CHAPTER XX
SOUTHWARD
St. Joseph’s School was a pleasant early Victorian house with white jalousies encircled by a deep verandah of florid ironwork. The garden, even for the spacious northwest of London, was exceptionally large, and like all London gardens seemed larger than it really was by the contrast between its arbours and the houses entirely surrounding them. There was a mystery about its seclusion that no country garden can possess, and one could imagine no fitter tenants of its leafy recesses than these placid nuns and the young girls entrusted to their tutelage. It seemed that in all those fortunate windows of the houses which overlooked through the branches of the great lime-trees this serene enclosure there must be sitting poets in contemplation of the pastoral of youth being played below. The flash of a white dress, the echo of a laugh, the flight of a tennis-ball, the glint of tumbling curls, all these must have held the onlookers entranced as by the murmur and motion and form and iridescence of a fountain; and this happy valley among the arid cliffs of London bricks must have appeared to them less credible than the green mirages in desert lands that tease the dusty eyelids of travellers.
“I’m glad you have a friend of your own age,” Nancy said to Letizia, when the morning after her arrival they were walking together along the convent avenue strewn with October’s fallen leaves.
“Well, she’s not a very great friend,” Letizia demurred.
“But I thought you wrote and told me that she was so very nice?”
“Well, she is very nice. Only I don’t like her very much.”
“But if she’s so very nice, why don’t you like her?”
“Well, I don’t like her, because sheisso nice. Whenever I say, ‘Let’s do something,’ she says, ‘Oh, yes, do let’s,’ and then I don’t want to do it so much.”
“Darling, isn’t that being rather perverse?”
“What’s ‘perverse,’ mother? Do tell me, because I’m collecting difficult words. I’ve got thirty-eight words now, and when I’ve got fifty I’m going to ask Hilda Moore what they all mean, and she’s twelve and it’ll be a disgusting humiliation for her when she doesn’t know. And that’ll be simply glorious, because she thinks she’s going to be a yellow-ribbon presently.”
“But don’t you want to be a yellow-ribbon?”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s really worth while. Evelyn Joy who’s much the nicest girl in the school has never been a ribbon. She said she couldn’t be bothered. She’s frightfully nice, and I love her one of the best six people in the world. She can’t be bothered about anything, and most of the girls are always in a fuss about something. Dorothy Andrews only wants to do what I want, because she thinks she ought to. Fancy, she told me she simply longed to be a saint. And she said if she died young she’d pray for me more than anybody, and I said, ‘Pooh, St. Maurice isalwayspraying for me and he wears armour and is very good-looking, so there’s no need for you to die young.’ And then she cried and said when she was dead I’d be sorry I’d been so cruel.”
Nancy thought that Letizia was not less precocious than she had always been, and she wondered if she ought to say anything to Sister Catherine about it. She decided that Sister Catherine was probably well aware of it and, not being anxious to give her the idea that she was criticising the wonderful education that the nuns were giving her little daughter, she resolved to say nothing.
She did, however, discuss with Sister Catherine herown project to go to Italy and have her voice trained; and she was much relieved when it was approved.
“It would be wrong not to avail yourself of such an opportunity,” the nun exclaimed. “Even if it involved breaking into your own savings, I should still urge you to go; but there seems no likelihood of that, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t accept this Mr. Kenrick’s offer. I’d no idea that you had a wonderful voice, and how delightful to be going to Italy. Do sing for us one evening at Vespers before you go. Sister Monica would be so pleased, and we shall all enjoy it so much. We shall feel so grand.”
“But I’m just as much astonished to hear that I’ve got this wonderful voice as you are,” Nancy said. “Nobody ever told me I had, until this fairy prince arrived in Bristol.”
“Ah, but I think people are always so afraid to think anybody has a good voice until somebody else has established the fact for them,” Sister Catherine laughed. “It was just a piece of good luck that you should be heard by somebody who understood what good singing is.... I’m glad you think dear little Letizia is looking so well. She is a great treasure, and we are all very proud of her. She has so much personality, and I’m doing my best to let her keep it without spoiling her.”
“I’m sure you are,” Nancy said. “And och, I wish I could ever tell you how grateful I am to you.”
“There is no need of words, dear child,” said the nun, smiling. “You prove it to us all the time. I heard from the Reverend Mother yesterday, and she inquired most affectionately after you.”
That afternoon Nancy went to Mr. Kenrick’s flat in Adelphi Terrace. He was so kind that she reproached herself for having refused so brusquely to let him meet her at Paddington.
“Well, it’s all arranged with Maestro Gambone. He’s really the kindest old man, though he may seem a little fierce before you know him. Should he, on hearing yourvoice, decide it’s not worth training, you’ll have to forgive me for rousing your ambitions and let me see you through any difficulties you may have about getting another engagement in England. I have taken a room for you with some people called Arcucci who have apensionein the Via Virgilio which is close to Santa Lucia. Arcucci himself was a singer; but he lost his voice through illness, poor chap. He never earned more than a local reputation at the San Carlo Opera House; but he is full of stories about famous singers, and you’ll get the right atmosphere from him. His wife is a capable and homely woman who will make you as comfortable as Neapolitans know how, which, to tell the truth, is not saying much.”
While her patron was speaking, Nancy was gazing out of his study window at the Thames and letting her imagination drift down on the fast-flowing ebb with the barges that all seemed like herself bound for some adventure far from this great city of London. Away on the horizon beyond Lambeth the domes of the Crystal Palace sparkled in the clearer sunshine. Even so, on an horizon much farther south than Sydenham flashed the elusive diamonds of success and fame.
“Tuesday is no day to set out on a journey,” said Kenrick. “So, I’ve taken your ticket for Wednesday. You’ll leave Paris that night from the Gare de Lyon in the Rome express, and you’ll be at Naples on Friday afternoon.”
He went to a drawer in his desk and took out the tickets.
“Good luck,” he said, holding Nancy’s hand.
She was again the prey of an embarrassment against which she tried hard to struggle, because it seemed to smirch the spirit in which she wanted to set out. This constraint prevented her from thanking him except in clumsy conventional phrases.
“Now, will you dine with me to-night?”
She wanted to refuse even this, but she lacked thecourage; in the end she passed a pleasant enough evening, listening to her host expatiate upon the career for which he assured her again and again she was certainly destined. He wanted her to lunch and dine with him on the next day too; but she pleaded the urgency of shopping and packing and her desire to see something of her daughter.
“Very well then,” he said, as he put her into a hansom outside Verrey’s where they had dined. “I’ll be at Victoria on Wednesday morning.”
Nancy was glad to be jingling back to St. Joseph’s, alone with her dreams in the sharp apple-sweet air of the October night.
The next day Mrs. Pottage arrived to say good-bye and help Nancy with her shopping. By now she had long been an institution at St. Joseph’s, where her conversation afforded the most intense delight to the nuns.
“Well, when you wrote you was off to Italy I was in two minds if I wouldn’t suggest coming with you. I don’t know what it is, whether I’m getting old or ugly or both, but I’ve not had a single proposal for eighteen months. I suppose it means I’ve got to be thinking of settling down and giving some of the younger ones a chance. Well, take care of yourself in Italy, and don’t eat too much ice-cream. Funny thing, I-talians should eat so much ice-cream and yet be so hot. There was an opera company came to Greenwich once, and the tenor who was an I-talian stayed with me. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘what he’ll want is plenty of macaroni and ice-cream.’ He looked a bit surprised, I’m bound to say, when I give it him for breakfast on the Sunday morning, but I thought he was only surprised at any one knowing his tastes so well. But, will you believe me, when I give it him for dinner again, he used language that was far from I-talian, very far. In fact, I never heard any one swear so fluent in English before or since. It quite dazed me for the moment. But we got on all right as soon as I found he liked good old roast beef. He gaveme two passes for the Friday night, and Mrs. Bugbird and me thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The opera was calledCarmenand Mrs. B. thought it was going to be all about them, and when she found it was actually the name of a woman she laughed herself silly. Every time this Carmen came on she’d whisper to me, ‘a good pull up,’ and then she’d start off shaking like a jelly. But there, she’s very quick to see the radiculous side of anything, Mrs. Bugbird is. Well, good-bye, dear, and take good care of yourself. You know your old Mrs. Pottage wishes you all the best you can wish for yourself.”
Sister Catherine had repeated her request that Nancy should sing to them, especially as it was the feast of All Saints. So after practising with Sister Monica, who had charge of the music, she sang Mozart’s motetAve Verum Corpusat Benediction amid the glowing candles and white chrysanthemums of the little chapel.
“Mother, you don’t often sing in church, do you?” Letizia asked.
“Didn’t I sing well?” said her mother with a smile.
“Yes, I expect you sang very well, but I thought it was a little loud, didn’t you? Sometimes it sounded like a man singing. I think you ought to be careful and not sing quite so loud, mother.”
Luckily the nuns themselves enjoyed Nancy’s rich contralto a great deal more than did their pupils. The warmth of femininity spoke to their hearts of something that they had lost, or rather of something that most of them had never won. It was easy to understand and sympathise with the readiness of the nuns to turn away for a few minutes from the austere ecstasies of Gothic art to worship some dolorous “Mother” of Guido Reni. A flush had tinged their cheeks so virginally tralucent, as if a goblet of water had been faintly suffused by a few drops of red wine.
Kenrick was at Victoria to see Nancy off next morning. Just as the train started, she leaned out of thewindow of her compartment and exclaimed breathlessly:
“Please don’t think me ungrateful. I do appreciate tremendously what you are doing for me. Really, I do.”
His long, sombre face lit up with a smile, and he waved his hand as Nancy withdrew from London into the train again.
France dreamed in a serenity of ethereal blue. In the little wedding-cake cemeteries black figures were laying wreaths of immortelles upon the graves. Nancy remembered with a pang that it was All Souls’ Day and reproached her cowardice for not having laid flowers on Bram’s grave at Greenwich before she left England. The bunch of carnations with which Kenrick had presented her became hateful to hold, and she longed to throw it out of the window. She would have done so, if two English old maids had not been regarding her curiously from the other side of the compartment, the one above her Baedeker, the other above theChurch Times. Why should elderly English women travelling abroad look like butterfly-collectors?
“Parlez vous anglaise?” said one of them to the ticket-collector, nodding her head and beaming as if she were trying to propitiate an orang-utan.
“Yes, I spik English, madame,” he said coldly after punching the tickets.
The other elderly lady congratulated her companion upon the triumphant conversation.
“He undoubtedly understood perfectly what you were saying, Ethel.”
“Oh, yes, I think we shall get along capitally after a time. I was always considered very good at French in my schooldays, and it’s just beginning to come back to me.”
Her ambition had been kindled by her success with the first ticket-inspector. With the next one who invaded the compartment she took a line of bold and direct inquiry.
“Paris, quand?”
The inspector stared back, indignation displayed upon his countenance.
“Comment?”
“Non, quand,” said the elderly lady.
The inspector shrugged his shoulders and slammed the carriage-door as he retired.
“That man seemed rather stupid, I thought, Ethel.”
“Most stupid,” the ambitious Ethel emphatically agreed.
Nancy felt thankful that Letizia would be taught French properly. Sister Catherine had already suggested to her that when she was twelve she should be sent for three years to a convent in Belgium with which the Sisters of the Holy Infancy had an arrangement of exchanging pupils. Nancy had been a little alarmed at first by the prospect of sending Letizia abroad all that time; but after these two absurd Englishwomen she felt no trouble was too great and no place too far and no separation too long that would insure Letizia against talking French like them in public.
But presently Nancy was too much occupied with her own problems—transferring herself and her luggage from one station in Paris to another, finding out how thewagon-littoilet arrangements worked, how to reply to the Italian examination of baggage in the Mt. Cenis tunnel, and how to achieve the change at Rome into the Naples train—either to criticise anybody else or even to dream and speculate about her own operatic future.
Then Vesuvius loomed above the russet orchards and dishevelled vines on the left of the railway. Nancy suddenly remembered that when she and Bram were first married he had one day said how much he should like to visit Naples with her. He had told her that he had seen a picture of it when he was a boy and of what a thrill it had given him. Now here it actually was, and he was not by her side to behold it. Here Naples had been all these years, and he had never seen it.
Time heals many wounds; but in some he makes a deeper gash every year with his inexorable scythe.