Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  CHAP. XXVII.

  I WILL TELL the Prioress you are here, but you’ll have to wait a little while, for she is busy now. I shall not mind waiting, Héloïse replied, and following the portress to the parlour door, she said: you know my name, Sister Agatha? Know it, Sister Agatha answered; what can you be thinking of? And you here with us for five years, my word! For six, Héloïse replied. Six, was it? I’d forgotten. And the sister paused to think the matter out; but remembering suddenly that the Prioress would be wanting to know who the visitor might be, she said: I must run away with the good news. But what an hour you have chosen to come, she cried back, from the end of the corridor, to Héloïse, who was about to re-enter the parlour, a room once of great importance in her life, for when she was summoned from the classroom and told that she was wanted in the parlour, she knew that all the fruits of the season awaited her; besides fruit, Madelon’s basket often contained a cheese, and it helped her to forget the convent fare, somewhiles trite and commonplace. She was glad, moreover, to see Madelon, to hear of the rue des Chantres and her uncle, who, alas, never came to see her. It would have been, in those days, a little triumph for her had he come to Argenteuil, for the pupils were judged by the rank and wealth of their parents and friends who came to see them. Madelon sometimes forgot to put on her best gown, and Héloïse remembered how one day, while walking with Madelon in the orchard, a pupil had caught sight of them, and asked her afterwards with whom she was walking. She had yielded to the temptation to lie to her fellow-pupil: with my aunt, she said, for to lie seemed better than to confess that her visitor was her uncle’s servant. She had dared it, for the pupil was many yards away, too far to notice Madelon’s stained and worn gown. The memory of this lie often threw a doubt on her own essential character, as she hoped it was and believed it to be; and now this bygone lie pierced her more sharply than it had ever done before. A mean spirit once dwelt within me, she said; it is in me still, though subdued, perhaps conquered. As she stood waiting for the Prioress she bethought herself of the cake that Madelon had brought her, of its great brown crust as much as the exquisite crumb, and how she had shared it with the pupil in the convent parlour. On the table before me, she said, we opened the hamper; and then to escape from an unpleasant memory she looked round the room, saying: nothing is changed. The table and six chairs are all in their places, that one still unmended, broken, not by Madelon, though she was charged with the breaking, put away in a distant corner for safety; and the books, too, piled one upon the other, just as I last saw them. The floor was polished last Tuesday, she added, drawing her feet along the shining surface, the beeswax giving forth a faint odour. I could tell the room by the smell, though I were blindfolded. The last time she was in the parlour she was summoned from the illuminating-room: a lay sister came to fetch her: Héloïse is wanted in the parlour, and she had run thither thinking of cake; and the sting of her disappointment on not seeing a basket on the table was still in her mind, and the sound of Madelon’s voice saying: I have come to fetch thee back to Paris, so make thy bundle quickly or we shall be late for supper. To fetch me to Paris for always or for a few days? she asked, and Madelon answered: that is just as his humour may fall out. Two years ago, about this very time of year, Héloïse said; almost the same hour of the day.

  Two years have passed, and in those two years is the stuff of my life: Abelard, Astrolabe and marriage. Yet in spite of all my fate is to return to Argenteuil. In a few days I shall wear the habit. How extraordinary! It requires courage, she said; but I feel that I shall not lack courage if I keep my thoughts fixed on the end; and if the waiting outruns two or three years Astrolabe may be sent for. For why not? she asked, and her thoughts returning to the years gone by, she remembered Clothilde, who, being the Prioress’s daughter, was never beaten, the exemption seeming reasonable to all, for Clothilde’s mind did not retain much of what was put into it, so what use to beat a child for being as God made her?

  One day, in answer to a question: why has the Prioress got a daughter? I thought nuns never had children, she was told that the Prioress was a widow and entered the religious life in consequence of her husband’s death, Comte Godfrey de Chatillon, who went to the Crusades and was buried in a place well known to the Prioress; for during the first year of her widowhood her husband’s ghost often came to beg her to enter a convent and dedicate the rest of her life to praying for the release of his soul from purgatory. Such was the story the pupils whispered among themselves, and if a pupil turned to a nun to ask if it were true that Godfrey appeared before the Prioress to beg that as soon as his soul was called into heaven his body should be sought on the field of battle and buried in Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre alongside that of Godfrey de Bouillon, the pupil was told that the Prioress entered the religious life with the intention of devoting herself to the liberation of her husband’s soul. And for that very reason she was elected Prioress. But there was another reason; Héloïse often heard it mentioned with lowered breath that the management of the convent would be safer in the hands of a widow than in those of a spinster, which was true in a way, but she was not altogether certain that the nuns did not feel that a noble name would add to the fame of the convent.

  It was the custom of the convent for the pupils to visit the Prioress in her room occasionally, and Héloïse dwelt on the emotion she experienced one day on being bidden thither, the dread she felt while mounting the stairs almost forbidding her to lift the latch of the door. Her knock was still clear in her memory, and the answer to it, and the great fat woman sitting in her chair writing at a table covered with papers. The Prioress’s veil was thrown aside, and Héloïse caught sight of a large bald patch and a few straggling grey hairs before the Prioress had had time to readjust her veil. The moment fixed itself upon her mind, and she had often recalled it, thinking of the Prioress as exceptionally of her race and country. For although a large woman of commanding presence, her face was small, rather short than long, with round, intelligent eyes, and her nose when she was a young woman must have been of great beauty, for it was beautiful in her decline, lying low upon the face, well shapen, with clear-cut nostrils. Héloïse remembered her mouth, large but well-shapen, and the chin’s deflection, giving to her face in conjunction with her eyes an expression of great kindliness. She had read in it pity and compassion, if not a liking an amiable toleration for human weaknesses; and a proneness to discover reasons why they should be overlooked, condoned and forgiven in others. When one of her nuns came and opened her heart to her she imposed no heavy penance, Héloïse was sure of that; and the story of Sister Paula’s baby was rising up in Héloïse’s mind, with a suspicion of the Prioress’s sympathy, when the Prioress herself opened the door and came forward with so ardent a face, and one so eloquent with welcome, that Héloïse was ashamed of herself for having indulged in a momentary condemnation, if her charity could be rightly called a condemnation.

  The Prioress had aged in the last two years; she was now an old woman with her middle age behind her; her gait was feebler, she tottered, but Héloïse could read some of the ancient grace in her hands when she sat talking, her hands laid on her clumsy knees, long, delicately shaped hands, that told of an ancestry free from kitchen work. There was charm in the Prioress’s low and affectionate voice when she began to talk of Héloïse’s father, Philippe, who was killed in Palestine. The lay sisters were waiting for their orders in the passage, and at last they took heart and rapped. But they were bidden to wait, and were clean forgotten — put out of her mind by memories of Peter the Hermit, who was from her own country. My father, as you know, Héloïse, was the Comte Guy de Puiset, and Abdère was the village in which Peter was born, not many miles from the castle where I was born, six miles from Amiens. He often came up to the castle, and touched by his piety and desire to see the Holy Sepulchre, which seemed to absorb the whole of his life, we gave him money for the journey (not all the money but the greater part of it), and I remember his thanks to us on the castle steps before he
went away.

  A year or eighteen months passed before we began to think of him again, and the news we got was that on arriving at Jerusalem he was shocked by the indignity with which the pilgrims were treated and the cruelty often put upon them, so much so that he was heartened to undertake a journey to Rome, where he caught the ear quickly of the good Pope Urban II., who promised him his aid in the persuasion of Europe, to unite and go forth and win back our Lord’s Sepulchre from the Saracen. You know the story, but it is pleasant to go over it again. After persuading the Pope to come to his aid, Peter crossed the Alps and preached from town to town, towns and villages emptying before him. He was of small stature, a dark, pleasant face, with long white hair, and rode upon a mule from whose tail his followers plucked hairs to keep as cherished relics. The Prioress’s voice became graver when she began to tell how the mule kicked out and broke a man’s ribs; but Peter, turning round in his saddle, raised his hands and invoked the power of the Lord, whereupon the man was made whole again, and, falling on his knees, he gave thanks. Nor was it long after, she said, that Urban II. came to France to hold a great Council, and when the Council was over and Urban preached to the multitude, passing from the Latin language to the French, a thing he was able to do, for he had not forgotten the language of his youth, a great shout went up: Deus vult. The Pope appealed to the knights standing by, asking how it was that they were busy in these fateful times shearing their brethren like sheep, and quarrelling one with the other. Fallen knights, he said, descendants of unconquered sires, remember the vigour of your forefathers and do not degenerate from your noble stock. As the voice of the Pope died away, there went up from the multitude once more: Deus vult! Deus vult! And with eyes raised to heaven Urban stretched out his hands for silence and began to speak, this time in terms of praise. Still forgetful of the lay sisters, the Prioress commenced her relation of the crusade. Héloïse had heard part of it, at least, for the nuns never wearied of telling it, but she had not heard it before from the lips of the widow of Godfrey de Chatillon; and in listening to the old nun she forgot her physical infirmities, her age, her bulk, and listened with reverence to the tale of the sufferings of the knights as they strove through Hungary — how the Huns, having been but lately converted to Christianity, did not welcome the Crusaders and the army; and that when the Crusaders saw the arms of their vanguard hanging in derision from the walls, they poured a thick flight of arrows into the city. The story she told was captivating, but it began to seem to Héloïse as if the Prioress would never come to the end of it, and she would have liked to remind the Prioress of the lay sisters waiting in the corridor, but she dared not; and so it befell her to hear that the Crusaders seized a deserted fortress called Exerogorgo, soon to be besieged by the Sultan of Rhum, and there being no drinking water they drank the blood of the horses to assuage their thirst; and the next thing Héloïse heard was of the capture of the sacred city by means of a wooden tower on wheels pushed alongside the wall, invented by Godfrey of Lorraine, and having thereby one part of the wall, a breach was made through which the Christian army poured, destroying the Saracens, killing men, women, and children, relinquishing their destruction only when they were moved to go to pray at the Holy Sepulchre; and their prayers done, they rose up again and continued to extirpate the enemies of our Lord.

  But thou’st heard me tell all this story before, Héloïse, and hast not forgotten any of it, maybe. But I have forgotten the nuns waiting in the corridor for orders, and have not welcomed thee as I should have done, allowing myself to be drawn into the old story before asking by what heavenly design thou’st been led back to us, though it be but for a visit. For more than a visit, dear Mother, Héloïse answered; for I have come to enter the religious life, the life of the world not seeming to us enough. The hand of God I see in this, the Prioress answered, and rising from her chair she took Héloïse in her arms. Let us kneel down together, she said, and thank God at once for his great goodness. He is good indeed, so good that we cannot measure his goodness. After having said a prayer the two women rose to their feet, and the prioress said: we have praised God, and now, Héloïse, thou deservest a word of praise; for we work together with God. Grace is given to us — But you must hear my story before you praise me, Héloise said. I am sure, the Prioress answered, there is nothing in Héloïse’s story of herself that will withdraw my love from her. I am sure that you will listen kindly, dear Mother, as kindly as Jesus did to the woman of Samaria. The Prioress bowed her head at the sacred name, and at that moment the door opened and Sister Cecilia came into the room, stopping abruptly in the middle of the floor to apologise for her intrusion. So overjoyed was I, dear Mother, at the news that Héloïse had come to see us, that I forgot that you and she would have much to talk about privily, and she turned to go, but Héloïse cried: don’t go, Cecilia; don’t go. Forgive me, dear Mother, Héloïse said, turning to the Prioress, but I have been so long out of the convent that I forgot to ask if Cecilia might not remain to hear my story; and waiting for the Prioress to answer, Héloïse sat gazing at a tall nun, whose long and round upper lip had always reminded her of a goat, a practical, managing woman, whose talent in the illuminating-room was a source of profit and renown to the convent. Am I to go or stay? Cecilia asked, and the Prioress answered that if Cecilia wished to stay and hear Héloïse’s story she might stay. But thou’st not heard, Héloïse, that my dear Clothilde, whom thou knewest in the novitiate, has departed from us and is now with God. We say so almost with certainty, for there are some souls that pass to heaven without delay in purgatory, sinless souls, and Clothilde was surely one of these. We must believe that some go straight to heaven. Peter the Hermit — Forgive me. Mother, Sister Cecilia interrupted, I forgot to tell you that the lay sisters, Apollonia and Marcella, are waiting to see you. I will see them presently, the Prioress answered; but we have first to hear the story Héloïse has come to tell us.

  And the nuns listened unabashed to Héloïse’s relation of her life with her uncle in the rue des Chantres, her meeting with Abélard, her flight to Brittany, and the birth of her baby. And to think that living within six miles of Paris we should not have heard of this before! cried Sister Cecilia. We have put the world behind us, Sister, the Prioress answered, for she had begun to think that the story they were listening to would prove a loosening in the convent discipline, already too lax. But she could not summon enough courage to dismiss Cecilia now, and with a heart full of misgivings and fears she gave ear to Héloïse, who told a moving story of how Abélard and herself were resolved to enter the religious life (it being in their case a necessity), thereby breaking the marriage yoke, which she admitted was not accepted by them with Christian humility, but as a sort of penance for the original sin. We should not be happy if we were to lose our souls in the end, she said. For of what does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he lose his own soul? the Prioress murmured, and then, raising her eyes subdued in-awe, she asked if there had been a manifestation. I mean, did an angel warn you that your marriage was a mistake and distasteful to God? We both began to feel that we could not continue in married life, Héloïse answered. And to whom was it first revealed that the religious life was the only way out of your difficulty? the Prioress asked. To me, I think, Héloïse replied; but Abélard knew that I spoke his truth as well as my own.

  A beautiful story, said the Prioress, and then, speaking like one in a dream, she continued: it may be that I’m speaking heresy if I say that God in his divine goodness may use sin as a means of bringing the souls he most needs nearer to himself. I am afraid I am, for does not the Church teach that sin is employed only by the Evil One to capture the souls he covets for the hell in which God has placed him? And though an angel be the messenger we are not sure he comes from God, for angels come from under as well as from above the earth. As no angel appeared to thee it must be that the order came from God. And Abélard being of the same mind I should have said I hold it to be certain that the hand of God is in it as much as it was in the ins
piration that took Peter the Hermit to the Holy Land, for wife and husband have never before been called apart from one another in a few days. A few weeks, dear Mother, Héloïse corrected; and the talk wore on, Héloïse telling as much of the story as she dared, repeating that Abélard and herself had agreed to part, though loving each other dearly. He to the priesthood and I to the cloister, she said, hoping that she had chosen words that would remove all doubt from the Prioress. But the nun did not answer, and Héloïse began to doubt that her story found acceptance; a mistake, however, this was, for the Prioress’s silence did not proceed from her doubts, for how could the story she had heard be thought of but as a rare and beautiful incident of the grace of God descending upon two human beings, taking them out of the danger of earthly life, and at the same time setting their feet on the way to the true life that lies beyond the grave. So did the old nun feel and think, and when she awoke from her dream of God and his providence, she said that the convent would be glad that Héloïse should remain with them if it were her husband’s wish. My husband, Héloïse said, will come here to-morrow, and we shall make the declaration which will free us from the marriage bond. It was at that moment that she began to understand that her end could not be reached except through a maze of lies, and forthright she accepted lies as part of her life’s business, saying to herself that it was hurtful to lie, and of all, to the Prioress, but to waver in the pursuit of that thing which seemed to her the only thing worth striving for was unworthy.