This was an extremely ill-omened sign to anyone who knew Mrs. Seldom’s habits. Under normal conditions, her first proceeding after breakfast was to move to the kitchen, where she engaged in a long culinary debate with both cook and gardener; a course of action which was extremely essential, as without it,—so bitter was the feud between these two worthies,—it is unlikely that there would have been any vegetables at all, either for lunch or dinner. When anything occurred to throw her into a mood of especially good spirits, she would pass straight out of the French window on to the front lawn, and armed with a pair of formidable garden-scissors would make a selection of flowers and leaves appropriate to a festival temper.
But this adjournment at so early an hour to the task of letter-writing indicated that Valentia was in a condition of mind, which in anyone but a lady of her distinction and breeding could have been called nothing less than a furious rage. For of all things in the world, Mrs. Seldom most detested this business of writing letters; and therefore,—with that perverse self-punishing instinct, which is one of the most artful weapons of offence given to refined gentlewomen,—she took grim satisfaction in setting herself down to write; thus producing chaos in the kitchen, where the gardener refused to obey the cook, and miserable remorse in the heart of Vennie, who wandered up and down the lawn meditating a penitential apology.
Satisfied in her heart that she was causing universal annoyance and embarrassment by her proceeding, and yet quite confident that there was nothing but what was proper and natural in her writing letters at nine o’clock in the morning, Valentia began, by gentle degrees, to recover her lost temper.
The only real sedative to thoroughly aggravated nerves, is the infliction of similar aggravation upon the nerves of others. This process is like the laying on of healing ointment; and the more extended the disturbance which we have the good fortune to create, the sooner we ourselves recover our equanimity.
Valentia had already cast several longing glances through the window at the heavy sunshine falling mistily on the asters and petunias, and in another moment she would probably have left her letter and joined her daughter in the garden, had not Vennie anticipated any such movement by entering the room herself.
“I ought to make you understand, mother,” the girl began as soon as she stepped in, speaking in that curious strained voice which people assume when they have worked themselves up to a pitch of nervous excitement, “that when I don’t appear at prayers, it isn’t because I’m in a sulky temper, or in any mad haste to get out of doors. It’s—it’s for a different reason.”
Valentia gazed at her in astonishment. The tone in which Vennie spoke was so tense, her eyes shone with such a strange brilliance, and her look was altogether so abnormal, that Mrs. Seldom completely forgot her injured priestess-vanity, and waited in sheer maternal alarm for the completion of the girl’s announcement.
“It’s because I’ve made up my mind to become a Catholic, and Catholics aren’t allowed to attend any other kind of service than their own.”
Valentia rose to her feet and looked at her daughter in blank dismay. Her first feeling was one of overpowering indignation against Mr. Taxater, to whose treacherous influence she felt certain this madness was mainly due.
There was a terrible pause during which Vennie, leaning against the back of a chair, was conscious that both herself and her mother were trembling from head to foot. The soft murmur of wood-pigeons wafted in from the window, was now blended with two other sounds, the sound of the tolling of the church-bell and the sound of the music of Mr. Love’s circus, testing the efficiency of its roundabouts.