Part 7

There is a sweet and tender strain of womanliness in Mabel’s nature, and when, as her amateur father confessor, I questioned her about her obvious difference with the young soldier, and she told me the facts, I fancied I recognised a tone of pity not unmixed with pleasure, which augured well for the boy’s chances. She is a wilful, erratic, delightful girl now; and I feel sure she will make a splendid woman. Cares and sorrows will overtake her soon enough, and force upon her the serious side of life, and her womanhood will not fail to rise to the occasion. In the meanwhile, let her continue to regard the world as a playground, where all is sweetness and light and pleasure. Let her retain her illusions as long as possible, and enjoy the delights of girlhood. Let her, in fact, extract all possible pleasure from any sport, any amusement. It will all react beneficially on her nature, and, when she awakens to the responsibilities of life, she will bear them all the more cheerfully that her youth has been happy and uncrossed and “awfully jolly.”

_THE NUN_

[Illustration]

Strange as it may sound, some of the happiest hours I have ever known have been spent within the precincts of a convent, while of the friendships which have been a joy in my life, none has made me prouder than that of Sister Annunciata. It may appear curious for a man-of-the-world to count a nun among his friends, but no one who has not been privileged to enjoy it, can understand the pure solace of conversing familiarly with a woman who, having renounced the world for what she deems a higher purpose of life, lives entirely apart from our every-day existence, and has no intercourse with it save through the ingenuous medium of young girls’ gossip. For Sister Annunciata belongs to one of the educational orders of sisterhood, and, though she has taken solemn vows for life, and may never go beyond the boundaries of the convent grounds, or again come in contact with the passions and ambitions inseparable from the struggle for life, she yet has a fruitful field of affection among the convent pupils, and thus she keeps her human sympathies in constant activity. Moreover, Sister Annunciata is the favourite of the convent, the beloved of all the girls, and though this naturally leads to certain jealousies, this very human trait of human nature makes an effective contrast with the general placidity of the place. The perfect faith in Divine grace, which is the ruling spirit of the convent, appears beautifully wonderful to one who moves amid the scepticism of the age, but how much more beautiful is it in conjunction with the humanity of these girls, their jealous love for their favourite nun, her impossible efforts not to show preference, and the striving of the other nuns to be equally loved? Though they have given up the large world, they have still their own little one. The beautiful natural craving for affection will not be renounced.

It was Sister Annunciata’s supremacy in the regard of her pupils that procured me her friendship, for, being on a visit with some friends in the neighbourhood of the convent, the young daughters of the house were eager to take me to see their “dear Sister Annunciata.” They were never tired of talking of her, and of the many virtues which endeared her to them, and they would not rest until I knew her too.

The idea of visiting a convent, and talking to a real live nun, was peculiarly fascinating to me, for my notions of convent life were vague and mysterious, and I regarded all nuns as uncanny creatures, living dismal lives in chilly cloisters. That they had renounced the world was sufficient, in my eyes, to invest them with a kind of unearthliness. Therefore, I approached the convent with a weird curiosity which I cannot describe.

The convent stands amid beautiful spacious grounds, composed of lovely gardens, groves, and grottoes, all picturesque and peaceful, with splendid views of sea and mountain around. As we entered the gates, and walked up the broad path leading to the grey stone building, the calm influence of the place began to work its spell upon me, and, as I saw here and there among the trees the black figures of the nuns, walking singly or in couples, suggestions of mediæval romance flitted across my mind. It was vacation time, all the pupils, save one or two, who were orphans, had gone to their homes, and the nuns were enjoying their hours of relaxation in the sunshine. There seemed to be a quiet happiness about the place, which quite upset my preconceived notions about nunneries.

The parlour in which we awaited the coming of Sister Annunciata, was severely simple in its furniture and adornment. But as soon as the Sister entered, I forgot the plainness of the room. I might have been sitting on the most luxurious couch, instead of a stiff horsehair chair, for all it mattered. She seemed to exhale a sweet cheerfulness, and the room was filled with a personality and a life that were entirely new to me. She greeted my girl-companions with warm affection, and joined in their girlish jokes, while she talked to me with an absolute frankness and simplicity I had never met before. She led us out into the grounds, and her merry laughter sounded strangely incongruous with her sombre garb, but as we walked along, I noticed that all the other nuns seemed anxious to show that they were quite happy. And, verily, they seemed so, as they walked among the flowers, or plucked the fruit, or read their books in shady spots, or basked in the sunshine, and talked or meditated. One of them, a good-natured, roundfaced nun, who had been gossiping gaily with my young friends, but had for a long time kept shyly aloof from me, suddenly came up to me and told me that they were all as happy as the days were long.

And it was a place to be happy in, I thought, as I stood in a beautiful grove, where the sunlight peeped through the trees and patched the grass with silver, near to a little sloping eminence whereon rested the chapel, in which the dead Sisters sleep eternally, while beyond some yellow cornfields reached away to the grey walls that marked the convent boundaries, and the further hazy blue sea appeared to carry the picture away into dreamland.

And here, I reflected, these women live away from the world we know, and they find happiness without a struggle, without—but Sister Annunciata is standing by me, and perhaps at this moment she is thinking of the old days before she gave up her life to religion. Yes, I have been talking to her of the outer world, and have named one that she knew long ago as a youth, and I tell her he is now a famous man. And the mention of her boy-playmate awakens old memories, and she tells me of her girlhood.

We are always apt—we worldly folk—to think that no woman becomes a nun, unless she has had some bitter disappointment in love, or seeks to do penance for wordly error, or to escape from sorrow or suffering. Sister Annunciata sought the religious life for none of these reasons. She had enjoyed a happy, careless girlhood, the world had offered her no trials; the pleasures of youth were open to her, as were the joys of happy womanhood. But her sensibilities were not yet awakened, she had never known what love meant, though she had been sought in marriage. So the ordinary social gaieties took but slight hold upon her, and life meant nothing to her but home affections and a passion for the arts.

But one day she saw a strong man suddenly smitten with paralysis, and she realised all at once the littleness of life, and how it should be used, such as it is, as a preparation for a greater. Then all her religious tendencies developed, and she bethought her how to make her life most useful while she was striving for Divine grace. To devote herself entirely to prayer, as many sisterhoods do, seemed to her selfish, and so, while she elected to renounce the world for the sake of her own soul, she felt that she could use such gifts and knowledge as she possessed for the instruction of the youth of her own sex, who sought the educational influence of the convent. Therefore, with the enthusiasm of a lofty purpose she entered upon her novitiate, and then, after two years, as no one questioned her vocation for the religious life, she took the final irrevocable vows that severed her from home and from the world. Her life as a novice had been made smooth for her, and all had endeavoured to show her the alluring side of the religious life, and strengthen her in the sense of duty that impelled her to adopt it. But no one warned her of the arduous life of self-suppression that was before her: no one told her that she was actually more fitted for the world than the cloister; that the sensibilities still dormant in her might some day awaken, when too late to be warmed with the human sympathy that they needed, and then be frozen in her heart, after much pain. So when I knew Sister Annunciata she had lived “unspotted from the world” some ten years or so, and had brought herself seemingly into a spirit of sublime submissiveness.

But had she not suffered terrible affliction of the soul during those years? For her spirit was proud and sensitive, and in small and narrow communities there are small and narrow jealousies, and authority is sometimes tyrannical. But Sister Annunciata is a woman of iron will and indomitable self-command, while she makes the light of faith the only beacon of her life. Therefore she has schooled herself to accept every cross with equanimity, while the natural cheerfulness of her disposition enables her to seem content and happy, as well as to inspire happiness in others.

Many were the talks I had with Sister Annunciata as we wandered over the grassy slopes and through the groves and gardens of the convent; and though the unusual circumstances may have appealed strongly to my imagination, certainly converse with woman never filled me with deeper and keener interest. Her vivacious and sympathetic personality and her renunciation of the world seemed so utterly at variance. She would evince the liveliest interest in worldly affairs, and encourage me to tell her of the men and women who are doing the work of the world, of my own personal friends, of my own feelings, of my mundane interests, and she would discuss all these with me, on sufferance as it were, and then remind herself every now and then, by religious allusions, that her life was utterly apart from mine.

She would love me to talk of poetry and romance, and, somehow or other, we would generally drift thence to religious mysticisms and the problems of life and death, which she would always solve with the logic of faith, and beg me not to try and prove her wrong. Talking to her was not like talking to other women; she could draw my soul out as by some enchantment, and the poetry of the place and its surroundings seemed to weave a spell about me. In her presence my ordinary life seemed so far away, and I suppose she was quite a woman, but to me she appeared always a kind of dream-woman. I never could quite associate her with her surroundings, and yet I could never imagine her anywhere else. It was so incongruous to think of her bright mind being shut away from society, yet she seemed to belong to that grey stone building and the wooded slopes with the sea beyond.

But Sister Annunciata is so different from all the other nuns. Her mental capacity is so much greater that she is not bound by the narrow prejudices of the others, which accounts for her greater sway over the minds and affections of her pupils. But then, perhaps, her Sisters are happier than she is, for all her cheerfulness and her laughter; not that she would ever own that she was not happy, though perhaps she would allow you to use the term “content” in preference. Content she is by reason of her will, and peace she has by reason of her faith and the place; but happiness is not the result of volition, it is an expression of the soul acted upon from without. But Sister Annunciata cannot be happy so easily as the other Sisters, for her soul, being larger and more active, requires more to make it happy; while the Reverend Mother, who has been half a century “in religion,” is as happy as she can imagine it possible to be, so long as she can pray to her heart’s content, and tell her beads in the sunshine. She can conceive no one reading any poetry but that which piously sings the praises of the Saints, and would probably cast up her eyes in horror did she know that Sister Annunciata had ever read Shelley.

“I don’t care to know what they do in the world,” said the old nun to me, when I marvelled that she knew nothing of the worldly events of the day, “we are much happier as we are.” And, after all, it is only habit that makes us crave for news. If I lived far away from the busy hum of men, amid such peace and beauty, I think I should soon grow accustomed to eat my breakfast without the accompaniment of a morning paper. It is possible to school oneself to anything, at least, so I have learnt from my visits to that convent and my friendship with Sister Annunciata, though doubtless a great deal of purposeless self-sacrifice is endured for mistaken enthusiasm.

I wonder if Sister Annunciata would have been happier had she not renounced the world, but pursued a sphere of usefulness outside the convent. Perhaps not, after all. Anyhow, her beloved pupils would not have been so happy, for she is their idol. And maybe when, in the little convent chapel, she pours out her virgin soul in solemn organ strains, or when she communes alone with Nature in those sweet, silent groves, and sends her dreams of higher life across the lovely landscape, she knows more peace than could ever have been hers amid the fever and fret of the toiling world of men.

[Illustration]

_THE CHEERY WOMAN_

Every one loves Mrs. Merrysmile, she is so bright and cheery and lovable, in a holiday way. To be with her is as good as going to the seaside, her breezy talk being as so much ozone. Yes, she is very popular; a kind of female Brighton, that one goes to for the purpose of being mentally braced up with general cheeriness and gaiety and excitement. Other women are our Cromers and our Birchingtons, whither we go for soothing rest and idle dreaming and world-forgetting but Mrs. Merrysmile is our London-by-the-Sea. We dress ourselves in our best to please her, and she keeps us on the alert. If we be dull and out of sorts, she takes it as a personal reproach, for she is so cheery herself that she cannot understand any ailment or misfortune being sufficiently depressing to counteract her influence. In her eyes dulness is an unpardonable offence, while to be invalided is to incur her serious displeasure; if you chance to be either, Mrs. Merrysmile attributes it merely to temper. She will tell you with a charmingly frank affectation that she hates the afflicted, and that the positively poor revolt her; but she professes to entertain the greatest sympathy with enterprising criminals, while the audaciously unscrupulous bankrupt is actually a hero in her eyes—a contrariness which must not be regarded as due to any flaw in her moral attitude, for that is quite above reproach, but simply to that effervescent cheeriness which will not accept defeat in any form. She cannot understand any one being beaten by circumstances, for, as she rather illogically puts it, “Circumstances were made for slaves; I make my own.” She says a great many things like this, by the way, and convinces herself, at all events, even if others fail to quite catch her meaning.

She is a masterful little woman, and among her own relations and immediate friends she is a perfect autocrat. Her constant cheeriness commands everything, and preserves a family unity, for in every emergency, in any dispute, in any trouble, Mrs. Merrysmile is the centre towards which they all make, from which radiates all the harmony. How many a family quarrel has been averted by her happily apposite wit, how many a cloud has she laughed away with the sunshine of her cheerful little heart! For though she pretends that humour rather than affection is the key-note of her life, that she would sacrifice any tender sentiment for the sake of a joke, Mrs. Merrysmile is brimming over with love of kith and kind, and is peculiarly sensitive to that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. Her never-failing cheeriness enables her to find some subject of interest everywhere, and the most commonplace stranger has some point that will appeal to her. Her universal sympathy is, in fact, quite remarkable. She can talk with equal interest to the washerwoman with seventeen children, a drunken husband and the rheumatics, and to the lady-novelist with a few published books and an inordinate idea of their merits and her own fame. She will enter into discussion upon any subject of interest to the person with whom she may chance to be conversing, irrespective of possibly her complete ignorance of it, yet somehow she will leave an impression that she is quite conversant with the matter. Her cheery manner and happy knack of saying the right thing at the right moment would, I believe, carry her triumphantly through a debate at the Royal Society, while I am convinced that if she had a seat in Parliament, the members below the gangway would accept her as their leader. They would not elect her; she would simply assume the position as a matter of course, and there would be an end of the matter, of course. Some women are born to lead as some men are, and whatever the circumstances of their lives, they will lead those around them. Mrs. Merrysmile is decidedly one of these women, but she leads by her perpetual, irrepressible cheeriness. There is no gainsaying it, it carries you along like a flood.

When I first met Mrs. Merrysmile I was in a hopeless state of depression. I had been disappointed by a woman I loved, and was very miserable, though I have no doubt I thoroughly deserved my fate. The fact is, when I was in love I was so heart-whole about the matter, it became so absolutely the only part of my life with which I had any concern, that I am now quite convinced I must have been a nuisance to the object of my adoration. For women do not love like this; they do not care to be perpetually in the society of their lover, they want change and the liberty of the subject. But, to a man who has no confidence in himself, that liberty of the subject, in the case of the woman he loves, always suggests possibilities of being superseded by some more engaging lover. Women are not as constant as men. I say this in no reproachful spirit, it is simply that their keener sensibility renders them more liable to receive fresh impressions, and to feel the influences of new personalities. Therefore, to a self-suspecting lover as I have always been, doubting my own powers to engage a woman’s constancy, jealousy, with all its petty irritations and its trivial tyrannies, was bound to come between her and myself. It needs a very strong and deep love to accept jealousy as an every-day accompaniment, and I do not suppose I was able to inspire that. So my love-dreams were roughly interrupted, and I was left to get over my sorrow and disappointment as best I could. Happily for me, Mrs. Merrysmile chanced upon my life at this opportune time. What I should have done without her I scarcely dare to think. Anyhow, some years have passed since then, and life has still its possibilities.

I remember, at our first meeting, in answer to some remark of hers, I said, “Nothing matters,” and she reproved me with, “Everything matters.” From that moment her cheeriness began to exert its influence upon my life, for she had immediately divined that something was wrong with me, and she determined to set it right. With a woman’s instinct she guessed it was love. A man would have put it down to liver; but a woman is sure that love is at the root of all evil. So Mrs. Merrysmile began to work in her own cheery, womanly way, and I, little suspecting her methods, lent myself to them entirely. She would draw me out every day on the subject of my love, and I, believing her to be wholly sympathetic, would tell her all that was in my heart, and she would say that she liked me to talk of that other woman. And I would do so, until, without noticing it, I talked less of her, and found that I was drifting into an interest for Mrs. Merrysmile herself, irrespective of her sympathy in my love-affair. Then this became accentuated by her persistent high spirits and jocularity, for though our surroundings of sea and cliff and cornfields, with the infinite poetry of ever-changing skies and moonlit nights, with their majestic mysteries, held me ever in the sentimental mood, and I believed her to be in tune with me, I would frequently receive a shock of discord from her sudden and unconscious leap from the sentimental to the grotesque, from the sublime to the ridiculous. She would rudely break an exquisite silence, which to me had meant a meeting of souls, a mute embrace of thoughts, with some irrelevant remark, some inconsequent gossip, which would jar upon me terribly, but which would really bring me nearer to her, for I would obstinately refuse to believe I had mistaken her soulfulness and beautiful womanliness, notwithstanding those jarring inconsistencies, which I could only regard as the excrescences of her natural cheeriness.

So I grew to love her in spite of myself, and then I began to realise that Mrs. Merrysmile was really an agreeable little flirt who had only taken any trouble to cultivate my affection—which she certainly did very artistically—because I was so absorbed in the woman who had naturally grown tired of me. This, to Mrs. Merrysmile, seemed not only a great pity for myself, but a slight to her own vanity, a waste of sound affection, and to remedy it presented an interesting experiment for a few idle weeks’ occupation. Those silences which I thought so beautifully mutual in feeling, as we sat and gazed over the blue deep, and into those wonderful summer skies which seemed to contain a world’s epic in their spacious mysteries, were, after all, most humorous interludes to her, full of amusing conjecture; but she could no more help all this than she could help talking.