She wanted to refuse even this, but she lacked the courage; in the end she passed a pleasant enough evening, listening to her host expatiate upon the career for which he assured her again and again she was certainly destined. He wanted her to lunch and dine with him on the next day too; but she pleaded the urgency of shopping and packing and her desire to see something of her daughter.
“Very well then,” he said, as he put her into a hansom outside Verrey’s where they had dined. “I’ll be at Victoria on Wednesday morning.”
Nancy was glad to be jingling back to St. Joseph’s, alone with her dreams in the sharp apple-sweet air of the October night.
The next day Mrs. Pottage arrived to say good-bye and help Nancy with her shopping. By now she had long been an institution at St. Joseph’s, where her conversation afforded the most intense delight to the nuns.
“Well, when you wrote you was off to Italy I was in two minds if I wouldn’t suggest coming with you. I don’t know what it is, whether I’m getting old or ugly or both, but I’ve not had a single proposal for eighteen months. I suppose it means I’ve got to be thinking of settling down and giving some of the younger ones a chance. Well, take care of yourself in Italy, and don’t eat too much ice-cream. Funny thing, I-talians should eat so much ice-cream and yet be so hot. There was an opera company came to Greenwich once, and the tenor who was an I-talian stayed with me. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘what he’ll want is plenty of macaroni and ice-cream.’ He looked a bit surprised, I’m bound to say, when I give it him for breakfast on the Sunday morning, but I thought he was only surprised at any one knowing his tastes so well. But, will you believe me, when I give it him for dinner again, he used language that was far from I-talian, very far. In fact, I never heard any one swear so fluent in English before or since. It quite dazed me for the moment. But we got on all right as soon as I found he liked good old roast beef. He gave me two passes for the Friday night, and Mrs. Bugbird and me thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The opera was called Carmen and Mrs. B. thought it was going to be all about them, and when she found it was actually the name of a woman she laughed herself silly. Every time this Carmen came on she’d whisper to me, ‘a good pull up,’ and then she’d start off shaking like a jelly. But there, she’s very quick to see the radiculous side of anything, Mrs. Bugbird is. Well, good-bye, dear, and take good care of yourself. You know your old Mrs. Pottage wishes you all the best you can wish for yourself.”
Sister Catherine had repeated her request that Nancy should sing to them, especially as it was the feast of All Saints. So after practising with Sister Monica, who had charge of the music, she sang Mozart’s motet Ave Verum Corpus at Benediction amid the glowing candles and white chrysanthemums of the little chapel.
“Mother, you don’t often sing in church, do you?” Letizia asked.
“Didn’t I sing well?” said her mother with a smile.
“Yes, I expect you sang very well, but I thought it was a little loud, didn’t you? Sometimes it sounded like a man singing. I think you ought to be careful and not sing quite so loud, mother.”
Luckily the nuns themselves enjoyed Nancy’s rich contralto a great deal more than did their pupils. The warmth of femininity spoke to their hearts of something that they had lost, or rather of something that most of them had never won. It was easy to understand and sympathise with the readiness of the nuns to turn away for a few minutes from the austere ecstasies of Gothic art to worship some dolorous “Mother” of Guido Reni. A flush had tinged their cheeks so virginally tralucent, as if a goblet of water had been faintly suffused by a few drops of red wine.