by George Moore
CHAP. XIX.
SUDDENLY SHE NOTICED in herself a little of that childish gaiety which had seemed to her to be one of the characteristics of the Sisters, and she reflected that she owed her peace of mind to her daily practice of obedience. She liked to break off in the middle of a sentence, at the first note of the Angelus or the De Profundis. She liked to hurry in answer to any summons of the Prioress or the Novice Mistress.
Obedience and chastity were the familiar spirits of the place, and like guardian angels they watched over her, and in the convent it seemed simple and natural to believe in God and all the dogmas of the Church.
In her first letter to her father she wrote:
“I am so happy here that I wonder why I remained in the world so long. Behind love and behind fame there is the ache of living, and it only ceases in a convent. I often look round wondering how it was that I could have passed happiness by so often; that I should have searched for it so eagerly, missing it always; that I should have gone so far in quest of it, when all the time it was at hand. You will think that I am mistaken, that I am deceived by the novelty of a new life, that I am enchanted by a new adventure. It may be so, though I do not think it is; but of this I am sure, that those who have been in the convent longest are the happiest of us all. I shall never forget how one day last autumn, when the grass was soaked with cold dew and the crisp leaves hung in a death-like silence, I met one of the lay Sisters, Sister Bridget, coming down the path. She was carrying a pail of water, and I noticed that she was going to our graveyard. She was going, she explained, to scrub the tiles which covered the late Reverend Mother’s grave. ‘Ah, well, Mother’s room must have its weekly turn out,’ she answered, and when I pointed out to her that the tiles were still clean, her answer made it clear that she regarded the task of attending to the grave not as a duty but as a privilege. Her face withered and ruddy like an apple reflected an extraordinary contentment, and I felt that if she were asked what she would do if she had to begin life again, she would answer: I would begin it again in a convent. She has worked for the community for nearly thirty years; she has been through all the early years of struggle — a struggle which has begun again — a struggle the details of which were not even told her, and which she had no curiosity to hear. She is content to work on to the end, believing that it was God’s will for her to do so. The lay Sisters can aspire to none of the convent offices; they have none of the smaller distractions of receiving guests, and instructing converts and so forth, and not to have as much time for prayer as they desire is their penance. They are humble folk who strive in a humble way to separate themselves from the animal, and they see heaven from the wash-tub plainly. In the eyes of the world they are ignorant and simple hearts. They are ignorant, but of what are they ignorant? Only of the passing show, which every moment crumbles and perishes. I see them as I write — their ready smiles and their touching humility. They are humble workers in a humble vineyard, and they are content that it should be so.”
Speaking again of the happiness she had discovered in the convent, she said:
“I sometimes look around a little dazed by my own happiness, and the happiness of those I see about me. I can hardly believe it is all true; life moves so easily from the early morning until bedtime. It flows (my comparison is a commonplace one, I know) like a beautiful stream, a steady current which bears onward happily and surely towards eternity. Everyone here has her work to do, everyone is busy and not one is overworked. If ever I felt disinclined for my work and wished for idleness I should find no one to idle with me. At every hour everyone is in her appointed place, doing her appointed duty. The food is not very good, nor very plentiful, for the nuns are poor. It is a little trying, I admit, to feel always a little hungry. But this inconvenience is slight, when we compare it with the great inconvenience which we have to bear with if we live in the world. Here, at all events, ennui is unknown. The remarks which we hear so often in the world, which I used to hear so often in Owen Asher’s society, in the country houses where we used to visit— ‘What shall we do this evening? What shall we do to-morrow? Whom can we go and see?’ are never heard here. Nor is there spitefulness nor jealousy, nor any divergence of aim; our ambition is the same, and it is the greatest and the noblest, for it is to love God, to please him and to put sin away. It is such happiness to feel that we are all working for one common end. We know one another intimately here, although we talk very little, and were the hardships of convent life a great deal worse than they are, they would be worth bearing with because of that spiritual intimacy which we find only in the cloister.”
In another letter she said:
“I am not yet happy as the other nuns are happy, because I am thinking of you. The ache of life is still in me, and I rarely wake in the morning without thinking of you. I see you in Rome, living in your lonely rooms, with not one to look after you, and then my life becomes bitter, for I think that the happiness which I find here has not come to me by right, that I have snatched it. My duty is with you, and we can never be happy except when we are doing our duty. But you said you did not wish me to come to you in Rome; you left me to look after the sale of Dowlands and of my flat; you said you were going to live with the friars, and that I should be in your way until you had had time to find lodgings for me. Indeed it was by your wish that I came here. As you did not want me I came here to help those who did want me, and I am helping them. My singing brings crowds to Benediction every day. I am not in the least vain about my singing now. But I am praising myself. So I will tell you instead of the Prioress, who is certainly a wonderful woman. I see a great deal of her, and she seems to read me through and through, and to see things in me which I do not know myself, but which are, nevertheless, quite true. The other day, when I told her I had never been happy until I came here, and that it seemed to me I had found out my life at last, she said, —
“‘ My dear Evelyn, you have hardly any perception of what our life is, you know it only from the outside, you are still an actress, you are acting on a different stage, that is all.’
“I could not answer her, for I felt I had adapted myself to the convent as I might to a new part; I do not say that the new part is not the part I shall play to the end, but now and again I catch myself playing a part. We are always playing parts in our life, no one is ever perfectly natural; we are all conscious of our actions — at least I am. An example will explain what I mean. The little penitential exercises, such as kissing the floor, as a sign of contrition for some petty fault, or kneeling for permission to pass to one’s place in choir or refectory if one should chance to be late, are much more distasteful to the other nuns than to me. The other novices run from the furthest end of the convent at the first sound of the bell, to avoid the risk of what seems to them a humiliating ordeal. I look upon these things as the etiquette of the convent, just as it is the etiquette of the stage to allow a man to kiss you whom you do not care for in the least. The Prioress did not suspect how true her remark was, and I did not tell her that in the first week I was deliberately late for dinner in order to test the sensation of kneeling before the entire community on the bare refectory floor.
“The other day when I was washing up dishes in the scullery, I laughed aloud. Of course there is nothing strange in it at all, but from the point of view of the world it is difficult to imagine a stranger transformation than the transformation of a prima donna into a scullery maid. But the world! Does it matter what it thinks? Shall I ever forget Owen Asher’s persistent worldliness; he sacrificed everything to the enjoyment of the moment, and was the unhappiest man I ever knew. He was unhappy always, and the happiness which I could not give him and which he could not give me I see shining out of the eyes of the nuns, out of the eyes of these women who have renounced everything that is said to make life pleasant.
“The nuns have their trials, and they bear them as well as may be, for they are merely women, not angels, and are not possessed of any supernatural power of detachment from the ills of life. I h
ave seen them struggle against weariness and failing health, and the novices sometimes astonish me by candid little grumbles, generally about the food. There is a good deal of irritability in the convent, but I am sure that the nuns do possess a divine something which outbalances the discomfort of their lives. They possess an extraordinary serenity of mind, and their optimism is delightful. As far as the rule allows them they are kind to one another, and I have seen none of that petty spite which is said to exist whenever a number of women gather together.”
In a letter to Monsignor she said:
“Mother Philippa is our manager, all the house accounts are in her charge, and her watchful economy saved the convent from shipwreck these many years. Her talent for domestic economy found an excellent outlet in the administration of an impecunious convent. If she had stayed at home, her abilities would have withered and she would have become as useless as her dull sisters; not one of them is married, and it is not likely that Mother Philippa would have married if she had remained at home. She is the one success in the family — three dull sisters and a dull mother come to consult the nun as to what they shall do in every emergency. Unfortunately they do not always take her advice, and when they do not mistakes are the result. Mother Philippa’s one trouble is her relations; she dreads their visits. ‘Poor Fred,’ she said the other day, speaking of her family,’ is only an expense.’ Was not that clever of her? What an admirable summing up! I can picture him coming back from Canada and quite cheerfully accepting the welcome of the doleful sisters. But this admirable woman is apparently not more pious than you or I.
“Forgive my irrepressible levity, dear Monsignor. The Reverend Mother often reproves me for it, but my levity has helped me through five months in a nunnery. Mother Philippa is one side of St. Teresa, and she exists in every convent, but the other side of St. Teresa I have not been able to discover in anyone. Mother Philippa is wholesome prose — the very best and plainest prose. The nearest thing to St. Teresa here is certainly Sister Mary John. She does not fall to the ground and remain rigid, but the other day after Benediction she forgot to give the sign to go. It is the custom for the eldest Sister present to give the sign to leave the chapel. We waited for Sister Mary John, but no sign came. She remained kneeling, lost in her delight, no doubt seeing God in heaven quite clearly. The novices coughed and moved their feet, but Sister Mary John did not hear them. At last one of the novices nudged her, and she awoke as from a dream, and heard as in amazement that the half-hour was over. Half an hour! What is half an hour to one who has been in eternity? Centuries looked out of her eyes.
“She and the Reverend Mother represent to me what is most personal in the convent, and what is nearest to me. Veronica is set apart; she is an abstraction, she is perfect innocence walking on earth, a white robe on which no speck of dust of the way has fallen, an angel by Fra Angelico; but the Reverend Mother and Sister Mary John, like myself, have breathed the breath of the world; and those who have breathed the breath of the world are easily recognisable from those who have not. I have often thought this mixture of worldly alloy is necessary to give hardness and durability to the metal. If the whole of the community were composed of nuns like Veronica and Mother Hilda it could not continue, and I think the pecuniary difficulties of this convent are largely owing to the fact that the late Reverend Mother was without experience of the world. She, like Veronica and Mother Hilda, had passed from the schoolroom to the novitiate; but the present Prioress is a woman who has had experience of the life of the world, and I confess to a great curiosity to know what forced her to give up the world. I feel sure that some calamity fell upon her suddenly. I cannot otherwise explain this subtle intelligence, lithe and hard as steel, and eyes which divine at once a state of soul, and out of which some far-off sorrow shines. I can see the Prioress in the world, and the world crumbling away at her feet, and every path crumbling away except the path that led her to the convent. But I cannot see her in the intermediate stages.
“Regarding myself, what have I to tell you? — that I am beginning to fear I have not a vocation.”
In another letter to her father she said:
“Oh, to be in Rome and to hear the wonderful choir you write me about! To exchange the wailing and wobbling of half-a-dozen nuns trying to sing a piece of plain chant for a Mass by Palestrina. How I long for Rome now that spring should be here, a spare scant spring in England, a beautiful, gracious, Southern spring in Rome, the sweet Easter time chiming over scent-laden hills and plains. Here on the edge of the Common the winter is still bitter, loud winds are still blowing against our door. The Common is covered with snow, and the gorse is burnt up with frost. This Common is all we can see of the world. In summer horsemen gallop along the hillsides, and the golf players appear in silhouette on the evening skies. But in winter the is a waste. Yesterday I saw a bent figure — making its way against the blast. A frost-hound and a Common I have seen from the windows of the novitiate until my eyes turn from it in despair. Once, half in jest, half in earnest, I suggested to our Novice Mistress that we might have the blinds down and light the lamp. And when I look away from this terrible Common land I am confronted with the continued childishness of the nuns and the triviality of their interests; and the childishness within and the barren land beyond the walls seem to interact upon each other, and enforce the impression of living death. Of course I know that the triviality which shocks me is merely an outer skin which covers a great purpose. I try to remember this, but it is difficult for one who has lived long in the world to accept the trivial externality of scapulars and candles. And the trite religious instruction which we receive in the novitiate often jars. One of the things that shocks one most is the discovery that there are fashions in pieties as well as in petticoats. Not being able to imitate each others’ bonnets, the nuns imitate each others’ pieties. If one says the Rosary at a special hour, others want to do the same, and saints come into, and go out of, fashion. The Prioress’s special saint, or the saint of any favourite nun, attracts a great deal of admiration, and for the proper stimulation of these special pieties it seems necessary to put up little shrines in the passages, and the erection and the maintenance of these shrines fall on me. The way the novices and postulants run to me for candles for the shrine of the saint that attracts their devotion at that particular moment is very trying; and it is hard not to tell them that they have merely exchanged their dolls for saints. So I philosophise in this fashion: ‘There are trivial-minded women, I say, in convents as there are in the world, and the trivial-minded pray, as they play, in trivial fashion. To the fashionable woman the gown she is going to wear is the centre of things, and the whole of her life is spent seeking to escape from herself in little distractions. Only a year ago the important to me was whether I could sing a scene as easily as another singer. The truth is, the external life is, and always must be, trivial.’”
In another letter to Monsignor she said:
“One of my greatest consolations is to watch the evening as the sun sets in the violet distances of Richmond Park. I think it was Ulick Dean who first taught me to see the country in the fairy-like way in which I see it now. Or perhaps it is, and I think it is, that the country is a great consolation to everyone who has passed their first youth. The country you see has always been, there never was a time it did not exist. The country is nearly as immortal as the sky, and it is nearer to us. I don’t think I could live in town again. When I leave here I shall live in the country. The last time I returned to Monmouth Mansions I looked round and I felt suddenly that I could not go on living in a flat. I felt I could not endure the daily routine, that I should have to do something else; then I felt the selfishness of it — getting up in the morning to discuss with my servant what we should eat. That is always the first thing one does in a flat, and then one thinks how one can spend the day most pleasantly to oneself. One thinks of the visits one may pay in the afternoon, and of the concerts and the theatres one may go to in the evening. To lead such a life year after year, k
nowing well that thousands have not sufficient food, nor a room to sit in, has become impossible to me. Then I need occupation. I am no longer interested in the things that used to interest me, and since I have been in this convent I have gone much further on the road on which I started when I first went to confess to you. So when I leave here, whether I live in England or in Italy, I shall live in the country, for my own sake and for the sake of others; for I have a little plan. I have thought that if I save two-thirds of my income I shall have enough money in three years to buy a cottage and a large garden. Once you get away from London land is not dear, and in Italy I daresay it is cheaper still.
“I used to do housework when a girl, and the convent has brought me back to it again, for here everyone has to sweep and to scrub and to brush. So I have thought that with another woman to help me, a sort of lady help, or a nurse, one who has been trained as a hospital nurse, we might be able to attend on ourselves and the six little cripple boys whom I would take to live with me. The little boys could work in the garden, and we could sell the vegetables and the eggs and the chickens, for of course we shall keep a poultry farm too; and I hear there is a good deal of money to be made by poultry. We could keep a pony and light cart, and one of the little boys, the one that was the least crippled, could look after the pony. There would not be much work to do in the cottage; for things do not get dirty in the country as they do in town, and there would not be much furniture — some plain tables and plain cupboards and plain shelves. The shelves will be painted green, and some nice green and yellow pottery will stand upon them. I must do something when I leave here, and I can think of nothing better than that; I am indeed very full of it, I think of it all day, and only fear that something will happen to prevent the realisation of my little plans. For things never come quite right in this world; the threads seem to slip out of our hands as we are going to tie the knot. There will be no wall round our garden, but a yew hedge will make a good background for flowers, lilies especially. The wall is one of the things that spoil the convent for me. But round my cottage, as I have said, there will be no wall, only a hedge, and all round for miles that sort of rich swelling country which I love — shady hillsides, and a little distance off a stream twisting through flat meadows by a sleepy town; such a stream as brought the swan to Elsa of Brabant; you see one cannot quite forget one’s past. I long for the country and for my little home for crippled children. I once saw a hare beating a tambourine in Regent Street, and the beating of the tambourine by this woodland creature seemed to make an infinitely pathetic picture, and one which is strangely symbolic of many human lives. I long, as the poor hare must have longed, for wide hillsides; and, landing on the highest point in the garden, I lose myself in the blue distances. I cannot tell you how I long for the return of the spring — I want to see the garden returning to life. St. Francis used to sit talking to the fire, and worshipped the sun, or very nearly, and I like to watch the tall trees. How gaily they talk in a light wind, and how sadly they whisper when the wind dies, and in the dense winter rain they stand as miserable as animals in the rain.”
