by George Moore
Leaning against the mantelpiece, Merat stood looking at her mistress as at an idol. These little chats were her recompense for the sacrifices she had made so that she might remain in Evelyn’s service.
“A cousin of mine, mademoiselle, is going to be professed to-morrow — would you like to see her take the veil?”
Merat described her cousin’s people as well-to-do tradespeople in a midland town. Their business prospered, and there was a nice garden at the back of their house, full of lilac bushes, and on Sunday there was always supper, and the young men stayed to supper. The mother being French, the children spoke French and English. Julia played the piano and Emily sang. During Merat’s profuse descriptions Evelyn thought not of Julia and Emily, but of Sophie, who had decided to be come a Carmelite nun. Why a Carmelite nun? In her own words, because if she were to become a mm, she would like a severe order. She would like her life to be as different from the life of the world as possible. Why did she want this? No one knew — she did not know herself. But she wanted this thing above all other things. She had always been a pious girl, but not more pious than her pious brothers and sisters. She used to romp in the garden on Sunday evenings with the young men. One of the young men had asked her to marry him. She had hesitated at first and then she had refused. Her father had asked her to wait for two years, and she had waited. Young men had come to supper and she had walked with them in the garden, and her voice had been heard laughing. Her sisters had married, and everyone had expected that she would marry. But when the two years her father had asked for were over she had told him that she had not changed. She wished as much as ever to be a Carmelite nun.
CHAP. V.
SPRING WAS BREAKING out in the streets — soft white clouds floated at the end of every street, and they drove past green squares. The convent was in a distant suburb, and during the drive there Evelyn hardly spoke. She was far more interested in her own thoughts than in Merat’s gossip, and, seeing the sparrows carrying straws into the budding trees, she thought of the girl whose destiny had been revealed to her at eighteen, and who had surrendered life without a sigh, perhaps gladly.
And, seeing lilacs in the convent courtyard, Evelyn wondered if the little sister who had opened the door to them would understand any part of what she was thinking if she were to tell her, or if the cloister had blotted oat her human heart.
When they entered the church the candles were being lighted, and on the right of the altar there was an open archway railed off by high rails. The pews were beginning to fill, and while they waited Evelyn thought, “So a girl is going to renounce the life of the animal — the individual life, the life of conflict. She is led to this, not by instinct, for she renounces the instinctive life; not by the light of wisdom, for she has no wisdom!”
There came a sound of chanting, and looking up they saw the priests and acolytes pass in by a side door; and at the same moment, and by the same door by which Merat and Evelyn had come into the church, the bride came out of the sunlight into the smell of the incense — a healthy-looking girl with flushed cheeks, leaning on her father’s arm, and Evelyn thought of Christ as of a tender lover waiting to receive his bride. Behind her followed her mother, and her brothers and sisters, and they sat on some scattered chairs on either side, while the bride, without visible bridegroom, knelt before the altar. Evelyn heard the voice of the priest intone the Veni Creator, and the response came from the nuns in thin, quavering notes; so inexpressibly dreary was the intonation, so like the strewing of ashes, that it seemed to her that her way must be with the sun and the lilacs rather than in the dim church, sickly with incense.
The ritual proceeded for a while, and then Evelyn followed the procession. She was so blinded by excitement that she could not observe anything, and it merely seemed to her that many carried tapers in their hands, and that there were acolytes and priests. She longed to ask what would happen next, but did not dare, so intense was the moment. The procession passed down the aisle and into the courtyard. The doors were wide open, and the procession passed through them into the garden, and Evelyn saw the cloaked nuns holding tapers, and, in the doorway, the Prioress, tall and graceful, bending like a mother over the bride kneeling at her feet, begging for admission. The bride’s father and mother, her brothers and her sisters, pressed forward to kiss her for the last time, and all that remained of Owen Asher in Evelyn rose in revolt, she wished, in spite of her reason, to snatch the girl from God and give her back to life. Amid the laburnums and the lilac, in the heat of this voluptuous day, the immolation seemed to be pitiful, too awful to be borne.
“I must see her,” Evelyn said; “she will be able to tell me the secret of her great discovery and how she came to make it.”
She followed Merat through a side door, and through various passages until they came to a bare room, and at the end of the room she saw merely an iron grating, and behind it a Carmelite nun. She pressed forward, eager to ask her why she had done this, to ask what circumstances in her life had driven her to do this, but the rush of questions escaped with her breath, for the middle-class girl had disappeared, and in her place she saw a being, seemingly more spiritual than human. There were traces of tears drying on the girl’s hot cheeks, and her look seemed to enfold Evelyn in its sanctification, and it followed her when she drove home in the hansom — and she saw nothing of the world around her. All the links in the chain seemed broken — centuries seemed to have passed, and when she entered her room she sat down, unable to speak, lost in the contemplation of something great and noble. All the familiar objects in the room seemed strange and unreal, yet she was clearer in her mind than she had ever felt before, and she seemed to see through life for the first time, and, seeing it, she cared nothing for it.
She stood like one alone on an empty island, seeing the house-lined shores from a distance, and she did not awake from her dream till the door opened.
She wore a maroon-coloured dress, and her figure looked very slight in it. She had grown thinner, and her arms were slender in the tight sleeves; white lace fell over her hands, making them seem fragile and beautiful, and Ulick read in her pale, nervous eyes, that she would be led far from him, and she read misery in his while she told him of the nervous irresolution she could not overcome, but she had to tell him why she had not gone to Victoria. And as she told him of her terror, and of the sudden sleepiness which had fallen upon her, she watched his eyes for any trace of anger that might appear in them. But they only reflected the pain in his heart — the pain which he felt for her.
He was dressed in the tweed suit which he wore from the beginning of the year to its end, a loose, well-worn cravat floated about his throat, but his simple dignity made Owen’s artificial dignities seem small and almost mean in her present eyes. His hair was tossed over his forehead, and she liked it as he wore it. She liked everything about him, even his clumsy boots, for the idea he represented was so much greater than any externals could be. His clothes seemed but a little shadow. The picture was all sky — the quiet of the sky and the wistfulness of the sky at evening; the sorrow and the pity and the immortality of the sky were reflected in his eyes, at least they were for her; and when she told him how the sublime act she had witnessed that morning had impressed her, he listened to her with a pity for her in his eyes that nearly broke her down. He seemed to her like some woodland creature who, hearing monks chanting in his woodland, divines in some half-conscious way that an idea in which he has no part has come into the world.
CHAP. VI.
THE PORTERESS’S PRETTY smile seemed less cheerful than usual, and as soon as Mother Philippa came into the parlour Evelyn divined a serious money trouble.
“But what is the matter, Mother Philippa? You must tell me about it. I can see there is trouble.”
“Well, my dear, to tell you the truth we have no money at all.”
“At all! You must have some money.”
“No; we have none. And Mother Prioress is so determined not to get into debt that she will not let us
order anything from the tradespeople, and we have to manage with what we have got in the convent. Of course there are some vegetables and some flour in the house. But we can’t go on long like this. We don’t mind so much for ourselves, but we are so anxious about Mother Prioress; you know how weak her heart is, and all this anxiety may kill her. Then there are the invalid sisters who ought to have fresh meat.”
Evelyn thought of driving to the Wimbledon butcher and bringing back some joints.
“But, Mother, why did you not let me know before? Of course I will help you.”
“The worst of it is, Evelyn, we want a great deal of help.”
“Well, never mind, I’m ready to give you a great deal of help.... As much as I can. Ah, here is the Reverend Mother.”
The door had opened, and the Prioress stood resting, leaning on the door handle. Evelyn was by her side in an instant.
“Thank you, my child, thank you.”
“I have heard of your trouble, Mother. I’m determined to help you, so you must sit down and tell me about it.”
“Reverend Mother ought not to be about,” said Mother Philippa. “On Monday night she was so ill that we had to get up to pray for her.”
“I’m better to-day.”
And speaking, Evelyn thought, very slowly and feebly, the Reverend Mother told Evelyn the amount of their liabilities. The house and grounds had been mortgaged for twenty thousand pounds, and when the interest on this had been paid, the margin they had to live on was not large, and this year it had been reduced unexpectedly.
As she was about to explain this new misfortune, she paused for breath.
“Some other time, dear Mother, you will tell me the details. Now I want to think how I can help you out of your difficulties.”
And Evelyn took the nun’s hand and looked into the tired, wan eyes, and she understood quite well how this woman, so firm and resourceful in her own convent, shrank from the trouble which fate had forced upon her with a material world, eager and merciless in its greed, and anxious to acquire valuable property regardless of the sufferings of others.
The weight of debt on the convent surprised her, but she hoped her face had shown no surprise. She had once been offered a large sum of money to go to America, and it seemed to her a heroic adventure to go there to sing the nuns out of debt. But to do this she would have to return to the stage, and she would if she could overcome herself; and in her anxiety to cheer the two elderly and helpless women, who seemed to have become oddly enough dependent upon her, she thought that she would be able to. To relieve their immediate necessities would be easy; she would send them twenty pounds at once. But how to cope with so large a debt she had not the faintest idea at the time. It was not until she was on her way back to London that the idea of a series of concerts in several large towns, beginning in London and ending in Glasgow, occurred to her. She would make at least a couple of thousand pounds in a six months’ tour, and this sum she would give to the nuns to hand over to their mortgagees. The nuns were paying four per cent., so next year they would be eighty pounds a year richer. It could not be that some Catholics would not be found to subscribe; once an example is set it is quickly followed. But next day her agent told her he could not hold out any hope to her of a successful tour before the autumn; during the summer months she would not draw half as much money as she would in September and October. He thought she could not do better than sing the music she was famed for.... London was more ready to welcome a new departure than the provinces. The provinces were conservative, and would want to hear what she had sung in London. Her agent left her to discuss the matter with Ulick, who had just come in, and after some consultation they decided to go to Dulwich and refer the matter to Mr. Innes.
Her father did not consider whether it was the sensual or the religious idea which had led her back to her art. He merely rejoiced in the fact that she was to return to art. He began to compose a programme for her — Wagner and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The provinces had not yet heard the old instruments, and he felt sure they would be appreciated. He went to the harpsichord and asked Evelyn to sing, and then went to the piano, and she sang again. He appealed to Ulick, and Ulick agreed with him, but so readily did he agree with her father that Evelyn guessed he was brooding something. He stood looking into space, or sometimes he looked at her with a sad, pitying expression which troubled her. It was the convent that troubled him. He would have her return to art for some other reason. She could see that he was hostile to the conventual idea, and she wondered why, for she knew no one more truly religious than he.
She had expected he would have tried to dissuade her, but he refrained, and when she told him of the convent, he listened, and on the first opportunity spoke of something else, and she was touched when he said as he bade her good-night, —
“You will want an accompanist; let me be your accompanist; it will save you a great deal of money, and I shall be helping the nuns in my own way.”
The mornings were henceforth passed at the piano. After lunch they went into the Park, and they talked of all the things in the Park in the late afternoons. It was pretty to stray through the groves, talking alternately of art and religion. At any hour of the day — even if you were to wake Ulick at three o’clock in the morning, he would not complain, if it were to talk of art or metaphysics. He would, there is not the slightest doubt, sit up in bed, and after rubbing his eyes, begin to discuss Wagner’s meaning regarding the Valkyrie, or the meaning of the Druids when they said that men had made the world. Evelyn liked to watch his reveries and hear him say that the meaning of the Druids’ saying that man had made the world out of his thoughts was that he had invented metaphysics and the mythologies. As they walked, love of him awoke in her heart when he explained what Father Railston had tried to explain. The priest had prosaically assured her that she should not expect sensible relief at every hour of the day, that to acquiesce in all the teaching of the Church was sufficient. But Ulick had said that if we believe in the moments when our life reaches its highest point, that is to say, in the moments when our animal nature is at wane, it should matter little to us if we should feel less certain about God in our ordinary, passing life. The conversation passed on, and Ulick told her that he had believed in one God in childhood; he had once believed in Jehovah, and about this great God he imagined a sort of pantheism. Christ had not interested him at that time, and he now understood the Son as a concession to polytheism. Man, he said, alternates between polytheism and monotheism.
“And the Virgin,” she said, “is another concession, and the canonised saints are further concessions, so that the divine idea may be brought within the reach of simple minds.”
It was July, and the leaves were already beginning to grow crisp, and a yellow tint to come into the green; and she said, —
“We shall never know each other better than we do to-day; our affection can do nothing but decline.”
“My heart, Evelyn, is like a mirror in which nothing changes and nothing passes.”
“But I am spoiling your life; I can give you nothing for your love.”
“You give me all my inspiration — you are the source of all of it.
“I beseech you,” he said after a long silence, “do not separate yourself from me because you think that.”
She promised him she would not, and an indefinable sensation of joy passed into their hearts, and it lasted while they looked into the sunny interspaces.
She feared him no longer; it was herself she feared, for though he did not make love to her his gentleness was compelling her, and she repressed the impulse to take his hand, lest to do so should break the love spell of those long summer days. They had reached the summit of their happiness, and both foresaw the day when they would have to begin the descent.
CHAP. VII.
IN THEIR LONG strayings by the Serpentine she often wondered what she should say if they were to meet Owen. He would pass them quickly, with a cynical smile on his lips and in his eyes, for he wou
ld think the worst.
Ulick had asked her if he might accompany her on her concert tour, but she had refused, feeling she could not hold out against his tenderness much longer. The moment would have come when she would have thrown herself into his arms. He had not tried to kiss her as Owen had done and it would have been easy for any other woman to have seen him every day without danger, but she was different. She could resist once, twice, even three times, but the time came when she could resist no longer. Love with her was like one of those poisons which remain in the body; it is not the actual dose which kills, but the accumulation of doses, and she knew that men had again become a feverish curiosity in her.
At Edinburgh the larger part of the stalls was taken up by Lady Ascott’s party. Lady Ascott had had a large house party at Thornton Grange, and she brought all her friends to Edinburgh to hear Evelyn. She brought many of the county people with her, and after the concert came to see Evelyn. Evelyn was thinking of the men whom she had heard talking behind her, and almost independently of her will she turned from the women who were complimenting her on her singing, and it was only by an effort of will that she engaged in conversation with Lady Ascott or some amiable old gentleman.
The temptation pursued her and kept her awake. She lay on her left side, seeing in the darkness the faces she had seen during the evening. And every day the danger seemed to grow more threatening. She would have abandoned her concert tour had it not been for the nuns — for their sakes she was obliged to go on with it. Every day her danger grew more imminent. Lady Ascott asked her to Thornton Grange, and after all Lady Ascott had done to make her Edinburgh concert a success she did not see how she could refuse to spend the interval between the Edinburgh and the Glasgow concert with her.
Thornton Grange was thirty miles west of Edinburgh, so it would be on her way to Glasgow, and as she went there she thought of the people she would meet. She would be sure to meet there some of the men whom she had met last autumn when she lunched with Owen, and the women she had met there too, for they went about in gangs. She knew what the party would be like; she knew it before it began. On the second would begin an exasperated desire to do something to escape from the tedium of leisure. Everyone would be divided as if the Atlantic divided them, even when they lay on each other’s arms, for their intimacies were merely physical. Physical Intimacies are but surface emotions, forgotten as soon as they are satisfied, whereas spiritual intimacies live in the heart; they are part of our eternal life and seem to reach beyond the stars.
