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Sister Teresa by George Moore

G >> George Moore >> Sister Teresa




"You mean when you found me sitting on the wall of an olive-garth?
But there was no harm in singing to the peasants."

"And when I found you in a little chapel on the way to the
pine-forest--the forest in which you met Ulick Dean. What has become
of that young man?"

"I don't know. I haven't heard of him."

"You once nearly went out of your mind on his account."

"Because I thought he had killed himself."

"Or because you thought you wouldn't be able to resist him?"

Evelyn did not answer, and looking through the rich rooms,
unconsciously admiring the gleaming of the red silk hangings in the
lamplight, and the appearance of a portrait standing in the midst of
its dark background and gold frame, she discovered some of the
guests: two women leaning back in a deep sofa amid cushions
confiding to each other the story of somebody's lover, no doubt; and
past them, to the right of a tall pillar, three players looked into
the cards, one stood by, and though Owen and Evelyn were thinking of
different things they could not help noticing the whiteness of the
men's shirt fronts, and the aigrette sprays in the women's hair, and
the shapely folds of the silken dresses falling across the carpet.

"Not one of these men and women here think as you do; they are
satisfied to live. Why can't you do the same?"

"I am different from them."

"But what is there different in you?"

"You don't think then, Owen, that every one has a destiny?"

"Evelyn, dear, how can you think these things? We are utterly
unimportant; millions and billions of beings have preceded us,
billions will succeed us. So why should it be so important that a
woman should be true to her lover?"

"Does it really seem to you an utterly unimportant matter?"

"Not nearly so important as losing the woman one loves." And looking
into her face as he might into a book, written in a language only a
few words of which he understood, he continued: "And the idea seems
to have absorbed you, to have made its own of you; it isn't
religion, I don't think you are a religious woman. You usen't to be
like this when I took you away to Paris. You were in love with me,
but not half so much in love with me as you are now with this idea,
not so subjugated. Evelyn, that is what it is, you are subjugated,
enslaved, and you can think of nothing else."

"Well, if that is so, Owen--and I won't say you are utterly wrong--
why can't you accept things as they are?"

"But it isn't true, Evelyn? You will outlive this idea. You will be
cured."

"I hope not."

"You hope not? Well, if you don't wish to be cured it will be
difficult to cure you. But now, here in this house, where everything
is different, do you not feel the love of life coming back upon you?
And can you accept negation willingly as your fate?"

Evelyn asked Owen what he meant and he said:

"Well, your creed is a negative one--that no man shall ever take you
in his arms again, saying, 'Darling, I am so fond of you!' You would
have me believe that you will be true to this creed? But don't I
know how dear that moment is to you? No, you will not always think
as you do now; you will wake up as from a nightmare, you will wake
up."

"Do you think I shall?" Soon after their talk drifted to Lady Ascott
and to her guests, and Owen narrated the latest intrigues and the
mistake Lady Ascott had been guilty of by putting So-and-so and
So-and-so to sleep in the same corridor, not knowing that their
_liaison_ had been broken off at least three months before.

"Jim is now in love with Constance."

"How very horrible!"

"Horrible? It is that fellow Mostyn who has put these ideas into your
head!"

"He has put nothing into my head, Owen."

"Upon my word I believe you're right. It is none of his doing. But he
has got the harvesting; ah, yes, and the nuns, too. You never loved
me as you love this idea, Evelyn?"

"Do you think not?"

"When you were studying music in Paris you were quite willing I
should go away for a year."

"But I repaid you for it afterwards; you can't say I didn't. There
were ten years in which I loved you. How is it you have never
reproached me before?"

"Why should I? But now I've come to the end of the street; there is a
blank wall in front of me."

"You make me very miserable by talking like this."

They sat without speaking, and Lady Ascott's interruption was
welcome.

"Now, my dear Sir Owen, will you forgive me if I ask Evelyn to sing
for us? You'd like to hear her sing--wouldn't you?"

Owen sprang to his feet.

"Of course, of course. Come, Miss Innes, you will sing for us. I have
been boring you long enough, haven't I? And you'll be glad to get to
the piano. Who will accompany you?"

"You, Sir Owen, if you will be kind enough."

The card-players were glad to lay down their cards and the women to
cease talking of their friends' love affairs. All the world over it
is the same, a soprano voice subjugating all other interests;
soprano or tenor, baritone much less, contralto still less. Many
came forward to thank her, and, a little intoxicated with her
success, she began to talk to some of her women friends, thinking it
unwise to go back into a shadowy corner with Owen, making herself
the subject of remark; for though her love story with Owen Asher had
long ceased to be talked about, a new interest in it had suddenly
sprung up, owing to the fact that she had sent Owen away, and was
thinking of becoming a nun--even to such an extent her visit to the
convent had been exaggerated; and as the women lagging round her had
begun to try to draw from her an account of the motives which had
induced her to leave the stage, and the moment not seeming opportune,
even if it were not ridiculous at any moment to discuss spiritual
endeavour with these women, she determined to draw a red herring
across the trail. She told them that the public were wearying of
Wagner's operas, taste was changing, light opera was coming into
fashion.

"And in light opera I should have no success whatever, so I was
obliged to turn from the stage to the concert-room."

"We thought it was the religious element in Wagner."

A card party had come from a distant drawing-room and joined in the
discussion regarding the decline of art, and it was agreed that
motor-cars had done a great deal to contribute--perhaps they had
nothing to do with the decline of Wagner--but they had contributed
to the decline of interest in things artistic. This was the opinion
of two or three agreeable, good-looking young men; and Evelyn forgot
the women whom she had previously been talking to; and turning to the
men, she engaged in conversation and talked on and on until the
clock struck eleven. Then the disposition of every one was for bed.
Whispers went round, and Lady Ascott trotted upstairs with Evelyn,
hoping she would find her room comfortable.

It was indeed a pleasant room, wearing an air of youthfulness, thanks
to its chintz curtains. The sofa was winning and the armchairs
desirable, and there were books and a reading-lamp if Evelyn should
feel disposed to draw the armchair by the fire and read for an hour
before going to bed. The writing-table itself, with its pens and its
blotting-book, and notepaper so prettily stamped, seemed intended to
inveigle the occupant of the room into correspondence with every
friend she had in the world; and Evelyn began to wonder to whom she
might write a letter as soon as Lady Ascott left the room.

The burning wood shed a pleasant odour which mingled pleasantly with
that of the dressing-table; and she wandered about the room, her
mind filled with vague meditations, studying the old engravings,
principally pictures of dogs and horses, hounds and men, going out
to shoot in bygone costumes, with long-eared spaniels to find the
game for them. There was a multitude of these pictures on the walls,
and Evelyn wondered who was her next-door neighbour. Was it Owen? Or
was he down at the end of the passage? In a house like Thornton
Grange the name of every one was put on his or her door, so that
visitors should not wander into the wrong room by accident, creating
dismay and provoking scandal. Owen, where was he? A prayer was
offered up that he might be at the other end of the house. It would
not be right if Lady Ascott had placed him in the adjoining room, it
really would not be right, and she regretted her visit. What evil
thing had tempted her into this house, where everything was an
appeal to the senses, everything she had seen since she had entered
the house--food, wine, gowns? There was, however, a bolt to her
door, and she drew it, forgetful that sin visits us in solitude, and
more insidiously than when we are in the midst of crowds; and as she
dozed in the scented room, amid the fine linen, silk, and laces, the
sins which for generations had been committed in this house seemed to
gather substance, and even shape; a strange phantasmata trooped past
her, some seeming to bewail their sins, while others indulged
themselves with each other, or turned to her, inciting her to sin
with them, until one of them whispered in her ear that Owen was
coming to her room, and then she knew that at his knock her strength
would fail her, and she would let him in.

Her temptations disappeared and then returned to her; at last she saw
Owen coming towards her. He leaned over the bed, and she saw his
lips, and his voice sounded in her ears. It told her that he had
been waiting for her; why hadn't she come to his room? And why had
he found her door bolted? Then like one bereft of reason, she
slipped out of bed and went towards the door, seeing him in the
lucidity of her dream clearly at the end of the passage; it was not
until her hand rested on the handle of his door that a singing began
in the night. The first voice was joined by another, and then by
another, and she recognised the hymn, for it was one, the _Veni
Creator_, and the singers were nuns. The singing grew more distinct,
the singers were approaching her, and she retreated before them to
her room; the room filled with plain chant, and then the voices
seemed to die or to be borne away on the wind which moaned about the
eaves and aloft in the chimneys. Turning in her bed, she saw the
dying embers. She was in her room--only a dream, no more. Was that
all? she asked as she lay in her bed singing herself to sleep, into
a sleep so deep that she did not wake from it until her maid came to
ask her if she would have breakfast in her room or if she were going
down to breakfast.

"I will get up at once, Merat, and do you look out a train, or ask
the butler to look out one for you; we are going to Glasgow by the
first quick train."

"But I thought Mademoiselle was going to stay here till Monday."

"Yes, Merat, I know, so did I; but I have changed my mind. You had
better begin to pack at once, for there is certain to be a train
about twelve."

Evelyn saw that the devoted Merat was annoyed; as well she might be,
for Thornton Grange was a pleasant house for valets and lady's
maids. "Some new valet," Evelyn thought, and she was sorry to drag
Merat away from him, for Merat's sins were her own--no one was
answerable for another; there was always that in her mind; and what
applied to her did not apply to anybody else.

"Dear Lady Ascott, you'll forgive me?" she said during breakfast,
"but I have to go to Glasgow this afternoon. I am obliged to leave
by an early train."

"Sir Owen, will you try to persuade her? Get her some omelette, and I
will pour out some coffee. Which will you have, dear? Tea or coffee?
Everybody will be so disappointed; we have all been looking forward
to some singing to-night."

Expostulations and suggestions went round the table, and Evelyn was
glad when breakfast was over; and to escape from all this company,
she accepted Owen's proposal to go for a walk.

"You haven't seen my garden, or the cliffs? Sir Owen, I count upon
you to persuade her to stay until to-morrow, and you will show her
the glen, won't you? And you'll tell me how many trees we have lost
in last night's storm."

Owen and Evelyn left the other guests talking of how they had lain
awake last night listening to the wind.

"Shall we go this way, round by the lake, towards the glen? Lady
Ascott is very disappointed; she said so to me just now."

"You mean about my leaving?"

"Yes, of course, after all she had done for you, the trouble she had
taken about the Edinburgh concert. Of course they all like to hear
you sing; they may not understand very well, still they like it,
everybody likes to hear a soprano. You might stay."

"I'm very sorry, Owen, I'm sorry to disappoint Lady Ascott, who is a
kindly soul, but--well, it raises the whole question up again. When
one has made up one's mind to live a certain kind of life--"

"But, Evelyn, who is preventing you from living up to your ideal? The
people here don't interfere with you? Nobody came knocking at your
door last night?"

"No."

"I didn't come, and I was next door to you. Didn't it seem strange to
you, Evelyn, that I should sleep so near and not come to say
good-night? But I knew you wouldn't like it, so I resisted the
temptation."

"Was that the only reason?"

"What do you mean?"

"Of course, I know you wouldn't do anything that would displease me;
you've been very kind, more kind than I deserve, but--"

"But what?"

"Well, it's hard to express it. Nothing happened to prevent you?"

"Prevent me?"

"I don't mean that you were actually prevented, but was there another
reason?"

"You mean a sudden scruple of conscience? My conscience is quite
healthy."

"Then what stayed you was no more than a fear of displeasing me? And
you wanted to come to see me, didn't you?"

"Of course I did. Well, perhaps there was another reason... only...
no, there was no other reason."

"But there was; you have admitted that there was. Do tell me."

And Owen told her that something seemed to have held him back when
the thought came of going to her room. "It was really very strange.
The thought was put into my mind suddenly that it would be better
for me not to go to your room."

"No more than a sudden thought? But the thought was very clear and
distinct?"

"Yes; but between waking and sleeping thoughts are unusually
distinct."

"You don't believe in miracles, Owen?" And she told him of her dream
and her sudden awaking, and the voices heard in her ears at first,
then in the room, and then about the house. "So you see the nuns
kept us apart."

"And you believe in these things?"

"How can I do otherwise?"

Owen sighed, and they walked on a few paces. The last leaves were
dancing; the woods were cold and wet, the heavy branches of the
fir-trees dripping with cold rain, and in the walks a litter of
chestnut-leaves.

"Not a space of blue in the sky, only grey. It will be drearier still
in Glasgow; you had better stay here," he said, as they walked round
the little lake, watching the water-fowl moving in and out of the
reeds, and they talked for some time of Riversdale, of the lake
there, and the ducks which rose in great numbers and flew round and
round the park, dropping one by one into the water. "You will never
see Riversdale again, perhaps?"

"Perhaps not," she answered; and hearing her say it, his future life
seemed to him as forlorn as the landscape.

"What will you do? What will become of you? What strange
transformation has taken place in you?"

"If--But what is the use of going over it again?"

"If what?"

"What would you have me do? Marriage would only ruin you, Owen, make
you very unhappy. Why do you want me to enter on a life which I feel
isn't mine, and which could only end in disaster for both of us." He
asked her why it would end in disaster, and she answered, "It is
impossible to lay bare one's whole heart. When one changes one's
ideas one changes one's friends."

"Because one's friends are only the embodiment of one's ideas. But I
cannot admit that you would be unhappy as my wife."

"Everybody is unhappy when they are not doing what Nature intended
them to do."

"And what did Nature intend you to do? Only to sing operas?"

"I should be sorry to think Nature intended me for nothing else.
Would you have me go on singing operas? I don't want to appear
unreasonable, but how could I go on singing even if I wished to go
on? The taste has changed; you will admit that light opera is the
fashion, and I shouldn't succeed in light opera. Whatever I do you
praise, but you know in the bottom of your heart there are only a few
parts which I play well. You may deceive yourself, you do so because
you wish to do so, but I have no wish to deceive myself and I know
that I was never a great singer; a good singer, an interesting
singer in certain parts if you like, but no more. You will admit
that?"

"No, I don't admit anything of the kind. If you leave the stage what
will you do with your time? Your art, your friends--"

"No one can figure anybody else's life: everybody has interests and
occupations, not things that interest one's neighbour, but things
that interest herself."

"So it is because light opera has come into fashion again that you
are going to give up singing? Such a thing never happened before: a
woman who succeeded on the stage, who has not yet failed, whose
voice is still fresh, who is in full possession of her art, to say
suddenly, 'Money and applause are nothing to me, I prefer a few
simple nuns to art and society.' Nothing seems to happen in life,
life is always the same; _rien ne change mais pourtant tout arrive_,
even the rare event of a successful actress relinquishing the
stage."

"It is odd," she said as they followed the path through the wintry
wood, startled now and again by a rabbit at the end of the alley, by
a cock pheasant rising up suddenly out of the yew hedges, and,
beguiled by the beauty of the trees, they passed on slowly, pausing
to think what a splendid sight a certain wild cherry must be in the
spring-time. At the end of the wood Owen returned to the subject of
their conversation.

"Yes, it is strange that an actress should give up her art."

"But, Owen, it isn't so strange in my case as in any other; for you
know I was always a hothouse flower. You took me away to Paris and
had me trained regardless of expense, and with your money it was
easy to get an engagement."

"My money had nothing to do with your engagements."

"Perhaps not; but I only sang when it pleased me; I could always say,
'Well, my good man, go to So-and-so, she will sing for you any parts
you please'; but I can only sing the parts I like."

"You think, then, that if you had lived the life of a real actress,
working your way up from the bottom, what has happened wouldn't have
happened; is that what you mean?"

"It is impossible for me to answer you. One would have to live one's
life over again."

"I suppose no one will ever know how much depends upon the gift we
bring into the world with us, and how much upon circumstances," and
Owen compared the gift to the father's seed and circumstances to the
mother's womb.

"So you are quite determined?" And they philosophised as they went,
on life and its meaning, on death and love, admiring the temples
which an eighteenth-century generation had built on the hillsides.
"Here are eight pillars on either side and four at either end,
serving no purpose whatever, not even shelter from the rain. Never
again in this world will people build things for mere beauty," Owen
said, and they passed into the depths of the wood, discovering
another temple, and in it a lad and lass.

"You see these temples do serve for something. Why are we not
lovers?" And they passed on again, Owen's heart filled with his
sorrow and Evelyn's with her determination.

She was leaving by the one train, and when they got back to the house
the carriage was waiting for her.

"Good-bye, Owen."

"Am I not to see you again?"

"Yes, you will see me one of these days."

"And that was all the promise she could make me," he said, rushing
into Lady Ascott's boudoir, disturbing her in the midst of her
letters. "So ends a _liaison_ which has lasted for more than ten
years. Good God, had I known that she would have spoken to me like
this when I saw her in Dulwich!"

Even so he felt he would have acted just as he had acted, and he went
to his room thinking that the rest of his life would be
recollection. "She is still in the train, going away from me, intent
on her project, absorbed in her desire of a new life ... this
haunting which has come upon her."



III

And so it was. Evelyn lay back in the corner of the railway carriage
thinking about the poor people, and about the nuns, about herself,
about the new life which she was entering upon, and which was dearer
to her than anything else. She grew a little frightened at the
hardness of her heart. "It certainly does harden one's heart," she
said; "my heart is as hard as a diamond. But is my heart as hard as
a diamond?" The thought awoke a little alarm, and she sat looking
into the receding landscape. "Even so I cannot help it." And she
wondered how it was that only one thing in the world seemed to
matter--to extricate the nuns from their difficulties, that was all.
Her poor people, of course she liked them; her voice, she liked it
too, without, however, being able to feel certain that it interested
her as much as it used to, or that she was not prepared to sacrifice
it if her purpose demanded the sacrifice. But there was no question
of such sacrifice: it was given to her as the means whereby she
might effect her purpose. If the Glasgow concert were as successful
as the Edinburgh, she would be able to bring back some hundreds of
pounds to the nuns, perhaps a thousand. And what a pleasure that
would be to her!

But the Glasgow concert was not nearly so successful: her manager
attributed the failure to a great strike which had just ended; there
was talk of another strike; moreover her week in Glasgow was a wet
one, and her manager said that people did not care to leave their
houses when it was raining.

"Or is it," she asked, "because the taste has moved from dramatic
singing to _il bel canto?_ In a few years nobody will want to hear
me, so I must make hay while the sun shines."

Her next concert succeeded hardly better than the Glasgow concert;
Hull, Leeds, Birmingham were tried, but only with moderate success,
and Evelyn returned to London with very little money for the
convent, and still less for her poor people.

"It is a disappointment to me, dear Mother?"

"My dear child, you've brought us a great deal of money, much more
than we expected."

"But, Mother, I thought I should be able to bring you three thousand
pounds, and pay off a great part of your mortgage."

"God, my child, seems to have thought differently."

The door opened.

"Now who is this? Ah! Sister Mary John."

"May I come in, dear Mother?"

"Certainly."

"You see, I was so anxious to see Miss Innes, to hear about the
concert tour--"

"Which wasn't a success at all, Sister Mary John. Oh, not at all a
success."

"Not a success?"

"Well, from an artistic point of view it was; I brought you some of
the notices," and Evelyn took out of her pocket some hundreds of
cuttings from newspapers. It had not occurred to her before, but now
the thought passed through her mind, formulating itself in this way:
"After all, the mummeress isn't dead in me yet; bringing my notices
to nuns! Dear me! how like me!" And she sat watching the nuns, a
little amused, when the Prioress asked Sister Mary John to read some
passages to her.

"Now I can't sit here and hear you read out my praises. You can read
them when I am gone. A little more money and a little less praise
would have suited me better, Sister Mary John."

"Would you care to come into the garden?" the nun asked. "I was just
going out to feed the birds. Poor things! they come in from the
common; our garden is full of them. But what about singing at
Benediction to-day? Would you like to try some music over with me
and forget the birds?"

"There will be plenty of time to try over music."

The door opened again. It was the porteress come to say that
Monsignor had just arrived and would like to speak with the
Prioress.

"But ask him to come in.... Here is a friend of yours, Monsignor. She
has just returned from--"

"From a disastrous concert tour, having only made four hundred pounds
with six concerts. My career as a prima donna is at an end. The
public is tired of me."

"The artistic public isn't tired of you," said Sister Mary John.
"Read, Monsignor; she has brought us all her notices."

"Oh, do take them away, Sister Mary John; you make me ashamed before
Monsignor. Such vanity! What will he think of my bringing my notices
to read to you? But you mustn't think I am so vain as that,
Monsignor; it was really because I thought the nuns would be
interested to hear of the music--and to excuse myself. But you know,
Mother, once I take a project in hand I don't give it up easily. I
have made up my mind to redeem this convent from debt, and it shall
be done. My concert tour was a failure, but I have another idea in
my head; and I came here to tell it to you. I don't know what
Monsignor will think of it. I have been offered a good deal of money
to go to America to sing my own parts, for Wagner is not yet dead in
America."

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