The following Sunday the Lights of Paris company found themselves in Warrington, and after Benediction at a little tin mission-church Nancy saw the priest and arranged for Masses to be said for Letizia’s great-grandmother. It was not so much the spiritual satisfaction she derived from the fulfilment of this pious duty as the feeling that somehow or other Masses said in this tin church for the repose of that strange old woman’s soul would express her personality in the immense void of eternity as effectively as on earth she had expressed herself with those vermilion cushions and Venetian mirrors. She had defied in her own creative world the overwhelming nonentity of Lebanon House, just as on the walls of her room Giorgione’s “Pastorale” had defied the meanness of contemporary existence, prevailing with colour against time itself. Now let beauty and compassion rise from the smoke of Warrington to sustain her soul.
There was no opportunity that December to go South and spend Christmas with Letizia; but Nancy was gratefully surprised by an invitation from Mother Mary Ethelreda to visit the convent at Beaumanoir on the moors of northern Lancashire, whence she could easily return in time for the matinée at Burnley on Boxing Day. The drive through the cold upland air, the quiet and seemliness of the conventual life, the dignity of the aged Mother Superior, the whiteness and candlelight within, the snow and starshine without, all united to compose Nancy’s mind so that when she returned to the theatre she moved in a dream, like one who has voyaged from afar and whose body has arrived while the spirit still lingers on the way. Looking out of her window that night, she fancied that the stars high above the smoke of Burnley were jingling like silver bells, so much nearer seemed they since her visit to the Convent of the Holy Infancy at Beaumanoir on the wintry moors. And she knelt down to thank Almighty God that Letizia’s youth was clear and bright, remote and crystalline as one of those stars ringing down notes of harmonious light upon the discordant gloom in which her mother wandered.
It was June before Nancy saw Letizia. They spent a month together in the cottage where she was born among the Kentish cherry orchards. The pinks smelt just as sweet along the garden paths as then. There were not fewer roses nor less honeysuckle in the high hedges of the lanes. The haycocks threw shadows quite as far across the shaven leas, across the green-glowing gold-bloomed leas. And when Letizia was tucked away in her old cot and Nancy sat by the lattice, poring upon the perfumes of the evening, there were just as many ghost moths dancing upon the dusky air of the garden, fluttering with the old fantasmal passion above the spiced and sombrous flowers. But in no lane and in no lea, behind no hedge, across no brook, at the end of no garden path was Bram, who in this same month six years ago was everywhere. Yet, in spite of the poignancy of remembered joys that she could never know again, Nancy was very happy during her holiday. Letizia was as diverting as ever, with her long tales of school, as definite in her likes and dislikes and as quick to express them.
At the end of the month the long-promised stay with Mrs. Pottage at Margate was accomplished, and Nancy noted with a little pang for the way Letizia was getting older that she no longer called her old friend Mrs. Porridge, just as now she always said “mother” instead of “muvver.”
“Well, they haven’t starved her at this convent,” the old landlady declared after she had embraced Letizia and presented her cousin, Mrs. Williams, the pleasant and hospitable woman in whose house they were to stay. “I was very doubtful about the idea when you settled to put her in this convent, because I’ve always had a horror of nuns, and which is why I’ve never been to see her. I know I read a story once about a pore girl they bricked up, and it gave me the horrors to that extent it was weeks before I could go down into the cellar and fetch up a scuttle of coal. But the child’s looking a regular nosegay. What do they give you to eat, duckie?”
“Oh, we have breakfast and dinner and tea and supper, and a glass of milk at eleven,” Letizia said.
“You do?” Mrs. Pottage exclaimed. “Oh, dear, oh, dear, they regular gormingdise you! I’ve got it all wrong about nuns. I suppose it’s the name that sounds so empty. But certainly I fancied if you had two slices of dry bread and a glass of water you thought you’d done well for one day.”
“Mrs. Pottage, when shall we go paddling?” Letizia asked persuasively.
“Paddling?” said Mrs. Pottage. “You surely don’t expect me to go paddling?”
“Well, of course you must paddle,” Letizia exclaimed. “Don’t you know we’re at the seaside?”