by George Moore
And the few people in the church who had witnessed the ceremony felt as Evelyn had felt when she saw the Birmingham girl leave the vanity of the world for the true realities of prayer. Within the cloister the nans gathered round Evelyn to congratulate her, and their congratulations seemed to her more valid than those which she used to receive for her singing “Elsa’s Dream.” But as they pressed round her she noticed that Sister Mary John was striving to absent herself, and breaking from them she called to her, —
“How is this, Sister? I do not hear you say anything; and why would you go away yourself?”
“I am glad, Teresa, indeed I am glad,” and she added under her breath, “More glad than I expected to be.”
“Did you doubt my vocation then?”
Sister Mary John strove to disengage her hands, which Evelyn held, and the other nuns had begun to wonder; in another moment they would have begun to surmise that something was wrong, but the Prioress intervened and took Evelyn into the garden and told her that her dearest wishes had been realised.
“I am glad, too, dear Mother; and you are accountable for a great deal of what has happened; for I doubt if I should ever have had the strength without you. But, dear Mother, tell me what has happened to Sister Mary John? Did you notice that she was the only one who did not come to congratulate me? For some time I have noticed that she avoids me in a way she never did before.”
“It was necessary, Teresa, for you and Sister Mary John to see a great deal of each other, but a nun must always remember that she belongs wholly to God.”
“Dear Mother, it was Sister Mary John’s example that brought me to God. She has been almost as great a help to me as you, and this estrangement has spoilt the pleasure of the day for me.”
“You will remember what I say, Teresa: a nun belongs wholly to God, and you must not try to force upon Sister Mary John a friendship which she does not wish.”
The Prioress’s voice had suddenly become cold; almost cruel. Evelyn’s heart misgave her. She felt that something had happened — something terrible, and she lay awake thinking of it. Her thoughts roved about the truth, not daring to approach it, whereas Sister Mary John knew it and she foresaw that Evelyn would question her. Her unhappiness was so great that her exile seemed to her less than the explanation that awaited her on the morning of her departure. Every day was a great labour, but the morning was now at hand, for the lady with whom Sister Mary John was to travel had written to the Prioress saying that her departure had been unexpectedly hastened. She hoped that it would suit dear Sister Mary John’s convenience equally well to travel this week as the following week. Sister Mary John looked upon this shortening of her torment as providential, for yesterday Evelyn had stopped her and begged her to explain why she no longer spoke to her. Evelyn had written an impassioned letter, and Sister Mary John had begun to feel that she could not bear the strain any longer.
Next morning she opened the library door, and Evelyn’s eyes lighted up, thinking they were about to be reconciled; but the light died out of them instantly, for Sister Mary John wore a long black cloak over her habit, and she had a bird cage in her hand, and Evelyn saw the sly jackdaw with his head on one side looking at her.
“I have come to say good-bye to you, Teresa; I am going away.”
“Now I understand why you have not spoken to me for so long. This is the reason of the change. Now I understand it all, and you are taking your jackdaw with you.”
“Yes; I was afraid he might pine and die, and dear Mother said I might take him with me.”
Evelyn asked her about the journey, for she did not dare to ask her if she had told the Prioress the reason why she wanted to leave. She did not like to ask her if she had consulted the other nuns or Father Daly, and they wasted a good deal of this last time together talking of indifferent things. But when Sister Mary John took up the cage, she cried, —
“For how long?”
“For always.”
“Oh, Sister, you must hear me before you go! You know how fond I have been of you. I shall not be able to live in the convent without you. I have no scruples whatever; so why should you have scruples regarding your affection for me?”
“Each one, dear Teresa, is guardian to her own soul, and if I feel I am losing my soul by remaining I must GO.”
“But, Sister, dear, you brought me nearer to God. Had it not been for you, I might never have had the courage to take the final vows.”
“I am glad if, through me, you learnt to love God better. That is so much to the good.”
“I thought this estrangement was only temporary. I am distracted. I cannot think of what I want to say to you; but when you are gone I shall remember, and ask myself why I did not say this to her and that to her. One moment. Tell me — it is only fair that you should tell me — how our love of each other has altered our love of God.”
“I can never tell you, Teresa. I can only say I understand — perhaps as I never did before — that nothing must come between the soul and God, and that there is no room for other love in our hearts. We must remember always that we are the brides of Christ — you and I, Sister — and I am leaving you that we may both give our love more wholly to our crucified Lord.”
They stood holding each other’s hands, and some of Sister Mary John’s spiritual exaltation passed into Evelyn, and she began to feel that this parting was inevitable.
“Won’t you kiss me before you go?”
“Please, let me go. It will be better not. The carriage is waiting, I must go.”
She went to the carriage that was waiting for her in the lane, and Evelyn took up her pen as if she were going to continue her writing, but she put it down, and she walked up the room like one dazed. If anyone had spoken to her she would not have been able to answer reasonably, and she was staring blankly out of the window when the Prioress entered the library.
“Mother, what does all this mean? Why did you let her go?”
The Prioress sat down slowly, and looked at Evelyn without speaking.
“Mother, you might have let her stay for my sake.”
“I allowed her to see you before she left, and that was the most I could do in the circumstances.”
Evelyn stared out of the window, and the old nun sat still in the armchair.
The terrace, and the trees at the end of St. Peter’s Walk, and the grass plots and the flower beds seemed to mock her, and in a flutter of terror she thought of the pain of intermittent memories, for the grief she suffered now would multiply in her heart.
“Mother, you might have advised her to wait, for I believed she acted on mere scruples.”
“She felt that by staying here she was imperilling her vocation and yours, and it was not, I assure you, without due reflection that she decided she must go. I insisted on her waiting to see if she would think differently.”
The words suggested to Evelyn that this leave-taking had been held over until she had taken the final vows, and she said that she should have been told of this before. But the Reverend Mother could not allow a nun’s mind to be troubled during the time of preparation for her vows; it had to be held over. Evelyn did not answer. It was terrifying to remember that no one had ever believed in her vocation except the Prioress. Mother Hilda had not believed; Monsignor had had doubts. So much had depended on her joining the community; she had wished to help them, and it did not seem possible in any other way.
“Do you still believe in my vocation, Mother?”
“Yes, Teresa, I feel quite certain. Put all such doubts away from you.”
“Ah, if I could. My vocation has been so different from anyone else’s.”
“Don’t think I blame either you or Sister Mary John for what has occurred. I only blame myself. I ought to have foreseen it. It all comes from having exempted you from the rules on account of the music; no one deplores infraction of the rule more than I do; it never answers, only in this case there seemed to be no alternative.”
“It was necessary to me to become a nun
, so the rule was broken. What is it that guides these things? It is not we.... It is God; Providence is behind it all. I can see the hand of Providence in it all as I look back. But Sister Mary John might have stayed. I feel sure that this is a mistake; her scruples were imaginary, and her going has done nothing except to trouble my peace of mind. And what will the Sisters think of it? Are they to know that it was because of me?”
“The Sisters will never know,” the Prioress answered with a little vehemence. “It is a secret between you and me and Sister Mary John. I forbid you ever to tell anyone the reason for her going. Teresa, I know this is a heavy trial for you, and I am ready to do all in my power to turn it to good account. Dear Teresa,” and the old nun took her hand, “our greatest happiness comes when we have put away every worldly recollection; it is often very hard to do this, but when we have made the sacrifice we are glad of it. I had a photograph of one who was very dear to me once, and it was a long while before I could bring myself to destroy it; but when I burnt it I was glad. We must try to understand that the things of this world are nothing; that this world is passing always like water and that our lives pass with it. Your grief will fade as all the things of this world fade. There is only one thing that does not fade, love of God. We are happy in it, and we are always unhappy outside it. Doing His work is the only happiness. You have discovered it yourself; it was that that brought you here.”
“Oh, Mother, all you say is right; but life is difficult, at this moment it is inexplicably so. It was she who taught me to love God, and now she leaves me for God’s sake. If I should love Him less now that she has gone, what a misfortune that would be. Then I should have lost all.” And turning suddenly to the Reverend Mother, Evelyn said, “But she need not have gone, Mother. Why did you not make her stay? Hers was only a scruple; she fancied she was giving to me what belonged to God. But God had all of her: I know better than anyone how entirely he possessed her.”
“Believe me, Teresa, there was no choice for her but to go. She confided in me, and I could not bring myself to say she was not to go; you only look at it from your point of view. For you there was no danger in this friendship, for you are different women — your lives have been so different.”
“I wonder, Mother, if you know how miserable I am? Before my profession I was sure of myself, or nearly, and I thought my vocation quite sure. But for this last two weeks I have been despondent and doubtful, so this comes as a greater shock now than at any other time.”
“The clothing brings great relief, and everyone is happy after her clothing; but I think everyone is despondent and doubtful after the final vows. You see profession brings such a change into a nun’s life. During her noviceship she is as a child; there is always the Novice Mistress to run to when she is uncertain or despondent. She will find help and cheerfulness in her. When the final vow releases her from the novitiate, all these supports are taken away from her. For the first time she has to rely upon herself, to judge for herself — I have never known it otherwise. You may be sure, Teresa, that you will be quite contented and happy in a few months.”
“It seems impossible, Mother.”
“When we are despondent happiness seems as if it would never come again, and when we are happy our happiness seems inherent in ourselves, and we do not believe that it can ever pass from us.”
CHAP. XXX.
ALL SORTS OF reasons were given for Sister Mary John’s departure; the nuns chattered like moon-awakened birds, and then the convent fell back into silence.
As the year closed, the old Prioress began to think that the incident was dead and that no consequences would be begotten. But the friendship of the two nuns remained unconsciously associated in everyone’s mind with the sudden departure of one of them from the convent; and behind these ideas there lay a half-reticulated background of suspicion regarding Evelyn. Without knowing why, the convent had begun to resent its dependency upon her singing. In the beginning of the following year Sister Winifred, who had done a set of caricatures of the lay Sisters cooking under difficulties, when the pipes were frozen and there was no water in the kitchen, conceived the idea that she might contribute to the general purse by selling her sketches in the parlour. They had amused the visitors, and encouraged by the sale of a copy of the convent Murillo, she had applied herself to a set of altar pieces. One of these had been bought by the lady who had given her the paints. Sister Winifred had been given a painting room; it had become the fashion to visit it, and the departure of the visitors, whom it was already difficult to induce to leave the convent after Benediction, was still further delayed. Sister Winifred had become a considerable person in the convent, and the fact that the Prioress did not admire her painting did not discourage Sister Winifred. She had answered, “Dear Mother, you can only admire Evelyn’s singing.”
A few months later Sister Agatha discovered an unsuspected talent in herself. She did not make it known to the Prioress until she had accumulated a large heap of manuscript on the life of her favourite saint, and her proposal was that the proceeds of the work should be devoted to paying off the convent debts. Another nun knew French, and a second remembered that she knew German. Then someone spoke of a school, and the idea seemed to them the very happiest; a school would give them all an opportunity of doing something for the convent, and the conversion of Wimbledon to Rome became a subject of conversation. Sister Winifred’s pictures and Sister Agatha’s manuscripts had never been taken very seriously; they had merely served as a pretext for the Sisters to discuss what was in their minds. But the idea of a school seemed to formulate many aspirations; it seemed like the solution of all their difficulties, and at every recreation groups of nuns collected to discuss the financial possibilities of the project, and to tell each other of the visitors who offered to send their daughters to them.
“They all seem to forget,” the Prioress said to Mother Hilda, as she passed down St. Peter’s Walk, “that to start a school would mean to alter the rule of our order.”
“You know that I do not approve, dear Mother, but what they say is that since the contemplative side of our house has been so largely infringed upon it might be well to go a little further and undertake a school.”
The Prioress winced a little; she knew Mother Hilda held her to be personally responsible for the change. For, according to Mother Hilda, the change was inherent in Evelyn’s election, which the Prioress had directly forced upon the convent. Mother Hilda would go further back still. The Prioress knew she would trace the origin of the disaster to the admission of Evelyn into the convent.
Nothing more was said at the time, but a few days later the matter came up for general discussion in chapter, and the Prioress pointed out that the teaching of music and painting, and French and German was contrary to the rule, and could never be lawfully undertaken, that if teaching were undertaken without the express permission of the Mother General it would mean cutting themselves off from the Mother House in France. It would mean practically the establishment of a new foundation, which would be classed among the active rather than the contemplative orders.
The dissidents had Mother Philippa on their side, and the Prioress’s argument regarding the new foundation did not frighten them. They admitted that the Passionist Sisters had never kept a school before, but they said there was nothing in their rule to prevent them from doing so. Sister Winifred held that the Prioress’s faith in their work as contemplative nuns amounted to fanaticism, and that she dung to the letter of the rule with mistaken rigidity — the rule was made for them, and not they for the rule, etc. During the next recreation fresh arguments were discovered in favour of the relaxation of the rule. It was pointed out that many of the enclosed orders had schools and lived by teaching, that to refuse the advantages which a rich suburb like Wimbledon held out to them was narrow-minded; and the Prioress was held up as the type of a mediaeval Catholic. It was said that an appeal to the Bishop must end by a decision in their favour, for the whole tendency of modern Catholicism was to look more
favourably on the active than on the contemplative orders. The prospect of Wimbledon’s conversion would win the Bishop to their side, and Sister Winifred spoke of the high place their community would take in the annals of the Church. She obtained the unqualified approval of some, but there were two Sisters who inclined towards a poultry farm. The little orchard at the end of the garden could be turned into an excellent chicken run, and they had calculated that three hundred hens would pay the convent debts in less than three years. After some discussion it was discovered that the poultry farm and the school did not conflict, so the poultry farmers and the educationalists made common cause against the contemplatives, and at the end of the month the two factions sat on different sides of the garden, congratulating themselves on their admirable self-control in refraining from speech.
Schism provokes schism, and the patient lay Sisters grew discontented with their lot. One day Sister Agnes was heard saying that her idea of an order was “the Little Sisters of the Poor”; and a few days after she told a group of choir Sisters, as she passed up the garden, that they were merely fashionable ladies, mostly converts. In extenuation of Sister Agnes’s rudeness a nun mentioned that she was merely a lay Sister, and another mentioned that the chaplain held very strong views about the active order. He was a favourite with the lay Sisters — he was of their class and shared their ideas.
Evelyn felt that she could not take sides, and these dissensions filled her with misgivings, for was she not the cause of them? There had been none till she came, and she wondered if she would always be a discord and what change would have to happen in her to bring her into the common order. She had been the cause of confusion before, and apparently worse confusion was about to follow. She had come to the convent because the world was lonely, and in this convent they had lived enfolded in an exquisite spiritual atmosphere. Each one knew the other, though the other spoke very little; the convent was a spiritual camp; and the prayers of each one were a contribution to the common weal. It was from this intimacy of thought and endeavour that they derived their happiness. But they had fallen from their high estate, they had grasped at the things of this world, they had conspired like the angels.
