Sister Teresa — Chapter 20

London: T. Fisher Unwin, 8 July 1901, pages 111-121, 3,984 words

XX

'You see, Evelyn,' the Prioress said, 'it is contrary to the whole spirit of the religious life to treat the lay Sisters as servants, and though I am sure you did not intend any unkindness, they have complained to me once or twice of the way you order them about.’

‘But, dear Mother, it seems to me that we’re all inferior to the lay Sisters. To slight them — ’

'I’m sure you did not do so intentionally.’

'I have said, “Do hurry up,” but I only meant that I was in a hurry. I do not think anything you could have said could have pained me more.’

Seeing that Evelyn was hurt, the Prioress said the Sisters had no doubt forgotten all about it by now. But Evelyn wanted to know which of the Sisters had complained, so that she might beg her pardon.

'She does not want you to beg her pardon.’

'I beg you to allow me; it will be better that I should, the benefit will be mine.’

The Prioress shook her head, and the conversation passed from the lay Sisters to the difficult question of the contemplative and the active orders. Evelyn had lately been reading the story of a servant girl, who had discovered genius in herself, genius, Evelyn said, compared to the genius of Joan of Arc. It had all happened in a little seaport town, and it had begun in a sudden conviction which the new priest had felt when he entered the town for the first time. As he ascended the avenue leading to the town he had heard a voice,         

'What have you come here for if not to rescue the aged poor?’

He wondered, not knowing how he was to do this, being bereft of all money. But. the tissue of things had woven itself out miraculously — miraculous hands had always seemed weaving on that woof, and the first lives to be woven into it were the little seamstresses, who had sat amid the rocks on Sunday in front of the bright gorse asking each other what the priest had meant when he had made them promise never to be wanting in their duties of charity towards the aged poor; very likely the priest did not know himself when he exacted the promise from them.

Not till then does Jeanne, the marvellous, extraordinary Jeanne, appear in the story.

She had been a goat-herd in childhood, and the single event of her life in any way ominous of her mission was her refusal of an offer of marriage. A young sailor had been anxious to marry her, and she had at first seemed willing, and then, without knowing why, from some impulse, she had hesitated, and when he returned from a voyage she had told him she never intended to marry. The wonder of this lies in the fact that she never knew in the least why she had refused the sailor, nor why she was determined not to marry, and it was not for nearly twenty-seven years afterwards that the importance of this early act of renunciation had been revealed to her. For twenty years she worked in humble service. She attended a priest till he died and then she went to live with his sister, and remained with her till she died. During all these twenty years Jeanne had saved only twenty-four pounds, and with this money she returned to her little seaport town, where there was no provision for the aged poor, where the aged poor starved in the streets or in garrets, in filth and vermin, in hunger and thirst, without hope of relief from anyone.

To this cruel little village Jeanne returned with her twenty-four pounds. She rented a garret with an old woman who was hardly able to help herself at all; and every day she went to the market-place to find some humble employment; and so she lived till she was forty-seven. It was then that the two little seamstresses heard of her, and the Curé sent for her and told her of the good that might be done for the aged poor and the blind beggars and such like who prowled about the walls of the churches in rags and vermin. On leaving the priest she had said, —

‘I do not understand, but I have never heard anyone speak so beautifully.’

But how were they, who could hardly support themselves, to support the poor? She did not know, but next day, when she went to see the priest, she understood everything, and it was in her garret that she harboured the first pauper, a poor blind woman, whom the seamstresses had discovered in the last stage of neglect and age. It was Jeanne who had discovered how they might support those who could not support themselves. It was she who seized the basket and said, 'I’ll beg for them.’

'There is a genius for many things besides the singing of operas, the painting of pictures and the writing of books,' Evelyn said, ‘and Jeanne’s genius was begging for her poor folk. There is nothing more touching in the world’s history than her journey in the milk cart to the regatta.’

She was accustomed to beg from door to door, but to intrude upon the crowd of fashionable folk bent on amusement she did not dare. Her courage almost failed her, but clasping the cross which hung round her neck, she entered the crowd of pleasure-seekers, saying, ‘Won’t you give me something for my poor folk?’

She begged with genius — a tall, thin, curious, fantastic figure, considered simple by some, but really gifted for the task which had been discovered to her in her middle age.

She begged that day and every day with genius. It is told that, bored by her persistence, a man had slapped her in the face, and that she had answered, ‘That is perfectly right, that is just what is suited to me; now what are you going to give me for my poor folk?' On another occasion at some regatta or fancy fair, where wealth and pleasure had collected, some young men had teased her, and having teased her they apologised and had given her five francs, and she had answered, ‘At that price you may tease me as much as you please.’

'It is extraordinary to think how this woman, unlettered, unread and uncouth, had been able to invent a system of charity which has penetrated all over Europe. I do not know which,' Evelyn said, ‘I realise most clearly, Jeanne or Teresa; they do not seem to me like women who have existed, but like women who always exist who are part of the spiritual substance with which the world is made.’

The Prioress reminded Evelyn of Jeanne’s start in the morning, when, after having made the beds and cleaned the garret, she took down her big basket.

'Now do not forget to ask for the halfpenny a week which I used to get at the grocery store.' 'Now I am sure you will forget to ask for my soup.’

Many used to hide their food under the bedclothes, and sell it surreptitiously for food for the pigs, leaving the Little Sisters almost starving; but their good humour was unfailing, they only said, 'So-and-so has not been so nice as usual this afternoon.’

'Yet, I cannot but feel — dear Mother, how am I to say it? — that the Little Sisters — ’

'Do not be afraid, Evelyn,' the Prioress said; ‘you mean that their way is perhaps a better way than ours.’

‘It seems so, Mother, does it not?’

‘My dear Evelyn, it is permissible to have doubts on such a subject — which is the better, acts of mercy or prayer? It is impossible not to doubt; we have all had our doubts on this subject, and it is the weakness of our intelligence that causes these doubts to arise.’

'How is that, Mother?’ said Evelyn.

'It is so easy to realise the beauty of the relief of material suffering — the flesh is always with us; we realise so easily what it suffers, and the relief of suffering seems to us the only good. Suffering appeals to us through such direct channels. A hungry man always seems more real than a man who prays. But in truth bread and prayer are as necessary to man, one as the other. When the veil of materialism is woven too densely, someone always comes to draw it aside.

‘You have never heard the story of the foundation of our order. It will not appeal to the animal sympathies as readily as the foundation of the Little Sisters of the Poor, but I do not think it is less human.’

Then the Reverend Mother told how, in Lyons, a sudden craving for God had occurred in a time of extraordinary prosperity. Three young women, daughters of bankers and a silk merchant, surrounded with every luxury, wearied of their wealth and the pleasures which wealth brought them, had almost simultaneously decided, without any intercommunication, that this world is a vanity, and that they were willing to forego it.

This story went to the core of Evelyn’s life. For she too had had wealth and fame and pleasure, and had found them to be nothing.

'But how,' she asked, 'had these women found that the world was not worthy of their seeking? Did they grow weary of it as I did, or was there a revelation?’

'There were three distinct revelations,' the Prioress replied. ‘Their souls were long prepared for the revelation; they wearied of the luxury and materialism of their lives and the pleasures with which they were surrounded, and sought to escape from it. They were good women and they waited for a sign, which was vouchsafed them. They were not women who were specially gifted like Jeanne to attend on the poor. At Lyons, at that time, the poor were not so plentiful as they were in the little seaport town, and it was towards prayer the souls of these good women turned rather than to good works. It appears they suddenly craved for prayer as they might have for light. They felt the world was dying, for no one prayed. But how to give a practical form to their idea they didn’t know. Maybe they doubted, as we all doubt in moments of weakness, the utility of prayer, and argued against their instincts. One certainly did. She herself tells how, unable to decide whether she should embrace a practical or a contemplative life, she knelt down while a great fire was blazing in the town. Owing to the strength of the wind, the firemen could not extinguish it. The fire was in one of the great silk warehouses, but it was not for the preservation of her father’s wealth that she prayed, but for the safety of an asylum for the aged which adjoined the warehouse, and which at that moment seemed sure of destruction. She was hardly on her knees when the wind suddenly lulled, and the flames were extinguished. And at the same moment she heard a voice in her heart saying to her quite plainly, “If one prayer can do this, what might not an order do whose mission it is to pray.” Her father, of course, told her that she was mistaken, and that she had heard no voice. But of what use is it [to] tell those who have heard a voice that they have not heard it?’

‘And the other two girls — were each of them vouchsafed a sign?' Evelyn asked.

‘Yes, in each case there was a sign. One was to be married to a rich silk merchant — a man whom she could not care for under any circumstances, and who was doubly repugnant to her now she had conceived the idea of a religious life — a man full of worldliness, and concerned only with this world. There seemed no escape for her, and she felt she had not the power to resist the will of her entire family, so she turned to God and begged of Him to provide some means of escape. Next day her suitor told her he could not marry her. In the night it had been revealed to him that this could not be. He had struggled against the conviction, and he had argued with himself, but in vain. He could explain nothing, except that it was so.’

'And the third one?' Evelyn asked.

‘The third incident was perhaps even more striking. She was walking through a wood, and on the other side of the river she saw two men engaged in a duel. She heard afterwards that this duel was to be fought to the death. But they were evenly matched and neither could vanquish the other. They returned to the contest again and again, and, in the face of this murder to be committed, she knelt down and prayed that it might be averted. Suddenly one declared he could fight no further, a conviction having been borne suddenly in upon him that he was doing wrong, and, unable to resist it, he told his enemy what had happened, saying, “It matters not in the least to me if you consider me a coward, I cannot continue this fight.” These three women confided their experiences to the same confessor. The priest himself had long been meditating a convent for men or women whose lives should be wholly devoted to prayer, for it had been borne in upon him too that some make-weight was necessary in this city wholly devoted to the making of money and to the pleasures which money can buy.’

Evelyn was interested in the story of these three founders of the order — these three women born among the sins of luxury in a materialistic society, to whom had come three distinct revelations. She was about to ask the Prioress the intimate history of the first foundation when the Reverend Mother interrupted, as it were, her thoughts, and said, —

'Any depreciation of the active orders is of course out of the question, but the desire to understand them is not depreciation. The good done by the active orders in the world is more obvious, more readily understood by the average man, who will say, “Ah, the Little Sisters of the Poor — I understand that; but the Carmelites, who merely pray, of what good are they?” But all that the average man does not understand is not necessarily useless. The truth is that the active orders and the contemplative orders are identical when we look below the surface.’

'How is that, Mother?’

'The mission of the active orders is to relieve physical suffering, and they accomplish a great deal, but not in the direction which the world thinks. The world thinks that the object of the Little Sisters of the Poor is the elimination of suffering from the world, or at least the reduction of suffering.’        .

'Surely their efforts make an appreciable difference in the sufferings of the world?’

'My dear child, a certain amount of suffering is inseparable from human life. If you eliminate on one side the growth is greater on the other. By preserving the lives of the old people you make the struggle harder for others. There is much the same amount of suffering in the world as there was before the Little Sisters of the Poor began their work. It is very doubtful whether the suffering to-day is not equal to the amount of suffering that existed fifty years before the order came into existence. That is what I mean.’

'Then, dear Mother, the order does not fulfil its purpose?’

'On the contrary, Evelyn, it fulfils its purpose, but its purpose is not that which the world thinks. It is by the noble example they set that the Little Sisters of the Poor achieve their purpose. It is by forsaking the world that they achieve their purpose, by their manifestation that the things of this world are not worth considering. They pray largely in outward acts, whereas the contemplative orders pray only in thought — the purpose, as I have said, of both is identical, that this world is a negligible quantity. The good they do is by the creation of an atmosphere of goodness. There are two atmospheres in this world — the atmosphere of good and the atmosphere of evil, and both are created by thought, whether thought in the concrete form of an act or by thought in its purest form, an aspiration. All those who devote themselves to prayer, whether their prayers take the form of good works or whether their prayer passes in thought, collaborate in the production of a moral atmosphere, and it is the moral atmosphere created by prayer which enables man to continue in human life.

‘Of the power of thought over matter I have given you three instances; but you, my dear Evelyn, need less proof of it than any other, for have you not often told me how our prayers, on more than one occasion, have saved you from the evil designs of your lover?’

‘As you state it, Mother, it seems clear; I did not think of it in that way before.’

'How interesting it would be to write the history of an order, the central idea of which should be the power of thought over matter.’

But the three nuns who came to England about thirty years ago to make the English foundation did not interest Evelyn very keenly. Her interest was not caught until the Prioress told her how, just at the time when they seemed on the point of failure, a young girl, in the best society, rich, beautiful, and surrounded by admirers, came to think, just as Evelyn had done, that the life of the world was a mere vanity, and had decided to dedicate her life to God. Her story was this: —

'She had been educated in a convent, and when she left, after her first ball, she told her father and mother that she wished to be a nun. Her parents besought her to consider her resolution and she agreed to do this, and for two years she went to balls and parties, seemingly the most worldly among her companions; but at the end of a year of her probationship in the world she said, “ I have waited a year, because you wished me to, and now I have come to tell you that I wish to enter a convent.” You see how analogous her story is to yours, Evelyn. It was the same vocation that brought you both here. It was with five thousand pounds out of the thirty thousand that this girl gave that the nuns bought the old country house in which we are now living. The late Prioress is blamed for this extravagance, and I think very unjustly, for how could she have foreseen the increased taxation. As a growing suburb the taxation became heavier.’

Then Evelyn heard that a portion of the old house had been put aside for guest-rooms; but the boarders who came were of the non-paying sort — penniless converts turned out by their relations, governesses, etc. And she heard how no more rich postulants came to the convent, and of the money the convent had lost in the railway, and how it came to be lost at a most unfortunate time, as only a few days before the lawyer had written to say that the Australian mine, in which most of their money was invested, had become bankrupt. So there was no help for it, they had to mortgage the property, and that was the beginning of their real difficulties, for as the land became valuable, the mortgagees became more and more anxious to foreclose. Once the convent had been late in paying the yearly interest on the money they had borrowed, and the mortgagees had insisted upon the penal interest.

'But, my dear Reverend Mother, I have offered to lend you the money.’

'It is impossible for us to take your money, Evelyn; we want a great deal of money, and a more legitimate means must be found than borrowing from you. The convent roof wants re-slating and the chapel wants re-decorating, and we spare every penny we can from our food and clothing to buy candles for the altar; and the twelve candles that have to burn there are quite an item in themselves; and another item, and a very considerable one, is the expense of the resident chaplain. The nearest parish is some distance, and cannot supply a priest every day. Frankly, Evelyn, we are at our wit’s end.’

‘You have no idea, Mother, how all you have said interests me, and the personal application I make of it to my own life. You said just now that you hoped one day I should become a member of this community. I am well aware how incongruous it would be to have me in a convent, and how ill my past life accords with your lives; but I have long wished to be a nun — the idea has been growing within me, and as far as I know it is quite a sincere one; but there is an impediment, and it is that that is breaking my heart — I do not see how I can become a nun. I am so happy here that I dread the letter which will come and order me away from you.’

'Then your anxiety is not that you should fail to live according to our rule?’

‘Not in the least, Mother, the reason is not a personal one; it is on account of my father. You see I cannot forsake him a second time; forgive me, Mother, for of course the motive is quite a different one, but I cannot forsake my father.’

The Prioress asked her if she had spoken to Monsignor on this subject or if she had laid the matter frankly before her father, telling him that she believed she had a vocation for a religious life.

She said she had not consulted Monsignor at all nor her father in the explicit manner in which the Prioress seemed to think she should have done. The blood flew to her face, and she laughed a little, and then confessed, with some reluctance and a sense of incongruity, that it was Owen Asher who had told her that her duty lay with her father

and not at all with the convent, and that by going into a convent she was only obeying a personal inclination, and according to her new conception of life personal inclination was the very thing which should be avoided on all occasions. He had therefore bidden her go to her father, this was her last obedience to him; and she had promised her father to go to him as soon as he was settled in Rome and was ready to receive her.

The conversation paused, and then Evelyn asked the Prioress to advise her.

'I cannot forsake my father, can I? Owen Asher was quite right when he told me I must go and live with my father.’

'The advice comes to you in a very doubtful way, my dear child, and from an equivocal side; I will only say you have reason to doubt the counsel of a man who was capable of acting towards a young girl as he acted towards you; I will not say any more — at least not for the present.

‘But you will think over it, dear Mother, and tell me.’

Late that night a telegram came from Rome telling Evelyn that her father was dangerously ill, and that she was to start at once for Rome.