XIX
ONLY the Polwerrow concert broke the monotony of the months that followed. It was not a very great event, but it was on that evening that Rosamund, by one of the agonized intuitions that are among the penalties borne by the too highly-strung, first began to suspect what Frances had in mind.
They drove to Polwerrow in Mrs. Severing’s car, and made their way into the reserved stalls selected by Nina.
“Don’t push, as the elephant said to the flea when the animals went in two by two,” Miss Blandflower muttered to herself, but, as usual, no one paid any attention to her.
They listened to much inferior singing: Bertha with a look of well-bred tolerance, Nina with closed eyes and a small, excruciated frown.
Rosamund sat next to Frances.
She wondered idly what dreams her little sister wove into the playing of the famous violinist. Frances’ face was absorbed, and her eyes quite unseeing. Rosamund thought that she looked very happy, as though her dreams were pleasant ones. Was she thinking of the ideals and aspirations newly revealed to her in the Catholic Church, Rosamund wondered. That Frances was finding the greatest happiness that her short life had as yet known, she felt no doubt, but she also wondered with quite unconscious cynicism how long that happiness would continue. Once received into the Church, it seemed to Rosamund, there appeared to be nothing further to which her sister could aspire, except, perhaps, to live quite near a Catholic church.
“There isn’t one anywhere very near in the Wye Valley,” Rosamund reflected. “I wonder if Francie will mindthat, when we live there together. But she can go to her convent sometimes and stay there for a little while, if she wants to. They were kind and nice to her. She likes the convent.”
And it was then that there flashed across Rosamund’s consciousness the first sickening, unreasoning suspicion, carrying with it all the anguish of certainty, that Frances would want to go and be a nun.
Shocked, as from a physical pang, she held on to the arms of her stall as though afraid of falling.
There was a pause in the music, and a faint sound or two as of uncertain applause. Rosamund saw Miss Blandflower begin to clap her hands enthusiastically, then turn doubtful eyes on Mrs. Severing, who had not moved, and begin to fumble with her gloves as though she had never meant to do anything else. The plaintive, poignant strains of the violin began again.
Rosamund suddenly felt that she dared not look at Frances, for fear of seeing in her face some mysterious confirmation of her own thoughts.
For a little while she argued with herself. It was absurd to jump at conclusions. Frances had never spoken, or given any hint, of wishing to become a nun. And even supposing she were infatuated with the idea for a time, her guardian would be the last person to encourage such a step. It would all be stopped and forbidden, and Frances would never be wilfully disobedient.
Such a thing could not happen—no one entered a convent nowadays. It was in medieval times that girls of one’s own class became nuns—not nowadays. A convent had been a refuge from the world, then. Involuntarily Rosamund wondered whether it would not present itself in exactly that light to Frances, now. “But she’s not going to—she can’t. Why, it would mean shutting herself up away from me—for the whole of her life,” thought Rosamund wildly.
She tried to look at it reasonably, to tell herself that this full-grown certainty which had suddenly sprung into being within her, was without any foundation in fact. She reminded herself of Cousin Bertie’s favourite advice, not to cross bridges before they were reached. But Rosamund happened to possess that fundamental form of sincerity which cannot blind itself to its own inner vision, and not all the wisdom of common sense and of Cousin Bertie’s optimistic philosophy, weighed against that one unreasoning flash of intuition.
A sudden craving for reassurance seized her uncontrollably.
She looked at Frances.
The last notes of the violin died away, and this time everyone broke into applause at once, and Miss Blandflower was able to clap fearlessly and noisily with the others.
Under cover of it all Rosamund leant towards her sister.
“Francie,” she said urgently, “you wouldn’t ever want to be a nun, would you? Promise me you wouldn’t.”
Perhaps there was some faint ray of hope underlying the wording of Rosamund’s sudden appeal. For it was with a new and even more bitter pang that the last certainty came to her, as Frances, without a single word of answer, raised startled, almost terrified eyes to hers, and as their looks met, blushed a deep, painful scarlet.
Words between them were unnecessary, nor could either have spoken.
The concert went on, and Rosamund wished that it could never stop. In the blur of sound which seemed to surround her, she did not think that she would ever realize what had happened. It would all remain chaotic and unreal.
There was a little movement beside her, and Frances’ small, soft hand sought hers, like that of a child seeking reassurance.
They did not look at one another, but for a moment their hands clung together.
“Shall we make a move now, before the crush?” said Mrs. Severing wearily. “Some of these renderings are really rather more than I can stand.”
Bertha shrugged her shoulders very slightly, and looked at Rosamund and Frances.
“Come out of the moon, Rosamund. You don’t look half awake, my child. We want to get out of this before everyone begins to crowd. Come along, Minnie, come along.”
Rosamund, in a dream, followed the wide, efficient figure of her guardian. Miss Blandflower had jammed a small rabbit-skin tie into the back of her stall, and, wrestling with it in an agony, was blocking the exit for both Frances and Mrs. Severing.
“Oh, my fur—dear me,isn’tthat tiresome, now! So sorry—do excuse me....”
It was not difficult to conjecture that Miss Blandflower was trampling recklessly over the feet on either side of her in her endeavours to rescue the rabbit skin.
As she left the hall with Mrs. Tregaskis, Rosamund heard the last glee begin, and exclamations issuing in the penetrating husky falsetto which was peculiar to Miss Blandflower when whispering:
“Don’t wait for me—but I’m afraid you can’t get out—or could you squeeze past? This wretched fur of mine. Simply beyond the beyonds, isn’t it? Wait a minute—the deed is done—no, it isn’t—false alarm. Oh, how dreadful of me this is ... you’ll never forgive me, I’m afraid. Now then, a long pull and a strong pull....”
The door swung to behind Rosamund.
“Where are the others?” asked her guardian.
Cousin Bertie always made her way through any crowd without any difficulty at all, partly because her bulk was considerable, and partly from a certain pleasant authoritative way she had of saying, “Thank you—if you’ll just let me get past, please—thank you so much.” Rosamund had noticed long ago that very few people were ever proof against that firm civility.
“Aren’t they coming?” said Mrs. Tregaskis, when they were in the outer hall.
“Miss Blandflower’s fur got caught into her chair or something, and the others couldn’t get past.”
“Wretched Minnie! Now they’ll have to wait until the end of that chorus—Nina will never come out in the middle of it. How cross she’ll be. Well, Rosamund, you and I may as well sit down and wait for them here.”
Mrs. Tregaskis established herself on the red plush sofa underneath an enlarged photograph of Mme. Clara Butt, and made room for Rosamund beside her.
“You look rather tired, old lady,” she said kindly. Rosamund felt suddenly grateful for the kindness of her voice and said:
“A little, Cousin Bertie.”
“A real deep draught of music always givesmea fresh lease of life,” remarked Mrs. Tregaskis, drawing a deep breath that expanded her broad chest yet more. “Not that we heard very much to-night, but the violin was good, of course. Funny that music doesn’t mean more to you two children, Rosamund. Your mother was wonderful. But still, I hope you and Frances enjoyed this evening.”
“Oh yes,” said Rosamund colourlessly.
Her guardian looked rather dissatisfied.
“Why so down in the mouth, eh?” she asked genially.
Mrs. Tregaskis was always very quick to detect an atmosphere.
Rosamund hesitated.
She partly shared Frances’ old childish feeling that Mrs. Tregaskis must always get just that answer which she expected to get, to her kindly, peremptory questionings, and she was partly actuated by an intense, miserable need of reassurance that made her turn even to a source which she felt to be unlikely.
“I’m feeling rather worried about Frances,” she said rather nervously, knowing that it was not a propitious beginning. Her tendency to torment herself and the wholehousehold on the subject of imaginary anxieties about Frances’ health or spirits had been genially but quite implacably combated by Mrs. Tregaskis ever since their first arrival at Porthlew.
She gave a half-humorous sigh.
“Well, darling, I’m sorry to hear that. But it isn’t anything so very new, is it? You’ve pulled a long face over Frances ever since I can remember you both, when she was a little scared thing who didn’t dare call her soul her own. I don’t mean you ever bullied her, my dear—but there is such a thing as over-solicitude, you know.”
Accustomed though Rosamund was to her guardian’s kindly banter on the subject of Frances, she had never ceased to resent it with the wounded fury of an over-sensitive child.
Instantly she resolved that it would be impossible to tell Cousin Bertie of her new-born dread.
“Well,” said Mrs. Tregaskis, “what is it this time? Is she tired, or has she got a cold, or has Nina been hurting her feelings? Out with it.”
Rosamund asked herself desperately: “Whywas I such a fool as to begin this?” and aloud said in a sort of uncertain tone which to her own ears sounded very unconvincing:
“I was just thinking of her having become a Catholic, and all that. Whether—whether she’ll be happier now, or—want anything more.”
It was the nearest she could get to the sudden terror that had lain like lead at her heart ever since that silent interchange of looks with Frances.
“Want anything more!” Mrs. Tregaskis repeated rather derisively. “Are you afraid of her asking to join the Salvation Army next? Upon my word, Rosamund, I think better of the child than you do. She was very silly and wrong-headed about it, but at least it was all perfectly genuine, and she’s in earnest about the religious part of it.”
“Yes. I know she is. That’s just it.”
“My dear, don’t be a little goose. She’s ’verted to thefaith that your mother was born into, after all, and it’s perfectly natural that she should take the whole thing very much to heart and prove a trifleexaltéeabout it all. It’s a most wholesome symptom, I assure you, and one I’ve been watching for. Presently there’ll be a reaction, and then she’ll settle down normally, I hope. But you’ll do her much more harm than good if you sit like a cat watching a mouse—waiting for every sign. It will only make her self-conscious.”
Under the flow of so much common sense, such sound, kindly advice, Rosamund had nothing to say. A creeping sensation of numbness invaded her mind. She ceased to feel acutely unhappy or apprehensive.
Mrs. Tregaskis, solid, competent, looking at her with rather puzzled eyes, seemed a sufficient bulwark against any such ephemeral fears as those which lay at Rosamund’s heart.
“My dear little girl,” said Bertha earnestly, “don’t go looking for trouble. I’ll give you a piece of advice which has helped me over some very rough bits of ground, rougher than any you’re ever likely to meet with, please God:
“‘Look up, and not down;Look out, and not in;Look forward, and not back,Lend a hand.’
“‘Look up, and not down;Look out, and not in;Look forward, and not back,Lend a hand.’
“‘Look up, and not down;
Look out, and not in;
Look forward, and not back,
Lend a hand.’
That’s pretty well coloured my whole life, Rosamund. I wasn’t as old as you are now when I first read those words, and I’ve never forgotten them.”
There was a moment’s silence, and Mrs. Tregaskis’ fine eyes grew for once introspective.
Then she roused herself briskly and exclaimed:
“Here are the others at last! Well, Nina, what happened to you?”
The drive home passed almost in silence. Mrs. Severing was annoyed at having been delayed, and replied coldly to all Bertha’s cheery assurances of enjoyment that much waslacking to the more modern interpreters of music. Had not Bertie felt it so? Ah well, perhaps not!
Miss Blandflower, contrite and incoherent, was responsible for most of the conversation, such as it was.
That night Rosamund and Frances exchanged only a very few words. Rosamund indeed did not feel that words were needed to emphasize the unhappy certainty that was hers, and any discussion seemed to distress Frances, who said stammeringly and with tears in her eyes that nothing would be done for a long, long time, andevenFather Anselm and Mère Pauline didn’t know yet.
“Have you thought of what Cousin Bertie will say?”
“No,” said Frances, the sudden whitening of her face belying the courage of her tone. “It’s no use thinking about that until the time comes.”
“And when will it come?” Rosamund asked wonderingly.
“I don’t know. I suppose Father Anselm will settle that. He is my director. Oh, Rosamund, it’s such a relief to know that one can’t do wrong as long as one is obedient. I just have to submit my own private judgment to what the Church teaches through her priests, and it’s such a comfort.”
Rosamund marvelled.
But she saw that Frances, in spite of the lurking apprehensions for the future which she so resolutely tried to put from her, was essentially happy.
It seemed to Rosamund now that the weeks were slipping by with incredible rapidity. She no longer thought of Morris Severing, and was occasionally ashamed of her own oblivion. But the honesty which in her was innate, did not allow her to falsify her own scale of relative values, and she knew that Morris was relegated to the unimportance of an episode.
After a little while she induced in herself a sort of surface sense of reassurance about Frances. No one else ever hinted at any thought of religious vocation, and Francesnever spoke of it. Rosamund thought wistfully that perhaps she had abandoned the idea and sought to confirm the trembling hope that sometimes rose within her, in tiny ways that she strove to persuade herself would mean a great deal. She sometimes spoke to Frances of “next winter,” or asked if she meant to get new frocks for going, later on, to stay with Hazel in London, and Frances always answered naturally and without demur. But Rosamund did not dare to make any allusion to their old plan of going back to live together in the Wye Valley.
It seemed as if life at Porthlew would always consist of the same uneventful routine, and Rosamund, far from feeling it tedious, found herself regarding each monotonous day as it slipped past in the light of a respite.
But the sword of Damocles fell at last, when her anxiety was almost dormant.
“Francie, my child, there’s quite a large mail for you to-day,” cheerily exclaimed Bertha, distributing the letters. “Two fat envelopes.”
“I always say that Frances mustn’t expect togetmany letters, because she seldomwritesany,” said Miss Blandflower with an air of sapience.
Frances took her correspondence without saying anything, but something in her face brought Rosamund’s every apprehension to life again in one unreasoning rush of terror.
She restrained herself with difficulty from making inquiries of her sister when breakfast was over, but in the course of the morning Frances sought Rosamund in the garden of her own accord.
“I’ve heard from Father Anselm and from Mère Pauline,” she said gently. She looked nervous, but not at all agitated. It was as though she were stating the accomplishment of some long-expected project.
“I didn’t know you’d written to them,” said Rosamund dully.
“I thought it wasn’t any use to say anything till I had the answers,” Frances said apologetically. “They might havetold me to put the whole thing out of my mind, you know.”
“They—they don’t do that, then?”
“No. I’ve brought the letters for you to read, Rosamund.”
The Prior of Twickenham’s letter was not a long one, and struck Rosamund as that of a peculiarly simple and unworldly man. He told Frances that he had long ago guessed the destiny which God held in store for her, and that he believed her vocation to the religious life to be a real one. She must speak to her guardians and obtain their consent before taking any step. Meanwhile, she was to write freely and to count upon his prayers that her decision might be guided and blessed from above. There was little else in the letter, but something in its tone of matter-of-fact acceptance frightened Rosamund.
Mère Pauline wrote at much greater length. She congratulated Frances on “the great honour she had received” and promised her many prayers, but after that she became at once characteristically practical in her advice. If Frances’ director thought with her that she was suited to their own form of convent life, then Mère Pauline would be very glad to receive her, and meanwhile Frances must try and fit herself to be of great use. She must take care of her health, so as to be strong, and she must study, so as to be able to work, and above all, she must not neglect prayer and meditation. And, added Mère Pauline in a matter-of-fact postscript, it might be no bad plan to set about learning Latin, for greater facility in the recitation of the Holy Office. But she need not impress upon her dear child that, above all, must the feelings of that family, so soon to be called upon for so great a sacrifice, be tenderly considered.
“Frances!” said Rosamund aghast. “She writes as though the whole thing were settled.”
Her little sister looked at her with compassionate, loving eyes, and said nothing.
But Rosamund knew, more surely than any words couldhave told her, that in effect, the whole thing, as she had said, was settled.
The conviction remained with her even when it became obvious that the main conflict was yet to come.
“When are you going to tellthem?” she asked later.
“Soon,” said Frances.
But that Frances’ courage had not yet proved equal to the avowal was made manifest some weeks later when Rosamund, unnoticed in the window, heard part of a conversation between Frederick Tregaskis and his wife.
“I shall want the trap in the morning, Frederick. I’ve got to drive Francie into Polwerrow.”
“Why?”
“Church, my dear man, church. It’s some holy Roman feast or other, and I promised the child she should get in to Mass if possible.”
“Very unreasonable,” growled Frederick.
“I knew you’d say so, dear,” patiently replied Bertha, who was apt to display tolerance of her ward’s inconvenient religion in proportion as her husband grumbled at it. “I should have thought Sundays quite enough, myself.”
“As to that,” replied the disconcerting Frederick, “she pays for her own cab on Sundays and doesn’t inconvenience anyone but herself. I’m not saying anything to her Sunday expeditions.”
“Well, well—it’s something to have peace. The child is perfectly happy, and has looked much better since she stopped fretting. Thank goodness, the religious crisis, since apparently she had to have one, is safely over and done with.”
Rosamund wrung her hands together in silent anguish.
She did not know what Frances’ latest decision might portend, but there seemed to stretch before her a despairing vista of pain and separation, based on principles that appeared to her but as the shadow of a dream.