Sister Teresa — Chapter 2

London: T. Fisher Unwin, 8 July 1901, pages 8-16, 3,233 words

II

Merat had come downstairs to tell her mistress that a pair of stockings was missing. But Evelyn did not answer her, and she hoped the footman would not bring the lamp yet.

‘You must have left them at your father’s. If you will write to-night...’

‘No, Merat, I did not leave them at my father’s. I left them at the convent.’

She wished her maid to know that her relations with Sir Owen would be different from henceforth, and it seemed to her that a mention of the convent would be sufficient for the moment. Better the truth than ugly rumours that Owen had left her for another woman, or that she had left him for another man. She wished Merat would leave her, but Merat was much interested in her mistress’s visit to the convent; and Evelyn was surprised to find that her maid’s ideas regarding a vocation were more simple and explicit than her own. ‘There are those,' she said, ‘who slip away from life when they are very young, before life has fairly caught them, and those who have had a disappointment, and feel there is nothing else for them.’

'But you, miss, you could never live their life; you are too old, or not old enough.’

And when Merat left her, Evelyn considered how she had discovered two instincts in herself, an inveterate sensuality and a sincere aspiration for a spiritual life. Which would survive? As she sat over the fire pondering, there came to her what seemed like a third revelation — that the sexual trouble was but the surface of her nature, that beyond it there was a deeper nature whose depths were yet unsounded. But if she had fallen she would have had to confess, and how could she go to Monsignor and tell him that on the very day she came back from the convent she had nearly yielded herself to Owen. He would lose all faith, all interest in her, and his interest in her meant a great deal to her. She had escaped, how she did not know, by accident seemingly. On another occasion she might not be so lucky, and she would go through agonies of conscience and eventually confess her sins, for any long returning to her old life was out of the question. So perhaps she had better write to Owen, saying he must not come to see her. But of what use, since she would be sure to meet him at Lady Ascott’s? But Lady Ascott would disappear from her life, and her friends too. Yet she had once looked on these people as her life, and on Lady Ascott as a dear and intimate friend. Now she seemed far away, and her people seemed far away, a sort of distant coast-line, and there were others besides Lady Ascott and they all seemed to be receding. There was no reason why she should not see them, nothing forbade her; but she would not know what to say to them now. There were other friends — men. She feared that men still interested her as much as ever; and the fact that she was going to deny herself did not seem to make any difference. Besides Owen and Ulick there were many men whom she liked, whom she had often looked at as possible lovers, men who sent her flowers and books and music, and whom she met by appointment in picture-galleries, men whom she wrote to occasionally, for beyond the single net in which we are caught there is a vaster reticulation. If all these men were to be put away she would receive no more letters — women’s letters are from men, as men’s letters are from women. For the human animal finds in the opposite sex the greater part of his and her mental life. She had heard Owen say that the arts rose out of sex; that when man ceased to capture woman he cut a reed and blew a tune to win her, and that it was not until he had won her that he began to take an interest in the tune for its own sake.

Her own desire of art had been inseparably linked to her desire to please men. Three days ago she had looked down from the organ loft to see if there were any men among the congregation, knowing she would not sing so well if she were only singing to women.

'But how am I to fill the days?' she thought as she rose from her chair, 'without lovers, without an occupation. Three parts of my life are gone; nothing remains but religion.’

Hitherto her life had been lived according to rule, and she had enjoyed her life most when the rule that her art had imposed upon her had been severe. Her happiest hours had been those she had spent in Madame Savelli’s class-rooms. Then her days had been divided out, and there had been few infractions of the rule. The little interruptions Owen had pleaded for were not frequent, nor did they last long. His interest in her voice had always been so dominant an interest that he had subordinated his pleasures to her voice. It was she who had wished to play truant and had said, —

'But you go away to your shooting and your hunting, to your London friends. I am always a prisoner, and Olive is a strict warder.’

During the five years in which she had practised her art, she had never escaped from the discipline of art; her life had been a routine.

‘Religion always seems to fling me into a waste of idleness,' she said aloud, and she remembered that her first qualms of conscience had led her to the part of Fidelio; she did not think she would have learnt the part of Isolde if she not met Ulick. Her love of him was her last artistic inspiration; the thought amused her for a moment, and she walked across the room thinking of the weariness of freedom. As she took down a book, she paused to remember how her first notes were held in view almost from early morning. How, after mid-day, every hour was a preparation for the essential hours. How on her singing days she avoided all that might distract her thoughts from her part. She opened no letters, and spoke very little; and after having dined lightly she read her music.

On the days she was not singing her accompanist came at ten o’clock, and she was with him for at least three hours; and after we have done three hours' work the rest of the day passes almost without our perceiving that it is passing. We have no need to think how we shall spend it; it just spends itself. It sheds itself like seed.

On her off days Owen was ready with some project, a visit to a picture-gallery, a ride in the country; and if Owen were not with her, Olive was waiting to take her shopping. The choice of her clothes, and the making of them, used to take a great deal of her time; henceforth it would take very little of it. She thought of Olive, of Olive with whom she had lived for six years, and who was no more than an appetite for facile amusement. Owen’s materialism was deep, but not so deep as Olive’s; in her there was no relaxation, no sighing of the flesh after the spirit when the flesh is weary; she was the same through and through like a ball of lard. Evelyn remembered that she would have to write and tell her that she had retired from the stage. Olive would not take her dismissal easily, and feeling she could not argue with her, Evelyn turned in her chair and sat looking into the fire. Suddenly it occurred to her that it was Owen who should break the news to Olive, and she wrote asking him to explain that she had left the stage. It was not necessary to say any more; she thought perhaps it would be as well to add that he must try to dissuade Olive from sending any information to the papers.

The only one of her former friends whose acquaintance she cared to continue was Louise. Louise’s lovers did not trouble her; Louise must look after her own soul. But what would they talk about? Hitherto their art had always been a source of intimate interest to them.... She had given up singing, so what would they talk about? She might go through Louise’s parts with her. But she knew she would not care to do that, nor could they talk about singing. She did not want to hear of music, especially of the music with which she had been associated. So all her friends must go — composers and conductors, tenors and basses, all her fellow artistes at whose rooms she liked to make appointments. All the adventure of rehearsals would henceforth be unknown to her, and all those whom she used to meet at rehearsals, various dilettante Bohemians and critics, all would disappear from her life.

She sometimes thought of sending away her piano, for there is something sad in the sight of a person or even of a thing that has absorbed much of our lives, and the sight of her piano and the music scores — the scores which she knew so well, and which she would never open again — caused her to sigh, to yearn, to look back, and this revelation of her life had been brought about by an idea. If Owen were to come to her with proof that there was no future state it would be just the same! She paused like one in front of a great discovery. We have only to change our ideas to change our friends. Our friends are only a more or less imperfect embodiment of our ideas.

And as she stood by the window watching the decaying foliage in the Park, she realised that the problem of her life was the discovery of an occupation. She had just come from a lunch at Owen Asher’s. She had met him a few evenings ago as she came out of a concert-room, whither she had been driven by terror of her lonely drawing-room, rather than by a desire of the music. Owen had spoken to her in the vestibule and she could see that he would always love her, whether she were well or ill, glad or sad, failing or successful. She had perceived this as the crowd jostled past her, and she was touched by it, and had promised to lunch with him. But fearing she would not lunch with him alone, he had mentioned a number of names. She would sooner have lunched with him alone, but she did not dare to say so, and he had invited the usual people, women whom she had once considered her intimate friends, and men with whom she had flirted. She remembered that she had once thought them all clever, and now they seemed to her like the toys the showman winds and allows to run a little way along the pavement before he picks them up. The vivid unreality of these people she attributed to the fact that they lived in the mere surface of life; in the animal sensation rather than in the moral idea; and she reflected that she had not only not been happy, but had never seemed to get even into touch with existence until she

had decided that there was a right and a wrong way.

But these women had asked her to dine with them; they had promised to write, and she would have to invent pretexts, and she had no aptitude for the composition of such letters. If she accepted their invitations she would have to talk to them on subjects which did not interest her.

If she were to tell them her ideas — she shrugged her shoulders and walked away from the window. This lunch seemed to have flung her back again. Owen had asked if he might come to see her. He had told her he was going abroad in order that he might forget her, and had asked if he might come again to say good-bye. She hated scenes of parting, but others did not think as she did, and she had given her consent to a last visit. It would have been difficult and disagreeable for her to have refused, but she would have refused if she had not felt singularly sure of herself. Her sex seemed to have fallen from her. For many days she did not seem to know that she was a woman, and feeling sure this visit would prove wearisome she tried to look upon it in the light of a mortification. But from such moods there is always a reaction, and the visit had been an agreeable one. He won her affection in spite of herself. Never had he seemed less hard, less material, and at the end of the week he had won his way into most of his old intimacy. They had been for a walk in the Park and had been to see some pictures, and during the first week of this renewal of their intimacy he neither said nor did anything to which she could raise any objection until one day, after saying he was waiting for a telegram from the yacht, he kissed her on the forehead. He might never see her again, he said, and she thought that it did not matter much as he was leaving. But no telegram came from Marseilles, and his stay in London was indefinitely prolonged. Soon after he produced a text in support of his contention that sin did not begin in a kiss, and he pleaded to be allowed to kiss her on the forehead and on the cheek. She begged him not to, but it is impossible to resist always, and he assured her that such kisses would not trouble her conscience. The opinion of the Fathers on the danger of kisses was debated; he struggled with her and got the better of her in the struggle and the argument. But his success did not prevail. For on the following day he saw, when he came into the room, that there would be but little pleasure in this visit, and regretted his indiscretions.

'You don’t mean to say that you are so absurd as to have scruples of conscience about that kiss?’

‘Yes, I think I have. You see, it is all true to me, and things can’t be at once absurd and true.’

'It is terrible that you should be like this. But let us change the subject. What about that song of mine?’

She looked in the direction of the clock before beginning to sing, and he guessed something liturgical — Benediction? and his hand dropped on her shoulder.

'Are you offended?’

‘Not exactly, but I have often told you I do not approve of kisses unless — ’

‘Unless what?’

'Unless you are going to make love to me, and as that can never be again — ’

‘You don’t see that an affectionate regard may be — ’

'I must send you away now.’

'When may I see you again?’

'I’ll write.’

He had kissed her, and she knew how kisses ended, at least in her case, and she was determined to dally with temptation no longer. She had been walking about nearly all last night, and she had convinced herself that as she was determined not to go back to her old life, the only thing to do was to do as Monsignor had told her, and to refrain from seeing either Owen or Ulick again. To do this she must put her old life completely aside. She must sell her house in Park Lane and get another which would be more in keeping with her ideas. Above all, she must get some work to do; she could not live without occupation. On all these points no one was so competent to advise her as Monsignor.

‘You see, Monsignor, one cannot think of one’s soul all day. There is Mass in the morning, and Benediction in the afternoon, and nothing else — neither work nor pleasure.’

He deliberated, and she waited, eager to hear what advice he would give.

‘When I advised you to leave the stage, I did not mean you were to abandon art,’ and he spoke of Handel and Bach, as she expected he would.

‘Well, Monsignor,perhaps you won’t understand me at all, and will think me very wilful; but if I am not to sing the music I made a success in, I don’t want to sing at all. I can’t do things by halves. I am either on the stage or — ’

‘In a convent,' he added, smiling, and Evelyn could not help smiling, for she recognised herself in the antithesis; and it was not until she had got up to go that she remembered she had forgotten to ask him to recommend her a solicitor who would negotiate the sale of her house for her, and invest her capital at reasonable interest.

'This is a matter on which I cannot speak off-hand, and I must send you away now. But I will write to you on the subject, probably to-morrow. Come to see me on Friday.’

To see Monsignor, to hear him, even to think of him, was a help to her, and in the course of the interview she decided she would write that night to Owen, telling him he must not come to see her again. She composed her letter as she went along the street, and wrote it the moment she got home. She expected he would send his valet in the course of the morning with a letter, but the only letter that came was one from Monsignor, recommending a solicitor to her, and for three or four days she was busy making arrangements for the sale of her furniture and her pictures, and looking out for a small flat which she could furnish in a simple way.

‘You are very lucky,' Monsignor said. ‘If Mr Enderwick says you will have four hundred a year you can rely on it, and you will be able to live comfortably and do not a little good. I have been thinking of what you said to me about the need of occupation. I quite agree with you that you cannot live in idleness.’

Returning to the question of concert singing, he begged her to consider the money she could earn, and the good use she could put it to. There were so many deserving cases, really sad cases, which he could bring to her notice; and once we are brought into touch with the poor it is extraordinary the sympathy they discover in our hearts.

'I’m afraid, Monsignor, you are mistaken in me. I do not think I could be of much use in philanthropic work.’

‘But, my dear child, you have not tried.'

‘You will think me very wicked, Monsignor, but I fear I do not even wish to try — that is not the direction in which my sympathy takes me.’