“Yes, I can understand that it must be a great anxiety to you.”
Nancy thought how beautiful the nun’s voice sounded in this darkness. While the train was moving, she had not realised its quality, but in the stillness now it stole upon her ears as magically as running water or as wind in pine-tree tops or as any tranquil and pervasive sound of nature. In her mind’s eye she was picturing the nun’s face as it had appeared when she was speaking of Italy, and she was filled with a desire to confide in her.
“That is really the reason I’ve been to Brigham,” Nancy said. “I thought that I ought to give my husband’s relations the opportunity of looking after Letizia. Not because I want to shirk the responsibility,” she added quickly. “Indeed I would hate to lose her, but I did feel that she ought to have the chance of being brought up quietly. My own mother died when I was very young, and my father who is on the stage allowed me to act a great deal as a child, so that really I didn’t go to school till I was over twelve, and it wasn’t a very good school, because I was living in Dublin with an aunt who hadn’t much money. Indeed I never really learnt anything, and when I was sixteen I went back to the stage for good. I’m only twenty-four now. I look much older, I think.”
“I shouldn’t have said that you were more than that,” the nun replied. “But how terribly sad for you, my dear, to have lost your husband so young. Many years ago before I became a nun I was engaged to be married to a young Italian, and he died. That was in Italy, and that is why I still always think of Italy as the loveliest country and of Italian as the most beautiful language. But you were telling me about your relations in Brigham.”
Nancy gave an account of her visit, and particularly of the interview with Letizia’s great-grandmother.
“I think the old lady was quite right. I cannot imagine that bright little sleeping creature was intended to be brought up in such surroundings. Besides, I don’t think it is right to expose a Catholic child to Protestant influences. Far better that you should keep her with you.”
“Yes, but suppose I cannot get an engagement? As a matter of fact, I have only a pound or two left, and the prospect is terrifying me. I feel that I ought to have gone on acting at Greenwich. But to act on the very stage on which my husband had died in my arms! I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t have done it.”
“My dear, nobody would ever dream of thinking that you could. It’s cruel enough that you should have to act on any stage at such a time. However, I feel sure that you will soon get an engagement. Almighty God tries us in so many ways—ways that we often cannot understand, so that sometimes we are tempted to question His love. Be sure that He has some mysterious purpose in thus trying you even more hardly. Nobody is worth anything who cannot rise above suffering to greatness of heart and mind and soul. Do not think to yourself that a foolish old nun is just trying to soothe you with the commonplaces of religious consolation. To be sure, they are commonplaces that she is uttering, but subtleties avail nothing until the truth of the great commonplaces has been revealed to the human soul. Our holy religion is built up on the great commonplaces. That is why it is so infinitely superior to the subtleties of proud and eccentric individuals as encouraged by Protestantism. What a long time we are waiting in this darkness! Yet we know that however long we have to wait we shall sometime or other get out of this tunnel.”
“Yes, but if we wait much longer,” said Nancy, “I will have another problem to face when we get to London, for I will never dare arrive back at my present landlady’s too late.”
“I can solve that problem for you, at any rate,” said the nun. “I shall be met at Euston by a vehicle, and I know that our guest-room is free to-night. So don’t let your night’s lodging worry you.”