array of silver trifles that constituted the prizes.
“You won’t get them, my child — not with McAllister as your partner. You’ll see, Lady Essie Cameron will get them, or one of the Nottinghams, if they’re in good form.”
“Peter Nottingham is playing with you, Alex,” Barbara informed her.
“That boy!”
“Nottingham is nearly eighteen, let me tell you,” said Cedric in tones of offence, “and plays an extraordinarily good game of tennis. In fact, he’ll be about the best man there probably, which is why I’ve had to give him to you for a partner. As you’ve not taken the trouble to practise a single stroke the whole summer, I should advise you to keep out of his way, and let him stand up to the net and take every blessed thing he can get.
“It’ll be a nice thing for me,” said Cedric bitterly, “to have to apologize to Nottingham for making him play with the worst girl there, and that my sister.”
“Cedric,” said his mother gently, “I’m sure I’ve seen Alex play very nicely.”
Alex was grateful, but she wished that, like Barbara, she had practised her strokes under Cedric’s tuition.
It was characteristic of her that when the occasion for excelling had actually come, she should passionately desire to excel, whereas during previous weeks of supine indifference, it had never seemed to her worth while to exert herself in the attainment of proficiency.
After breakfast she went out to the tennis-court, freshly marked and rolled, and wondered if it would be worth while to make Archie send her over some balls, but Cedric hurried up in a business-like way and ordered everybody off the ground while he instructed the garden boy in the science of putting up a new net.
Alex moved disconsolately away, and tried to tell herself that none of these trivial, useless enthusiasms which they regarded so earnestly were of any real importance.
She wandered down to the chapel and sat there, for the most part pondering over her own infinitesimal chances of success in the coming tournament, and thinking how much she would like to astonish and disconcert Barbara and Cedric by a sudden display of skill.
It was true that she had not practised, and was at no time a strong player, but she had sometimes shown an erratic brilliance in a sudden, back-handed stroke and, like all weak people, she had an irrational belief in sudden and improbable accessions of luck.
Needless to say, this b
elief was not justified.
Peter Nottingham, a tall, shy boy with a smashing service and tremendous length of reach, was intent on nothing but victory, and though he muttered politely, “Not all, ‘m sure,” at Alex’ preliminary, faltering announcement of her own bad play, the very sense of his keenness made her nervous.
She missed every stroke, gave an aimless dash that just succeeded in stopping a ball that would obviously have been “out,” and felt her nerve going.
Just as success always led her on to excel, so failure reduced her capabilities to a minimum. Her heart sank.
They lost the first game.
“Will you serve?” enquired Peter Nottingham politely.
“I’d rather you did.”
Alex was infinitely relieved that responsibility should momentarily be off her own shoulders, but young Nottingham’s swift service was as swiftly returned by Lady Essie Cameron, an excellent player, and one who had no hesitation in smashing the ball on to the farthest corner of the court, where Alex stood, obviously nervous and unready.
She failed to reach it, and could have cried with mortification.
Thanks to Nottingham, however, they won the game.
It was their solitary victory.
Alex served one fault after another, and at last ceased even to murmur perfunctory apologies as she and her partner, whose boyish face expressed scarlet vexation, crossed over the court. She was not clear as to the system on which Cedric had arranged the tournament, but presently she saw that the losing couples would drop out one by one until the champions, having won the greatest number of setts, would finally challenge any remaining couples whom they had not yet encountered.
“I say, I’m afraid this is pretty rotten for you, old chap,” she heard Cedric, full of concern, say to her partner.
“Perhaps we may get another look in at the finals,” said Peter Nottingham, with gloomy civility.
He and Alex, with several others, sat and watched the progress of the games. It gave Alex a shock of rather unpleasant surprise to see the improvement in Barbara’s play.
Her service, an overhand one in which very few girl players were then proficient, gave rise to several compliments. Her partner was the good-looking artist, Ralph McAllister.
“Well played!” he shouted enthusiastically, again and again.
Once or twice, when Barbara missed a stroke, Alex heard him exclaim softly, “Oh, hard luck! Well tried, partner.”
Alex, tired and mortified, almost angry, wondered why Fate should have assigned to her as a partner a mannerless young cub like Nottingham, who thought of nothing but the horrid game. It did not occur to her that perhaps McAllister would not have been moved to the same enthusiasm had she, instead of Barbara, been playing with him.
The combination, however, was beaten by Cedric and the youngest of the Russell girls, a pretty, roundabout child, who left all the play to her partner and screamed with excitement and admiration almost every time he hit the ball.
It was quite evident that the final contest lay between them and Lady Essie Cameron, a strapping, muscular Scotch girl, whose partner kept discreetly to the background, and allowed her to stand up to the net and volley every possible ball that came over.
When she and her partner had emerged victorious from every contest, nothing remained but for Cedric and Miss Russell to make good their claim to the second place by conquering the remaining couples.
Alex played worse than ever, and the sett was six games to love. As she went past, Cedric muttered to her low and viciously:
“Are you doing it on purpose?”
She knew that he was angry and mortified at his friend Nottingham’s disappointment, but his words struck her like a blow.
She stood with her back to every one, gulping hard.
“You didn’t have a chance, old man,” said a sympathetic youth behind her. “They might have arranged the setts better.”
Peter Nottingham growled in reply.
“Who was the girl you were playing with?”
Alex realized that her white frock and plain straw hat were indistinguishable from all the other white frocks and straw hats present, seen from the back.
“Hush,” said young Nottingham more cautiously. “That was one of the girls of the house, a Miss Clare.”
“Can’t play a bit, can she? The other one wasn’t bad. Didn’t one of them give poor Cardew the chuck or something?”
“Oh, shut up,” Nottingham rebuked the indiscreet one. “Much more likely he chucked her, if you ask me.”
Alex could bear the risk of their discovering her proximity no longer, and hastened into the house.
It was the first afternoon since her arrival at Windsor that she had not looked eagerly for the afternoon post.
The letter, a square, bluish envelope of cheap glazed paper, caught her eye almost accidentally on the table in the hall.
She recognized it instantly, and snatching it up, opened and read it standing there, with the scent of a huge bowl of late roses pervading the whole hall, and the distant sound of cries and laughter faintly penetrating to her ears from the tennis-court and garden outside.
Mother Gertrude’s writing showed all the disciplined regularity characteristic of a convent, with the conventional French slope and long-tailed letters, the careful making of which Alex herself had had instilled into her in Belgium.
The phraseology of the Superior’s letter was conventional, too, and even her most earnest exhortations, when delivered in writing, bore the marks of restraint.
But this letter was different.
Alex knew it at once, even before she had read it to the end of the four closely-covered sheets.
“Sept. 30, 1897.
“MY DEAREST CHILD,
“There are many letters from you waiting to be answered, and I thank you for them all, and for the confidence you bestow upon me, which touches me very deeply.
“Now at last I am able to sit down and feel that I shall have a quiet half-hour in which to talk to my child, although I dare not hope that it will be an uninterrupted one!
“So the life you are leading does not satisfy you, Alex? You tell me that you come in from the gaieties and amusements and little parties, which, after all, are natural to your age and to the position in which God has placed you, full of dissatisfaction and restlessness of mind.
“Alex, my dear child, I am not surprised. You will never find that what the world can offer will satisfy you. Most of us may have known similar moments of fatigue, of disillusionment, but to a heart and mind like yours, above all, it is inconceivable that anything less than Infinity itself should bring any lasting joy. Let me say what I have so often thought, after our conversations together in my little room — there is only one way of peace for such a nature as yours. Give up all, and you shall find all.
“I have thought and prayed over this letter, my little Alex, and am not writing lightly. You will forgive me if I am going too far, but I long to see my child at rest, and for such as you there is only one true rest here.
“Human love has failed you, and you are left alone, with all your impulses of sacrifice and devotion to another thrown back upon yourself. But, Alex, there is One to whom all the love and tenderness of which you know yourself capable can be offered — and He wants it. Weak though you are, and all-perfect though He is, He wants you.
“I don’t think there has been a day since I first heard His call, when I have not marvelled at the wonder of it — at the infinite honour done to me.
“If I have told you more of the secret story of my vocation than to any one else, it has been for a reason which I think you have guessed. I have seen for a long while what it was that God asked of you, Alex, and I believe the time has come when you will see it too. Your last letter, with its cry of loneliness, and the bitter sense of being unwanted, has made me almost sure of it.
“You are not unwanted — you need never be lonely again. ‘Leave all things and follow Me!’ If you hear that call, which I believ
e with all my heart to have sounded for you, can you disobey it? Will you not rather, forsaking all things, follow Him, and in so doing, find all things?”
“I have written a long while, and cannot go on now. God bless you again and again, and help you to be truly generous with Him.
“Write to me as fully as you will, and count upon my poor prayers and my most earnest religious affection. I need not add come and see me again on your return to London. My child will always find the warmest of welcomes! It was not for nothing that you came into the convent chapel to find rest and quiet, that summer day, my Alex!
“Your devoted Mother in Christ,
“GERTRUDE OF THE HOLY CROSS.”
Alex stood almost as though transfixed. The letter hardly came as a surprise. She had long since known subconsciously what was in the Superior’s mind, and yet the expression of it produced in her a sort of stupefaction.
Could it be true?
Was there really such a refuge for her, somewhere a need of her, and of that passionate desire for self-devotion that was so essential a part of her?
The thought brought with it a tingling admixture of bitter disappointment and of poignant rapture.
She realized almost despairingly that she could no longer stand in the hall clasping Mother Gertrude’s letter unconsciously to her.
Already light, flying feet were approaching from the garden.
“I came to look for you, Alex,” said Barbara breathlessly in the doorway. “They’re going to give the prizes. What are you doing?”
“I’m coming,” said Alex mechanically. She was rather surprised that Barbara should have taken the trouble to come for her.
“Did mother send you?”
“No,” said Barbara simply; “but I thought it would look very bad if you kept out of the way of it because you happened to play badly and not win a prize.”
So Alex assisted at the prize-giving, and saw Lady Essie accept the jingling, Indian silver bangles that were so much in fashion, with frank pleasure and gratitude, and saw consolation prizes awarded to Cedric and to his partner, who appeared entirely delighted, although she had done nothing at all to deserve distinction.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 110