Chapter XI

Daphne's sixteenth and seventeenth years might have been called the years of the giggle. In the main they poured over shallows. No successor to Roger Muirhead came troubling her with a like emotion; and except for one short period she had no religion to make depths in the stream-bed. There was but one clear motive in her life that waxed stronger with the months, and brought a pattern to the welter; and this was her ambition to write. Of the rest of her nature the lawless high spirits took possession.

She grew like a blade of newly-sown grass. As her father said, you could almost see her growing; nay more, on a still night, if you listened very carefully, you could hear her growing. Her features lost some of their roundness and softness, and her body became a thought too narrow for its height. It worried her rather, so that she began to take very seriously her physical culture--her gymnasium, riding and tennis.

She laboured at this time on the manufacture of a distinguished signature, "Daphne D. T. Bruno," giving it a tail like an unwinding lasso, till her father, seeing the flourish, expressed acute distress and shame: "Duffy, this is awful--awful. You must have the soul of a tea-shop girl."

The ambition to write increased with every novel she read, and every discussion she heard on other people's novels. In a small part its driving force was the true compulsion of the artist; but the most of it was a mixture of crude ambition and sheer imitation. She wanted no less than a thundering fame, and she wanted to imitate the style and methods of the authors she read. After reading Dickens, she wanted to be a great humanitarian and a master of comic caricature; after Thackeray, an urbane and tolerant satirist; after George Eliot, William Black, or Bulwer Lytton--well, she remodelled her style on whichever of them was the last read. She had no idea of working hard to equip herself for greatness; her reading was lazy, and limited to such fiction as pleased her; it could only be compassed lolling in a comfortable chair, and any hard parts she read through without troubling to know if she understood them.

Since she had no sincere religion or stable code of morals, nothing but an antiseptic, compounded of humour, innocence and the herding instinct, saved her from the grosser evils. This, and the two steadying influences of Hollins and Miss Sims. There had to be a show of religion at Hemans House, of course, but except in panicky moments when she sent up ejaculatory S.O.S.'s to God, it made no settlement in her secret life. Already the sceptic in the corner of her mind issued hints that she was probably the only girl in the school who knew that she didn't believe anything. This struck her as rather original, and she would sometimes give it an airing before Hollins. She did it with intent to shock, till one day the old servant, now very grey, discomfited her by interrupting:

"I'm very sorry, Miss Duffy, but I must ask you once and f'r'all, not to do your laughing at these things with me. I don't like it, I tell you I don't. It makes me think you'll be struck leprous, or the like of that. And though you're only a child, it--it sort of upsets my faith. And then I don't know where I am.... It's for your pa to say, of course, but to my idea it's a dreadful thing for children to be brought up without any religion. No good'll come of it, I dare swear."

She had a similar experience with Miss Sims.

Miss Sims had kept her favourite's affection, if not the earlier adoration. And on Sundays, when the crocodile went tail-first to church, Daphne would inflate the governess's heart by coming to chatter at her side, and in church by pushing to sit next to her.

It was when walking to church one Sunday that Daphne deliberately shocked Miss Sims by a frank statement of her atheism, with this corollary; that she didn't think she would marry because it would interfere with her writing, but she saw no reason, believing in love as she did, why she shouldn't have intermittent love affairs like other famous women. Here was opportunity for Miss Sims to play the saviour, and she filled the part at once. She hurt her favourite with a swift lash, refusing to be amused and suggesting that Daphne walked elsewhere; and when the girl, who had been silent for the rest of the walk, was sitting beside her in church, Miss Sims acted her own devotion and faith. It distinctly impressed Daphne, who glimpsed a beauty and peace in holiness.

But it was Winnie Chatterton who really led her on a short excursion into holiness. Winnie Chatterton was the only notable successor to Trudy Wayne. The friendship with Trudy had wilted. They had not quarrelled, but just drifted apart. They were friendly, but not friends. After a chain of minor intimacies Daphne discovered Winnie Chatterton, and Winnie Chatterton discovered Daphne Bruno. Both wondered how they could have been three and four years at the school without an earlier gravitation each to the other. In figure and colouring they were much the same, which was delightful, and there was the most wonderful community of taste. And now on walks through Windsor Park these two tall girls went hand in hand. Their place was near the head of the crocodile, and of the many treble voices that made up that peripatetic parliament, one, as likely as not, was Daphne's as she told to Winnie the whole story of the last novel that had affected her. "Vanity Fair" she serialized, telling it in three instalments on three successive walks. And Winnie, whose art was music, talked enthusiastically about that, or about the High Churchmanship that had lately won her. In the end Daphne tried both the music and the religion.

Old though she was, she insisted on taking up the 'cello with Mr. Pulteney, the music master (the "Chutney" of the girls). And after her first lesson, which was disastrous, she rushed to Winnie to give humorous report of it.

She had walked towards the music-room, explained Daphne hurriedly, and seen Petsy (Miss Vidella) waiting for her outside. Together they had entered the room where Chutney was tuning her shining new instrument. Petsy had seated herself on a chair to act as chaperon, for music lessons and the music master, as all literature showed, were the points at which foolishness and sin were most likely to break through. So Petsy had sat in a chair to strengthen the defences. Daphne, on taking the huge instrument, had most unfortunately felt a sudden desire to giggle. It was awful, and when Chutney placed the music-stand before her and asked: "Where's your music, Miss Bruno?" she had only been able to reply, with the giggle trembling through her words: "I've forgotten it. It's up in my bedroom." At that Petsy had rustled in her chair, probably rendered ill at ease by this mention of bedroom to a music master. "Really, my dear child," she had whined, "you are slatternly in many things. Can she not, Mr. Pulteney, use some of the music of the other dear children?" Chutney had said he was afraid not, because she needed the most elementary book, and he had no other girl beginning at the beginning. So Petsy had creaked out of her chair into a standing position, and said: "Well, we must go and get it, dear. It's really very thoughtless of you. Come. Trip ahead of me."

"Why we were both obliged to go out Heaven only knows," commented Daphne. "I suppose because if Petsy had gone for the music, I should have been left alone with a music master, and if _I_ had gone, she'd have been left alone with a music master. And Chutney couldn't go, of course, because of the intimate nature of the room where the music was. So we tripped out together."

When they were in the hall Daphne had run upstairs, two and three steps at a time, while Petsy waited at the bottom in all the safety of that public place. She must needs call after Daphne: "Don't go up the stairs like that, dear child. Supposing anyone had been passing and seen you. So impetuous you dear children are!" Daphne had got her music and come down again decorously. She had then re-entered the music-room behind her principal, and sat in the pupil's chair while Chutney placed the 'cello in the correct position, and Petsy watched carefully through her spectacles to make sure that in touching the 'cello he didn't also touch the 'cellist.

Then the 'cellist had commenced. Her first notes had been as horrible as an amateur's first notes on a bugle, and the desire to giggle had got much worse, with the result that her hands trembled, and the next notes were too awful for words. Unfortunately, Chutney, who was a perfect dear, had caught the infection of her giggle. Presumably he had never before had so old a pupil at the clumsy stage of 'celling. At last, after a dreadful prolonged note on the lowest string, her giggle had burst out, and Chutney had only saved himself from disgrace by swinging round, so that his back was turned to Miss Vidella. Miss Vidella had asked: "Has something humorous happened?" and Daphne had apologized, saying: "I'm sorry, Miss Vidella. I can't help it." Then Petsy had begun to rustle a lot, thinking no doubt that this conjunction of a music master, music, and a giggle promised the worst results. She had shut her eyes behind her spectacles for a second, and asked: "Can you approach anything, Daphne dear, without unsuitable levity? If you are not disposed to bring seriousness to these music lessons, which your dear father has secured for you at considerable cost"--Chutney had grimaced at that--"and from the best instructors"--that had set him grinning sheepishly out of the window--"I shall have to recommend him to discontinue them. Now please proceed."

Then there had been a lot of trouble with her fingering. Time and again Chutney had moved to adjust her fingers with his own, only stopping when he saw that Petsy's spectacles ruled out so indecorous a thing. Absurd, because Chutney was really such a pure little man. He had been obliged to demonstrate the correct method by holding another instrument before her, and asking her to copy exactly the movement of his fingers; which she had done, but her sounds had been quite different from his, and induced Petsy to poke in with some advice: "Try to do what Mr. Pulteney says, dear." Not a helpful remark; and Daphne, getting annoyed, had pulled her bow rather savagely along the string, producing the most painful sound of the morning. This had changed her temper into humour, and for some torturing seconds she had been much more occupied in controlling her laughter than in catching what Chutney was saying. Her wrist work and her holding of the bow had been just as troublesome, and Chutney had kept coming towards her with the obvious desire of putting her hand and wrist into the correct position, but had tripped, as you might say, over the protective ray from Petsy's eyes. And Petsy had most stupidly tried to bridge the difficulty by some more advice: "Do try and remember, dear, that it is a bow that you are holding and not a clothes brush"; which had made Daphne want to mutter: "Oh, you shut up, for the Lord's sake!"

"From somewhere about this time," explained she to Winnie, "the row began to begin. I can hardly remember how it started--I never can--and I had a beastly feeling when it was all over that I had made a fool of myself, but you know what Petsy is--she's such an old fool, posing so pompously and thinking it's funny."

"Oh, what happened, what happened?" asked Winnie.

"Well, I think Chutney said, as a sort of excuse for me, that the exact position was a little difficult to get right at first. And Petsy was sarcastic and said: 'Not, I take it, to intelligence.' And I lost my temper and said: 'But I'm not intelligent.' Chutney stared, and Petsy was rather taken aback, but when she had recovered herself, she opened fire, I can tell you. She said: 'Precisely, my dear. And the less intelligent girls have to make up for their deficiencies by a becoming willingness and humility. They do not boast of their stupidity.' And I snapped back: 'I wasn't boasting. I was deploring the fact.' Then Petsy stood up. I think she was simply beaten by such cold-blooded impudence, and could not for the life of her decide how to deal with it. But she had to do something in front of Chutney, so she began: 'My dear Daphne, I do not like that tone at all. I do not like it at all. I really have not been insulted in a music lesson before. I think you will go to your classroom, where you will wait to hear from me.' Then she apologised at great length to Chutney for taking up his valuable time with a perverse and ill-mannered child, and Chutney was perfectly sweet, saying I was only confused and awkward at first, and would be all right next time. And Petsy interrupted: 'I really do not know whether there will be a next time. I am not at all sure that I shall allow her to continue her lessons.' And of course I said: 'I've no particular desire to,' and went haughtily out of the room. She's said nothing so far, but I suppose I'm in for an interview, and a heart-to-heart talk."

Her conversion to High Churchmanship was a mixture of sincerity and posturing, as the sceptic in the corner would hint through his gags. It was sincere in this: that she secretly disliked much of her character and wanted to improve it; she had depressed moments when she thought herself vain, lazy, much too selfish, and without a decent control of her temper; and while she couldn't believe that her own strength would ever pull out these tough-rooting faults, she was quite sure that a stern religion would do it. And her lack of any stable morality could trouble her sometimes; she remembered how it had enabled her to suggest in flippancy things that earned disgust from people like Miss Sims. At such times, aided by the placid demeanour of Miss Sims and her occasional homilies, and by the graver, brow-furrowing chats of Winnie, and the tales of the saints that she had read, her imagination would show her the religious life as one of self-respect, happiness in worship, and peace in believing.

The element of posture lay in her eagerness to perform the picturesque rites of High Churchmanship; in her instant response to its spirit of gay rebellion; and in her desire to do something that would startle her family.

In the beginning sincerity occupied most of the ground. Her first weeks, after her acceptance of the faith and her prayer in which she surrendered to God and asked forgiveness for her long neglect, were very happy; and she was perfectly conscious of a softening and ennobling of her character. She went ahead of Winnie, and silently wondered how her friend could keep certain things in her life as fellow-tenants with her religion. These were perhaps the sweetest days of Daphne's childhood. But it could not last. The soil was too unbroken, and there were too many older roots in the tilth; the little sceptic spread his gangrene: "Do you _really_ believe all this? You know you don't _really_? Not if you once thought it out"; and a series of little shocks, as she realised some of the things that the religion implied, helped to wither the sincerity and bring in the element of posture. That every good Catholic was morally obliged to go to Confession she had not foreseen, and she knew she could never go; other duties such as fasting, hearing Mass, being confirmed, and preparing long and earnestly for her communions she was prepared to accept, but not this--not confession to any living creature of some of the things that hurt her conscience: And that every really Catholic priest ought to be a celibate--good heavens, did Anglo-Catholics say that?

Winnie, who considered that she had to be as extreme as possible now she was instructing a neophyte, declared that such of course was the truth. In fact, she made much of this question of celibacy, deploring its widespread disregard. Her first vicar had been married, she said, but had had the decency not to have children. His successor, however, was not only married, but had a boy at Cambridge. "I don't think he ought to have married at all," expounded Winnie, "but if he did, he shouldn't have borne a son."

When Daphne went home for the holidays, the posturing was so far in possession that she was chiefly eager to offend everybody by insisting that she must go into Brighton on Sundays to hear Mass at a respectable church. And her first Sunday she found herself in St. Paul's, West Street, which had the reputation of being as high as was possible. It certainly seemed very high indeed; and disappointment took her when she knew herself shocked, bewildered, and traitorously sure that she could have worshipped more easily in the service to which she was accustomed. But it was only a matter of getting used to it, she supposed, and therewith struggled up to certain points of spiritual exaltation. All the holidays she talked Catholicity to the household, and when her father ridiculed her, saying: "Yes, run and worship in your strange groves, Daphne," she was not displeased at this prick of persecution. Hollin's acceptance of the news was rather disturbing, for, after Daphne had been chattering some time about the joys of religion, the old servant suddenly dropped her sewing, blew her nose, and carried the handkerchief to her eyes before returning it to her lap. "Well, there, miss," she said, pretending to believe that Daphne had not observed anything, "I am glad. It's kind of done me a lot of good, and strengthened my faith that prayers, if you stick to 'em, are often answered."

By the time she went back to school, the sceptic had nearly worked himself free of his gags, and she knew that she was only longing to shock the other girls with her advanced Catholicity, and to see what would happen when she exhibited it on the first Sunday of the term to Miss Vidella.

The movements of Daphne and Winnie that first Sunday were the creations of Daphne's brain. She justified them on the ground that it was a duty to reveal to old-fashioned and prejudiced minds the strength of Catholic thought. Winnie and she, as elder girls, walked to the church, one on each side of Miss Vidella; and when they reached the Lady Chapel, in which were the seats allotted to Hemans House, they still managed to keep her between them. This was designed to surround Miss Vidella with Catholicity. Kneeling down, they made augmented signs of the cross, prayed for a suitable time, and made second signs of the cross; and then resumed their chairs and read advanced manuals. The vestry opened on to the side chapel, and when the vicar and the curate passed them at the tail of the choir, the two girls bowed in reverence for the priestly office. The vicar noticed it and looked surprised.

They made the sign of the cross at the Absolution and at the close of the creed. They bowed at every _Gloria_. And in the Ante-Communion Service, at the _Incarnatus_ clause, they genuflected. The genuflexion left Miss Vidella standing as a sort of indignant Protestant lighthouse in these undulating waters of Catholicity. Some girls in front turned round to see what had happened.

All the way home Miss Vidella was menacingly reserved; and they were soon summoned to her room. This prospect of imperial persecution was excellent. They had done nothing, absolutely nothing (Daphne assured her partner as they walked to judgment) but what they were perfectly entitled to do--what indeed it was their duty to do. Petsy wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

Miss Vidella began mildly.

"I could not but notice, Daphne dear and dear Winifred, that in church this morning you indulged in practices which are usually associated with Roman Catholicism. You are not, I believe, Catholics."

"Yes, we are," said Winnie.

"Yes, Catholics," Daphne explained, "but not _Roman_ Catholics."

"Oh, you are, are you?" The imperial power was clearly annoyed by their bearing. "But not _Roman_ Catholics. And may I inquire how you can be Catholics without being Roman Catholics?"

To explain to the uninstructed the answer to this question has always been a long and laborious business; so Winnie turned to Daphne as spokesman.

"All Church of England people are Catholics if they only knew it," said Daphne.

"Oh, I see. Then am I a Catholic?"

This made Daphne want to giggle; and at first she thought she had better leave the query without a reply; but, deciding not to go back upon her church, she said awkwardly:

"Yes, I--I'm afraid so."

It seemed rather a press-gang method of getting Miss Vidella on board the Ark, and it was not surprising that her annoyance was increased.

"I see. But I fear I am not so good a Catholic as to tolerate in my school such ridiculous practices as those with which you embarrassed the greater part of the congregation this morning. You will kindly behave as others do and keep your gymnastic exercises for Tuesdays and Fridays, when I think you go to the Royal Gymnasium for Instruction. Have you anything more to say?"

Daphne knew that what she ought to say now was a modern paraphrase of "Oh King, live for ever. Be it known unto thee that we will not worship as you wish, nor do anything that you suggest"; but on being asked so abruptly she couldn't shape a single sentence.

"Then that will do, my dears, you may go."

They decided in a mysterious council of war that, having done this much they could henceforth, with the early Christians for a precedent, veil their gestures and reverences.

At the end of that term Winnie left to be "finished" in a French convent, and Daphne, who had been ashamed to backslide before her friend, tried her religion on a charge of personation, and convicted it.

Now she received occasional news of Roger Muirhead. Owen was at Sillborough and would mention him in his letters or on his holidays. Not often though, for Daphne never asked for information, and Owen apparently detested his senior. It looked as if Owen also had a secret desire to be an author, for he affected a very personal and precious style. "At this Academy," wrote he in his first letter from Sillborough, "we have one R. Muirhead, with whose name you will not be wholly unfamiliar. He is, I think, the most conceited ass I have ever known. He's a prefect, and fancies himself hugely as a disciplinarian. 'My word is law and changeth not' sort of business--as our inimitable Herbert Hollins would say. 'Woe to anyone who crosses my path or thwarts me! I am severe but just. Oh, yes, I am not easily angered, but if some groundling does raise my ire, he must expect no quarter. Oh, no.' Funny that these pompous blokes never credit any one with the brains to see through them. Of course the boys suck up to him, because he's hot stuff at games, which he certainly is, though not as good as he thinks. No one ever was as good as that. And this sucking up makes him ten times worse. I can tell you R. Muirhead is no small panjandrum. Dammy, no."