by George Moore
A treacherous scruple could not enter a mind already aware that in marrying Abélaid she had discovered not only a great passion but a career and an ambition, and she was filled with contempt for herself for the faint hesitation with which she had lied to the Prioress; and vowing to be more resolute in future, she spoke with enthusiasm of the life in the convent, of the new nuns that had joined, adding anxious enquiries for pupils with the view to deceiving the nuns. Thy return to us is indeed a gift of God, said the Prioress. But here comes an old friend of thine, Sister Tetta, and Héloïse rose to greet a small nun, small and withered, like an autumn leaf seemingly ready to detach itself from its stem, to flutter down into the earth. But though very little was left of the original woman, Sister Tetta still retained her funny running little gait and her pleasant, almost joyful, voice. Why, it is Héloïse, she cried, come back to us at last, at last. We have all been wondering if you had forgotten us; it must be more than two years, nearly three, since we have seen you.
Héloïse has been married, the Prioress said, and has left husband and baby to join us; and Abélard, the great philosopher, her husband, was moved by the grace of God to forget the vanities of this life, else she could not have come hither. And is not this story which Héloïse has just related to me and Sister Cecilia an extraordinary manifestation of God’s goodness and his unending providence? Two or three years, Sister Tetta answered, of the life of the world is enough for those in whom God has implanted the instinct of heaven, and I think I always felt that one day Héloïse would be returned to us. But how long has Héloïse been away from us? Sister Cecilia asked, and the three nuns were agreed that it must be about three years since Madelon had come from Argenteuil with a letter from Canon Fulbert saying that Héloïse was to return home. But at what season did Madelon come with this letter? Sister Cecilia asked, and the Prioress and Sister Tetta were not agreed, the Prioress holding that it was in October, Sister Tetta holding by August as the date of Héloïse’s departure. But why this dispute about the date, since we may find it, for you all remember the first page of the missal that is going to-morrow to the Bishop of Lichfield. It will be a great adornment to his cathedral, Cecilia continued, for it is the best work we have done. You cannot, Mother Prioress, have forgotten that we stood by this very table wondering at the beauty of the page? Sister Cecilia opened the missal, and pointing to the two knights fighting, she said: you cannot have forgotten this, Héloïse? Here are the two knights, one on the ground bleeding, the other leaning on his sword, and the cat scrambling through the tendrils and leaves of the bower carrying away the privy member that the knight has just lopped from his rival’s body. Thou canst not have forgotten, Héloïse, for these leaves are thine and nearly as firm in line as anything in the missal. We shall be glad of thy handicraft again if thou hast not lost it, which cannot be in so short a time. Does not the cat recall to thee the old brindled fellow, Satan, that used to watch us, sitting on the table beside us as we worked, a little bored, sometimes taking the pencil from our fingers?
Héloïse looked into the missal, and the nuns talked on a little, forgetful of Héloïse, who was too tired to listen to them. Her eyes closed from time to time and she opened them quickly, not unmindful of the politeness she owed to the nuns, and every time she did so she heard the same argument — that another Peter the Hermit must be sought and found who would rouse Europe again to go forth to repel the Saracen. But we are forgetting our visitor, the Prioress cried. My dear Héloïse, thou’rt falling asleep and weak with hunger. Héloïse protested. But obedience to the Superior is the first rule, the Prioress said; thou’rt too tired to eat, but a glass of milk shall be sent to thee and some food, a slice of bread and butter and a fruit or two; and I, too, will disappear, but to return again later in the afternoon.
CHAP. XXVIII.
HER SLEEP DEEPENED hour after hour, and when the opening of the door awoke her she could remember nothing, and sat staring at her visitor, a pleasant, open-faced woman, thirty or thirty-five, of medium height and good figure. I hope that I have not disturbed you, she said, and Héloïse answered: no, you have not, but how long have I been asleep? It doesn’t matter in the least, the sister answered; return to sleep if you are so disposed. No, do not go, Héloïse cried, unwilling to part with the nun’s pretty forehead, curved eyes, and the face coming to a point, her long, shapely hands and winning smile, a smile so intimate that Héloïse already felt a longing for the nun’s friendship beginning in her. My name, she said, is Hildegarde, I am the novice mistress, but Hilda is the name my friends know me by, and I hope you’ll soon be one of them. Héloïse answered that she felt she was already one of them. But you were not here when I was a child, getting my education from the nuns? she asked. I was not, the nun answered; I have been here only two years. You must have come soon after I left to go to live with my uncle in Paris, said Héloïse, and Mother Hilda answered her that it is always coming and going from the convent to the world, and from the world to the convent. You’ve just been married, yet I hear that you and your husband have decided to enter the religious life. God’s grace comes suddenly and inexplicably, Héloïse said, sorry to look into the nun’s beautiful face with a lie upon her lips. And to escape from further lies she began to tell of the Prioress’s willingness to chatter of Peter the Hermit. She never wearies of that story, said Mother Hilda; nor is there any reason why she should. The husband she loved truly was killed fighting for the possession of the Holy Sepulchre, and his spirit appears to her. Her husband’s ghost was a good reason for her to come hither, Héloïse replied; she could not leave the poor soul lamenting in purgatory. Did many of the nuns in this convent lose their husbands in the Holy Land? she asked. I lost mine, Mother Hilda answered; and she told that she had been compelled from the world into the convent for the same reason, or very nearly the same reason, as the Prioress. My husband was killed in the Holy Land fighting for the Holy Sepulchre, and I came hither to think of him more securely than I could do in the world, afraid, she said, that in the world temptation might find me out, and the poor dead require all our thoughts, for they live in us and are only really dead when we cease to think of them. Do you think the beloved dead die when we die? Héloïse asked. If no one is left to think of them, Mother Hilda replied, they die; and that is why it seems to me that men will sacrifice all things for glory, for by the achievement of great deeds they beget memory that will keep them alive for centuries. So you think, Mother Hilda, that the Crusaders go to the Holy Land to rescue the Holy Sepulchre to save their own lives? In a measure, yes, the nun answered; Jesus lives for us as long as we think of him, and the more we think of him the more intensely he lives. But, Mother Hilda, Jesus is God. Jesus is God, of course, Mother Hilda replied. I was thinking of how he lives in us, not how he lives in heaven. Men do not know, she said, pursuing her thoughts as if she had forgotten Héloïse, why they sacrifice themselves in battle, retire into caves, fast and pray; why they write books or build churches. They act in obedience to an instinct. Only the shallows of our lives are agitated by reason, instinct controls the depths, and our highest instinct is of our immortality.
It begins here on earth — You do not think then, Héloïse interrupted, that we drink our immortality from the same cup? From the same cup, perhaps, Mother Hilda answered, but not the same draught. At that moment a tall, slim nun entered, and Héloïse’s heart sank, for Sister Angela closed the door and came over to join in the conversation, seemingly the least likely person in the world to understand or appreciate spiritual confidences; such was Héloïse’s reading of Sister Angela’s round, almost foolish eyes, her dragging mouth and drooping chin. In her face was the simplicity of the deer, and not even the nun’s habit could hide the gracefulness of her long arms and slender hands. Héloïse expected a stupid woman to reveal herself, but an intelligence began to appear — a fitful, disconnected intelligence that broke into the conversation and then left it as abruptly, putting thoughts into Héloïse’s mind of animals she had seen at one moment
eager to claim human companionship and then, wearying suddenly of it, returning into themselves without apparent reason.
Mother Hilda turned to the second Crusade, which was being talked about, and after listening with a look of contempt on her face, Sister Angela said: it is not by hacking the Saracens with battle-axes and stabbing them with halberts that we shall win the Sepulchre, but by prayers for their conversion. But do you think, Héloïse asked, that if all the monasteries were to offer up prayers together for the conversion of the Caliph, he would relinquish the errors he was born into? If we were to devote our lives to praying for the Caliph, he would not be able to help himself, said Sister Angela; but our prayers are thwarted by the prayers of monks asking for more battle-axes, and the Sepulchre though won from the Saracens may fall into the Infidels’ hands again, for the Saracen warriors are not the barbarians they are represented to be, but poets — troubadours indeed. And the talk of the nuns turning from troubadours to the great men of the past, to Socrates and Plato, Sister Angela then held that men who lived virtuous lives were sure of heaven, not perhaps as sure as any Christian, but still sure. It seemed to Héloïse that Mother Hilda listened approvingly when Sister Angela began to advocate one of Abelard’s doctrines, that heaven was not closed to the great Pagans. But this belief was called into question by a new-corner. Whereupon Sister Angela rose to her feet, saying: now I must be going, and left the room abruptly. I hope I said nothing to offend her, said the nun who had dared to impugn Angela’s orthodoxy. Mother Hilda answered that Angela was always sudden and unexpected. We always say that one side of Angela knows nothing of the other side, and in support of this appreciation Héloïse heard that Sister Angela had been engaged for some years on a great work. But if we ask her, said Mother Hilda, what the great work is about she cannot tell us, for as I have said one side of Angela is a stranger to the other.
The door opened. It was the Prioress come to ask Héloïse if she would like to take the air on the green sward. I thought that if thou wert not tired — I am quite rested, Héloïse replied. And thou must come with us, Mother Hilda, said the Prioress, and addressing Héloïse, she added: our novice mistress. Mother Hilda pleaded that she had been away from the novitiate too long, and hoping that the Prioress would excuse her she left them. A most successful novice mistress, the Prioress said, and thou’lt like her as much as the others do. For to-morrow I shall be in the novitiate, Héloïse replied, and she sat silent, afraid that her voice had betrayed her. In three or four months we’ll give thee the white veil; and the habit is a great help. The Prioress continued talking, and Hëloïse sat rapt in thoughts of Abélard’s ordination, and was glad when the sun-litten windows interrupted the prosy Prioress, reminding her that summer was not yet over. A beautiful summer, she said; I have yet in mind the fine days breaking slowly after a wet spring, for in March it seemed as if God wished to punish us; such stupid thoughts often come to me, so thoughtless am I of all that God does for us. We all forget him but he never forgets us, as this evening testifies. I have known beautiful Junes and Julys and beautiful Augusts, too, but never a September like this one. Look up, Héloïse, didst ever see such clouds? And Héloïse was uncertain what colour to put upon the clouds, for they were neither red nor yellow; a red-yellow, she said, making the blue between bluer than any flower. We must not compare the abode of God with the abode of man, the Prioress replied. I started in the dusk, said Héloïse; when not a leaf was stirring. And not a leaf is stirring now, the Prioress answered; a beautiful day has gone by. I am glad, she continued, that thou hast come to us on an evening like this one. In the world we forget quickly, but we remember our childhood, and I am glad to think that thy childhood was passed with us. Mother, I remember everything. Well then, come and see the things that thou dost not remember — our little improvements. Here we are in the orchard, where thou hast walked many times. The gravel of this broad path is familiar under my feet, Héloïse answered, and the smell of the orchard brings the years back to me. But what an abundance of fruit you have; the trees are loaded. They are indeed, Héloïse. But the waste of the fruit breaks my heart, for we cannot eat it all nor sell as much of it as we wish; we store the apples along numberless shelves. I know them, Héloïse answered. We have put up many more during thine absence, dear child, and in this way we keep our apples sound till Christmas; but after Christmas decay begins. If we walk a little farther thou’lt see a low wall built along the river’s bank and this wall is one of our improvements. It gives us greater privacy, and it is not too high to shut out the view of the river and the towing-path on the other side. From the windows of the illuminating-room thou’lt see the barges sailing, coming up from Normandy laden with food returning in ballast, a beautiful sight. Mother, I have never seen anything more beautiful than that great plain along which the mists are now rising. The silence seems to unite earth with heaven, and the moon rising up behind yonder poplar puts me in mind of a tall altar candle. Lighted for thee, the Prioress answered. But, Mother, God would not take notice of anything so small as I am. My dear child, God knows all things, and is everywhere, in all things, behind things, and in front of things; all is permeated with God. The smallest life, as well as what seems to us the greatest, are all the same in his eyes. I say this in truth, for his hand must be everywhere or nowhere.
CHAP. XXIX.
A LITTLE WHIRLING wind blew up from the river; a presage, it seemed to the Prioress to be, of winter, mayhap of a bronchial cold, and she drew her feet more quickly through the loose gravel and sand, to Héloïse’s admiration, for she did not think the old woman could walk so fast, throwing the pebbles from side to side. She was, moreover, weary of the Prioress’s pious talk, and thinking that she could not endure it another five minutes, she confessed to a great longing for bed, for you see, Mother, I was out of bed at daybreak. Thou shalt be in it within the next few minutes, the Prioress answered, and Héloïse was scarcely at length before she was asleep. I must have dozed at once, she said, when the Mass bell awoke her.
Her breakfast was brought to her in the parlour; and after Mother Hilda, her first visitor, many old friends came to see her. Sister Paula was amongst them, and her fresh, girlish face — she had changed but little, if at all — drew Héloïse’s eyes to her; and, her thoughts crossing ever back and forth between Brittany and Argenteuil, she bethought herself of a little outing, she and Paula going to visit the woman who was looking after Paula’s baby, she had forgotten the child’s name. But to arrange for this excursion she must have some private talk with Paula, and while she was thinking how this might be managed, Sister Cecilia asked Héloïse to come to the illuminating-room and sit there with her. Sister Josiane proposed the library, and Héloïse answered: for a whole year in Brittany I have not seen a book. In Brittany? cried several voices. Yes, Héloïse replied; I went to Brittany to have my baby; but as soon as I have cast a look over the shelves and returned from a little walk in the orchard and kitchen garden, you may expect me. But do not forget, Sister Cecilia, that I have not put my hand to painting since I left here, and you can entrust me only with the simplest work. I am glad, answered Sister Cecilia, that you have not forgotten the convent. So well do I remember it that I am going to become one of you, Sister Héloïse replied. A miracle our Prioress declares it to be, and a miracle it must be, for none of us thought to see you again. But why a miracle, Sister Cecilia? asked Héloïse. That grace should have come to you both, and at the same time, and you only a month wedded, is indeed miraculous, the nun answered; and Héloïse shrank from Sister Cecilia’s examination of her motives in returning to the convent, and changed the matter of their talk by a mention of the beauty of yester evening by the river. We must get rid of our pigs, Sister Cecilia said, or keep them in sties. You will not forget, said Sister Tetta, to walk down to the river and see the wall we have built there, for you’ll find a long, low wooden seat that has been put up since you were here; we sit there in our evening recreation and look out on the world. I have already admired the wall in
the Prioress’s company, but I will admire it in yours, Tetta. But first I must look up and down the bookshelves. In this you have not changed much, Héloïse, for a book was always the best thing in the world for you, and having opened the library door for her, Sister Tetta said: you will stay here just as long as you please, dear Héloïse. It is your last day of liberty; if Abélard comes to-day and you sign the declaration, you will re-enter the novitiate to-morrow.
In the novitiate to-morrow, she repeated to herself, climbing the steep way to Abélard’s fame, my happy lot. On these words her eyes turned from the shelves, and when they went back to the shelves she began to ask herself of what she had been thinking. Virgil’s name distracted her thoughts from herself, and she recalled the window in the rue des Chantres overlooking the river, the town springing up on the right bank, the fields between the houses in which the white steers laboured and the ploughman bent over the stilts, a landscape nearer her heart than the landscape before her, for it was at a window overlooking the Lombard quarter that she had read Virgil, Tibullus, Horace, Cornelius Nepos, Sallust, Seneca. It was in the rue des Chantres that she had spoken to Abélard of the Academics, Cicero’s book putting a thought of another book in Abelard’s head, Sic et non, in which he would show the Fathers contradicting each other just like the Philosophers. Boëthius! A high official whose book on the consolations of philosophy was written whilst waiting for execution; and whilst waiting for Abélard she might have to rely on the consolations of philosophy. Her curiosity was caught next by the Thebaid of Statius, a writer of whom she had never heard, and taking down his book she began to turn over the pages, reading here and there till her attention was fixed by the story of the blaspheming Capaneus, who threatened to storm Thebes in spite of Jupiter’s lightning and was struck down by a thunderbolt. And then she came upon some works by Aristotle — the Categories — which she returned to their place on the shelf for a future occasion. She passed over a translation of Plato’s Timœus, and on taking down its neighbour, the translation of Dionysius, the Areopagite, on the heavenly hierarchy, by John Scotus Erigena, she remembered having heard Abélard say that the Pope was not sure that this work ought to be translated, but did not condemn it, for Dionysius was a saint, the patron saint of France, and one that could not be easily condemned. She continued to think of him while opening and shutting books filled with stories of Troy and Alexander, and these seemed to contain many things not in Virgil or the historians. One of these days when I have a bad cold in the head — she said, and turning to the next shelf, she found it filled with the works of Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine and his disciple Orosius, who, she had heard Abélard say, set himself to prove that the whole history of the kingdoms and republics of the world was a calamitous history. After reading a few pages she closed it, saying: a dismal book, but needed at the time to reply to the heathen, who declared their misfortunes were due to Christianity. It was not, however, a book with which to break her long fast from literature, and she sought along the shelves for something more tasty. For beauty I shall have to go to the ancients, she said, and Ovid’s Art of Love seemed to her suitable to her circumstance; for it will remind me of the love that I put aside, and which I may forget in this convent if his ordination be retarded unduly. But one doesn’t forget, she added; and she read on and on, as much for the sake of the subject as for the elegant Latin in which the poet conveys his teaching. The Latin was often so apt that it set her thinking (she had not read Latin for more than a year) that Virgil was not a greater poet than Ovid, and to set her mind at rest she sought for the Metamorphoses, and finding it fell to admiring the strenuous narrative flowing on without break. A wonderful imagination, she said, but not so near to the heart of poetry as Virgil, whereupon the Metamorphoses was laid aside, and after reading the Georgies a little while she breathed a happy sigh and sat quite still, rapt in meditation, saying: he loved life as life has ever been, as it will always be, bringing the earth in its holiness before us, the fields and all the shows of the seasons. She picked up the book and sat reading, laying it aside from time to time so that she might enjoy her old admirations, and returning to her book after a long dream she read on, forgetful of her promise to visit Cecilia in the illuminating-room.
