by George Moore
Our house was at the farther end of the village, standing a little apart, and a very pretty house it was. All kinds and sorts of noble folk were often before our door. My father was a lutanist, as you know; but perhaps you don’t know that some of the best lutes in France were made in our workshop: viols, vielles, gitterns, citherns — all the stringed instruments. We often had orders from some of the Paris houses for lutes. Our customers were many great counts and viscounts, barons and marquises. The Comte de Rodeboeuf had many a lute from my father, and I have seen Jean Guiscard in our workshop talking with father. All the lutes and citherns in the convent were made by father, and that is why, perhaps, I never had any taste for reading, and am never happy unless I am singing to a lute or playing the viol or gittern. I often envied you your music, Sister Paula, for music releases us from sad memories better than books. But it was your choice to come here, Paula answered. Was it not yours, Sister Paula? We came here for learning just as you did, Paula replied, and when I was sixteen and Catherine eighteen we left the convent, for father and mother did not wish us to be separated. It was pleasant at first to get away from the ringing of the bell announcing the different lessons, calling us to chapel and to the refectory. We liked the garden, planting vegetables in the spring and gathering fruits in the summer and autumn; we liked to creep into the workshop and to meet father in his leathern apron examining a lute that had come to be mended, to hang round our work-man again, to talk about strings and stops, and of all to watch the barons and the counts and the marquises ride up to our gate asking to see father. But after a year or two we began to feel that we had no part in the spectacle. The barons and the counts took no notice of us: they might have if it hadn’t been for mother, who shut us away, leaving us to peep through the top windows. An armourer and his wife were the only ones that came to see us, for in the county around there were but hovels and castles. Every morning a bell rang calling the lord’s serfs to work, and the lutanist and the armourer were like stranded ships, high and dry; the nobility above us and the tradespeople of Argenteuil below us. So it may have been our loneliness that decided Catherine to return to the convent, or it may have been — She stopped suddenly, and Héloïse sat watching the nun’s blank face, guessing her thoughts to be far away, reliving an incident. Of what are you thinking, Sister? she said at last. Paula started out of her dream. Of what am I thinking, Sister? she asked. Of what good to tell a sad story? Sometimes it relieves the mind, Héloïse answered, and then, forgetful of Héloïse, almost as if she were talking to herself, Paula said: it often seems to me that a disappointment in love was a partial motive in determining Catherine’s vocation. But I am not sure; Catherine could not tell herself; not now.
All the same a young man given over altogether to the art of lute-playing and singing, at whose castle many festivals were held and who was reputed to be in love with a lady of his own class, came to our house with a lute to be mended, and while talking to father he stopped suddenly, saying: I hear singing in the room above us. My daughters are singing, father answered, and the Baron, for he was one, and a great power in the country, said: I can hear but indistinctly, missing many notes. Whereupon my father called to us to come down; he bade us sing to the stranger, who pronounced himself pleased with our singing, and said he would send for the lute; but instead of sending he came himself to fetch it. May I not sing a song or two with your daughters? he asked, and my father, being much flattered, begged him to come through the shop into that part of the house in which we lived. My thoughts always go back to that first evening. The evenings that followed it are not so clear to me; but all that summer-time was pleasant, trying to please the Baron and he trying to please us. Almost every evening, two or three times a week, he rode over from his castle. Mother shook her head, saying, in answer to father, that though it might be that my sister and I were no more to him than two voices, it was by no means sure that a preference would not begin to appear. Moreover, there are the girls themselves to consider. We began to hate mother. It was in the summertime, and the evenings went by in our orchard singing, our visitor walking between us, accompanying us, the moon looking down through the branches. Mother often sent father to bid us to the house, the pretext being cake and wine. I hated her for it, but Catherine — I don’t know what she thought, she kept her thoughts to herself; we feared confidences, for we were both thinking of him; and if we spake, of him it was in the presence of our father and mother rather than when we were alone, each keeping her secret, neither trusting the other. A week rarely passed without our seeing him; it was in November that he did not call or send a message, and we were all agog. At last the news came that he had married a lady for her money, one of his own class, and we knew we should see no more of him. It was then that Catherine spoke of entering the religious life, and it was with her going that trouble and loneliness came into my life, for I don’t know that I was in love with the Baron, and Catherine kept writing that she was offering up prayers that I might join her in her happiness, the only true happiness, and I began to think that now the Baron was gone there was nothing else for me to do but to follow her example. So I often fell down upon my knees before my bed and prayed that somebody else might come, for I dreaded the convent. But nobody came, only the winter, which is always hard to bear; and the winter that followed the Baron’s departure was lonelier than the winter that preceded his coming: cold and wet, with storms of wind, and afterwards the snowfall, and there seemed to be nothing but silence, with great falls of snow. Father and mother were always talking of the sunset of their lives, saying that not many more years of life lay in front of them, and that they would die happy if they knew what would become of me when they were gone. At last I summoned all my courage and said: but father, mother, if I were to follow Catherine’s example and enter the convent, what would become of you? You would be alone. No answer came from them, but I could see that there was something in their minds; and at last, in reply to repeated questions, they confessed the truth to me, that if I made up my mind to enter the convent, they too would separate, one going to a monastery, the other to a convent. And we all three sat looking at each other, unable to speak.
Mother died with the melting of the snow and I was alone with father, who, I could see, couldn’t forget his soul for five minutes together. His lips would begin to move and he’d lay the half-finished lute aside, and he as good as told me that if I entered the convent he would leave his money to Argenteuil and Saint-Denis, getting many Masses for the repose of his soul. It was lonelier than being in the house by oneself, for he walked about like one in a dream, and when we met he started as if at the sight of a stranger, as if he had forgotten me, and I’d answer: wake up, father, hast forgotten me? And then he would smile and become himself again; but only for a little while, and the estrangement continued, getting worse day by day, till we were apart, even when we were together, for he was thinking all the time of the prayers that awaited him in the room overhead. Everything else was forgotten, and of all the workshop; those who gave him lutes to repair went away with their broken instruments to be mended in Paris. He has come to hate the house, I said, for it is part of the life of the world, and so am I, and if I stay here much longer he will begin to look upon me as the barrier between himself and his monastery. So in despair I fell once more to praying that another baron might come and marry me. Every night I prayed, but none came; and one night father and I were alone in the house together, father in the room above, I in the room below, and I could hear him singing psalms, praying and striking his breast. It was then that I gave way. I had borne all I could, and knowing that I couldn’t resist father any longer, and that the convent waited half-a-mile down the road, the river came into my mind, and I bethought myself that I might run thither, not to drown myself but to buy or beg a passage in one of the ships plying between Paris and Havre. You know they anchor at night by the shore, and my idea was to stand on the bank screaming till somebody on board awoke; maybe the captain, I said, who will take a bribe, or
a sailor; and with no other thought in my mind but to escape from everything I had ever seen or heard, I ran on till I reached Stephen’s house, and there I was stopped by the sight of the priest reading by the window, the lamp at his elbow. Father, I said to myself, will not miss me for a long while, but he will miss me sooner or later and it is wicked to go away without leaving a message; and with whom can I leave it if not with our priest? Something laid hold of me. It is said that a guardian angel is always on one side of us and an evil angel on the other, the good angel trying to overpower the bad, the bad trying to overpower the good. It must have been like that with me then, or something like that, for I couldn’t pass the house. My good angel must have got the better of the bad angel at that moment, giving him a fall, and before the bad angel could rise again I had knocked at the priest’s door, which was opened to me by the old woman, his housekeeper, who said: it is late to see his reverence; his reverence is tired. But I couldn’t go without leaving my message, and after a while she said: I’ll ask his reverence if he will see you. Come this way, he said, and took me into his room, and I told him what my life was, and that I hoped in a few hours to be far away. I remember all I said and the stillness of the room, with the priest listening and speaking not a word. Now I must go, I said. It is my duty to warn you, he answered, that when your father hears that you have gone away for ever to live with sailors — That it will kill him, I cried; well then, there is no escape for me, I must enter the convent. But you do not know, my dear child, he answered me, what the life on board those ships is, and the violence that the sailors offer to women. Life in which there is nothing is worse, I said. You must return home, my dear child, to-night. And then, feeling that my project had come to naught, I fell to weeping, my head thrown across the priest’s table. How I wept! My sobs were so loud that he must have thought my heart would break, for he called in his old housekeeper, who took me in her arms, but I shook her off. Stephen begged of me to be calm, but I cried: leave me, leave me. Tears there were everywhere, on the priest’s books, on his table, on the floor. I must have wept a great deal, and there was reason for my weeping, for never was anybody unhappier than I was in the half-hour I spent in the priest’s house. In the garden was a syringa, and whenever the night sighed the thick, sickly perfume came into the room, and I think it was because I could not bear the cloying scent any longer that I escaped from him. But Stephen followed me, and when we were in the road, he said: you have come to me to-night and it is my duty to protect you from yourself. I will not warn your father of your project, but to-night you must return home, for you are acting on impulse; if to-morrow night you wish to leave everything you can do so, but not to-night; to-night I am responsible for you. My strength was gone and I could not dash away from him.
Father was still praying when I entered the house, but it didn’t matter; I was exhausted. But the next night? Héloïse asked. Next night Stephen came to see us; he came the night after and every night till he persuaded me to become a nun, and here I am, a Benedictine nun with a baby. But the father of your baby, Héloïse asked, do you see him? Do not ask me to tell you my secret: it is the only thing that remains to me, the only thing really my own — that and baby. And then, misinterpreting the change that came into Héloïse’s face, she said: but you’re not angry? You’ll allow me to keep my secret? Did you come to the library to tell me your story? Héloïse asked. I hadn’t thought of telling my story to anybody, Paula answered; I came to talk about my baby, but it seems to me that I have talked only of myself. If you care to see my little girl, the Prioress will give you leave to come with me to Argenteuil. Yes; there was something else I had to say to you. Why don’t you send for your baby? Ask the Prioress’s leave. The convent would be less dreary with a little fellow running about. Mine is but a nun’s sin, and she can’t come hither, though I begged and prayed the Prioress, if it was only once a week or once a month. But she wouldn’t hear of it, my baby is a scandal, so it would seem. But why? for a baby is such a natural thing. We have talked of all this already, and I have kept you from your book. Now I must run away.
The door closed softly, and Héloïse sat thinking of Paula, who seemed to her like a flower long shut in a book which still retains some of its colour and perfume; and then her thoughts turned to Astrolabe, a child of three, for whom she would have to wait three or four years, for so young a child could not bear the long journey. Not till he was six would it be safe to send for him. For three long years she would have to wait, and all that time perhaps without news of Abélard. For none came to the convent, and the rare letters that reached her contained no mention of him, and she asked herself wildly if Denise thought that because she was a nun she ceased to be a wife and a mother. Six months passed without a letter and then a letter came, bringing news of Astrolabe, she said, and on turning the page her eyes caught sight of her child’s name, brightening her face, but only for a moment for the news that the letter brought her was that the child was ailing and that they had sent him to the sea with Madelon, to her own country. Where French is not spoken, Héloïse said; so the child that Madelon will bring me sooner or later will come to me without French or Latin. On reading a little further she learnt that the child had recovered his health, which was good news; and she took heart, for a child forgets a language as easily as he learns it, and nearly persuaded herself that she did not care to have him back till he had learnt French, for a child with only Breton on his lips would not be her child; nor would he be Abélard’s, who knew no word of that language. It would be hard to be without him for three years, and harder still to be without news of Abélard. It seemed to her that she could bear with the absence of one but not of both, and she often asked herself if she were given her choice which she would choose. Abélard, her heart cried, comes first, but she loved her baby boy, who was not only hers but Abélard’s; and when he returned to her she would begin to teach him French and Latin. But out of what book would she teach him French? Out of his father’s songs? But there is very little of the language in a song, and Astrolabe would ask her to tell him stories, saying: Madelon used to tell me beautiful stories of giants and wizards, and of Peronnik, the village fool, who was not such a fool as he seemed to be, for he overcame the enchantress in her castle and released all the prisoners she kept under lock and key in the castle dungeons. The story had almost passed out of her mind, but she might recall it.... Already it was coming back to her, and the task of writing it would be a pleasant one if she could only remember how Peronnik met the enchantress. But all she could think of was that she used to ride by on a black horse followed by a foal, and not being able to fashion a story out of this material, she bethought herself of a white knight riding through a village perishing for want of rain from a drought brought about by the golden bowl and diamond spear having fallen into the power of the enchantress. The enchantress might send one of the knights she had enslaved to waylay the knight in quest of the Grail — a cripple, Héloïse said to herself, and her arm was stretched across the table for a pen. With rhymes and notes to help it the common language was delightful but without them French seemed so strange, so incongruous in prose, that she would not have dared to continue the story in it if it had not been that she must have something in French out of which Astrolabe could learn his native language. As Astrolabe did not speak French he might as well begin his lessons in French as in Latin. But it is not easy to write in a language that one has never seen written. And there were other difficulties; the Latin construction was always getting in her way, and very often she lacked courage to write a sentence as she would speak it. Living speech seemed to her so barbarous that perforce she must juggle with it; it was not amenable to grammatical forms. But it is meant only for a child, she said.
After writing a few pages she began to enjoy the prattle, for it is no more, she said, excusing herself to herself. My boy shall read of Æneas in Latin, and of Peronnik the Fool in French, in the language that the Breton lad learnt in the French village, for Peronnik was a Breton. Or
was it that Peronnik was a backward child who learnt no language from his mother, of whom he remembered nothing, and knew not whence he came?
CHAP. XXXIV.
THE WET SUMMER of 1127 was followed by an autumn of sunny airiness, blue skies, with white clouds unfolding, the afternoons passing into glowing evenings and the evenings into soft, still nights, the like of which Cherriez, the convent gardener, couldn’t discover in his memories. And the decline of the year was as lovely on earth as in the skies, the slender leaves of the willows falling unobtrusively through the branches into the current, the crumpled leaves of the crisped orchard, reft of its fruit a month ago, falling now and then with a little crinkly sound, the robin singing the dirge of the year from the hedge’s highest spray all the long day through, till the rooks came wheeling home to the dishevelled elms showing last year’s nests. And while watching the starlings in the fields over which the swallows had circled during the wet days gone by, Héloïse told the sisters who walked beside her of the bird she had freed from lice in the rue des Chantres, at which they all wondered, till the starlings went away with a whirr of wings, unable to bear any longer the gaze of human eyes. The nuns resumed their walk in thoughts of the mysterious summer-time, come, it seemed to them, from beyond the skies, a miracle vouchsafed by God, since Cherriez could not explain it. Even the chill that a few evenings later caused them to draw their habits about them as they came up from the river did not shrink their belief that they might escape the winter, nor did the cold night and the colder morning, that brought the nuns forth from their cells shivering in the dark to pray, for the Angelus bell was ringing. After the prayer, Sister Agatha said: fog and frost, what a change from yesterday; and when the nuns looked out of their doorways the ghostly landscape turned their thoughts eastward, and it was in every mind that Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the Saracen. Somebody avouched it. But a few hours later their belief in the Infidel’s triumph was dispelled by the top branches of the elms showing above the mist, glowing in the light of a pallid, rose-coloured sun, full of promise of a fine day. And certain, then, that the Sepulchre was still safe in Christian hands, the nuns set themselves to the enjoyment of the sunshine, which lasted for many days more, for nearly two weeks, till a storm began at midnight, clattering so loudly among the roofs that the nuns quaked in their beds thinking perhaps that God was preparing the world’s end. The leaves rustling in the panes seemed to them angels bidding them awake for judgment, and when Agatha opened the door she bade the sisters behold a heap of dried leaves in the porch. Leaves must fall, said Sister Tetta, but the storm cannot have failed to bring down some trees. Even if we do lose a tree or two, Sister Angela answered, we shall have more firewood, for after so much fine weather the winter is sure to be severe. Do not say that, cried Sister Tetta, lest you bring to pass what you fear; none suffers from cold as I do. Cherriez will be able to tell us, Sister Angela answered, if a fine autumn precedes a cold winter. The bell for Mass began to ring, and Sext and None seemed longer that morning than they had ever seemed before. But all things end, the nuns said, as they escaped from chapel and ran for their cloaks, eager to enquire out the havoc the storm had wrought.
