by George Moore
It was Sister Mary John’s faith that had inspired her; it was Sister Mary John’s example that had helped her to believe that the Real Presence was the one true reality. Now she remembered that she had said to Sister Mary John, “Nothing seems to me so real as the Sacrament, not even you, whom I can see and touch with my hands....” What sin had been theirs? What shadow of sin had Sister Mary John seen in their friendship? Something less than a shadow, and lest this shadow of a shadow should define itself, she had left her alone in the convent.
She had been in bed three hours, and she was weary of thinking, and for three weeks she had hardly slept; and in the lucidity of these white nights she had read her life. At first she had allowed herself to read it for a few moments, just to see if she remembered it, but gradually she had yielded more and more to the temptation of remembrance. Her stage lovers, and her other lovers, even her admirers, men whose names she did not even remember, returned to her. One of these was a young Russian. She remembered the evening they had stood on a hilltop overlooking the city; from where they stood they could see the harbour and the ships; and she remembered the blown trees and the faded grass, and the young man, who was a prince, had pressed her to marry him. If she had done so she would now be a Russian princess living among the Steppes, whereas she was now a nun living in the Wimbledon convent. She never would see him again. Had he discovered someone to marry him, and did he ever think of her? she wondered. Yes, far away in the Steppes he thought of her sometimes.
She remembered the names of actors she had acted with, she remembered when they had sung well and when they had sung badly. Perhaps the pleasantest days to remember were the days when she went to her singing lessons every morning, and when Owen had come from England to visit them. They had given dinner-parties and dances in that house, in the Rue Balzac, and she remembered that Owen had to leave her to escape from the torment of desire. She remembered that it was difficult for them to sit in the same room when others were present.
But this life of sin had been forgiven her, and to save herself from memories of Owen she had to think of Ulick’s gentleness, and the different delight she had taken by his side. She thought of the days they had spent in Ireland, and fell asleep, dreaming of a long beautiful day in the lonely country.
But before the first bird began to sing her sleep had become broken, and when the first bird chirped a cry escaped from her, and she moaned and seemed to resist someone. “No, oh, no, Owen, I cannot.” Then her voice sank to a murmur and she waved her arms. “It is sacrilege,” she cried, and she sank back. “Stay here with me, no one will know you are here, but in the chapel you may be seen. I cannot do that, I cannot commit sacrilege; God would never forgive that.”
She lay stark and white beneath the obscene oppression, unable to resist Owen, who led her from her cell to the chapel where the nuns were assembled to Mass. All the way down the stairs she besought him, asking him why he wished this one thing. There was a strange leer in his eyes, and his lips were strangely curled when he said she dared not go for she knew Monsignor was the celebrant. He grasped her by the wrist and dragged her, and though she resisted with the other arm, placing it against the door-post, she was hurled along, her strength giving way each time. The chapel door was open, and all the nuns were in choir. She could see her empty place, but the nuns did not seem to see it was empty; they were deep in prayer. She was not certain who was the celebrant. It might be Monsignor as Owen had said. She could not see the celebrant very distinctly, but the server she saw quite distinctly. The server was Veronica, and she wore a surplice. She had disguised herself, but her naked feet showed beneath the surplice, and when she changed the book from the right to the left Evelyn feared she would be discovered.
All this while Owen and Evelyn were hiding behind a pillar, and they watched Veronica, who, regardless of the danger of discovery, stood by the celebrant, helping him to find the place in the book. Evelyn besought Owen to come back to her cell with her, but they remained in hiding, and at the Elevation it seemed to her it was not Monsignor who was saying Mass, but a satyr — a satyr whom she had once seen in a picture in the Munich gallery, and she watched the vestments, catching sight every now and then of the hoofs. Then, forgetting the celebrant, she watched the nuns, thinking every moment one of them would look towards where she and Owen were hiding, and one did look, but to Evelyn’s surprise she did not seem to see them.
On the altar a statue lay at length, and Evelyn was puzzled to explain its presence along the altar. The priest continued to say Mass as if he were not aware of the statue, or even inconvenienced by it, and then it seemed to Evelyn not to be a statue but a woman. She noticed that the face was like one of the nuns — she could not tell which, and as the priest bowed his head the woman looked round and watched. Monsignor came from the sacred table to give them communion, and as he was about to return to the altar he caught sight of her and Owen, though Owen had shrunk into the shadow of the pillar. He asked him what he had come for, and Owen answered “to communicate.” She besought Owen to say that he had not come to commit sacrilege; but Owen begged the priest to give him the sacred Host. He put it into his handkerchief, and as they were about to leave the church a sharp rap at the door awoke her.
It was the Sister who had come to tell her to watch before the sacrament.
“I cannot, I cannot get up.”
“Are you ill, Sister?”
“Yes, I am very ill indeed. I cannot watch to-day, I cannot; someone else must take my place.”
CHAP. XXXV.
THERE WAS NO will in her to get up; she lay quite still, her eyes wide open and her look was vague like an animal’s. She did not dare to rouse herself lest any stir might bring back a glimpse of her dream. There was no sign of life in her, except that her face sometimes contracted in an expression of suffering, and when at last she slipped out of bed and began to dress herself, she was certain that come what may she could not endure another month in the convent. The alternative of leaving the convent no longer frightened her. Even if it were to kill the Prioress she must leave; her own soul was at stake, and every moment she lingered in this convent, she was losing it.
She hastened a little so that she might be in time for Mass, and she had begun to hope she might be able to pray. To pray ever so little would alter everything. But when she knelt among the nuns her heart was empty and prayer seemed like sacrilege. The worst was that at the Elevation she could think of nothing but her dream. She doubted no longer that her soul was a lost soul, and to live with her soul, knowing it to be lost, was really hell. Only by leaving the convent could she save her soul. But she could not see the Prioress till noon, and it seemed as if she could not live through her anxiety. She did not dare to think; and at dinner she crumbled a piece of bread and drank a little water, thankful for the silence, for she would not have been able to answer if she had been spoken to.
After dinner she escaped from recreation and went into the chapel and tried to pray. She called, but He answered not, and unable to control her nerves she left the chapel, and catching sight of the Prioress in the passage she hurried after her, but paused at the foot of the stairs to think the matter out. Thinking did not help her; the knot remained untied in spite of all her trembling thoughts, and she went upstairs.
The firm, white face, and the old wrinkled hands turning over some papers unnerved her, and she thought of the chill eyes reading in the recesses of her soul.
“I know, my dear child, that the great crisis of your life has begun. It began some weeks ago. I did not question you; disease ripens best in silence. Sit down, and we will talk about it.”
Evelyn dropped into a chair.
“If you knew, Mother, what I have to say to you you could not speak like that. If I am to save my soul I must leave; it has come to that.”
She spoke with feverish simplicity, telling that her motives were spiritual, that it was because she feared she could not believe sufficiently, and not on account of any desire of the world, or of t
he men whom she had once loved; they were dead to her, the trouble of the flesh had died out of her; such temptations were light, they could be repressed almost at will.
“I feel that I can love God better in the world.”
“But if you were to return to the world, the passion that you could control here would subdue you, and all the struggle would have been in vain. Do you not think that this is so?”
“Oh, no, Mother, I do not think so. The struggle would not have been in vain — God would take it into account. That may not be true doctrine; I fear that it is not, and it is the doctrine and not the flesh that I fear. It is not true that the roots of doubt are in the flesh, though I thought so once, and Monsignor once told me so.”
“So you think, my dear child, that you would be safer in the world than you are here, and that you would be leading a life more pleasing to God?”
“Yes, I cannot think otherwise, and if I could tell you all, you too would think so.”
“Should I?”
The two women sat looking at each other, and then Evelyn said, “I am the unhappiest of women, and the most unfortunate, I think. Imagine a nun, dedicated to perpetual adoration, and unable to believe in the sacrament.”
“You mean, Teresa, that your faith is no longer as complete or as fervent as it was. That may be, nothing is more likely; we should be too happy if a sensible faith were always by us.”
“I have thought of all that, Mother. But my case is different. There is no hope for me — my soul is lost — God has deserted me.”
“But what you say, my dear child, is unthinkable. God cannot withdraw belief in His presence in the sacrament in order that you may return to the world.”
“I see that I cannot make you understand. No one can understand another, and perhaps I am difficult to understand. You cannot understand — I mean sympathise — of course you cannot sympathise with my leaving the convent, that is one of my afflictions. You will always misjudge me, and it is not your fault. No one can lay before another the life that passes in her soul.
.. Words are ineffectual to explain it. With words you can tell the exterior facts of life; but you cannot tell the intense yet involuntary life of the soul — that intricate and unceasing life, incomprehensible as an ant heap, and so personal though it is involuntary.”
At that moment a sudden haunting of her last night’s dream sprang upon her, bringing her, as it were, to bay, and she said, “If it were not for my dreams, Mother.”
“Your dreams are involuntary, so you are not responsible.”
“I have thought of that too, but another night like last night, and I should go mad. I thought this morning I should go mad. I can only think that I must be possessed with the devil. If I could but tell you the dream you would think so too.”
“The devil possesses no one who does not desire him. You are excited and cannot control your nerves; but a little time will bring the change.”
Then the Reverend Mother mentioned one who, the Scripture said, had had an evil spirit cast out of her; and Evelyn mentioned another, and the question was discussed for a while. Both were conscious of the irrelevancy, but neither could disentangle herself from it, and it allowed Evelyn to consider the wretchedness of her plight if she returned to the world, and the Reverend Mother to think how she could save her from the fatal step. Suddenly there came a silence, and Evelyn said, “I became a nun, I am thinking, too late, or too soon. I can understand the acceptation of the religious life by those who passed, like Veronica, from the schoolroom to the novitiate; and there are those who enter the convent late in life, when the vine of life has perished, in disappointment, in misfortune.”
The two nuns sat a long while without speaking.
“Yes, Teresa, the vine of life gathers round and captures and overgrows our natural love of God. You were seven or eight-and-twenty, I think, when you came here first — I was twenty-five when my husband died. Before I was married I often used to come to the convent. I was fond of the nuns, and I was a pious girl, and, like you, I once made a retreat when I was sixteen or seventeen. But after our marriage I forgot our holy religion, and thought seldom of God. I was captured by life, the vine of life grew about me and held me tight. One day, passing by the door of the convent, my husband said, ‘It is lucky that love rescued you, for when I met you you were a little taken by the convent, and might have become a nun. If you had not fallen in love,’ he said, ‘you might have shut yourself up in there — fancy you shut up in there draped in a grey habit.’ I wore that day a grey silk dress, and I remember taking the skirt up as we passed the door and hitting the kerb stone with it. ‘Shut up in that prison house! how could I ever have thought of such a thing! ‘These were my words, but God in His great goodness and wisdom resolved to bring me back to Him. A great deal is required to save our souls, so deeply are we enmeshed in the delight of life, and in the delight of one another. So God took my husband from me after an illness of three weeks. This happened forty years ago — far away from here I used to sit on the seashore crying all day. My little child used to put his arms about me and say, ‘What is mamie crying for?’ Then my child died, seemingly without any reason, and I felt that I could not live any longer amid the desires and activities of men. I will not try to tell you what my grief was; you have suffered grief, and may imagine it. I left my home at once and hurried here, just as you did. When I saw you return here after your father’s death I could not but think of my own returning. I saw myself in you. But we nuns do not speak of our past lives, and if I have told you it is because a force within me impelled me to do so. It may help you; one never knows what may help another — help comes unexpectedly, and from an unexpected side.”
“Thank you, dear Mother, I know what it must have cost you to speak of these past things. There is a great lesson in all you have said.”
At that moment the question of whether the death of a father was as wide and deep a distraction in the life of a woman as the death of a husband and child set itself before Evelyn. But after considering the question for a while, she put it aside, not daring to think it out, and listened instead to the Reverend Mother, who was speaking to her of what her life would be in the world if she were to return to it.
“You have said that to go back to the stage is out of the question, so I can only think of you as a music teacher. The money you gave to the convent cannot be returned to you unless all the nuns agree. I do not know if it could be managed.”
“Do not speak of such a thing. To put back the weight of debt on your shoulders which it was my mission to lift from them! If I were to do that then indeed my life would be deprived of all meaning whatever. It would be all quicksand — shifting sand. The redemption of this convent from debt is the one thing that I have accomplished. Under no circumstances could I ever take back the money. Never speak of it again.”
“My dear child, I should like to say you are very good, but this is not the moment for saying such things. Yet I think I can say that I do not believe God will allow anyone who is as good as you are, who desires goodness as ardently as you do, to leave the convent and start again in the miserable life of the world, where all is disappointment. We shall pray for you, and we have confidence in our prayers. They have been answered before.”
“I fear this return to the world. Outside of the convent what can my life be — the life of an obscure music teacher, half remembered and half forgotten — grey and shadow-like I shall pass —
‘When I move among shadows a shadow, and wall by impassable streams.’
My sole reality will be the convent. I shall never see you, dear Mother, nor any of the Sisters — Veronica, Mother Philippa, and Mother Mary Hilda, so gentle and wise, and yet I shall see nothing but you all, just as an exile sees nothing but his native land. I had often wondered before I came here what my end would be, and I imagined all kinds of ends, but never one so shadowy as mine will be if I leave you.... The disgrace, too-undoing all the good that I have done, that seems the hardest part. It is my de
sertion you will remember; not you, Mother, but the convent.”
The Prioress told Evelyn that when the Mothers met to discuss whether they should vote for, or against, her election, Mother Mary Hilda had advised her rejection until she had proved the reality of her vocation by remaining another year in the novitiate.
“But I always believed in your vocation, and I shall believe in it. God will guide us aright, and will listen to our prayers. But if it should so happen that you should feel your spiritual welfare to be endangered by remaining in the convent, you must leave — there can be no question of that. We must all be guided by our consciences. There is so much that we do not understand. We must always place ourselves in the hands of God.”
This admission seemed to disarm Evelyn, and the terrors of the night having worn off she began to think her fears were illusory, and that by strenuous efforts on her part and by the aid of the prayers of the nuns God would give back His grace to her.
The Prioress found wise words, and Evelyn agreed that a month was the shortest time she could give to the consideration of so irreparable an act as the breaking of her vows.
“Oh, the restlessness of life, and how weary I am of it!” she said, as they went downstairs, for the chapel bell was ringing for Benediction.
CHAP. XXXVI.
THE FORTITUDE WHICH had enabled the Prioress to endure her life, after the death of her husband and her child, appealed to all that Evelyn admired most in human character, and she looked at the old woman with affectionate and wondering eyes. The simple words in which she had described the shipwreck of her life enabled Evelyn to see it clearly, and she could picture the young woman, without a hope in this world, driving like a ship upon the rocks, but saving herself by extraordinary force of character. After the death of husband and child, the convent was the only consolation for a woman like the Prioress, and for nearly half a century her life had swung at anchor, like a ship, in a safe harbour. Evelyn entered the chapel with her, realising the beauty of her serene age, and the wonder of her life in its faith and its romance. And under this influence Evelyn prayed a little while, and it seemed to her that the troubles of her life had faded from her. But before she had left the chapel, before even she had finished her prayer, her thoughts had strayed back to the sacrament. The faintly burning lamp had drawn her thoughts back to it, and she could see it white and transparent amid the gold.