Sister Teresa — Chapter 4

London: T. Fisher Unwin, 8 July 1901, pages 21-27, 2,592 words

IV

Every morning she said, ‘Now I will get up and begin. The moment I begin I shall feel interested in what I am doing, whereas, if I sit by the fire doing nothing, I shall be mad with melancholy before dinner-time.' But she remained reading her paper, and when she rose to her feet she passed the piano and stood by the window, hoping for a visitor. At that moment anyone would have been welcome, and full of contempt for her weakness she yielded to the temptation which the artist spends his life in fighting — the temptation to go and talk to someone. She thought which of her friends she could go to see — Louise? She had been twice to see Louise that week, so she went to Dulwich, but her father was always busy, and feeling like a criminal, she stopped at St Joseph’s. She had nothing to confess but idleness, and vowing to mend her life, returned home. She returned home to sit all the morning recalling her vows, painfully conscious of the presence of her piano. At twelve o’clock she thought she was going to study, but she opened instead the score of 'Fidelio ’; when it had been looked through she opened 'Tannhauser,' and read Elizabeth’s music as a wanderer reads a well-known landscape — the hills and the village street he knew when he was a child. The wanderer passes on, and Evelyn closed the score with a sigh, and stood a long while looking into the street, thinking of nothing definitely — that some of these scores were beautiful, that some were ugly, that none meant anything to her. Her thoughts grew more explicit, and she felt that she could only do things from impulse and to please herself. But how would she make her agent understand that the thinking out a scheme whereby a poor widow might be sent to a convalescent home, and a situation found for her daughter, interested her far more than the singing of all these modern religiosities? Her agent would never understand, and to attempt any explanation would be waste of time. Still, she was glad he was coming, and so worn out was she with.loneliness that she asked him to stay to tea. When he left she looked round the room, wondering what she was going to do. Her dinner would not be ready for at least two hours, and it seemed that she could not stay in the house. Whom should she go to see — Louise? Louise disliked religion and she looked upon nuns as fools, and an argument with Louise troubled and perplexed Evelyn without changing her. So she went instead to see a philanthropic woman who lived in her neighbourhood. This woman was an excellent journalist and could have earned a considerable income if she had been able to put her own wants before the wants of others. Evelyn was always touched by her simple disinterestedness. She had had six callers that morning and had not been able to do any work. There was the woman from the workhouse who wanted a little tea and sugar; there was the woman who wanted a coal-ticket, and there was the woman who wanted to be advised — her husband had just been sent to gaol, and she had three children dependent upon her.

'And what did you do?’

'I had to think out the circumstances of each case, and see what could be done.’

‘But that is just what I cannot do. I can spare the money, I can give it, but I cannot think out a plan as you can to start them afresh.’

'It should be easy for one who can think out the gestures, the intonations of voice of Isolde and Elsa, to design a new career for Patrick Sullivan, who has been turned into the street with his five children because he cannot pay his rent.’

At that moment it seemed to her that she was good for nothing except the singing of operas and being Owen Asher’s mistress. She could not learn the oratorios, and she could not think out careers for the many Patrick Sullivans who would present themselves. If she could only find something to do which she could do, and which seemed to her to be worth doing. There was a root of some good in her. She had not known till now that this root was in her. She did not know how she could cultivate it; but if she could separate herself from her old circumstances she thought it might grow.

She went home to her lonely dinner, to a few letters to write, and to a book to read, and it seemed as if every day would be the same as the last. But next day, as she was turning over some old clothes to send to her philanthropic friend for her poor people, Ulick walked into the room. Merat had suddenly announced him, and she had not had time to thrust the bundle under the table. He was, however, too much absorbed in the pleasure of seeing her to notice it.

This was the first meeting for many months. It was their first meeting since she had written to him saying he was not to come and see her. She wished to hear what his life had been in France — what music he had written, and he wished to know what encouragement and help the Church had been to her, and what music she had been singing. For her father had only mentioned that he thought she was going to sing oratorios. But before they could talk of music, they would have to talk of themselves. She wanted to know if he still loved her, and she hoped he did not love her in a way that would prevent their being friends; and so intent was she to know this that she did not hear what he was saying about the colourlessness of English music and its want of background.

'It is very good of you to come to see me,' she said. ‘I’m very glad you’ve come. This appears very inconsequent, does it not, after the letter I wrote to you?’

She no longer felt as she did when she had last written to him, and he asked her if she wanted to return to the stage, and if she still held to Catholicism. She laughed at the question, so impossible did it seem to her that she could ever be anything else but a Catholic again. She could see that he was a little puzzled, and then she told him how much it had cost her in loneliness to send him away.

‘We must live according to our ideas,’ he said, ‘and it is by living for our ideas, and by suffering for our ideas, that we raise ourselves above our animal nature. I was not angry with you for your letter. It proved to me that there was a deeper nature in you than that of the mere singer.’

These were the first words of sympathy that had been spoken to her since she had altered her life, and she was deeply touched. She told him she feared she had little aptitude for parochial work. She was not of much use to the poor. It was the poor who were of use to her. It was the poor who helped her to live. He said he understood, and he told her how he had given up writing a certain kind of music, because a schism in a certain hermetic society to which he belonged had scattered his audience.

‘We all require,’ he said, ‘a group of people in whom we are in sympathy; we require our ideas about us,' and the little anecdote told her how well they understood each other.

He saw that she stood in need of a friend, and she felt that her life would be lonely without one influence. His spiritual ideas interested her, and through their ideas they became extraordinarily intimate. Each visit was looked forward to, and she often went to meet him in the Park by appointment, and walking by the Serpentine in the evening they spoke of the life of the body, which he believed to be an incident in the development of the eternal soul. His creed, that God is everywhere, especially in the twilight which gathered in the great trees, did not seem to conflict, though he said it did, with her belief in the sacrament, and he told her she had only to listen to the silence in her own heart to hear God. The spire of Kensington Church shot up above the trees, touching the very heart of the sunset; and he deprecated a feeble human ritual, exalting the ritual of Nature above it. He asked why man should seek God in scrolls rather than in the sky above, and the earth under our feet, and why a foreign land should be more sacred than the earth underfoot. He spoke more excitedly than he had spoken before. He said that her heart would grow grey and that God would desert her in the cloister, and when she asked him what he thought would become of her, if he thought she would become a nun, he said, —

'Only marriage can save you from the cloister. You have liked me, you seem to like me still; will you marry me?’

He waited a moment for her to answer, and then said, —

‘We must go away to-night, so that there may be no turning back. You must meet me at nine o’clock at the railway station — we will go to Dulwich.’

'To-night!’

As they walked back through the chill spring twilight he questioned her closely. She had been falling in love with him again, and was feeling lonely, miserable, and what was worse, she thought, very weak. She had to admit that her life was lonely — unbearably lonely he said it must be — and he admired her strength of character. That she had given up a great deal for her ideas did not impress him so much as the fact that she was living for her ideas. 'But what is the use,' she thought, 'in having suffered if I am to break down?' She could see that he sought to overrule her will with his. He said she must promise to go away with him that very night. That promise she could not give. If she were to marry him her life would be lived among artists and musicians. She would be brought back to all that she had renounced. No, she would not go away with him, she said, as she went upstairs to her room; and she crossed the room certain that she had arrived at an irrevocable decision. Some time passed, and as she went to get a book from the bookcase, she remembered, and with extraordinary intensity, that marriage would give her a hold upon life, and that was what she wanted. She could not continue to live her present life. She was certain of that. Her life seemed like a difficult equation; and after dinner, in spite of the meal, her consciousness increased until she seemed to be trembling in her very entrails.

‘In half an hour I shall have to put on my hat — in twenty minutes — in fifteen minutes — in ten minutes I shall have to go.’

The fire began to burn up, and, worn out with thinking, her eyes closed and her brain beat like a pulse. She started in her chair twice, and saw the fire burning very red. Then her eyes closed a third time, and she dreamed she was in a stable where there was a savage horse. So long as the groom remained the horse could not attack her; but suddenly the groom slipped out of the stable, and instantly the horse seized her by the sleeve and held her as a dog might, only with twenty times the power. The stable was divided by a wooden partition, in which there was a door, and it was her object to get behind the door and close it, but the horse held her firmly on the threshold. It seemed to her that the groom had left her to be done to death by the horse, to be trampled and torn by it, and she was unable to imagine any reason why he should have done this. But she saw it was cleverly planned, for her death could not be attributed to him; it would be said that she had foolishly strayed into the stable after he had left.

Her eyes opened, and she sat in a sort of obtuse consciousness, afraid to move, looking into the red glow; and she did not stir, though the fire was burning her legs, until Merat came to ask her if she had any letters for the post.

‘Well, Merat,' Evelyn said, ‘I wonder what will be the end of it all. Shall I end my days in a convent? What do you think, Merat, you say you know me so well?’

‘I think mademoiselle will go into the convent, but I do not think she will stay in it.’

'Another failure, that would be worst of all. If I once went into a convent, why should I leave it? What do you think would have power to draw me out of it?’

Leaning against the mantelpiece, Merat stood looking at her mistress as at an idol. These little chats were her recompense for the sacrifices she had made so that she might remain in Evelyn’s service.

'A cousin of mine, mademoiselle, is going to be professed to-morrow — would you like to see her take the veil?

Merat described her cousin’s people as well-to-do tradespeople in a midland town. Their business prospered, and there was a nice garden at the back of their house, full of lilac bushes, and on Sunday there was always supper, and the young men stayed to supper. The mother being French, the children spoke French and English. Julia played the piano and Emily sang. During Merat’s profuse descriptions Evelyn thought not of Julia and Emily, but of Sophie, who had decided to become a Carmelite nun. Why a Carmelite nun? In her own words, because if she were to become a nun, she would like a severe order. She would like her life to be as different from the life of the world as possible. WFy did she want this? No one knew — she did not know herself. But she wanted this thing above all other things. She had always been a pious girl, but not more pious than her pious brothers and sisters. She used to romp in the garden on Sunday evenings with the young men. One of the young men had asked her to marry him. She had hesitated at first and then she had refused. Her father had asked her to wait for two years, and she had waited. Young men had come to supper and she had walked with them in the garden, and her voice had been heard laughing. Her sisters had married, and everyone had expected that she would marry. But when the two years her father had asked for were over she had told him that she had not changed. She wished as much as ever to be a Carmelite nun.