by George Moore
“Oh! Mother Mary Hilda, you’ve forgotten ... this is my last lesson, I am going away to-morrow.”
“Even so it need not be the last lesson; you will come and see us during the winter, if you are in London. I don’t remember that you said that you are going abroad to sing.”
“Mother Mary Hilda, I’m thinking of leaving the stage.”
The nun turned the leaves of the breviary, and it seemed to Evelyn that she dreaded the intrusion on her thoughts of a side of life the very existence of which she had almost succeeded in forgetting; and, feeling a little humbled, Evelyn applied herself to the lesson. And it was just as Mary Hilda’s hand closed the books that the door opened and the Reverend Mother entered, bringing, it seemed, a new idea and a new conception of life into the room. Mother Mary Hilda gathered up her books, and having answered the Reverend Mother’s questions in her own blithe voice, each word illuminated by the happy smile which Evelyn thought so beautiful, withdrew like an apparition.
The Reverend Mother took the place that Mother Mary Hilda had left, and by her very manner of sitting down, showed that she had come on some special intention.
“Miss Innes, I have come to ask you not to leave to-morrow. If you are not already tired of our life, it would give us great pleasure if you would stay with us till Monday.”
“It is very good of you to ask me to stay, I have been very happy; indeed, I dread returning; it is difficult to return to the life of the world after having seen what your life is here.”
“We should only be too happy if you will prolong your stay. You are free to remain as long as you please.”
“Thank you, Reverend Mother, it is very good of you, but I cannot live here in idleness, walking about the garden. What should I do if it were to rain?”
“It looks like rain to-day. We have had a long term of fine weather.”
The nun’s old white hand lay on the table, a little crippled, but still a nervous, determined hand, and the pale, sparkling eyes looked so deep into the enigma of Evelyn’s soul that she lost her presence of mind; her breath came more quickly, and she hastily remembered that this retreat now drawing to a close had solved nothing, that the real solution of her life was as far off as ever.
“Then I may take it that you will stay with us till Monday. I will not weary you with our repeated thanks for what you have done for us. You know that we are very grateful, and shall never forget you in our prayers, but you will not mind my thanking you again for the pleasure your singing has given us. You have sung every day. You really have been very kind.”
“I beg of you not to mention it, Reverend Mother; to sing for you and all the dear sisters was a great pleasure to me. I never enjoyed singing in a theatre so much.”
“I am glad you have enjoyed your stay, Miss Innes. Your room will always be ready. I hope you will often come to see us.”
“It will be a great advantage for me to come and stay with you from time to time.” Neither spoke for a time, then Evelyn said, “Reverend Mother, is it not strange that I should have come back to this convent, my old convent? I never forgot it. I often wondered if I should come here again. When I was here before, it was just as now; it was in a great crisis of my life. It was just before I left home, just before I went to Paris to learn singing. I don’t know if Monsignor has told you that I have decided to leave the stage.”
“Monsignor has entrusted you to me, and I should like to count you as one of my children. All the nuns tell me their little troubles. Though I have guessed there must be some great trouble in your life, I should like you to feel that you can tell me everything, if to do so can be the least help to you.”
Evelyn’s eyes brightened, and, trembling with emotion, she leaned across the table; the Reverend Mother took her hand, and the touch of that old benign hand was a delight, and she felt that she must confide her story.
“I have been several times on the point of speaking to you on the subject of my past, for if I am to come here again I feel that you should know something about me. But how to tell it. I had thought of asking Father Daly to tell you. To-day is your day for confession, but last week I confessed to Monsignor, and do not like to submit myself to another director. Do you understand?”
“Father Daly is an excellent, worthy man, the convent is under the greatest obligations to him, but I could not recommend him as a very enlightened director of souls. That is why the nuns tell me all their troubles. I should like you to feel that you can tell me everything.”
“Reverend Mother, if you did not pass from the schoolroom to the convent like Veronica, you will have heard, you must know, that the life of an opera singer is generally a sinful life. I was very young at the time, only one-and-twenty. I knew that I had a beautiful voice, and that my father could not teach me to sing. But it was not for self-interest that I left him; I was genuinely in love with Sir Owen Asher. He was very good to me; he wanted to marry me; from the world’s point of view I was very successful, but I was never happy. I felt that I was living a sinful life, and we cannot go on doing what we feel to be wrong and still be happy. Night after night I could not sleep. My conscience kept me awake. I strove against the inevitable, for it is very difficult to change one’s life from end to end, but there was no help for it.”
Her story, as she told it, seemed to her very wonderful, more wonderful than she had thought it was, and she would have liked to have told the Reverend Mother all the torment and anguish of mind she had gone through. But she felt that she was on very thin ice, and trembled inwardly lest she was shocking the nun.
It was exciting to tell that it was her visit to the convent that had brought about her repentance; how that very night her eyes had opened at dawn, and she had seen clearly the wickedness of her life, and she could not refrain from saying that it was Owen Asher’s last letter, in which he said that at all hazards he would save her from losing herself in religion, that had sent her to Monsignor for advice. She noticed her omission of all mention of Ulick, and it seemed to her strange that she could still be interested in her sins, and at the same time genuinely determined to reform her life. The nun sat looking at her, thinking what answer she should make, and Evelyn wondered what that answer would be.
“We shall pray for you.... You will not fall into sin again; it is our prayers that enable men to overcome their passions. Were it not for our prayers, God would have long ago destroyed the world. Think of the times of persecution and sacrilege, when prayer only survived in the monasteries.”
Evelyn could not but acquiesce: a world without prayer would be an intolerable world, as unendurable to man as to God. But if the Reverend Mother’s explanation were a true one! If these poor forsakers of the world were in truth the saviours of the world, without whose aid the world would have perished long since!
When she had gone, Evelyn sat thinking, her head leaned on her hand, her eyes fixed on the distant garden, seeing life from afar, strange and distant, like reflections in still waters. She could see distant figures in St. Peter’s walk, tending the crosses and the statues of the Virgin placed in nooks, or hanging on the branches. Some four or five nuns were playing at ball on the terrace, and in the plaintive autumn afternoon, there was something extraordinarily touching in their simple amusement; and she had, perforce, to feel how much wiser was their childishness than the vanity of the world.
Ulick had said that their adventure was the same, only their ways were different. He had said that he sought God in art, while she sought him in dogma. But if she accepted dogma, it was only as a cripple accepts a crutch, Catholicism was essential to her, without it she could not walk; but while conforming to dogma, it seemed possible to transcend its narrowness, and to attach to every petty belief a spiritual significance. It is right that we should acquiesce in these beliefs, for they are the symbols by which the faith was kept alive and handed down. God leads us by different ways, and though we may prefer to worship God in the open air, we should not despise him who builds a house for worship. The Real Being i
s all that we are sure of, for He is in our hearts, the rest is as little shadows. Ulick had quoted an Eastern mystic— ‘He that sees himself sees God, and in him there is neither I nor thou.’
And, reflecting on the significance of these words, she turned with pensive fingers the leaves of The Way of Perfection.
But she was going back to London on Monday! In London she would meet Owen and all her former life. She knew in a way how she was going to escape him. But her former life was everywhere. She got up and walked about the room, then she stood at the window, her hands held behind her back. She was sorely tried, and felt so weak in spirit that she was tempted, or fancied that she was tempted, to go away with Owen in the Medusa. Or she might tell him that she would marry him, and so end the whole matter. But she knew that she would do neither of these things. She knew that she would sacrifice Owen and her career as an opera singer so that she might lead a chaste life. Yet a life of prayer and chastity was not natural to her; her natural preferences were for lovers and worldly pleasures, but she was sacrificing all that she liked for all that she disliked. She wondered, quite unable to account for her choice to herself. Her life seemed very mad, but, mad or sane, she was going to sacrifice Owen and her career. She might sing at concerts, but she did not think such singing would mean much to her and she thought of the splendid successful life that lay before her if she remained on the stage. Again she wondered at her choice, seeking in herself the reason that impelled her to do what she was doing. She could not say that she liked living with her father in Dulwich, nor did she look forward to giving singing lessons, and yet that was what she was going to do. She strove to distinguish her soul; it seemed flying before her like a bird, making straight for some goal which she could not distinguish. She could distinguish its wings in the blue air, and then she lost sight of them; then she caught sight of them again, and they were then no more than a tremulous sparkle in the air. Suddenly the vision vanished, and she found herself face to face with herself — her prosaic self which she had known always, and would know until she ceased to know everything. She was here in the Wimbledon Convent, and Owen was in London waiting for her. She knew she never would live with him again. But how would she finally separate herself from him? How would it all come about? She could imagine herself yielding, but if she did, it would not last a week. Her life would be unendurable, and she would have to send him away. For it is not true that Tannhäuser goes back to Venus. He who repents, he who had once felt the ache and remorse of sin, may fall into sin again, but he quickly extricates himself; his sinning is of no long duration! It was the casual sin that she dreaded; at the bottom of her heart she knew that she would never live a life of sin again. But she trembled at the thought of losing the perfect peace and happiness which now reigned in her heart, even for a few hours. Her face contracted in an expression of terror at the thought of finding herself again involved in the anguish, revolt and despair which she had endured in Park Lane. She recalled the moments when she saw herself vile and loathsome, when she had turned from the image of her soul which had been shown to her. Then, to rid herself of the remembrance, she thought of the joy she had experienced that morning at hearing in the creed that God’s kingdom shall never pass away. Her soul had kindled like a flame, and she had praised God, crying to herself, “Thy kingdom shall last for ever and ever.” It had seemed to her that her soul had acquired kingship over all her faculties, over all her senses, for the time being it had ruled her utterly; and so delicious was its subjection that she had not dared to move lest she should lose this sweet peace. Her lips had murmured an Our Father, but so slowly that the Sanctus bell had rung before she had finished it. Nothing troubled her, nothing seemed capable of troubling her, and the torrent of delight which had flowed into and gently overflowed her soul had intoxicated and absorbed her until it had seemed to her that there was nothing further for her to desire.
She remembered that when Mass was over she had risen from her knees elated, feeling that she had prayed even as the nuns prayed, and she had retired to her room, striving to restrain her looks and thoughts so that she might prolong this union with God.
To remember this experience gave her courage. For she could not doubt that the intention of so special a favour was to convince her that she would not be lacking in courage when the time came to deny herself to Owen Asher. At the same time she was troubled, and she feared that she was not quite sincere with herself. She would easily resist him now; but in six months’ time, in a year? Besides, she would meet other men; her thoughts even now went out towards one. Ah! wretched weakness, abominable sin! She was filled with contempt for herself, and yet at the bottom of her heart, like hope at the bottom of Pandora’s box, there was tolerance. Her sins interested her; she would not be herself without them, and this being so, how could she hope to conquer herself?
Saturday and Sunday were monotonous and anxious days. She had begun to wonder what was in the newspapers, and she had written to say that her carriage was to come to fetch her on Monday at three o’clock.
There had not been a gleam of light since early morning, only a gentle diffused twilight, and the foliage in the garden was almost human in its listlessness; a flat grey sky hung about the trees like a shroud. Mother Philippa and Mother Mary Hilda were walking with her about the grass-grown drive. They were waiting for the Reverend Mother, who had gone to fetch a medal for Evelyn. She heard her chestnuts champing their bits ready to take her back to London, and she could not listen to Mother Philippa’s conversation, for she had been suddenly taken with a desire to say one last prayer in the chapel. She must say one more prayer in the presence of the Sacrament. So, excusing herself, she ran back, and, kneeling down, she buried her face in her hands. At once all her thoughts hushed within her; it was like bees entering a hive to make honey. Prayer came to her without difficulty, without even asking, and she enjoyed almost five minutes’ breathless adoration.
The three nuns kissed her, and as the Reverend Mother hung the medal round her neck, she told her that prayers would be constantly offered up for her preservation. The chestnuts plunged at starting.... If she were killed now it would not matter. But the horses soon settled down into their long swinging trot of ten miles an hour, and all the way to London she reflected. The Reverend Mother had said that the prayers of nuns and monks were the wall and bastion tower which saved a sinful world from the wrath of God, and she thought of the fume of prayer ascending night and day from this convent as from a censer. Men had always prayed, since the beginning of things men had prayed, and as Ulick had said, wisdom was not invented yesterday. He agreed with the naturalistic philosophers that force is indestructible, only objecting that the naturalistic philosophers did not go far enough, the theory of the indestructibility of force being equally applicable to the spiritual world. The world exists not in itself, but in man’s thought.... Often an intense evocation has brought the absent one before the seer’s eyes, and that there are sympathies which transcend and overrule the laws of time and space hardly admits of doubt. Life is but a continual hypnotism; and the thoughts of others reach us from every side, determining in some measure our actions. It was therefore certain that she would be influenced by the prayers that would be offered up for her by the convent. She imagined these prayers intervening between her and sin, coming to her aid in some moment of perilous temptation, and perhaps in the end determining the course of her life.
THE END
Sister Teresa, 1901 version
Described by some as Moore’s masterpiece, this novel was first published in 1901 by Fisher Unwin and in the preface to the book, Moore explains its origins – he was writing a story called Evelyn Innes (1898), which was becoming too long for publication, so he split the narrative and Sister Teresa was the result. The novel is in reality the second half of the narrative of the life of Evelyn Innes, an opera singer. Moore was a self confessed enthusiast of Balzac and was strongly influenced by his work; Balzac’s novel La Duchesse de Longeais has been cited as part inspi
ration for Sister Teresa. Moore went further than acknowledging his admiration for Balzac. In his preface to the revised version of the novel, Moore opines “I may have done no more than to realise one of [Balzac’s] most famous characters [Honorine, from La Duchesse de Longeais]”.
The story opens as Evelyn Innes, a gifted Wagnerian soprano who has retired early, has experienced a calling to give up her old life and turn to a more spiritual one. She travels into London from the Passionist convent she has attached herself to and is met at Hamilton Place by Sir Owen Asher, her former lover, who still desires her. As she prepares for a rare performance, she reflects on her life, wondering how in one person she can reconcile her vibrant sensuality and also her equally powerful spirituality. Her old life as a “celebrity” now seems increasingly distant; friends she had held close, such as Lady Ascott, now appear to be receding along with her memories. Yet, still she feels that she sang better if she sang to men as well as women; and she also feels that relinquishing her old life has left a gulf that her faith and the convent have yet to fill. Evelyn turns to the Monsignor for guidance and he advises her not to give up her art completely, but to put it to good use; that way, she will not feel so redundant; even so, Evelyn goes ahead with the auction of her household goods, ready to move towards a much simpler life. At first she spends weekdays with her father and in artistic pursuits, feeling less and less in empathy with the music she plays and teaches and at the weekends she returns to the convent. More complications arise with the arrival of another of her former lovers, Ulick, who despite her wish that they become platonic friends, presses her yet again to marry him, claiming that such a move is all that can save her from the cloister.
