Edna sat very still under the trees; she clasped the black book in her fingers as though it were her missal. She takes the name of Sister Angela. Snip! Snip! All her lovely hair is cut off. Will she be allowed to send one curl to Jimmy? It is contrived somehow. And in a blue gown with a white head-band Sister Angela goes from the convent to the chapel, from the chapel to the convent with something unearthly in her look, in her sorrowful eyes, and in the gentle smile with which they greet the little children who run to her. A saint! She hears it whispered as she paces the chill, wax-smelling corridors. A saint! And visitors to the chapel are told of the nun whose voice is heard above the other voices, of her youth, her beauty, of her tragic, tragic love. “There is a man in this town whose life is ruined….”
A big bee, a golden furry fellow, crept into a freesia, and the delicate flower, leaned over, swung, shook; and when the bee flew away it fluttered still as though it were laughing. Happy, careless flower!
Sister Angela looked at it and said, “Now it is winter.” One night, lying in her icy cell, she hears a cry. Some stray animal is out there in the garden, a kitten or a lamb or — well, whatever little animal might be there. Up rises the sleepless nun. All in white, shivering but fearless, she goes and brings it in. But next morning, when the bell rings for matins, she is found tossing in high fever — in delirium — and she never recovers. In three days all is over. The service has been said in the chapel and she is buried in the corner of the cemetery reserved for the nuns, where there are plain little crosses of wood. Rest in Peace, Sister Angela….
Now it is evening. Two old people leaning on each other come slowly to the grave and kneel down sobbing, “Our daughter! Our only daughter!” Now there comes another. He is all in black; he comes slowly. But when he is there and lifts his black hat, Edna sees to her horror his hair is snow-white. Jimmy! Too late, too late! The tears are running down his face; he is crying now. Too late, too late! The wind shakes the leafless trees in the churchyard. He gives one awful bitter cry.
Edna’s black book fell with a thud to the garden path. She jumped up, her heart beating. My darling! No, it’s not too late. It’s all been a mistake, a terrible dream. Oh, that white hair! How could she have done it? She has not done it. Oh, heavens! Oh, what happiness! She is free, young, and nobody knows her secret. Everything is still possible for her and Jimmy. The house they have planned may still be built, the little solemn boy with his hands behind his back watching them plant the standard roses may still be born. His baby sister … But when Edna got as far as his baby sister, she stretched out her arms as though the little love came flying through the air to her, and gazing at the garden, at the white sprays on the tree, at those darling pigeons blue against the blue, and the Convent with its narrow windows, she realised that now at last for the first time in her life — she had never imagined any feeling like it before — she knew what it was to be in love, but — in — love!
About Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield, short-story writer and poet, was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in 1888 in Wellington. At 19, she left for the UK and became a significant Modernist writer, mixing with fellow writers such as Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot and DH Lawrence. She wrote five collections of short stories, the final one being published posthumously by her husband, the writer and critic John Middleton Murry, along with a volume of her poems and another of her critical writings. Subsequently there have been collections of her letters and journals. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 34 at Fontainebleau. Although New Zealand settings do feature in her works, she looked to European movements in writing and the arts for inspiration, and also wrote stories with a European setting.
Virginia Woolf famously admitted that Mansfield was the only writer she was jealous of, and it is believed that conversations with Mansfield prompted Woolf to write Mrs Dalloway. Many writers in the 1930s, such as Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley, consciously adopted Mansfield’s pioneering styles, and, along with DH Lawrence, used her character (she was called ‘a dangerous woman’) in their fiction. This parallel influence of her life as well as her literary voice has continued in such works as CK Stead’s novel Mansfield. The clarity and vividness of her pared-back writing lend it a timeless quality that continues to weave its magic with new readers.
Roger Robinson writes that it took 50 years for ‘New Zealand imaginative writing to begin to engage with this complex presence in the country’s cultural history’ (The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature). Since then, Murry’s tireless efforts to establish Mansfield’s reputation have been built upon by others, with much scholarly attention, and leading to the five-volume Letters, edited by Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, and Anthony Alpers’ seminal biography. In 1959 the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Awards were established, and in 1970 the Mansfield Memorial Fellowship was created.
About Vincent O’Sullivan
Vincent O’Sullivan is an editor, poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, essayist, academic and critic and has served as literary editor to the New Zealand Listener. Among other residencies and fellowships, O’Sullivan has held the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship in Menton, France, and has won numerous literary prizes throughout his distinguished career, including several Montana Book Awards. In 2000, he was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. He is a graduate of the University of Auckland and Oxford University, and has lectured at Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Waikato. In 1997, he became Director of Victoria University’s Stout Research Centre, and is now Emeritus Professor of English. In 2004 he was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship, and in 2006 he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement.
Known for his powerful intellect, and the broad range of his writing, O’Sullivan has also earned international acclaim as the joint editor, with Margaret Scott, of the five-volume Letters of Katherine Mansfield.
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