Agnes Lahens - Chapter 2

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_ AGNES LAHENS
CHAPTER II

Agnes wore a jacket made of some dark material, she held a little fur muff in her hand, and under a black straw hat her blue eyes smiled; and when she caught sight of her mother she uttered a happy cry.

Mrs. Lahens looked at Agnes curiously; at this thin girl; for, though Agnes' face was round and rosy, her waist was slender, and her hands, and hips, and bosom; and Mrs. Lahens was unconsciously affected by the contrast that her own regular and painted features, and her long life of social adventure, presented to this pretty, dovelike girl, this pale conventual rose, without instinct of the world, and into whose guileless mind no knowledge of the world would apparently ever enter.

'Oh, father, how are you? I did not see you, the room is so dark.' Agnes kissed her father, and with her right hand in her mother's left hand, and her left hand in her father's left she looked at her parents, overcome by her affection for them. But suddenly remembering, she said:

'But I haven't introduced you to Father White. How rude of me! Father White was good enough to see me home. The Mother Abbess was afraid I should get into a wrong train, or get run over in the streets.'

The little priest came forward shyly. His black cloth trousers were too short, and did not hide his clumsy laced boots. His features were small and regular, and his light-brown hair grew thick on his little round head, which he carried on one side. He was young, seven or eight and twenty, and so good-looking that some unhappy romantic passion suggested itself as the cause of his long black coat and penitential air.

'I'm sure that we're very much obliged to you for your kindness, Father White,' said Mrs. Lahens.

'I was going to London, and the Mother Abbess asked me to take charge of Miss Lahens, and surrender her safe into your hands.'

'Won't you sit down, Father White?' said Mrs. Lahens. 'I want to talk to you about Agnes. I hope you will stop to lunch.... I wish you would.'

'Thank you, but I'm afraid I cannot. I have an engagement to lunch with the Dominicans.'

'I'm sorry, but you can spare me a few minutes,' said Mrs. Lahens, leading him away.

Lord Chadwick came forward and shook hands with Agnes.

'I'm afraid you've forgotten me, Agnes. It is nearly five years---'

'No; I haven't, at least not quite. It was in the country, at the cottage in Surrey. You're the gentleman who used to go out driving with mother.'

'Yes; you're right so far, I used to go out driving with Mrs. Lahens. You used to come too.'

'And very often you used to speak French to mother. I never could understand why--I used to think and think.'

'And do you remember any of the things he used to say in French?' said Mr. Moulton.

'No; I didn't understand French then.'

'But you do now?'

'Yes. Our school is one of the best; we are taught everything.'

'I'm sorry for that. There'll be nothing for us to teach you.'

'For you to teach me?' said Agnes, looking at him inquiringly.

At that moment the servant announced Mr. Harding. The Major went forward and welcomed him cordially.

'You see, you've lost your bet,' Moulton whispered to Harding.

'We were very sorry to lose her,' said Father White, 'and she was sorry to leave, but it would not be right for her to take vows to enter a severe order until she has seen the world and had opportunities of knowing if she has a vocation. On that point I shall be very firm with her, you can rely on me, Mrs. Lahens.'

'I'm afraid that she will never care for society. I'm afraid that this experience will not prove of much avail. She'll return to the convent, I shall be sorry to lose her.'

'She's indeed a good girl, and if she finds that she has a vocation--'

'Now, you are speaking about me,' said Agnes. 'I can hear the word vocation.'

Mrs. Lahens smiled and was about to reply when the servant announced Miss Lilian Dare.

Lilian was a red blonde; her rich chestnut hair fell over her ears like wings, and she was showily dressed in an expensive French gown which did not suit her, which made her seem older than she was.

'So you have come alone?'

'Yes, dear Lady Duckle was not feeling well this morning; she sends you her love, and begs you'll excuse her.'

'Oh yes, we'll excuse her. But tell me, Lilian,' said Mrs. Lahens, taking the girl aside, 'how do you like living with her?'

'It is delightful, you don't know what it means to me to get away from home--all those brothers and sisters--that hateful suburb.'

'You must never speak of it again. Islington, where is that? you must say if Islington should happen in the conversation, which is not likely. I always told you that you'd have to throw your family over. We want you, not your family. Chaperons nowadays are a make-believe. Lady Duckle will suit you very well; she'll feel ill when you don't want her, when you do she'll be all there. She's an honest old thing, and will do all that's required of her for the money you pay her. Thirty pounds a month, that's it, isn't it, dear?'

The servant announced Lady Castlerich.

Lady Castlerich disguised her seventy years under youthful gowns and an extraordinary yellow wig. She wore a large black hat trimmed with black ostrich plumes, it became her; she looked quite handsome, and her cracked and tremulous voice was as full of sympathy as her manner was of high breeding. She seemed very fond of Lilian, and was soon engaged in conversation with her.

'You mustn't disappoint me, my dear; you must come to my shootin' party on the twenty-fifth, and dear Lady Duckle, I hope she'll come too, though she is rather a bore. I shall have plenty of beaux for you, there is my neighbour Lord Westhorpe, he's young and handsome, a beautiful place, charmin', my dear. And if you don't like him, there's my old lover Appletown, you know, my dear, all that is a long while ago. I said to Appletown more than ten years ago--"Appletown, this must end, I am an old woman." You've no idea the look he gave me. "Florence," he said, "don't call yourself an old woman, I can't bear it. You'll never be an old woman, at least not in my eyes." Charmin', wasn't it; no one but a nice man could speak like that. So we've always remained friends, Appletown has his rooms at Morelands, and he does as he likes. He likes you, dear, he told me so. I've got a telegram from him, I'll show it to you after lunch.'

The servant announced Mr. Herbert St. Clare, a fastidiously-dressed man. He was tall and thin, and his eyes were pale and agreeable; his beard was close-clipped, he played with his eye-glass, and shook hands absent-mindedly.

'Oh, Mr. St. Clare, I'm enchanted with your last song,' said Lady Castlerich. 'Every one is talking of it, it is quite the rage, charmin', I wish I had had it ten years ago, my voice is gone now.'

'You still sing charmingly, Lady Castlerich, not much voice is required if the singer is a musician.'

'You're very kind,' and the old lady laughed with pleasure, and Mrs. Lahens smiled satirically, and whispered:

'Oh, you fibber, St. Clare.'

'I'm not fibbing,' he answered; 'she sings the old Italian airs charmingly.'

Soon after lunch was announced, and Mrs. Lahens once more asked Father White to stay. He begged her to excuse him, and she went into the diningroom leaving him in the passage with Agnes.

'Good-bye, my dear child, I shall see you next week. I will write telling you when I'm coming, and you'll tell me what you think of the world. The convent is only for those who have a vocation. You can serve God in the world as well as elsewhere.'

'I wonder,' said Agnes, and she looked doubtfully into the priest's eyes. 'I wonder. I confess I'm a little curious. At present I do not understand at all.'

'Of course the convent is very different from the world,' said Father White. 'You learnt to understand the convent, now you must learn to understand the life of the world.'

'Must I? Why must I?'

'So that you may be sure that you have a vocation. Good-bye, dear child. The Lord be with you.'

Agnes went into the dining-room, and she noticed that every one was listening to her father, who was talking of the success her mother had had at a concert. She had sung two songs by Gounod and Cherubino's _Ave Maria_. He declared that he had never seen anything like it. He wished every one had been there. His wife was in splendid voice. It was a treat, and the public thought so too.

Agnes listened and was touched by her father's admiration and love for her mother. But very soon she perceived that the others were listening superciliously. Suddenly Mrs. Lahens intervened. 'My dear Major, you're talking too much, remember your promise.' The Major said not another word, and Agnes felt sorry for her father. She remembered him far back in her childhood, always a little weak and kind, always devoted to her mother, always praising her, always attending on her, always carrying her music, reminding her of something she had forgotten, and running to fetch it. Looking at him now, after many years, she remembered that she used to see more of him than she did of her mother. He used to come to see her in the nursery, and she remembered how they used to go out together and sit on the stairs, so that they might hear mother, who was singing in the drawing-room. She remembered that she used to ask her father why they could not go to the drawing-room. He used to answer that mother had visitors. She used to hear men's voices, and then mother would call her father down to wish them good-bye.

Her memories of her mother were not so distinct. She never saw her mother except on the rare occasions when she was admitted to the drawing-room; she remembered her standing in long shining dresses with long trains curled around her feet, which she kicked aside when she advanced to receive some visitor; or she remembered her mother on the stairs, a bouquet in her hand, a diamond star in her hair; the front door was open, and the lamps of the brougham gleamed in the dark street. Then her mother would kiss her, and tell her she must be a good girl, and go to sleep when she went to bed.

There had never seemed to be but one person in the house, and that was mother. Where was mother going, to the theatre, to a dinner-party, to the opera? and the phrase 'When shall the carriage come to fetch mother' had fixed itself on her memory. And in her mother's bedroom-- the largest and handsomest room in the house--she remembered the maid opening large wardrobes, putting away soft white garments, laces, green silk and pink petticoats, more beautiful than the dresses that covered them. The large white dressing-table, strewn with curious ivories, the uses of which she could not imagine, had likewise fixed itself on her memory. She remembered the hand-glasses, the scattered jewellery, the scent-bottles, and the little boxes of powder and rouge, and the pencil with which her mother darkened her eyebrows and eyelids. For Mrs. Lahens had always been addicted to the use of cosmetics, therefore the paint on her mother's face did not shock Agnes as it might otherwise have done. But she could not but notice that it had increased. Her mother's mouth seemed to her now like a red wound. Ashamed of the involuntary comment, Agnes repelled all criticism, and threw herself into the belief that all her mother did was right, that she was the best and most beautiful woman in London, that to be her daughter was the highest privilege.

Her thoughts were entirely with her parents; and she had hardly spoken to the men on either side of her. Mr. Moulton had asked her if she were glad to come home, if she rejoiced in the prospect of balls and parties, if she were sorry to leave her favourite nun. She had answered his questions briefly, and he had returned to his exchange of gallantries with Lady Castlerich, who he hoped would invite him to Morelands. Agnes did not quite like him. She liked Mr. St. Clare better. St. Clare had asked her if she sang, and when she told him that she was leading soprano in the convent choir he had talked agreeably until Miss Dare said:

'Now, Mr. St. Clare, leave off flirting with Agnes.'

Her remark made every one laugh, and in the midst of the laughter Mrs. Lahens said:

'So my little girl is coming out of her shell.'

'Out of cell,' said Mr. Moulton, laughing.

'Out of her what?' asked Lady Castlerich.

'You don't know, Lady Castlerich, that my Agnes wanted to become a nun, to enter a convent where they get up at four o'clock in the morning to say matins.'

'Oh, how very dreadful,' said Lady Castlerich, 'Agnes must come to my shootin' party.'

'Father White--the priest you saw here just now--brought her home. Fortunately he took our side, and he told Agnes she must see the world; it would be time enough a year hence to think if she had a vocation.'

'Mother dear, he said six months.'

'What, are you tired of us already, Agnes?'

'No, mother, but--' Agnes hung down her head.

'Agnes must come to my shootin' party, we must find a young man for her, there is Mr. Moulton, or would you like Mr. St. Clare better? I hope, Mr. Moulton, you'll be able to come to Morelands on the twenty- fifth.'

Mr. Moulton said that nothing would give him more pleasure, and feeling that Lady Castlerich intended that his charms should for ever obliterate Agnes' conventual aspiration he leaned towards her and asked her if she knew Yorkshire. Morelands was in Yorkshire. His conversation was, however, interrupted by Lady Castlerich, who said in her clear cracked voice:

'We must put Agnes in the haunted room amid the tapestries.'

'No, no, don't frighten her,' whispered the Major.

'But, father, I am not so easily frightened as that.'

'Who haunts the tapestry-room?'

'A nun, dear, so they say; Morelands was a monastery once--a nunnery, I mean. The monastery was opposite.'

'That was convenient,' giggled Mr. Moulton.

'And why does the nun haunt the tapestries?'

'Ah, my dear, that I can't tell you.'

'Perhaps the nun was a naughty nun,' suggested Mr. Moulton. 'Are there no naughty nuns in your convent?'

'Oh, no, not in my convent, all the sisters are very good, you cannot imagine how good they are,' said Agnes, and she looked out of eyes so pale and so innocent that he almost felt ashamed.

'But what a strange idea that was of yours, Agnes,' said Miss Dare across the table, 'to want to shut yourself up for ever among a lot of women, with nothing else to do but to say prayers.'

'You think like that because you do not know convent life. There is, I assure you, plenty to do, plenty to think about.'

'Fancy, they hardly ever speak, only at certain hours,' said Mrs. Lahens.

'It is the getting up at four o'clock in the morning that seems to me the worst part,' said Miss Dare.

'The monotony,' said St. Clare, 'must be terrible; always the same faces, never seeing anything new, knowing that you will never see anything else.'

Agnes listened to these objections eagerly. 'The nuns are not sad at all,' she said. 'If you saw them playing at ball in the garden you would see that they were quite as happy as those who live in the world. I don't know if you are sad in the world; I don't know the world, but I can assure you that there is no sadness in the convent.'

Agnes paused and looked round. Every one was listening, and it was with difficulty she was induced to speak again.... Then in answer to her mother's questions, she said:

'We have our occupations and our interests. They would seem trivial enough to you, but they interest us and we are happy.'

'There must be,' said Lilian, 'satisfaction in having something definite to do, to know where you are going and what you are striving for. We don't know what we are striving for or where we are going. And the trouble we give ourselves! Say what you will, it is something to be spared all that.'

'Yet if we asked the ordinary man,' said Harding, 'what he'd do if he had ten thousand a year, he would answer that he would do nothing. But he may not. The only man who does nothing is the man who suddenly acquires ten thousand a year; he tries to live on his income; he doesn't, he dies of it.'

'And those who are born rich?' asked Moulton.

'They work hard enough, and their work is the hardest of all, their work is amusement. For by some strange misunderstanding all the most tedious and unsatisfactory means of distraction, are termed amusement, betting, gambling, travelling, dinner-parties, love-making. Whereas the valid and sufficient form of distraction, earning your livelihood by the sweat of your brow, is designated by the unpleasant word Labour.'

'But if you are fortunate in love, you're happy,' said old Lady Castlerich, 'I think I have made my lovers happy.'

Harding laughed. 'Happy! for how long?'

'That depends. Love is not a joy that lasts for ever,' the old lady added with a chuckle.

'But did no woman make you happy, Mr. Harding?' asked Lilian, and she fixed her round, prominent eyes upon him.

'The woman who gives most happiness gives most pain. The man who leaves an adoring mistress at midnight suffers most. A few minutes of distracted happiness as he drives home. He falls asleep thanking God that he will see her at midday. But he awakes dreading a letter putting him off. He listens for the footstep of a messenger boy.'

'If she doesn't disappoint him?'

'She will disappoint him sooner or later.'

'I have never disappointed you,' said Lilian, still looking at Harding.

'But you have not been to see me.'

'No; I've not been to see you,' she replied, and played distractedly with some dried fruit on her plate.

'These are confessions,' said Lady Castlerich, laughing.

'Confessions of missed opportunities,' said Moulton.

'So, then, your creed is that love cannot endure,' said Lord Chadwick.

'The love that endures is the heaviest burden of all,' Harding replied incautiously. A silence fell over the lunch table, and all feared to raise their eyes lest they should look at Mrs. Lahens and Lord Chadwick.

'I suppose you are right,' said Mrs. Lahens. 'It is not well that anything should outlive its day. But sometimes it happens so. But look,' she exclaimed, laughing nervously, 'how Agnes is listening to St. Clare. Those two were made for each other. Celibacy and Work. Which is Celibacy and which is Work?'

'I think, Olive,' said the Major, 'that you are rather hard upon the girl. You forget that she has only just come from school and doesn't understand,'

'My dear Major,' said Mrs. Lahens, and her voice was full of contempt for her husband, 'is it you or I who has to take Agnes into society? As I told you before, Agnes will have to accept society as it is. She won't find her convent in any drawing-room I know, and the sooner she makes up her mind on that point, the better for her and the better for us.'

'Society will listen for five minutes,' said Lilian, 'to tales of conventual innocence.'

'And be interested in them,' said Lord Chadwick, 'as in an account of the last burlesque.'

'With this difference,' said Moulton, 'that society will go to the burlesque, but not to the convent.'

Agnes glanced at her mother, seeing very distinctly the painted, worldly face. That her mother should speak so cruelly to her cut her to the heart: and she longed to rush from the room--from all these cruel, hateful people; another word and she would have been unable to refrain, but in the few seconds which had appeared an eternity to Agnes, the conversation suddenly changed. Lilian Dare had returned to the idea expressed by Harding that he had only found happiness in work, and this was St. Clare's opportunity to speak of the opera he was writing.

'In the first act barbarians are making a raft.'

'What are they making the raft for?' asked Lady Castlerich.

'To get to the other side of a lake. They have no women, and they hope to rob the folk on the other side of theirs.'

St. Clare explained the various motives he was to employ; the motive of aspiration, or the woman motive, was repeated constantly on the horns during the building of the raft. St. Clare sang the motive. It was with this motive that he began the prelude. Then came two variations on the motive, and then the motive of jealousy. St. Clare was eager to explain the combinations of instruments he intended to employ, and the effect of his trumpets at a certain moment, but the servant was handing round coffee and liqueurs, and the story of what happened to the women who were carried off on the raft had to be postponed. St. Clare looked disappointed. But he was in a measure consoled when Lady Castlerich told him that they'd go through the opera together when he came to stay with her for her shooting party.

'Won't you sing something, Lilian?' said Mrs. Lahens, as they went upstairs.

'No, dear, I'd sooner not, but you will.'

'I'd sooner sing a little later. I don't know where my music is, it has been all put away. But do you sing. St. Clare will accompany you. Do, to please me,' and Mrs. Lahens sat down in a distant corner.

She had said that very morning, as she painted her face before the glass, 'I am an old woman, or nearly. How many more years? Three at most, then I shall be like Lady Castlerich.' And the five minutes she had spent looking into an undyed and unpainted old age had frightened her. She had hated the world she had worshipped so long. She had hated all things, and wished herself out of sight of all things. That she who had been so young, so beautiful, so delightful to men, should become old, ugly, and undesirable. That she should one day be like Lady Castlerich! That such things should happen to others were well enough; that they should happen to her seemed an unspeakable and revolting cruelty. And it was at that moment that her husband had sent for her. He had told her she must give up her lover for her daughter's sake. Should she do this? Could she do this? She did not know. But this she did know, that the present was not the time to speak to her of it. Give him up, hand him over to that horrid Mrs. Priestly, who was trying all she could to get him. Whatever else might be, that should not be.... She loved her daughter, and would do her duty by her daughter, but they must not ask too much of her.... She had lost her temper, she had said things that she regretted saying; but what matter, what did the poor Major matter--a poor, mad thing like him?

These were the thoughts that filled Mrs. Lahens' mind while Lilian sang. The purity of Lilian's voice was bitterness to Mrs. Lahens, and it was bitterness to remember that St. Clare loved that face. For no one now loved her face except perhaps Chad, and they wanted her to give him up. It was the knowledge that the time of her youth was at an end that forced Mrs. Lahens to say that Lilian sang out of tune, and to revive an old scandal concerning her.

'Surely, mother,' said Agnes, 'all you say did not happen to the young girl who has just left the room?' _

Read next: Agnes Lahens: Chapter 3

Read previous: Agnes Lahens: Chapter 1

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