Chapter XI: Confirmation

"BY THE BYE, have you ever been confirmed, Beryl?"

The question came out bluntly next morning in family conclave. Diana was enjoying the sweets of idleness in an easy-chair, and Pearl was making believe to get through a little fancy-work, as she sat in the bow-window chatting with Ivor. Escott had appeared early, and was doing his best to conceal languor by joining fitfully in the conversation. Millicent's calm face had a careworn look. Beryl was for once reading instead of working, and she had not spoken a word since breakfast, finished about half an hour earlier. She looked up at the sound of her name, and said, "No."

"Very careless of Mrs. Brigstock. Of course, I supposed she would see to all that sort of thing."

Beryl coloured, and evidently had a difficulty in speaking on the subject. But after a moment of hesitation, she said stiffly, "I did not wish—"

"Didn't wish what?" asked Mrs. Fenwick, with sharpness.

"Mrs. Brigstock asked me last year if I would be confirmed; and I said not."

"Why, pray?"

"I did not wish it."

"Absurd," Diana said, with an impatient jerk of her gold watch-chain. "Why, Pearl is only just over sixteen, and she was confirmed more than a year ago. You were sixteen last year, 'quite' old enough. Nobody thinks of waiting longer. It is absurd to put off in that way. Now I think of it, I remember writing to you, when Pearl was confirmed, and saying that I wished you to take the first opportunity, if you had not done so already. You remember?"

"Yes, I remember." Beryl lifted her eyes to look straight at Mrs. Fenwick, not defiantly, but with the air of one bracing herself to resistance.

"Then why did you not do as you were told?"

"I did not wish to be confirmed. Mrs. Brigstock gave me the choice, and I said I would not."

"Mrs. Brigstock had no business to do anything of the sort. What was your reason for refusing?"

Beryl was silent.

Diana evidently had not the faintest idea that the conversation was one which should have taken place in private.

"I hope you have not taken up any ridiculous scruples about the rite being of no use, and so on," she said, with sufficient vagueness. "One never knows what notions people will get hold of next, in these days."

Silence still.

Diana flipped a crumb from a small crevice in the arm-chair.

"If you have no reason to give, of course I can only suppose it to have been a childish fancy. There will be a Confirmation in Hurst next autumn, and I shall expect you to be confirmed then. I shall give in your name directly we return. It is provoking, for the classes are always held at a most inconvenient time, just so as to interfere with one's meals, and I hate to have arrangements upset. But it can't be helped. As Mrs. Brigstock did not choose to see to it, I must."

Beryl was crimsoning. "I would rather not," she said.

"But I would rather you should," said Mrs. Fenwick.

The defiant look came now unmistakably, and, Beryl breathed hard. "I shall not be confirmed," she said. "Not yet, I mean. It would not be right for me. I do not wish it, and it is not a thing can be forced."

"Forced! Rubbish," said Diana petulantly. "Why, you are nearly eighteen. It is not proper or respectable to go on without Confirmation. Everybody is confirmed."

"I hope not—in that spirit," Millicent said involuntarily. "If Beryl does not feel yet that she could take the vows from her heart, she is right to hold back."

Beryl's eyes sent one glance of gratitude in her direction, while Diana reddened angrily.

"Stuff! Nonsense!" she said. "Why it is a form,—very good and necessary, of course,—but it is a form. It is a thing one has to do. Everybody does it. It is just that."

"Just a piece of respectability," put in Ivor.

"If it really were 'just that,' and no more, one could not be surprised at any one counting it a meaningless rite," said Millicent.

"I am sure 'I' don't know what you mean. It is a form,—everybody knows that. And everybody goes through with it. You had your boys confirmed as soon as they were sixteen."

Millicent's gentle face lighted up. "Yes," she said, looking across to the "boys" in question. "It was their earnest wish, and I was thankful. I could not look into their hearts, Di, and God alone knows whether they felt as much as they seemed to feel, only I know they honestly thought they did. They did not come forward to make solemn promises before God, merely as a respectable form, with the deliberate intention of breaking their word."

"You talk just as if the baptismal vows were promises in the common sense of the expression," said Diana.

"'They did promise and vow three things in my name,'" quoted Millicent.

"Oh—well, yes,—but everybody knows there is a difference—"

"I see none. A promise is a promise,—certainly not 'less' when spoken to God than when spoken to man."

"Well, I am tired of the subject," said Diana pettishly. "The upshot of it all is that you encourage Beryl to set up herself against me."

"You mistake me," said Millicent quietly. "I should be very sorry to see Beryl opposing you for the sake of opposition. She owes you far too much. But I think you will agree with me here, when you have considered the matter. Children, is it not a pity you should waste your morning indoors this fine day?" She often call them "children" thus, in her motherly tender way, and the boys liked the word from her lips, though a good many young fellows of their age would not have liked it. "Why not take a walk—Beryl and Pearl and Ivor?"

"And Escott," her other son said.

"Are you up to it this morning?"

Escott said, "Quite," and a general stir followed.

Millicent went out of the room with them, and when the quartette had disappeared, she came back, to find Diana shedding angry tears.

"As if I had not worry enough already," she said. "It really is too bad. The girl will be perfectly unbearable."

"But, Di, it is evidently a question of conscience."

"Oh, nonsense! I don't believe it. She likes oppose me, and to make a fuss. Conscience is the excuse for everything in these days. But I intend to have my own way in the matter. I will not be baulked by a girl's whims."

"I hardly see how you can obtain your way. It would be better to yield gracefully in the beginning than to be defeated in the end, putting aside more serious considerations. Beryl has simply to tell Mr. Bishop that she has no wish for Confirmation, or even to do no more than decline to answer any questions, and she will not be admitted."

"Beryl will do what I choose, or she will be sorry for it. Why, I had no such fuss with Pearl. She said 'Yes' at once, and went through the classes, and I am sure she looked a perfect picture in her white veil. Everybody was noticing her. She was like a little bride."

Millicent felt that the discussion was hopeless.

"As for making such a fuss about feelings, the less people say the more they feel, as a rule. I don't believe in all that talk about religion. It is a pure case of conceit and obstinacy. Beryl likes to go against me on all occasions, and always did. But she shall learn to submit, or I will have no more to do with her. Not wish for Confirmation, indeed! Your boys were not so absurd, say what you like in defence of Beryl."

"They did wish for it, Di. That made all the difference."

"Of course they did, and so would any person with proper feelings. 'I' wished it when I was a girl. I never thought of putting it off. And it is not that your boys are so tremendously religious either. Escott may be inclined that way—sickly people often are,—but Ivor is just like any other young man."

"I think 'not,'—if you mean any other irreligious young man. Ivor is reserved, but he has high principle, and I believe there is much deeper feeling than appears on the surface. I am not denying that he has his faults,—that is another question. And I do not for a moment contend that self-deception is not possible,—is not even frequent. I only say that no one ought to be confirmed, without at least a strong sense of the reality of the promises, and an earnest purpose to keep them."

"Well, I am sick of the subject. But I intend to have my own way with Beryl. It would never do to let her begin by defying me." And Diana settled herself to the perusal of a yellow-backed novel, with her feet on the sofa, in a fatigued attitude.