Before they could say any more, Ulrica herself came back.
“I cannot find Mary to say good-bye,” she said. “If she should come in here whilst I am packing, dear Maria, ask her to wait, or come up to my cell, if you please.”
“Cell?” said Mrs. Bradley, when Ulrica had disappeared again.
“She has hopes of entering the religious life,” Maria reminded her. “Más valdría no decir nada más,” [It would be better not to say anything more.] she added, glancing towards the door.
“Possibly you are right,” Mrs. Bradley agreed, so they said no more, and Mrs. Bradley, sitting on the floor where Ulrica had sat, and brooding over the chessboard like a crumpled bird of prey, waved a skinny claw to invite the black-haired child to continue the game which Ulrica had abandoned.
Nearly an hour later, Ulrica came down, not expecting, it was obvious, to discover Mrs. Bradley still there. She watched in absolute silence, while Mrs. Bradley moved on slowly to victory. Then she gave a little sigh, and the victor and the vanquished both looked up.
“This lady could beat my father,” said the Spanish child, picking up a castle in slender, olive-brown fingers. Ulrica nodded, and asked:
“Did she continue the game from the point at which I left it?”
“Yes, she did, and you left it at very bad,” Mrs. Bradley’s opponent observed with considerable candour.
“Sister Geneviève has taken my suitcase to the top of the stairs, and Bessie is coming to carry it out to your chauffeur,” said Ulrica, smiling to show that she felt no resentment of Maria’s frank opinion.
In less than a quarter of an hour, she and Ferdinand had been driven away by George from the convent guest-house. George had just returned with a report of having seen Miss Bonnet’s car in the grounds of Kelsorrow School.
Mrs. Bradley and Bessie watched Ferdinand, George and Ulrica out of sight, then turned to one another with the mutual congratulation of those who are left behind while others take themselves off. Bessie even wiped her hands on her apron. Her opinion of Ulrica Doyle was soon made clear.
“Snitchy little tripe-hound,” she observed. “Don’t half fancy herself, I reckon. Ask me, she knowed what she was doing when t’other poor nipper conked out.”
“I fear that your remark is highly actionable, dear child,” said Mrs. Bradley, in gently remonstrative tones. Bessie grinned and spat. Then she said good night, and watched, bright-eyed, whilst Mrs. Bradley re-entered the guest-house doorway. She herself returned to the Orphanage for supper, which consisted of thick bread and butter, milk pudding and cocoa. It was greatly relished by the orphans, and got finished to the very last crumb; this to the perennial mystification of Mother Ambrose, who could not understand how children could be so hungry when, not many hours before, they had made a generous tea.
Mrs. Bradley, with the comfortable feeling of a job well done, went across to soothe Mother Francis, who so far had not been notified of Ulrica Doyle’s departure. Mother Francis, looked greatly concerned, almost ran to meet her, and told her a long involved story, the gist of which was that Mary Maslin could not be found on the building, and had not been seen since just after a quarter past three.
“And if only I had listened to you,” said Mother Francis, with all the disarming humility of her profession, “I should not have caused myself all this terrible new anxiety. I ought to have insisted that both the children were sent away when you said.”
Mrs. Bradley took out a notebook, and asked for all the information which Mother Francis could give.
“Thank God we have got the other child away!” Mother Francis exclaimed more than once in the course of her detailed narration. Mrs. Bradley, longing to dispense with some of the conversation and get to work, had a sudden uneasy recollection of an hour she had spent playing chess whilst Ulrica Doyle was supposed to be packing a suitcase.
Mary, it appeared, had been well on the previous day, when Mother Cyprian went in to take the needlework at half-past two. She had answered her name and, later (perhaps at ten to three, Mother Cyprian thought), she had had her work criticised and was shown how to do a false hem.
And no false hem would have been necessary, Mother Cyprian had reiterated, if only Mary were not such a stupid girl. Even over needlework she was stupid, than which there could not be a pleasanter, easier subject, or one which was in every way more suited to a young girl’s mentality.
This cry from the heart Mrs. Bradley was obliged to receive in full from Mother Francis, who, weighed down, apparently equally, by worry and humility, had lost the faculty for selection, and let Mrs. Bradley have all the material at her disposal in one great tangled muddle of fact, opinion and emotion.
“And you, my dear friend,” she finished up, almost in tears, “you warned me, and still I would not listen!”
“But what makes you refer the matter back to yesterday afternoon, when the child did not disappear until to-day?” Mrs. Bradley enquired. Mother Francis threw up her hands in a frankly Gallic gesture of despair.
“She was sick! She was sick! I fear the poor innocent young girl has been poisoned!” she said, and went on to make good her words in a mixture of French and English which was not very easy to follow.
chapter 18
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“That weary deserts we may tread
A dreary labyrinth may thread
Through dark way underground be led.”
richard chenevix trench: The Kingdom of God.
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Mrs. bradley, armed with all the facts that were known, quickly organised a search. The child had been taken ill on the previous afternoon at just after a quarter past three, because as soon as the form had had their afternoon break at the end of Mother Cyprian’s lesson, Mary, according to the evidence of certain members of the class, had complained of feeling sick, and had gone off alone, refusing the comradely help and companionship usually given to one another by schoolgirls under these circumstances, and they had not seen her again that afternoon.
Two of them had made a tour of the water closets towards the end of break, but those within had all announced their identity, and Mary, it seemed, had concluded her attempts at being sick—‘she wasn’t sick,’ they announced unanimously (this was the sort of information which, in a form of twelve-year-olds, could be relied on, Mrs. Bradley knew, for accuracy, and is always common property), ‘but she’d certainly come out before we called to her, because everyone else inside answered. ’
Mother Francis was sufficiently overcome by the shock of Mary’s disappearance to be incapable of delivering even the mildest homily upon the indelicacy of these proceedings, and received all the tidings with a curt nod and an order to ‘go to your places and get straight on with your extra preparation, and do not let me hear another word.’
This display of Old Adam had had the effect of crushing an incipient outbreak of general conversation, and, prompted by Mrs. Bradley, Mother Francis continued the exposition, but would not be hurried into missing out the smallest fact or most unimportant opinion.
After break, Mary’s form had gone to Mother Mary-Joseph for an English lesson, and here Mary Maslin had not appeared at all. An excuse had been brought by a girl named Ryan—Nancy Ryan—aged twelve. All she had said was that Mary felt sick, and would come into class as soon as she possibly could. Nobody added that Mary’s whereabouts at the time that the lesson began were unknown to the rest of the form, and Mother Mary-Joseph—very pale when Mrs. Bradley interviewed her—admitted that she had forgotten the child and had not sent out during the lesson to find out how she was.