XX
IT was in a very little while that Mrs. Tregaskis became fully aware of the fallacy in her hopeful theory that the crisis was over for the younger of her two adopted daughters.
“I can’t think how I could ever have been so blind. Give children an inch and they’ll take an ell! I might have guessed that Frances would develop some fanatic notion of this kind. WhydidI ever let her go to that wretched convent? She’s thought of nothing else ever since, and now she tells me that they’re ‘willing to receive her’ into the novitiate there. Willing, indeed! I should think they were!”
“Of course, Bertie dear, if you let her get under the influence of priests and nuns, what else can you expect?” inquired Mrs. Severing.
“You can’t reproach me more than I do myself,” said Bertha vehemently. “Though I must say, dearest, it’s rather laughable coming from you, since you were the very person who urged me to send the child to make that Retreat, and even insisted on going with her yourself, if you remember.”
Nina looked at her greatest friend for a moment in silence, and then said in the compassionate tones of a ministering angel:
“My poor dear! I can see that you’re so much on edge about the whole thing, you simply don’t know what you’re saying. I am so sorry for you.”
“Thank you, Nina,” said Mrs. Tregaskis rather dryly. “It would be more to the point, perhaps, if you knew what to say to Frances. Do you think you could put a little sense into her?”
The inquiry was more than tinged with doubtfulness, as Bertha eyed her friend coldly, and Mrs. Severing, with a sudden access of austerity, replied in accents grown markedly remote:
“Really, Bertie, you mustn’t ask me to come between Frances and her conscience. I have a very great deal of influence with her, as you know, and I shouldn’t care to take such a responsibility on myself. The child’s instinct is a very pure and holy one, and personally I can’t see why she shouldn’t follow her own inspiration. It may very well be a God-given one.”
“I never heard such an outrageous piece of nonsense in my life,” declared Mrs. Tregaskis, for once losing control of her temper. “Anything to save trouble, Nina. That’s you all over. Always the line of least resistance! Well, I’m not going to let Frances ruin her life by taking a step of which she doesn’t even realize the meaning, before she’s seen anything of life. Even Roman Catholics insist on their daughters waiting until they’re of age before letting them enter a convent.”
“I’m afraid Frances isn’t your daughter, Bertie, which may make all the difference. Though really,” said Nina dreamily, “it doesn’t seem to matter much nowadays, since the younger generation takes its own line without reference to any standards but its own. The myth of parental authority is altogether done away with.”
“Frances isn’t made of the same stuff as Morris, my dear. Well, if you won’t or can’t help me, I must tackle the situation myself. It isn’t the first time I’ve taken on a tough job single-handed, and it won’t be the last, I don’t suppose. Ah well! it’s better to wear out than to rust out!”
In the ensuing weeks at Porthlew it appeared not unlikely that the process of wearing out would extend to other members of the household in addition to Mrs. Tregaskis.
Frances, white and exalted, spent her days in writing to the Prior of Twickenham and to Mère Pauline and the major part of her nights in tears. Only Rosamund realizedhow inflexible was the determination that underlay her sobbing protests.
Miss Blandflower bleated frightened auguries and ejaculatory condemnations, and Rosamund upheld Frances passionately and told herself that it would only be an experiment, and that, of course, Frances would never, never stay at the convent for life.
“Will they let you come away if you want to?” she asked tensely.
“Yes,” said Frances almost violently. “That’s what a novitiate is for.”
“Will you promise to come away if you find you’ve made a mistake?”
“I promise.”
“Then Cousin Bertie ought to let you go,” declared Rosamund, sick with misery. “If it’s the only thing that will make you happy.”
For answer Frances began to cry again, piteously and silently, as she used to cry when a child.
Rosamund, with the same despairing instinct of rebellion and impotent protection that had been hers in the days when she had resisted Bertha Tregaskis’ kindness to the little orphan sisters, put her arms round Frances.
“Don’t cry,” she whispered. “I’ll go to Cousin Frederick, and he mustmakeCousin Bertie give in. They’ve no real right to forbid you.”
She sought Frederick Tregaskis in the study which had become his almost permanent refuge from the strained atmosphere now prevalent at Porthlew.
He looked up angrily, and her heart failed her, but she began steadily enough.
“I’ve come to speak to you about Frances——”
“I don’t wish to hear you. Everyone comes to speak to me about Frances. When I come into this room, it is in order to avoid being spoken to about Frances.”
“I know it is,” said Rosamund desperately. “But I only want to say one thing, Cousin Frederick——”
“Then don’t say it in here. Come into some other part of the house.”
Rosamund followed the exasperated Frederick into the hall, where he made a sound expressive of disgust on seeing Miss Blandflower, wearing a large pair of yellow wash-leather gloves, arranging flowers. Rosamund, however, was not even aware of the governess’s presence.
“Frances is breaking her heart. She thinks that she is meant to be a nun and that she ought not to wait indefinitely. Will you give her leave to go? I don’t believe she’ll stay there long——”
“I’ve told her already that I’m not in a position to give or refuse leave. She’s no daughter of mine.”
“It will satisfy her conscience if you will just say that she has your consent,” urged Rosamund.
Minnie, listening hard in the background, muttered frantically: “Conscience in truth makes cowards of us all; and how she can even speak of such a thing!”
“She can have my consent for what it’s worth,” said Frederick Tregaskis. “But she must fight it out for herself with your Cousin Bertha.”
“That’s the worst of it——”
“Of course it’s the worst of it! And the sooner she puts an end to it the better. This house is like a—shambles,” said Frederick in tones which convinced Miss Blandflower, who did not know what the word meant, that a shambles must be some recondite form of impropriety. She became very red and uttered a shocked and protesting titter, which had the effect of drawing Frederick’s eye upon her for a searing moment before he again retreated to the impregnable study.
But Rosamund took comfort with her when she went back to Frances.
“If it’s only Cousin Bertie,” said Frances rather surprisingly, “I don’t mind so much. I know I’m frightened of her, though she’s so very, very kind, but Father Anselm says that my first duty is to God, and that it’s not as if shewere really my mother. He thinks I ought to enter now.”
“It’s only an experiment,” cried Rosamund entreatingly, but with a sinking heart.
And Frances would not contradict her.
The days dragged by in an atmosphere of eternal discomfort.
Bertha’s face showed signs of wearing and of wakeful nights, but she remained determinedly normal and even cheerful. Miss Blandflower loyally supported her with chirping and obvious contributions to the lagging conversation at meals and in the evenings, and even Frances, pale-faced and with scared, sorrowful eyes, made her evident and rather piteous attempts to behave as usual in the face of a mental struggle that she felt to be only the strength-sapping preliminary to an impending crisis of upheaval.
Rosamund, supersensitive to atmosphere, and bearing the weight of her sister’s dumb unhappiness as well as that of her own rebellious, apprehensive misery, began to feel that the only hope of relief for any of them lay in the decisive cutting of the Gordian knot.
“This can’t go on, you know,” she said ruthlessly to Frances. “What are you waiting for?”
“Waiting for?”
“Yes. Do you think Cousin Bertie will ever give in?”
“No.”
“Then do you mean to put the whole thing out of your mind till you’re much older—say about twenty-five—and just submit, till then?”
Even as she spoke, Rosamund felt convinced that such a course had not presented itself to Frances.
“No,” said Frances with the inflexible note in her childish voice that Porthlew was learning to dread. “It wouldn’t be right to do that. Father Anselm is a very wise priest and very holy, and he says I ought to be brave and go now. If I am unfaithful to my vocation, it may be taken away from me.”
Rosamund, quite unconscious of humour, reflected on theextreme convenience of such a solution. She did not believe that any Divine call had come to her sister, but she felt convinced that Frances would know no rest until she had tested by experience the reality of her religious vocation.
“You’d better go, I think,” she said abruptly.
“Go now?” Frances whitened. “Then I should have to run away.”
“Oh no, Francie! If you say, definitely, that you’re going to the convent no one can stop you. They can’t lock you up or use brute force.”
The moral courage involved in such a course seemed unattainable to Frances. The psychological moment, however, for which we all, consciously or unconsciously, wait when on the brink of a vital decision, came at last.
There came an instant, unexpectedly even to herself, when Frances looked up from a letter received by the afternoon post, and said suddenly:
“Cousin Bertie, Mère Pauline writes that I had better go to the convent some time next month, if I can get my things ready. I—I want you to let me fix a date.”
Her heart was beating so that she felt as though she must suffocate.
“I have already written to Mère Pauline, Frances, and she knows quite well that I do not think you old enough or strong enough or wise enough to take such a step as that, at any rate for the present.”
“Whenwouldyou let me, then?”
“I don’t know, my child. When you’ve learnt to be less self-righteous and self-opinionated at home I shall think you better fitted to try and undertake a life of mortification and humility.”
Then Bertha suddenly relapsed into her normal tones of hearty kindness.
“My dear, I hate playing the heavy guardian and talking to you like this, but these people have worked you up into taking the whole thingau grand serieux, until one doesn’tknow what other tone to adopt. Can’t you be content to trust me, Francie?”
“I do trust you,” said Frances miserably. “But I must do what I think right. It would be a sin not to.”
“My dear child, don’t talk such nonsense. Do you mean to say that you think we ought all to rush into convents, under pain of sin? How would the world go on, pray?”
Bertha laughed a little, but Frances answered her quite seriously.
“No, I don’t think that. I quite see that everyone can’t enter the religious life—but then everyone doesn’t want to.”
“Every enthusiastic little girl who has just been bitten by a Romanist craze wants to,” said Bertha laughing, “but no one has any business to encourage them, and I don’t think any the better of your convent authorities for doing so, my Francie.”
“May I go there next month?”
“No, my dear, you may not, and if you can’t make up your mind to it, I shall forbid any more correspondence with these people. I don’t want to be severe with you, and I know quite well that you think you’re doing right and being a little martyr in a sacred cause, etc., but I’ve gotmyconscience to think of as well as yours, you know.”
Frances began to cry again, in a helpless, inefficient sort of way that gave no hint of the sense of irrevocability that had taken possession of her and finally clinched her resolution.
Bertha left the room, frowning a little in her vexation and perplexity.
“You’re making yourself quite ill with all this worry, dear Mrs. Tregaskis,” protested Minnie fondly. “You really will break down.”
“Oh, it would take more than that to make me break down, my dear! But it certainly is very tiresome, and making the whole house uncomfortable. However, there’s a meeting I have to go to at Pensevern school next week, andI shall spend a couple of nights with Nina. That’ll make a break, and give me a bit of a rest. And between ourselves, Minnie, when I get back I’m going to arrange to send Frances somewhere for a little change. It’ll do us all good to get away from one another for a while, and then we shall be able to start fresh. Poor little girl, I can’t bear to see her so wretched.”
“Mrs. Tregaskis,” said Minnie with conviction, “you really are an angel without any wings.”
The following week witnessed the departure of the angelic Mrs. Tregaskis for Pensevern, and the atmosphere of tension at Porthlew sensibly relaxed.
Even Frances seemed to have recaptured some of the characteristic serenity that she had only recently lost, and she and Rosamund spent the afternoon together amongst the mellow reds and yellows of the autumn garden, happy in the midst of trivial, familiar things. As they turned indoors as dusk was falling, Frances spoke.
“Rosamund, I had meant not to tell you—but after all, I couldn’t—and besides, you always know.... You know what Father Anselm said I ought to do——?”
A pang, that held far more of recognition in it than of surprise, went through Rosamund.
“Go to the convent in spite of them?”
“Yes. I’m going to do it while Cousin Bertie is away.”
“Francie! Is it quite fair?”
“I don’t know,” said Frances calmly. “I haven’t told Father Anselm or Mère Pauline or any of them, because it would be such a dreadful responsibility for them to know—and, besides, they might not think it right toadviseme to run away from home. But it’s the only way I shall ever have the courage to do it.”
Rosamund felt a sense of utter impotence invading her as she listened to the childish voice, made resolutely steady and matter-of-fact.
“But Cousin Bertie will be back the day after to-morrow.”
“I know. So I’m going to-morrow.”
“Francie!”
“Don’t,” said Frances, her voice quivering for the first time. “It’s the only way I can ever do it, I’m such a moral coward. And it’s far better to do it all quickly than to have a long waiting first—that would be much harder for both of us, Rosamund. At first I thought I wouldn’t even tell you, so that you wouldn’t have to say good-bye or anything sad—but then I couldn’t help it. I knew you’d understand.”
“I understand,” said Rosamund drearily, conscious only that she must not make it harder for Frances. “But have you thought at all how you’re going to do it?”
A sense of unreality rushed upon her.
“To-morrow! It’s impossible—you can’t do it.”
“I’ve looked up the trains and everything,” said Frances literally. “I can take the one o’clock train, and you must send my box after me. I can’t take it because the servants would know—but by the time Cousin Bertie is back, everybody will know, and it won’t matter.”
“You can’t arrive there with nothing at all,” said Rosamund, her mind refusing to take in any but the immediate practical issues of the case.
“I shall carry my little tiny attaché case, and if I start early I’m certain to meet someone or other who will give me a lift to the station. It’s market day, you know.”
“You’ve never even travelled alone,” began Rosamund conscious of futility.
“But I can’t possibly make any mistake. It’s a through train to London, and then I shall take a cab to Liverpool Street Station and go on from there. It’s not a very long journey if I get a good train.”
“Will they know you’re coming?”
“I shall telegraph from London.”
“Francie, you say you’re a moral coward, and yet you’ve planned everything out like this! What would you do supposingyou met Cousin Bertie on your way to the station? It might quite easily happen.”
Frances whitened instantly.
“I’d thought of that, but her meeting is at two o’clock, and they’re sure to go early. Cousin Bertie always does. So they’ll be having luncheon at one o’clock, and you know Mrs. Severing hardly ever has the motor out in the mornings. So I don’t think there’s any real chance of it.”
“I suppose not,” said Rosamund drearily. “What on earth will she say when she comes back and finds you’ve gone?”
“Oh, Rosamund, it will be so dreadful for you! I’ll leave a letter for her, and then you won’t have to tell her.”
“What about Cousin Frederick and Miss Blandflower?”
“Cousin Frederick hardly ever comes in to luncheon, and he’s quite likely not to notice that I’m not at dinner. Even if he does, he’ll probably think I’ve just gone to bed or something—you know he never bothers. I’m afraid Miss Blandflower will have to know at dinner-time, but she won’t be in herself for luncheon.”
“How do you know?”
“She’s going to the Rectory. She told me, quite by chance. Oh, Rosamund,” said Frances with an awe-struck face, “it does seem as though I were meant to do this. All sorts of little things seem to have happened together, to make it possible. You know Cousin Bertie never goes away as a rule—I might have had to wait for months for this opportunity, and yet it’s happened now—just the very time that Mère Pauline wrote to say she would receive me in the novitiate. It’s all too wonderful.”
“Do you mean to say you’re really happy about it all?”
“Yes, oh yes! If only it wasn’t for the leaving of you.”
Rosamund marvelled miserably.
It seemed to her that the evening went by in a dream.
She could not believe that it was Frances’ last night at Porthlew.
But even if she came back, it would be only after an experience that would stretch like a gulf between all that had been before and all that might come after. She went to Frances’ room and they packed her box, locking the bedroom door carefully, and Rosamund wrote out a label and affixed it to the small trunk.
“I’ll put the things in the attaché case to-morrow morning,” said Frances, looking rather wistfully round the room. “It seems so funny to be leaving all my frocks behind. I wish you could wear them, Rosamund, but you’re too tall.”
“You aren’t leaving them for good. You’ll want them when you come out,” cried Rosamund, and hurried on lest Frances should contradict her: “You’ll remember that you’ve promised—promised—to come away if you find you’ve made a mistake.”
“Yes,” said Frances faithfully. “I’ll remember.”
That night they slept together.
The morning pierced through a soaking white mist, a day typical of Cornwall in the autumn.
Miss Blandflower came down looking harassed and haggard, and announced that she had toothache. Breakfast proceeded as usual, and Rosamund found it quite impossible to realize that in a few hours Frances would be gone.
But the morning sped by, swift and yet leaden. At midday Miss Blandflower put on galoshes and a mackintosh and set off for the Rectory, valiantly suppressing a hinted inclination to “give in” to her increasing toothache, and remain seated over the fire, and as she went down the drive Frances said gently:
“I shall want a waterproof. I’ve only got my blue serge coat and skirt and my brown hat to travel in.”
“Put on thick shoes,” said Rosamund urgently, as though she had no other preoccupation.
When Frances stood ready, looking pale and childish, and grasping her little leather case, Rosamund pulled down a thick Irish frieze cape from the hall and flung it round her own shoulders.
“I’m coming as far as the road with you,” she said in an inward voice.
Dumbly they went together down the steps and across the gravelled court. The thick mist seemed to swallow them up, and Frances put her hand into Rosamund’s.
Outside the drive gate they stopped. It was the high-road which lay outside, and down which the farm carts and pony traps would pass on their way to market.
“I will write to-night in the train, after I’ve left London.”
“So will I, darling.”
They stood in silence.
“If something doesn’t come soon, I ought to begin to walk,” said Frances nervously. “I can’t miss the train.”
The sound of wheels, muffled in the fog but unmistakable, came to them both almost as she spoke.
“I don’t know if they’ll see us, the mist is so bad just here. Come a little on to the road, Francie.”
“I think it’s Mrs. Westaway’s cart. I can see the white horse.”
They hailed the cart and Frances called out her request.
The farmer’s wife acceded to it cheerfully, begging Miss Frances not to keep the mare standing, but to jump up quickly.
So Rosamund kissed her once, almost threw the little case in after her, and in another instant the high dog-cart and jolly, fat Mrs. Westaway on the driving-seat with her great baskets of market produce, and Frances clinging to the back seat, and the impatient white mare, had all disappeared into the mist, and even the sound of wheels had become inaudible.
She went back to the house, the laurels and rhododendron bushes on either side of the drive dripping on to the sodden ground.
All the afternoon she tried to tell herself that Frances was gone, and found herself repeating the words over and over again, but still they carried no conviction to her. She thought that perhaps at dinner-time, when she would inevitablyhave to explain Frances’ absence to Miss Blandflower, it might help her to understand what had happened. But Miss Blandflower sent a message downstairs to say that her tooth was much worse, and she had gone to bed, and did not wish to have any dinner.
So Rosamund and Frederick Tregaskis dined together in almost unbroken silence, and he did not appear to notice the absence of Frances. At nine o’clock a telegram was brought to Rosamund, and she tore it open with a vague, sick sense of apprehension, and read:
“Arrived safely—kindest possible welcome here—best love.—Francie.”
“Arrived safely—kindest possible welcome here—best love.—Francie.”
That night Rosamund cried and sobbed herself to sleep as she had done in the days of her childhood after her mother’s death.
She woke to the realization that Mrs. Tregaskis would return that day.
At breakfast Frederick asked her suddenly:
“Is Frances upstairs?”
“No. Miss Blandflower is upstairs with toothache.”
“I know that. Where’s your sister?”
Rosamund looked at him dumbly, searching less for words in which to clothe her meaning than for the power to speak at all.
“H’m!” Frederick looked at her significantly. “You can make your own explanations to your Cousin Bertha, then.”
Rosamund instantly felt convinced that he knew perfectly well what those explanations were to be.
Earlier than Rosamund had expected, she heard the hoot of Mrs. Severing’s motor in the drive, and then sounds indicating that Mrs. Tregaskis had descended and entered the house.
Without the slightest idea of what she was about to do or say, Rosamund went into the hall.
The mist of the day before had cleared altogether, and sunlight streamed into the hall and over the ample form of Mrs. Tregaskis, rapidly unwinding her motor-veil before the glass, her back to the door against which Rosamund leant heavily, from sheer physical inability to advance further.
Miss Blandflower, a pallid and grotesque figure with one side of her face swollen beneath the small grey shawl that draped her head and shoulders, was hurrying feebly down the stairs.
“My dear old Minnie! Whathaveyou been doing to yourself? An abscess?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. A bad tooth, and I foolishly went out in the wet yesterday and caught cold. There’s no luck about the house—you know the old song, dear Mrs. Tregaskis. It’s a sight for sore eyes to see you back, as they say.”
“Where are my girls?”
Rosamund tried to speak, and made an inarticulate sound.
Bertha whirled round.
“Hallo, hallo! Why, my dear, what’s wrong?”
Her voice changed.
“Rosamund, what’s happened? Where’s Frances?”
Miss Blandflower gazed from one to the other, a puzzled smile further distorting her swollen face.
Quicker than Rosamund could find words Mrs. Tregaskis’ quick perceptions had leapt at the truth.
“Frances has gone? She’s gone to that convent?”
“Yes,” said Rosamund at last, and felt as though an immense weight had suddenly been taken from her.
“Oh, she couldn’t have been so wicked—oh, I knewnothingabout it,” screamed Minnie, and collapsed on to the stairs.
Bertha sank heavily on to a chair.