Sister Teresa — Chapter 27

London: T. Fisher Unwin, 8 July 1901, pages 150-159, 3,550 words

XXVII

She was writing in the library, and Veronica had just opened the door, and though her back was turned to the door she seemed to know it was Veronica. She had seen very little of her lately, and at one time Evelyn, Veronica and Sister Mary John had formed a little group. But since Evelyn had become attached to Sister Mary John, Veronica had withdrawn herself from their friendship, and she now treated them to little disdainful airs, and she did not at once answer Evelyn, who, with the prettiest smile, had asked her whom she had come in search of, and there was an accent of concentrated dislike in her voice when she said she was looking for Sister Mary John.

'I heard her trampling about the passage just now; she is on her way here, no doubt, and won’t keep you waiting long.’

Evelyn understood the word 'trampling'as an allusion to the hobnails which Sister Mary John wore in the garden. Veronica had lately been indulging in bitter remarks, but it was not the rudeness of the present remark that startled Evelyn, but Veronica’s manner. She did not give Evelyn time to answer her, but left the room instantly, and Evelyn sat nibbling the end of her pen, thinking of what had happened. The little jealousy with which she had credited Veronica did not seem sufficient to account for so much dislike, and she was forced towards the conclusion that Veronica’s dislike of Sister Mary John went deeper than she had suspected. She seemed to foresee some unpleasantness, and she sat thinking till the door opened; she hoped it was Veronica, but it was Sister Mary John.

'I can’t think what is the matter with Veronica,'she said. 'I passed her in the passage just now, and when I asked her if she had seen you, she said she was really too busy to speak to me, and a moment after she stopped for quite a long while to play with the black kitten which was catching flies in the window.’

Evelyn stood looking at the nun, thinking of Veronica’s remarks regarding the hobnails.

'Do you know what it means? Has she ever been rude to you?’

'No, I don’t think she has.’

But, in spite of herself, she began awkwardly and hesitatingly to tell of the little passage-of-arms between herself and Veronica. And while laughing at Veronica’s jealousy, she stopped suddenly to ask Sister Mary John of what she was thinking.

'She is quite right; it is we who are in the wrong. We have been disobeying the rule this long while.’

Evelyn could not find words to answer her, and an ominous silence was broken by the smiling, ruddy-cheeked porteress.        . .

'Sister Teresa, Monsignor has come, and is waiting to see you in the parlour.’

The colour rose to her cheeks, and so excited was she at the thought of seeing Monsignor that she forgot Veronica’s rudeness, and very nearly forgot the rupture her jealousy might cause in a friendship which had been the principal interest in her life for the last three months; and asking the Sister if she were tidy, she hurried away.

As the door closed Sister Mary John looked round the library, and a little sadness appeared in her face, and many things became clear to her which, until now, she had only half understood. It was Monsignor who had converted Evelyn — Evelyn was therefore attached to him in a special way; but she saw that part of Evelyn’s exultation sprang from her instinctive interest in men.

‘A man always comes before everyone else, whether she is on the stage or in a convent. So she goes flying to him, her heart in both hands, eager to confide and to trust.’

Sister Mary John walked across the library, cruelly perplexed, for it had suddenly been revealed to her that to bring this friendship to an end she must leave the convent. She must go straight to the Prioress and tell her her life was being absorbed in Evelyn, and beg her to transfer

her to the Mother House in France.

Evelyn was now talking to Monsignor in the parlour, and the nun could see him listening, encouraging her to reveal herself by an attentive silence. The Prioress had sent for him, so that he might advise her regarding Evelyn. When the interview was over the Prioress would go to the parlour to hear Monsignor’s opinion. So the opportuneness of the moment for her to confide her difficulty to the Prioress was evident to Sister Mary John. The very words she should say rose up in her mind, yet she hesitated, and she stopped in the middle of the room to ask herself why she hesitated. Questions would be intolerable and

shameful; but the Prioress would understand, and there would be few questions.

As she turned from the door a voice of extraordinary sweetness began to whisper in her, and she heard that for the sake of retaining Evelyn for a few short years she would lose her through eternity. Were it not better to see her in heaven? And then a strange confusion of thought happened in her. She was tempted by the thought that even in

heaven they would be separated by their love of God, and she remembered with horror that it was since love of Evelyn had begun in her that that passionate love of Christ, which was her vocation, and without which she could not live in a convent, had declined. She must choose between Christ and Evelyn. Well, had not Evelyn chosen Monsignor before her? She was conscious of an exceeding wickedness; her thoughts faded, and she became, as it were, vague pain and irresolution.

But suddenly a great strength was vouchsafed to her, and she went to the Prioress’s room.

It was always easy to talk to the Prioress. In their confessions the nuns spoke as if they were thinking aloud, and Sister Mary John explained how this friendship had come to be a disintegrating influence, how her spiritual character had fallen away since Evelyn had become to her a sensible pleasure. She had known this a long while, but had stifled the voice of her conscience. Veronica’s jealousy had brought her, as it were, to bay, and in a flash she had realised how deeply she was involved in the entanglement of her senses. Speaking quickly, she said that Evelyn had absorbed her life, that she lived immersed in her as she should live immersed in God.

'My dear child, you exaggerate unconsciously, for enough power remains in you to break silence and to put the matter into my hands.’

'I could do nothing else; I had to come to tell you, Mother. The truth is I am losing my vocation, and to regain it I must leave. Dear Mother, I have come to ask you to transfer me to our house in France.’

A shadow flitted across the Prioress’s face, and the nun anticipated a refusal.

‘I am thinking, my dear child, of what is best to be done.'And while the Prioress thought of the best way out of the dilemma, the nun regretted the trouble she was giving this old woman. There was a swish of wind and rain on the window, and the trees waved disconsolately in the wet air, and their waving carried her thoughts out to sea, where there were sails and rigging, and she saw herself on her way to France. France was to be the end of her life, and she was thinking of the end of her days in the Mother House at Lyons, where she knew no one, when the Prioress said, ‘Mrs Cater is going to France next month. You can travel with her.’

'So a month must pass. I had thought of leaving to-day or to-morrow, but I see that that is impossible. A month — how shall I endure it?’

‘No one will know,'the Prioress answered, with a little vehemence; ‘it is a secret between us, and I forbid you to tell anyone the reason of your leaving.’

'May I not tell Teresa?’

'Teresa will be professed in the next few weeks, I hope, perhaps next week; she has reached a critical moment of her life, and her mind must not be disturbed. The raising of such a question at such a moment might be fatal to her vocation.’

The Prioress rose from her chair, and following Sister Mary John to the door, impressed upon her again that it was essential that no one should ever know why she had left the convent.

‘You may tell Teresa before you leave; but she must hear nothing of it till the moment of your leaving. I give you permission merely to say good-bye to her on the day you leave, and in the interval you will see as little of each other as possible.’

But when Sister Mary John said that Sister Elizabeth could accompany Evelyn as well as she could, the Prioress interrupted her. ‘You must always accompany her when she sings at Benediction. You must do nothing to let her suspect that you are leaving the convent on her account.’

And at that moment the Prioress remembered that Evelyn was talking with Monsignor.

'She thinks him a Bossuet,'the Prioress said to herself, as she returned to her chair; 'they have corresponded for months on literary questions.'She hoped Evelyn would not be effusive in her admiration, and so convey a false impression of herself, and then a little smile hovered round the corners of her mouth, a sign of the thought that had passed. She began to arrange her papers, and as she did so Evelyn asked the prelate to tell her about Rome.

The last time she had seen him was in the early summer, soon after her clothing, and she had hardly been able to speak to him. She had not recovered from the shock of her father’s death; and he recalled all the circumstances of it so vividly, the very moment when he had led her from the room.

Her father’s death was almost as much before her now as then, but differently. Her grief had gone, as it were, out of flesh, and was reflected now merely in her imagination. It looked at her out of the sky like a star, the sign whereby the wayfarer directs his steps. The old poignant grief which the sight of Monsignor had reawakened in her only endured for a moment; she had recovered herself, and was asking him to tell her about Rome and its ecclesiastics. She thought of them because of her father’s relations with them; she talked gaily and eagerly; and yet she had, perhaps, never felt so clearly, nor had the feeling ever been so conclusive, that the personal life was dead in her, that she now lived for the nuns, in order to help them out of their difficulties; and that when that was done her mission would be accomplished.

All her surface characteristics remained, but in her deeper self had been changed. It seemed to her that she had been lifted out of animal life, to some extent, and had been carried forward, if not into, at least towards the life of the soul. She felt this very clearly now, and yet she wished to hear of the little externalities of religion to which pious women devote so much time.

She reminded him of things which he had almost forgotten, and he was surprised that she wished to hear the end of the disputation in which he had been engaged with a certain cardinal, who had taken a reactionary view regarding the value of the Biblical account of the Creation. She reminded him of the arguments he had used, but he had forgotten them, and she recalled his very words. He had said that the cardinal had committed the Church as far as he could commit the Church to certain opinions which might afterwards have to be reconsidered. Monsignor had said that religion had nothing to fear from science. Science is exclusively concerned with man’s physical surroundings; religion is, with equal exclusiveness, concerned with the

development of his moral consciousness. She said that this way of putting the question had struck her at the time; and his face lighted up, and he expressed surprise at her memory of his opponents and

the details of the disputation.

'Ah, you don’t know what it is to be shut up for more than a year with a lot of women in a convent.’

'But I came here to talk to you about your vocation, to discover whether you are called to separate yourself from all worldly interests.’

‘I have made up my mind to be a nun, but now you are here I want to talk about Rome and of its people.’

She had kept all his letters, and knowing his bent for theological discussion she had allowed certain little heresies to creep into her letters, in order that he might disprove them to her admiration. He had replied at length, and his letters were the letters of a man of liberal intelligence, pragmatical and astute. But these letters coming into the conventual monotony had seemed like great manifestations of a great central mind, and she insisted that the book he was writing would give new impetus to Catholic life. She exhorted him to take the lead, to assert himself, for without him Catholic ideas could make no

further progress in England. She deplored that he had not been made a cardinal and with an enthusiasm that impressed him.

Taking advantage of a pause in the conversation he mentioned that the writing of the last portion of his book had been delayed, but he hoped to find time to finish it this winter. Then he asked her, somewhat abruptly, if certain scruples regarding the Holy Communion had passed. She answered that they had passed, and the conversation came to an awkward pause.

‘You have come here,’ she said, 'to talk to me about myself, whereas I want to talk to you about you; it will interest me so much more. You want to find out if I have a vocation, but the more I tell you about myself the less you will believe in my vocation.’

The prelate persisted, and after some hesitation she said,—

‘My duty was to go to Rome with my father, but I could not bring myself to accept that duty, so great was the temptation to separate myself from the world. For this wrongdoing I was punished; my father died, perhaps through my fault. His death however wrought a great change in me, a change which had been preparing a long while back. I felt clearly, what I had always felt indistinctly, that there is no value in human life at all except in so much as it enables us to develop our spiritual life. You remember that I wrote to you about a man not being given a soul, but a germ which might become a soul if he cultivated it. It now seems to me that that belief in the mortality and the immortality of the soul is what is most natural and inherent in me. It is the original seed of my nature, but it was buried very deep, and it took a long time to grow out of the ground. Now I have told you all I know of myself, Monsignor, all that I have learned in the long year of my novitiate. I have told you the whole truth so far as I have gone.’

‘And you have determined to take the veil? Tell me, you do not find this rule difficult and arduous?’

So long as we live with those whose ideas correspond with ours, the rest matters very little.’

'Remember that the step is extremely grave. Nothing could be more unfortunate than that you should take vows merely because you are friends with these nuns and wish to relieve them from their pecuniary embarrassments.’

‘You are very sceptical, Monsignor. What can I say to convince you? That I do not like the rule, that I find it very difficult? ’

She laughed and pressed him to admit that that was what he was minded to say. And he admitted if she had said she found the rule difficult he would have found it easier to believe in her vocation.

'Ah, my past life — you cannot forget it; you are like the others,' and she reminded him that the Prioress herself had not refused the world, like Veronica, but had renounced the world, like herself.

'Yet she is our Reverend Mother. Who knows, Monsignor — I succeeded on the stage, why should not I  succeed equally well in the convent? Promise me this, that if the nuns vote for me, you will profess me, and that if one day I should be Prioress you will write and advise me on doctrine and on the daily life of my convent.’

He could not refuse to promise what she had asked, and they laughed and stood looking at each other until a bell rang.

'Now I must go to the sacristy.’

As she went there she met Sister Mary John, and she said, —

'I think I have convinced Monsignor, and he has promised to profess me.’

'Then it is settled?’

'Yes; but why do you look so strange? Do you think the nuns will not vote for me?’

The nun stood looking at Evelyn, conscious that the entanglement was even more intricate than she had imagined. If Evelyn were not elected she might leave the convent and return to the stage. She was one who would travel a certain distance with admirable perseverance, surmounting every obstacle, until one, very likely a smaller obstacle than those she had already passed, opposed her, then without any very clear reason she might quickly return the way she had come. ‘Should Evelyn leave,' Sister Mary John thought, ‘I may stay. Nothing is decided, except that we are to be separated.' The nun asked herself if she were deceiving Evelyn by withholding her intention to leave the convent as soon after Evelyn’s profession as possible, and the question whether she should vote for her, or abstain from voting, or vote against her, perplexed her. What matter, she thought, since in any case we are to be separated.

'But what is the matter, Sister? Why do you stand looking at me like this?’

The nun could not answer, and Evelyn was about to hold out her arms to her, thinking she was going to fall. At that moment the Prioress called. The Prioress was on her way to the parlour, and divining the difficulty that had arisen, she sent Sister Mary John with a message to Mother Philippa. Her hand was on the door handle, and she entered the parlour as soon as the nun was out of sight.

‘I hope you are pleased, Monsignor, with the excellent condition of mind in which you have found our dear Sister Teresa? She told me she intended to ask you to profess her. I am sure it would be of great assistance to her if you would.’

'Sister Teresa and I have had a long talk, and I find her very earnest. I think I may say that I found her very much improved. She seems to have read and thought a great deal since I last saw her.’

‘Yes, Sister Teresa reads a great deal; theological questions present a great attraction to her mind.’

Monsignor did not answer, and he left the Reverend Mother to continue the conversation. She did this with alacrity, and they talked round the subject. At last there seemed to be nothing more to say, and the Prioress found herself obliged to ask him if he thought Sister Teresa had a vocation.

'I find her, as I have said, my dear Reverend Mother, extremely earnest; she has evidently thought a great deal on spiritual matters. But she has only just fulfilled the required time in the novitiate; are you sure she has acquired that solid piety so necessary for a religious life? She is very emotional. What I mean is, should you say that her attitude towards the life was normal?’

‘Sister Teresa,' the old nun replied, ‘will never be normal, but her genius has enabled her to assimilate our rule.’

In reply to further questions, he said that he had only seen Sister Teresa once in the last six months. Besides, no one was so capable of deciding on a nun’s vocation as the Prioress herself, and he begged her not to be influenced by anything that he had said.

‘When the question is decided, let me know, for I have promised Sister Teresa I will profess her myself.’

The Prioress looked at him sharply, and as she went to her room she thought of what might have happened if she had been refused election, and she thought of the grave responsibility which she and the other Mothers would incur by refusing to vote for Evelyn.