XII
WHATEVER Lady Argent’s strictures on the length of time that Mrs. Severing might entertain a hypothetical director in the confessional, she did not herself hesitate to inflict upon the Prior at Twickenham an epistle which covered the better part of six pages.
Ludovic watched his mother’s pen hurrying over her paper with an uneasy sense of knowing what she was about, and presently asked her gently:
“Mother dear, you won’t try and persuade Mrs. Tregaskis into allowing that little girl to do anything in a hurry, will you?”
“Not for the world, dear,” said Lady Argent, colouring guiltily. “I quite see what you mean—it would seem very interfering, and besides, I do not think it would move Bertie in the least. She is much cleverer than I am, and would not dream of asking my advice, far less of taking it. But I am just sending a few lines to Father Anselm, on a—a little matter of conscience, dear.”
Ludovic knew the peculiar expression of self-conscious guilt which meant that his mother was embarked upon some pious course of which she felt certain that her son would disapprove, and was far from reassured by this simple explanation.
Lady Argent’s mysteries were so transparent, however, that he felt confident of a speedy enlightenment, but a few days later she announced that she thought of making a few days stay in London and of taking Frances with her.
“But why, dear? You know London never suits you. Is it really necessary?”
“My teeth really do need attention, Ludovic,” faltered his mother with an intonation which betrayed plainly that howevermuch her teeth might require attention they were not solely responsible for her sudden resolution, even if she had not immediately added in conscience-stricken accents:
“Not that I want you to think it is only my teeth, though I have made an appointment with Mr. Fanshawe, because it seemed such waste not to go there when one was actuallyinLondon, but I do rather want to do one or two other things besides.”
Ludovic perceived that his mother did not wish him to have a more intimate knowledge of the one or two other things, for which he felt sure that the singular number would have sufficed, and forbore to inquire further.
She took Frances to London the following week, and from there wrote to her son:
“We went to Twickenham for the day on Sunday, as Frances was most anxious to see the monastery, and I could not help longing that she should know Father Anslem. I left them to have a little talk together while I paid my visit to the chapel, and the dear child was so very much pleased with all he said to her.”
Lady Argent, like the majority of women, was always at her most valiant on paper, and Ludovic rightly conjectured that she hoped thus to render further allusion to the Twickenham visit unnecessary. It was therefore not without some amusement, on the evening that she and Frances returned, that Ludovic listened to the conversational manœuvres by which his mother strove to forestall any inconvenient inquiries.
“And what about Twickenham, dear?” he firmly inquired.
“Oh, my dear boy, it was the most freezing day you can imagine—that very cold Sunday—and altogether so unlike what one always associated with Twickenham—Twickenham Ferry, you know, though it’s a song one never hears nowadays—such a pity, I always think. It makes one think of straw bonnets and crinolines and so many delightful things of that kind, which one never meets with now—not that I can remember crinolines myself.”
“I suppose not, dear, but I want to hear about the monastery,” said Ludovic inexorably. “What did you think of the Prior, Miss Frances?”
“I liked him very much. I never saw a monk before, and he was so much more human and cheerful than I had expected, somehow.”
“It would not be at all surprising if they were the most melancholy creatures on earth,” Lady Argent agitatedly broke in, “at least from a human point of view, because, of course, want of food and sleep are most dreadfully trying, and they never have enough of either.”
Frances sat with an awestricken expression in her eyes.
“It’s extraordinary to realize that that sort of thing actually goes on now, at the same time as one’s own ordinary everyday life,” she said slowly. “I never knew before that it—religious life, I mean—went on, in that sort of way, in England nowadays. It always seemed, somehow, so remote—belonging to medieval times.”
“Like the Inquisition, etc.,” unkindly remarked Ludovic, with a glance at his mother, whom the allusion always roused to eloquence.
“That was only a political institution, dear, as you very well know, and had nothing to do with the Church—at least the worst part of it hadn’t, and naturallyautres temps autres mœurs, and, besides, it was in Spain, which I never think is quite the same as other countries, in spite of having kept the Faith in that marvellous way all these years, which I believe is the reason they have no days of abstinence there, but look at the bull-fights and things. Their ideas must be different to ours, I feel certain.”
“Very different indeed,” dryly remarked Ludovic. “But please go on about Twickenham. Did you spend the whole day there?”
“Yes,” said the unconscious Frances. “They gave us lunch and tea in the guest-house, and showed us all over the grounds, and we stayed to Benediction in the evening. It was so nice.”
“Such good music, my dear boy,” said Lady Argent in a pleading tone of extenuation.
Ludovic refused to attribute the visit to any music, good or otherwise, but he said no more until he found himself alone with his mother, who faced him with a mixture of deprecation and resoluteness in her gaze.
“I know you don’t approve, darling,” she said bravely, “but the fact was that that poor little dear reallyrequiressome spiritual direction, and I had already written to Father Anselm about her, and he was so very anxious that I should put her into the way of being taught something about the Faith, that it really seemed one’s duty. You see she will be dreadfully cut off from everything when she gets back to Porthlew.”
“And what is the Prior going to do? Lend her books?” said Ludovic, with a most unenthusiastic intonation, and a vivid recollection of the innumerable devotional manuals of suggestive titles that were strewn about his mother’s bedroom and boudoir.
“Yes, dear,” meekly returned Lady Argent; “and—I am really afraid you won’t approve at all, Ludovic—but she is most anxious to be instructed—and really when one remembers that her mother was a Catholic and everything——” She paused helplessly.
“You can’t have had her turned into a Catholic already?”
“No—they wouldn’t receive her until she knew more about it—but Father Anselm is going to give her a course of instruction by post.”
“Mother, you really are not acting fairly by Mrs. Tregaskis.”
“Do you think she would mind so very much? After all, Frances is not her daughter.”
“The point is that she has not been asked. I really think she has a right to be told, before there is any question of anything so definite as receiving regular instructions.”
“Oh, Ludovic, my dear boy! I wish I could get you to look at it as I do. The gain of a soul, you know.”
“The end justifies the means,” quoted Ludovic, shaking his head and unable to help laughing. “Mother dear, may I talk to her about it?”
“To Frances? Oh yes, dear, I wish you would. I assure you that it’s most edifying to see the graces that child has already been given—she seems to believe by instinct, as it were. Perhaps,” said Lady Argent with a sort of melancholy hopefulness, “she may be able to show you things in quite a new light.”
Ludovic was inclined to think this contingency a remote one, and it did not deter him from seeking a conversation with Frances Grantham.
Something unexpectedly flintlike in the quality of her determination came upon him as a surprise.
“I am going to tell Cousin Bertie all about it,” she said quietly. “She and Cousin Frederick have the right to be told, but they have not the right to stop me from following my own conscience. I am going to become a Catholic as soon as Father Anselm thinks me sufficiently instructed.”
“And when will that be?”
“He thought in about six or eight months, perhaps. But he wants to see me again before then.”
“How can you manage that?” asked Ludovic wonderingly.
“I should have to go away, anyhow, to be received. There is no Catholic Church anywhere very near Porthlew. And Father Anselm suggests that I should stay at a convent where they take lady boarders, somewhere between us and London, as he will be coming down there to give a Retreat, which I should make.”
She spoke with all the decision of which her gentle tones were capable, and Ludovic realized that she had very definitely made up her young mind. He wondered whether the instinct which he divined to be as strong in her now as in her twelfth year, of childish obedience and submission, would revive under contact with the masterful will of Bertha Tregaskis.
“Surely your guardian will at least want you to wait until you are of age?”
“Why should I? Hazel did not wait to be of age to get married.”
Her voice held defiance and Ludovic said gently:
“I am not venturing to condemn your decision. But my mother has had something to do with furthering it, and she would be very sorry, as you know, if it meant distress and difficulties for Mrs. Tregaskis.”
“Oh,” cried Frances, “I can’t bear to think of it. She has always been so very good to us, and you know Hazel’s marriage was a dreadful blow to her—it is still, because Guy doesn’t let Hazel see much of her—they’ve only been to Porthlew once, and Cousin Bertie hasn’t even seen the baby yet. But how can I help it?”
“It isn’t quite the same thing as though she were really your mother, perhaps,” Ludovic said kindly.
Frances coloured, and the lines of her soft mouth hardened again.
“It isn’t that. God comes before one’s father or mother. It would be just as much my duty to become a Catholic now if all my nearest and dearest were against it. I must do what I think right.”
In the implacable self-righteousness which Frances mistook for principle, Ludovic saw his mother’s best ally.
“I do not suppose that she will ever yield, when it comes to what she thinks is a question of conscience,” he told Lady Argent that evening, who replied with surprise:
“I am so delighted that you think so, Ludovic. I always thought she was so very gentle and submissive that perhaps it would be only too easy for anyone to influence her, which would be so dreadful, now that she has really had light given her. Not that I want to judge dear Bertie rashly, but I am afraid it is quite possible that she may raise difficulties.”
“Quite possible,” Ludovic dryly assented.
It was not altogether without amusement that he foresawMrs. Tregaskis engaged in a contest of wills with the youngest and hitherto most easily dominated of her charges. That Frances herself anticipated just such a contest was evident, and Ludovic, almost in spite of himself, wondered whether she did not view the approaching conflict with more complacency than she knew.
As her long visit to the Wye Valley drew towards its close, Frances lost her shyness with Ludovic. Twice he took her across the valley to the cottage where the earlier years of her childhood had been spent, and marvelled at the gentle detachment of the looks she cast round her. Insensitive Frances could not be, but Ludovic realized afresh that reality, for her, would never lie on the material planes where most of us turn instinctively to seek it.
Her reserve once broken, she and Lady Argent would gently and interminably discuss the subject of conversion with a soft disregard for his presence and prejudice alike which almost involuntarily caused Ludovic a good deal of amusement.
“It would be such a help to you, dear child,” Lady Argent said on the eve of Frances’ return to Porthlew, “if you only had some friend quite near, to whom you could talk, because writing is never quite the same thing, as I found with Mother Serafina—you know, dear, the nun who did so much towards my conversion—when she said it was quite out of the question for her to come and stay here, and I must write to her instead. Which, of course, I did, and I still do at Christmas and Easter and any sort of Feast, but it was a most unsatisfactory correspondence—really most unsatisfactory.”
“Did the Superior have to read the letters?”
“Yes, dear, all of them, but she’d told me about that, and I didn’t mind so much, though it made one a little bit careful, perhaps, as to what one said. But it wasn’t really so much whatIwrote—though that was awkward enough sometimes, between not knowing whether one ought to send one’s love to Reverend Mother, or only ask for her prayers—butwhatshewrote. She always signed herself ‘Yours affectionately in Christ,’ which used to puzzle me dreadfully. (I was still a Protestant in those days),” said Lady Argent in an explanatory parenthesis. “And I used to wonder so very much whether she expected me to sign myself ‘Yours affectionately in Christ’ back again. It seemed so very unnatural if I did, and yet so very marked if I didn’t, as though my affection for her was quite a worldly sort of thing. And then, dear, she always had a long string of letters after her signature—Mary Serafina, and then ‘Mother’ in brackets and a little cross and P.R.O.S.A., which I used to think for a long time must be Latin, you know—something like ‘Prosit,’ whatever that may mean, only feminine, because it ended witha.”
“And what was it really?” asked Frances, evidently rejecting this plausible hypothesis.
“My dear, I believe it stands for Professed Religious of the Order of St. Anthony. I quite see that it was very stupid of me not to have thought of it at once, but little things like that puzzle one so much at the beginning, and one doesn’t like to ask. That is why I was suggesting,” said Lady Argent, ingeniously finding her way back to her original point of departure, “that it would be a help to you if only you had some Catholic friend to whom you could go—or, if that is quite impossible, to whom you could write.”
“There is always Mrs. Severing,” suggested Frances rather faintly.
Lady Argent looked markedly unenthusiastic, but only remarked in tones of forbearance that Mrs. Severing was not a Catholic.
“I think she will become one, don’t you?” said Frances, but there was no conviction in her voice.
“No doubt it is as it will be, dear,” Lady Argent replied with cryptic charitableness. “But what I had thought of for you, was to put you in touch with the Superior of the Convent at Plymouth. She is a dear friend of mine, and isparticularly fond of girls. They have a big school there, I dare say you have heard of it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s very well known, dear, because the girls there always distinguish themselves in all the Oxford locals and examinations and things in the most remarkable manner. It is really very curious indeed, when there is such a prejudice against a convent education, but the girls always do better than the high-school girls. The Superior told me so herself.”
“How nice!” cried Frances in perfect sincerity.
“Yes, dear, and it really is wonderful, because I know the dear children always wear a special medal of the Holy Ghost when they go to their examinations, so it really is quite wonderful,” repeated Lady Argent, who, in common with many other devout souls, would frequently issue meticulous and childlike petitions to Heaven, and then express the greatest astonishment when these requests were acceded to.
“And you see, dear, if you could write quite freely to the Superior it seems to me it would be such a very great help to you, and you needn’t feel that the letters wouldn’t be quite private, because, being the Superior, of course nobody else reads her letters.”
“Thank you very much for thinking of it,” said Frances gratefully. “If Cousin Bertie lets me, I should like it very much. You see, I don’t want to vex her more than I can help, and I don’t think she’ll like my writing to Father Anselm much—but that, of course, is a matter of conscience.”
It seemed to Ludovic that those three words, as uttered by Frances, would probably be responsible for more numerous and deeper dissensions than any that the house of Tregaskis had yet known.
The next morning he drove Frances to the station. Lady Argent kissed her guest very affectionately as she bade her good-bye, gave her a rosary which had been blessed first byFather Anselm and eventually by Pope Leo XIII., and said earnestly:
“Good-bye, my dearest child, and do write to me and let me know how you get on, and what dear Bertie thinks, though kind and understanding Iknowshe’ll be, and the grace of God will do the rest, I feel certain. You must come again whenever you like, for we love having you, though I know it’s a most awkward journey for you, dear, and I only hope you’ll not have too long a wait when you change at Bristol. Have you got your sandwiches, dear?”
Ludovic cut short his parent’s farewells, knowing from experience that they were apt to result in a narrow escape from missing the train altogether, and Frances drove away from the Wye Valley.
“I shall be interested to hear of further developments at Porthlew,” Ludovic said to his mother that evening. “That little girl is a curious mixture of timidity and determination. I wonder what her sister will think of this?”
“There is only one thing anyone can think, darling,” serenely returned Lady Argent, “and that is how very good God has been to that dear child, and I feel sure that He has a number of graces in store for her, for she is so wonderfully good and holy already.”
“I am sure of it,” gently replied Ludovic.
“I shall miss her,” wistfully said Lady Argent, and added after a silence:
“My dearest boy, I do wish you would find some nice Catholic girl and marry her.”
Ludovic had heard this aspiration before, and felt no desire to comply with it.
“I’m quite happy as I am, mother darling,” he told her gently. “Besides, I don’t believe any nice Catholic girl would have me—a bald-headed heretic with a crutch. Now I must do a little writing, and you can say a rosary for my conversion. You know that’s what you alwaysdosay it for.”
“Yes, dear, it is, and one of these days when you leastexpect it, that prayer will be answered,” predicted his mother triumphantly.
“We shall see. You’d better be content with your latest conversion, for the time being. I’m sure it will knock at least five hundred years off your purgatory, as soon as it’s afait accompli.”
But that the reception of Frances Grantham into the Catholic Church was not to become afait accompliwithout some previous difficulty, soon became abundantly evident.
Frances did not prove to be a good correspondent, but Lady Argent received one or two letters from her, of which she imparted the contents to Ludovic, and then came a lengthy epistle from Bertha Tregaskis.
“Dearest Sybil, you have been such an angel to my little girl that I make no apology for thrusting her affairs—and my own—upon you. The fact is, the child is perfectlyentichéewith matters religious at the moment, and declares that only the Roman Catholic faith will do for her. You won’t misunderstand me if I confess that, if Frances were my own child, I should take away all her little holy books and ornaments in the midst of which she sits like a young virgin-martyr, and forbid her to speak of the subject again for at least a year. We should then see how much of it was an emotional craze, and how much genuine stuff. But the facts that she is notquitemy own flesh and blood, and that her own mother did, in actual point of fact, belong to your Faith, make rather a difference. As Frederick says, we have no actual authority over the child, and one hesitates as to how far coercion may be desirable in such a case. Frederick, man-like, refuses to discuss the subject with anybody—what cowards men are! ‘’Usbands be proper fules for the most part, and us dü arl the yead work for both,’ as one of my old women said to me the other day!“Well, my dear, the upshot of it all is, am I to let the child go to this convent at Easter, where she wants to make a Ladies’ Retreat—whatever that may be—and, I suppose,eventually be received into the Catholic Church? Can you tell me anything about this convent, what sort of a woman the Reverend Mother is, and what sort of people she will come across there? I shall send poor Minnie Blandflower with her, if I let her go at all.“This is a proper ole yarn, isn’t it, but I rely on you to understand that I only want what is best for Francie, and am writing to you, since I know you’re fond of the child, and can probably advise me as to the convent and other particulars.”
“Dearest Sybil, you have been such an angel to my little girl that I make no apology for thrusting her affairs—and my own—upon you. The fact is, the child is perfectlyentichéewith matters religious at the moment, and declares that only the Roman Catholic faith will do for her. You won’t misunderstand me if I confess that, if Frances were my own child, I should take away all her little holy books and ornaments in the midst of which she sits like a young virgin-martyr, and forbid her to speak of the subject again for at least a year. We should then see how much of it was an emotional craze, and how much genuine stuff. But the facts that she is notquitemy own flesh and blood, and that her own mother did, in actual point of fact, belong to your Faith, make rather a difference. As Frederick says, we have no actual authority over the child, and one hesitates as to how far coercion may be desirable in such a case. Frederick, man-like, refuses to discuss the subject with anybody—what cowards men are! ‘’Usbands be proper fules for the most part, and us dü arl the yead work for both,’ as one of my old women said to me the other day!
“Well, my dear, the upshot of it all is, am I to let the child go to this convent at Easter, where she wants to make a Ladies’ Retreat—whatever that may be—and, I suppose,eventually be received into the Catholic Church? Can you tell me anything about this convent, what sort of a woman the Reverend Mother is, and what sort of people she will come across there? I shall send poor Minnie Blandflower with her, if I let her go at all.
“This is a proper ole yarn, isn’t it, but I rely on you to understand that I only want what is best for Francie, and am writing to you, since I know you’re fond of the child, and can probably advise me as to the convent and other particulars.”
“Dear Bertie is most kind-hearted and charitable, isn’t she?” said Lady Argent, “and of course I can write and tell her anything she wants to know about the convent. How very glad I am that dear little Frances is going there! but I wish Bertie would send her sister with her, as well as Miss Blandflower.”
“I don’t think Miss Rosamund is at all inclined to be interested in religion for its own sake, somehow,” returned Ludovic, rightly divining that his mother viewed Miss Blandflower and Rosamund alike in the light of possible fish for the convent net.
Lady Argent murmured that the grace of God was very wonderful, and you couldn’t tell at all, and then returned to her correspondence.
“Father Anselm writes that he is very much pleased with her dispositions,” she presently observed, looking up from a letter.
“H’m!” said Ludovic, feeling oddly out of charity with the members of religious orders generally, and the Prior of Twickenham in particular.
He speculated often during the next few months as to events at Porthlew, and their effect upon Rosamund and Frances Grantham, but he was much in London and heard little news of them.
It was just before Easter-time that his mother triumphantlytold him that the date for Frances’ visit to the convent was arranged for the following week.
“And I can’t tell you, my dear boy, what a relief it is to me after all the correspondence there has been with dear Bertie, and Father Anselm, and the poor child herself, who never wavered at all, but one couldn’t help feeling that at any moment she might begin to wonder whether it wasn’t her duty to do as Bertie advised, and wait. So fatal in a question of religion, I always think. And it would have been dreadful to see dear little Frances one of those shilly-shallying souls, never either quite in or quite out of the Church,” said Lady Argent, in a voice which had become, to Ludovic’s perceptions, charged with reminiscences of Nina Severing.