XVIII
HAZEL had not changed.
That much was evident in the first instant, and even after Frances had seen her, laughing and triumphant, playing with her baby son or, securely radiant, seated at the head of her husband’s table, she still felt Lady Marleswood to be very much one with the little Hazel Tregaskis of Porthlew days.
Her relations with Bertha, even, were singularly unaltered. Frances knew that her guardian’s imperious rule had weighed far more lightly on Hazel, in their nursery days, than on either of her wards. She had opposed to it a certain joyous pagan insensitiveness, for the most part too indifferently good-humoured to resist, but quite capable of overruling, lightly, merrily, yet more or less decisively, her mother’s most trenchant bidding by her own calm quality of self-reliance.
Now, in such security of happiness as Frances had never dreamed of, her own way so amply justified as to need no further explanation, Hazel could afford to listen with the smiling surface docility that had always been hers, to Bertha’s dictatorially-worded counsels for the welfare of Dickie and her tempered approval of his nursery arrangements.
But Frances did not think that Hazel meant to follow Cousin Bertie’s wise advice about not spoiling the little darling, and making him learn at once that he must go to sleep at the proper times without being coaxed. Hazel only shook her tawny curls, and said in a tone of comical resignation that she was sure Dickie was going to be dreadfully spoiled, and she only hoped he would have a little brother to help keep him in order, and not an adoring sister.
Sir Guy was very polite to Mrs. Tregaskis, and very kind to Frances. It was he, Hazel eagerly told her cousin, who had suggested that Frances should stay with them in the summer and be taken through her first season by Lady Marleswood.
Frances was impressed and almost overawed by such kindness. Sir Guy had hardly appeared to notice her existence at Porthlew, but he seemed quite different now, under his own roof, with no atmosphere of strain and disapproval to contend against.
“Does he know about me?” Frances asked Hazel rather timidly that evening.
Hazel had come into her cousin’s bedroom in a blue silk négligée and sat on the floor, just as she used to do in her blue cotton kimono at Porthlew.
“What about you, except that you’re a darling, and just like my very own sister?” demanded Lady Marleswood.
“Being a Catholic.”
“Oh yes, of course, and we both think it perfectly splendid,” declared Hazel lightly.
Frances felt relief at the very lightness of her tone.
“Was there a lot of difficulty about it? Were they all very vexed?” asked Hazel sympathetically.
“Rather vexed. Cousin Bertie was very, very kind, of course—and Rosamund understood, and didn’t think I wanted to be separate or—or different or anything—you know what I mean, though I can’t explain it at all well. But, of course, they didn’t like it. Naturally.”
“Now why ‘naturally’? What had it got to do with anyone but yourself? If it makes you any happier, why on earth shouldn’t you be a Roman Catholic to-day and a Primitive Methodist to-morrow, if you want to? I’ve no patience with this never letting people run their own show,” declared Lady Marleswood.
“It was very difficult to know what to do,” rather solemnly said Frances.
“That’s so like you, Francie dearest.Ishouldn’t haveseen the least difficulty in it. Do whatever you want to do, and whatever you think best. Then you take your own risks and have nobody but yourself to blame if things go wrong. But I don’t believe they do go wrong. Look at me!”
Frances looked—at the radiant blooming face of little Dickie’s mother.
“I’ve never,” said Hazel earnestly, “never for one single minute, regretted that I took my own way, Frances. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life, and even if I lost Guy and the baby to-morrow, I should still think it had been worth while.”
Frances looked at her.
“You’ve not changed a bit, Hazel. I feel just as if you and Rosamund had been to some grown-up party and then you’d come into my room at Porthlew to tell me all about it.”
“I’m so glad,” cried Hazel delightedly. “I should hate it if you all thought I’d changed and become quite different just because I’m so happy. Francie, Idowant Rosamund and you to be as happy as I am. It seems unfair that you shouldn’t be, when you’re both so much better than I am. Is Rosamund going to marry Morris Severing?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so.”
“That’s all right. He’s not nearly good enough for her. We’ll find someone much nicer—a very clever man who writes books or something, I think—and when they’re married you can live with her most of the time, till you marry yourself. Oh, Francie, I can’t help it—I want to seeallthe people I love married now—it’s so much the nicest thing to be!”
“It depends,” faltered Frances, colouring.
Hazel looked at her with her shrewd, sympathetic gaze. She had that odd degree of intuition that the most frankly self-absorbed natures often display.
“Francie,” she said slowly, “do you want to become a nun?”
Frances coloured helplessly under the unexpected bit of penetration.
“I don’t know—oh, Hazel—what made you think that? I haven’t said one word—not for a long time yet,” she stammered incoherently.
“I’m not exactly surprised,” remarked her cousin calmly. “You were always much too good for this world, darling; but do you think you’d be happy in a convent?”
“Of courseI should be happy. But I don’t know if—if they’d even have me. Oh, Hazel, it makes it all seem so much more real when we talk about it like this. I’ve not told anybody at all—not even Rosamund.”
“I won’t tell a soul,” promised Hazel. “I don’t know anything about convents at all, but there are some sisters who call for subscriptions sometimes at Marleswood, and they always look very nice and happy.”
“Nuns are always happy,” said Frances seriously.
“Are they? I wish I knew more about them, and what sort of life they have to lead. I suppose it’s nice and peaceful and holy, if you like that sort of thing. Do you feel as though you had a vocation, or whatever it is, Frances?”
Frances said nothing, only looked at Hazel with large, distressed eyes.
“I’m talking of what I know nothing about,” declared Lady Marleswood, kissing her affectionately. “I won’t bother you about it, but if they worry you at Porthlew, when they know, you can come to us just whenever you like and for as long as you like. Nobody shall say anything to you, and you can go to church all day if you want to.”
“Oh, Hazel, how nice you are!”
“Good-night, Francie darling. Do remember that the only thing is to follow one’s own convictionsquiteregardless of anything and everyone. I know it sounds dreadful, but look at me! I’m a living example of the advantages of self-will. Now I must go and say good-night to mother.”
Hazel left Frances to the realization that her hitherto unspoken desire had gained the strangest degree of life andsubstance from the mere facts of having been put into words, and received almost as a matter of course.
“Hazel seemed to think it quite natural, and not at all dreadful,” Frances thought to herself. “Perhaps Cousin Bertie won’t mind as much as I think she’s going to. I know I’m a moral coward, because I’m more afraid of telling her, for fear she should be angry, than of telling Rosamund, who’ll only be dreadfully unhappy. But I needn’t think of it yet. Father Anselm said I was not to think of the future at all, or to make plans....”
She lost herself in surmises, that almost amounted to certainties, as to the interpretation her confessor had put upon her timidly vague references to her own future. That the shrewd little French Superior had penetrated her scarcely apprehended secret, Frances felt hardly any doubt.
“They’ll tell me what to do when the time comes,” she thought with a quickly beating heart, and remembered thankfully her new-found allegiance.
The day following, Mrs. Tregaskis and Frances went down to Cornwall.
Frances felt as though she had been away for a lifetime, and had to combat an unreasonable tendency to astonishment at finding her surroundings utterly unchanged.
It was a relief to her that no allusion was made at first to that change in herself of which she felt so acutely conscious.
Frederick, rather as though the words were dragged out of him under protest, asked for news of Hazel, and Miss Blandflower squeaked ecstatic inquiries about the baby.
“Is the dear little man like Hazel?”
“Not very like her,” said Bertha rather slowly. “His eyes are dark blue, for one thing.”
Everyone remembered Sir Guy’s remarkably dark blue eyes, with the apparent exception of the unfortunate Minnie, who exclaimed in a high-pitched key of astonishment:
“Now where can he get that from? Yours are so verybrown, dear Mrs. Tregaskis, and Hazel’s, as we know, match her name.”
“By some extraordinary coincidence,” said Frederick’s disagreeable voice, “the child has inherited his father’s eyes.”
Miss Blandflower looked confused, laughed a good deal in a nervous way, and made a characteristic attempt to retrieve her verbal footing by embarking upon a disastrous quotation:
“Ah well, it’s a wise child that——”
“Give me a bun, Minnie,” said Bertha in loud, commanding tones. “I be starvin’ for my tay. Why, Francie and I haven’t had a blow-out like this for I don’t know how long. Tea at the convent consisted of stewed twigs and a Marie biscuit, eh, Frances? that is to say, when we got any all.”
“There wasn’t very much,” Frances admitted reluctantly, and without smiling.
“There was not indeed! And that Mrs. Mulholland has the appetite of a cormorant, positively.”
Few feminine indictments can be much more virulent than the charge of “having an appetite,” and there was a distinct quality of venom in Mrs. Tregaskis’ tone.
“Is that the one Mrs. Severing talked about?” asked Rosamund.
“Yes, as though she were her dearest friend. Poor Nina’s gush is sometimes apt to be misleading,” laughed Bertha tolerantly. “Has she been over here, Rosamund?”
“She came yesterday, to see if you were back.”
“Any news?”
“There’s to be a concert at Polwerrow on the twentieth, and she wants to take us all. She’ll call for us in the car and bring us back.”
“Excellent. A deep draught of music is just what I want. Anyone good coming down? I suppose so, or Nina wouldn’t condescend.”
“Some violinist—I can’t remember his name.”
“You wouldn’t!” laughed Bertha. “Well, my dear, that’ll be very jolly. I love an outing, and there’ll be plenty of room in the car for all of us.”
“Mrs. Severing was kind enough to suggest my coming too—room for a small one,” said Minnie agitatedly. “Of course I said it wasn’t to be thought of for a moment.”
“Minnie, you know you like music, and you always go with us to any decent concert at Polwerrow,” said Bertha patiently. “Of course you’ll come.”
Under cover of the protests, incoherent objections, and final yielding, which were always part and parcel of any invitation issued to and accepted by Miss Blandflower, Rosamund and Frances made their escape.
Their long talk together left Frances very happy. She gave Rosamund no such confidence as that sudden, unpremeditated one which had been drawn from her by Hazel’s matter of fact suggestion, but nevertheless she was all but unconscious of any reticence.
It was to Rosamund that she could best pour out the story of her new experiences, and the fullness of Rosamund’s sympathy gave no hint of any sense of exclusion.
If a division of the ways had been reached neither was conscious of it. To Rosamund, her sister’s happiness, in itself unintelligible, became merely a subject for rejoicing, and the ready congratulations she gave out of her affection needed no deeper source to fill Frances with tender gratitude.
They drew nearer together in the very difference that might have separated them for a time.