PART II

Chapter VI

I

MANNINGHAM village fell into a state of curious suppressed excitement on the afternoon of the nuns' arrival, just before Christmas.

It was that cheerless kind of day that occasionally falls in mid-December, neither honest wintry frost nor tempestuous storm, but a heavy, weeping sky, an earth in which all seems contracted and starved; the bare trees shivered and stood patient in the wind, the pavements were damp but not dripping; there was a general sense of discomfort and unhappiness.

The entrance to the park lay on the station side of the village, fifty yards before the houses began, but a tolerable little crowd had collected to see the carriages drive up. A dozen children were, as usual, in front; a couple of tradesmen's boys loitered carefully towards the point of interest a minute or two before the rumoured time of the arrival; a little way away gathered a group of aproned women, and, behind them, in twos and threes, a dozen men.

Mary had found it difficult to arrive at exactly the point of view that lay behind the quiet, mannerly suspicion of the villagers; she had made one or two attempts, but the worst she could gather was that it was believed that these nuns were probably rather wicked in a suppressed kind of way, that they had designs--of what nature it did not appear--upon the British Constitution, and that their life was one of entire idleness and luxury. There seemed too to be a faint suspicion abroad as to the fate of English girls who should venture too closely in the direction of the new convent--a danger of some sort of bewitchment, also undefined.

She had done what she could to reassure the village by a few purposely short and easily repeatable sentences, planted here and there with emphasis.

"They are some French ladies, with an English lady or two among them, who are coming here to settle down."

"They are very good people, who just want to pray, and be left alone... No, you won't see them about at all; but they will be pleased to see you sometimes."

But it seemed pretty useless. It was unintelligible to the English rustic mind that anyone, who had not designs of some sort behind, should wish to live in a large, rather uncomfortable-looking house, merely in order to pray, and never to go out visiting.

A kind of despair had fallen upon Mary at the railway station just now, as the train had drawn up, and out of two reserved second-class compartments there had emerged a dreary-looking company of French ladies, in indescribably sordid-looking, rather respectable dresses, with black bonnets. Most of them were spectacled; and all were nervous. They reminded her faintly of a procession of hens, rather agitated, entering a new farmyard. She nodded and smiled reassuringly, saying a few French sentences, till an old lady, stoutish, with large round spectacles, pale, pendulous cheeks, muffled round her face with a black comforter, had been ushered through the crowd, and been announced in English by an unknown voice as the Reverend Mother Prioress.

It was something of a disappointment. Mary had expected rather more of a stage effect--a certain dignity at any rate, an augustness, a few tall, dignified figures, chastened by sorrow; instead here was this reminder of a fowl-house.

She uttered a sentence or two of welcome, gave assurances that the luggage should be seen to, and after another explanation or two, had led the way to the close carriages drawn up outside, where Jack awaited them with his bicycle.

Jack had come forward, also nervous and a little awkward, had promised his assistance for the identifying and safe conveyance of the luggage; then, when all the others had been bestowed behind, Mary with the Prioress, a tall woman, obviously English, and a very young-looking, round-faced French girl--presently introduced as the single novice of the house--entered the front carriage, and the procession set itself in motion.

The horror of dreariness and agitation fell more and more heavily on Mary as they drove up the country road, passed the groups at the park entrance, and turned up through the lodge-gate. There was hardly anything to say, but she said it. Things seemed so extraordinarily different in actuality. It appeared to her like a bad dream come true. She had not realised even while the workmen came and went, and the walls rose on the hill above the house--the grey stone court, surmounted by the gable of the bleak chapel--how all this would dominate and colour all the life that she knew. Here was the house and place that she had learned to love, associated in her mind with that normal English life in which even Father Banting had been a faint discomfort--now and henceforward to be overlooked and affected at every instant by the knowledge of these Frenchwomen in the heart of it all, not two hundred yards away. The dead building had scarcely given her a hint of the impression that the living people would bring to bear. And now they were here; and actual responsibilities had begun... She dismissed the horror with a violent effort and began to talk again, now in French to the Prioress, learning a little of the journey's adventures; now to the tall Englishwoman who sat opposite,

The face of this one seemed more homely, though not in the least beautiful. She was tall and rather largely made, thin-faced with big cheekbones and large brown eyes. She had been in the convent, Mary learned, about four years. There was a certain friendliness about her that Mary found pleasant, though she sat back silent in an instant when the Prioress made a movement to speak.

Mary made one or two attempts to point out various things as they went--the trout-stream, the group of old oaks, finally, where the road branched half-way up the park, the Hall itself a hundred yards away. But the Prioress seemed not to be attending.

"The baggage, madam--that will be all safe, will it not, with monsieur your husband?"

Mary reassured her.

"There are all our treasures there," she said; "our chapel furniture, our vestments: all that the Government would permit us to remove. And there is our greatest treasure of all."

Mary asked genially what that was--thinking it to be an old crucifix, perhaps, or a monstrance.

"It is the body of our little saint," said the Prioress, beaming through her round glasses, "our little sister Catherine."

Mary jumped, thinking she could not have heard aright.

"I beg your pardon," she said, "you don't mean--"

"But yes: in a packing-case. She was a saint, there is no question. We had leave to bring it with us. She has worked many miracles, we think, already. You shall see her to-morrow, madam."

Mary sat aghast.

It seemed to her the gilded pinnacle of her house of fears--the very incorporation and symbol of her forebodings. It expressed in a form which there was no mistaking the enormous gulf between her own methods of thought and those of these women whom she was bound now to befriend. To carry a dead body about! She had faced, more or less, in imagination, all those details of routine which were so entirely absent from her own instincts: the bell-ringing, the endless trifles, the silence of the new great house above her own; she had thought it possible that she could still live her own life in spite of them--for her attempt during these last four months to modify it had been a remarkable failure; but somehow the mention of this horrible dead body, transported from Tours in a packing-case, counted as the chief of the treasures--this seemed to focus in a burning-point all her terrors and unwillingness... What in the world would Sarah think?...

She sat silent.

"Yes, you shall see her to-morrow, madam," said the old lady again... "Ah! we are arrived?"

"Yes, reverend mother," said Mary mechanically. "We descend here."

The building could not be called beautiful, yet it was not ugly. It stood here, like a contemplative in a ballroom, severe, cold, self-contained, graceful, yet with a grace that did not in the least accord with its surroundings. Obviously it was an afterthought.

The little lodge at which they stood, built, like all the rest, of grey stone, was placed exactly at the crown of the hill, where the slopes began to descend to the Hall. There was a short covered way, as Mary knew, paved with flagstones, immediately beyond the lodge, leading into the glazed cloister, court-shaped, above which ran the cells on this side and to the west. The chapel stood at the further end of the cloister on the left, the refectory to the right, and the kitchen offices beyond. In the centre of the cloister garth, where a few shrubs still lingered disconsolately, a pump and a well had their position. The whole place had been built after a good deal of correspondence, and included a walled garden approached through the tiny ante-chapel. The court and the garden formed the whole "enclosure," technically so called, beyond which, later on, no nun might pass. Visitors would be admitted through the lodge into a couple of small parlours, where a double grating would separate them from those on the other side.

The rest of the ground was comparatively unchanged, though it looked a little dreary now with the marks of recent mortar heaps and certain chips of wood that blew about in the December wind. The semicircular hedge was still in place, though part of the walled garden approached it very nearly in one place. Mary had arrived at the perfectly just conclusion, more than two months ago, that the peculiar charm and value of the place had been completely destroyed, and had already made her plans for another garden elsewhere, entirely out of sight of the convent.

Well, here they stood; and at the first pull on the bell the lodge-gate opened, and one of the gamekeeper's wives, who had been educated at a convent and had volunteered to make things more or less ready, stood there smiling and curtseying. Smoke went up in the background from the kitchen chimney.

But the place was indescribably dreary to Mary's eyes as she went through with the Prioress, and the flock followed whispering together. There was a horrible newness about it all, yet it was far from bright. All was grey about them; and their footsteps, marked by the creaking of new boots, echoed dismally upon the stones. The daylight was darkening every minute, for it was drawing on to sunset, and there was no welcoming warmth of carpet and firelight to suggest a refuge from the grey world.

'They went together through the place, first to the chapel, where the white bare altar seen beyond the screen glimmered like a sheet, and the painted deal stalls ranged themselves on either side. Across the foot of the chancel the screen, not yet closed, barred the way, beyond which the nuns later would not be able to pass; and on the left again, lightly barred, rose the opening to the transept that, projecting outside the walled garden, was accessible to the public, and would serve in future instead of the chapel of the Hall for the small Catholic congregation of the district. From a door at the side of this opening there emerged the figure of Father Banting, who had been busy in the sacristy, and now after a word or two of greeting in execrable French (the poor man had a French grammar lying open in his room down at the house) stood smiling behind the iron bars like an amiable lion, until he excused himself again and disappeared to finish his work.

But worse even than the cold welcome of the chapel was the appearance of the cells and the corridor that united them on the upper floor. It seemed natural somehow that the chapel should be austere and forbidding, but the new, clean deal boards of the passage, the frosted-glass panes of the windows, both in the passage and the cells, the appalling emptiness of these rooms where the nuns would pass most of the hours of their solitude this was too much for Mary altogether. She had seen them before, of course, again and again; but the thought that on this night women would sleep here--and that in the luggage to be brought up were no such things as pictures, or carpets, or wall-paper--this appalled her.

Each cell contained four principal objects, and no more. A bed stood against two sides--at least, what was called a bed. It consisted of a rectangular, shallow box of wood, covered now with a brown blanket; and beneath lay one of those thin straw mattresses which Mary had obtained with some difficulty from London. At the foot of the bed stood a prie-dieu with an enormous black painted cross hanging above it on the white wall. In the centre stood a deal table and chair; in the further corner a wash-hand stand. And that was all. There was no fire-place--a black iron radiator stood near the door. There was the pale deal underfoot; all the rest of the room was dead-white. In the twilight filtered through the frosted glass the desolation was overwhelming.

The refectory was not much better. The eternal deal was again underfoot; deal tables ran along the sides of two walls with a small cross-table uniting them. The one tolerable feature was the brown-painted panelling that rose to the height of about four feet up the walls, and suggested--faintly indeed, yet suggested--a kind of echo of a thought of comfort A radiator also stood here, near to the door.

Mary was almost dumb with dismay as she came out again with the Prioress and the Englishwoman, now known to her as Sister Teresa, and stood to make her farewells for the present at the entrance to the lodge-passage. The Prioress had entirely refused any further help in the work of settling in, beyond that supplied by the gamekeeper's wife.

"We are accustomed to work," she said. "All shall be finished to-night; and Holy Mass is to be at seven to-morrow, is it not?"

"I believe so," said Mary.

"Then nothing remains but to thank you, madam," said the Prioress, peering at her through her round spectacles; "and our Lord can do that better than I. Then if you will come to-morrow, madam, some time after ten, you shall see our little Sister Catherine."

And as Mary came out at the lodge-gate, there, among the valises and bundles, over whose disembarkment from the van Jack was presiding, she thought she discerned a tall packing-case, grim and ominous against the pale sky.

II

Half an hour after dinner the two were sitting in the smoking-room talking together. There was an enormous amount of detail to be discussed, and Mary at least had found it a certain safety-valve for her feelings.

They had been a curious four months since the building had once got under way, and in them again the quantity of practical things to be done and decided had been a kind of refuge from the facing of principles. Jack, as Mary had related in her note to Sarah, had once at least offered to give up the whole idea, saying that he understood better now the demand that it made upon her; but Mary would not hear of it. Since then, with a kind of furious ardour, the two had thrown themselves into work--Jack into long consultations with the architect and hours spent among the workmen; Mary into interminable correspondence, first with the nuns, then with tradesmen, and almost weekly excursions up to London. It was amazing how much had to be done. The crockery was obtained from Spain, and the cooking-vessels from France. The garden also had to be overseen, and proper selections made for its stocking.

But the end was in sight.

For an hour before dinner they had discussed details connected with the new chapel, and one or two arrangements concerning the gardeners; through dinner they had continued the same kind of thing; and now, half an hour later, by common unexpressed consent they had dropped the rest, and both sat suddenly silent before the fire.

It was a delightful little room in which they sat--the room in which, five months ago, Jack had accomplished the holocaust of his bats. In August she had found him again preparing to remove certain books on sport from the room; but on her pointing out their suitability at least for guests, he had left them as they were. (This was on the day after the flower-show, and he had seemed a little depressed that day, she had thought.) For the rest, the room was ordinary enough. A semicircle of vast leather chairs, five in number, were ranged round the fire: a deep window-seat ran from its edge; there were horns, books, glass cases of stuffed birds, a deep Turkey carpet, and heavy, comfortable curtains over the windows. No one would have suspected that it was the sitting-room of a fanatic; and Jack had begun once more to make it his sitting-room, and had acquiesced in its appearance.

In fact, in a good many ways he had shown his reasonableness after the first excitement had expired. He still said his office (Mary had peeped at him more than once from an upper window, going up and down the broad walk beneath); he meditated, frowning rather, for a smart half-hour each morning; he went to the Sacraments once a week, and to Mass every day. But in other matters he had gone on very much as before. He had pointed out to her that his position certainly did go for something; saying that Father Banting agreed with him; and that, on reflection, he considered he had been rather hasty in determining to give up all social duties. He now took a glass of wine again at dinner, though he had not yet resumed smoking; and he still refused to have a man-servant of his own. The butler now looked after his clothes.

On the whole Mary was content with him. He was now what would be called an excellent and devout Catholic; there was very little trace of the fanatic about him.

And Mary?

Well, the account that Sarah would have given of her--in fact did give of her, fairly frequently--was that she was perfectly charming, though a little given to brooding sometimes. She no longer said the kind of things she used to say--except during one week in October, when she had raged about as usual, denouncing the convent, Jack, religion, herself, and everyone concerned. But she had repented of this so abjectly, explaining with such misery in her eyes that she had been maddened by neuralgia, that this scarcely counted. Obviously there was something going on in Mary that Sarah did not understand. It hardly seemed probable, as Jim had pointed out before he had left for Scotland in the summer, that a conversation with Jack and two with Lady Carberry should have worked a complete conversion of outlook. But as to what the other element was Sarah had no idea. She had fished, with ill-success. Veils had descended upon Mary's eyes, and her face had fallen a little. Sarah dismissed the whole affair--at least she said she dismissed it, though she continually pulled it back to look at it again--by attributing it to that Catholic temperament so inexplicable to other people.

Here then the two sat--Jack and Mary--suddenly silent before the smoking-room fire.

For some while Mary was not conscious of it. Their last words had been as to having breakfast at half-past eight in future instead of half-past nine. This appeared as a necessity, since Mass was to be in future an hour earlier than usual. And from that point Mary had run on, thought by thought, dwelling on little vignettes of memory--on the Prioress's spectacled face, the deal boards of the cells and corridors, and the rest. She began to picture to herself the life there, so far as she knew it the silent row of figures passing in the dead night hours to prayer, the hooded faces in the refectory, the interminable silences, the even more interminable "recreations," at which all must talk, in whatever mood. She passed on again to consider the packing-case and its contents... the grimness of the thought of the body of this French peasant-girl, as she probably had been, being hauled about on railways and a steamer, guarded by jealous, anxious eyes, stored now in some little white room, probably the refectory--these nuns had no imagination--till its translation into the white iron-barred church.

So she sat thinking, staring into the wood fire unconscious of all save her own thoughts.

She was disturbed by a small sound, faintly familiar, and looked up.

Jack also, it seemed, was meditating. He lay there in the deep chair, also staring at the fire, frowning a little as he stared, and further holding in his hand to his mouth a small wooden object, through which he was sucking in a contemplative manner, with a hollow and whistling sound.

Mary perceived it was an empty pipe.

"There!" she said. "You're a backslider!"

Jack smiled lazily and said nothing. They were both rather tired with the labours of the day.

How nice and clean he looked, thought Mary.

Never, even in the first days of his enthusiasm, had he omitted to dress for dinner. He lay there now with his long legs extended. One shoe had fallen off from a large foot, and his toes twisted luxuriously up and down before the blaze. His chin was sunk on his white shirt-front, and his eyes blinked at the fire. He looked extraordinarily comfortable and pleasing to the eye.

Then Mary thought again of the nuns, and sat up instinctively.

"You lazy pig," she said; "and think of those poor creatures up there in the cold."

Jack smiled again and made a small contented noise. Plainly he was sleepy.

"Oh, Jack, what a dear you are to have done all that! They are so happy. What a brilliant idea it was! And they're really there."

"Yes, they're really there," murmured Jack. "It's finished; and Mass to-morrow at seven. Don't forget."

"It seems awfully luxurious to them, you know," went on Mary. "It's only out of concession to us."

"No. Is that so?"

"It's about four in France, you know, or five or six. I forget, but it's certainly long before seven."

"Oh!" said Jack.

Then he added, "Oh, by the way, I'm going out for a ride to-morrow."

"That's excellent," said Mary.

Again there fell a long silence. Mary went on thinking. There were a thousand things to think of. She rehearsed again the past, the present, and the future.

She began to feel rather sleepy at last. The fire swam up more than once before her eyes, and dropped down again with a jerk into its place as she winked the sleep away. Finally she sat bolt upright and looked at Jack with that kind of reproachfulness with which an awakened dozer always regards the rest of the company.

But she need not have done so. Jack himself was sleeping like a child. The pipe had fallen from his fingers and reposed against his cheek.

III

The weather was no better next morning, nor even satisfactorily worse. The same grey clouds fled across the sky, the same wind shrilled uncomfortably with spatters of rain, as Mary, after interviewing the housekeeper, set out in furs to pay her visit.

She had been to Mass in the early morning, a minute or two late, with Jack five minutes later again; but that did not count, so to speak. One sped only over the ground in the dark, carrying a lantern, and back again. The Mass itself had been oddly dreary in that bare sanctuary, seen through iron bars, with the single figure of the priest moving about, the tiny server from the village motionless on his heels, the naked glimmer of candle-flames seen against the white stone surfaces. It was too queer to arouse any emotions but that of curiosity, and a faint contemplative wonder as to the process of events that had made it a fact. One thing only thrilled her to the least degree--the knowledge that out of sight, behind the screen she had seen yesterday, kneeled in deal stalls seventeen Frenchwomen and an Englishwoman who thirty-six hours ago had crossed the Channel from home to exile...

They had talked a little at breakfast; Jack had displayed slight symptoms of a morning crossness, and had presently sunk into a study of the Westminster Gazette of the evening before. He said he was going to ride at twelve.

The door of the lodge was opened to her by Mrs. Truman, the gamekeeper's wife--a thin, active, energetic woman with Irish eyes.

"Mother says, will you step into the parlour, please, ma'am."

It was a bleak little room this, on the right-hand side, carpeted like the other--and these the only two in the building--with new cocoa-nut matting. A small rosewood table stood here, and an early Victorian sofa in green ribbed silk that had once done duty in Mary's mother's schoolroom. These things had been placed here by Mary herself; but there hung now on the wall opposite the door an astonishing picture, framed in black shiny wood with gilt pins at its corners, representing, in oleograph, a woman in a Carmelite habit, clasping in her hand the feathered end of an arrow apparently piercing her heart, while her eyes--and no wonder, thought Mary--were turned upwards with a painful expression. In order that there might be no mistake, the words "Sainte Thérèse" were printed at the foot in gold letters. Mary gazed at this object in horror, wondering what was the emotion for which it stood, or which was proposed to be elicited.

Then she looked at the side opposite the window, and examined the gratings which she had watched in process of erection. The entire wall consisted of grating--on this side of iron bars set trellis-fashion; and from each point of crossing protruded forward a short iron spike. Then, after a space of the thickness of the wall, came a second grating of horizontal wood, and behind that blackness. The blackness was new to Mary.

She sat down after a moment or two, wondering as to the reason of her having been shown in here and the cause of the delay; but almost simultaneously there came a little sound from the convent side, and one square of the blackness vanished. In its place appeared the head and shoulders of a human being, swathed in black, with a glint of brown beneath. No face was visible.

"Good day, madam," came a voice in French.

Mary made her greetings, understanding that it was the Prioress who spoke, and drew her chair a little nearer.

"You will pardon me for not having received you in the cloister," went on the voice. "I thought it better that we should begin at once as we shall continue. The enclosure is not yet commenced; but we had best act as if it were. You will pardon me, madam?"

"Why, of course," said Mary, a little disconcerted all the same.

"And monsieur, your husband,--our benefactor he is well?"

"Oh, Jack's always well," said Mary --"except last summer--" Her voice faltered.

"Ah, but so many prayers will be offered for him here," went on the tranquil old voice, "for his goodness to us. Our Lord will surely reward him a hundredfold."

"I hope you are all comfortable," said Mary, conscious that the word was scarcely the right one in this place. But it was taken up enthusiastically.

"Comfortable! Why, yes; it is luxury; it is too good for poor nuns."

"Isn't it dreadfully damp?"

"Ah no; the walls perspire a little; but it is nothing. We shall work the better, to keep ourselves warm."

"Surely it is bitterly cold," said Mary, suddenly aware of the fact. "The furnace--is that all right?"

"It will serve us very well," said the voice.

"Is it lighted?" demanded Mary, putting out her gloved hand to the radiator beside her.

"We have not kindled it yet," said the voice. "We have had so little time. But we shall do it presently. And you have come to see our little sister. Well, she is in the chapel now, all ready; we shall place her in her tomb this afternoon. You will come to the little ceremony?"

Mary had a sudden revulsion.

"I think not, reverend mother. I--I half expect visitors this afternoon; and you see--"

"I comprehend perfectly, madam. Then you shall pay your devotions to her this morning; she is all ready by the screen. But wait, madam; let me tell you of her first."

Mary sat and listened as in a dream, while the story was told. It will be told again publicly, some day, no doubt, in a certain court in Rome; but nothing would persuade me to tell it now. It concerned, as Mary had half guessed, the life of a French peasant-girl, and nine-tenths of it would be entirely devoid of interest to most English people--a life lived behind bars like those through which Mary stared, of small obediences, of sayings, of minute actions, of rhapsodies; and the tenth part of it would be regarded as medieval nonsense; of rose leaves, of sick persons healed, of a broken bone restored, and of what the Prioress called "Spiritual Favours." It seemed amazingly unconvincing to Mary--full of holes through which a coach could be driven, of omissions, of exaggerations; yet the old voice went on, serene and confident, with a little ring of complacency infinitely pathetic.

"And she was one of my daughters," ended the old motherly voice. "I received her at seventeen years of age, and she went to our Lord when but twenty-two."

Mary asked what seemed to her an intelligent question or two, rustled as if interested; and in her heart despaired.

"And you will come and see her now, madam, and ask her prayers for yourself and your dear husband--and for us all? Will you pass round the garden, madam, and enter through the sacristy?"

"One moment, mother. May I see Sister Teresa?"

"Afterwards, madam," said the voice firmly.

It seemed stranger than ever to pass on such an errand over that familiar lawn outside, now grey with December growth, through a gap cut in the hedge, to the new little doorway of the sacristy. Father Banting was there again, and a tray, from which he had breakfasted a couple of hours earlier, still rested on the table in the middle. He greeted her with that nervous little manner he had always shown, and himself took her through into the sanctuary. The two genuflected side by side, and then approached the grating. Mary's heart beat, quick and hot, as she observed that--that part of the screen had been removed through which the nuns received Holy Communion, and that there lay beyond, guarded by the Prioress, a long box, supported on trestles, covered with a white cloth.

She knelt down, hardly knowing what she did. The next instant, as, without a word, the veiled figure swept aside the cloth, she knelt, suddenly gone white, staring at what was disclosed.

Certainly it was a human figure that lay there; that could be seen by the shape and the attitude; but it took two or three seconds before she understood that she looked indeed upon the face of a girl. The head was shrouded in a hood, and a veil passed below the chin; and in the midst, a grey-brown thing lay, with sharp jutting nose, a slightly prominent chin, sunken eyes, and a sunken mouth like a cut. The texture seemed that of polished wood; and two hands, of the same aspect, crossed on the breast, and emerging from wide sleeves, held a rosary and a crucifix in the fingers. One thing only relieved the horror--the incapability of the imagination to grasp that this had once been a human being.

There was a dead silence as she looked. Father Banting behind, either standing or kneeling--she did not know which--was as still as death itself. The Prioress was motionless.

Time meant very little as the moments went by: there was nothing to measure them by. And at last, as she still stared--with every instinct of repugnance and terror mounting at every second, the; standing figure stooped, kissed that wooden, shiny forehead once, as a mother might kiss a sleeping child. Then the cloth swept softly into place again, was smoothed down and adjusted; and Mary drew a long breath and stood up.

"You have prayed well for us all, have you not?" whispered the old voice.

IV

The parlour seemed scarcely the same place when Mary found herself back in it a minute or two later. It had become indifferent; it no longer mattered, in face of the horror that had fallen and enveloped her... She did all mechanically--passed again through the daylight, in again through the lodge-door, and so to the parlour and sat down. Time and space seemed, so to speak, flat and superficial; to be but scenery for the reality of that grey, fallen face with sunken eyes and mouth. There lay a kind of dazing blankness on her, in which she was scarcely conscious of herself.

So she sat down mechanically and waited; no longer interested in the thought of the Englishwoman she was about to see. She wondered only whether the Prioress had noticed the shocking impression that had been made upon her.

Then again the curtain disappeared; and this time she was allowed to see plainly the nun who spoke to her. The swathed face seemed very different from that of the bonneted, black-dressed woman whom she had seen first as Sister Teresa. The lines of it were infinitely more graceful. In spite of herself, Mary glanced at her with interest; yet again and again there recurred the vision of terror she had seen in the chapel.

For a while Mary said little or nothing except the most ordinary remarks; but she watched the big eyes with the dark beneath them, the thin nose and the sensitive lips. This was an Englishwoman, she reminded herself, of one blood with herself. Then suddenly the lethargy passed and she became interested.

"You are a convert, you say?"

"I was a convert when I was about eighteen. My father was a Wesleyan minister."

"Ah! And did he--what did he do? You don't mind my asking these questions?"

"I never saw him again," said the nun simply.

There was a pause.

"Tell me something about the life," said Mary suddenly. "Don't you get fearfully tired?"

"Oh, yes; but it's different somehow. There's not time to get tired in the ordinary way." (The nun smiled.) "At least there's no time to think about it, which comes to the same thing. We always sit upright, you know."

"Upright! Do you mean you never lean back?"

"No, it's our custom. Oh, you soon get accustomed to it. It's just habit."

"But--but what do you do? I mean what outward work?"

"Well, my work was always the garden. I expect it will be so here. I'm quite a tolerable gardener."

"But in your habit!" exclaimed Mary, glancing at what she could see of the heavy brown folds.

"Oh, we've a way of tucking that aside. It's a great pleasure to have the garden to do."

Suddenly Mary realised that the nun was kneeling, not sitting, on the other side of the grating. There was a little stool behind her; and for the rest, just the deal floor, the walls and the ceiling. Then, once more, the whole thing rushed on her (as blood rushes back to compressed veins)--the amazing hardness of the life, and its absolute mad folly as judged by any merely physical philosophy of the world. If the body were the real person, and the soul, at the best, but a department of it, what wildly conceivable justification could there be for such a life as this? Yet the nun looked serenely happy. And--and that grey face in the chapel was the end of it all.

Mary gripped the bars.

"Tell me, sister," she said. "How can you bear--Are you really and truly happy?"

The nun looked at her straight for one instant. Then she dropped her eyes and opened her lips to speak.

"No, let me finish," said Mary, oddly excited--she scarcely knew why. "Let me say it right out... You won't be offended?... I've just been to see--to see Sister Catherine. Reverend Mother made me. Well, that just sums it all up--that dead body. It seems to me horrible--horrible; it's utterly impossible that God can really want that. And you all seem to me just like that--all dead and yellow, without any of the advantages of being dead..."

She stopped breathlessly, excited and shocked by herself. Yet it was exactly what she meant. The bars shook a little in her hands.

"Are you really happy?" she repeated abruptly.

The nun looked at her again.

"It's very hard to put into words," she said slowly in that thin, very slightly tremulous voice. "Words mean such different things to different people. Let me answer it like this. For no conceivable reason on earth would I leave the convent. I would sooner die ten times over. Suppose I woke up and found the whole thing a dream, and that I was living in the world, I think my heart would break."

Mary interrupted abruptly. She felt that her side was winning.

"Ah, but you aren't really happy. You've only killed your capacity for happiness--spoilt it--starved it to death. Now isn't that true?"

The nun's steady eyes lifted and dropped.

"There's a good deal of truth in that, Mrs. Weston. I don't deny that. But--"

"It's exactly as I thought," said Mary, conscious simultaneously of triumph and disappointment. "I've always felt that must be so, and now you tell me it is so."

"Ah, but I hadn't finished," said the nun gently. "It is perfectly true that one sort of happiness goes entirely; I mean that things that give pleasure to people in the world after a time aren't even any temptation to us. And it's perfectly true that--that comes from their being 'starved to death as you say. But another sort of happiness comes that's entirely different. You can't even call it happiness. It's something else."

Mary made a sound as if to interrupt.

"Let me finish, please. I can't put it into words. No one can. All I can say is that the life inside is just a different thing altogether from life outside. There's sorrow too; but that's different again. It isn't at all the same thing. It's like a new set of faculties for pain and pleasure, and another world altogether. It's all different."

Mary dropped her own eyes as she met again those of the other beyond the bars.

"Do you know the last sermon I heard my father preach?" went on the nun. "I've forgotten the sermon; but the text was, 'Ye are dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God.' Well, I understood that for the first time. It was the last straw. I don't remember a word he said. I was just thinking all the while of the text, and I've been thinking of it ever since. You were quite right when you said what you did about Sister Catherine. That's exactly it."

Mary listened with a new kind of sensation enfolding her more swiftly every instant. She understood absolutely what the other meant. She saw its horror and its inexorableness, and she saw also, what terrified her still more, a glimpse of the enormous possibilities of an entirely new kind of joy that lay hidden under the horror. It was as if a great hand were on her, grasping in an irresistible soft pressure every surface of her mind and soul, and she loathed and resented the touch. She dropped the bars abruptly and sat up, rigid and resisting. Her own voice sounded strange at first in her ears.

"I think I see, sister." (She drew a long breath as the pressure relaxed.) "It's extremely beautiful; but it seems to me quite unreal--unreal to me, I mean." (Ah! that was better. Sanity was coming back like a tide. She noticed again the texture of the painted iron she had grasped just now.) "But thank you so much for trying to tell me. I hope I haven't been too inquisitive. It's always so interesting to hear other people's points of view, even if one can't take them oneself. After all, we can be good Catholics, even if we don't understand the religious life, can't we?"

"Why yes," said the nun, smiling. "It's all a question of vocation."

"Of vocation--yes; just so," murmured Mary, drawing a long breath of relief. "I do think that's so splendid in the Church. Why, I heard a very holy priest say once that it might be a vocation for a Catholic to be the best-dressed woman in every room she went into."

The nun smiled once more.

"I must be going," said Mary. "Thank you so much."

V

A great scraping of hoofs greeted her as she turned the corner of the house, and Jack's voice sharply raised. Then, as she stepped on to the gravel sweep, she saw a delightfully distracting scene.

There revolved in the middle of the gravel two living beings, a horse and a very young groom. They faintly resembled a chain-shot, and the link between them was the bridle, which the horse had slipped over his head, and now held, so to speak, at nose-length with his head in the air.

"Get to his head, you fool," bellowed Jack, who was standing, in riding-gaiters, capless, and with a large smear of mud and gravel all down his back, just below the mounting-block.

The horse had that appearance of patient complacency that horses do the first round of a conflict. He seemed to move on tiptoe and on springs, delicately prancing; he appeared to be divided between pleasure and apprehensiveness.

"Is that the new horse?" asked Mary. "I say; take care, Jack!"

Jack that instant had done a thing he certainly ought not to have done. He launched himself straight at the horse, snatching at the reins and saddle, and the horse very properly responded by an indescribable movement that left Jack empty-handed, and that pulled the groom as nearly as possible off his feet. It was obvious how Jack's back had become gravelly.

"That's no good," said Mary impulsively. "Here, let me try."

She went straight across the gravel, past her speechless husband, and took the end of the reins from the groom's hands. The horse eyed her carefully.

"Poor dear, then; did they bully you?"

"He's a beast," said Jack.

"Not at all," said Mary. "Are you, my dear?"

She was gently shortening her grip on the reins, up and up and up. The horse rolled his eyes once towards the gaitered figure with the riding-crop, and then decided to attend to this new personage instead. Very slowly the gloved hands advanced and advanced. There was a delightfully soothing sensation of his ears being pulled, and he thought it better to lower his head a little; then something went gently over it, and the next instant he was slouching forward, as tame as a cat, to the mounting-block.

"Up and down first, my dear. Now are your nerves quite quiet again? Did the nasty man jump at him and frighten him out of his wits?"

"I didn't," burst in Jack. "The beast swerved violently just as I was getting on. I'll teach him."

"No you won't. You must be quite quiet too, or you shan't get on. Now then--no; not from the block. Probably he isn't accustomed to one."

But it was no good. The horse wasn't going to be cajoled like this for one instant. Again he swerved violently, and dragged Jack, hopping frantically with one foot in the stirrup.

"There then. Will you behave?" said Mary sharply. "Give me a handkerchief."

The groom, anxious not to be left out in the cold, produced a large red bandanna so suddenly as nearly to bring about another catastrophe.

"Jim, that's not the way to quiet a horse," observed Mary. "Thank you."

The handkerchief seemed really harmless after all, thought the horse, after he had inspected it by means of long snuffles and blowings out of his nostrils. He would permit this lady to do what she liked with it. Then, of course, so soon as it was firmly across his eyes and tucked into the cheek-straps there was no more to be said or done.

"Thanks," said Jack, as he settled himself in the saddle. "Cap, Jim."

"Where are you going?" asked Mary, standing back, a little flushed, still holding the handkerchief.

"I don't know. I must see what this beast's made of."

"He's a dear if you take him right... What's that?"

The horse pricked his ears too as a confused sound broke out from the direction of the lodge below--a strange yelping cry, the clatter of hoofs, and voices shouting.

"It's the hounds," cried Jack. "Good Lord! what a chance!"

Over and through the palings below, beyond the stream, came a torrent of white and grey specks, breaking, mingling, breaking again like quicksilver. From a group of trees appeared a flash of scarlet, then another; while round through the lodge-gate, bending sharply to the left, came a stream of riders; the hollow drumming of hoofs on turf grew louder and louder; and the shrill cheers from the village street turned thin as the bellowers tore up the road outside the park to get another view further on.

"Oh, Jack, do--"

But her voice failed, as she understood.

This, then, was one more of the things that Jack had given up. He had never hunted much; but it would have been inconceivable in the old days that he should have refrained at a moment like this. There below passed the hunt; the hounds had already vanished up the park, their cry fainter every instant; the last stragglers were following; it was not yet too late to pick them up at the bridge... She looked again at Jack.

It was not until that moment that she realised how entirely his old self had come back to him during that little struggle with the horse. He had been during those minutes so obviously himself, indignant, impatient, and very human. But even now that odd constrained expression had descended on him again: his lips looked thin and tight; in his eyes only the pair of moods still fought one with the other. Then he dropped his eyes suddenly and settled himself again in the saddle.

"I shall go round by the Carberrys'," he said deliberately. "Thanks very much for helping, Mary. I'll be back to lunch."

VI

Mary felt extraordinarily better that afternoon. She informed herself that the horrid discomfort that had descended on her during her visit to "Sister Catherine" was quite removed by her victory over Sister Teresa. It was a real relief, she said to herself, to know from a nun's own mouth that the apparent victory achieved by religious over what were called worldly temptations was nothing else but their starvation. Of course she had known so all along really, but it was pleasant to be corroborated.

She had one more corroboration, too, at tea; and she thought it really providential when she considered it afterwards. Certainly there were some unpleasant accompaniments to the evidence, but those could be dealt with separately.

It is an unhappy drawback to the possession of an old house that courteous and inquisitive archaeologists are apt to be brought by neighbours to inspect it--brought with many apologies, but none the less brought. So it fell out this afternoon.

Professor Peters did not happen to be an archaeologist, by the way; he occupied the chair of psychology at a new American university, but to the layman all these things amount to the same. He was a professor, and that was enough. He was bound to be interested in old oak, a winding stone staircase with pentacles inscribed on each step to keep devils away, and a chest covered with human skin, presumably Danish.

It was half-past three that he arrived, towed up to the house by an earnest young squire from the next village, whose name is of no importance; and ran straight into Jack, who that instant was emerging through the garden-door. There was no escape; Jack was obviously unoccupied, and after sending a message to Mary that there would be two people at tea, he resigned himself and went off with them.

The Professor was so overwhelmingly learned in psychology that he had forgotten everything else except his manners. (Professors are usually like this, except that most of them have forgotten their manners too.) He was so certain that psychology was the very centre of knowledge that he imagined it the circumference also, and sought to bring all phenomena within its radius. He made some very valuable remarks about pentacles and the modern revival of magic, alleging that the value of symbols lay in the fact that they enabled the naturally diffuse mind to concentrate itself upon the point symbolised. There were no devils, of course, and nothing in a pentacle as such; yet the Pentacle-idea could be made to counteract the Devil-idea with very happy results. He used a German phrase or two at this point, and Jack assented politely. It was all very convincing indeed.

He seemed a pleasant old man, thought Mary, as she gave him his tea half an hour later. He was neither deaf, nor lame, nor blind, as professors usually are; nor did he wear his hair particularly long. He was a thin-faced, clean-shaven man, respectably dressed, with very bright and piercing grey eyes, and a long upper lip. She talked to him, therefore, on a settee, while Jack and the earnest young squire entertained one another on the other side of the table.

When two persons are, permanently or temporarily, possessed each of one idea respectively, and talk together, it is not surprising if the two ideas are brought forcibly into contact. Mary was thinking just then of the convent; the Professor was thinking then, as always, of psychology. Within ten minutes therefore, they were discussing the psychology of the Religious Life.

"Of course, to us psychologists," said the Professor presently, "there is nothing at all remarkable in the phenomenon of persons wishing to shut themselves up in order to concentrate on one idea. Neither does it matter at all whether or no the idea is a delusive one--"

"I am a Catholic," said Mary rather quickly.

The Professor made a little sound that might stand equally for assent or compassion.

"The eremitical life is, however, common to all religions," he said gently. "The Buddhist monk, no less than the Christian, is a person possessed of one idea to the exclusion of others. He finds, therefore, to be quite tolerable conditions of life impossible for others."

Mary shifted her position a little and took another piece of toast.

"I don't quite see why," she said.

The Professor smiled.

"It is a familiar phenomenon in psychological studies," he said. "A mind under the stress of any sufficiently strong emotion will be impervious to all others. If he is in love, for instance, his appetite will go. An artist will forget his meals and his duties. It is a perfectly commonplace--"

"I see," said Mary abruptly. "And in their place a new set of sensations will appear."

"Exactly. The possessing idea will produce them. And, as I said before, it is of no importance whether or no the idea corresponds to fact or not."

"I don't see that."

"Well, Mrs. Weston; a young man in love will--"

Mary nodded. This was a little more than she had bargained for. She retraced a step or two.

"The whole state, then," she said, "is an exalté one."

"Just so. We should call it 'morbid'--not in any opprobrious sense, you understand: merely pathological. But we are only in the very beginning of the science. The word self-suggestion, for example. What a world of possibilities lies there."

"And you believe it accounts for all these things?"

"Undoubtedly. So far as we see at present, there is no boundary in sight. There is scarcely any abnormal phenomenon established--I may say, I think, not one--which cannot be brought under the range of this force."

A little mental vignette of Sister Teresa's face, as she had seen it through the grille, passed before Mary's eyes. She regarded it an instant. Was it really possible?

"Isn't it possible to push that too far?" she said.

The Professor made an indescribable little deprecatory movement resembling the ghost of a shrug.

"It is possible, of course," he said.

"I mean," said Mary, with a glimmer of humour in her eyes, "that it may even be true that psychologists themselves bring their main idea to bear too much on phenomena. We are all open to that danger."

The Professor wrinkled his face up in honest mirth. He was perfectly good-humoured.

"A palpable hit," he said. "You silence me."

Mary sat pensive over the fire when they went out at last. She was thinking very hard indeed. But underneath she was conscious of a considerable relief. It was at least pleasant to her pride to remember that the very trying life of the convent was not so trying after all, that if one could but be possessed sufficiently by one idea, all things became possible. "All things are possible to him that believeth."

Then what about other things--her religion, for instance; Jack's remarkable developments? Why the key fitted appallingly well.

But that's quite different, she assured herself, entirely different. Why at that rate--

Then Jack came in.

Chapter VII

I

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 very 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 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." 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.

II

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--oui" 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 the other. 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--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."

III

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 impressions.

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?

Chapter VIII

I

THE views upon the convent current in the village suffered but very little modification as time went on. Subconscious public opinion had deeply suspected that within a week or two, at any rate, some mask or other would be thrown off, and figures would emerge in order to set about some mysterious business of bewitchment or proselytism. It was not seriously credible that confinement and prayer were really the objects for which so much preparation had been made. And the fact that no mask had yet been thrown off made the nuns all the more dangerous.

There began then very soon, in the public-houses of Manningham, that slow stream of comment and rotatory argument that continues in them, I believe even to the present day. There were practically no data to argue upon; nobody but a tradesman's boy or two and a laundress's assistant ever approached the house, and these had nothing to report except the appearance of a curiously dressed woman with her head wrapped up, who spoke in a very un-English manner. The argument therefore must always be of an a priori nature.

Naturally the squire came in for a quantity of comment also. He had been certainly popular; a man does not play for the Gentlemen of England without becoming a kind of compelling demi-god, scarcely human. And to this had been added Jack's own extreme geniality and approachableness. He had given a cricket ground to the village as soon as he had arrived in the place; and on certain glorious evenings he had himself bowled at the nets for a few minutes to the chieftains of the village team. But his last mood had bewildered all the world. It was not that he lost his popularity. Rather he was contemplated with a kind of pity, as a pleasant man suddenly struck insane. The burning of his bats, the rumour of his prayers, in fact his whole violent change of front, had tossed him back into the atmosphere of suggestive mystery in which, as a Catholic, he had first arrived.

A small event, however, took place at the very close of the shooting season that once more complicated the situation.

There was gathered at the lodge-gate on the last day of January a group of men and boys, in leggings, armed with heavy sticks, at half-past ten o'clock; and it was understood that the Wetherly coverts were to be beaten for the last time. It was an almost perfect shooting day--turquoise sky, frost in the air, and a small breeze. Three or four retrievers pulled small boys about at the ends of chains; low conversation filled the air; and Mr. Truman in a velveteen jacket stood a little apart like Napoleon before a battle. It was known that six guns were required; three were to be provided by the house, three more were to come from a distance--personages known as "the Colonel," Mr. Francis, and "Parkinses." The Colonel had already whisked up the drive in his dog-cart, a vision of red face and cropped white hair, beside his man; Mr. Francis, even now, could be discerned walking up from the station carrying his gun; and simultaneously half-past ten struck from the church clock.

There followed the clash of a gate within the park; and three minutes later Jack and his four guests appeared--the Colonel, magnificent now in his loose knickerbockers of loud check, his gaiters, and his Norfolk jacket, and the three men staying in the house. Jack, it was evident, had no intention of shooting; he had not been out once this season, and now his stockinged legs and low shoes made it plain that to-day was to be no exception.

There was a short pause while "Parkinses" was still expected. Yet he should have come by the ten fifteen, and Mr. Francis reported no glimpse of him. Jack strode about, bare-headed, swinging his stick, and giving directions to Mr. Truman, while the beaters stood in groups, shifting slowly from one leg to the other, the dogs tugged, and the guests said a good many things over and over again to one another.

The tableau was broken by a telegraph boy. Jack took the orange envelope and tore it open.

"Parkins isn't coming," he said; "wired for--or something. Well, it can't be helped."

Mr. Truman saluted.

"Beg pardon, sir."

"Yes?"

"Can't do the Wetherly coverts without six guns, sir," he said. "We could do with eight."

Jack jerked his head impatiently.

"Well, who is there? You can't take a gun! You'll be wanted."

Mr. Truman made no remark. And the church clock struck the quarter.

The guests looked at one another, and at Jack. There had been almost the beginning of a faintly unpleasant scene in the smoking-room the night before. The youngest of the men, who had been with Jack at school, had attempted to rally him genially on his Puritanism; but the extreme impatience of his air, coupled with a single remark as to "a man's own business," had caused an uncomfortable pause. (Algy Lennox had made one or two bitter little mental notes on the apparent failure of religion to make a man behave decently.)

So everyone looked at everyone else first and then at Jack, in dead silence. Jack was observed to bite his nails.

"Damn it!" he said suddenly. "Truman, send one of the boys up for my gun. I shall shoot vilely; but it can't be helped. Oh! and tell him to bring a cap. I've come out without one."

Rapid and almost feverish conversation broke out upon the instant, as the boy vanished at a run through the park-gate.

"Let's be getting on, anyhow," observed Jack. "We've a good half-mile across the fields. Yes, we may as well spread out. There may be outlying birds."

II

Lunch was to be eaten in the outhouse of a farm at one o'clock, and Mary and Sarah were to be present,

At a little after twelve they came together up through the coverts that had already been shot, guided by the sound of firing, and emerged at last upon one of the broad rides--trunk-roads, so to say--that cut this patch of woodland into three or four large copses. Straight in front of them, with his back turned towards them, facing the tall, leafless trees beyond, stood the Colonel, his legs about a yard apart, waiting. Mary whistled gently to make their presence known, lifted her eyebrows in interrogation; and, reassured by his nod, sat down on a stump.

It was a delicious day; and the two had not said anything particularly vital on their walk uphill. The world up here looked very charming the wall of wood before them rose from the green darkness of rhododendrons and undergrowth into a perspective of filigree against the radiant sky; and it was not too cold for enjoyment. All was at present silent; the beat was a long one, and the men, Mary supposed, some half-mile away. Neither yet had the game begun to appear.

There is a curious meditative, almost hypnotic mood into which one falls at such times. The objective faculties are fixed intently upon external expectation, and the subjective powers work in a mill-like kind of way, serene and redundant. There was a background always to Mary's thoughts now--dating from the previous summer, but established more firmly than ever now by the happenings of the last month. The nuns, the past, the future, the convent-needs, Jack these recurred like figures in a zoetrope, gently and not unpleasantly revolving.

Yet there was a sense of discomfort, for all that.

She began to wonder faintly what exactly Jack was doing. He had said at breakfast that perhaps he would start with the shooters, and since he had not come back to the house, she imagined he was with them still. At any rate, she would see him presently at lunch...

A movement from Sarah brought her to facts again; and she looked up to see the Colonel bending this way and that in an effort to see through the complicated undergrowth in front. A brown body whisked out like a streak away to the right; there was a formidable bang, a mutter, and, far away, she heard the patter pass away and cease.

Then she sat up to attend: she loved such days as these. They were objective and distracting...

The approach of driven game through a wood is as incalculable and as mysterious as the advent of spring. Certain things always happen: there are always a few ideal shots to be had--swift birds coming straight and high like projectiles; a cunning group taking advantage of every shred of cover; a certain proportion of rabbits that appear and vanish again like fast-bouncing cricket-balls; hares that emerge suddenly, sit up and look, and then do something unexpected; certain inexplicable pauses, and equally inexplicable torrents of flying targets--all these phenomena take place in the average drive. The skill bears upon the discerning of which are which, and the meeting of each in its proper manner. Mary was well entertained to-day... She had the pleasure of seeing half a dozen quite excellent shots--again and again she saw the streak overhead, smooth and curved, heard the bang, saw again the curve broken, and after an ecstatic pause heard the mellow thump on the dry leaves. She counted seven rabbits killed quite perfectly as they whizzed across the ride, and two hares. Further, she had the pleasure, no less keen, though different, of observing four times a clucking pheasant pass unscathed, triumphant and hysterical, reprieved for one more summer among the woods.

It was always delightful to watch this Colonel. He was not good enough to be at all infallible; he was not bad enough to be disappointing. And he looked so capable, so business-like, and so steady. He smiled so frankly when all went well; he was so obviously indignant with something other than himself when it did not.

Again the thought of Jack recurred... Ah! what a pity it was...

A beater or two emerged presently, and the Colonel turned round.

"Done pretty well, Mrs. Weston," he said, "for the last day. Ah! Lady Sarah."

He took off his cap with an air.

It is always suggestive to watch the two sexes on such an occasion as this. The situation is so obviously a reversion to a primitive type. The men lord it always; the women submit femininely. The women are there on sufferance. They stand for the squaws who should presently gather and cook the game by the camp fires of the tribe. They are politely snubbed, gently mocked, and they play their own parts perfectly. The men at the best are tolerant and kind. Chivalry vanishes, or is retained only by a series of violent efforts. And the men, again, are so complacent. There is a sense abroad of duty done and hardships endured.

The Colonel was magnificent. He descended to small talk with a magnanimous air, and Sarah played up to him beautifully; while Mary, who though she loved it all, had never been quite sure that the business comprised the whole duty of man, observed them philosophically. But her philosophy received presently a small jerk.

She heard Jack and Mr. Truman in earnest conversation approaching round the corner, and an instant later saw them appear. From Mr. Truman's left hand depended a dead cock pheasant (head keepers will seldom condescend to carry a rabbit), and over Jack's shoulder was an undeniable gun. He broke off in the middle of a sentence as he caught his wife's eye.

"Why, Jack," she said, "whose gun--?"

He dropped his eyes.

"Parkins didn't turn up," he said in a slightly high voice. "I'm taking his place."

She paused for an infinitesimal instant.

"I'm so glad," she said. "Sarah and I will stand behind you at the next drive. May we?"

The next drive was even more favourable to spectators.

The line of guns was drawn up in a grass field outside that which was the very pick of the woods, and Mary and Sarah, standing a yard or two behind Jack, had a view of the entire line from end to end. Algy Lennox was to their immediate left, and the rest, down to the stout Colonel, dwindled far away to the right.

Mary was conscious of such a mixture of emotions, and all of them so slight, that she was quite unable to formulate any conclusion. She tried to tell herself how sensible Jack was and how pleased she ought to be, yet simultaneously she was aware of a faint resentment that was wholly without justification. It took shape in a resolution to watch Jack's shooting in serene silence, and to praise him very enthusiastically indeed for any good shots that he might make. Also she determined to exchange no glances with Sarah at all. It was all very unreasonable, and she knew it.

But Jack's shooting was so singularly bad that there was little opportunity for enthusiasm. He stood like a rigid statue, with a kind of determination apparent in the curve of his back, and he missed everything except one rabbit, which, looking at him with a hesitating air, he shot straight in the face at a distance of fifteen yards.

The performance began with a pheasant, rising slowly and perpendicularly out of the undergrowth in front. Two barrels full of shot rent the air about him, and he disappeared, crowing, back again into the wood. A hare followed, crossing smooth ground at a good steady pace, and grass sprang twice into the air in his rear. Then came a bustle of pheasants one after another, exploding like fireworks. The rabbit came next and died. Some more pheasants followed and lived, and so forth.

There was a dismal little pause as two beaters appeared and a retriever.

Mary drew a breath.

"You got that rabbit all right," she said.

Jack paused before answering.

"Please don't stand quite so close again," he said. "It bothers me."

III

"May I come in?" said Mary at a quarter to twelve that night, tapping at the door of Jack's bedroom.

It had been rather a dreary evening. Two or three satisfactory people had come in to dine; the three bachelor guests were quite pleasant people; yet the thing had hung fire. Jack himself did not seem altogether at his ease.

She had had no opportunity of speaking to him alone till now, and even now she had not the least idea what she wanted to say. Everything surely was as satisfactory as it could be. Jack had shot again, not in the least because he wished it, but simply to fill up a vacant place. And why shouldn't he shoot, anyhow? Was not this kind of reasonableness exactly what she had urged upon him so often?

Yet she was uneasy; she felt there was something to be said, though she did not know what. She sat up in her dressing-gown in her own room, told her maid not to wait, and had listened urgently for the closing of Jack's door beyond her own and the vibration of his footsteps.

"Oh, yes; come in," he said.

He was standing straddle-legs, with his back to the fire, in his smoking-coat, and did not move as she came in.

"What is it?" he said.

"Oh, nothing," said Mary comfortably. "I must sit down a minute. Your fire's better than mine. Did you have a good day?"

"Oh, it was all right," he said. "I forget the bag; it was pretty decent."

Mary arranged herself delicately in a chintz armchair and spread her feet before her. Then she took a sudden determination.

"I was awfully glad you shot," she said. "What was the matter with Mr. Parkins?"

He did not answer her question.

"Are you?" he said abruptly.

Mary looked at him with a deliberately assumed wonder.

"Why, of course," she said. "Haven't I asked you again and again."

Jack grunted.

"But, Jack--" She stopped.

"Yes?"

She took the fence at a rush.

"I mean I'm awfully glad that you did it just this once. I don't mean--"

He waited, silent.

Again she took it at a rush. She had no intention of saying this kind of thing when she came in just now, but somehow the pleasant intimacy of this room, the firelight, Jack in his smoking-coat, and the rest of it--this suddenly broke down at least one or two of her barriers. She leaned forward a little, looking into the fire.

"I mean I'm glad you did it just this once. It was an entirely right and reasonable thing to do. But, you know, I don't feel as I did a couple of months ago, or even as I did when you didn't go after the hounds."

"How do you mean?" came in a carefully deliberate voice.

She glanced up and down again.

"Well, I've changed rather," she said. "I mean--oh! I may as well say it right out. I mean that I think there is a good deal more in your point of view than I thought at first."

There was a dead silence. She felt she had taken some plunge of unknown significance.

She had seen nothing at all in Jack's face as she had looked up just now. He had put his bedroom candle on the mantelpiece, and he himself was in shadow. She looked up again, half nervous, and saw only that he was looking at her. Then he moved a little.

"Tell me," he said. "How do you mean?"

Mary leaned back once more, clasping her hands behind the loose billows of hair that her maid had just arranged. Somehow this seemed to her a critical conversation; she did not know why. She supposed it was because she was going to make a confidence, and she was not quite sure how much she was going to say, nor, in fact, how much she had already said. So she determined to be easy and natural.

"Well," she said, "it's rather hard to put into words. I--I think I should say that--that I rather agree now with what you said about being more--oh!" she wailed suddenly, "this is horribly priggish. I can't keep it--but, being more, well, serious. I'm--I'm not quite sure that I think shooting and--and cricket and--and--this sort of life is quite ideal after all. Oh, Jack, please don't think me a prig. I can't put it like you... Oh, what would Sarah say?"

She was taking refuge in mock-misery, and knew it. But she thought it the only way.

Jack turned abruptly to the mantelpiece, took off it a small china bowl clasped by a small china boy, and began to examine it with an intent, connoisseur-like air. For an instant she thought him a little irresponsive. Then she decided it must be through an anxiety not to say too much; it was through depth of feeling that he was silent.

"Oh, you're beginning to think that too," he said slowly. "Do you mean--"

"No, no," cried Mary, suddenly frightened. "I don't in the least want to do what you suggested at first--I mean about monks and nuns. That's all perfectly impossible. But I mean in other ways. I think you've been perfectly splendid, and I want to help you, really. And I think your shooting to-day was the best of all. It shows you're--you're finding your balance again. It seems to me that things will be easier now--on both sides. I don't in the least want you to make these things a regular business again, as you used. But I want you to be able to do them when you ought; and to be a good magistrate, and landlord, and all the rest; and--and--well, say your prayers and be properly pious. I--I think it's splendid," she ended abruptly.

"I see," said Jack shortly.

"You know it's that convent," she said, "partly--" (relieved now that she had got her confession over); "they've done me a lot of good--"

"But I want to know," said Jack, putting the china bowl carefully back again, "I want to know exactly what you wish. Do you mean that you think--"

"I mean I'm going to be converted too," said Mary. "There! that's it, in a nutshell. I've been thinking a lot. Oh, I know that Sarah'll howl; but I shan't tell her. It's not her business. She can find out if she likes; I don't care. And it seems to me that we can just go on living here as before, only--only be pious too. It seems to me that your ideas are perfectly splendid; the convent and everything. I can't imagine why we shouldn't, both of us, be really good Catholics, and yet go on here." (She was beginning to talk rather feverishly, and was aware of it.) "I don't believe for an instant that we ought to give it all up and be something else. And I wanted to tell you that. I don't in the least agree with the ideas you had at first, you know, and I never shall. I think that was real fanaticism, you know--all that about you and me going off to the convents, or living in a gamekeeper's cottage. You and I aren't made for that, are we? Oh, I'm sure you see that now. But I wanted to tell you that I do agree with the way you're doing it now--and--and that I won't be tiresome. Do you see, Jack?"

Again there was a moment's silence.

Mary felt her excitement pause for a moment, like a wave before it breaks. The impulse had come upon her so suddenly that it seemed like an inspiration. But she was driven too by another motive which she refused to recognise.

The point was, how would Jack take it? She waited with an extraordinary expectancy for his answer. It seemed to her as if some kind of sentence was to be pronounced. Jack's face was still in shadow; and in that moment of time it appeared that tremendous issues were being decided, utterly disproportionate to the situation as she had stated it. Again, she knew, but refused to recognise what those issues were.

Then the tension broke; and when Mary went to her room five minutes later, she knew, with a sinking at her heart, that judgment had been deferred.

All Jack had done was to kneel suddenly forward and kiss her.

"Thank you, my dear," he had said--no more than that. Then he stood up, nodded good night, and turned away.

So Mary sat some half-hour more before her fire, motionless.

Chapter IX

I

LADY CARBERRY was not feeling very well. In a word, it was digestive... But such troubles as these may mean a very great deal after a certain age and to a certain constitution; and little Dr. Basing recommended that her drive should be given up for the present and that she should remain in the house for a week or two.

So the little ceremonial ceased. The fat horses waxed slightly fatter; the aged lodge-keeper, whose duty it was to be standing by the gate bare-headed with a bent back at twenty minutes to three, snoozed uninterruptedly in his chair instead; the coachman remained half an hour longer in the steward's room after dinner; and when three days further had elapsed, Miss Fakenham was asked to come down.

It all fell pretty heavily upon Sarah, whose duty it became to hang about and do nothing in particular. She took second place, definitely and clearly, to her ladyship's maid, and was instructed to wait upon that lady for orders. Miss Fakenham's arrival, therefore, was something of a relief.

But it was a very dreary time: the slender stream of guests dried up; it was impossible to accept invitations; and Sarah was reduced to long and lonely rides--not too long, as her mother might want her--and to seeing what she could of Mary at odd times.

Of course Mary let out fairly soon by hints and implications what was in the air, and the dreariness increased even further for her friend. It seemed to her exceedingly hard that this most natural and easy-going friend should take a turn of this kind. They had something resembling a small tiff one day just before Easter. They seemed, said Sarah, to be drifting apart.

"I can't understand," said Sarah, "why you need make such a fuss. It seems to me that you were much nicer before."

Mary paused with her hand on the garden-gate. She had walked up in the afternoon to enquire after Lady Carberry, and Sarah had walked down with her as far as the gate to the short cut across the park.

"I don't think that's the point," she said.

"It is for me," said Sarah. "Besides--"

"Well?"

"It seems to me it's the real point for everyone. Surely religion can't do anything better than make people friendly and natural and all the rest. There's this world for certain; and as regards the other--"

"Yes?" said Mary.

"Well, as regards the next world, no one knows anything for certain."

"Catholics do," said Mary, quick and sharp.

"So you say."

Sarah was certainly a little cross to-day. She had had a trying morning of it. The doctor had come as usual, and been rather gloomy: he had refused to give any kind of assurance as to when the old lady would be about again. And she herself had been sent for twice to be found fault with. Mary, then, seemed to her the last straw.

"You're a little fractious," said the girl, smiling.

Sarah made a small impatient sound.

"I hate all that sort of helpful cheerfulness," she said.

Mary let the gate swing to between them, and her face darkened ever so slightly.

"All right," she said. "Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Sarah, with sudden dignity.

It was all very tiresome and troublesome, thought Sarah, as she went back to the house. She knew perfectly well she had behaved rather badly; but she preferred to say that Mary had. Then, two days later, came a sudden event that drove these things away.

She had been up to see her mother about twelve o'clock, and found her even more severe than usual. The beef-tea had not been properly prepared, and it was entirely Sarah's fault for not overlooking the servants more carefully. What, it was asked, would she herself do when she had a house of her own, if she could not even keep well-trained servants up to the mark? Would it not be better if Miss Fakenham took over the entire charge of the house for the present? And so forth. The worst of all was that it was entirely impossible to snap back. More, the old lady lay in awful dignity, crowned with a black lace shawl, her ruddy face pinched and fallen, with disagreeable-looking pouches beneath the eyes. The whole room too suggested a pathetic imitation of a presence-chamber: the large four-posted mahogany bed, the satin-wood toilette-table decked with silver objects, the faint smell of furs, dresses, eau-de-cologne, the deep carpet, the bath-rug, the little row of miniatures, the solemn chintz furniture, all somehow combined to suggest a great personage fallen low, surrounded by possessions which, with digestive troubles, she could not properly enjoy.

"You should be more thoughtful, my dear," observed her mother when the daughter had been sufficiently crushed. "When your poor father died I never left him night or day."

"But, mother, you're not so ill as all that!"

"We never know," said the old lady, who knew perfectly well that she was going to recover, and had told Dr. Basing with some warmth that very morning that she would not be treated like a helpless invalid.

"We never know. I only know that you should be more thoughtful. The beef-tea was most tasteless this morning; I could scarcely manage more than a spoonful or two... So just remember, my dear, in future."

"I'm very sorry, mother; but really, the beef-tea--"

"Yes, my dear; I do not expect you to prepare it. That would be too much to ask. But it's the general tone of the house that shows itself in little things like that. If the servants had been kept up to their work this would not have happened. Now go and enjoy yourself, my dear. A good brisk walk before lunch would do you good. Just give me that prayer-book, and the miniature of your poor father, before you go. I like to have them beside me... . And tell Linton to come to me immediately. And please, my dear, see that the baize-door is kept closed at the top of the stairs. I think that is not too much to ask under the circumstances."

Sarah looked at her, torn between compassion and resentment It was this kind of thing all day long.

Certainly she looked ill this morning; her ringless old hands jerked gently and peevishly on the silk rug that lay over her; and her face was lined in iron-looking folds. The scorned beef-tea stood in a small white fluted covered vessel on the pedestal by the bedside; and two toast crumbs, one on the very end of the old lady's nose, made her dignity the more pathetic.

Sarah made suitably filial remarks and went downstairs.

The luncheon-table too increased her sense of dreariness. It was so exact in its appointments, each of which was dictated by irrevocable laws. The butler was so immutable, the food so exceedingly well cooked. And yet the chair of the mistress of all was pushed back against the wall, her place at the head of the table, so sacred was it, rested vacant, and the roast lamb lay instead before Sarah's own seat in the middle of the long side facing the windows. Neither was Miss Fakenham helpful: she sat subdued and gloomy opposite Sarah, answered all her remarks correctly and volunteered none of her own.

It was as the sweets were being actually placed upon the table that the blow fell. A bell was heard to ring; the butler nodded swiftly and silently to the footman, who vanished. The butler, when all was set, vanished also; and two minutes later reappeared, slightly breathless.

"Her ladyship is taken suddenly ill, my lady. Her ladyship's maid--"

Then the two rose and fled.

II

Mary first heard the news from Dr. Basing himself in the afternoon, and it fell on her with that sense of bewilderment which such news, regarding one whom one rather dislikes, always bears with it.

"Dead! You don't mean it!"

The doctor quieted his horse and leaned over the rail a little nearer. It was just outside the park-gates.

"Indeed, yes," he said; "it was what I feared. The heart was weak. It was all over by five minutes after I got there."

Mary turned her pony's head on the instant and was off.

The house was in the same sort of breathless condition, suggesting without manifesting disorder, in which, as in a bad dream, she remembered her own house hardly more than seven months ago. It looked like a familiar face in a swoon. In the hall, down which she had so often seen Lady Carberry proceeding as on some high day, were small evidences, scarcely noticeable, yet taken together, significant of a real disorganisation. A bright red and black cricketing cap, plainly the property of a footman, lay in the midst of the majolica plate that held the calling-cards. (The butler secreted it deftly as he came to the door.) An umbrella lay all across the floor, and a white fluted covered vessel stood on the seat of a polished wooden chair. Whether it was these things, or her own knowledge, or whether conceivably some actual shadow of emptiness cast from some plane of which we know nothing--at least there was desolation here, and a certain horror of darkness.

She went swiftly through into the morning-room, a cave of firelight and dying daylight stealing through unshuttered windows, and there started up a figure hidden in a deep chair that threw itself, wild-eyed, into her arms...

"And the worst of it all," moaned Sarah presently, "is that she didn't know me. And the last thing I really saw of her was when she was cross with me. Oh, my dear, does she understand now, do you think?"

Mary tightened her arms round her friend.

"My darling, of course it's all right. Don't think of it like that."

"Yes, yes; but what does she think of it all now? Tell me. You Catholics say you know."

Mary hesitated. Was purgatory assimilable Sarah just now? And yet, if ever, purgatory were obviously necessary!... She hesitated.

"The Rector's been up here; he's been telling me about heaven and all that; but--but, Mary dear--I--I can't think of mother... like that. Do you really think--?"

Her voice faltered and stopped.

Then Mary made an attempt. Truly she did her best; she insisted on happiness for all those who followed the light they had; she toned down certain points, which need not be discussed; she said that she quite agreed that heaven and palms and harps were a little difficult just at present, considered as an environment for Lady Carberry; she hinted gently.

"And what I'm going to do next, goodness knows," moaned Sarah.

Mary's trickle of consolation dried up on the instant. There was really no need for consolation.

An hour later she came out again. Oh, yes, she had been upstairs and seen the satin-wood dressing-table, and the silver ornaments, and the mahogany bed, and that which lay on it, august and terrible. A nurse sat there by the bed. Sarah kneeled by her. Three candles were burning; and a little fire, before which hung a sheet or two, burned on the hearth. Miss Fakenham, Mary remembered afterwards, was somewhere in the room--a mourning shadow.

Sarah came down again with her, through the house so deathly still, clung to her again, and listened without hearing to the last words that Mary pumped up for her with intolerable effort.

Yet as the girl drove away again into the darkness, in spite of what she had seen and the sorrow of her friend, she was thinking of neither of these things, but of that interior conflict of her own which once more surged within her.

III

Jim was lying in bed in a room in his aunt's house in London when he heard the news by the first post.

It was a room so entirely characteristic of its inhabitant that it is really worth a description. First, it was papered and painted throughout in creamy white, with the exception of a light green frieze of the exact tint of apple leaves in sunlight, which colour was repeated in the short silk window curtains, furniture coverings, and carpet. All the furniture was of mahogany, brought to a high pitch of polish (it was of some period or other, but I entirely forget which, if I ever knew); it had spindle legs and a particular kind of curve in its lines. The bed too was of mahogany, very delicate and exquisite, with a beautiful little inlay in the carved bed-head. There was not a great deal of furniture: the room had an empty aspect; but it was a very expensive emptiness.

Upon a discreet-looking upright couch at the foot of the bed lay Jim's clothes, ready for assumption. (His man had called him half an hour before, set out his bath-towel dressing-gown, and placed a little early-morning tea-set of pink china beside his bed.) His clothes, even empty of Jim, were a caress to the eyes, so perfect were they; and by their side lay a pair of his famous clocked socks with suspenders attached.

But the bed itself and its occupant formed the climax, so white were the sheets, so delicate the silk bed-spread turned back over the foot, so beautiful the pyjamas, and so quiet the owner of all.

(I love Jim--as I have said before--at least I love, mentally, to walk round him, and look at him, and paw him with reverential fingers. He is so perfectly finished, so completely true to type, so utterly contented.)

Further, I forgot to mention, on the table by his bed lay a small vellum-covered book of French poems, a silver cigarette-case, and a match-box that struck a light almost entirely unaided. And on the spindle-legged table beyond the couch rested four more books--no more--in a little stand.

He was lying very quiet and thinking very hard; and, if the truth were known, I expect he was experiencing the supreme struggle of his life. He was wondering whether he would go to the funeral or not--no more. It would take place in three days, he was informed by his aunt's letter, that still lay open on the bed; and he was to send a wire immediately. So his bath cooled rapidly in the next room while he fought it out.

It was a struggle, because he chose to make it the symbol of a conflict in which he had long been engaged. The point was: was he to marry Sarah or not?

The alternatives lay before him, ranged down to their minutest details. Jim was essentially a bachelor; persons of his temperament always are: they are gloriously sufficient to themselves; their atmosphere is so individual and personal a thing that the risk of an alien intrusion is a danger seldom faced. Who could tell, for instance, whether Sarah's taste would rise to all that was represented by this white, apple-green, and mahogany? And if not...

On the other hand, there was a great deal to be said for it. An individualistic and artistic bachelor is apt, when he reaches a certain age, to be treated even too much as an individual and too little as a social personage. He ceases to be able to shoot or play billiards, or even fish as well as he would like; and philosophical conversation cannot please for ever. But the husband of Lady Sarah must always be taken into consideration. There would be two houses at once, and a third to follow on his aunt's death, besides quite a decent income. He need no longer stop in his Civil Service: he might even begin to add once more to his first editions. And, after all, Sarah was not a bad sort, all things considered, and might be capable of a good deal of improvement.

So Jim lay and considered it, with his sleek head black against the linen and his eyes closed.

Lady Carberry's death he did not even pretend to regret, except for the fact that it brought things to a point. He would no longer be able to play about down there. Sarah, undoubtedly, would drift off into other circles presently, and might--it was really quite conceivable, after all--she might find someone even more to her taste than Jim. It was now or never...

A small, bulgy, china clock on the mantelpiece beat nine in the tones of a distant cathedral. Jim opened his eyes and touched the bell by his bedside.

"Oh, just turn on some more hot water," he said when the man came. "I shall be down in half an hour; and there'll be a wire to send as soon as I come down."

So the great decision was taken; and Jim considered it all over again under innumerable aspects as he ate a kidney and a half and drank some coffee before setting out for Whitehall. (The kidney was slightly dry, he noticed; he would speak about it. No, on the whole, he wouldn't; it was his own fault for being late; and the coffee was so superlatively excellent that it really made up for the other.)

Ten minutes later, again, he was in the hall still thoughtful, slipping his arms into the coat respectfully held up by Charles his man.

"No, I'll take the umbrella," he said. "I think it might rain. No cab; I'll walk part of the way anyhow. The wire went all right?"

"Yessir."

Then he went out and turned briskly up the pavement to the left.

So the mysteries of Life and Death are wrought and interwoven.

IV

I think too it is worth while to describe the funeral. No less than two columns of the county paper were occupied in its chronicle, recording the list of mourners, the special train from town, the mob of carriages and cars at the churchyard gate. Further, the churchyard itself figured at length, the exquisite symbolism of the sun that came out, the white surplice of the venerable Rector, the extraordinary beauty of the singing of the hymns "For all the saints" and "Now the labourer's task is o'er."

Lady Sarah's distinguished grief-stricken figure made its appearance four times in the two columns; and a word of tribute was paid to the broad-mindedness of Mr. and Mrs. Weston, and especially the delicate sympathy of the latter, who, for the first time since they took up their residence at Manningham, entered the parish church. It was remarked also that Mr. James Fakenham supported his aunt on this melancholy occasion, and drove back with the mourners to the house of sorrow.

To Mary the experience was one of almost unrelieved horror.

She arrived with Jack ten minutes before the service began, and, sitting in the church in the seat assigned to her, watched through the low, clear-glass window that which the newspaper described as the "funeral cortege" (without the accent).

For the first time in her life she saw a plumed hearse actually in existence, and stared with almost superstitious terror on the twelve black erections, which with their long fringes resembled so many longhaired faceless heads nodding in mute sorrow.

She saw too the great coffin, silver-plated, clamped and bound, slide out from its end on to the shoulders of six men in black frock-coats, and watched its progress up the path, with the Rector in front, reading aloud words which she could not hear, while his surplice blew open from the neck. Then came the mourners and the crowd.

Presently when the church was filled--I omitted to say that Chopin's funeral march was being played meanwhile by the village schoolmistress--the organ boomed out again into a hymn, studied closely by Mary, recounting the glories of God's saints and the song of Alleluia which is theirs.

She reached out a hand and took Sarah's, who stood next to her--herself speechless. Death, it seemed to her, was terrible enough without this kind of unreality; yet Sarah smiled at her, as if comforted, through her heavy veil. Jim, Mary noticed, stood beyond Miss Fakenham next the aisle, with a respectfully bowed head.

So the affair went on. Once or twice she stared out again at the plumed heads that waited twenty yards away down the path, then again at the Rector reading, with that scholarly expression for which he was renowned in the district, an enormous portion of Scripture containing a few passages of amazing beauty and a good deal that was completely unintelligible to modern ears: "There is one glory of the stars... and another of the moon... One kind of flesh... another kind of flesh"; and then, ever and again, at the monstrous shape before the chancel steps, loaded, piled, and heaped with white flowers as a symbol of innocence and simplicity.

And it was the body of Lady Carberry, she reflected, that rested there.

The second hymn at the graveside crowned her abhorrence. It began, certainly with sufficient beauty of expression, by announcing that "the labourer's task was o'er," that "the battle day was past," and that "the voyager lands at last upon the farther shore." It concluded, as in every verse, with a word upon the "servant" of God sleeping in Him.

Oh, yes, the hymn was a beautiful one, bringing tears to the eyes. (Sarah broke down and sobbed half-way through.) It was sung reverently and softly; and the sun came out, as recorded by the Gazette, and shone from curtaining western clouds. And the Rector uttered the last words with an almost perfect intonation; and yet, and yet...

Well, in a sentence, what was there in common between all this tenderness and confidence and the life of the old woman whose body lay in the midst?

Mary struggled against the thought--it was horrible to think such things--yet, was it not an indisputable fact that the life that had ended had been one of utter and complete selfishness? She had been hard upon all who knew her; she had sinned by every sin of pride and complacency, and even the smaller kinds of tyranny, that it was possible to imagine; she had spoiled, so far as it was possible for her to spoil, the life of this poor girl beside her, who sobbed and sobbed at the thought that their last words had been words of reproach and fault-finding, though not even on her side--this poor girl, who, in the midst of her agony, had had time to wonder what was going to become of herself. Certainly the old woman had lived a conventionally good life; she had outraged no proprieties, had brought herself within the reach of no human or social law; yet if there were a divine law of love anywhere in the universe, her life had been but one defiance of it from beginning to end. She had no friends; she had only unreal shadows of herself. There was not one soul in the universe who in a week's time would really regret her, or one life that would be the poorer for her loss. This passionate crying of the girl, these discreet eye-wipings of Miss Fakenham and two other middle-aged ladies--these were at the most purely symptoms of nervous emotionalism. In a month from now Sarah would be happier and freer and more effective than ever in her life before; and as for this grave concern on the faces of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, the magistrates, a dozen farmers--tenants, of course--Jim Fakenham, and the rest of the mob--this was worth exactly as much, considered morally, as the black coats and gloves that they wore upon their bodies.

And it was this woman who was the labourer and soldier and traveller of God, who had won her reward; and it was from the lips of the soul that had inhabited that body that the eternal Alleluia was presumed to be pealing. Was there not to be one cry for mercy, one confession of failure and misery, one utterance of faith and hope in a compassion utterly undeserved and forfeited?...

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore," said the Rector comfortably. And the choir sang Stainer's Amen.

V

Husband and wife drove in silence through the park gate. Mary had promised Sarah to come up a little later when the mourning guests had gone.

Then Jack turned to her in the brougham.

"My dear," he said, "don't look so overcome."

Mary said nothing.

"Well, she was a good old thing, I suppose," he said.

Mary assented with a nod.

"And I suppose Sarah'll go and live with an aunt or something," he went on. "She's well enough off, anyhow. There was Jim Fakenham there; did you see him?"

Mary sighed.

"Oh, Jack!" she said, "it really was awful, though. That hearse, those hymns... everything. That's what's called a bright funeral."

Jack made a small demurring sound. (He looked extraordinarily odd, thought Mary, in black gloves and trousers.)

"Yes," he said, "I suppose so. But I don't see why they shouldn't. They don't pray for the dead, you see, so I don't see why they shouldn't put the best construction--"

"Oh, Jack! you don't believe that for one instant."

Jack looked out of the window.

Even in their own delightful drawing-room Jack's black suit cast a certain dreariness. They had tea instantly, but everything was a little sepulchral, for all that. Once again Jack remarked upon Mary's manner; and this time she seemed to resent it a little.

"Oh, don't bother, my dear!" she said. "Sarah's on my mind, rather, too."

"Too?" questioned Jack.

"As well as Lady Carberry," said Mary deliberately.

She rose and went to the window, leaving her cup half drunk. The sun had set a few minutes before beyond the western slopes, and the air was of that dying luminosity that resembles a hope that is going downhill--exquisite, tender, and melancholy. The clouds had cleared yet more before sunset, and there shone, high up, coming and going, seen as within folded-back curtains, a single star like a crumb of glass. Beneath, the slopes lay dull and menacing, dark ash-coloured, darkening as she looked. A little wind shook the dwarf-ivy at the window and sank again. It seemed to Mary as if everything waited for some solution--some key-word to set all in order. Were things generally really so futile and meaningless as they appeared? Or was there, after all, an answer--a missing letter that would make sense out of nonsense?.. . And if so, was it what she suspected?...

Mary turned round abruptly.

"Where are you going?" asked Jack, lowering his cup.

"I'm going up to church for a bit," said Mary, and went out.

Chapter X

I

IT was Miss Groves, lady's-maid to Mrs. Weston, who firs noticed that the mistress's health was not all that it should be. She was a discreet personage of forty years of age, and had nursed Mary as a child; so not one word was breathed except to Mrs. Reculver, the housekeeper, who had fulfilled the same duties towards Jack. Yet what she had to say amounted to little enough. Mrs. Weston, it seemed, was usually now to be found lying awake in the mornings; she continually dismissed her at nights comparatively early, presumably with the intention of sitting up; she was beginning to be a little dark under the eyes; she fell into silences when her hair was being put up; she did not always drink her early cup of tea. It was not alarming; but the facts were noted.

Other persons also noticed small indications--silence, brooding, and, if it must be confessed, slight irritability. It is a distressing fact that the most august griefs produce such symptoms.

At the convent too it was noticed, though not one word was uttered on the point, that the charming Mrs. Weston did not come to see the nuns any more. She was in the chapel, certainly, at Mass every morning; she was occasionally discerned there by the rustle of her dress at odd times during the day; but the parlour knew her no more. She was as generous as ever; bundles of spring vegetables appeared in embarrassing profusion; even a message or two was left that if anything were needed, news was to be sent down immediately: one of the farm light carts was required to call three times a week for instructions. But Mary did not appear.

Sarah's contribution to the mass of evidence is inconsiderable; for Sarah had gone to an aunt, as Jack had foretold, and the two together to Switzerland as June began. There was an impression too abroad, among Sarah's friends, that Mr. James Fakenham's holidays this year were falling unusually early, and that he mentioned more than once the delightful opportunities for recuperation offered abroad at a time when hotels were comparatively empty, in such places as the Tyrol or even Switzerland itself.

It was on a delicious day about half-way through June that Madeline, one of the nondescript girls in caps and black dresses already mentioned who seem to frequent convent kitchens, was looking out of one of the few windows on the kitchen side of the house that commanded any view whatever of the outside world. The room was on the first floor, and she could look out over the yew-hedge that rose immediately below her window straight down a ride that led on level ground into the heart of the wood. There were a few minutes more before she would be wanted in the kitchen; so here she stood and stared, noticing the cool green shadow under the tall trees that met overhead, the flecks of sunlight and the dusty-looking atmosphere in which whirled ceaselessly myriads of tiny summer afternoon insects. It was not an exceedingly wide view, since the lower half of the window was filled with frosted glass, and it was all that she could do, standing at her full height, to raise her eyes over the central windowbar. She was therefore entirely invisible to anyone approaching from without.

As she was on the very point of turning away, she noticed a white figure, with something scarlet moving above it, coming extremely slowly up the ride she was watching. A rabbit that a moment before had suddenly sat up with cocked ears in the middle distance dropped and vanished; and a minute later the girl could see who it was that was coming.

To those who live in convents a comer from the outside world is always slightly interesting; and the sight of Mrs. Weston set in motion in the girl's mind a train of thought not indeed exactly envious, but of a faintly tantalising nature. She herself purposed some day to enter the convent as a lay sister; it was the obvious thing to do. She had been caught somehow in its train; she had been swept off with it to England; there was nothing else she particularly wanted to do. But she was still aware of external interests; and it struck her now as she looked vaguely out at the girl, not ten years older than herself, who came along so leisurely under her red sunshade, bare-headed, in her white dress, that it must be exceedingly pleasant to be the mistress of a large domain, to walk where the mood calls, at four o'clock in the afternoon, to have a quantity of servants, and to have no duties at all which cannot be deputed to somebody else.

The figure came along very slowly, straight towards where a gate in the hedge gave entrance to the path that, straight forward, led to the transept door, and, curving to the right, round to the lodge gate and the front of the convent. Madeline supposed that she was coming to pay a visit to the church, but watched as a child watches, purely, so to speak, for the academic interest of the thing, to see which path she would take.

The latch of the gate seemed a little difficult, and the sunshade, that up to now had hidden the woman's face, suddenly slipped back as she put her hands to it; Madeline still watched, and then, in a moment, was startled by the white pallor of which she caught sight. Was that look, she wondered, merely one of impatience with the latch?

The gate opened and closed; and Mary stood there for an instant hesitating. Her face looked out again, her eyes seemed to meet Madeline's own; and the girl started back, partly from a sense of being caught watching, partly from that look of misery that was now so unmistakable. When she peeped again she was only just in time to see Mary's dress vanishing round the corner in the direction of the lodge.

Madeline ran downstairs, through the cloister at a more discreet pace, and came towards the inner passage leading to the gate as the bell overhead jangled once.

"Can I see the Reverend Mother?" asked Mary without a word or smile of greeting. Then, without waiting for an answer, she turned aside into the parlour.

II

The Prioress, looking presently through the two gratings, and peering as well as she could at her visitor's face, noticed too that something was wrong.

It was a look of extraordinary weariness that she saw there. During the first sentence or two of ordinary greeting there arose upon the eyes and mouth the conventionally appropriate expression, but it faded again in a moment, leaving the eyes heavy and almost sombre, the corners of the mouth turned down, and that same deadly tiredness she had seen upon her first entrance.

"You have come to see us again, then, madam; and monsieur your husband--?"

"Jack's away for two or three days," said Mary dully. "He comes back to-night."

"And you are lonely? I am not surprised; when so charming a--"

Mary jerked slightly with an impatient movement, and the nun broke off. Then there fell a silence.

(It is not very easy at first to exchange confidences through two gratings. It is a little like making love on a telephone. There is a sense of firing a gun and waiting for an indication that it has reached its mark. But it has, too, its advantages.)

The Prioress broke the silence, leaning a little nearer.

"So you have come to see the poor nuns again, madam?"

"I have come to see you, mother," came the dull voice again.

"You are in trouble, madam?" came back after a pause.

Mary bowed her head.

"I am in bitter trouble," she said.

The Prioress shifted her position once more.

"Tell me, my child," she said softly.

"I--I don't think I can."

"Oh, my child, yes. It eases the soul. Tell me simply and quickly."

Mary looked up at the head bent towards her and caught, or thought she caught, the glimmer of kind eyes through the veil.

Then the flood-gates opened. Mary talked rapidly, jerkily, emphatically, her voice rising as she spoke, and the Prioress listened, with scarcely a word of answer.

"I must tell you, but I am a coward, a deadly coward. I--I hesitated even at the gate just now. I never meant to come; but I can't bear it; I can't bear it; it's killing me. Well, it's a long story. It's gone on for nearly a year--since Jack's illness. I've told you about that. You remember?"

"I remember."

"Well, that was the beginning, at least practically. You remember, Jack was dying. The doctors were there and Sarah. I prayed. Oh, yes; but it was no good; I knew it wasn't; it never is.

"Well, then Jack died. I saw him die before my eyes, and the doctors told me so. Then Sarah tried to take me away, and I wouldn't go. I screamed, I think. I wouldn't let myself believe it."

The Prioress leaned forward again, and her voice came clear and almost sharp.

"My child, be tranquil. You must tell me tranquilly."

Mary raised her terrified eyes and let them fall again slowly.

"I will, mother," she said. "Thank you..."

She drew a long breath to steady herself, unclasped her hands, and clasped them again. Then she went on, without the ring of hysteria in her voice. It was more as if she were repeating a lesson.

"Well, Sarah left the room after that, to see the doctors. I told her she must leave me for two minutes with Jack. I knew quite well what I wanted to do. It was quite deliberate; it was that--that has made it all so bad. I told Father Banting that, again and again; but he wouldn't believe me. He said it was not a deliberate vow, and that I had no time for consideration.

"But, mother, you know how one can be deliberate at a time like that, even in a second or two; and I had at least three or four minutes."

"What did you do, my child?"

"Well, I looked at Jack lying there, and I simply could not bear it. I didn't think Jack had died exactly in mortal sin. Oh, I don't know what I thought. He had received conditional absolution; but I knew his life hadn't been anything particular. But that wasn't the only thing: I wanted him alive again. It wasn't only that I wanted him with me, but I couldn't bear to think of him as dead. Oh, mother, death is so ghastly."

"Tranquilly, my child."

Mary shivered a little and settled herself again. "Well, when Sarah had gone, I knelt down by Jack and looked at him. They had put a crucifix

in his hands... Then I--then I--"

"Yes, my child; be tranquil..." Mary was silent a moment.

"It's hard to put it into words, mother. I didn't use any words at least, out loud; but I meant it, and expressed it, inside, you know, as deliberately as I possibly could... It was this: I said to God, absolutely knowing and meaning what I said, that if Jack could only be alive again, I'd offer myself entirely to Him for ever, that I wouldn't shrink from anything, that I'd do anything He wished--I meant, of course, in big things--"

"Did you have any idea of what you meant by that?"

Mary bowed her head. "Yes, mother," she said in a tiny voice.

"Tell me, my child..."

There was dead silence.

"Tell me, my child... No, tranquilly..."

Mary, who once more had looked up with a quick movement, looked down again. She began mechanically, yet with an appearance of extreme care, to twist her rings slowly round and round.

"I knew nothing about the Religious Life, mother--about the rules about a husband and wife, and so on But the thought of the Religious Life came quite clearly into my mind. I didn't understand in the least how or where, or anything like that; but I included it in my mind, though I loathed the thought of it. And I included it; I meant I would do it, if I could, and if God asked it of me. Of course I thought it really impossible."

The Prioress leaned back slowly.

"Yes, my child; continue."

"Well, I did that--I did it twice; with my eyes tight shut and my hands on the bed. It was all perfectly deliberate; and I was quite quiet, and then--"

"Yes?"

Mary began to shake. The Prioress's hand rose with a kind of soothing, commanding gesture.

"Then I opened my eyes," said Mary very low indeed, "and I heard something; then I saw Jack opening his eyes; and the crucifix slipped out of his hands--his fingers... Then he said something... I screamed..."

"That is enough, my child. Be quite silent a moment"

Mary looked up again. Her lips, her eyelids, her whole head shook so violently that she could scarcely see. She steadied her chin on her hand, her elbow on the ledge, and she saw for a moment, plainly enough, the veiled, quiet old face opposite, with closed eyes. Then the eyes opened, and Mary dropped her own.

"Continue, my child--quite slowly--"

Mary drew a long breath. The worst was over, and the rest comparatively simple.

"Well, ever since then I've been fighting against it all. I tried to make the doctors say that Jack wasn't really dead at all, and of course they said it, and that satisfied me in a sort of way--at least I made it satisfy me."

"I comprehend perfectly."

"Then the awful thing happened." (Mary's voice faltered slightly.) "Jack proposed the very thing itself--I never told you that, mother--the very thing that we should both enter Religion."

"Yes?"

"I said I wouldn't. (He had found out all about it from books and priests.) I entirely refused. I said all the--the sensible things. You know... I said them to myself, and to Jack, and to Sarah, over and over again. I persuaded myself; at least I half persuaded--"

"But yes; I comprehend perfectly."

"Well, I wasn't happy; I was wretched. I--I caught at things--anything to salve my conscience. The convent was the first thing. (You know I was against that at first? Well, I was.) And then I caught at it; I made myself think it would do for the--for the sacrifice of myself. I did all I could for it; and all the while, right down, I knew it wouldn't do; though I don't think all the time I knew that I knew." (The Prioress nodded gently without interrupting.) "And then you came; and I thought that the extra things might make the difference--the getting up earlier; Father Banting being about always--Oh, that was before; but it doesn't matter. And then you came--"

"Yes, my child."

Mary gripped herself again with an effort.

"Then you came--and you showed me the dead body--you know the sister." (The Prioress raised her old eyes steadily to the girl's an instant.) "Yes--well, that was another blow; I don't know why, but it showed me it wouldn't do--that I was shamming--playing the fool. And then I talked to Sister Teresa. It was horrible... She made me understand perfectly, in just a sentence or two. It came down on me like--like a gas, or a hand; and I fought it and got free. That was why I never dared to see Sister Teresa again. I--I couldn't bear myself--

"Well, then I began to think about Jack--"

"Yes?"

"Well, that distracted me a little. I began to pretend to myself that really and truly it was my duty to keep Jack within bounds that--that--he would never make a monk, that he was a fanatic--and that therefore it was no good my being a nun. (Oh, yes; I had it clear enough by then!) And then Jack went out shooting one day, after, he hadn't for ages, and I made that an excuse. I said to myself that--that was a sign, so I backed him up. I pretended that I knew his vocation better than he did. I told him that he must be just a good Catholic. I--I hindered him as much as I could. I had already refused, in spite of everything, to release him; and I made it worse by trying to cheat him. And all the while I knew perfectly well that he ought to be a monk. No, he has said nothing; not a word. He promised he wouldn't; but--but I'm ruining him, and I'm cheating myself; at least I--I almost succeeded in cheating. I think I should have... but then--then Lady Carberry died. Oh, it was one thing after another; one thing after another... like--like blows of a hammer. Not one of them alone would have done it. Some of them were just little taps. Oh, there were hundreds more, I've almost forgotten: little sentences in books--a bird flying in a particular way--anything would do.

"Yes... I know it sounds silly; but Lady Carberry's death woke me up again. I don't know why... Somehow it made death frightfully real... Yes: I know she was very old; but that didn't matter. She wasn't the sort of person that dies--there was a sort of eternity about her... . And the funeral--all about the saints and the labourers... Oh, I can't explain, mother--it's endless. But it woke me up again...

"And then..."

There was a pause.

"Yes, madam?"

"Well, then I set myself down to kill the thing. Sarah was away--I had plenty of time. I used to go and try to hypnotise myself--yes, before the Tabernacle into believing it was all nonsense... I even began to play with my faith to wish I wasn't a Catholic. Oh, mother--"

"Yes, my child?"

"And I can't bear it--I can't bear it."

"There's been no sudden event since then, my child, to make you--"

"No, mother. No; no; it's just everything; And--and--"

There was a sudden break in the girl's voice, and in an instant she was down, her head on her hands, her hands on the ledge, sobbing as if her heart would break.

III

"Now listen to me carefully, my child," went on the Prioress five minutes later. "You are quiet now? You can attend to me? Eh well, I shall make you a little discourse.

"You have done that which is very common in the world. You have attempted to silence the voice of our Lord speaking in the heart. You have played with grace--ah, I know it very well. It is the temptation of all who know anything of the inner life. It is their only temptation after a while. And you have tried to give to our Lord other things--things which He did not ask of you, to serve in place of that which He did ask of you. And in effect you have been unhappy...

"I do not think you know anything yet of what the interior life truly means; no, nothing at all; not so much as a child like our Madeline here. And the very first thing that our Lord has asked of you, you have refused to give it to Him! That is not such a piece of generosity as would show that you have progressed very far! Eh? Is it not so?...

"Yet our Lord is so generous that He has asked that one thing of you, though knowing that you would not give it Him! And your generosity! Ah, a fine one, is it not?--to offer our Lord this and this and this, which He does not want, and to refuse Him that which He does!"

(The Prioress's voice softened suddenly.)

"You have given Him vinegar, my child, instead of the wine He asked...

***

"Eh well, listen to me. (No, my child, I did not wish to make you cry... Be tranquil then, and listen to me.)

"Eh well. We must ask ourselves why it is that our Lord asked such a thing at all... I will tell you. It was because He saw in you a power, a capacity, is it not so?... A seed (no more than a seed, my child)... yet it was there, and He saw it. Now our Lord does not trouble Himself... I should say that He does not trouble souls for whom He has no intentions--such as can do nothing great for Him... He leaves them alone, I think... He gives to them such grace as they need, and He leaves them tranquil. It is a good sign then that you have been unhappy...

"What, then, does He wish from you now?... It is certain. A reparation of your fault. And that fault was as I have said.

"Now listen carefully if you please, for this is a little difficult.

"Our Lord once said, 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.'... There is, that is to say, in each soul an interior castle, as our Holy Mother Saint Teresa tells us, and for many that interior castle is at rest. Our Lord dwells there in peace; He gives such graces as are necessary, but He does not proclaim Himself.

"Now, with you it is not so. He has proclaimed Himself in you; and you have answered Him, We will not have this Man to reign over us.

"It was at monsieur your husband's death-bed that you offered yourself to Him, knowing what you offered; and He answered you from the castle. Until then you had not known that He was there. And He begged you to give Him the key of that castle--to surrender yourself to His will, and you would not. You have offered Him this and that in its place. There I will say no more of that.

"But you have kept the innermost place of your heart to yourself. You would not give up all: you had no confidence in Him.

"Whether or no you had indeed a vocation to Religion I do not know; that is not our affair. Our affair is only that we should have no reserves from Him. It may well be that He will send you back to serve Him in the world... No, my child, you do not believe that, I know well. Eh well, so much the better.

"Well, then, this is what you must do. There is no question of it at all. Monsieur your husband returns this evening, you tell me? You must go to him immediately; you must say to him that you are ready to do anything that he wishes in the matter... No, be tranquil, my child; listen to me. You must say to him that you believe that you too have a vocation, or at least that you are willing to offer yourself. You need not tell him all the tale; you need but say as I have said.

"And when that is finished, with a full heart, then will be the time to speak of it further, to consider whether or no it is possible. But you will have repaired your fault then; you will have offered yourself fully...

"Now go, my child... No, not a word further. Come again to-morrow...

"Ah, you are happy now! Is it not so?"

Chapter XI

I

THERE is no manner of life which so teaches control of the features as that of a butler: in comparison with it that of an actor, a religious novice, a diplomat, or a Jesuit sinks into nothingness. Persons are born or die, the house is in flames, yet a butler is impassive; it seems that his small square whiskers hold his features gripped as in an iron frame.

Mr. Parkinson was relaying the table for his master's dinner at half-past nine; the mistress had dined as usual at eight. And although he himself had been present and watched her carefully throughout, no expression of any unusual kind had crossed his face, nor the faintest novel tone found its way into his voice. Neither had he said one word to anyone on the fact that she had refused soup and fish, eaten largely of mutton, and had radiated such ecstatic and excellent content that he thought her beside herself altogether. She had talked to him a little, since nobody else was present, and had said a number of rather odd things. Finally she had told him to bring coffee into the smoking-room, and had given careful directions as to the master's dinner. Mr. Parkinson was to wait upon him, was to say that the mistress was in the garden, but would be in again at ten. She had thrown herself with such passion into detail in itself unimportant that even to Mr. Parkinson it was evident that there was emotion about; and as to the character of that emotion her face spoke eloquently.

All he permitted himself to say in the steward's room during his hasty supper a little before nine was that the mistress seemed very pleased to have the master home again. He said this just before the telephone bell from the lodge gate announced the passing through of the motor.

The master looked very different as his coat was taken off in the hall, and his hat and stick put away.

He had been off to the other side of the county on some agricultural affair, staying with the Lennoxes, and had been absent four days. And this was the first time he had slept away from home since his illness last summer. Apparently the visit had not been a success.

He asked shortly after the mistress.

"Yes, sir, the mistress is very well. She asked me to say, sir, that she was out in the garden and would be in at ten o'clock. The mistress told me to take your coffee to the smoking-room, sir."

Jack nodded and went to wash his hands. As he washed he glanced out through the open window into the solemn jewelled dusk and wondered where exactly Mary was.

This dinner was very different. Jack sat in silence throughout; he ate of everything; he drank three glasses of claret; he said not one word good or bad. He sat, between the courses, rather hunched up, twirling a glass in his hand--and staring. It was a queer contrast.

When the dessert things were put on he leaned forward, took four strawberries, which he ate rapidly, obviously thinking of something else, and got up immediately.

"Coffee in the smoking-room, eh?"

"Yes, sir, immediately."

"Is it ten o'clock yet?"

"Close upon it, sir. Shall I tell the mistress?"

"Er--no; don't bother."

Then he was off, crossed the hall, and vanished into the smoking-room. Mr. Parkinson heard the door shut rather loudly.

Jack threw himself instantly into a chair, stretched out his legs and closed his eyes. Certainly he did not look very well; there was a sort of heaviness about his good-humoured mouth and eyes that made him appear almost sullen.

So he remained, perfectly quiet, obviously not asleep nor even sleepy, for there was a certain tension about his features: once or twice his blue eyes opened, and the perfect intelligence and even fixity in them showed that he was very intent upon something. The coffee came in presently; and as soon as the door was closed again, he helped himself quickly to two cups one after the other, and drank them in hasty gulps. Then he lay back again.

As he lay there the anxiety on his face deepened again; once or twice his lips moved as if rehearsing some sentence; once or twice he changed his position with a jerk.

After two or three minutes he got up quite deliberately, took a pipe from the rack, blew through it once or twice, and examined it. Then he hunted about on a side-table, pulled out at last a tobacco-jar, and unscrewed the lid. There was a little tobacco there, left there by some guest--perhaps Algy Lennox himself--and he began, with an oddly nervous sort of air, to cram a little of this into his pipe. Yet when it was filled he hesitated, and so stood, the pipe in his hand, looking now at it, now at nothing: once he glanced quickly and guiltily at the door as if he heard some sound. Then he put out his hand to the matches, took one from the roughed-glass globe on the chimneypiece, and hesitated again.

It was a perfectly ordinary scene, yet minute as filigree, and obviously significant of some sort of indecision that was very nearly tragic. It seemed that something of enormous import depended on whether that pipe were lighted or not. It was obvious too that it was not its mere smoking that mattered; it was the occasion and the act: there was symbolism in the air. Then suddenly, as a footstep came close outside, he thrust the pipe quickly behind a framed photograph and sat down. You would have thought that he had not moved for half an hour, so perfect was his pose as the door opened.

Mary came in swiftly, closed the door behind her, and turned.

"Jack!" she said.

Her face was alight with excitement, radiant with happiness and a strange look of expectation. She was in white from head to foot, and there were flowers in her hair. She might be a bride on her wedding-evening. Her face was pale, but her eyes shone like stars. Jack looked at her and sat up. Then he stood up.

"Here I am," he said.

She seemed to recover herself; she came forward and kissed him.

"And you've had a nice time?" she said.

"Oh, yes; all right."

She sat down abruptly on the arm of the chair he had just left; he went and stood by the mantelpiece, wondering.

It was plain that something was in the air, he told himself; and for a moment or two he lost his own sense of misery. His own became merged in a greater emotion.

"What is it?" he said shortly.

She looked at him for an instant in silence. Then she too stood up, seeming to drive down by sheer will the passion that shook within her and escaped in silence from her eyes.

"It is this," she said. "Oh, I won't waste words. I've come to tell you that I consent."

"What?--I don't understand."

Her face broke into smiles and her eyes suddenly filled.

"Oh, yes you do, old boy. You know. Don't look like that. It's perfectly true. I've come to tell you that you've been right and I've been wrong."

He clasped his hands suddenly behind him.

"I don't understand. Tell me," he said in a quick, dry voice.

"Come and sit down. Yes; I mean it. And I'll sit here. I don't want you to see my face. I'm--I'm too happy for anything. Yes; I insist."

He came forward stupidly, still but half understanding all that she meant, and sat down. She once more arranged herself on the arm of the chair, supporting herself along the back. (As she began to talk, he was staring in front of him with relaxed hands; but presently he had shifted a little, and was shading his eyes, his face turned from her, motionless.)

"It is this," she said in a quick, low voice. "This is the sum of it. You remember what you asked of me after your illness--about the Religious Life? Well, I said I wouldn't. I was wrong. And I knew I was wrong. I've been fighting against it ever since; and I see now--

"Listen. You don't know what happened when you died. I haven't told a soul--except in confession--oh, and the Prioress this afternoon. Well, when the room was empty I knelt down and offered myself to God--if only you could live again. And you came back you came back, Jack. Oh, Jack! He accepted it, you see. You were perfectly right. You did die; and God brought you back. And then I--I refused my part of the bargain. The minute you said it I knew that--that was the thing that I ought to be willing, at any rate--and I wasn't. I--I excused myself; I jumped at what the doctors said. I wrote to Sir James. I've got his letter upstairs saying that it was not death, but only suspended animation. I tried to make Dr. Basing say you were mad. I did everything. Oh, Jack! I've been so mean. Suspended animation!

"It was because I was a coward. I couldn't bear to give up all this. I didn't understand. But I do now. Oh, Jack, I do now!

"And--and I want to ask your forgiveness. I've been a beast to you. I've hindered instead of helping. I've kept you back from your vocation.

"You haven't talked much lately about these things. And I must make a confession about that. I thought it was because you were--were giving in--going back again. But I understand that now too. It was because I couldn't share... I've watched you, Jack. I've seen you making your meditation...

"Then the shooting the other day. That was all lies too. I don't mean I don't think it all right; but I mean as to what I said, about being a country gentleman being best. I knew that was lies. Oh, Jack! what a liar I've been--a liar and a cheat.

"Well, that's all over. (No, my dear, don't interrupt till I've done.) I went to see the Prioress to-day. I couldn't bear it any more. I told her everything; and oh, it was a relief! And--and she said such things to me, but not half bad enough. I've finished it, once and for all. It's done now, and I'm so happy I don't know what to do. Do you see, Jack? I've come to tell you at once. I couldn't bear to see you till I could tell you. Oh, Jack, kiss me though I suppose you oughtn't to--not any more."

She turned her tearful, flushed face towards him for the first time, and saw how his head was turned from her, shaded by his hand. She thought she understood so perfectly, and her reward in that instant compensated for everything. He was overwhelmed with happiness. He could not take it in.

She put her hand gently on his head.

"Poor old Jack!" she said; "but it's all over now. Kiss me, Jack."

Still he did not move.

She slipped off the arm of the chair and kneeled half in front of him, taking his other hand in hers.

"Forgive me, Jack," she said; "give me absolution."

Then she kissed his hand gently.

And at the touch of her lips he tore it free and turned such a face on her that she shrank back.

"Why, Jack!" she said.

"You don't mean it! You don't mean it!" he cried.

"I do--I do."

"You don't! I don't believe you. You're--you're playing a trick."

"Jack, what's the matter?"

He sprang up.

"I don't believe a word of it. You've been spying. You've been finding out things. Look here!" He banged aside the photograph-frame--it fell with a crash on to the fender; he tore out the pipe.

"Look here," he said. "Look at this. Do you understand now? I'm sick of it all. I've been a damned fool."

His hand shook, but he snatched up the match--a miserable little symbol that stood to him for so much--dashed it alight, and put it to his pipe. It was silly, theatrical, abominable, and trifling; yet his passion was so great as almost to ennoble it. She stared at him, white-faced, sank back on her heels.

"There," he said. "Do you understand now?"

He pulled furiously at his pipe, sending out wreaths of smoke.

"You had better understand it at once," he said. "I'm sick of the whole damned thing. I've been playing the fool for months, footling along with things, and trying to be pious. It's all rot. Look here--"

He snatched at his coat-pocket.

"There's a letter that came for me at the Lennoxes'. It's to play again in South Africa. I haven't answered it yet, but I'm going to. I'm going to say yes... Pack of rubbish... Just because I was ill..."

He tossed the letter towards her.

"Don't look like that, Mary. There! I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have said all that." (He stooped and picked up the letter, laying it on the mantelpiece.)

"But I've been a fool, and I'm furious with myself--a silly, posing fool. And all those asses at the Lennoxes' finished me. No, you're all right, old girl. You haven't done anything you shouldn't. It's I who've been the fool. And now I've gone and given the thing away by building that rotten convent. We must see what can be done. Perhaps we can get rid of them."

He paused again.

Mary rose to her feet in dead silence and stood there looking at him.

He turned away his face and affected to probe his pipe with a pen-knife that lay on a little tray.

"Mary, I'm sorry I was violent. I meant to tell you quietly. But what you said--There--I'm sorry. Are you going? All right; we'll talk later. That's best. Look here, I'm really sorry."

III

Half an hour later he was again sitting motionless in his chair.

He had had time to think and grow cool again, and the shame at his own violence had gently passed away. Of course he would apologise to her again presently. He must go in and see her before he went to bed.

So there had risen within him again that attitude of mind to which he had now been approximating for three or four months--that solid sensible mood which had always been his until the event of last summer.

He lit his pipe again, stretched out his feet, and began to review things.

First there was the shock of his apparent death and his recovery. It was remarkable, but, after all, such things had happened before. That odd sort of vision he had had of the doctor and Sarah walking on the grass; that yet more odd impression--all part of the same thing, of course--that he had become aware of a real world of spirit, and all the rest. Well, that was just the delirium of his illness, and had persevered in an unusual degree. It was all really the "subjective" self (he was pleased with the phrase; he had read a little article in a monthly review at the Lennoxes' on the point). Of course it was that; it was quite obvious. People who died did not recover. Therefore he had not died.

The coincidence of Mary's prayer! He saw through that in an instant, of course. Why, wherever had there been a death-bed of a husband at which a wife did not pray like that? And did the husband always recover? Very well, then.

How long had the impression lasted? Well, vividly, only for a few days. He remembered saying to Mary that he must act at once, that he must not lose the impression. That was pretty soon after. Then it must have been about then that the thing was fading--exactly as one would expect. With convalescence came sanity.

Why then had he gone on acting as if it was still real to him?

He pulled on his pipe thoughtfully, trying to analyse his own psychology. It was not very easy, but he began to see presently. (Somehow his little scene with Mary had cleared his mind wonderfully. He was able now to look back and criticise himself. Up to that point, in spite of his efforts, he had not been able to dissociate himself from his past. It had been like a man trying to look at his own back!)

What, then, was the reason? Yes, he saw. He had been still afraid that the thing might be true; his will, so to speak, had run on by impetus after the first emotional impulse had ceased. Even the process of convent-building had been sustained by this impetus. He had been acting rather superstitiously, remembering the emotion he no longer felt.

Certain little points began now to stand out clearly--their significances, unknown at the time, were obvious now.

There was the sucking at the empty pipe. That was on the evening after the nuns had arrived. That is to say, he had fixed his will up to that point, and relaxation immediately followed its consummation. How natural that was!

Then there was the arrival of the new horse, and the little scene as the hunt went past. That had been a fierce little struggle--really the first of all. Of course he had beaten down the desire... But it only showed how morbid he was when he could take so seriously the difference between riding alone and riding after a pack of hounds.

Then there was the shooting incident. That had stood for a lot to him--far more than he had thought at the time. It had meant a very real break... He smiled, in his sanity, as he recalled the sense of guilt with which he had killed his first bird that day--his discomfort at Mary's presence. (How abominably he had shot too!)

And now, here was the final smash--that is to say, his final re-emergence into reasonable thought.

What had brought on this final smash, for which all those other incidents had been a series of preludes?

First there had been his days with the Lennoxes. It was the first time he had been away from home--away, that is to say, from the power of association--and it had been a curious revelation to him, or rather reminder, of what real human life was like. The Lennoxes were Catholics? Oh, yes; Algy had been at school with him. Algy and his wife nearly always went to their Easter duties. They had built a house for the priest too. (That reminded him. Father Banting must really be got down to the village again somehow. It would never do as it was.) Yet the Lennoxes were quite ordinary people. You might stay with them for weeks, and not dream that they were Catholics at all! That was the proper way. Religion ought to be well kept in the background. Of course it was all true in a sort of way, but...

Then there was the conversation at the Lennoxes'. Those "asses," as he had described them just now, had begun by ragging him rather, till they saw he didn't like it. Then they had stopped. It had stung rather. And then Algy had talked to him so sensibly just after the arrival of the letter.

Then the letter itself had done a good deal. (He smoothed it out on his knee and glanced at it again.) How sensible and manly it was--just businesslike. It was from good old Dick. Dick said something perfectly courteous about certain rumours he had heard as to Jack's having given up cricket, but refused to believe it. Jack couldn't be such a fool, said the letter. Then came the offer.

What rot all that had been! Why the devil shouldn't a Catholic play cricket? Why the Church allowed recreation even of kinds that others thought dangerous, such as horse-racing. What a mad ass he had been! Why even Mary had laughed at him! And Father Banting, too, he had been very plain about fanaticism, and had even urged him to go on with his sports.

But the final thing had been Mary just now.

Jack crossed one leg over the other, beat out his pipe into an ash-tray, and resettled his position.

He hadn't answered that letter! Why not? Well, it had seemed more decent somehow to tell Mary first. Oh, yes, he had intended to tell Mary, of course. That was why he had the letter in his pocket. But then before he could get a word out had come this beastly scene. He had behaved like a brute. (Yes, he must look in at Mary and really apologise. But of course Mary would understand. She was so sensible, at least she had been.)

Of course she didn't mean what she said just now. It was just a bit of morbidity, the result of seeing him day after day going on with his prayers and his ridiculous meditation and all the rest of it. (Oh, that meditation! What a burden it had been!)

Yes, that was it. It was all his own fault for behaving like a fool. He must tell her that, and it would be all right again.

Well, it was her suddenly saying that about being willing that had caused all the row. It had been so unexpected, and when he was already in a devil of a temper.

The letter fell from his knee, and he picked it up. Yes, he must answer it before he went to bed. That would settle it.

To-morrow? Mass? No, he was too much done. Besides, it wasn't Sunday. Really, this nonsense about daily Mass was too much. No, he'd go on Sundays, of course. He must set an example. And perhaps on Thursdays. Well, he'd think about that. There was no hurry. To-day was Monday.

That letter. Oh, yes, he must answer it.

He got up, carrying the letter, and went across to the writing-table, near the window. But even then he hesitated. He put the letter carefully down, and stood looking at it. Why, what in the world was he hesitating about? Why the deuce shouldn't a Catholic play cricket in South Africa?

He looked up meditatively to the window. Yes, that was right; the windows were wide open. What a heavenly night!

He leaned on the sill and stared out.

The enormous night lay there before him, mysterious and infinite. The world seemed very quiet. Below spread the park in the dim darkness, blotted here and there by clumps of trees. No lights sparkled in the village. It must be getting late. And above him lay that gulf of stars, immeasurable, remote, and watching--a vast span, cut overhead by the parapet, arching down opposite to the tops of the hills across the valley. There came to his nostrils the smell of the sweet earth and the dreaming flowers, to his ears the silence of English country at night, as familiar and living as the sleep of a child. It seemed friendly indeed, but full of secrets, and extraordinarily solemn. A kind of memory, like a far-off echo, came to him of his dreams a year ago when he had thought himself dying, of the lawns of the old house, the gavotte, his parents, the river and the water-plants, and the rest. There was enough in common between the emotion of those things and of the solemn moonlight. But he thought of them with an almost entire contempt...

There he stood for a full minute, looking, smelling, listening, and hesitating.

Then with a jerk he turned away and sat down at the writing-table.

Chapter XII

I

ONCE more there was a little excitement in the village, as at the arrival of the nuns, when it became known that Lady Sarah and her husband were to stay at the Hall for a fortnight. The events of the last few months were perfectly known, even to an elaboration of detail, in that strange manner in which secrets do get out.

First there had been the letting of Lady Carberry's house--or rather Sarah's--for a term of two years, and the going abroad of the mistress. Then, like a thunderbolt, the news of the marriage in October, scarcely six months after the old lady's death. Mr. Fakenham was only known as a well-dressed figure who occasionally walked through the village with his trout-rod; but it was known that he was an old friend, and had stayed with her ladyship in several consecutive years. On the whole the affair was approved of, particularly when it was considered that Lady Sarah's sole remaining aunt--with whom she had gone abroad--had also died in August, and that the girl had no other relations in the world. A husband was the best thing for her under the circumstances.

Once more, therefore, at the close of an afternoon in late November, there was gathered a little group at the lodge gate to see the brougham drive through; and it was thought that it would be a pleasant distraction for Mrs. Weston, all alone now, through the absence of her husband in South Africa.

Sarah herself was very content as she drove up to the house. She had had a delightful month, very quietly, with her husband in Wales--that husband in whom she still felt a very considerable pride. He was really a very clever man; he was entirely presentable, and now that he had resigned his position in the Home Office, he was free to come and go with her as he liked. He had not been very well; the routine of the office was very trying to his nerves; and the fact that now he had no earthly reason for continuing with work that was distasteful to him had finished the affair finally. He had told her, in a burst of confidence, that there was any amount of occupation in the world generally for a man of his tastes; and he had begun once more his collection of first editions. It was a very pleasant life that these two were to lead in future. They had let the Manningham house for the present, but they were already negotiating for another; they were to divide their time between town and country; they were going to enjoy themselves very much indeed in doing nothing in particular.

"My dearest," said Sarah, and threw herself into Mary's arms in the hall.

Sarah's first preoccupation, when the two were alone after tea in the morning-room, was to say a word or two about the difficulties of dressing suitably in her double character of bride and mourner.

I forget how the matter had been solved by Madame Valérie, but Mary assured her that it had been solved satisfactorily; and told her, in other words, that her appearance was heartless neither to the dead nor the living.

That was all right then; and Sarah began to attend to her friend.

"And you, dearest--how are you? You're looking rather pale."

Mary said she was very well indeed.

"And Mr. Jack? Has he reached Capetown? Aren't you fearfully lonely?"

"I had a wire yesterday," said Mary. "He begins to play next week."

There fell a little pause.

Sarah had written demanding explanations of the very short sentence in which Mary had informed her of Jack's change of plans, but had had no answer. She was determined to have one now; but did not quite know how to begin. She threw back her boa a little further and leaned forwards to the fire, stretching out her hands. The wedding-ring was there.

"Tell me some time, dearest, won't you, all about Mr. Jack; I didn't quite understand--"

"There is really nothing to tell," said Mary quietly, "except what I told you. Jack changed his mind about cricket, and has gone out to South Africa to play."

"That's what you wanted him to do, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"And--and it's all right--?"

"Yes, it's all right," said Mary.

"Really and truly?"

Mary nodded.

Well, that was the end of that, for the present. Even Sarah saw that it was no good going on just then. But as they talked of all the things that they would talk about--of Jim, of the wedding, of Switzerland, and the rest--Sarah was observing with all her might. The impression she received could not be put into words; she could not even formulate it in thought, beyond telling herself that "something" had happened. Mary looked really perfectly well; she was charmingly dressed; she talked naturally and easily; she asked the proper questions; she made the proper answers; and yet something hung down like an obscuring veil, through which glimmered formless things whose nature could not be detected. There was a gravity about her, yet not a gravity different either in kind or degree from gravities that Sarah had observed before; there was an air of reticence, yet of a reticence that she had seen before, and that had broken suddenly and abruptly into whirling confidence. Only, this evening, this did not break.

At dinner it was the same. The three talked genially, pleasantly; Jim made the kind of remarks that he did make in congenial and admirative company; Mary appreciated them beautifully, as Sarah, glancing up quickly, observed with pleasure; and everything went very well indeed. Yet there was this kind of note sounding in the background; Mary presented only one superficies of herself, the rest was somewhere else.

The husband and wife talked it thoroughly well over that night--Sarah in bed, Jim smoking a cigarette on the hearthrug after half an hour alone in the smoking-room.

"It's all a matter of temperament," said Jim.

"Yes, I know, but it isn't Mary's temperament. That's the point. Mary's not a bit like that really. Why, six months ago she'd have told me the whole thing in ten minutes. Something's happened, and I don't know what. I believe she's been alone here ever since her husband went."

"It's temperament for all that. You must make allowances for temperament. It's only a part that you haven't yet seen. But it's a part."

Sarah was not attending.

"Tell me again what Algy Lennox told you."

Jim sighed and flicked away his ash.

"Oh, nothing much. They were ragging Weston in the smoking-room, and he lost his temper. Bad form that."

"Which?"

"Both. Why can't people mind their own business? Well, he lost his temper. And two days later Algy heard from him that he'd accepted this invitation."

"That's all?"

Jim nodded. Sarah sighed and drew the bedclothes close under her chin.

"But I don't understand why Mary isn't pleased. It's what she was always wanting him to do. Why, she burst into tears when she found him burning his bats."

Jim said nothing.

"And now--Jim dear, what do you think?"

"Perhaps she's turned religious too."

Sarah was silent a moment.

"No," she said, "not like that. You're wrong there. Mary's thoroughly sensible. Of course she s more religious than she was; but--"

"She goes to Mass every day," observed Jim; "she said so at dinner."

"Yes, I know; but that's not--"

Sarah stopped again.

She felt extraordinarily piqued by the situation, and rather resentful too. She was in a particularly expansive mood just now. Her mother's death had relieved her from a real moral incubus, her newfound liberty, her hotel life in the summer, her marriage--all those things had combined to make her so; and it was really annoying to meet with reticence from one whom she considered she knew through and through.

"Go and ask the nuns," said Jim suddenly, throwing the stump of his cigarette into the fire behind him. Sarah started.

"Jim, that's perfectly brilliant. I will. The Mother's sure to know, and I'll get it out of her. Now, please don't dawdle any more. I want to go to sleep."

II

There was an excellent opportunity for this next morning. Mary told her, with quite the right amount of regret, that she had a hundred things to do, and wouldn't be free till eleven. So about a quarter-past ten, after a large breakfast, up went Sarah.

The little parlour appeared to her more repulsive than ever. Not content with Sainte Thérèse, someone had hung up yet another appalling effigy, of a shaven man in brown and white, clasping a book, beside the other picture. This time Mary was not there, and there was no need, therefore, for any kind of pose; she could study during the few minutes of waiting, honestly and sincerely, not the details only, but the entire effect of this little room. Yet its message was as illegible to her as hieroglyphics. It must mean something--she saw that; it must stand for some aspect of life, yet it was one she could not interpret. It could not be a sheer love of ugliness, not even simple carelessness, that was the ideal; for the boards were spotlessly clean, the table exactly in the middle, and even a bunch of flowers upon that. Well, she accepted the fact that it meant something she did not understand, and concluded by the same act of thought that it was not worth understanding: it was plainly medieval and foreign and second-rate. Probably, too, all the nuns were rather middle-class.

When the curtain was back at last, and the proper things had been said, and mutual enquiries made, Sarah started for her goal with superb assurance. She knew perfectly well that she, with all her experience and tact, would get out of this guileless old creature all that she wanted without difficulty.

"Reverend Mother," she said, "I want to ask you about Madame Weston. Can you tell me what is the matter with her?"

"Eh? Is she ill?" asked the veiled enigma. "Madam was at Mass, I think--"

"Oh, yes: I don't mean in that way. But about Mr. Weston and all that. Mary seems unhappy--well, not perhaps unhappy, but strange."

"I regret it infinitely," said the old lady. "Monsieur her husband is away; and the loneliness perhaps--"

"No, no, my mother. I do not mean with regard to that. But Mr. Weston has changed his manner of life again; and it seems to me that Mary is not very happy about it. Six months ago--"

"But, madam, explain yourself, if you please. Monsieur Weston is an excellent Catholic--"

"Oh, yes, yes. I don't mean that," explained Sarah, a little irritated at the very slow comprehension of this old lady; "I meant with regard to other things. Monsieur Weston was so strict a few months ago; and now all is changed again. I don't understand Mary in the least. Six months ago she was urging him to be--be ordinary" (Sarah wondered for one wild instant whether "ordinaire" exactly expressed the thought)--"to be like other people, and now that he has commenced again she--she seems not pleased."

"Eh well," remarked the old lady, in a conclusive kind of voice.

This was not illuminating; and Sarah began all over again. It was annoying to have so small a vocabulary; it was annoying to have to discharge this slender weapon through two banks of grating; but it was simply maddening to find on the other side a stupidity even greater than she had supposed. It appeared as if no combination of French words could convey even a hint of the subtle question she attempted to put. She was aware, of course, that every woman who could deliberately (and even more, if acquiescently) confine herself "between four walls" must have been exceptionally dull, even before she had become a nun; but this dullness seemed to her remarkable. Once only did she suspect for a moment that the dullness was assumed; and that interpretation vanished a moment later as the old lady began to discourse on health in general, with a particular application to Mrs. Weston of so sensitive a constitution. Sarah put it all as patiently as she could, over and over again; and each time, before she could drive the point home, some smooth surface was interposed, and the conversation slid off at an angle. She gave it up at last, trembling a little with indignation.

"Eh well, Reverend Mother," she said (she was very much pleased with the naturalness of her Eh bien) "I see Mary has not confided in you."

"Eh," came back the murmur; "but to you, her friend, madam, no doubt--"

"And, of course," went on Sarah rather hastily, entirely unable to resist a little dig, "living as you do in the convent, it is impossible for you to understand what goes on outside."

"Yes, yes, madam; we are but poor nuns who know nothing. You will pray for us the more, is it not so?"

The answer was perfectly courteous, almost deprecating. Yet for a moment Sarah again wondered whether the mind behind were quite as flat as appeared. But no; it was impossible that this nun should know anything. The stupidity was too well marked. Besides, was it not to be expected?... and so on.

"Well, good-bye, Reverend Mother. We are to be here a fortnight--"

"And you will come again to see us, will you not?" said the tranquil voice, "and give us the news? Come as often as you please, madam."

And Sarah went away with her suspicions lulled.

III

Her direct assault upon Mary--for, of course, she made one, and that no later than that very evening--was, at any rate, decisive for the time, though not in the way she intended.

The two were sitting together as they had sat last night. Jim, who had got thoroughly wet through in the afternoon, and had half dressed on coming in, had wandered away to the smoking-room in dress trousers and a Norfolk jacket; and an excellent opportunity displayed itself.

She began with a stratagem.

"I went up to see the Reverend Mother this morning," she said, "as I told you. We had a delightful conversation about you, my dear."

Mary lifted her eyes and let them fall again.

"Really, darling? How extraordinarily interesting it must have been. What did you say?"

"Oh, we talked about you," said Sarah vaguely, trying to get a world of suggestiveness into her voice. "Mary dear, do you know you've become quite different since I saw you last?"

"How do you mean, my dear? Deterioration?"

Sarah looked up from the low stool which she had drawn quite close to the fire. But Mary's face was quite impassive, with a flicker of only the very faintest humour upon it. She was sewing gently at something or other on her lap.

"You're different," said Sarah emphatically. "Tell me. Have you had a row with Jack?"

Mary fumbled in her workbox, drew out a letter and tossed it to her friend.

"Read that," she said. "Yes, I mean it."

Sarah read it: it was a very friendly and cheerful note from Jack, quite in his old manner, dated from Madeira or Gibraltar or somewhere.

"I don't understand," said Sarah.

"Well, my dear," said Mary sedately, "you asked me whether we have had a row. I ask you, Does that note look like it?"

"You're trying to fence," said Sarah, struck by a brilliant inspiration; "you don't answer."

Mary laid down her work and looked straight at her friend. (It must be remembered that these two really did know one another quite well.)

"Do you mean you want to know whether Jack and I have had a breach, and that my air of mystery means that I am a broken-hearted and deserted wife?"

(It was a good sentence. It had been carefully prepared by Mary two days before.)

"Well, yes, more or less," said Sarah.

"Then I'll tell you, No. Jack and I are excellent friends. Quite excellent. Can I do anything more for you, my dear?"

"And you've had no rows?"

"Oh, my dearest, of course we've had rows. And so will you and Jim, before long. But we've always apologised and made it up, quite beautifully; as I hope you and Jim will."

"And there's no row on now?"

"Absolutely none. We're on as excellent terms as ever."

Sarah stared at the fire without speaking; she heard only the lap of the flames and the gentle rip of the thread through the silk beside her. Then she sighed loudly.

"Oh well, if you won't tell me, you won't."

The rip of the thread ceased.

"Sarah," came a stern voice, "will you kindly tell me exactly what's in your mind?"

"It's this," burst out Sarah indignantly. "There's something up. There's this thing of Jack's--I mean his suddenly changing round again and becoming just what you wanted him. And there are you, as grave as a cat, telling me nothing, and trying to pretend that there's nothing the matter. You didn't write anything to me. You won't tell me anything. All right, then don't. And there's that stupid old woman up there--"

"What old woman?"

"Why, the Reverend Mother, of course! I could have--could have slapped her face; only there were the bars between."

"Then you went up to find out all about me, did you?"

"Of course I did!"

"What! After your experience with Father Banting too--that old sheep, as you once called him?"

Sarah looked slightly offended.

"And she didn't understand what you wanted?" pursued Mary relentlessly.

"No; she was too stupid. I never met such a--"

Mary's face rippled all over with laughter.

"You really thought that?"

"Why, of course--what else could I think?"

"Do you know who the Reverend Mother once was?"

"Once was! Why, I suppose she was always a nun, wasn't she? At least--"

"Have you ever heard of Pauline, the writer?"

"I've read her books, of course," said Sarah sulkily.

"Well, she is Pauline. Or she was, forty years ago."

"Pauline! Do you mean--?"

"I mean what I say. Only you mustn't tell her you know, please. I only found it out by chance."

This was so bewildering that Sarah ran clean off the scent. But she was whipped on to it again.

"Whether she knows or not, is not to the point," went on Mary severely. "Only perhaps you'll remember next time that we aren't all abject fools. I should have thought your time with Father Banting would have taught you that. Dear Sarah, I love you, you know; but really you're rather stupid about Catholic things. I know you only think it a matter of temperament and all that, but I assure you there's more in it than you think. We do know our job, you know." (Mary broke off.) "And do you really think that if she did know anything she'd let it out to you?"

"I--I thought, perhaps--" began Sarah feebly.

"Just so. Well, we can leave that. Now you come to me. Well, I'll tell you this much and no more. Something has happened; but nothing more is going to happen. It's all done with. (I think you're the most inquisitive person I've ever met in all my life, or I wouldn't tell you even this.) But it's all done with. Jack's going to play cricket in South Africa, and is going to play very well too, and make a great many runs. And then he's going to come back here and play all the summer. And then he'll shoot in the winter. And I shall go on doing what I've always done; and you and Jim will come and stay here every year. And we're all going to live happily for ever afterwards. There; that's enough, my dear."

Mary patted the silk on her knee contentedly and observed Sarah with a large smile.

Sarah thought very hard indeed for about ten seconds. Then she threw herself back on the stool, clasping a knee.

"I see," she said, really trying to keep resentment out of her voice. "Now let's talk about something else."

Chapter XIII

I

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.

II

[2]

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 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 convinced 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 thin 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.

III

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 she 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.

IV

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

I

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 blasé 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.

II

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.

III

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."

The End

Notes

[1] I cannot find that this nobleman ever did anything beyond writing four pamphlets on Indian Administration that are very severe against the Liberal policy of his day. He seems to have been a man of almost startling obscurity; and I suspect him of having been henpecked by his wife.

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

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