Chapter VIII

IT is curious how some houses, more than others, seem, in the absence of their owner, to be eloquent of that absence. Some houses are sufficient in themselves, complete and entire; it is they which are the substance and their inhabitants are but accidental. With others the contrary is true; and every detail and combination of their rooms cry out for and imply a vital presence.

Manningham Hall was of the second class, and even Sarah noticed it. The effect perhaps was a simple thing after all — the result of two or three caps in the hall, an empty pipe- rack in the smoking-room, a couple of chairs before the hall-fire, obviously the special property of the host. The rooms were human enough and individual enough to postulate a human individuality.

Now Sarah was not very clever, as will have been perceived; and it took her some time to be aware of this, and a longer time to express it; but she expressed it at last; and she thought it rather silly even as she said it.

She and Jim had been to church in the morning on their second Sunday, and the combined effect of certain hymns, and of the sight of her mother's grave — (she had taken a large wreath of chrysanthemums to lay upon it) — had produced an introspective kind of mood. She had also seen and shaken hands, after church, with the tenants of her own house across the valley — people of no importance; and emotionalism descended upon her. She walked up from church with Jim, rather silent, with her head on one side, and went on into the house alone when he said he would take a stroll and meet Mrs. Weston coming down from Mass. She went into the smoking-room — she did not quite know why — and sat down before the fire.

It was a very pleasant room, with an aspect that has already been described — and, still rather sentimental, she let her eyes rove round it.

There was nothing peculiar about it; it was extraordinarily ordinary, entirely true to type, in its faint smoky smell, its extreme comfort, its deep chairs, its emblems and books of sport, and its empty pipe-rack. Jim smoked cigarettes only, of course, and his silver case, with his small inscribed match-box, lay forgotten on the mantelpiece. They seemed an intrusion.

Over the mantelpiece hung two framed photographs on either side of an oil-painting of a horse in a stall. One photograph presented a cricketing group, with Jack, strangely childish-looking, dandling a bat in the centre, and a coat-of-arms painted above; the other a lawn and a great shuttered house, backed by towering limes. She believed this second photograph to be a picture of Jack's old home. The lawn had a tea-table and chairs set out on it, she noticed.

Between the fire and the door was an old cracked bat in a glass case, with an inscription on a tarnished silver plate let into the splice. Next to the fire was the pipe-rack.

Then, as she looked, the personality of Jack descended upon her as a cloud, and she set herself once more to regard the problem connected with him....

Yet she got no satisfaction from it. No data had been added beyond the single assurance of Mary that " something " had happened (and that she had known before). So she lay back in Jack's chair, and with the pipe-rack before her eyes, and the two photographs over the mantelpiece, and the ancient bat that had escaped the fire, and the suggestion, rather than the smell, of smoke in her nose, considered him absorbedly.

A spatter of rain, and voices in the hall, and the sudden clatter of a dog's claws on polished boards, and a cheerful cry of "Get down, sir," from Mary, brought her out of the chair again and into the world of men. Yet the sensation did not leave her.

Some other little things happened on that Sunday at Manningham that I think are just worth writing down. They are of complete unimportance in themselves, and they may be completely unimportant even when correlated with facts. At any rate, let us have them.

It is within the bounds of possibility that a certain groom may be remembered, whose name was Jim. (I am sorry it is the same name as Mr. Fakenham's; but such was the fact.)

It was Jim's business to give a look in at the stables before going down to the village to church; then to lock them up, and place the key on a certain nail outside the harness-room door.

So, at about twenty minutes to eleven, as the bells were in full blast, Jim came out from the back premises, in his black trousers and red waistcoat, with his white silk tie properly knotted and secured by a fox-head pin, and opened the stable-door. There was some kind of a sharp movement as he entered from the further end, so he went past the other stalls up to that of the " new horse," Charlie, whom Mary had managed so admirably on a previous occasion. There was something the matter with

• The following section can be omitted without detriment to the story, In fact, I am not sure that the story is improved by it.

Charlie: he was apparently uneasy, and it was some movement that he had made that had startled the boy.

He was in a loose-box of his own, being an excellently behaved creature, and could roam about in it at his will. Now, however, he was in the further corner, backed up against his own manger, with his head high and his eye rolling, exactly as if a stranger were making too free with him.

Jim looked in over the top and made the proper remarks. Charlie whinnied, high and fretfully, tossed his head again suddenly back; and the boy could see that he was shaking from head to foot.

" Now then! " said Jim again, sternly.

Charlie paid no attention beyond suddenly breaking from his position, darting forward to the corner nearest the door, yet away from Jim, and again standing and shaking.

This was very serious; and Mr. Perks, the coachman, must be informed forthwith. It looked like some kind of a fit.

Jim drew back the bolt and went in. (Charlie paid no attention to him whatever.) He looked round the box, beat his foot once or twice, and said " Shoo." It was just conceivable that something had got in that had no business there — a strange cat, a particularly large rat, even a snake. Jim's imagination rose to that point. Nothing whatever happened.

Then (I have this from Jim's own lips) he was aware that some sort of movement took place close beside him, so localised that he glanced quickly behind him, expecting to see Mr. Perks himself. There was no one there. Then he had a sort of feeling that there was someone near the door of the stable, and he craned up on tiptoe to see. Again there was no one. Jim called himself a fool, and looked at Charlie once more. The horse still looked uneasy, but the appearance of tension was gone, and he allowed himself to be slapped and poked without resenting it. His skin was a little moist, but the shaking was all over; and Jim presently went out and thought no more of it.

The second odd little thing that fell out at Manningham that day happened to one of the gardeners. It had come on to rain suddenly the afternoon before, and Ferguson, the second gardener, had left one or two little things on one of the upper lawns, intending to do something in one of the greenhouses till the rain was over, and then to return and fetch them.

Well, the rain continued, and he forgot. He went straight home to his cottage from the glass-house, and left the things lying about.

At about ten minutes to eleven on the Sunday morning, as Ferguson set out on his Sunday rounds from his cottage above the house (he was a con-L vinced Presbyterian, and would almost as soon have heard the Popish Mass as attended the ministrations of the Establishment), he suddenly remembered his omissions. This would never do. Things must not lie about on the Sabbath. He had intended to go to look round the home-farm over the other side, but he thought he might as well extend his round and gather up the things. Everyone else would be safe in church.

He came out from the walled kitchen-garden straight on to the upper lawns, between the convent and the house, and was advancing to the wheelbarrow, which was only too plainly visible, when quite distinctly he heard someone call him from the direction of the house. He looked, and there was no one. He advanced again, and again, clearly and plainly, he heard his name called.

Ferguson was a Lowlander, and he had therefore none of the charming superstitions to be found further north. He had not the faintest suspicion but that one of the men wanted him, perhaps to take a message somewhere. It would not be quite proper to shout back, so he wheeled about and turned down the path towards the house, half expecting to see a head thrust out through the window of some back premises. There was no one there. Neither was there anyone on the gravel sweep. Neither was there anyone about the stables, to which he went on immediately. (Jim had disappeared five minutes before.)

Ferguson was so puzzled that he penetrated even into the kitchen department, but there was no one there but a scullery-maid, singing a hymn as the custom is, line by line, very slowly and emotionally, while she scoured copper pans. No, the men were all gone ten minutes ago, she said.

So Ferguson went on to the home farm, once more entirely forgetting the wheelbarrow.

The third odd little thing that happened was so very little that I am really ashamed to mention it. It was this, and no more.

Miss Groves, lady's-maid, had a slight cold this morning, and thought she wouldn't go to church. As soon as eleven o'clock struck and the bells stopped she had occasion to go to the morning-room for something or other. So she came out of the door below the stairs to cross the hall, and began to cross it. Half-way she stopped and looked up, because she was suddenly aware that someone was leaning with his arms on the rail and looking down on her from the gallery that ran along the upper part of the hall. She did not see this person, she informed people later, except out of the corner of her eye; and when, she turned and looked there was no one there.

Now these things were absolutely the only unusual events that happened at all on this Sunday morning, and they are all so small and so easily explicable that I scarcely know why I have described them.

For example, horses do sometimes behave in an odd manner. Almost anything will make them do it. An unusual sound associated in their minds with something exciting is quite enough. And grooms and people of that kind are notoriously unsatisfactory witnesses even as to their own sensations.

Next, gardeners do forget things, and then remember them, and then forget them again. And gardeners, as well as other people, do sometimes think that they hear their names called when there is nobody to call them.

Lastly, nothing is commoner than for ladies'-maids to see things out of the corners of their eyes and imagine themselves to be observed when they are not.

Finally, servants'-hall evidence is very nearly the worst evidence in existence under all circumstances, and servants'-hall evidence collected after the event is simply trumpery.

However, the things were reported to have happened, and they were all written down in a note-book by a thii> man with gold eyeglasses and an academic air not more than a fortnight later, who came down from London on purpose on behalf of some publication or other, and they all appeared in the ensuing number, disguised by initials and studious misdirections.

I give them, therefore, for what they are worth.

in

Sarah put her sensation into words that evening.

It had been an unwholesome kind of day — windy in the morning and too warm for November, windy and rainy in the afternoon. And the day had closed in early with a heavy sky, racing north-eastwards all in one piece, flushing angrily in the west, with the winter sunset ending suddenly in a gash of yellow over the hills and then swiftly falling darkness. The two women had been out in the woods walking over a mile of fallen leaves up the long rides, in and out, telling of secondary matters, each thinking the other a little superficial, and had come back over the hill towards the house as the early dusk was falling. It was very much Sunday and very much November. Tea was a delightful thought.

It had been planned that Mary should be back in time for Benediction at the convent at four o'clock, and that Sarah should or should not come with her, as she felt inclined. Mary, Sarah considered, was one of those charming people who leave their guests, with full sympathy, to the mood of the moment.

At the chapel-door she had hesitated; then she had followed Mary in.

But the twenty minutes' service had only deepened the emotional dream in which she seemed to move to-day. She had let her eyes stray from the pointed candle-flames, bright and comforting, to the pointed windows, austere and chilly, looking, too, now at the heavy figure of the priest, his profile, ruddy and white, his deep-folded cope, and at the tiny server who moved with such deliberate childish dignity; listening again, in a dull kind of impatience, to the voices of the village people in the transept behind her, staring up at the high wooden roof lost in gloom. It all seemed a very queer and unnatural way of worshipping God.

A thousand thoughts drifted by her; yet again and again she came back to Jack. Of what was happening there before her eyes, or was believed to be happening, she thought little or nothing, except vaguely of the amazing credulity of the worshippers. It was, in some fashion, the personality of Jack of which she thought — suggested to her, no doubt, by these evidences of his absence which had come before her to-day in this receptive mood of hers. She wondered what, really, in his heart of hearts, he thought of all this; did he really believe it? Then she remembered, with a curious little glow of satisfaction, that at any rate he had taken to.smoking and cricketing again. He seemed, at that reflection, to be very much in sympathy with herself.... All this the quietly absorbing, suggestive spectacle continued to develop within. Outward appearances formed a vivid background to her thought.

How astonishingly difficult it is to put this kind of moodiness into words. Though I know Lady Sarah Fakenham extremely well, and have talked to her once or twice about this very day of her life as well as of the rest, yet I can understand little of what she felt. All that che was able to convey to me was that sense of deepening heaviness, mostly sentimental, not at all unpleasant, that came upon her in the smoking-room in the morning after church, and increased upon her all the rest of the day, and running through it was a thought of Jack.

The day was practically gone when she came out again, following Mary, and down through the gardens to where the great house lifted its twisted chimneys beneath. Overhead still raced the sky, heavy as a blanket; dead leaves whirled and span beside them, torn from the heart of the woods, and an incessant sound was in the air, the long hush of the wind through the stripped branches. From the window of the morning- room, as they came over the last ridge, shone out the firelight. It was pleasant to think of tea waiting there, and the long evening. (Jim, she reflected, would probably be asleep still before the smoking-room fire.)

The two hardly said anything as they went; but Mary pointed out, as they took the short cut past the kitchen-garden, that one of the gardeners had forgotten a wheelbarrow loaded with flower-pots and a garden instrument or two. That must be seen to, she said. It must have been left there, unnoticed, since the day before.

The glass door, too, into the hall had blown open as if someone had passed quickly through, forgetting to close it after him. But they went through, closed it, and passed on to the morning-room.

It was just after the dressing-gong had sounded that Sarah uttered her psychological state. She had stood up mechanically at the sound of the gong, though she had no intention of going for twenty minutes yet, and Mary had laid down some book or other that she had been reading aloud.

The room had been to Sarah that evening all that it had promised to be, as she had seen its window shining out on to the darkening gardens, and her animal emotionalism (for I do not even now believe it to have been psychical) had lain as in a warm bath for relaxation. They had had the lamp taken away, and in the firelight they had talked gently of ten thousand little things, with silences between. Jim had looked in on them once to make an enquiry as to where a certain book was to be found (he was on the track of first editions again, as in the days of his youth). Then they had lighted the candles and Mary had read aloud, I forget why or what, and Sarah had sat on her stool by the fire and listened and looked — now at the fire, now at her own ringed hands on her knees, now at Mary's face, bent and attentive, half in candle-light, half in shadow.

Then the dressing-gong; and Sarah stood up, stretching.

" Thanks, dearest; that's lovely."

Mary closed the book, and sat, her finger still in the place, meditating.

" Oh, I feel so funny," said Sarah suddenly.

Mary smiled up at her, obviously thinking of something else.

" Do you, dearest? I'm sorry."

" So very Sundayish," said Sarah. " I've felt it ever since this morning. Do you know that feeling one gets sometimes, that everything's sort of — sort of slowing down to a stop? Or else it has stopped, like a train between stations, and one's rather sleepy, and just blinks out at everything, and wonders who the man is going along the road, and whether he'll get there in time, and what his wife's name is."

Mary smiled again, showing her even, white teeth. Sarah did say this kind of thing sometimes, quite unexpectedly. It was, so to speak, Jim translated through her feminine medium.

"But the train always goes on," said Sarah. "At least, it always has with me."

Mary stopped smiling abruptly. And for an instant Sarah found herself wondering whether by any chance Mary's train had not gone on with her. There was that "something" that had happened. Then she remembered about Jack.

" I've been thinking about Jack all day long," she said. " I can't think why. I — why do you look like that?"

Mary dropped her eyes.

"Like what?"

She said it so naturally that Sarah concluded herself wrong. It was no doubt the effect of firelight.

" Ever since I went into the smoking-room I've been thinking about him. There was his pipe-rack there and the photograph of the cricket-group. What is that photograph, by the way?"

" Oh, it's a Stonyhurst group," said Mary.

" And the photograph of that house? "

" That's his old home, where he lived as a boy."

" And then this afternoon too. How extraordinarily empty this house seems without him. Yes, I know that's not polite — you're quite a — a hostess in yourself, of course. Now there are some houses that aren't a bit like that. Jim's aunt's is one. It doesn't matter in the slightest if she's there or not, you know. The furniture goes on just the same."

Mary smiled again without speaking. She was not contributing much to the conversation; but it made no difference to Sarah.

"But here, somehow, it's all Jack. You aren't in it at all, my dear. At least it is so to-day."

" I know what you mean," said Mary evenly.

"And there he is, out in Africa, probably in a blazing sun, making hundreds of runs. How very odd and untrue that does seem. What's the difference of time between here and South Africa? "

" I haven't the slightest idea," said Mary.

" Dear me! What an extraordinary wife you are! Now if it was Jim making runs in a hot sun in South Africa, I should sit here, so to speak, with my watch on my knee. I wonder where Jim is? How quiet the house is! He's probably asleep again."

" It's time to go and dress," said Mary, without moving.

" So it is," said Sarah, and sat down again.

The house certainly was very quiet. The faint vibrations of ten minutes ago, as man and maid passed to and fro overhead, opening wardrobes, and setting down hot water, were all over. The table too had received its finishing touches in the next room, and the household was quiet.

Even the wind outside seemed to have dropped;

and except for one instant in the silence as the two sat, when there lifted a kind of big draught outside, spattering the fountain over the pavement in the little flagged court, the world seemed tired to rest.

It was quite interesting, thought Sarah, still in her sentimental mood, to sit here and listen to the quiet. Once again, as she listened, a window opened somewhere, perhaps in the basement, and a voice said an inaudible word or two, and there was silence again.

" It's as hard to go up and dress," remarked Sarah, " as it is to go to bed. Why is life such a series of efforts? "

" Well, we must make one of them," said Mary resolutely, getting up and blowing out the candles.

As they came into the hall, whence rose the staircase, in Jacobean dignity, to the warm gloom of the picture-hung corridors above, a great log crashed forward on to the hearth. Sarah paused at the first turn of the staircase to see Mary attempting to grasp it in the tongs and restore it.

" Oh, you're doing it wrong! " she said, and came down again in a hurry, as the smoke was eddying out, a thin, pungent cloud, into the hall. But as she put out her hands to seize the tongs Mary stood up suddenly.

" What's that? "

There was a violent vibration of the inner glass door of the hall as the outer one opened, and the sound of footsteps on the stone. The next instant Parkinson came through, with his hat on, in an ulster opened at the front, showing his white shirt. He recoiled as he saw his mistress, and stood there, still covered, staring as if in terror.

But Mary said nothing. She stood there silent, still holding the steel tongs, waiting for who should follow.

Then the priest came through — a grotesque figure, his skirts gathered in his hands, an old cloak thrown over his shoulders, and a tall silk hat on his head. He held something in his hand that glimmered white in the light of the hall-lamp overhead. The big outer door banged heavily behind him in the wind, and the reverberation rang through the house like thunder.

He came straight through, lifting his hat as he did so, and setting it on the table as he passed.

" Mrs. Weston " he said.

No sound came from Mary.

" Mrs. Weston, may I — may I speak to you privately an instant? "

His kindly old face was all drawn with some emotion, and the rain through which he had come shone on his shoulders.

" A — a telegram," he said; " Parkinson received it ten minutes ago. It is from — from "

Sarah cried out something.

"Yes; from Africa," he said. " It— it— bad news. He is ill — Mr. Weston is ill. Mrs. Weston, may I speak to you privately? Yes — yes — he died to-day."

EPILOGUE

THERE are few things in this world more pleasant than a proper breakfast-room in full summer at about half-past nine o'clock — harmonising, as it does, the simplicity of air and sun and lawn and flowers — all moderately ethereal joys — with the grossest carnal suggestions of kidneys and amber marmalade and steaming silver coffee-pots. Such a harmony as this makes it possible sometimes for the most blase to be tolerant.

Sarah thought so, at least, as she came down and regarded the scene, pushed her head out of the window and her nose into the very heart of a crimson rose, and turned once more to the table Three or four letters lay there by her plate; she opened one, glanced through it quickly, and sat down.

Ten minutes later Jim appeared. He was a little tired, he explained; there was a rebus book-plate that had kept him puzzling till after midnight: he was convinced he had solved it at last.

Sarah nodded, then passed over the note she had first opened.

"At two o'clock," she said. "We must not be there after that."

Jim yawned delicately.

" Is my presence really necessary? " he asked.

" Of course it is," said Sarah energetically. " I couldn't bear it alone."

Jim went to the sideboard with pursed lips as if he were whistling. Sarah stared meditatively at his brilliant socks.

" Poor dear! " she said suddenly.

" Yes, I am rather " began Jim.

" To think of it coming to this," she went on without the smallest attention. " And I warned her. Oh, how I warned her not to be morbid!"

Jim selected a kidney.

" Catholic — and temperament," he observed. " Two inscrutable mysteries."

" I suppose we must say something nice to Mrs. Aberford. Oh, Jim!"

" Who's Mrs. Aberford? "

" Oh, an old aunt. She's dug out from Scotland somewhere — ' to give her away,' as they say."

" Give her away! What the blazes "

" Oh, I don't know. It's one of the things they do. And don't make the obvious joke."

Jim looked a little hurt.

It was a gloomy breakfast after all, in spite of the amber marmalade and the sunshine and the roses and the kidneys. Jim made an attempt or two at conversation, but it was a failure. Sarah sat, picking a scrap or two of food, staring before her, and Jim gave it up.

He could not understand, he told himself, why she was so concerned. Surely she had known, two years before, that it would come to this. Mary had written to that effect within a month of Jack's death, remarking that she was going abroad first to get things into focus, but hinting plainly enough what the result of it all would be. Then there had followed another pause, then another; and then three months before they themselves had taken possession again of their own house the last stage had been entered upon, and Mary had entered the convent as a postulant. Absolutely the last detail had been fulfilled by the arrival of a little red-lined paper announcing that His Lordship the Bishop of Pentapolis would give the habit to one postulant at 3 p.m. on the Feast of Something or Other, at Manningham Convent, that vespers would be sung at 2 p.m., and the sermon preached by the Rev. Father Badminton, SJ. There had been no abruptness; the thing had developed as surely as an engagement develops into marriage. Why then sit over kidneys in the morning sunshine dumbfounded, on what was, so to speak, the wedding-day? There the thing was — perfectly hopeless and morbid, of course — but if people liked that sort of thing it was obviously the sort of thing that such people would like. Live and let live! Meanwhile, there were first editions and book-plates, and real strenuous life for the wholesomely minded. So he was not greatly occupied with the thing. He reflected only that he would have to lunch at a quarter to one.

And while Jim pondered downstairs, Sarah went up to look at the baby.

It had arrived six months before, and was enthroned, with a nurse, in what had been Sarah's own nursery and schoolroom years ago. Somehow or other it seemed to her symbolical to-day; and she stood with her back to the fire-place, regarding it in silence as it went up and down looking over its nurse's shoulder. It appeared to her almost infinitely pathetic that Mary had had no child; it would have solved so much. A baby was surely the outward sign of what life ought to be; it stood for reality and facing facts and all the rest of it; it gave a sense of permanence and continuance and all the rest of it. Whereas Mary's dreams — how desolate and fruitless!

She did not exactly formulate these ideas, but they passed imaginatively before her, one by one, and she thought herself very feeling. She perceived the contrast between this homely nursery with its white furniture, its gay carpet, the little brass-railed cot, and so forth, and a nun's cell as she knew it to be. The one stood to her for sanity and wholesomeness, the other for a despair of life. Obviously one's chief duty to the world was to live in it as permanently as possible, and a child — as Zola and Mr. H. G. Wells have mystically represented it — is a real fulfilment of that duty. And that child in its turn would pass on the torch of life, and so on — yes, and so on.

She felt a little melancholy as she looked, yet utterly certain that she was right. Of course Eternity and all that was all right for the individual, but there was also the duty of forgetting self in one's children. Whereas poor Mary ended with herself: there was no more to be said.

She took the baby for a minute or two into her own arms and held it there. The warm touch and movement were reassuring. Then she gave it back to the nurse and whisked out of the room.

The sweep of gravel outside the chapel was crowded with vehicles as the Fakenhams drove up in their beautiful motor at about ten minutes before two. The heat was considerable here, and Jim, who had lunched grudgingly though quite heartily at a quarter before one, paid very little attention to Sarah's remarks, as they waited for a carriage resembling a pantomime comic cab that occupied the steps. Yes, he assented, obviously that was the back of a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic getting out of it. There were all kinds of other people there, some known, some unknown; and all bore themselves with an odd air as they nodded and exchanged remarks. The occasion might equally well have been, judging by their demeanour, a cheerful funeral or a very melancholy wedding; such a one at which the bridegroom, for instance, might be deaf or paralysed.

Their turn came at last, and in they went, stumbling along in the sudden darkness, led by a smiling young woman in a black silk cap. shaped rather like the head-dress of Red Riding-Hood.

Then Sarah began to look about her in earnest.

Little by little the glare of sunlight in her eyes passed, and this is what she saw. Immediately in front of her, beyond the single row of heads that occupied the front places in this public transept, rose up the light iron screen; but the door in it was set open, and two or three odd figures, looking rather like modest French peasants, passed in and out continually, obscuring that which lay behind. She could just make out heads, but no more. To the left stood the altar on its two or three steps; and six candles burned behind upon the gradine. A carpet stretched-from its foot down to where the moving group revolved. Then suddenly the group partly dissolved; and Sarah — with a sudden catch of her breath — saw Mary in three-quarter profile, kneeling at a prie-dieu facing the altar. Beyond her, slightly behind, showed

Mrs. Aberford's severe Scottish countenance framed in a purple bonnet.

Mary's appearance was a complete surprise, and a shock, as horrible as if she had been dead; for she was dressed as a bride from head to foot, in an exquisitely made costume, white silk, lace veil, orange blossoms — all complete — with her hair elaborately coiled and puffed upon her head. A painted candlestick, some four feet in height, stood beside her, and the light from the candle fell full upon her face. She was kneeling upright, with open eyes, looking serenely before her.

The sight was horrible to Sarah — arresting and shocking; for she had last seen her in black for her husband. It looked so heartless, she thought; and, above all, that radiant face, as young as if a young girl. And the reason shocked her again as she considered it — ah, to think that this was Mary! Her eyes filled with tears that ebbed again.

The door beside the transept suddenly opened and two priests came out with a boy or two. She looked at their faces as they took their places, and hated them. That callous brute in a cope with his wooden demeanour — he was the successor of that tiresome old Father Banting, wasn't he? — dead three months now. What was it all to him, but one more hysterical woman, under a piteous heart-breaking mistake, embracing an unnatural life that he himself dared not live? No, no; there were pipes and alcohol and a decent bed and good food for him — and for Mary, well, for Mary, what Sarah now knew by heart. What was that which he was saying in his brazen voice?

" Deus in adjutorium...."

Some gabble or other.

Then, for an instant, her thought was struck dumb, for in answer, away from the right, over that shuttered screen, came the weirdest sound she had ever heard; it was like wind, it was like the cry of migrating night-birds on the northern fens — it was like the voices of the dead. Yet there were syllables in it, syllables that must surely mean something, on but two notes, the tonic and the leading notes — no more. So it wailed and ceased, unearthly, terrifying, horrible; and again in answer without a tremor the brazen voice from the seat opposite.

What in the world did it all signify? What did it stand for?

There was a subsidence into seats almost immediately, and Sarah, beginning to think once more connectedly, yet still to that intolerable accompaniment — two notes and no more, unsupported by organ or harmony — glanced again at the other priest, whose face she could see bent over his book. She hated him too. He was commonplace, she decided, unimaginative, imperceptive, with his reddish hair and big nose on which perched a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. He slightly resembled a chestnut horse, she thought. Then again she looked at Mary, immovable and upright on her knees, looking before her.

For how long the affair went on Sarah did not know. It might have been twenty minutes, she considered afterwards; but the appalling monotony of the voices soon overcame their absorbing horror, and she listened with scarcely even interest after a while to the change of voice that began each psalm on a higher note. Only once she started a little, as one of these single voices began, containing in itself, it seemed, the very essence of the grave — thin, high, vibrating, and windy, as a ghost might sing. The censing of the altar later gave her a moment or two of interest, and she paused in that endless treading of the mill of thought and memory and prospect, to watch the wooden-faced priest going about his business to the chink of chains, and to sniff sharply that strange, haunting, sepulchral odour that floated in an invisible film down into the transept. Jim coughed softly and patiently beside her, as a kind of tolerant protest, she thought. She was glad he had so much philosophy to sustain him.

When the sermon began, she sat back with curiosity to hear what would be said. She had decided that the matter of it would probably be defiant, and certainly rhetorical. A ceremony like this sorely needed a very river of emotion to flow over its horror. There would be talk about Brides of the Lamb, and convent ecstasies, and midnight vigils, and the thrill of the Bridegroom's kiss.

Yet there were none of these things. The affair was commonplace and even dull. The preacher, standing on the altar-step just above Mary, after a sign of the cross and the placing on his head what Sarah just knew to be a " biretta," began his deliberate little discourse and flowed on tranquilly to the end. She could scarcely remember afterwards what it was about. She just remembered that the text was something about " Ye are dead, and your life..." She forgot the rest.

It began with something about "congratulating our sister" on the step she was undertaking to-day. There followed a little description of the Garden of Eden — a thing of whose very existence Sarah was exceedingly doubtful — and a contrast with it of the world at the present time. The beauty was still here, said the priest, but there " lurked here what had been lacking there " — sin. He went on a little about this — with illustrations and examples, and remarked that it was for this reason that certain " elect souls, called specially of God," left the world, not indeed to run away from evil, but to deal with it the more effectively.

(That, Sarah reminded herself, was sheer nonsense. It was even untrue. For all the world knew perfectly well that the Religious Life, at least this kind, was simple cowardice and selfishness, however much it might be disguised, and that the whole object of nuns was to try to escape from worldly troubles. Sarah sighed as she considered the fact that her mare was lame, that her dentist had been very discouraging last week, and that there was that tiresome Colonel and his more than tiresome wife coming to stay that very evening.... Well, troubles must be borne bravely. Meanwhile, poor dear Mary! To think that she thought she could escape from troubles within convent walls! What a delusion! — since human nature is the same everywhere, and bears its own troubles with it.)

She was so much occupied with interior refutation that she missed a good bit of the discourse. When she was able to attend again the priest was, almost timidly, she thought, claiming that at least this Religious Life ought to show to the world that there was such a thing as faith. He commended to the consideration of any Protestants that might be present the reflection that somehow or other it was a fact that there was an exceedingly large number of persons in the world, of whom this " sister " of ours is one, who deliberately, after full consideration, preferred to live this life to any other. It was at least remarkable that in the face of those who at the present day maintained almost openly that the senses alone offered solid pleasure, there was another kind of joy sufficiently convincing to make girls and women who had all to lose from the worldly point of view by their renunciation, give up once and for all everything that for the worldling made life worth living, and embrace a life in which bodily comfort was reduced to a minimum.

It was an involved sentence, and Sarah despised it with all her might. Besides, the matter of it was ridiculous. It was all just self-hypnotism, as Jim had told her at the beginning.

As she finished these strictures the sermon ended, and the two priests with their attendants went out in silence.

There followed a rather uncomfortable little pause. People began to rustle and whisper. Sarah heard a sharp sentence or two from somewhere behind. " They say she's heart-broken, poor thing." " Yes. I shall be at home to-morrow, dear, any time after four."

Sarah jerked her shoulders impatiently and looked at Mary again.

Still the moments went on. Then suddenly she made a discovery: that in the shuttered screen on the right that cut off the nuns' choir from the sanctuary a grating was open, and she could see even from her seat, for it was hardly three steps away, straight into the choir proper. But it was difficult to see anything satisfactorily. There was woodwork, yes, of unpainted deal, and yes — that was a human figure beyond that desk, motionless. Then a shutter slid again into its place without a sound. Sarah determined, if there was an opportunity later, to shift her seat a little in order to see better.

Then, abruptly, half a dozen figures emerged from the sacristy door, one of them a burly man with dark complexion and heavy eyebrows, in some kind of purple and black, with a glint of gold chain and cross. That would be the bishop, she thought.

She watched the vesting of him carefully, with scorn in her heart. All this elaboration about nothing. Why could not the man put on his clothes in private? The clothes too seemed endless in number, and when all was done at last and he stood up with his immense pointed mitre on his head and jewelled staff in his hand, she called him " Medicine-man " to herself.

The medicine-man, however, it seemed, had business outside, for an instant later the group swept towards the transept and disappeared, passing within a yard of herself. A kind of flurry broke out in the benches, restrained by the attendants, and with an emotion that clutched at her throat Sarah suddenly saw Mary within a yard of her, passing swiftly on behind the clergy, dead white, yet smiling, with eyes like stars. Two little girls dressed in white carried her heavy brocaded train. Then the procession was gone, and Sarah cast herself into the scurry that followed, battling nobly with her elbows to see the end.

It was strange to come out again into the hot sunlight and to see the trees over the encircling wall. Sarah contented herself with thinking once more of the artificiality left behind, and of God's own sky and world natural about her. It was an immense consolation to her to reflect on this thought and to perceive, mentally, her own superior spirituality. Poor dear Mary! But what had happened to the procession?

Presently she found out.

A kind of semicircle had been formed about the porch-entrance to the convent, consisting of the congregation who had made the most speed; and into the pack Sarah presently forced herself, obtaining what was, on the whole, a very respectable position. And almost immediately she understood what was happening.

Within, the porch opened out a little, and in the space stood the bishop and his clergy, facing, slightly on one side, the door into the enclosure. This was at the instant shut, and immediately in front of it stood Mary, with her aunt on one side and the two little girls on the other. Then the door opened; and Sarah drew a breath.

Between the heads immediately in front of her, across the gravel, through the porch, beyond the groups within, she had her first clear sight — and indeed almost her last — of contemplatives with their veils thrown back.

She remembered afterwards the following points: —

They stood in a wide semicircle — she imagined about a dozen of them; she caught a general effect of brown and white and curious swathed headdresses. The Prioress stood in front. Behind them showed the dull white of the cloister and the glint of sunlit green beyond.

Of their faces she had afterwards a confused recollection, for the sight lasted scarcely a minute. But she summed it all up in whispers to a friend over tea in the phrase "unhealthy and morbid." There was an odd irrelevance between eyes and mouth — they did not seem quite to belong; for the mouths were grave and natural, and the eyes deadly tired. In fact, they were not quite like the faces of living people. They resembled rather masks.

It was difficult for Sarah to define her emotions even to herself; for curiosity was so dominant that analysis was nearly impossible. On the whole, however, perhaps indignation, blind and unreasoning, was the next forcible sensation. She expressed it later by saying that at that moment the whole thing appeared to her even more abominable than she had dreamed. It was a kind of outrage upon the sky and sun and summer air.

Ah, the door was closing; and there stood Mary within, beside the Prioress, smiling. Sarah was distressed that their eyes did not meet. As the door closed she saw her friend's eyes begin to follow its movement with a strange expectancy.

There was a breaking up of the crowd; a murmur of voices; and again the bishop and his clergy swept back in the sunshine.

Ill

Of what followed in the chapel when Sarah, after a gallant struggle, found herself in the desired seat, she would have had a far more accurate knowledge if one of her neighbours behind had not maintained a steady whispered comment to someone else on all that took place. The bishop, who by now was stationed by the grating into the nuns' choir on the right, had his biography shortly retailed and his personal appearance disapproved of. Sarah turned a fierce cheek backwards now and then without avail.

It was exceedingly difficult to attend therefore to all that happened.

First, however, she noticed that the square window-like grating was swung back, and that it was possible to have a tolerable view into the place where Mary would for the future pass a large number of each set of twenty-four hours, that we call a day. It was not inviting: it was stone-floored; it was walled for some four feet up by a partition of deal, beyond which, she supposed, the nuns sat in their stalls.

Then she noticed with a shock that they were actually sitting there, motionless as statues, shaped indeed like human beings, yet unrecognisable, since once more their veils hung down. And she had hardly seen this when without a sound Mary's own face, still crowned and wreathed, appeared at the square opening. A candle, she observed, burned like a star beside the face and shone upon the smooth texture of the cheek.

Then the bishop was speaking. There were questions asked. Sarah could just catch their purport, in spite of the shuffling and whispering about her.

What was it that she desired? Mary's grave voice, steady, clear, and deliberate, gave the answer: " The blessing of God. The Habit of the Order; and the companionship of her sisters."

(" Or it was something like that," said Sarah later over her buttered toast.)

And was it of her own free will that she was there?

Indeed, yes.

Then certain folded objects were handed through by the bishop — a kind of bundle. (What theatrical nonsense it all was, said Sarah to herself! Why in the world make such a fuss about a little cheap stuff?)

And there were prayers in Latin being said now — an unintelligible mumble. Oh! what in God's name had all this to do with God's sky and birds and trees? The bundle was being blessed. Blessed indeed!

Then again the face vanished, and again one of those awkward pauses ensued.

Sarah, sitting back in her seat, began to reflect how much better she could have done it all. It was these pauses that were so abrupt and stupid. For herself, she would have arranged it quite beautifully. There should have been gentle hymns, cooed out of sight — nice peaceful things like Sunday evening — or at the least a little quiet organ-playing. And incense too. A boy in scarlet, with a melancholy sweet face and golden hair brushed out like a halo. Ah! these Catholics didn't really understand the beauty of religion. Of course the whole thing was deplorable; but if it must be done, why not do it exquisitely? The affair was so abrupt — like gashes. It was so terribly workaday and businesslike — like the delivery of a prisoner to a gaol — no real sentiment or tenderness at all; and the attempts at it lamentable. The wedding dress, for instance; that was simply bad taste. It was as bad as Father Banting's pink angel.

She was brought back in a jump.

" How much longer?" asked Jim's gloomy whisper in her ear.

" I don't know. I "

Ah! there was the face once more. Yet was it, indeed, her face? There showed at the opening the head of a woman veiled in white, with down-turned eyes and closed lips. The lashes lay dead on the white cheek, and the very lips looked pale. The crown of hair was gone; instead the shroud-like veil. The wedding dress was gone, and the glow of blossoms, and the splendour of lace and silk; instead rough brown stuff showed at the neck, and the edge of a heavy white mantle over it. So, motionless, in the square opening rested this woman's head and shoulders; and Sarah, craning this way and that, saw that she knelt upon a carpet on which lay a sprinkle of a few white flowers.

It was for a moment only. Then the figure vanished; and Sarah, edging out from her seat, careless of etiquette, was able to see beyond the bishop, from whom once more mumbled out some jargon or other, a long shape covered with a mantle that lay flat upon its face upon the carpet.

It was almost the crowning horror of all — the very pitch of all this theatrical unreality that veiled another reality so overpowering that Sarah was aware of its existence only in the formless pressure of fear that it exerted upon herself and her own fierce resentment.

Mary! Mary! By act after act of will and memory she tried to compel herself to know that this shape was Mary — Mary Weston who had ridden with her, laughed with her, smoked with her. There she was — the same person whom she herself had known, in whose company she had been in this very transept, lying flat upon a carpet with heavy men in fantastic dresses standing over her — there, behind bars more impregnable than of a prison, since they were raised and held in place by the prisoners themselves.

It was impossible for the imagination to take hold of the fact. It simply could not be Mary. The imagination must be right; the intellect wrong. Mary must be elsewhere — the thing was an illusion. It would be all right presently. The affair would be all over; the chapel gone like a dream. It was on another plane. Surely Mary herself would meet her afterwards, and laugh, and give her tea....

The emotional movement passed; and she looked again intelligently. Yes, that was Mary, rising now, with another figure beside her, as the group of ecclesiastics moved away.

But her veil too was down. Was it possible that she had seen Mary's face for the last time?

Where were those two going? Ah! there was another figure come out from somewhere behind the deal boarding. Yes.

" Look, Jim; they're kissing — with their veils down."

Jim sighed tolerantly. Then the grating closed.

Jim broke the silence in the motor five minutes later.

" Temperament, my dear girl, that's all. You must make allowances for temperament."