X
FRANCES and her hostess found themselves in perfect harmony. It did not occur to Frances that the eight years which had transformed her from a child to a young girl had changed Lady Argent a great deal more. Discursive she had always been, but her talk had now become almost wandering, and her always gentle volubility had increased surprisingly. The amusement, tempered by slight dismay, with which Ludovic listened to his parent’s verbal flights, was quite unshared by Frances. Lady Argent talked about the Catholic Church, about which Frances wanted to learn all that she could, and each was serenely content.
“I haven’t any scruples, dear, about telling you all that you want to know,” Lady Argent unnecessarily informed her guest, “because dear Bertie is so broad-minded and honest herself that I know she wouldn’t mind. And it seems only fair to counteract all those dreadful years that you’ve spent with Protestants, poor child, who have such very strange ideas about the Faith. Like Indulgences, you know—so terribly misunderstood, I always think—paid permission to commit sin for a hundred days, I’ve even heard people suggest—ignorant Protestants, you know.”
“They are not all as ignorant as that,” justice compelled Frances to observe.
“I nevercanremember that you are still a Protestant, poor child. You don’t mind being called so, I hope?”
Frances was much too embarrassed to reply, but fortunately Lady Argent did not wait for a disclaimer.
“To think that I once held those shocking notions myself, dear. I really can hardly believe it now.”
“How long is it since you became a Catholic?”
“Six years, dear child. It all seems like a dream—the time before one had the Faith, you know. It all happened in such a wonderful way. I was staying at the seaside with a poor old Catholic aunt of mine who was dying, and she had a great friend who was a nun in a convent there. So she used to ask me to go and give this old nun news of her from time to time, and I went. Mother Serafina her name was, and I always think it’s such a beautiful name, though I dare say that’s just association, since, of course, one couldn’t exactly call one’s daughter Serafina, and in any case I don’t think nuns are allowed to be godmothers even if one asked her to—— Where was I, dear?”
“You were telling me how you went to the convent to give the nun news of your aunt.”
“Oh yes, and the little parlour was so dreadfully bare and cold,as it seemed to me then,” mysteriously interpolated Lady Argent as though some concealed source of heat in the little fireless room had since been revealed to her; “but there she sat, always smiling away, and that great brown rosary at her side. So sympathetic always, and the whole community praying every day for my poor aunt; and I remember one day she told me that she would pray every day for me, too, because of the anxiety and everything, you know, dear. So charitable and broad-minded, I always think, because I hadn’t any idea of being a Catholic at all then. But the Church always prays for those outside the Fold in the most touching way.”
“I always like when we say the prayer for Jews and Roman Catholics, once a year,” said Frances thoughtfully.
Lady Argent flushed in a most agitated way.
“Pray don’t talk of it, my dear. It makes me very angry indeed. The idea of their praying for us as heretics! and calling usRomanCatholics, too! Such impertinence, I always think.”
Frances wisely forbore to say anything further. “Tellme some more about Mother Serafina,” she pacifically suggested.
“Well, dear, I went to see her very frequently, and quite as much for my own sake as for poor Aunt Charlotte’s, who was quite past understanding things by that time—a sort of senile paralysis the doctor said it was, though I think myself it was only second childhood, as they call it; and of course she was very weak, and sinking a little every day. Nothing but beef-tea and milk, dear, and her rosary always in her hand, though I’m sure she couldn’t say a bead. She was a most devout Catholic, and the priest used to come and see her every day—and I remember I couldn’t bear him, which shows what a dreadful thing prejudice is. He was an Irishman, and very stout—I remember the stairs were such a trial to him—and really I could hardly understand a word he said, he spoke with such a brogue. I am afraid,” said Lady Argent with unutterable melancholy, “that I was far from looking upon him as I should have done, with the reverence due to a priest. He always used snuff, which seemed to me such a disgusting habit, and his hair wanted cutting so dreadfully. I am afraid I was most dreadfully narrow-minded about him, and I’m sure he was a very holy man.”
“It was a pity he was—untidy,” said Frances delicately.
“Yes, dear, but one is especially taught by the Church not to make rash judgments. I dare say I missed many graces by not talking to poor old Father O’Leary.
“However, poor Aunt Charlotte died, and I had to stay on after the funeral, sorting her things—such a collection, my dear! and I found so many references in her old letters and papers to my dear husband and myself, and wishing so much we might become Catholics. Not that dear Ludovic’s father would ever have dreamed of such a thing, though, of course, God can do anything he pleases; but dear Fergus was a Scotchman, and if he had one prejudice stronger than any other, it was against Romanists, as he always called them. Of course, if the Lord had willed it....” said Lady Argentvery doubtfully, and shaking her head at the memory of the late Sir Fergus Argent’s determination, as opposed to Divine Omnipotence.
“But dear Fergus had been dead a long while, even then, and no doubt he views things very differently now. It’s such a comfort to feel that hemustthoroughly approve, now, whereas if he’d been alive I’m very much afraid, dear, shocking though it is to say so, that he would have disliked my becoming a Catholic quite dreadfully—in fact, I really don’t know what might have happened.”
Lady Argent devoted a moment to the consideration of her spouse’s probable attitude towards her adoption of the Catholic faith, and hastily abandoned thetableauthus conjured up with a slight shudder.
“God certainly knows what He is about, dear,” she said thankfully.
“Did you go on seeing Mother Serafina at the Convent?”
“Oh yes. I had grown very fond of her by that time—and talked to her a great deal, and I shall never forget what a shock it was when I found I couldn’t ask her to stay with me here. She told me the nuns had all made vows of perpetual enclosure, you know, dear, and couldn’t move a yard out of the grounds except for the most serious reasons and with a dispensation from the Holy Father himself. And it wasn’t at all like the sort of old convent gardens one reads about, with alleys and box-hedges and cedars and things, but quite a tiny little gravel court at the back of the house, and only a plane-tree in one corner. In fact, I don’t know how all the community and the plane-tree and everything ever fitted into it at all, when they were out there for the midday recreation, though some of them did walk backwards, but I think that was only so as to see the Superior and hear what she was saying. But I’m sure they must all have bumped into the plane-tree a number of times. However, they all seemed very happy, and Mother Serafina always told me she had never known what happiness was until she became a nun.”
“It must be wonderful,” breathed Frances.
“Yes, dear, quite wonderful, but that’s what the grace of a vocation is. Quite supernatural, I always think, to leave one’s home and everything and live such a life—detachment, you know, dear.”
“Of course,” ventured Frances, “it must be rather sad for the father and mother of a nun—to let her go, I mean.”
“Dreadful, my dear. But one would always feel so glad and thankful, though so dreadfully sorry—you know what I mean,” lucidly returned Lady Argent. “I really don’t know what one would do if one had a daughter a nun—say one’s only child—though, of course, even as a girl, I can hardly imagine dear Ludovic a nun, but one never knows——” Lady Argent looked distractedly into the fire.
“Sometimes,” she murmured, “I am afraid that I idolize Ludovic. I lie awake at night, you know, dear, wondering what I should do if he were ever to be burnt to death.”
“But why should he be burnt to death?” said the literal Frances fixing horrified eyes on her hostess.
“At the stake, you know, dear, just as so many martyrs have been, even in England—you know what Tyburn is, dear: so dreadful, I always think; and though one ought not to look upon any soul as being outside the pale of God’s grace, that terrible Queen Elizabeth, with Mary Stuart’s blood upon her head and everything—— So that if persecutionshouldbegin again—and, after all, dear, look at France, and all those poor good Dominicans turned out of their holy monastery—and if Ludovic was by that time a Catholic, as one prays and hopes, should I be able to let him go? Let alone being like the Mother of the Maccabees, though I always felt certain, even when I was a Protestant, that that was a sort of miracle, because one knows what one would feel about one, let alone seven—though really I dare say by the time those frightful tortures had begun on the youngest she had almost ceased to feel anything at all, except thankfulness that there were no more to come. But when I think how often I have wickedly rebelled at my poor Ludovic’s being lame——”
“Was he always?” gently inquired Frances.
“From the time he was a few weeks old, dear, and I’ve often thought that if I’d been a Catholic then, and put a pair of scapulars round my poor little darling’s neck, the accident would never have happened.”
On this melancholy reflection the door opened, and Lady Argent’s poor little darling came into the room.
“Don’t you want the lights, mother? It’s nearly dark, and I’ve brought you the second post.”
Ludovic turned on the light as he spoke, and gave a small packet of letters and newspapers into his mother’s hands, shaking his head reproachfully as he did so.
She looked up guiltily.
“There’s nothing much, darling—only a little magazine calledBeads, andThe Catholic Firesideand a—a few letters.”
Ludovic laughed gently.
“And how many of those are begging letters, dear?”
Lady Argent looked through the little heap, appearing rather distraught.
“This is a receipt,” she declared triumphantly, waving a sheet of cheap glazed notepaper closely covered with neat, angular writing.
“It’s a very long one,” said Ludovic suspiciously.
“Those poor French sisters at Coleham-on-Sea! The Superior has actually taken the trouble to write herself, and I only sent them the most dreadful old things: not clothes only, Francie, dear—though some of Ludovic’s old vests, not fit to give to the poor people here—but hair-brushes without any bristles—and even that seems a mockery, since their hair is all cut off when they take their first vows, I believe—so unwise not to wait till the final ones, I always think, though no doubt the Church has her reasons; and books with half the leaves torn out; and even a dreadful little half-empty pot of rouge, which my maid actually put in though she never told me till afterwards. No, Ludovic, youreally shouldn’t laugh. I can’t think where such a thing came from, for I’ve certainly never used it in my life, and I can’t bear to think of the scandal it may have given those dear good Sisters of the Poor.”
“Do they make any allusion to it?” asked Ludovic, with boyish amusement in his laughing eyes.
Lady Argent scanned the closely-written sheets.
“No, dear. ‘Those good and useful gifts, such joy for poor people’—thatcan’tbe the hair-brush, can it?—‘we can never thank you enough for your generosity to us’—dear, dear, it does make one feel so dreadfully mean. ‘We shall have the wherewithal to decorate a Christmas-tree for our little ones’—Ludovic! they can’t give the poor children my broken air-cushion or that torn mackintosh of yours—or the old dog-collar. ‘You will certainly be rewarded for this great generosity and our poor prayers....’ Oh dear, dear, this is very touching,” said poor Lady Argent, folding up her letter with an air of remorse.
“Perhaps they can get money by selling the things after they’ve mended them up,” whispered Frances consolingly. Ludovic heard her, and looked at her very kindly, but he only said:
“Now, mother, tell me what your next correspondent means by putting ‘Sag’ in the corner of the envelope? Is it the same sort of thing as Mizpah or Swastika, or whatever the thing is that housemaids have on their brooches?”
“No, dear,” said Lady Argent with an air of great reserve. “Quite different. It isn’t ‘Sag’ at all.”
Ludovic held out a corner of the envelope to Frances.
“I appeal to you. If that isn’t ‘Sag,’ what is it?”
She looked, half-laughing, towards Lady Argent.
“Ludovic, dear, pray don’t be so ridiculous. It’s S.A.G., my dear boy, and stands for ‘St. Anthony guide,’ just to make sure the letter doesn’t go astray. I don’t say I put it on my own letters but it’s a very pious little custom—and lettersmightget lost, you know.”
“I do not think that this one would have been any great loss,” rather grimly replied her son. “It’s a begging-letter, isn’t it?”
Lady Argent took out sundry enclosures, glanced through them and exclaimed triumphantly:
“Not at all! In fact it’s just the contrary. It’s from those Sisters in Dublin, offering me tickets in their great charity lottery, and with a list of the prizes. It’s really quite wonderful—a wonderful opportunity,” repeated Lady Argent, with more wistfulness than conviction in her tone.
Ludovic took the badly typewritten strip of paper from her hand.
“A live pig, six months old. A harmonium in perfect repair. A table-centre for the parlour—I should certainly have a try for that, mother, it would improve the drawing-room; coloured statue of St. Joseph standing four feet high, etc., etc. Tickets sixpence, ninepence, or a shilling.”
“It’s to pay off the debt on their new church, dear,” replied his mother. “You remember the account of the opening ceremony that I read you fromThe Tabletthe other day? So very nice and edifying, but I’m afraid they spent rather more than they meant to. At any rate they are some eight hundred pounds in debt over it, I believe, and no doubt this charity bazaar is to clear some of it off.”
“Raffles are illegal,” quoth Ludovic severely, “and I don’t think you should encourage them, mother. Please help me to persuade my mother that charity begins at home, Miss Frances.”
The modern fashion by which any man becomes entitled to use the Christian name of any girl spending a week in his mother’s house, failed altogether to commend itself to Ludovic Argent.
“The Canon is always in difficulties here, and would be very glad of money for some of the poor people.”
“Oh, my dear,” cried Lady Argent. “I am torn in two as you very well know, and the Canon has been a friend ofours for a number of years, but how can I encourage the spread of Protestantism?”
“You need not, darling. I don’t care a bit about their spiritual welfare, only their temporal,” coolly observed Ludovic, “and I’ve sent him a small cheque for the District Nursing Fund, from both of us.”
“Oh, my dear boy, how can you say such a thing—he doesn’t mean it, Frances—but I’m really very glad you’ve done it, and it will show the poor Canon that one isn’t narrow-minded, and perhaps bring him to see things in another light.” Lady Argent mused thoughtfully over the imaginary portrait, than which nothing could have appeared further from probability to an impartial observer, of a suddenly Catholicized Canon inspiring his flock with views similar to his own, and Ludovic glanced thoughtfully at Frances Grantham.
No hint of humour had disturbed the placid purity of her intent gaze while listening to Lady Argent and plying her with gentle questions. She was manifestly absorbed in the subject, and her natural reverence was in no way shocked or checked by demonstrations which Ludovic in his own mind could only qualify as absurd. “She is a born mystic,” he thought with a sudden conviction that was almost physical in its intensity, “the stuff to make an ideal lady-abbess. If she becomes a Catholic, I believe she will be a nun.”
He felt vaguely compassionate at the idea, and said later to his mother:
“Wouldn’t it be better to say rather less about religion to that little girl? She is very impressionable.”
“That’s just why I like talking to her, darling,” returned Lady Argent ingenuously. “One feels that it is sowing seed in ground which is all ready for it.”
Ludovic remained silent for a moment, pondering this excellent reason for the conversion of his mother’s youthful guest.
“I love having her here,” said his mother, “she is sosweet. I’m only afraid it’s dull for her. Would she like her sister to come for a few days, or a friend?”
“Ask her.”
Frances frankly disavowed any wish for companionship other than that of her hostess, but a few days later she said to Lady Argent: “Mrs. Severing is staying near here, at the Towers. I should like to see her, if I may. She has written me such a kind little note suggesting that I should go over there, and I am very fond of her.”
“I know you are, my dear,” kindly replied Lady Argent, who had heard many of Nina’s spiritual upliftings from her admiring echo. “I should like you to see her, and I should like to meet her myself. But the fact is—it is a little awkward—I have never called on the people at the Towers.”
“Who are they?” said Frances wonderingly.
“Sir Giles and Lady Cotton, dear. He is the original founder of Cotton and Sons—the big ironmongers in the City. That is really why—not the shop, dear, of course, but the shocking way they treated the poor dear Fathers. I never could bear to go near them, and I had to give up the shop altogether, though I’d always dealt there for nearly twenty years. So I never called on Lady Cotton.”
“What did they do to the Fathers?” asked Frances with a curiosity unspoilt by the previous recital of many similar outrages.
“Oh, my dear child, it was all about some garden seats that the Prior ordered for the grounds of their house at Twickenham—for visitors, you know, because they naturally have no time to sit on garden seats themselves, as you can imagine, however tired they may get with all that manual labour, and getting up at four o’clock in the morning and everything; and there seems to have been some terrible misunderstanding—with the shop-people, you know, dear, and whether the seats were on approval or not. Anyway, they got left out in the rain all one night, and the paint was spoilt, and the Prior sent them back and said they couldn’t takethem after all. But the shop-people were thoroughly unpleasant, and said the seats must be paid for just the same—most grasping and disagreeable, even though the letter of the law may have been on their side. I never quite understood the ins and outs of it all, but as the Prior, who was the most simple soul on earth—a Breton, dear, such a nice man—asked me himself: how they could tell whether they liked the benches or not until they had seen the effect of bad weather on them? Which sounds very reasonable indeed, but Cotton and Sons behaved quite shockingly, and even threatened to go to law about it. All very well for them, you know, dear—it would have been an advertisement in a way, but most unpleasant for the poor Fathers.”
“What was the end of it?”
“They had to pay for the garden seats, dear, and I never could sit on one with any pleasure, though they are strewn all over the garden at Twickenham. That is to say,” said Lady Argent, colouring faintly, “it was—friends—who actually paid for them, but I never said much to Ludovic about them. To this day he does not know why I have left off going to Cotton and Sons.”
Frances did not dare to make any further suggestion for arapprochementbetween Lady Argent and the quondam proprietor of Cotton and Sons. She only looked wistfully and undecidedly at the letter in her hand.
“To be sure, my dear, I was forgetting about your friend. Of course, I do not suppose she has any idea of all this,” said Lady Argent generously, “since it is not a story that tells well for Cottons, and I do not suppose Sir Giles cares to dwell upon it. I really cannot make up my mind to call upon them—in fact, after all this time I don’t quite see how I could—but I shall be delighted if Mrs. Severing cares to come over any day next week. Ludovic could drive you over to fetch her in time for luncheon. Do write and suggest it, my dear.”
“Thank you so much. I know you will like her, and shewould love to see you and the garden—and the chapel,” said Frances rather shyly. “You know she is thinking of becoming a Catholic.”
“How very delightful. But what can she be waiting for, dear? She is a widow, and her son, you tell me, is quite a boy. No doubt she will bring him into the Church too, later on. By all means, Francie, ask her to come over on Friday, or whichever afternoon suits her best.”
Frances wrote the invitation gladly.
She was curiously devoid of insight, and it did not occur to her that any two people of whom she was fond could fail to like and admire one another.
“Isn’t Mrs. Severing the ‘Nina Severing’ who composes?” asked Ludovic, as he drove Frances to fetch her friend.
“Yes. Her music is my favourite modern music. Don’t you like the ‘Kismet’ songs?”
“I once heard her play,” said Ludovic, avoiding, clumsily, as he felt, a reply. “Her execution was very brilliant.”
“Meretricious,” was the adjective he had applied to the popular musician’s talent, at the time.
Ludovic wished that the recollection had not occurred to him so opportunely.