by George Moore
That girl had known the truth from the beginning, and had confirmed her conviction by an act, and Evelyn remembered that even at that time her own feet were on the way that had led her to the convent. But how incredulous she would have looked if anyone had told her then that in a little while she would stand a nun on the terrace of the Wimbledon convent.
There was no doubt that she was greatly changed, and yet it was the strange discomfort of her clothes that reminded her she was a nun — the voluminous trailing habit with its wide, hanging sleeves, and, smiling, she thought that this stiff, white head-dress made her feel more like a nun than her vows.
She stood, her eyes fixed on the horizon. It had changed from blue to violet, the evening was growing more beautiful. Evelyn had begun to feel that she would stand looking at it for ever, and it was at that moment that the rosy-cheeked porteress came tripping down the terrace to tell her that a lady had called to see her.
“The lady is in the parlour. Mother Hilda is with her, and she has sent me for you.”
It was Louise who had called to see her, but when Evelyn entered the parlour Mother Hilda was not there, and she was not certain if she should remain.
“I can see you are doubtful whether you should stay with me, Evelyn; how is it that you can accept such obedience? And that ridiculous gown, those sleeves, and that head-dress! I hear you were clothed to-day. You have had your hair cut off. But is this the Evelyn, the Evelyn with whom I used to sing?”
“Yes, dear Louise, it is I; and it is kind in you to come here. But how did you find me out? Let me know before Mother Hilda returns. We shall not be able to talk freely before her. This opportunity is quite exceptional.”
“But, Evelyn, your gown distracts me. Well, it was accident that gave me your address. Owen Asher did not know it.”
“Louise, you must not talk to me of him. Though I should like to know he is well. Nor must you talk to me of the stage. All that is past.”
“Then what shall we talk about?”
“Tell me how you found me out.”
“You look so serious that I shall find it hard to tell you anything.... I was singing Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria,’ and a man told me he had heard a nun at Wimbledon sing it more beautifully than anyone — myself, of course, excepted. Something told me it was you, and the moment I heard you I knew.”
“I have not sung it for some weeks.”
“It is about three weeks ago, but I was with a friend and could not call that day, and the following day I went to Paris. I have just returned. This is the first free day I had.”
“It is very good of you to come, Louise. I am glad you have not forgotten me.”
“But tell me — I want you to tell me how long this fancy — this whim of yours — is going to last.”
“You surely cannot think that I am not serious. I assure you that living in a convent is no joke at all.”
“Then you are not happy?”
“On the contrary, I am happy, and I grow happier every day. When I said that to live in a convent was not a joke I meant that it would be horrible if one were not sure of one’s vocation.”
“But you will tell me, Evelyn, what reason led you here, what impulse.”
“Ah, that is what everyone wants to know. The question you have asked me is the question everyone wishes to put to a nun. I remember longing to ask a Carmelite nun why she had refused the world. She was only eighteen or twenty.”
“And what answer did she give you?”
“I asked her nothing; the reason was plain upon her face. But I will tell you why I came here. I came here in quest of happiness. The same reason that took me to the stage took me here. The happiness I seek is not the happiness I sought in art and lovers. But I came here in quest of happiness.”
“And you have found it?”
“Nuns are far happier than actresses. They seem to me to be perfectly happy, and they have surrendered everything.”
“And are you happy?”
“I am happier than I used to be. But I have not yet taken the vows which separate me irrevocably from the things which make us unhappy; I am not so happy as the nuns who have been here for twenty years, but I am sure I am happier than you are, Louise.”
“I am not happy at all.”
The conversation paused and then Evelyn said, “The moment we come to see that life is something more than a set of adventures (that is how I used to look upon my life), the moment we come to see that life has a spiritual meaning, we find ourselves propelled to alter our lives.”
“One can alter one’s life without shutting oneself up in a nunnery?”
“We must go where we feel we shall find health.... A person suffering from a contagious disease would leave the infected place as soon as he was cured.”
“Perhaps your convalescent might think it his duty to remain to tend the sick.”
“Ah, which is the better, the active or the contemplative order, which is it better, to pray or to act?”
“My dear Evelyn, you were always a little mad. I know all about convents and nuns. I was brought up in a convent, and I, too, was tempted by the religious life, but I did not give way to the temptation. But what are you striving after, Evelyn? You can never know for certain that there is a future life.”
“Even so. It interests me more to pursue a moral idea than to sing difficult music for applause and gain. The inward satisfaction one gets by living for an idea is infinitely greater than one gets by the pursuit of artistic or other pleasure. It is delicious to feel that one is not prompted by selfish motives. I assure you I would sing the ugliest music ever written to get money to pay the convent’s debts. To pay off these debts is the object of my life.”
“You think that it is a sufficient object?”
“It is sufficient for me. London had come to seem like a stuffy omnibus. Moreover, I could not breathe in London.”
CHAP. XXV.
THE DOOR OPENED and Mother Hilda came in, and, after a few words, Louise asked if they might go into the garden. Mother Hilda assented readily, and, as they walked down the terrace, they stopped to listen to the nuns who were singing in the library. Louise spoke of a school, of the advantages of the situation.
“And what an inducement,” she said, “for mothers to send their children to you. Where could girls learn singing as they could here?”
Mother Hilda did not perceive that Louise’s remark was intended to be satirical, and she explained that they could not have a school without altering the rule of the order. Louise regretted that this was so, and spoke of the convent where she had been educated. Mother Hilda knew the convent and several of the nuns, and they were soon talking of their friends, of their tempers, their ailments and their amiabilities. Sister So-and-So was dead, Mother So-and-So was getting very old. Evelyn knew none of them, and her thoughts turned to Louise, and the annoyance this visit caused her seemed out of proportion. She had wished this day to pass in meditation, and her meditations had been interrupted for no good reason, to argue about matters which this day had settled for ever. She did not wish to think unkindly of Louise, but she hoped she would not come to see her again. Visits are only agreeable when they are prompted by the desire for mutual benefit and when they are an exchange of mutual ideas. What benefit had come to her or to Louise by this visit? They had not a thought in common, and once all their thoughts had been common. She had lived with this woman, she had sung with her, they had travelled together, and now Louise was merely a faded recollection, a something that had once been.
By this time Mother Hilda and Louise had exhausted their memories of the French convent, and the conversation had begun to flag, and Evelyn wondered what would happen next. At that moment the porteress appeared — she had come to say that the Prioress would be glad to speak with Mother Hilda. Evelyn and Louise walked on, and they spoke of Mother Hilda, without feeling any interest in what they were saying, until they came to the fish-ponds; then to keep the conversation from falling Evelyn had to tell Louise how t
ame the fish were. Louise began to sing the song of the Rhine Maidens. Evelyn joined her for a few bars and then Louise asked her to throw away the ring.
“What ring, dear?”
“The ring that was put on your finger to-day.”
“No ring was put on my finger. I shall not get the ring till I am professed. That will be in a year from now.”
“Evelyn, let me implore you.”
“But, my dear Louise, if I am happier here than I was in the world I had better remain here.”
“The nuns only want your money. When you have given them your money you will be unhappy.”
“These women are my dearest friends. It is painful to me to hear them spoken of in this way.”
A slight mist was rising, a thin moon floated like a pale feather in the sky, and the convent roofs were clear in the luminous air. A nun had come with a message to Evelyn, and she said, —
“Now I must say good-bye.”
“Shall I not see you again, Evelyn? Have we nothing in common any more? Have we faded from each other? I cannot tell you how indescribably sad it seems to me.”
“Only because you put all your faith into the things of this world, which are passing. But I shall pray for you, Louise; I shall always remember you in my prayers.”
“Only in your prayers, Evelyn?”
“My name is no longer Evelyn. I am Sister Teresa.”
CHAP. XXVI.
ONE DAY, IN the last month of Evelyn’s noviceship, Sister Mary John sat at the harmonium, her eyes fixed, following Evelyn’s voice like one in a dream. Evelyn was singing Stradella’s “Chanson d’église,” and when she had finished the nun rose from her seat, and, clasping her friend’s hand, she thanked her for her singing with effusion and with tears.
For some time past their eyes lighted up when they met in the passages, and it was delicious to think for a moment how closely they were dependent upon each other. Once Evelyn had noticed that the Sister seemed to avoid her; it might be only a seeming, she thought, for a few days after Sister Mary John had hurried to meet her. On another occasion she had noticed a flutter as it were in the nun’s eyes and a change of colour in her cheeks, and then an appealing look in her eyes, like one whose heart misgives her. Evelyn knew the nature of her own feelings, but she feared that Sister Mary John would one day suspect that hers was neither permissible nor valid; and then, whatever it cost her, she would put it aside; she would not allow anything to come between her and her love of God. Evelyn knew that this nun would not hesitate to leave the convent if she felt her vocation to be endangered by remaining. The possibility of such a leave-taking frightened her, and she resolved she would avoid all casual conversation for the future. But it was difficult to do this; their musical occupation left them constantly together, and Evelyn’s coldness increased the nun’s desire for her affection.
This friendship, which had begun in the music, caught root in the Latin language, in the Holy Office. It was from Mother Hilda that Evelyn had learnt the groundwork of the Office, but it was from Sister Mary John that she had learnt the great place the Office should take in the life of a nun. The nun had caught Evelyn’s eyes fixed upon her as she scolded against those who are content with a mere recital of the words and shrink from the labour of learning to appreciate the wonderful appropriateness, acquired not in a single composition, but built up bit by bit in the centuries like some great epic. She had guessed that Evelyn was ready and willing for further instruction.
And they had read the Breviary together, four great volumes, one for every season of the year; the language was in itself a beguilement, and behind the language there was the rich, mysterious tradition of the Church. Sister Mary John had taught her Latin, and Evelyn had learnt how we may think of God even to forgetfulness satisfy the mind more than any secular literature. There was always something in the Office for them to talk about, something new amid much that remained the same, and the communication of her pleasure at the reappearance of a favourite hymn was always something to look forward to.
In this personal intimacy, so rare in a convent, but which peculiar circumstances had allowed to them, she had become aware of Sister Mary John’s extraordinary passion for God. The nun had tried to hide it from her, but she had discovered it, and it was during this time that Evelyn had made her first real advance in piety. It was from the example of Sister Mary John that she had learned how we may think of God even to forgetfulness of our own identity, living while on earth, as it were, in the very atmosphere of His bosom. To watch her friend in prayer was in itself an instigation to prayer; and Sister Mary John had begun to think she had discovered a genius in Evelyn, which, if cultivated, would give a new visionary to the Church. She believed that Evelyn would attain an extraordinary sanctity, that she would acquire marvellous power, and all her prayers were directed to this end. She even neglected the prayers she should say to release her own soul from purgatory, thinking that a few more years would matter little for so great an end. To excite Evelyn’s enthusiasm she even did violence to her own humility, speaking of her own visions and ecstasies — poor though they were and inferior to those which would be given to Evelyn if Evelyn would devote herself wholly to God.
Sister Mary John was the only nun in the Wimbledon convent who reminded Evelyn of the nuns she had read of in the lives of the saints. Ecstasies, she felt sure, were not Mother Philippa’s religious lot, nor Veronica’s. Veronica was far too trim and methodical for a vision. But certain as she was of the somewhat lowly spirituality of the other nuns, she was sure that Sister Mary John succeeded in living beyond herself. That was her own phrase; her admonition was always that we should strive to live a little beyond ourselves. When the sensible realities faded, she said the Word of God became clearer, and this evacuation of sense had often taken her when she sat alone playing the organ in the church; and after these transports the return to the physical world was slow and painful.
“I have written down some of my visions in a book; I have never shown them to anyone, but I will show them to you.”
Beguiled by the immediate moment, and believing it would be to her friend’s advantage to read her manuscript, she sought for it among the music, explaining that she had written it as if it were a translation from some medieval French writer.
“Do not read it now; take it to the library.”
Evelyn took it to the library at once, and she read how the Sister had been met suddenly in the midst of a great darkness by a shining light which unfolded and revealed to her the Divine Bridegroom, who took her in His arms, saying that He loved her. The anecdote was told so simply that it convinced, and Evelyn paused in her reading to think that whoever attains to any knowledge of the unseen world does so by foregoing some part of her knowledge of the natural world. Whoever prays sees God in a greater or less degree, and visions are but the revelations of the spiritual world about us. “Yes,” she said, speaking to herself, “the spiritual world is revealed to us by prayer, just as the material world is discovered to us according to the measure of our senses.”
She read that while looking at a picture of St. Francis, whom Christ had taken to His bosom, Sister Mary John had heard a voice saying, “I will gather thee, oh, my bride, to my bosom in a far warmer embrace, and our communion shall be so perfect that it may not be seen.” Evelyn wondered if the nun had had any scruples regarding her visions, and, turning the pages over, she discovered that once a scruple had entered her heart.
One night she had been awakened, she knew not how or why, it seemed as if she had been awakened to see a soft light shining in the corner of the room, which was quite dark. She lay with her feet and hands folded, watching the light which grew wider until it descended upon her; and when she awoke again she was lying on her left side, and an angel was beside her. She could just see him in the faint and tremulous light which his flesh emitted, and he folded her in his arms, and his white wings closed about her, and it seemed to her that she had never seen anything so beautiful as his flesh. He folded h
er closely in his arms, and told her how he loved her, and watched for her, and he held her so closely that the two seemed to become one. Then her flesh became beautiful and luminous like his, and she seemed to have a feeling of love and tenderness for it. She saw his face quite dearly; she seemed to have seen it in some picture. “But oh, how much more beautiful is the real face,” she thought; and then she hoped he would kiss her; but he did not kiss her, they only seemed to become one — one perfect soul united for ever and ever. He said that she was the counterpart he had been waiting for in heaven, and she fell asleep in his arms — a beautiful sleep, deep and refreshing as the sea, and when she awoke he had left her.
Sister Mary John confessed that she was unable to explain the words, “I am your counterpart and await you in heaven.” For it was Christ who awaited her in heaven, and for this reason she prayed, if it were God’s holy will, that the angel might not visit her again.
The next day at Mass she had feared she would never gather strength to go to the sacred table. But suddenly she had heard a voice saying, “Come, come, my beloved spouse, I wait for thee; I will descend into thee and take my joy in thee.” Evelyn laid down the book. This passionate materialisation of God’s love she felt she could never feel. She did not see the wounds, nor could she count the nails, nor did her soul ever escape into the wound in the side and find a divine beverage in the flowing blood. The Christ to whom her thoughts went out was neither the victim nor the bridegroom, but the young man who had appeared in Galilee, preaching a doctrine which could alone save men from themselves. It was not God, but it was the wonder of the moral law that delighted her, and her heart remained dry, if it did not rebel against a physical love and perception of God.