Chapter II

SOMEHOW the thing had to be faced: Sarah had to be shown over the convent, or rather admitted to the parlour, and allowed to express her views by comment or silence. Mary dreaded it unspeakably; yet she could hardly have said why. She supposed it was because of the need of defending the indefensible; at least, she said it was that. Soon after the beginning of the New Year, therefore, she sent a short note across to the following effect:—

" My dearest, — We may as well get it over. You've got to see it all some time, and grasp the fact that it's now a part of me, so to speak. I know you'll be kind, and not say too much. Come to lunch on Tuesday — Jack's away that day — and we'll go to the convent afterwards: they're in working order now. Yours,

M."

Sarah was agreeably impressed by the letter. It seemed to grant her own superior position. In fact her faint resentment gave way to a certain pity. She determined to be ve'ry kind indeed.

Mary seemed rather feverish at lunch, she thought: she talked rather quickly, gave her statistics and a few external facts, and never even approached the attitude of her mind manifest in her letter. But when the servants had gone, and coffee had been set in the morning-room, she threw her arm round Sarah's waist as they went across the hall.

" Oh, dear me! Be very nice to me, Sally dear. I need it."

This was delightful. Sarah felt more of a strong-minded friend than ever, and rejoiced in the sensation. She thought she understood everything now — that there was this strain of weakness in her friend — deplorable, though natural in a Catholic born and bred — and that it was her own part to comfort and console.

She implied this delicately in the conversation that followed.

" I don't see why you need mind so much," she said. " I often think our own clergymen rather fools.... One isn't responsible for all that."

Mary said nothing; she just lifted and dropped her eyes.

"You see," went on Sarah, remembering fragments of Jim Fakenham's philosophical conversation, " you see there are all sorts of temperaments; we mustn't be narrow-minded. I daresay those old i8o A WINNOWING

Frenchwomen are happier there than they would be anywhere else. I am sure it seems to me all very harmless, in spite of what mother says."

"Is she very " began Mary.

" Oh, she can't bear it. You knew that. I don't think she'll come here much. But she was very clear that she still regarded you as neighbours."

The ghost of a smile came and went across Mary's face. Sarah reflected it more broadly.

"Yes; I know," she said. "But mother's like that. Oh, Mary, need everyone be so dreadfully responsible? "

" I've got to be," said Mary gloomily. " I'm a sort of nursing mother now, you know."

She turned a little and sat staring out of the window.

" Have a cigarette," said Sarah.

" I don't fancy it, as the lady said," answered Mary dismally. "Oh, Sarah, be nice.... Here" — she jumped up — "let's go and get it over. Then we can talk about other things. Yes — this very instant."

There was a touch of frost in the air to-day, and things were not, therefore, so utterly depressing as a fortnight before, when the nuns had arrived. Mary put on her furs, and they always suited her. Sarah thought she had never seen anyone so entirely suitable to this world — her face touched now with excitement, her eyes bright, her quick, alert movements over the frozen ground. She hardly said anything on the way up, and even Sarah refrained from depressing comments upon the way in which the peculiar charm of the place had been entirely ruined by that stiff little lodge, that seemed to dominate the hill like a convict warder. As they rose higher the roofs rose with them, till they stood at last before the gate, and comment was impossible.

It was one of those mysterious dependents that always seem to haunt convents who opened the door — a small, brisk young Frenchwoman in a nondescript black dress and a frilled cap. She broke into smiles and voluble half-finished sentences at the sight of Mary, showed them promptly through into the parlour, and a single stroke of a bell was presently heard to sound somewhere in the cloister within.

Sarah could not resist a little silent triumph in this room. She observed the grating, fingered one of the spikes with a suede-gloved hand, glanced at the table, gave a long and ^careful inspection to the picture of Saint Teresa, and said nothing whatever of any sort.

A deep sigh broke from Mary.

" Don't," she said feebly.

" My dearest, I didn't say one word. I'm behaving beautifully."

"Yes, I know," sighed Mary, who had sat down on the sofa. " That's just it."

i8a A WINNOWING

But Sarah's heart beat a little quicker for all her superiority, as she caught a faint sound from beyond the shrouded grating.

Her views on nuns — except on those who, as she would have said, " did something useful " — were, for a wonder, very much what she had stated them to be. It appeared that there were people who were, unhappily, endowed with a morbid sort of temperament that could find satisfaction in nothing except some sort of self-inflicted misery. Now here these people were in the world, and had to be provided for; so convents of this sort had naturally come into existence. There was no shadow of doubt in her mind but that her own point of view was the saner, and that Almighty God, at the best, only tolerated with a kind of pity those of less healthy minds. She did not for an instant, like her mother, think that nuns were actually wicked. At the worst they were but dangerous, like people suffering from an infectious disease. Yet since the type was uncommon, there was something rather interesting in it, and she prepared to visit the convent in the kind of mood in which she would have gone to see a hospital, or a lunatic asylum warranted to contain only amiable invalids.

Naturally, therefore, her interest quickened almost into excitement as she heard the footstep stir beyond the grating, and she settled down in her chair determined to observe her hardest, while — and this was seriously a kindly thought — to humour so far as she consistently could the harmless old thing that would immediately make her appearance.

The square of blackness slid away. There was the murmur of a voice, and the head and shoulders of some human being appeared on the other side.

For an instant Sarah was taken aback. Her expectations had been either of an old person in a cap and spectacles with weak blue eyes, or of a dramatic figure in an attitude: she had oscillated between these two conceptions. The reality startled her. It was a trifle ghastly, yet not at all menacing or theatrical.

She was reassured by Mary's voice at her side — speaking in French.

" Good afternoon, reverend mother. This is Lady Sarah I've told you about — a Protestant. I've brought her in to see you."

" Good day, madam — good day, madam. I'm very happy to see you, madam. So you've come to see the poor nuns and to promise them your prayers."

" Er — out" murmured Sarah. (She was not very good at French, and had explained so to Mary.)

" My friend cannot talk French very well, she says/' went on Mary, "but she can understand perfectly. She has never been inside a convent before."

" Ah, you think us all very wicked, then? " went on the quiet old voice almost apologetically.

Sarah hastened to defend her broad-mindedness.

"No, no; not at all. I'm not like that. It isn't that. I know how good you are. Mary, my friend here, has often talked to me of you."

" Ah, then, that we are very foolish then, is it not so? And you are quite right, madam. We are all of us very foolish — very foolish and simple. You must pray for us the more."

Was that irony, thought Sarah, or a pretence of humility? She had no idea; the voice sounded sufficiently simple.

" We owe all our beautiful home here to madam," went on the voice, "to madam and monsieur her generous husband. God will surely reward them.... And you would like to hear of the life we live, would you not? All our visitors ask us of that."

Then, extraordinarily simply, the voice went on to give a little sketch of the day, such as Sarah had already heard from Mary, laying stress upon the quietness and regularity of the life, speaking with something that might or might not have been humour, of the excellence of the meals, largely provided for the present from the Hall, telling her of the little manual works that they carried out — one in embroidery, another in writing out music for churches, another in the garden.

" But you must understand, madam, that our principal work is prayer. Not only must we work for what we need but pray also; and for all sinners who will not let men work for them."

Sarah listened, with but half her mind. She had determined, of course, that a great effort would be made to convert her; and had resolved to be thoroughly magnanimous in return. She would humour the old thing; she would not utter all those convincing sentiments that she had rehearsed in private — such as the " four walls " business, or the obviousness of the fact that since God had made the world it was meant to be enjoyed; and that it was far braver to meet in open field those obstacles to perfection that were called temptations rather than to try to run away from them — not even the final argument about " selfishness." After all, why should she upset and anger the poor old creature? It could do no good. No, she would be patient.

It was a little disconcerting therefore, even disappointing, that nothing at all was said about religion, as Sarah understood it — not one word about the superior light enjoyed by Catholics. The voice went on serenely, telling of the external details of the day, assuming that they would be heard with interest, though with a deprecatory remark or two thrown in as to the dullness of all this to one who had so varied a life as madam, and nothing else.

" And you are very happy? " asked Sarah at last.

"Yes, madam, very happy," said the voice tranquilly.

" And the young girls who come to you? They are happy too — always? "

"If they are not happy we find it out very soon, madam; and then, of course, they leave us. I was obliged to send away a novice shortly before leaving France — the poor child! "

" She was a peasant? "

" No, madam, she was of noble family, and it nearly broke her heart."

" Why did you send her away? "

" She became a little melancholy, madam."

This was all quite outside Sarah's range. She thought it safest to be content with a sympathetic murmur. That committed you to nothing.

" And you would wish to see our Sister Catherine, of whom Madame Weston has without doubt told you? "

" I should like " began Sarah politely. But

Mary's voice broke in, swift and tremulous.

" Not to-day, reverend mother, thank you. I don't think that's quite "

" I understand perfectly, madam," came the gentle old voice. " Then some other day, perhaps. Madame Weston will explain to you. And you will come to see us again, madam — the poor nuns, and bring madam, your good mother? "

Sarah made a confused sort of answer; the voice bid them good day, once or twice; there was some sound again beyond the grating; then, once more, blackness and silence.

The two made their way round to the chapel almost without a word, and came into the public transept by the side door.

Things were a trifle better here now. There was at least a carpet before the altar, cheap, but not outrageously ugly; a statue in not quite the worst possible taste stood in the transept itself, just on this side of the screen, and the altar itself showed on its gradine the gleam of gilded wood and flowers. But there was nothing particular to be said about it.

Sarah sat and considered it all, as Mary knelt, not precisely in a mood of hostility, certainly not in a mood of appreciation. She told herself that she must just take in impressions, and be very kind to Mary when they came out. Mary's anxiety just now in the parlour had been almost pathetic.

So when again they left the chapel and began to go homewards down the hill, for a while Sarah said nothing. It was hard to find exactly the frame of words to use. Mary drove her to it first.

" Well? " she asked, without looking up.

Sarah made an effort.

" I liked that old nun," she said generously. " I thought her very nice not to argue."

" Argue? Why should she? "

" Oh, I thought she'd want to convert me."

" And that she'd begin to argue? "

'•' I thought so."

" Oh," said Mary.

"Well, but doesn't she?"

" Doesn't she what? "

" Want to make me a Catholic."

" Of course she does, and everybody else too. But, of course, she doesn't argue."

" But what'll she do then? "

" Oh, she'll pray," said Mary wearily.

Sarah pressed her arm sympathetically. She thought she understood so perfectly the mood of thejDther. But there was no responsive pressure.

" Who's Sister Catherine? " asked Sarah presently.

The arm stirred a little in her own.

" Sister Catherine's dead. She died ages ago."

Sarah was amazed.

" But I thought she said "

"Oh, you may as well know at once," burst out Mary suddenly and vehemently. " Sister Catherine's a dead body that hasn't decayed. And they carry it about, and kiss it. They brought it over here from France in a packing-case, and it's somewhere in that chapel now. I don't know where."

" But, my dear," interrupted the shocked Sarah.

" Yes, I know. It's perfectly horrid. They think she's a saint. And I daresay she was too; but I think it's all horrid — at least Oh, I don't know.

Let me alone! "

This sounded like hysteria. Sarah faced about suddenly on the path, still holding Mary's arm, and looking straight and stern into the flushed face and tearful eyes. But there seemed no hysteria there — nothing but a face tortured by some sudden revulsion, or some hidden conflict suddenly revealed. Mary tore herself free like a petulant child.

" No, I'm all right. Leave me alone."

Sarah stood, grave and reproachful.

" My dear, you oughtn't to treat me like that. I've done my very best. I haven't said one word "

" I know you haven't. But that doesn't make it any better for me! Let's talk about something else. Come on."

Ill

Sarah had entirely failed to form any satisfactory conclusion by the time that she had reached home. Mary had accompanied her to the lodge-gate, saying she mustn't come any further, as Jack might be home soon from his magistrates' meeting; and Sarah had gone the rest of the way in solitude.

It was all very puzzling.

After that outburst on the path, just after they had reached the first terrace, no more had been said. They had talked of almost entirely other things; the nearest they had approached again to the subject of the convent was the matter of its being visible from Lady Carberry's windows. This, it seemed, was another unfortunate detail.

What, then, was the matter with Mary? She determined to write to Jim Fakenham, who would be sure to have an illuminating word to say.

Then she reviewed her own i-npressions.

That nun had been very unexpected — chiefly in her mildness and her curious little air of dignity that even beyond those two abominable gratings had made itself perceived. There it was — there was no question of it — it was the air of one who ruled and was obeyed. Yet what of those little humble sentences that had been interspersed? Sarah decided that these had probably been uttered for the sake of effect. That then was settled.

And as regards the whole thing.

There Sarah failed to correlate her impressions. It was all so unusual. In the parlour there was ugliness naked, and not only unashamed, but complacent. There had not been a hint of apology for the miserable little room with its dismal picture. It was not even dignified. She supposed that the nuns thought that that was the kind of room in which worldly people lived. No wonder then that they despised the world!

To that had to be added the bleak chapel, and — a note that reflected it — the horror of those prison-bars. These, Sarah was quite certain, were merely stage effects. Finally, there had somehow to be reconciled with the tame feebleness of the parlour the desolation of the chapel and the unspeakable horror of " Sister Catherine."... And there were quiet old Frenchwomen who somehow combined these impressions into a coherent whole! Well, it was more than Sarah could do. She could but contemplate them severally.

Finally, again, there was the problem of Mary.... Oh, these Catholics!

She took considerable pains about her letter to Jim — with whom by now a kind of skirmishing correspondence had been established. Secretly she felt a little proud of enjoying the intimacy with a man of Jim's evident powers. He was so very philosophical, so aloof, so well finished; and he took the trouble to say such shrewd things to her — things that he never said, apparently, to his own aunt or her mother. It was pleasant to think that she understood him. So she wrote her letter with considerable pains.

Dinner, alone with her mother that evening, was a little difficult. Somehow her mother had to be informed of the visit to the convent (she would be sure to find out anyhow), and yet neither alarmed nor ruffled.

Sarah did it rather well.

" I was lunching with Mary Weston, you know, to-day, mother."

" So I understood from you, my dear."

Sarah then discoursed for a while upon Mary — oh! she had learnt, she thought, how to manage her mother by now — touched upon Jack, and finally introduced, in a parenthesis, the information that Mary had just taken her up to see the Reverend Mother.

Lady Carberry consumed rice-pudding, and asked an intelligent question or two, with a forbearance that caused Sarah to congratulate herself on her tact. But there was no gaining an advantage over that lady. When the questions had been asked and answered, one sentence shattered Sarah's complacency.

" And why couldn't you tell me that at once — instead of all those goings about it? "

Dear, dear! thought Sarah, diplomacy was a disappointing science. She would go upstairs as soon as she could and just look over her letter to Jim again. Why was Mary such an interesting person?