by George Moore
“But I don’t feel young, Mother.” And every day the old woman grew more and more dependent upon Evelyn.
“You are very good to me. Why should you wait here till I am dead? Only it won’t be long, dear. Of what matter to me that the convent will be changed when I am dead. If I am a celestial spirit, our disputes — which is the better, prayer or good works — will raise a smile upon my lips. But celestial spirits have no lips. Why should I trouble myself? And yet—”
Evelyn could see that the old woman could not bear to think that her life’s work was to fall to pieces when she was gone.
“But, dear Mother, we all wish that what we have done shall remain; and we all wish to be remembered, at least for a little while. There is nothing more human. And your papers, dear Mother, will have to be published; they will vindicate you, as nothing else could.”
“But who is to publish them?” the Prioress asked. “They would require to be gone over carefully, and I am too weak to do that, too weak even to listen to you reading them.”
Evelyn promised the Prioress again that she would collect all the papers, and, as far as she could, select those which the Prioress would herself select; and the promise she could see pleased the dying woman. It was at the end of the week that the end came. Evelyn sat by her, holding her hand, and hearing an ominous rattling sound in the throat, she waited, waited, heard it again, saw the body tremble a little, and then, getting up, she closed the eyes, said a little prayer, and went out of the room to tell the nuns of the Prioress’s death, surprised at what seemed to her like indifference, without tears in her eyes, or any manifestation of grief. There could be none, for she was not feeling anything; she seemed to herself to be mechanically performing certain duties, telling Mother Philippa, whom she met in the passage, in a smooth, even voice, that the Prioress had died five minutes ago, without any suffering, quite calmly. Her lack of feeling seemed to her to give the words a strange ring, and she wondered if Mother Philippa would be stirred very deeply.
“Dead, Sister, dead? How terrible! None of us there. And the prayers for the dying not said. Surely, Teresa, you could have sent for us. I must summon the community at once.” And the sub-Prioress hurried away, feeling already on her shoulders the full weight of the convent affairs.
In a few moments the Sisters, with scared faces, were hurrying from all parts of the house to the room where the Prioress lay dead. Evelyn felt she could not go back, and she slipped away to look for Veronica, whom she found in the sacristy.
“Veronica, dear, it is all over.”
The girl turned towards her and clasped her hands.
“Auntie is dead,” was all she said, and, dropping into a chair, her tears began to flow.
“Dear Veronica, we both loved her very much.”
“So we did, Sister; the convent will be very different without her. Whom will they elect? Sister Winifred very possibly. It won’t matter to you, dear, you will go, and we shall have a school; everything will be different.”
“But many weeks will pass before I leave. Your aunt asked me to put her papers in order; I shall be at work in the library for a long while.”
“Oh, I am so glad, Sister. I thought perhaps you would go at once.” And Veronica dried her tears. “But, dear, we can’t talk now. I must join the others in the prayers for the dead, and there will be so much to do.”
“We shall have to strip the altar, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, the whole chapel — we shall want all our black hangings. But I must go.”
At that moment a Sister hurried in to say the bell was to be tolled at once, and Evelyn went with Veronica to the corner of the cloister where the ropes hung, and stood by listlessly while Veronica dragged at the heavy rope, leaving a long interval between each clang.
“Oughtn’t we to go up, Sister?” Veronica asked again.
“No, I can’t go back yet,” Evelyn answered. And she went into the garden and followed the winding paths, wondering at the solemn clanging, for it all seemed so useless.
The chaplain arrived half an hour afterwards, and next day several priests came down from London, and there was a great assembly to chant the Requiem Mass. But Evelyn, though she worked hard at decorating the altar, was not moved by the black hangings, nor by the doleful chant, nor by the flutter of the white surplice and the official drone about the grave. All the convent had followed the prelates down the garden paths; by the side of the grave Latin prayers were recited and holy water was sprinkled. On the day the Prioress was buried there were few clouds in the sky, sunshine was pretty constant, and all the birds were singing in the trees; every moment Evelyn expected one of her bullfinches to come out upon a bough and sing its little stave. If it did, she would take his song for an omen. But the bullfinches happened to be away, and she wished that the priests’ drone would cease to interrupt the melody of the birds and boughs. The dear Prioress would prefer Nature’s own music, it was kinder; and the sound of the earth mixed with the stones falling on the coffin-lid was the last sensation. After it the prelates and nuns returned to the convent, everybody wondering what was going to happen next, every nun asking herself who would be elected Prioress.
“Dear Mother, it is all over now,” Evelyn said to Mother Hilda in the passage, and the last of the ecclesiastics disappeared through a doorway, going to his lunch.
“Yes, dear Teresa, it is all over so far as this world is concerned. We must think of her now in heaven.”
“And to-morrow we shall begin to think for whom we shall vote — at least, you will be thinking. I am not a choir sister, and am leaving you.”
“Is that decided, Teresa?”
“Yes, I think so. Perhaps now would be the time for me to take off this habit; I only retained it at the Prioress’s wish. But, Mother, though I have not discovered a vocation, and feel that you have wasted much time upon me, still, I wouldn’t have you think I am ungrateful.”
“My dear, it never occurred to me to think so.” And the two women walked to the end of the cloister together, Evelyn telling Mother Hilda about the Prioress and the Prioress’s papers.
And from that day onward, for many weeks, Evelyn worked in the library, collecting her papers, and writing the memoir of the late Prioress, which, apparently, the nun had wished her to do, though why she should have wished it Evelyn often wondered, for if she were a soul in heaven it could matter to her very little what anybody thought of her on earth. How a soul in heaven must smile at the importance attached to this rule and to these exercises! How trivial it all must seem to the soul!… And yet it could not seem trivial to the soul, if it be true that by following certain rules we get to heaven. If it be true! Evelyn’s thoughts paused, for a doubt had entered into her mind — the old familiar doubt, from which no one can separate herself or himself, from which even the saints could not escape. Are they not always telling of the suffering doubt caused them? And following this doubt, which prayers can never wholly stifle, the old original pain enters the heart. We are only here for a little while, and the words lose nothing of their original freshness by repetition; and, in order to drink the anguish to its dregs, Evelyn elaborated the words, reminding herself that time is growing shorter every year, even the years are growing shorter.
“The space is very little between me and the grave.”
Some celebrated words from a celebrated poet, calling attention to the brevity of life, came into her mind, and she repeated them again and again, enjoying their bitterness. We like to meditate on death; even the libertine derives satisfaction from such meditation, and poets are remembered by their powers of expressing our great sorrow in stinging terms. “Our lives are not more intense than our dreams,” Evelyn thought; “and yet our only reason for believing life to be reality is its intensity. Looked at from the outside, what is it but a little vanishing dust? Millions have preceded that old woman into the earth, millions shall follow her. I shall be in the earth too — in how many years? In a few months perhaps, in a few weeks perhaps. Possibly wi
thin the next few days I may hear how long I may expect to live, for what is more common than to wake with a pain, and on consulting a doctor to see a grave look come into his face, and to hear him tell of some mortal disease beyond his knife’s reach? Words come reluctantly to one’s tongue. “How long have I to live?” “About a year, about six months; I cannot say for certain.”
Doctors are answering men and women in these terms every day, and Evelyn thought of some celebrated sayings that life’s mutability has inspired. She remembered some from the Bible, and some from Shakespeare; and those she remembered from Fitzgerald, from his “Omar Khayyam,” took her back to the afternoon she spent with Owen by the Serpentine, to the very day when he gave her the poem to read, thinking to overcome her scruples with literature.
“There were no scruples in me then. My own business, ‘The Ring,’ is full of the pagan story of life and death. We have babbled about it ever since, trying to forget or explain it, without, however, doing either; I tried to forget it on the stage, and did not succeed, but it was not fear of death that brought me here. The nuns do not succeed better than I; all screens are unavailing, for the wind is about everywhere — a cold, searching wind, which prayers cannot keep out; our doorways are not staunch — the wind comes under the door of the actress’s dressing-room and under the door of the nun’s cell in draughts chilling us to the bone, and then leaving us to pursue our avocations for a time in peace. The Prioress thought that in coming here she had discovered a way to heaven, yet she was anxious to defend herself from her detractors upon earth. If she had believed in her celestial inheritance she would have troubled very little, and I should be free to go away now. Perhaps it is better as it is,” she reflected. And it seemed to her that no effort on her part was called for or necessary. She was certain she was drifting, and that the current would carry her to the opposite bank in good time; she was content to wait, for had she not promised the Prioress to perform a certain task? And it was part of her temperament to leave nothing undone; she also liked a landmark, and the finishing of her book would be a landmark.
She was even a little curious to see what turn the convent affairs would take, and as she sat biting the end of her pen, thinking, the sound of an axe awoke her from her reverie. Trees were being felled in the garden; “and an ugly, red-brick building will be run up, in which children of city merchants will be taught singing and the piano.” Was it contempt for the world’s ignorance in matters of art that filled her heart? or was she animated with a sublime pity for those parents who would come to her (if she remained in the convent, a thing she had no intention of doing) to ask her, Evelyn Innes, if she thought that Julia would come to something if she were to persevere, or if Kitty would succeed if she continued to practice “The Moonlight Sonata,” a work of the beauty of which no one in the convent had any faintest comprehension? She herself had some gifts, and, after much labour, had brought her gifts to fruition, not to any splendid, but to some fruition. It was not probable that any one who came to the convent would do more than she had done; far better to learn knitting or cooking — anything in the world except music. Her gift of singing had brought her to this convent. Was it really so? Was her gift connected in some obscure way with the moral crisis which had drawn her into this convent? There seemed to be a connection, only she did not seem to be able to work it out. But there must be one surely, otherwise her poor people, whom she loved so dearly, would not have been abandoned. A very cruel abandonment it was, and she pondered a long while on this subject without arriving at any other conclusion except that for her to remain in the convent to teach music to the children of rich merchants, who had villas in Wimbledon, was out of the question. Her poor people were calling to her, and the convent had no further concern in her life. Of that she was sure. It was no longer the same convent. The original aspiration had declined; the declension had been from the late Prioress to Sister Winifred, who, knowing that her own election to Prioress was impossible, had striven to get Mother Philippa elected Prioress and herself sub-Prioress — a very clever move on her part, for with Mother Philippa as Prioress the management of the school would be left to her, and the school was what interested her. Of course, the money they made would be devoted to building a chapel, or something of that kind; but it was the making of money which would henceforth be the pleasure of the convent. Evelyn took a certain pleasure in listening negligently to Mother Winifred, who seemed unable to resist the desire to talk to her about vocations whenever they met. From whatever point they started, the conversation would soon turn upon a vocation, and Evelyn found herself in the end listening to a story of some novice who thought she had no vocation and had left the convent, but had returned.
“And very often,” Mother Winifred would say sententiously, “those who think themselves most sure of their vocation find themselves without one.”
And Evelyn would answer, “Those who would take the last place are put up first — isn’t that it, Mother Winifred?”
Very often as they walked round the great, red-brick building, with rows of windows on either side facing each other, so that the sky could be seen through the building, Evelyn said:
“But do you not regret the trees?” She took pleasure in reminding every nun that they sacrificed the beauty of the garden in the hope of making a little money; and these remarks, though they annoyed Mother Winifred, did not prevent her from speaking with pride of the school, now rapidly advancing towards completion, nor did Evelyn’s criticism check her admiration of Evelyn herself. It seemed to Evelyn that Mother Winifred was always paying her compliments, or if she were not doing that, she would seek opportunities to take Evelyn into her confidence, telling her of the many pupils they had been promised, and of the conversions that would follow their teaching. The girls would be impressed by the quiet beauty of the nun’s life; some of them would discover in themselves vocations for the religious life, and a great many would certainly go away anxious for conversion; and, even if their conversions did not happen at once, though they might be delayed for years, sooner or later many conversions would be the result of this school. And the result of all this flummery was:
“Now, why should you not stay with us, dear, only a little while longer? It would be such a sad thing if you were to go away, and find that, after all, you had a vocation for the religious life, for if you return to us you will have to go through the novitiate again.”
“But, Mother Winifred, you always begin upon the supposition that I have a vocation. Now, supposing you begin upon the other supposition — that I have not one.”
Mother Winifred hesitated, and looked sharply at Evelyn; but, unable to take her advice, on the very next opportunity she spoke to Evelyn of the vocation which she might discover in herself when it was too late.
“You have forgotten what I said, Mother Winifred.”
Mother Winifred laughed, but, undaunted, she soon returned with some new argument, which had occurred to her in the interval, as she prayed in church, or in her cell at night, and the temptation to try the effect of the new argument on Evelyn was irresistible.
“Dear Sister Teresa — you see the familiar name comes to my tongue though you have put off the habit — we shall be a long time in straitened circumstances. A new mortgage has had, as you know, to be placed on the property in order to get money to build the school; the school will pay, but not at once.”
Evelyn protested she was not responsible for this new debt. She had advised the Prioress and Mother Winifred against it, warning them that she did not intend to remain in the convent.
“But we always expected that you would remain.”
And in this way Evelyn was made to feel her responsibility so much that in the end she consented to give up part of her money to the nuns. So long as she had just enough to live upon it did not matter, and she owed these nuns a great deal. True that she had paid them ten times over what she owed them, but still, it was difficult to measure one’s debts in pounds, shillings, and pence. However, that was t
he way the nuns wanted her to measure them, and if she could leave them fifteen hundred pounds — . And as soon as this sum was agreed upon, Sister Winifred never lost an opportunity of regretting that the convent was obliged to accept this magnificent donation, hinting that the Prioress and herself would be willing (and there would be no difficulty in obtaining the consent of the choir sisters) to accept Evelyn’s services for three years in the school instead of the money.
“Five hundred a year we shall be paying you, but the value of your teaching will be very great; mothers will be especially anxious to send their daughters to our school, so that they may get good singing lessons from you.”
“And when I leave?”
“Well, the school will have obtained a reputation by that time. Of course, you will be a loss, but we must try to do without you.”
“Three years in this convent!”
“But you are quite free here; you come and go as you please. After all, your intention in leaving the convent is to teach music. Why not teach music here?”
The argument was an ingenious one, but Evelyn did not feel that it would appeal to her in the least, either to continue living in the convent after she had finished her book, or to go back to the convent to give singing lessons three or four times a week.
It would be preferable for her to give fifteen hundred pounds to the convent, and so finish with the whole thing; and this she intended to do, though she put Mother Winifred off with evasion, leaving her thinking that perhaps after all she would teach for some little while in the convent. It was necessary to do this, for Mother Winifred could persuade Mother Philippa as she pleased; and it had occurred to Evelyn that perhaps Mother Winfred might arrange for her expulsion. Nothing could be easier than to tell her that somebody’s friend was going to stay with them in the convent, that the guest-room would be wanted. To leave now would not suit Evelyn at all. The late Prioress’s papers belonged to the convent; and to deceive Mother Winifred completely Evelyn agreed to give some singing lessons, for they had already begun to receive pupils, though the school was not yet finished.
