Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  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 foresaw Mrs. 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 what I wrote — 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 — but what she wrote. 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 with a.”

  “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 is particularly 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 b
e 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 by Father 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 I know she’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 any one 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 always do say it for.”

  “Yes, dear, it is, and one of these days when you least expect 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 a fait accompli.”

  But that the reception of Frances Grantham into the Catholic Church was not to become a fait accompli without 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 perfectly entichie with 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 not quite my 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 I “Usbands be proper fules for the most part, and us dii 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 sup pose, 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 triumphantly told 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 shillyshallying 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.

  XIII

  “I’M an impulsive creature,” declared Bertha, in despite of the protesting eyebrows which Mrs. Severing instantly erected at the assertion. “It was an impulse that made me allow Francie to accept Sybil Argent’s invitation, and I don’t mind owning that it was a mistaken one. The child came back more tiresomely self-righteous than she went, and now — as you know — we’ve practically consented to the whole business.”

  “Of course, darling,” said Nina tenderly, “I do not look upon it in the light that you do, but at the same time, you know, if I had once said no to a child of mine, no it should remain. Nothing is more fatal than a half-consent, to my mind.”

  “Indeed, Nina. And when does Morris come home, may I ask?” said Bertha acidly, and had the satisfaction of seeing her friend colour faintly, as she replied with what both of them knew to be, more spirit than sincerity: “Any time, now. I expect him from day to day, practically. But a young man is a very different matter to a little girl, Bertie, though perhaps only we mothers of sons really appreciate that.”

  Bertha changed the subject.

  “Frances goes to this
convent next week, when they appear to be giving a Retreat of some sort, and after that I suppose she’ll become an R.C. outright. As Frederick says, we’re not in a position actually to forbid it, so we may as well make the best of it. I hate making a compromise, and yet, since the children grew up, I’ve been doing nothing else, it seems to me.”

  “Poor dear! But I’m sure it’ll be better for everyone when the child’s actually taken a decisive step. She’ll be much more settled afterwards.”

  “Settled in the wrong direction!” sighed Bertha. “However, she’s always been a good little thing, and except for this unfortunate fancy, we’ve never had any difficulties. So unlike poor Rosamund! As Frederick says, it’s the only form of self-will Frances has ever shown, and though she is obstinate, it isn’t quite the same thing as Rosamund’s constant perversity.”

  “A fit of religion might be no bad thing for her.”

  “I quite agree — but there isn’t a sign of it. Frances suggested her making this Retreat affair too, but she wouldn’t hear of it — fortunately enough, perhaps, since I should certainly have had to put my foot down. I shall have to send poor Minnie with Frances, I suppose.”

  “Let me take her!” suddenly exclaimed Nina, with an air of self-abnegation. “I have been thinking of making a Retreat for some time.”

  Bertha was as well aware as Nina herself that “some time” only covered the last five seconds of time, but the advantages of Nina’s suggestion were too obvious for her to point out any flaws in the proposal.

  “But, my dear, should you like it? A. whole week at a place of that sort, and nothing on earth to do!”

  “To ‘make my soul,’ Bertie. It would be such a rest — such a help. Not the teachings and sermonizings, you know, but quiet hours to myself in the garden and the chapel, a little time to read and meditate....”