The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

IV

An hour later an oddly-assorted couple set out for Beacon Abbas, bound for the monastery which had been so great an eyesore to the famous Evangelical peer.

Wantley's critical taste soon found secret fault with the blue-and-white check cotton gown, which, if it intensified the wearer's pure colouring, was surely unsuited to do battle with sea-wind; the sailor-hat, however, was more what the young man, to himself, called de circonstance; but he groaned inwardly over the clumsy shape of the brown laced shoes which encased what he divined to be the pretty, slender feet of his companion, and he thoroughly disapproved of a shabby little black bag fastened to her belt.

It must be admitted that Cecily did not compare, outwardly at least, very favourably with the three girls who had formed part of the house-party he had left the day before, though even in them, as regarded their minds, however, not their appearance, Wantley had found plenty to cavil at.

Perhaps Cecily's critic would have been surprised and rather nettled, had he known that he also was undergoing a keen scrutiny, and one not altogether favourable, from the candid eyes which he had soon decided were the best feature in the girl's serious face.

Wantley's loosely-knit figure, of only medium height, clad in what even she realized were somewhat unconventional clothes for church-going; the short pointed beard (Cecily felt sure that only old gentlemen were entitled to wear beards); the grey eyes twinkling under light eyebrows; the nondescript light-brown hair brushed sleekly across the lined forehead—these did not compose a whole according well with her ideal of young manhood. But, after all, Penelope had declared her cousin to be quite clever enough to be of use to the Settlement. There, as Cecily knew well, even the most unpromising educated human material could almost always be made useful: already, in imagination, she saw Lord Wantley teaching an evening class of youths to draw, for surely Mrs. Robinson had said he was a good artist.

As they walked along the path through the pine-wood, the fresh, keen air, the sunlight falling slantwise through the pine-trees, softened the young man's mood. He felt inclined to bless the girl for her silence: inpertinent appreciation of nature was one of the traits he found most odious in those of his young countrywomen with whom fate—and Penelope—had hitherto brought him in contact. Wantley far preferred the honest—but, oh, how rare!—girl Philistines who bluntly avowed themselves blind to the charms of sea, land, and sky.

Not that he felt inclined to include Cecily Wake among these. He had seen her face when a sudden bend of the path had revealed the long turning coast-line, and spread the wide seas below them; but she had uttered no exclamation, refrained from trite remark, and so the heart of this rather fantastic young man warmed to her.

'And now,' he said, holding open the wicket-gate which led from the wood to the open stretch of down—'and now that the moment has come to reveal our mutual aversions, I will begin by confessing that quite my pet aversion in life has long been your Settlement.' Then, as his companion only reddened by way of answer, he altered his tone, and added more seriously: 'I esteem all that I have ever heard of Melancthon Robinson. I never saw him, for I was in America both when the marriage and when his death took place, but I have no patience with sham playing at Christian Socialism. Of course, I know that the Melancthon Settlement was but a pioneer of better things, and that it has led the way to the establishment of several more practical undertakings.' (Here Cecily bit her lip.) 'But when I think of all that my uncle—I of course mean Penelope's father—accomplished in the way of really benefiting and bettering the condition of our working people, and that, I imagine, without ever even seeing the East End—when I consider how he would have regarded the Melancthon Settlement——'

He smiled a rather ugly smile, but still Cecily Wake made no answer. Nettled by her silence, he added suddenly: 'I will give you an instance of what I mean. You know my cousin Penelope?'

For the first time Wantley realized that the girl walking by his side had a peculiarly charming smile, and he altered, because of that smile, what he had meant to be a franker expression of feeling.

'Now, honestly, Miss Wake, can you imagine Penelope, even in intention, living an austere life among the London poor, and occasionally pulling them up by the roots to see if they were growing better under her earnest guidance? The fact that young Robinson thought it possible that she should ever do so added, to my mind, a touch of absurdity to what was, after all, a sad business.'

'And yet he and she did really live and work at the Settlement,' objected Cecily quietly, and he was rather disappointed that she showed so little vehemence in defence of her friend.

'That's true, tho' I believe Penelope was very often away during the four months the marriage lasted, it was a new experience, and we all enjoy—Penelope more than most of us, perhaps—new experiences and new emotions.'

'But our people'—the girl spoke as if she had not heard his last words, and Wantley was pleased with the low, rounded quality of her voice—'our people, those of them who are still there, for you know that they come and go in that part of London, have never forgotten that time: I mean when Penelope lived at the Settlement. Perhaps you think that poor people do not care about beautiful things; if so, you would be surprised to see how those to whom Mrs. Robinson gave drawings treasure them, how they ask after her, how eager they are to see her!'

'She doesn't often give them that pleasure.' The retort was too obvious. He delighted in being Devil's Advocate, and it amused him to see the colour at last come and go in cheeks still pale from too long acquaintance with London air.

But the time had come to call a truce. The little town of Wyke Regis lay below them, looking, even to the boats lying on the sea, like a medieval map, and, for some time before they reached the road leading to the monastery, they could see streams of people passing through the great doors, which, forming a true French porte-cochère, gave access first to monastic buildings built round three sides of a vast paved courtyard, and then to the spacious gardens and orchard, where jutted out the curious miniature basilica which had been the pride and pleasure of the Popish Lord Wantley.

To Cecily's surprise, perhaps a little to her disappointment, Wantley refused to accompany her into the chapel; instead, he remained outside in the sunshine, smoking one cigarette after another, and amusing himself by deciphering the brief inscriptions on the plain slabs of stone which, sunk into the grass under and among the apple-trees, marked the graves of two generations of French monks.

Meanwhile, Cecily Wake—for they had arrived some minutes late, and Wyke Regis was now full of summer visitors—knelt down at the back of the chapel, among the curiously miscellaneous crowd of men and women generally to be found gathered together just within the doors of a Catholic place of worship.

After she had said her simple prayers, not omitting the three requests, one of which at least she trusted would be granted, according to the old belief that such a favour is extended to those who enter for the first time a duly consecrated church, Cecily, during the chanting of the Creed, allowed her eyes to wander sufficiently to enjoy the singular beauty and ornate splendour of the monastery chapel.

She soon saw which were the windows connected with Penelope's family. On the one was emblazoned the mailed figure of St. George crushing the dragon, presumably of Wantley, under his spurred heel. Obviously of the same period was the St. Cecilia, who, sitting at an old-fashioned Italian spinet, seemed to be charming the ears of two musically-minded angels. More crude in colouring, and more utilitarian in design, was the figure of good St. Louis dispensing justice under the traditional rood: this last window, as the girl was aware, was that which the young man, who had refused to come into the chapel, had raised to the memory of his own father.

Just as the bell rang, warning those not in sight of the high-altar that the most solemn portion of the Mass was about to begin, there arose, close to where Cecily was kneeling with her face buried in her hands, the loud, discordant cry of an ailing child.

Various pious persons at once turned and threw shocked glances at a woman who, alone seated among the kneeling throng, and herself nodding with fatigue, was shifting from one arm to another a fat curly-headed little boy, whom Cecily, now well versed in such lore, instinctively guessed to be about two years old.

A few minutes later, Wantley, tired of waiting in the deserted orchard, pushed open the red-baize door.

At first he saw nothing; then, when his eyes had grown accustomed to the dimmer light, he became aware that at the end of a little lane of people, and outlined against a rose-coloured marble pillar, stood the blue-clad figure of a young woman holding to her breast a little child, the two thus forming the immemorial group which has kept its hold on the imagination of Christendom throughout the ages.

Cecily was swaying rhythmically, now forward, now backward, her head bent over that of the child. She did not see Wantley, being wholly absorbed in her task of quieting and comforting the little creature now cradled in her arms; but he, as he looked at her, felt as if he then saw her for the first time.

Over the whole scene brooded a curious stillness, the stillness with which he was already familiar, owing to his haunting, when abroad, the long Sunday services held alike in the great cathedrals and the little village churches of France and Italy.

Long years afterwards, Wantley, happening to be present at one of those futile conversations in which are discussed the first meetings of those destined to know each other well, in answer to the somewhat impertinent question, uttered, however, by a youthful and therefore privileged voice, 'And do you, Lord Wantley, remember your first meeting with her?' answered in all good faith: 'I first saw her in our Roman Catholic chapel at Beacon Abbas, nursing a little beggar child. She wore a bright blue frock, and what I took to be a halo; as a matter of fact it was a sailor-hat!' And then, from more than one of those that were present, came the words, 'How nice! and how exactly what one would have expected from what one knows of her now!' And Wantley, happy Wantley, saw no cause to say them nay.

Yet the half-hour which followed might well have effaced the memory of a more tangible vision, and have impressed a man less whimsical and easy-going as almost intolerably prosaic.

After the congregation had dispersed, he had had to wait at a short distance, but not, as he congratulated himself, out of earshot, while Cecily Wake and the Irish mother of the ailing child held what seemed to be an interminable conversation. The listener then became acquainted, for the first time, with certain not uninteresting data as to how the citizens of our great Empire are prepared for their struggle through existence. He learnt that the child's first meal that Sunday, administered by the advice of 'a very knowing woman,' had consisted of a half-glass of the best bitters and of a biscuit; he overheard Cecily's realistic if gently worded description of what effect this diet was likely to have on an unfortunate baby's interior, and he admired the way in which the speaker mingled practical advice with praise of the poor little creature's prettiness.

Finally, from the shabby waist bag Wantley had looked at with so much disfavour a couple of hours before, Cecily took a leaflet, which she handed to the woman, the gift being softened by the addition of a two-shilling piece. He heard her say, 'This is milk money; you will not spend it on anything else, will you?' And there had followed a few mysterious sentences, uttered in lower tones, of which Wantley had caught the words, 'afternoon,' 'Benediction,' 'fits,' and 'doctor.'

At last the woman had shuffled away with her now quiescent burden, and as they passed through the monastery gates Wantley saw with concern that his companion looked pale and tired. 'If you propose coming back here this afternoon, and seeing that woman again,' he said with kindly authority, 'I will drive you over. Perhaps by that time your aunt will be well enough to come too.'

'Oh, I hope not!' Cecily's expression of dismay was involuntary. 'Aunt Theresa only likes my helping poor people whom I know about already,' she explained.

'And does she approve of the Settlement?' He could not forbear the question. The girl blushed and shook her head, smiling. 'Of course not. She feels about the Settlement much as you do, only she thinks all that sort of work ought to be left to nuns. But Mrs. Robinson persuaded the Mother Superior of the convent where I was brought up, to write and tell Aunt Theresa that she might at least let me try and see if I could do what Penelope proposed.'

'I think that Penelope has had decidedly the best of the bargain,' Wantley rejoined dryly; for now, looking at his companion with new eyes of solicitude, he saw the effects of that work which he also thought might well be left to nuns, or at any rate to women older than Cecily. But he was somewhat taken aback when, encouraged by the kindly glance, his young companion exclaimed impulsively, 'Why are you—what makes you—so unfair to Penelope? And why have you always refused to have anything to do with the Settlement?'

Wantley turned and looked at her rather grimly. 'So ho!' he said to himself, 'my shortcomings have evidently been revealed. That's too bad!' And then, aloud, he answered, quite gravely, 'If I am unfair to my cousin—I mean, of course, unduly so—she is suffering for the sins of her parents, or perhaps I should say of her father, by whom, as you are possibly aware, I was adopted in a sort of fashion after the death of my mother.'

Cecily looked at him surprised. To her apprehension, the great Lord Wantley had been one of those men who, in another and a holier age, might well have been canonized. Of Lady Wantley she knew, or thought she knew, less—indeed, they had never met till the evening before; but, while admitting to herself her own complete lack of comprehension of the older woman's peculiar religious views, Cecily was prepared to idealize her in the double character of the famous philanthropist's widow and as Penelope's mother.

But Wantley, his easy-going nature now singularly moved and stirred, was determined not to spare her.

In short, dry sentences he told her of his happy childhood, of his father's conversion to the Catholic faith, followed shortly after by that now ruined father's death. Of Lord Wantley's reluctant adoption of him, coupled with a refusal to give him the education he had himself received, and which is, in a sense, the birthright of certain Englishmen.

He described, shortly indeed, but with a sharpness born of long-endured bitterness, the years which he had spent as an idle member of Lord and Lady Wantley's large household. Instinct warned him to pass lightly over Penelope's share in his early troubles and humiliations; but there were things in his recital which recalled, as almost every moving story generally does recall, episodes in the listener's own life; and when at last he looked at her, partly ashamed of his burst of confidence, he saw that he had been successful in presenting his side of the story, more, that Cecily was looking at him with new-born sympathy and interest.

Then a slight accident turned the current of their thoughts into a brighter and a lighter channel. Wantley suddenly dropped the heavy old Prayer-Book of which he had taken charge, and, as it fell on to the path, what seemed a page detached itself, and, fluttering out, was caught between the tiny twigs of a briar-bush. As he bent to rescue and restore, he could not help seeing that what was lying face upwards on the mass of little leaves was one of the 'Holy Pictures' so often placed by Catholics as markers in their books of devotion.

On the upper half of the small white card had been pasted an inch-square engraving of a little child guided by its guardian angel, while underneath was rudely written, in a childish handwriting, each word so formed as to resemble printing: 'Dear Angel, help me to-day to practise Obedience, Punctuality, and Kindness, for the love of the Holy Child and His blessed Mother.'

As Wantley placed the little card back again between the leaves of Cecily's shabby Prayer-Book, of which the title, 'The Path to Heaven,' pleased him by its unquestioning directness, he said, smiling, 'And may I ask if you still believe, Miss Wake, in the actual constant presence, near to you, of a guardian angel?'

'Of course I do!' She looked at him with wide-open eyes of surprise.

'But,' he said deferentially, 'isn't that a little awkward sometimes, even for you?'

Cecily made what was for her a great mental leap.

'Isn't everything—of that sort—a little awkward, sometimes, for all of us?' she asked.

'Yes,' he said; 'there must be times when guardian angels must feel inclined to edge off somewhat, eh? or do you think they fly off for rest and change when their charges annoy them by being contrary?'

Cecily looked at him doubtfully. He spoke quite seriously, but she thought it just possible that he was laughing at her. 'I suppose that they do not remain long with very wicked people,' she said at last, and he saw a frown of perplexity pucker her white forehead. 'But I'm sure they do all they can to keep us good.'

'I wonder,' he said reflectively, 'what limitation you would put to their power? To give you an instance; you admit that had your aunt been at church to-day you could not have taken charge of that poor baby, or afterwards helped, as you most certainly did help, its tired mother. Now, do you suppose that this baby's guardian angel provoked, by some way best known to itself, your excellent aunt's headache?'

'Laugh at me,' she said, smiling a little vexedly, 'but not at our own or at other people's guardian angels; for I suppose even you would admit that if they are with us they have feelings which may be hurt?'

As he held the wicket-gate open for her to pass through from the cliff path into the pine-wood boundary of Monk's Eype, Wantley said suddenly: 'I wonder if you have ever read a story called "In the Wrong Paradise"?' and as Cecily shook her head he added: 'Then never do so! I am sure your guardian angel would not at all approve of the moral it sets out to convey.' And then, just as she was going up from the flagged terrace into the central hall of the villa, he said, the laughter dying wholly out of his voice: 'And if I may do so, let me tell you that I hope, with all my heart, that I may ultimately be found worthy to enter whichever may happen to be your Paradise.'

A look of great kindness, of understanding more than he had perhaps meant to convey, came over Cecily's candid eyes. She made no answer, but as she ran upstairs to her aunt's room she said to herself: 'Poor fellow! Of course he means the Church. Oh, I must pray hard that he may some day find his way to his father's Paradise and mine!'

She found her aunt lying down, and apparently asleep, on the broad comfortable old sofa which was placed across the bottom of the bed, opposite the window. The pretty room, hung with blue Irish linen forming an admirable background to Mrs. Robinson's fine water-colours, looked delightfully cool to the girl's tired eyes; the blinds had been pulled down, and Cecily, walking on tiptoe past her aunt, sat down in a low easy-chair, content to wait quietly till Miss Wake should open her eyes. But the long walk, the sea-air, had made the watcher drowsy, and soon Cecily also was asleep.

Then, within the next few moments, a strange thing happened to Cecily Wake.

After what seemed a long time, she apparently awoke to a sight which struck her as odd rather than unexpected.

On the elder Miss Wake's chest, nestling down among the folds of her white shawl, sat a tiny angel, whose chubby countenance was quite familiar to Cecily, as his brown curls and pale, sensitive face recalled, though, of course, in a benignant and peaceful sense, the little child whom she had soothed in church.

Cecily tried to get up and go to her aunt's assistance but something seemed to hold her down in her chair. 'Please go away,' she heard herself say, quite politely, but with considerable urgency. 'How can my aunt's headache get better as long as you sit there? Besides, your little charge is much in need of you!'

But the angelic visitor made no response, and she noticed, with dismay, that he wore on his chubby little face the look of intelligent obstinacy so often seen on the faces of very young children.

Again she said: 'Please go away. You are really not wanted here'—as a concession she added, 'any more!' But he only flapped his little wings defiantly, and seemed to settle down among the warm folds of Miss Theresa's shawl as if arranging for a long stay.

Cecily was in despair; and she began to think that everything was strangely topsy-turvy. 'Perhaps,' she said to herself, 'he only understands Irish, so I'll try him with French!' and, speaking the language, to her so dear, which lends itself so singularly well to courteous entreaty, she again begged her aunt's strange guest to take his departure, pointing out that his mission was indeed fulfilled, and there were reasons, imperative reasons, why he should go away. Then, to her dismay, the little angel's eyes filled with tears, and at last he spoke impetuously: 'Mais oui, j'ai de quoi!' he cried angrily in an eager childish treble.

Cecily felt herself blush as she answered hurriedly, soothingly: 'Mais, petit ange, mon cher petit ange, je ne dis pas le contraire!' and she had hardly time to add to herself, 'Then he was Irish, after all,' when the blinds, which were drawn down, all flapped together, although, as Cecily often assured herself afterwards, there was absolutely no wind, and the girl, rubbing her eyes, once more saw the white shawl as usual crossed over primly on her aunt's chest, while Miss Theresa Wake, opening her eyes, suddenly exclaimed: 'Is that you, my dear? I have not been asleep exactly, but I now feel much better and less oppressed than I did a few moments ago.'

Cecily never told her curious experience, but a day came when the dearest of all voices in the world asked imperiously: 'Mammy, do angels ever come and talk to people? I mean to usual people, not to saints and martyrs. Of course, I know, they do to them.' And Cecily answered, very soberly: 'I think they do sometimes, my Ludovic, for an angel once came and talked to me.' But not even to this questioner did she reveal what the angelic visitant had said to her.

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