CHAPTER I.
About a quarter of a century ago, under a bright May morning sun, the English Channel Squadron steamed into the harbour of the French town of Harbourg, with flags half-mast high. The Captain of one of the vessels had lost his young wife that morning.
Until the very hour of her death, the poor fellow had persisted in believing that she was getting better, that the weakness which had been growing for months on the fragile little lady, the paleness of her delicate cheeks, the feebleness of her sweet voice would pass away. And now they had indeed passed away—into waxen death, and the twenty-year-old wife lay peacefully in the little state cabin, while her husband, stunned by uncomprehending grief, stood beside her with her baby in his arms, not hearing its soft babble of inarticulate sounds, not seeing anything but that horrible, agonising, still image of the woman he had frantically loved.
“Speak to mamma, baby, wake her, wake her!” he had cried when, noticing how still and white his wife had grown, and refusing to own the truth, he had rushed out of the cabin, snatched the child from its nurse, and held out its little warm arms towards its mother. But the white, thin arms had lost their tenderness, and lay still; the cold mouth met that of the child with no loving kiss; and as the great brown eyes stared fixedly and without meaning at the ceiling, where the reflection of the sparkling blue water outside danced and shimmered, the man’s heart was torn by a pang of maddened comprehension, and a black pall was cast for ever, for him, upon the whole world.
Six hours later, when the sun was declining, and a fresh breeze was blowing from the sea, and the angelus was sounding from the chapel of the grey-walled convent, whose turrets rose up high upon the cliffs above the town, a stranger rang for admission at the convent-gate. The little sister who peeped at him through the wicket and then slowly opened the door, was rather alarmed by his appearance, and found the foreign accent in which he asked to see the Mother-Superior difficult to understand. But she would not have dared deny him admittance, for there was something in his curt tone and manner which would have made refusal of any demand of his impossible to the meek nun.
As the Gothic-pointed outer door clanged to behind them, and the stranger stepped in out of the shining sunlight into the darkness of the white-washed cloisters, a little cry rose up from the burden he carried in his arms, and the woman’s heart went out in an instant to the hidden morsel of humanity.
“Holy mother!” cried she, “it’s a child! Let me see it, monsieur.”
The stranger’s hard features did not soften, but a light came into his eyes as he drew aside the shawl which covered the child and showed a weird, pale little face, with great frightened dark eyes.
“She has no mother?” whispered the sister, with quick apprehension and sympathy.
“God help her! no,—unless,” and the man’s hoarse voice trembled,—“unless she finds one here.”
The sound of sweet singing from the little chapel began to be heard, muffled, through the cloister walls, and then it swelled louder as the chapel door opened, and another dark-robed woman peeped out, hearing the strange footsteps and a man’s voice.
“Come,” said the portress briskly, “this way, monsieur, you shall see the Mother-Superior yourself.”
The smell of the white lilac came in from the quiet garden as they passed through the cloister, and entered a great, square, bare-looking room, with a floor polished like glass, high white-washed walls, a round table, and a regiment of rush-bottomed chairs placed stiffly against the wainscoting. A very large plain bookcase containing brightly-bound religious and devotional works, a gloomy-looking oil-painting of a former Mother-Superior, and a black stove standing out from the wall, completed the furniture of the convent visitors’ room.
After some delay, the Mother-Superior came in. She was an elderly lady with a face of intellectual type, to which the habit of her Order gave a look of some severity. The stranger took in every detail of her appearance with a searching look, and opened his business abruptly.
“I am in great trouble, madam,” he began, in a harsh voice, “where to find a home for my little girl. And as I was wondering, down in the harbour there, what I should do with her, I saw your walls looking down over the water, and heard your bells, and I thought perhaps she might find a shelter here. I am a sailor, and I have—no one to trust her with.”
His voice got out of his control on the last words. The Superior looked perplexed, but not yielding. As he unfolded the shawl which was wrapped round the child, she gently shook her head.
“We couldn’t undertake the care of a child as young as that,” she said, not unkindly. “She can’t be more than two.”
“That’s all,” said her father.
“Her mother——” began the Superior gently.
“Died this morning,” said he hoarsely.
“Oh!” The lady uttered this exclamation in a low voice, and bent at once over the child, taking its little hand tenderly. “I am afraid my sombre robe may frighten her,” she said.
But the child did not draw back, only looked wonderingly at the lined face, at the snowy linen and the thick black veil.
“Is she of our religion?”
“No.”
“But you of course wish her to be brought up a Catholic?”
“No.”
The good Mother looked up in surprise.
“Then what induced you to bring her here?”
“Where women are I expected to find kindness and mercy for my motherless child.”
“You are English, monsieur?”
“Yes.”
“And you would trust Catholics, Frenchwomen, as much as that?”
“I have been a traveller, madam, and I am no bigot.”
The Superior, with her face wrinkled up with deepest perplexity, looked from him to the child, who had stretched out her tiny fingers for the rosary.
“You see this omen. Does not that frighten you?”
The stranger hesitated, and looked down upon his little daughter, who was clasping the crucifix with delight. Like most sailors, of high and low degree, he was superstitious.
“One must risk something,” he said at last bluntly. “And if I’m ready to risk that, surely you might give way.”
“I would if I could. My heart yearns to the poor little creature. But she would be very unsuitably placed here. Have you no friends, no relations, who would take charge of her?”
He laughed shortly.
“Plenty. I am not a poor man, madam; I did not use that as an inducement to you, for it’s not money-bought kindness I want for my—my poor wife’s child. But you could name what sum you like for her keep, education, anything.”
“I had not thought of that, monsieur,” said the Superior, with more dignity. “We take older girls to educate, but——”
“But not my poor lame baby. Very well.”
He was wrapping the child up quickly, when the Superior stopped him by one word uttered in a different tone.
“Stop!”
The stranger, without pausing in his work, looked up.
“Lame, did you say?”
“Yes, I said lame,” he answered shortly. “I had forgotten that further disqualification. A d——, I mean a fool of a nurse dropped her on the deck when she was seven months old, and—and she’s lame, will always be so. Come, Freda, we’ll get out in the sunshine and warm ourselves again.”
The great room was cold, and the child’s lips and nails began to look blue. But before he could reach the door, he saw the black garments beside him again, and with a quick, strong, peremptory movement the child was taken out of his arms.
“Lame! Poor angel. You should have told me that before.”
The heavy veil drooped over the little one, and the father knew that she had found a home.
“God bless you, and all the saints too, madam, if it comes to that!” he said with a tremor in his voice. And he cleared his throat two or three times as, with uncertain, fumbling fingers, he searched for something in his pockets.
At last he drew out a soiled envelope, which he placed upon the table. It was directed simply “To the Mother-Superior, Convent of the Sacred Heart.” The lady read the direction with surprise.
“You were pretty sure of success in your mission, then, when you came up here?”
“Yes, madam, I have always believed I could succeed in everything—until—this morning.”
His harsh voice broke again.
“You will find in that envelope an address from which any communication will be forwarded to me. It is an old house on the Yorkshire coast, which has been shut up now for many years. But there is a caretaker who will send on letters.”
“And some day you will open the place again, and want your daughter to keep house for you?”
He shook his head.
“It’s a lonely place, and would frighten a girl. The birds build their nests about it. I believe the towns-folk have named it Sea-Mew Abbey. Good-bye, madam, and thank you for your goodness. Good-bye, Freda.”
He printed one hasty kiss on the pale baby face of his daughter, and the next moment his heavy footsteps were echoing down the cloister. The Mother-Superior heard the outer door clang behind him and shut him out into the world again, and then, still clasping the child in her arms, she opened the envelope which the stranger had left. It contained English bank-notes for fifty pounds, and a card with the following name and address on it:
“Captain Mulgrave, R. N.,
“St. Edelfled’s, Presterby, Yorkshire.”
As she read the words, the child in her arms began to cry. At the sound of the little one’s voice, one of the many doors of the room softly opened; and secure from observation, as they thought, two or three of the sombrely clad sisters peeped curiously in.
But the good Mother’s eyes had grown keen with long watchfulness; she saw the white-framed faces as the door hurriedly closed.
“Sister Monica, Sister Theresa!” she called, but in no stern voice.
And the two nuns, trembling and abashed, but not sorry to be on the point of having their curiosity satisfied even at the cost of a rebuke, came softly in.
“We have a new little inmate,” said the Superior in a solemn voice, “a tender young creature whom God, for His own all-wise purposes, has chastened by two severe misfortunes, even at this early age. She is lame, and she has lost her earthly mother.”
A soft murmur of sympathy, low, yet so full that it seemed as if other voices from the dim background took it up and prolonged it, formed a sweet chorus to the kindly-spoken words. The Superior went on:
“I have promised the father of this child that, so far as by the help of God and His blessed saints we may, we will supply the place of the blessings she has lost. Will you help me, all of you? Yes, all of you.”
And again the soft murmur “Yes, yes,” of the two nuns before her was taken up by a dimly-seen chorus.
“Come in, then, and kiss your little sister.”
They trooped in softly, the dark-robed nuns, their rosaries jangling on the bare boards as they knelt, one by one, and kissed the tiny soft face of the child in the Superior’s arms. Bending close to the baby in the dim twilight which had now fallen on convent and garden, until the snowy linen about their calm faces fell with cold touch on the tiny hands, they scanned the childish features lovingly, and rose up one by one, bound by holy promises of tenderness and sympathy to the little one.
And so, before the evening primroses in the convent garden had shut up their pale faces for the night, and the cattle had been driven to their sheds on the hill, Freda Mulgrave was no longer motherless.