CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXIV

DECENNIAL

Cœur de Lionsuffered from cardiac depression in the heat of July and ceased to beat half-way through the month. Although Mr. Percy Mortimer offered Nancy a part in his autumn production, he did not offer her a higher salary. Not only had she been unable to save a penny in London; she had had to draw heavily on what remained of her savings when she had paid her father’s debts. No doubt, if she stayed on at the Athenæum she should gradually establish herself as a London actress, but should she ever save any money? She felt that she lacked the temperament to become a star. Even if she had had the consuming white-hot ambition, she did not possess the necessary personality. For one thing she was too useful an actress. She would always be given parts that were difficult to fill, obviously. She would never establish herself as the one actress who could play one particular kind of part. Nevertheless, to refuse a good part in the forthcoming production at the Athenæum was not an easy thing to do. Another conspicuous success would mean a rise of salary for the next production and, were there nothing for her at the Athenæum, she might surely count on a good engagement at another theatre. Then there was Letizia in London, and it was so jolly to be able to see her almost every day. She seemed to grow more amusing and interesting and adorable all the time. There were many years yet before she should be wanting that money to launch her on whatever career she chose. Would she choose the stage? Probably. Plenty of personality there. With the natural sense of the theatre she must inherit from both sidesshe would stand a splendid chance of becoming a really renowned actress. But what a much greater chance she would stand if she were not hampered by the urgent need of a livelihood. Not that Nancy intended her daughter to be aware of her amateur status. If she chose to be an actress, she should begin under the impression that there was not a farthing between herself and starvation in the event of failure. But once she secured a London engagement, why, then the money to dress herself, the money to be able to turn up her nose at a small salary, the money to flick her fingers in the face of any manager—— But Letizia’s début was a long way off yet. She might not choose the stage; and was it risking so much for her mother to stay on and enjoy the amenity of acting in London?

Nancy was on the point of settling for the autumn with Mr. Mortimer when an actor with whom she had played in two provincial companies before Bram’s death offered her £7 a week to go out on tour with him in a repertory of Robertson’s plays—£7 a week in the country was the equivalent of £10 a week in town. Nancy flung away any hope of fame, flung away the amenity of the London stage, flung away the pleasure of seeing Letizia every day, and became once more a strolling player, wandering the next ten years up and down the length of England, in and out of Wales, over to Ireland, and across the border into Scotland. She never sang any more except at festive gatherings to celebrate some Bohemian occasion; but if she sang no more on the stage, neither did she play another adventuress. Her engagements were nearly always with number one companies for number one towns. Having once achieved £7 a week, she never acted again for less, and without stinting herself too much or denying herself a month’s rest she managed to put by £100 every year.

Until Letizia was twelve she was allowed to spend the summer holidays with her mother, who was, of course, always on tour in August, so that Letizia had plenty ofexperience of theatrical life in her impressionable childhood. At the age of eleven she fell very much in love with a good-looking actor of forty-five, a member of the company with which her mother was touring. At first Nancy was amused by this precocious passion and had many jokes about it with Mr. Bernard Drake, the object of Letizia’s adoration. But when, notwithstanding the bracing air of Blackpool, Letizia began to grow thin and pale and hollow-eyed and altogether thoroughly love-sick, Nancy became anxious about her health and begged Drake not to encourage her little daughter by any kind of “let’s pretend.” The next week the company was playing at Douglas, and Letizia was no better in spite of all sorts of amusements and thrills that included a personal introduction by Mr. Drake to several freaks then being shown at one of the halls by the sea for which Douglas was famous in those days.

“Whatisthe matter, Letizia? Aren’t you enjoying your time with me?”

They were sitting among the heather beyond the town, looking at the calm sea and the curve of the longmarina.

“Oh, yes, I’m enjoying myself terribly,” said Letizia in woebegone accents. “Only, in another month I shall have to go back to school.”

“But the holidays aren’t half over yet,” her mother pointed out.

“No, not yet,” Letizia sighed. “But theywillbe over.”

“Would you like to invite Mrs. Pottage to come and stay with us next week—no, next week is Llandudno and Rhyl—the week after at Hastings?”

“No, thank you, mother. She’ll only laugh all the time at everything.”

“Letizia, do not be so ridiculous. It’s only during the last fortnight that you’ve not been laughing at everything all the time yourself.”

“I don’t think I shall ever laugh again,” Letizia groaned.

“Why on earth not?”

“Because I want so dreadfully to be grown up.”

“Well, you can’t go on moping for the next seven years, my dear.”

“Will I be grown up in seven years?” Letizia asked, brightening. “That isn’t so very long, is it? I’m more than half-way already.... Mother?” she resumed.

“Yes?”

“When does a bearded lady begin to grow a beard? I couldn’t suddenly become a bearded lady, could I, when I was grown up?”

“Of course not, you noodle.”

“You’re quite sure?” Letizia pressed.

“Positive.”

“The bearded lady was very nice when I shook hands with her,” said Letizia pensively. “But I wouldn’t much like to kiss her if I was a man, would you?”

“Not at all,” Nancy declared with a grimace.

“Mother?”

“What now?”

“Do you think she’d mind if I asked her if she had any bits of beard when she was eleven?”

“No, darling, I don’t want you to meet those freaks again. I can’t think why Mr. Drake ever introduced you to them. It was very naughty of him.”

Letizia turned a pale and reproachful face to her mother.

“I think Mr. Drake is the nicest man who ever lived,” she proclaimed solemnly. Then in a voice that strove to to be nonchalant, she asked how old he was.

“About forty-five.”

“Mother?”

“Still another puzzle for poor me?”

“Is fifty-two frightfully old for a man to be?”

“Very old indeed.”

“Too old to marry?”

“Much too old,” said Nancy decidedly.

Letizia uttered a sigh of unutterable despair, and in spite of everything that her mother could do, in spite ofa boisterous visit from Mrs. Pottage to Hastings, she remained in a state of gloom all through the summer holidays. Moreover, Sister Catherine wrote to Nancy half-way through the next term that she was so worried about Letizia’s health that she thought it would be wise if she went to Belgium early in the New Year, as London did not seem to be suiting her. Nancy wondered if she should say anything about her unfortunate passion for a middle-aged actor, but decided that it might give a wrong impression to the nuns and kept silence. She was glad she had, when soon after Letizia’s arrival in Belgium she received a letter full of excitement and good spirits. The sickness of love was evidently cured. But that it could endure so long at the age of eleven made Nancy a little anxious about her daughter’s emotional future.

Four years passed while Letizia was at school in Belgium. There were changes among the Sisters of the Holy Infancy. Mother Mary Ethelreda died and was laid to rest in the soil which her ancestors had held long ago by the sword. Sister Catherine was elected mother-superior. Sister Rose became head-mistress of St. Joseph’s. There were no changes in Nancy’s existence apart from the change every week from one town to another. She never heard of Kenrick nowadays. He had passed out of her life as if he had never been. Mrs. Pottage was growing old, and for the first time since Bram’s death Nancy visited Starboard Alley to celebrate the old lady’s seventieth birthday.

Aggie Wilkinson was there looking now almost as old as Mrs. Pottage and in some respects a good deal older, though she was still alluded to by her mistress as if she were in short skirts.

“Pore little thing, it does her good to get about a bit on those crutches of hers. She likes a jollification as much as I do myself. She’s been helping me with the birthday cake, and which I don’t mind telling you is a proper mammoth and no mistake. It ’ud make Mong Blong look like a fourpenny lemon-ice.”

Mrs. Bugbird was there, and Nancy thought that she too looked a proper mammoth, so much fatter had she grown with the years.

“It’s to be a nice cosy little party,” Mrs. Pottage announced. “In fact we’re all here now except one.”

With this she winked at Mrs. Bugbird, who shook with her accustomed laughter, though she was now so immense that she could scarcely fall off any chair, and not very easily fall off a sofa.

Nancy gratified her hostess by displaying a great deal of curiosity about the missing guest.

“He’s my one and only left,” Mrs. Pottage said. “No, I’m joking. He isn’t what you’d call a suitor at all. In fact, he wouldn’t suit anybody. He’s just a nice quiet old fellow called Hayhoe who likes to pop in of a evening and smoke his pipe in my kitchen. He’s been in Australia all his life, and when he come home again he found all his friends and relations was dead and buried. So the pore old boy’s a bit lonely, and he enjoys himself telling the tale to me about Australia, and which seems to me from what I can make out of it a much larger place than what you’d think. And on Sunday to pass the time he blows the organ. He says that’s the only way he can go to church without missing his pipe, though whether because the organ has pipes and to spare or because he’s for ever puffing at the bellows I never could rightly make out. He’s entertained Mrs. B. and I a lot this last winter, and he’s very handy with a hammer and nails. In fact, we call him the jumping kangaroo among ourselves. Hush, here he comes.”

Perhaps Mr. Hayhoe was abashed by the presence of a stranger, for he certainly did not jump about at all that afternoon, but sat small and silent in a corner of Mrs. Pottage’s room until he was called upon to help cut the cake, which he did with the air of performing a surgical operation.

“Well, I shall certainly do my best to live a bit longer,” Mrs. Pottage declared when she was responding to thegood wishes of her guests, “for the longer I live, the more I enjoy myself. Oh, dear, I do wish I’d have been a month or two younger though, and then Letitsia could have been with us this afternoon. Shehasbeen away a time. Talk about Brussels sprouts, shewillbe a Brussels sprout by now, and no mistake. You mark my words, Mrs. Bugbird, that child’ll come home a walking maypole.”

And certainly Letizia did seem the most enormous creature to her mother when they met again, with her skirts half-way between her knees and her ankles and her dark-brown wavy hair in a tight pigtail.

“Fancy, having a flapper for a daughter,” Nancy exclaimed.

“I know, isn’t it too perfectly beastly, mother. I hope Sister Rose will let me fluff my hair out again. After all, I’m only just fifteen, and I don’t want to be grown up before I need be. But I don’t expect she will. She was always the strictest of the lot. I can’tthinkwhy they made her head-mistress of St. Joseph’s.”

Sister Rose felt that it was her duty to try and quell some of Letizia’s exuberance, and throughout the next year Nancy was getting letters from her daughter about “rows.” With all her strictness Sister Rose seemed much less capable than Sister Catherine of keeping her pupils in order; or perhaps it was that Letizia was now one of the big girls and consequently involved in much more serious escapades than those of the juniors. Then came the most tremendous row the school had ever known, according to Letizia.

St. Joseph’s School,Sisters of the Holy Infancy,5 Arden Grove,N. W.,May 15, 1906.Darling Mother,There’s been the most frightful row, and it looks as if one or two of us will get the boot. I don’t think I shall becauseI’m not in up to the hilt. But it’s all very thunderous, and Reverend Mother has been sent for to deal with matters. What happened was this. You know the backs of the houses in Stanwick Terrace look down into our garden? Well, one of the girls—I’ll mention no names because a deadly system of espionage has been instituted—we’ll call her Cora which sounds an evil and profligate name. Cora met a youth, well, as a matter of fact, he’s not such a youth, because he’s left Cambridge. So he must be about 22. Cora met him during the Easter Hols, and was most fearfully smitten. So they arranged to correspond. In fact she considers herself engaged to him. Which of course is piffle, because she’s only sixteen. She asked me to be one of her confidantes now, and later on a bridesmaid, and get hold of her notes. Oh, I forgot to say that this youth lives in Stanwick Terrace. So, he used to put them under a flower-pot on the garden wall. But the silly idiots weren’t content with notes. They found that they could easily signal to one another from their rooms, and they arranged a code. Two candles in the window meant “My darling, I love you madly”; and all that sort of piffle. Cora used to work her messages with the blind, and I and Joan Hutchinson, the other girl who shares a room with her, got rather fed up with her pulling the blind up and down in a passionate ecstasy. So I said, “Why don’t you go out and talk to him over the garden wall? We’ll let you down with a sheet, which will be rather a rag.” As a matter of fact that’s just what it was; because the beastly sheet busted, and there was poor Cora dancing about by the light of the moon in a nightgown and a mackintosh. Sister Margaret, who has apocalyptic visions every night, thought Cora—oh, I’m sick of calling her by a false name, and anyway if some stuffy old nun does open this and read it, well, I hope she’ll enjoy it. I do hate espionage. Don’t you? We’ve only had it here since Sister Rose succeeded to the throne. Well, Sister Margaret was looking out of her window just as the sheet busted and dropped Enid Wilson—that’s the girl—down into the garden. She at once thought it was a miracle, and rushed to Sister Monica who sleeps in the next room and banged on her door and said. “Oh, sister! Our Lady has just descended into the garden.” Tableau vivant! There’s a picture for you! Of course Joan and I were simply in fits. Anyway there’s the most terrificrow on that the school has ever had. Enid is convinced that she’s going to be expelled. Investigations by the authorities have discovered all about her darling Gerald. Apparently one of the gardeners found a note and gave it to Sister Rose. Joan Hutchinson and I are in pretty well to the hilt for letting Enid out of the window, and so at any moment you may receive a curt note from Reverend Mother to say that I am incorrigible and please accept delivery.Heaps of love,Your sinister childLetizia.That’s what Sister Rose thinks I am. She said to me, “I cannot help thinking, Letizia, that you have played a very sinister part in this sorry affair.”

St. Joseph’s School,Sisters of the Holy Infancy,5 Arden Grove,N. W.,May 15, 1906.

St. Joseph’s School,Sisters of the Holy Infancy,5 Arden Grove,N. W.,May 15, 1906.

St. Joseph’s School,

Sisters of the Holy Infancy,

5 Arden Grove,

N. W.,

May 15, 1906.

Darling Mother,

There’s been the most frightful row, and it looks as if one or two of us will get the boot. I don’t think I shall becauseI’m not in up to the hilt. But it’s all very thunderous, and Reverend Mother has been sent for to deal with matters. What happened was this. You know the backs of the houses in Stanwick Terrace look down into our garden? Well, one of the girls—I’ll mention no names because a deadly system of espionage has been instituted—we’ll call her Cora which sounds an evil and profligate name. Cora met a youth, well, as a matter of fact, he’s not such a youth, because he’s left Cambridge. So he must be about 22. Cora met him during the Easter Hols, and was most fearfully smitten. So they arranged to correspond. In fact she considers herself engaged to him. Which of course is piffle, because she’s only sixteen. She asked me to be one of her confidantes now, and later on a bridesmaid, and get hold of her notes. Oh, I forgot to say that this youth lives in Stanwick Terrace. So, he used to put them under a flower-pot on the garden wall. But the silly idiots weren’t content with notes. They found that they could easily signal to one another from their rooms, and they arranged a code. Two candles in the window meant “My darling, I love you madly”; and all that sort of piffle. Cora used to work her messages with the blind, and I and Joan Hutchinson, the other girl who shares a room with her, got rather fed up with her pulling the blind up and down in a passionate ecstasy. So I said, “Why don’t you go out and talk to him over the garden wall? We’ll let you down with a sheet, which will be rather a rag.” As a matter of fact that’s just what it was; because the beastly sheet busted, and there was poor Cora dancing about by the light of the moon in a nightgown and a mackintosh. Sister Margaret, who has apocalyptic visions every night, thought Cora—oh, I’m sick of calling her by a false name, and anyway if some stuffy old nun does open this and read it, well, I hope she’ll enjoy it. I do hate espionage. Don’t you? We’ve only had it here since Sister Rose succeeded to the throne. Well, Sister Margaret was looking out of her window just as the sheet busted and dropped Enid Wilson—that’s the girl—down into the garden. She at once thought it was a miracle, and rushed to Sister Monica who sleeps in the next room and banged on her door and said. “Oh, sister! Our Lady has just descended into the garden.” Tableau vivant! There’s a picture for you! Of course Joan and I were simply in fits. Anyway there’s the most terrificrow on that the school has ever had. Enid is convinced that she’s going to be expelled. Investigations by the authorities have discovered all about her darling Gerald. Apparently one of the gardeners found a note and gave it to Sister Rose. Joan Hutchinson and I are in pretty well to the hilt for letting Enid out of the window, and so at any moment you may receive a curt note from Reverend Mother to say that I am incorrigible and please accept delivery.

Heaps of love,Your sinister childLetizia.

That’s what Sister Rose thinks I am. She said to me, “I cannot help thinking, Letizia, that you have played a very sinister part in this sorry affair.”

Nancy immediately wrote a stern letter to Letizia, reproaching her for not appreciating what the nuns had done for her, and by the same post she wrote to Mother Catherine, pleading for a lenient view of what she assured her was really more a thoughtless prank than a serious and premeditated piece of naughtiness.

Perhaps Mother Catherine decided that Sister Rose’s methods tended to make her pupils rebel against them by outrageous behaviour. At any rate, Sister Rose went to take charge of the house at Eastbourne and rule the indigent maiden ladies provided for therein. Sister Perpetua came down from Beaumanoir to be head-mistress; and there were no more letters from Letizia about rows, for Sister Perpetua, like Mother Catherine, was never strict for the sake of strictness, but wise and holy and human.

That year Nancy was acting in the North, so she spent Christmas at Beaumanoir with Mother Catherine. Snow was lying thick on the moors when she arrived. It reminded her of that Christmas eleven years ago when Mother Mary Ethelreda was still alive.

Mother Catherine had changed very little with passingtime. Her tranquil azure eyes had lost none of their fiery compassion, none of their grave and sweet comprehension. By half-past three when Nancy arrived at the convent a dusk heavy with unladen snow was creeping over the moor, and the candles were already lighted in the Reverend Mother’s parlour.

“I have been so distressed over Letizia’s behaviour,” said Nancy. “I cannot think what happened to her last spring.”

“Don’t upset yourself about her, my dear child,” Mother Catherine replied, patting Nancy’s hand. “She is quite herself again now, and in any case it was really nothing more than the normal exuberance of youth. Frankly, I am pleased to find her relatively much younger now than she was before she went to Belgium.”

“But I was so shocked at her apparent ingratitude,” Nancy sighed.

Mother Catherine shook her head.

“She is not ungrateful. You must remember that she has been at school many, many years now. I can easily understand that St. Joseph’s must be seeming irksome, and that is one of the reasons why I am glad to have this chance of talking over with you a plan that is in my mind. I must tell you that dear Mother Mary Ethelreda left the Community very well endowed, and there is a fund set apart for the benefit of any girls who show any kind of artistic promise. They are to be helped to achieve their ambition, no matter what it may be. As you know, Letizia has definitely made up her mind to go on the stage....”

“She has not said so to me,” Nancy interrupted.

“Well, that of course is just what you would expect. Parents and teachers must always expect to be suddenly confronted with the inexplicable reserve of the young. Just as she wrote you a full account of that foolish business with Enid Wilson and Joan Hutchinson, so she has given me her confidence about her career. I fancy thatthe instinct to entrust a secret to an outsider is a normal one. You would be expected to regard her theatrical hopes with a professional eye just as I should be expected to regard her escapades with a professional eye.”

Nancy nodded her agreement with this.

“Very well,” Mother Catherine went on, “if Letizia is going on the stage it is important that she should now concentrate on deportment, elocution, dancing, singing, and all the graces that will adorn her vocation. Another of our pupils longs to paint, and another who shows signs of having a really lovely voice wishes to become a singer. I propose to send these three young cousins of the Muses for a couple of years to Italy with adame de compagnie. Thus each one will be able to study what will most help her afterwards.”

“To Italy!” Nancy exclaimed.

“I don’t think Letizia will ever have a voice as good as her mother’s,” the nun said, with a smile. “And that reminds me, will you singAdeste Fidelesfor us at the midnight Mass?”

“Oh, I never sing nowadays,” Nancy replied, the tears standing bright in her eyes at the thought of the delight that was in store for that little daughter—a walking maypole now perhaps, but still so much her little daughter.

“But you must sing for us,” Mother Catherine insisted. “We want to hear your voice roll out above our thin notes. It is so dreadful, this news that the French Government has forbidden midnight Mass in any of the French cathedrals or churches this year. What woes that wretched country is calling down upon itself! It will hearten us to hear your voice singing that wonderful old hymn.”

Nancy felt that it would sound like affectation to refuse after this, and into her voice at midnight she put all the triumph, all the gladness, all the gratitude in her mother-heart.

So, for the next two years Letizia was writing home to England the most absorbing accounts of Rome, whereshe and her companions spent most of their time, though on different occasions they visited all the famous cities of Italy. While up and down the length of England, in and out of Wales, over to Ireland, and across the border into Scotland wandered her mother.

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