Part 15

“Ma-me-laid, as the chicken said,” lugubriously and quite absent-mindedly remarked Miss Blandflower, neither she nor anyone else paying the slightest heed to the historic jest, which she repeated almost every morning of her life.

“Well,” Bertha said at last, “I suppose I must sacrifice the poor Mothers’ Union and trot after my stray lamb. I’ve a very good mind to pay her a surprise visit, and see what she’s really up to.”

“Frances would never deceive you, Cousin Bertie,” indignantly said Rosamund.

“I dare say, my dear; but Frances is with people whom I know very little about, and I can’t tell what nonsense they may be stuffing into her little head. Anyway, I’m going to find out.”

“Better send Rosamund,” was the observation of her Cousin Frederick, uttered in tones which conveyed at one and the same time the impressions that he was making the suggestion sarcastically, and that he knew it would be displeasing to his wife.

Rosamund looked at Mrs. Tregaskis. She had not the slightest expectation of accompanying her to the convent, and was not even sure that she wanted to do so.

“Rubbish,” said Mrs. Tregaskis briskly. “No use glowering at me, Rosamund. You’d be dreadfully in my way, darling, and in Frances’, too, little though you may believe it. She’s never quite natural and open when you’re there to try and tell her what she must say and what she mustn’t.”

This observation, partly from the substratum of truth which it contained, always roused in Rosamund a fury of pain and resentment.

She told herself vehemently that Cousin Bertie never understood anything, and hated the quick, angry flush that denoted her feelings plainly to that amused, observant eye.

Her retaliation she knew, with all the impotent anger of youth at its own inadequacy, to be as awkward and ineffectual as it was fierce.

“I shall certainly write and tell Francie that you are coming, Cousin Bertie.”

“Oho! You think she wouldn’t appreciate a surprise visit, is that it? It doesn’t speak very well for your theory that Frances would never deceive me, does it?” laughed Bertha. “Very well, my dear, write to her by all means, and say that I’ll be there on Saturday. I can’t possibly get away to-morrow.”

“Dear me, no,” said Minnie anxiously. “There’s your dairy class in the morning, and then Nurse Watkins wants to come and talk to you about that poor woman with the twins, and isn’t it the third Friday of the month? because that’s your committee meeting out at Polwerrow, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I shall have my hands full. You’ll have to take the mothers on Saturday afternoon, Minnie. I’ll give you the leaflets to distribute, and they must have tea as usual, and you or Rosamund might read them a little something afterwards. I’ll look out something or other that will do.”

“They’ll be dreadfully disappointed at not seeing you,” sighed Miss Blandflower.

“Tell them how sorry I am to be away. It’s not often I’ve missed one of the meetings, is it? The fact is, it does me good to talk to them all and hear all about baby’s croup and Old Man Granfer’s rheumatism and the rest of it. I revel in a gude old clackit o’ wummin, as we say down here.”

“They all adore you,” said the faithful Minnie.

“Rubbish, my dear! It’s only that one has a knack of understanding them, and then they’ve known me all my life. Why, I’m still ‘Miss Bertie’ to most of them!”

Bertha laughed, finished her breakfast, and told Minnie to come and help her get ready for the dairy class.

Helping Mrs. Tregaskis never meant anything more than the more mechanical jobs that she herself had not time to undertake, but Minnie followed her obediently, and spent the intervening time until Saturday toiling blindly and ineffectively in her wake.

“I’m so dreadfully afraid that I shall forget something or other,” she sighed, watching Mrs. Tregaskis drive away from the hall door. “I’ve not got her head for organization, you know. Ah well! it takes all sorts to make a world, as they say.”

It must be admitted that Miss Blandflower’s distrust of her own capability as a substitute was not unshared by Mrs. Tregaskis.

“Poor old Minnie! She always does her best,” Bertha said to her husband as he drove her to the station. “But I’m afraid there’ll be a big accumulation by the time I get back. However, it’s all in the day’s work, and the main point just now is to see what Frances is up to.”

Frederick remained silent, and she added hastily:

“Now, not another word till we get to the station. I’ve promised myself the luxury of this quiet half-hour to go over the blanket-club accounts.”

She pulled out of her bag a little red notebook and was immersed in figures until they reached the station.

Nor did Mrs. Tregaskis’ activities cease when she had established herself in the corner-seat of a third-class railway-carriage.

There was a woman seated opposite to her whose baby was fractious and crying, and only howled the louder at Bertha’s kind, broad smiles and dangled watch-chain. She gave the mother a few words of advice as to its feeding, and laughed away her stammered apologies at the baby’s ungracious reception of the lady’s kindness.

At the first stop a young girl whom Mrs. Tregaskis knew by sight as the daughter of a distant farmer, got into the carriage, her head muffled in a shawl, and immediately shut both windows with a timid, “Excuse me--I have the toothache.”

“No, no, no!” cried Bertha with jovial decision, and lowering the window furthest from the girl’s swollen face. “Sit over there, Nellie, and you won’t feel it. It _is_ Nellie Jewell, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Mrs. Tregaskis.”

“Well, Nellie, I’m very sorry you’ve got toothache, but we’re--let me see--one, two, three, _four_ people in here besides yourself! Five, if we count this little man,” she added, with a laughing nod at the unresponsive baby, “and I don’t see why he shouldn’t have his share of fresh air. You wouldn’t want five people to do without God’s lovely fresh air that’s so good for us all, just because you’ve got toothache, Nellie?”

“I don’t want to catch cold in ’un, Mrs. Tregaskis,” muttered the girl sullenly.

But she left the window open.

Presently Mrs. Tregaskis asked her if she’d been to the dentist.

“Yes, Mrs. Tregaskis. I’m just on my way back. But her culdn’t du nothin’ for me while ’tis swollenlike.”

“No, I see that. You silly girl, you ought to have gone before it got so bad. If only you girls ate fewer sweets, you wouldn’t have such bad teeth--but at any rate, if you _must_ give yourself toothache, you ought to be brave and go to see the dentist before getting to this stage. Now I don’t suppose you’ve been able to do much towards helping your mother for the last week, have you, with your mouth in that state?”

“No, Mrs. Tregaskis.”

There was a suspicion of a flounce in Nellie Jewell’s movements as she rose to get out at the next station.

“Good-bye, Nellie. I hope you’ll have had that tooth right out next time I see you,” said Bertha, with unperturbed good-humour.

She made a mental note to the effect that she must call on Nellie Jewell’s mother when she got back and see if they couldn’t persuade the girl to become an Associate of the G.F.S. She seemed to be a silly girl, but no doubt something could be done for her.

For the rest of the journey Mrs. Tregaskis dismissed parochial concerns from her mind, and allowed herself the luxury of an uninterrupted hour’s reading of “La vie des Abeilles.” She enjoyed, quite consciously, the sense that this was the first time she had had spare time in which to read it at leisure during the six months she had had the book in hand.

The journey was a long one, and packets of sandwiches were produced on either side of her, but Mrs. Tregaskis always grudged time given to food, and only at the last junction put her head out of the window and allowed herself to drink two cups of very strong tea from the station refreshment-room.

It was nearly six o’clock before she reached, by means of the slowest of cabs, the convent door.

She looked at the unimposing building, high and narrow like the buildings on either side of it, with some contempt. It was not at all picturesque, like the charming convents or monasteries of her experience in Italy and Southern France. Only a modest brass plate on the door and a blue and white figure cut out of what used to be called “transparencies” and pasted against the inside of the glass fan-light, proclaimed the house to be a convent.

Once inside, however, Bertha thought that her surroundings left small room for doubt. The small, dark parlour was hung with highly-coloured devotional pictures, a cheap coloured statuette stood on the mantelpiece and another one on a bracket over the door.

Contrary to the conventual wont, however, Mrs. Tregaskis was not kept waiting. Frances came into the room almost immediately. She did not greet her guardian with any of the timidity which she often displayed, and which Mrs. Tregaskis had half expected.

“Cousin Bertie, I _am_ so glad you’ve come! It was so much easier to talk than to write--you know how bad I am at letters.”

“Your last letter was rather explicit, Francie, my child,” said Bertha drily. “We’ll have a long talk about it to-morrow, but just at present I want to know whether these good nuns are expecting me. I suppose you asked them if I could have a room?”

“Yes. You’ve got the one Mrs. Severing had. You see, the Retreat was over two or three days ago, so most of the visitors have gone. There are only the usual lady boarders left now.”

“The Retreat was over two or three days ago, was it? I see.”

Frances flushed at her guardian’s tone.

“Oh, Cousin Bertie, if Rosamund hadn’t said that you were coming here I meant to have written you a long letter, and told you why I was staying on, and everything.”

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Tregaskis, still dryly. “I hope you did. I feel sure you did. Now show me where my room is, will you?”

Frances, the look of pleasure on her face altogether dashed, preceded Mrs. Tregaskis to the room next to her own.

Mrs. Tregaskis, as usual, was appreciative and observant, was charmed at having a window that looked out on to the garden, and thanked Frances delightedly for the little vase of flowers arranged upon the tiny dressing-table. Frances reflected remorsefully that Cousin Bertie never failed in recognition of any effort, however small, to give her pleasure. Joined to the thought, however, was the subconscious conviction that neither did Cousin Bertie ever fail to mark and remember any infringement, however trivial, of the wide, easy, and yet inflexible discipline which she was apt to wield over all her surroundings.

It was perhaps this unacknowledged certainty which drove Frances, as soon as breakfast was over on the following morning, to withdraw herself and her guardian, with unwonted decision, from the voluble overtures of Mrs. Mulholland, to the comparative privacy of the small garden. It was only nine o’clock, and they both shivered a little in the raw morning air.

“Tut! This won’t do,” exclaimed Bertha. “Come along, Francie--in step, now.”

She began to chant with a sort of martial ardour, keeping time as she stepped out gallantly:

“I had a good place and I _left_--_left_--_left_; I’m out of work now and it serves me jolly well _right_--_right_--_right_! Soon be warm at this rate! Don’t shiver like that, Francie. Why, bless me! it’s good to be alive on a day like this.”

Frances was guiltily conscious that her shivers were not altogether due to defective circulation.

She made a great effort, clenching her small fists unseen, and said valiantly:

“Cousin Bertie, you know that I’m staying on here because I want to be received as a Catholic next week. They are--quite willing.”

She felt uncomfortably breathless, and her voice caught in her throat once or twice.

None of Hazel’s valour in opposition would ever be Frances’.

Bertha’s voice was most reassuringly kind.

“Well, darling, we must talk it over a little bit. Why so much haste?”

“I--I don’t quite know what there is to wait for,” faltered Frances, conscious of the lack of conviction in her voice.

That Cousin Bertie was also conscious of it was evident in the tone of smooth good-humour in which she replied:

“I might perhaps answer that you could wait to be a little older and wiser and more experienced, or that later on you may reproach me bitterly for having allowed you to take a decisive step in a fit of enthusiasm.”

“Oh no!” breathed Frances.

“Oh yes!” cried Bertha cheerfully. “I can assure you that people _do_ change their minds, astonishing though it may seem to you, my darling, and that even ten years hence you’ll feel quite differently about nearly everything under the sun. Tell me, don’t you see for yourself that you’ve changed a good deal since you were a little girl of fourteen or fifteen, even? Aren’t almost all your opinions, and values, and ambitions quite different?”

Frances reflected conscientiously and then replied rather timidly:

“No, Cousin Bertie. I don’t think they are.”

Bertha broke into her ringing laugh, her head flung back.

“Oh, my dear little girl! You’re even younger than I thought you were. It’s a shame to laugh at you when you’re so much in earnest--but you’ll laugh at yourself in a very little while. Oh, Francie, Francie!”

She laughed again, irrepressibly.

At last she became serious.

“Now, Frances, bar all joking. Tell me exactly why you want to join the Catholic Church.”

Frances noted gratefully that her guardian, speaking to her of the Catholic Church, did not use the prefix “Roman.”

She gave a stammering, halting summary of reasons, which sounded curiously unconvincing even to her own ears, for wishing to become a Catholic as soon as possible. Even the attentive silence, punctuated by quiet movements of the head, in which Bertha listened to her, seemed to add to the sense of pitiful inadequacy overwhelming her.

She knew that her uneloquent, shakily-spoken sentences gave no hint of the passionate convictions and determinations seething within her.

“Will you talk to Father Anselm--the Prior, you know--or to Mère Pauline?” she ended desperately.

“Certainly I will,” said Bertha promptly. “I had already meant to do so, my child, since these people have taken a very big responsibility on themselves in persuading you to leave your own Church before you’re even old enough to know what you’re doing. They’ve got to render a very strict account of it to me, too.”

“Cousin Bertie, there’s one thing,” said Frances, flushing scarlet. “By rights, the Catholic Church _ought_ to be my own Church, because my mother was one, and if--if the rules and things had been as strict then as they are now, Rosamund and I would have _had_ to be baptized Catholics.”

Bertha responded instantly:

“That’s quite true, Francie, and it’s because of that, and because we know that your dear mother belonged to that Faith, that Cousin Frederick and I are allowing you so much latitude. You see, darling, if _Hazel_ had taken this turn, we should have forbidden it outright until she was at least twenty-one--but it’s not quite the same thing where you’re concerned.”

“Oh, Cousin Bertie, how kind and understanding you are!”

“Ah, the dull old people with Experience behind them do sometimes understand, don’t they?” asked Bertha playfully. “Well, now, what about a chat with the Reverend Mother Superior and all these good people? Can I see any of them?”

“I expect so,” said Frances, glad to think that her cause should be transferred to better hands than her own.

They went indoors again.

XVII

“Let me speak,” earnestly said Mrs. Mulholland. Unnecessarily.

No one could have stopped her.

Bertha Tregaskis did not attempt to, but listened with a broad, if rather fixed smile, and an impatient foot tapping the floor with sharp, irregular beats.

Regardless of the fact that it was Sunday evening, and that Mrs. Mulholland’s hands were locked, severely unoccupied, in her ample lap, Bertha was knitting vigorously.

She had had a day of interviews, in which it seemed to her that the Prior of Twickenham’s bland assumption of a knowledge of the world which he obviously did not possess was only less provoking than Mère Pauline’s austere conviction that _le bon Dieu_ alone was conducting the _affaire Frances_ and was not, and never had been, in receipt of extraneous aid from even the most chosen of His instruments.

Smilingly refusing to take these or similar assertions in any way for granted, Bertha had nevertheless made small headway against the unescapable fact that Frances, and that potent agent, Frances’ conscience, were arrayed against her.

Vexed in spirit, but still indomitable, she had fallen a victim, at the end of the day, to the assiduous pursuit of the zealous Mrs. Mulholland.

“_La mère des dames pensionnaires_,” was her emotional introduction of herself, spoken with an atrocious accent.

“That’s what our lay-sisters here all call me, you know. The mother of the lady boarders. That’s what it means: the mother of the lady boarders.”

Bertha smiled.

“_La mère des dames pensionnaires_,” she repeated, less because she was impressed by the title than in order that her French pronunciation should make it evident how extremely unnecessary Mrs. Mulholland’s translation had been.

“That’s it, my dear--excuse me calling you so--that’s it. I see you understand French as well as I do myself. I always say that’s one of the advantages of living with a French community, as I do--one gets to know the language as though it was one’s own. Quite a French order, ours is, you know--founded by a Frenchwoman, Mam’selle Simone Vergy de Lange, in Paris. Ah, poor Paris! No convents there now, you know, Mrs. Tregaskis.”

“No, alas! Even when I was last there, about ten years ago, it----”

“Terribly sad, terribly sad,” interrupted Mrs. Mulholland; “but it’ll bring a judgment on the country. Mark my words, it’ll bring a judgment. All those flourishing Orders scattered and sent into exile--they can’t feel it anything but exile, you know--there they are, all over the place.”

Mrs. Tregaskis cleared her throat resolutely.

“A good many of them have found hospitality here in England,” she began firmly.

“Ah, yes, yes, yes. A blessing in disguise for this poor Protestant country--that’s what I always feel. Who knows what it may lead to? I dare say it’s largely for England’s sake that all this terrible persecution has been allowed, and then in return for the charity and hospitality they’ve received, these good monks and nuns will help to spread the Faith.”

“I’m not a Roman Catholic,” said Mrs. Tregaskis.

She might have omitted the “Roman” but for her certainty of Mrs. Mulholland’s complete invulnerability.

In effect, Mrs. Mulholland merely retorted in unabashed assent:

“Quite so, quite so. You’ll excuse me saying that I was already aware of that, Mrs. Tregaskis, quite aware of it. But I always say just what I think--no respecter of persons, so to speak. Say what you think and think what you say is my motto--always has been.”

Mrs. Tregaskis felt rather as though she were listening to a caricature of herself.

“Now I dare say you have a prejudice against religious orders--many people have, I know--quite good people, mind you, who only need a little enlightenment.”

“On the contrary, I can assure----”

“Never mind, never mind!” cried Mrs. Mulholland with breezy inattention. “I know all about it, and you must remember that I’m a woman of the world, Mrs. Tregaskis, though I do live in a convent, and can see your point of view as well as ours. It’s all quite natural, and I can assure you that a great many people have felt just as you do. Especially about foreign Orders--French and the like, you know. Not got quite our ideas about fresh air, for instance, or a daily bath--_that_ sort of thing.”

Bertha drew a deep breath.

“I dare say not,” she said in a louder voice than usual, “but I’ve had plenty of truck with convents and the like in my time, you know--in Italy, and so on. Naturally, one has no insular prejudices of an early Victorian kind, after knocking about the world as I’ve done.”

She laughed heartily, but briefly, being well aware that any opening would be seized upon by Mrs. Mulholland to make her own voice heard once more.

“Now, you must forgive me, but I must go and hunt up my chick-a-biddy. I don’t know where the child’s got to since supper.”

“Now, my dear Mrs. Tregaskis, listen to me, and let that child alone. Let her alone, I say,” commanded Mrs. Mulholland, in accents of authority such as had never been addressed to the astonished Bertha since her schooldays.

Mrs. Tregaskis drew herself up to the full of her very considerable height, looked Mrs. Mulholland up and down with an expression of astounded contempt, and rose without a word from her seat. Upon which Mrs. Mulholland, with surprising and most unexpected agility, rose also, and planted her enormous bulk against the closed door of the small parlour.

“Now, listen to me,” was her superfluous injunction as she and Mrs. Tregaskis stood facing one another, at a distance of about two yards apart. “You’ll think me very strange, I dare say”--Bertha’s face showed the absolute correctness of this supposition--“very strange, perhaps. But what people think doesn’t matter to me, Mrs. Tregaskis. We’ve got to trample human respect underfoot in a matter like this. I shouldn’t feel that I was doing my duty if I didn’t speak out. You may say it’s no business of mine, but Miss Grantham has talked to me--very fully, I may say, on the whole--and so’s Mère Pauline. That child wishes to be received into the Church, Mrs. Tregaskis.”

“I see no reason for discussing the subject with you,” said Bertha, thoroughly incensed, and ignoring the very tangible reason in front of her. “Kindly let me pass out of that door.”

But the person who is hampered by the instincts of good breeding is at a disadvantage when dealing with an antagonist prepared serenely to ignore even the more elementary canons of behaviour. It did not occur to Bertha, resolute as she was, to launch herself bodily upon the sturdy old woman who stood in front of the door and force a way past her. Still less did it occur to her that Mrs. Mulholland would continue to maintain her spread-eagle attitude the more defiantly for this very forbearance.

But no trifling considerations for the ethics of good taste were ever destined to stand in Mrs. Mulholland’s way.

Her massive bulk against the door, her large hands gesticulating emphatically, she freed her mind in hoarse, vehement accents that completely overpowered the spasmodic attempts of her audience to interrupt her.

“I know very well that Mère Pauline’s been talking to you, and that good holy Prior. But there it is, people in the world look upon priests and nuns as unpractical--they won’t listen. But I tell you, Mrs. Tregaskis, speaking as one woman who’s seen life to another, that if ever there was a case of absolute genuine conversion, it’s that child--that ward of yours, or whatever she is. If you withhold her from the true Light, out of worldly consideration or any other motive, you’ll be doing a most serious wrong, Mrs. Tregaskis--a most serious wrong. I’m all for obedience and discipline, as a rule. ‘If you don’t obey,’ I say, ‘you’ll never know how to command,’ is what I say. But if little Miss Grantham comes to me for advice, I shall tell her just what I think.”

“Kindly let me----”

“_Just_ what I think. She must go straight ahead and follow her conscience in spite----”

The door-handle turned from outside.

“Who is there?” almost shouted Mrs. Mulholland in truculent accents.

“It is I. Mère Pauline.”

The small, trenchant voice fell like a douche of cold water on the agitation within. Mrs. Mulholland, in some strange way, seemed to Bertha to crumple up under the severely inquiring gaze of the little French Superior.

“What is all this?”