The Superior had flushed very deeply, and her voice was shaken, but there were no tears in her steady eyes. Alex, trembling with passionate sympathy, and with a gratitude so intense as to be almost painful, for the confidence bestowed upon her, asked the inevitable question of youth:
“Have you been happy? — haven’t you ever regretted it? Oh, tell me if you are really and truly happy.”
“Absolutely,” said Mother Gertrude unhesitatingly. “But not with happiness such as the world knows. The word has acquired a different meaning. I hardly know how to convey what I mean. ‘Grief’ and ‘Joy’ mean something so utterly different to the soul in religious life, and to the soul still in the world. But this much I can say — that I have never known one instant of regret — never anything but the deepest, most intense gratitude that I was given strength to follow my vocation.”
There was a long silence, Alex watching the nun’s fervent, flame-like gaze, in which her young idolatry detected none of the resolute fanaticism built up in instinctive self-protection from a temperament no less ardent than her own.
“So you have the story of God’s great mercy to one poor soul,” said the nun at last. “And the story of every vocation is equally wonderful. The more I see of souls, Alex — and a Superior hears many things — the more I marvel at the ways of God’s love. As for the paths by which He led me to the shelter of His own house, I shall only know the full wonder of it all when I see Him face to face. I have only given you the barest outlines, but you understand a little?”
“Yes,” breathed Alex, her whole being shaken by an emotion to the real danger of which she was entirely blind.
She went home that day in a state of exaltation, and could not have told, had she been obliged to analyse it, how far her uplifted condition was due to the awakening of religious perceptions hitherto undreamed of, to her increasing worship of the woman who had roused those perceptions, or to her exultant sense of having been made the repository of a confidence shared with no other human being. It was small wonder that Lady Isabel traced the rapt look on Alex’ face to its source.
“But most girls go through this sort of thing at school,” she said hopelessly. “Of course, I know it is only a phase, Alex, whatever you may think now. But why can’t you be more like other people? Why insist all of a sudden on makin’ poor Holland get up early and go out to church with you on Sunday, when I always like the maids to have a rest?”
“Holland doesn’t mind,” said Alex sulkily. She could not explain to her mother that the Superior had asked a promise of her that she would not again willingly miss going to Mass on Sundays.
“If it was a reasonable hour I shouldn’t object so much — I know heaps of very devout Catholics who always do go to Farm Street or somewhere every Sunday, and I wouldn’t forbid that, Alex — though why you should suddenly get frantic about religion I can’t imagine. I suppose it is the influence of that woman you have been seein’ at the convent.”
Alex grew scarlet, to her own dismay.
“I thought so,” said Lady Isabel, looking annoyed. “I don’t want to prevent your doing anything that does give you pleasure — Heaven knows it’s difficult enough to find anything you seem to care about in the very least — but I am not goin’ to let you infect Barbara.”
“Oh, no!” said Alex, with sincere horror in her voice. The last thing she wanted was to take Barbara to the convent. She instinctively dreaded both her sister’s shrewd, cynical judgment, and the misrepresentations that she always somehow contrived to make of all Alex’ motives and actions. Alex clung to the thought of her exclusive claim on Mother Gertrude’s interest and sympathy as she had never yet clung to any other possession.
“Well, we shall be leavin’ town next week, and there’ll be an end of it. When I said you might go to the convent, Alex, I never meant you to rush off there three or four times a week, as you know. But if you have taken a fancy to this nun, I suppose nothing will stop you.”
Lady Isabel sighed, and Alex, from the glow of contentment that possessed her, felt able to speak more warmly and natural than usual.
“I don’t want to do anything to vex you, mother, truly, I don’t, but the Superior is very kind to me, and I do like going to see her. You know you always say you want me to do whatever makes me happiest.” She spoke urgently and coaxingly, like the impulsive, impetuous child Alex, who had been used to beg for favours and privileges with all the confidence of a favourite.
Lady Isabel sighed again, but her face wore a touched, softened look, and she said resignedly, “So long as you cheer up, and don’t vex your father by seeming doleful and uninterested in things.... Of course, girls now-a-days do take up good works and slummin’ and all that sort of thing — but not till they are older than you are, darling, and then it’s generally because they haven’t married — at least,” added Lady Isabel hurriedly, “people are sure to say it is that.”
“I don’t mind if they do,” said Alex proudly, her mind full of Mother Gertrude’s story.
“Well, I suppose you must do as you like — girls do, now-a-days.”
Alex almost instinctively uttered the cry that, with successive generations, has passed from appeal to rebellion, then to assertion, and from the defiance of that assertion to a calm statement of facts. “It is my life. Can’t I live my own life?”
“A woman who doesn’t marry and who has eccentric tastes doesn’t have much of a life. I could never bear thinking of it for any of you.”
Alex was rather startled at the sadness in her mother’s voice.
“But, mother, why? Lots of girls don’t marry, and just live at home.”
“As long as there is a home. But things alter, Alex. Your father and I, in the nature of things, can’t go on livin’ for ever, and then this house goes to Cedric. There is no country place, as you know — your great-grandfather sold everything he could lay his hands on, and we none of us have ever had enough ready money to think of buyin’ even a small place in the country.”
“But I thought we were quite rich.”
Lady Isabel flushed delicately.
“We are not exactly poor, but such money as there is mostly came from my father, and there will not be much after my death,” she confessed. “Most of it will be money tied up for Archie, poor little boy, because he is the younger son, and your grandfather thought that was the proper way to arrange it. It was all settled when you were quite little children — in fact, before Pamela was born or thought of — and your father naturally wanted all he could hope to leave to go to Cedric, so that he might be able to live on here, whatever happened.”
“But what about Barbara and me? Wasn’t it rather unfair to want the boys to have everything?”
“Your father said, ‘The girls will marry, of course.’ There will be a certain sum for each of you on your wedding-day, but there’s no question of either of you being able to afford to remain unmarried, and live decently. You won’t have enough to make it possible,” said Lady Isabel very simply.
“But one of us might want to marry a very poor man.”
“A man in your own rank of life, my dear child, could hardly propose to you unless he had enough to support you. Of course, we don’t wish either of you to feel that you must marry for money, ever, but at the same time I think you ought to be warned. Girls very often go gaily on, thinkin’ it will be time enough to settle later, and then something happens, and they find they have no money of their own, and perhaps no home left. For a few years, perhaps, it’s possible to go on paying visits, and staying with other people, but it’s never very pleasant to feel one has no alternative, and the sort of environment where a man looks for his wife is in her own sheltered home,” said Lady Isabel with emphasis.
Alex felt rather dismayed, though less so than she would have done before her intimacy at the convent had given her glimpses of another possible standard.
She paid one more visit to Mother Gertrude before leaving London.
This time she was kept waiting f
or a while in the parlour, so that she began to wish that she had not told Holland to call for her in an hour’s time. She never dared stay any longer, partly from a vague impression that Mother Gertrude had a good deal to do, and partly from a very distinct certainty that Lady Isabel always noted the length of her visits to the convent, no less than their frequency.
She looked round the ugly room rather disconsolately and fingered the books on the table. They seemed very uninteresting, and were mostly in French. One slim volume, more attractively bound than the others, drew her attention for a moment, and she turned idly to the title-page.
“Notre Mère Fondatrice Esquisse de piété filiale.”
Alex smiled at the wording, which she read in the imperfect literal translation of an indifferent French scholar, and turned to the next leaf.
Two photographs facing one another were reproduced on either page.
The first portrait was of a young woman standing by a table in a stiffly artificial attitude, with enormously wide skirts billowing round her, decked with elaborate, and, to Alex’ eyes meaningless, trimmings of some dark, narrow ribbon that might have been velvet. She wore long, dangling ear-rings, and her abundant plaits of dark hair were gathered into the nape of her neck, confined by a coarse-fibred net. The face, turned over one shoulder, was heavy rather than handsome, with strongly marked features and big, sombre, dark eyes.
It was with a little thrill approaching to awe that Alex recognized her again on the next page in the veil and habit of the Order.
The girth of the figure had increased, and the face showed traces of having been heavily scored by the passing of some twenty or thirty years, but this time the strong mouth was smiling frankly, and the eyes had lost their brooding look and were directed upwards with an ardent and animated expression. The hands, so plump as to show mere indents in place of knuckles across their remarkable breadth, grasped a small crucifix.
Under the first portrait Alex read the inscription “Angèle Prédoux a dix-huit ans.”
Beneath the picture of the nun, Angèle’s not very distinguished patronymic had been replaced by the title of “Mère Candide de Sacré Coeur,” and still supplemented by the announcement:
“Fondatrice et Supérieure de son Ordre.”
Old-fashioned though the dress in the photograph looked to Alex’ eyes, she was yet astonished that any woman so nearly of her own time should have founded a religious Order. She had always supposed vaguely that the educational variety of religious Orders which she knew flourished in Europe had taken their existence from the old-established Dominican or Benedictine communities.
But it seemed now that a new foundation might come into being under the auspice of so youthful and plebeian-seeming a pioneer as Angèle Prédoux.
Alex wondered how she had set about it. A grotesque fancy flitted through her mind as to the fashion in which Sir Francis and Lady Isabel might be expected to receive an announcement that Alex or Barbara felt called upon to found a new religious Order.
Alex could not help dismissing the imaginary situation thus conjured up with a slight shudder, and the conviction that Angèle Prédoux, if her position had been in any degree tenable, must have been an orphan.
Wishing all the time that Mother Gertrude would come to her, she glanced through the first few pages of the book.
It somehow slightly amazed her to read of the Founder of a religious Order as a little girl, who had, like herself, passed through the successive phases of babyhood, schooldays and the society of her compeers in the world.
“And to what end,” inquired the author of the esquisse, when Angèle Prédoux had celebrated her twenty-first birthday at a ball given on her behalf by an adoring grandfather— “to what end?”
Alex repeated the question to herself, and marvelled rather vaguely as various replies floated through her mind. Life all led to something, she supposed, and for the first time it occurred to her that she herself had never aimed at anything save the possession of that which she called happiness. What had been Angèle Prédoux’s aim? — what was that of Mother Gertrude? Certainly not human happiness.
Life was disappointing enough, Alex reflected drearily. One was always waiting, always looking forward to the next stage, as though it must reveal the secret solution to the great question of why. Alex’ thoughts turned to Noel Cardew and the sick misery and disappointment engendered by her engagement.
The door opened and she sprang up.
“Oh, I am so glad you have come at last.”
“Were you getting impatient? I’m sorry, but you know our time is not our own.”
The nun sat down, and Alex flung, rather than sat herself in her favourite position on the floor, her arms resting on the Superior’s knee.
“What is the matter?” asked Mother Gertrude. “What was troubling you just before I came in, Alex?”
“You always know,” said Alex, in quick, passionate recognition of an intuition that it had hitherto been her share to exercise on behalf of another, never to receive.
“Your face is not so very difficult to read, and I think I know you pretty well by this time.”
“Better than any one,” said Alex, in all good faith, and unaware that certain aspects of herself, such as she showed to Barbara, or to her father and mother when they angered or frightened her, had never yet been called forth in the Superior’s presence, and probably never would be.
“Well, what was it? Was it our Mother Foundress?”
“How did you know?” gasped Alex, unseeing of the still open book lying on the table.
Mother Gertrude did not refer to it. She passed her hand slowly over the upturned head. Alex had thrown off her hat.
“I was looking at the picture of her. It seemed so difficult to realize that any one who actually formed a new religious Order could live almost now-a-days and be a girl just like myself.”
“God bestows His gifts where He pleases! Sometimes the call sounds where one might least expect to hear it — in the midst of the world, and worldly pleasure, sometimes in the midst of the disappointment and grief of the world.”
Alex did not speak, but continued to gaze up at the nun. Mother Gertrude went on speaking slowly:
“You see, Alex, sometimes it is necessary for a soul, a loving and undisciplined one especially, to learn the utter worthlessness of human love, in order that it may turn and see the Divine Love waiting for it.”
“But all human love isn’t worthless,” said Alex almost pleadingly, her eyes dilating.
“Surely a finite love is worthless compared to an Infinite,” said the nun gently. “We can hardly imagine it, Alex, with our little, limited understanding, but there is a love that satisfies the most exacting of us — asking, indeed all, and yet willing to accept so little, and, above all, giving with a completeness to which no human sympathy, however deep and tender, can ever attain.”
Alex heard only the ring of utter conviction permeating every word uttered in that deep, ardent voice, and listening to the mystic, heard nothing of the fanatic.
“But not every one,” she stammered.
The nun did not pretend to misunderstand her.
“Many are called,” she said, “but few are chosen. Do you want me to tell you a little of all that is promised to those who leave all things for His sake?”
“Yes,” said Alex, her heart throbbing strangely.
XVII
Lawn-Tennis
Looking back long afterwards, to that last week of the brilliant Jubilee season in London and to the two months that followed, spent in a house near Windsor, taken principally to gratify Cedric’s passion for tennis, Alex could never remember whether the first definite suggestion of her entering the religious life had come from herself or from Mother Gertrude.
Neither she nor Barbara had been taken to Cowes that year, and the first fortnight spent at the Windsor house, which stood in a large, rambling garden, full of roses, close to the river, reminded her strangely of the summer holidays they had spent tog
ether as children.
Cedric, very sunburnt and sturdy, played tennis with a sort of concentrated, cumulative enthusiasm, took part in innumerable cricket matches — possessing already a very real reputation in Eton circles as a promising slow bowler and a very reliable bat — and occasionally took his sisters on the river. Barbara, on whom late nights in London had told, slept half the morning, and then practised “serves” at tennis assiduously under her brother’s coaching, while Pamela, already a hoyden, romped screaming over the lawn, in a fashion that in Alex’ and Barbara’s nursery days would have met with instant and drastic punishment. But old Nurse was lenient with the last and youngest of her charges, and now-a-days her guardianship was almost a nominal one only.
Alex was preoccupied, aimlessly brooding over one absorbing interest, as in the summer holidays that the Clare children had spent at Fiveapples Farm.
Just as then she had waited and looked and longed for Queenie’s letters, so now she waited for those of Mother Gertrude.
Day after sunlit day, she stood at the bottom of the straggling, over-grown paddock that gave on to the dusty high-road, and waited for the afternoon post to be delivered.
She was often disappointed, but never with the sick intensity of dismay that had marked every fresh stage in her realization of Queenie Torrance’s indifference to friendship.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 109
