by George Moore
* * * * *
Late that night a telegram came telling Evelyn that her father was dangerously ill, and she was to start at once for Rome.
XIX
THE WIND HAD gathered the snow into the bushes and all the corners of the common, and the whole earth seemed but a little brown patch, with a dead grey sky sweeping by. For many weeks the sky had been grey, and heavy clouds had passed slowly, like a funeral, above the low horizon. The wind had torn the convent garden until nothing but a few twigs remained; even the laurels seemed about to lose their leaves. The nuns had retreated with blown skirts; Sister Mary John had had to relinquish her digging, and her jackdaw had sought shelter in the hen-house.
One night, when the nuns assembled for evening prayer, the north wind seemed to lift the roof as with hands; the windows were shaken; the nuns divined the wrath of God in the wind, and Miss Dingle, who had learned through pious incantation that the Evil One would attempt a descent into the convent, ran to warn the porteress of the danger. At that moment the wind was so loud that the portress listened, perforce, to the imaginings of Miss Dingle’s weak brain, thinking, in spite of herself, that some communication had been vouchsafed to her. “Who knows,” her thoughts said, “who can say? The ways of Providence are inscrutable.” And she looked at the little daft woman as if she were a messenger.
As they stood calculating the strength of the lock and hinges the door-bell suddenly began to jingle.
“He wouldn’t ring the bell; he would come down the chimney,” said Miss Dingle.
“But who can it be?” said the portress, “and at this hour.”
“This will save you.” Miss Dingle thrust a rosary into the nun’s hand and fled down the passage. “Be sure to throw it over his neck.”
The nun tried to collect her scattered thoughts and her courage. Again the bell jingled; this time the peal seemed crazier than the first, and, rousing herself into action, she asked through the grating who it might be.
“It is I, Sister Evelyn; open the door quickly, Sister Agnes.”
The nun held the door open, thanking God it was not the devil, and Evelyn dragged her trunk through the door, letting it drop upon the mat abruptly.
“Tell dear Mother I want to speak to her — say that I must see her — be sure to say that, and I will wait for her in the parlour.”
“There is no light there; I will fetch one.”
“Never mind, don’t trouble; I don’t want a light. But go to the Reverend Mother and tell her I must see her before any one else.”
“Of course, Sister Evelyn, of course.” And the portress hurried away, feeling that things had happened in a life which was beyond her life, beyond its scope. Perhaps Sister Evelyn had come to tell the Prioress the Pope himself was dead, or had gone mad; something certainly had happened into which it was no business of hers to inquire. And this vague feeling sent her running down the passage and up the stairs, and returning breathless to Evelyn, whom she found in a chair nearly unconscious, for when she called to her Evelyn awoke as from sleep, asking where she was.
“Sister Evelyn, why do you ask? You are in Wimbledon Convent, with Sister Agnes; what is the matter?”
“Matter? Nothing and everything.” She seemed to recover herself a little. “I had forgotten, Sister Agnes, I had forgotten. But the Prioress, where is she?”
“In her room, and she will see you. But you asked me to go to the Prioress saying she must see you — have you forgotten, Sister Evelyn? You know the way to her room?”
Evelyn did not answer; and feeling perhaps that she might lose her way in the convent, Sister Agnes said she would conduct her to the Prioress, and opened the door for her, saying, “Reverend Mother, Sister Evelyn.”
There was a large fire burning in the room, and Evelyn was conscious of the warmth, of bodily comfort, and was glad to sit down.
“You are very cold, my child, you are very cold. Don’t trouble to speak, take your time and get warm first.” And Evelyn sat looking into the fire for a long time. At last she said:
“It is warm here, Mother, I am so glad to be here. But perhaps you will turn me away and won’t have me. I know you won’t, I know you won’t, so why did I come all this long way?”
“My dear child, why shouldn’t we be glad to have you back? We were sorry to part with you.”
“That was different, that was different.”
These answers, and the manner in which they were spoken even more than the answers themselves, frightened the Prioress; but unable to think of what might have happened, she sat wondering, waiting for Evelyn to reveal herself. The hour was late, and Evelyn showed no signs of speaking. Perhaps it would be better to ring for one of the lay sisters, and ask her to show Evelyn to her room.
“You will stay here to-night?”
“Yes, if you will allow me.”
“Allow you, my dear child! Why speak in this way?”
“Oh, Mother, I am done for, I am done for!”
“You haven’t told me yet what has happened.”
Evelyn did not answer; she seemed to have forgotten everything, or to be thinking of one thing, and unable to detach her thoughts from it sufficiently to answer the Prioress’s question.
“Your father—”
“My father is dead,” she answered. And the Prioress, imagining her father’s death to be the cause of this mental breakdown, spoke of the consolations of religion, which no doubt Mr. Innes had received, and which would enable Mr. Innes’s soul to appear before a merciful God for judgment.
“There is little in this life, my dear; we should not be sorry for those who leave it — that is, if they leave it in a proper disposition of soul.”
“My father died after having received the Sacraments of the Church. Oh, his death!” And thinking it well to encourage her to speak, the Prioress said:
“Tell me, my dear, tell me; I can understand your grief and sympathise with you; tell me everything.”
And like one awakening Evelyn told how for days he had fluctuated between life and death, sometimes waking to consciousness, then falling back into a trance. In spite of the hopes the doctors had held out to him he had insisted he was dying.
“‘I am worn to a thread,’ he said, ‘I shall flicker like that candle when it reaches the socket, and then I shall go out. But I am not afraid of death: death is a great experience, and we are all better for every experience. There is only one thing—’
“He was thinking of his work, he was sorry he was called away before his work was done; and then he seemed to forget it, to be absorbed in things of greater importance.”
Sometimes the wind interrupted the Prioress’s attention, and she thought of the safety of her roofs; Evelyn noticed the wind, and her notice of it served to accentuate her terror. “It is terror,” the Prioress said to herself, “rather than grief.”
“I waited by his bedside seeing the soul prepare for departure. The soul begins to leave the body several days before it goes; it flies round and round like a bird that is going to some distant country. I must tell you all about it, Mother. He lay for hours and hours looking into a corner of the room. I am sure he saw something there; and one night I heard him call me. I went to him and asked him what he wanted; but he lay quiet, looking into the corner of the room, and then he said, ‘The wall has been taken away,’ I know he saw something there. He saw something, he learnt something in that last moment that we do not know. That last moment is the only real moment of our lives, the only true moment — all the rest is falsehood, delirium, froth. The rest of life is contradictions, distractions, and lies, but in the moment before death I am sure everything becomes quite clear to us. Then we learn what we are. We do not know ourselves until then. If I ask who am I, what am I, there is no answer. We do not believe in ourselves because we do not know who we are; we do not know enough of ourselves to believe in anything. We do not believe; we acquiesce that certain things are so because it is necessary to acquiesce, but we do not believe in anything, not even tha
t we are going to die, for if we did we should live for death, and not for life.”
“Your father’s death has been a great grief to you; only time will help you to recover yourself.”
“Recover myself? But I shall never recover, no, Mother, never, never, never!”
The Prioress asked when Mr. Innes had died.
“I can’t remember, Mother; some time ago.”
The Prioress asked if he were dead a week.
“Oh, more than that, more than that.”
“And you have been in Rome ever since? Why did you not come here at once?”
“Why, indeed, did I not come here?” was all Evelyn could say. She seemed to lose all recollection, or at all events she had no wish to speak, and sat silent, brooding. “Of what is she thinking?” the Prioress asked herself, “or is she thinking of anything? She seems lost in a great terror, some sin committed. If she were to confess to me. Perhaps confession would relieve her.” And the Prioress tried to lead Evelyn into some account of herself, but Evelyn could only say, “I am done for, Mother, I am done for!” She repeated these words without even asking the Prioress to say no more: it seemed to her impossible to give utterance to the terror in her soul. What could have happened to her?”
“Did you meet, my child, either of the men whom you spoke to me of?”
The question only provoked a more intense agony of grief.
“Mother, Mother, Mother!” she cried, “I am done for! let me go, let me leave you.”
“But, my child, you can’t leave us to-night, it is too late. Why should you leave us at all?”
“Why did I ever leave you? But, Mother, don’t let us talk any more about it. I know myself; no one can tell me anything about myself; it is all clear to me, all clear to me from the beginning; and now, and now, and now—”
“But, my child, all sins can be forgiven. Have you confessed?”
“Yes, Mother, I confessed before I left Italy, and then came on here feeling that I must see you; I only wanted to see you. Now I must go.”
“No, my child, you mustn’t go; we will talk of this to-morrow.”
“No, let us never talk of it again, that I beseech you, Mother; promise me that we shall never talk of it again.”
“As you like, as you like. Perhaps every one knows her own soul best…. It is not for me to pry into yours. You have confessed, and your grief is great.”
The Prioress went back to her chair, feeling relieved, thinking it was well that Evelyn had confessed her sin to some Italian priest who did not know her, for it would be inconvenient for Father Daly to know Evelyn’s story. Evelyn could be of great use to them; it were well, indeed, that she had not even confessed to her. She must not leave the convent; and arriving at that conclusion, suddenly she rang the bell. Nothing was said till the lay sister knocked at the door. “Will you see, Sister Agnes, that Sister Evelyn’s bed is prepared for her?”
“In the guest-room or in the novitiate, Reverend Mother?”
“In the novitiate,” the Prioress answered.
Evelyn had sunk again into a stupor, and, only half-conscious of what was happening to her, she followed the lay sister out of the Prioress’s room.
“It is very late,” the Prioress said to herself, “all the lights in the convent should be out; but the rule doesn’t apply to me.” And she put more coal on the fire, feeling that she must give all her mind to the solution of the question which had arisen — whether Evelyn was to remain with them to-morrow. It had almost been decided, for had she not told Sister Agnes to take Evelyn to the novitiate? But Evelyn might herself wish to leave to-morrow, and if so what inducements, what persuasion, what pressure should be used to keep her? And how far would she be justified in exercising all her influence to keep Evelyn? The Prioress was not quite sure. She sat thinking. Evelyn in her present state of mind could not be thrown out of the convent. The convent was necessary for her salvation in this world and in the next.
“She knows that, and I know it.”
The Prioress’s thoughts drifted into recollections of long ago; and when she awoke from her reverie it seemed that she must have been dreaming a long while: “too long” she thought; “but I have not thought of these things for many a year…. Evelyn has confessed, her sins are behind her, and it would be so inconvenient—” The Prioress’s thoughts faded away; for even to herself she did not like to admit that it would be inconvenient for Evelyn to confess to Father Daly the sins she had committed — if she had committed any. Perhaps it might be all an aberration, an illusion in the interval between her father’s death and her return to the convent. “Her sins have been absolved, and for guidance she will not turn to Father Daly but to me.” The Reverend Mother reflected that a man would not be able to help this woman with his advice. She thought of Evelyn’s terror, and how she had cried, “I am done for, I am done for!” She remembered the tears upon Evelyn’s cheeks and every attitude so explicit of her grief.
“A penitent if ever there was one, one whom we must help, whom we must lead back to God. Evelyn must remain in the convent. To-morrow we must seek to persuade her. But it will not be difficult.” Then, listening to the wind, the Prioress remembered that the convent roof required re-slating. “Who knows? Perhaps what happened may have been divinely ordered to bring her back to us? Who knows? who knows?” She thought of the many other things the convent required: the chapel wanted re-decorating, and they had to spare every penny they could from their food and clothing to buy candles for the altar; another item of expense was the resident chaplain; and when in bed she lay thinking that perhaps to-morrow she would find a way out of the difficulty that had puzzled her so long.
XX
“YES, DEAR MOTHER, if you are willing to keep me I shall be glad to remain. It is good of you. How kind you all are!”
Very little more than that she could be induced to say, relapsing, after a few words, into a sort of stupor or dream, from which very often it was impossible to rouse her; and the Prioress dreaded these long silences, and often asked herself what they could mean, if the cause were a fixed idea… on which she was brooding. Or it might be that Evelyn’s mind was fading, receding. If so, the responsibility of keeping her in the convent was considerable. A little time would, however, tell them. Any religious instruction was, of course, out of the question, and books would be fatal to her.
“Her mind requires rest,” the Prioress said. “Even her music is a mental excitement.”
“I don’t think that,” Sister Mary John answered. “And as for work, I have been thinking I might teach her a little carpentry. If plain carpentry does not interest her sufficiently, she might learn to work at the lathe.”
“Your idea is a very good one, Sister Mary John. Go to her at once and set her to work. It is terrible to think of her sitting brooding, brooding.”
“But on what is she brooding, dear Mother?”
“No doubt her father’s death was a great shock.”
And Sister Mary John went in search of Evelyn, and found her wandering in the garden.
“Of what are you thinking, Sister?” As Evelyn did not answer, Sister Mary John feared she resented the question. “You don’t like me to walk with you?”
“Yes I do, I don’t mind; but I wonder if the Prioress likes me to be here. Can you find out for me?”
“Why should you think we do not wish to have you here?”
“Well, you see, Sister — oh, it is no use talking.” Her thoughts seemed to float away, and it might be five or ten minutes before she would speak again.
“I wish you would come to the woodshed, Sister. If not, I must leave you.”
“Oh, I’ll go to the woodshed with you.”
“And will you help me with my work?”
“I help you with your work!”
There was a long, narrow table in the woodshed — some planks laid upon two tressels; and the walls were piled with all kinds of sawn wood, deal planks, and rough timber, and a great deal of broken furniture and heaps of
shavings. The woodshed was so full of rubbish of all kinds that there was only just room enough to walk up and down the table. Sister Mary John was making at that time a frame for cucumbers, and Evelyn watched her planing the deal boards, especially interested when she pushed the plane down the edge of the board, and a long, narrow shaving curled out of the plane, but asking no questions.
“Now, wouldn’t you like to do some work on the other side of the table, Sister?”
Evelyn did not answer, and it was not that day nor the next, but at the end of the week, that she was persuaded to take the pincers and pull the nails out of an old board.
“And when you have done that, I will show you how to plane it.”
She seemed to have very little strength — or was it will that she lacked? The pincers often fell from her hands, and she would stand, lost in reverie.
“Now, Sister, you have only pulled two nails out of that board in the last ten minutes; it is really very tiresome of you, and I am waiting for it.”
“Do you really mean that you are waiting for this board? Do you want it?”
“But of course; I shouldn’t have asked you to draw the nails out of it if I didn’t,” And it was by such subterfuges that she induced Evelyn to apply herself. “Now, you won’t think of anything until you have drawn out every nail, will you? Promise me.” Sister Mary John put the pincers into her hand, and when the board was free of nails, it seemed that Evelyn had begun to take an interest in the fate of the board which she had prepared. She came round the table to watch Sister Mary John planing it, and was very sorry when the nun’s plane was gapped by a nail which had been forgotten.
“This iron will have to go to the grinders.”
“I am so sorry, Sister. Will you forgive me?”
“Yes, I’ll forgive you; but you must try to pay attention.”
When the cucumber-frame was finished Sister Mary John was busy making some kitchen chairs, and the cutting out of the chair-backs moved Evelyn’s curiosity.
