Sister Teresa — Chapter 1

London: T. Fisher Unwin, 8 July 1901, pages 1-7, 2,562 words

I

She was conscious of her indolence: within and without her there was a strange, lifeless calm, a strange inactivity in the air and in her mind. In the landscape and in her there seemed no before and no hereafter. But a glance inwards revealed to her the ripple of some hidden anticipation moving under the sullen surface. The idea of returning to London stirred a little dread in her, yet she felt that for the moment she had seen enough of the convent. For the moment she could assimilate no more of it. The rhythm of the carriage penetrated her indolent body. The thud of the chestnuts'hoofs in the empty road stirred a quiet wonder in her, and she looked into the sunset as she might into a veil.

The mist had gathered in the suburban streets, and over the scraps of waste ground, changing them to blue; and looking into this dim colour and dimly-suggested form, she seemed to become aware of the presence of a phantom life moving on the hither side of her life, dependent upon it, and yet seemingly not concerned by its affairs, occupied by interests and desires exclusively its own. Her perceptions gathered in intensity, and she waited, tremulous and expectant, for the moment seemed to have come for the invisible to become visible. But in spite of her efforts to keep her attention fixed, to exclude the natural, her attention wandered or it lapsed, or the natural slipped in between, intercepting her vision, and the phantom folk lost their supernatural appearance and took on the likeness of the nuns. She saw the nuns in their convent garden, playing at ball, or in church, sitting in their stalls, turned sideways, with books in their hands. As the carriage entered the Fulham Road, that long, narrow, winding lane, she saw Sister Mary John digging, and she smiled at her strange, brusque ways. Her quaint bird came towards them, hopping over the broken ground, and she remembered how elimination of the spiritual weeds had resulted in other weeds.

As she drove toward London she pondered Sister Mary John’s sensuous enthusiasm for her singing. She knew that she appealed to the nun’s imagination, and she knew that the Prioress appealed to hers — that she was charmed by a wise, sad nun, by the woman that the nun’s veil could not hide, nor an extreme old age. She felt that the Prioress had renounced, whereas the other nuns, or a great many of them, had refused life.

The still autumn evening was like a magic mirror, and looking into it she saw the slow, devotional pose of the old white hands resting on the table edge, and she heard the calm, even voice telling her of the supremacy of the contemplative orders.

As the carriage drove up Grosvenor Place the cries of the pea-fowls in the gardens of Buckingham Palace startled her, and she looked round, terrified to find herself in London again. The carriage turned into Hamilton Place. She was returning to the life of the world, the battle with herself was about to begin again; and though she felt quite sure of herself, the fact of finding Owen waiting for her seemed like an omen, or at least a challenge. He was waiting for her at the head of the stairs. There was a little nervous smile on his lips and an anxious look in his eyes. As she went upstairs to meet him, confidence in God, and the confidence in herself, which her prayers and the prayers of the nuns had given her, appeared in her face, and Owen wondered at the extraordinary beauty which looked at him out of her eyes. She seemed capable of a more exalted passion, of a more intense feeling, and his desire to win her back grew more acute than ever. She seemed, to read his thoughts in his eyes, and lest she should read them completely he said, —

'I did not know you were coming home to-day; I came on the chance of finding you.’

'Well, Owen, I wrote to tell you you were not to come; but it sounds ungracious to tell you so.’

‘You said that I was not to come to see you for three months, but you broke your promise. You wrote to say you would not see me again; that liberated me from my promise not to come to see you for three months, isn’t that so?’

She did not answer, and he wondered if she were trying to remember why she had written him that cruel letter.

'I am very glad to see you, Owen.’

‘Are things different?' he asked. ‘Tell me if things are worse, and they are worse if you will not take me back.’

'Owen, you must not speak like that now.’

'And why not now? Where have you come from — is there any secret?’

'There is none.’

'Merat told me she did not know.’

'And you concluded there was a secret. I have come from the convent. I have been in retreat.’

‘Eight days shut up in a convent singing psalms and burning incense — I wonder you’re here to tell the tale.’

'It is very easy to speak like that; such sarcasms are easy.’

Neither spoke for a long while, and then they spoke of ordinary things, as if they had forgotten that their lives had come into a crisis. Suddenly, like one retaken by an ache which had left him for a while, Owen said, —

'Ah! if I had married you when I first met you. But you would not have been half as happy as you have been if I had set you up at Riversdale and Berkeley Square to entertain the best people, and had loaded you with diamonds. The mistake I made, Evelyn, was not to have allowed you to have children. The only way a man can keep a woman is through her children. I did not think of that at the time — one cannot think of everything. But I did the best for you, Evelyn, didn’t I? Say that I did.'

‘Yes, Owen, your conduct was better than mine, for you acted according to your lights.’

He sprang to his feet, and taking a Worcester vase from the table he examined its design; and fearing that he would dash it to the ground Evelyn did not say a word; but his irritation passed without the breaking of the jar, and resuming his seat beside her he saw the autumn leaves, and the faintly-flushed sky, and with a sudden pang he remembered that life is passing away while we are arguing how to live it.

‘You may struggle for a while, but the passion for the stage will overtake you.’

But this did not seem to him true. He remembered that the new idea had been growing steadily in her for some while, and, though it might not absorb her entirely, the chances were against her returning to the stage. Nor could he overcome the feeling that her talent for the stage was an immediate inheritance whose roots did not go very deep into her nature. Her dramatic talent might be a passing reflection of her mother’s temperament. Suddenly she heard him say that it would be the lust of the flesh that would save her from the cloister; it would bring her back to life, to man, maybe to him. And once again he sat down, and with a new set of arguments he tried to convince her she was not intended for a religious life. Merat brought in tea, and the conversation broke down; and after tea, when they were talking of indifferent things, he noticed that a different mood was preparing in her. She sat, as if fascinated, her huddled knees full of temptation, and following her to the end of the sofa he seemed to lose his reason suddenly in her atmosphere. She did not drive him from her, but once looked up pleadingly. He seemed to dread her displeasure, for he merely kissed her hair, which hung loose and thick over her neck, and he took it in his fingers and lifted it from her neck. He thought that to win her his lips must seek to surprise her senses suddenly in her lips, but while holding her face in his hands he was held back by some strange pity, and in that moment of hesitation she recovered her strength to resist him.

'Owen, you must not make love to me; all that is over and done between us. Owen, do not make it impossible for me to see you. I want to love you, dearest, but not as I have loved you; leave go my hands; you have never yet disobeyed me, and if you are violent I shall never, never be able to see you again.’

For a moment his love of her seemed to move from earth to heaven; that is to say, from all that eyes see, that ears hear and the nostrils inhale; and he felt he must not detain her. Her face expressed such purity that he abandoned her hands, compelled by some grave force which he could not explain or contest. So nothing came of this love meeting except the pinning up of some hair which had fallen; and when he looked at her again he was not quite sure that he had not misinterpreted the affectionate emotions which had carried her towards him a moment ago. But whatever his mistake may have been, her manner towards him had changed, and now her face seemed to express sorrow that he could not be to her what she wished him to be, and she seemed to regret that each should be a temptation to the other. She felt that she ought to send him away, but lacking the courage to do so, she asked if he would come into the Park with her, and they walked by the Serpentine, conscious of the melancholy of the autumn evening. And leaning on the balustrade of the bridge, looking into the mist which shrouded the Long Water, he thought of what he had told her of herself, that her artistic instincts were but a passing reflection of her mother’s spirit, whereas the true romance of her life was in the sexual instinct.

The stream’s banks were shrouded in a thick mist, out of which the tops of the trees emerged. In the middle of the water there was one space free from mist, and two wild ducks with a whirr of wings dropped into the pool of light; they swam a little way, and a moment afterwards were swallowed up by the mist. He was too sad to be irritated by anything she might say, and he allowed her to say that it was impossible to deny the influence of prayer of others without denying the influence of hypnotism and telepathy.

But what are you going to do? How is all this to end? You are not going to shut yourself up in a convent, nor devote yourself to philanthropic work. You have no plans, I believe, except perhaps to live a chaste life.'

'Owen, I had to change my life. Except for a moment I took no pleasure in anything.’

He noticed how her face became suddenly grave, and that the intimate secret of her nature seemed to rise to her lips when she said that whatever spirituality she might attain to she would attain to through chastity.

‘We have only a certain amount of force. A certain amount goes to support life, and the rest we may expend upon a lover, or upon our spiritual life.’

'But this cannot be the last time I shall see you, Evelyn,' he said, when she mentioned that it was growing late and that she must be returning home. 'How shall I live without you, alone in Berkeley Square, nothing to do but to think of my lost happiness?’

‘You are lonely because you will not allow anyone to come between you and yourself.’

They were walking towards home, and for a moment he believed it to be his lot to be her husband.

'Will you marry me, Evelyn?’

'Owen, you should have asked me before.’

In that moment it seemed to her too that her destiny was beside her, and she did not dare to look up lest she should see it, and she was mortally afraid of what was happening. For if he had pressed her for a definite ‘yes' or ‘no' she felt she would never have had the force to resist, particularly if he had said, ‘Well, let us go away at once.' If he had pressed an immediate flight, she would have assented, and a fate that would have been quite unlike her would be her fate. But our fate is more like ourselves than we are aware.

It was at that moment that Owen decided that when the door opened he would follow her upstairs, he would say he had forgotten his cigarette-case, any excuse would do, and then in the drawing-room he would overpower the will of the nuns and her will in a kiss. So intent was he on his plans that he could hardly continue the conversation.

‘Owen, good-bye,' she said. ‘I won’t ask you to come up.'

‘I have forgotten my cigarette-case.’

‘I saw you take it out of your pocket, and you lit a cigarette, do you not remember?’

He searched his pockets and admitted she was right.

The door opened and she entered, hardly pausing on the threshold to say good-bye.

The memory of the summer evening he had taken her away to Paris arose in his mind, and his conduct on that occasion seemed to him to have been much wiser, and he could not recognise the man in the first adventure with the man in the present one. If he had not wavered he would have won her — for a while; and he heard her telling him what suffering chastity is in a woman of her temperament. If he had asked her to go away with him in The Medusa her face would have darkened, and on the morrow she would come to him, her face set in iron determination, or would have written him one of those cold, acid letters, which he dreaded even more than the personal interview. He hated suffering, and it was his hatred of suffering which had made him refrain. He could not have acted otherwise; very likely other men could have, but he had never been able to make love to a woman against her will. He seemed on the point of remembering something, and then he began to remember as one remembers a dream; he was not certain whether he were inventing or remembering, but it did seem to him that he had been prevented from making love to Evelyn by some power, gentle and yet irresistible. His reason rebelled against the admission that others had been in the room. But it did seem as if these nuns had intervened. He exclaimed against the folly of his thoughts, and wandered on. He eventually turned into a club in hopes of finding Harding.