Evelyn Innes

by George Moore

"We are nearly there."

Evelyn started; it was Father Daly speaking to her. "The cottages have spoilt the appearance on this side, but the view is splendid from the other."

The lane ascended and Evelyn remembered how the house stood inside a wall behind some trees, looking westward, the last southern end of the common land as the windmill was the last northern end. There had been iron gates when a great City merchant lived in the Georgian house, which had been gradually transformed to suit the requirements of the sisters. The melancholy little peal of the bell hanging on a loose wire sounded far away, and in the interval Evelyn noticed the large double door, from which the old green paint was peeling. A step was heard within, and the little shutter which closed the grated peephole in the panel of the door was drawn back; the eyes and forehead band of a nun appeared for an instant in the opening; and then with a rattle of keys the door was hastily opened and the little porteress, with ruddy cheeks and a shy smile, stood aside to let Evelyn pass in. She kissed the hand of Monsignor as he turned to her with a kindly word of salutation. "The Reverend Mother is expecting you," she said, her agitation being due to the importance of the occasion.

"No doubt they have been praying that I might sing well, poor dears," Evelyn thought, as she followed the nun up the paved, covered way. Through the iron frame-work, woven through and through with creepers and monthly roses, she caught glimpses of the partly-obliterated carriage drive, and of the neatly-kept flower beds filled with geraniums and tall, white asters.

In the hall an Adam's ceiling radiated in graceful lines from a central medallion, and before a statue of the Sacred Heart a light was burning. Evelyn remembered how the poor lay sisters laboured to keep the stone floor spotless, and it was into the parlour on the left, which Evelyn remembered to be the best parlour, that Sister Angela ushered them.

In the old days, before a sudden crisis on the Stock Exchange had obliged the owner to sell the house for much less than its true value to the little community of sisters of the Passion who were then seeking a permanent house, this room, round which Evelyn and the two priests were looking for seats, had been used as a morning-room. Three long French windows looked out on the garden, and the flowers and air made it a bright, cheerful room, in spite of the severe pictures on the walls. She recognised at once the engraving of Leonardo's "Last Supper" which hung over the solid marble chimney piece a little above the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes and the two blue vases, and also the pale, distempered walls, and the coloured, smiling portrait of the Pope, and a full-length photograph of Cardinal Manning, signed in his own clear, neat handwriting.

Evelyn and the priests, still undecided where they should sit, looked at the little horsehair sofa. Monsignor brought forward for her one of the six high, straight-backed chairs, and they sat at the circular table laid out with severe books; a volume of the Lives of the Saints lay under her hand, and she glanced at a little box for contributions. She looked at the priests and then round the room, striving to penetrate the meaning which it vaguely conveyed to her—an indescribable air of scrupulous neatness and cleanliness, a sense of virginal dulness. But suddenly a startling sense of the incongruity came upon her, that she, the opera-singer, Owen Asher's mistress, should be admitted into a convent, should be received, the honoured guest of holy women. And she got up, leaving the two priests to discuss the financial results of the concert, and stood gazing out at the window. There was the rosery with the lilac bushes shutting out the view of the green fields beyond; and this was the portion of the garden given up to visitors and boarders. She used to walk there during the retreat. Away to the right was the big, sunny garden where the nuns went for their daily recreation. By special permission she had once been allowed there; she remembered the sloping lawns, the fringe of stately elms, and over them the view westward of Richmond Park. She thought of the nuns walking under their trees, half ghost-like, half sybil-like they used to seem in their grey habits with their long grey veils falling picturesquely, their thoughts fixed on an infinite life, and this life never seeming more to them than a little passing shadow.

Evelyn returned slowly to the table. The priests were talking of the convent choir; Monsignor turned to address a question to her, but before he spoke, the door opened and two nuns entered, hardly of this world did they seem in their long grey habits.

The Reverend Mother, a small, thin woman, with eager eyes and a nervous, intimate manner, hastened forward. Evelyn felt that the Reverend Mother could not be less than sixty, yet she did not think of her as an old woman. Between her rapid utterances an expression of sadness came upon her face, instilled through the bright eyes, and Evelyn contrasted her with Mother Philippa, the sub-prioress. Even the touch of these women's hands was different. There was a nervous emotion in the Reverend Mother's hand. Mother Philippa's hand when it touched Evelyn's expressed somehow a simpler humanity.

She was a short, rather stout, homely-faced Englishwoman, about thirty-eight or forty, such a woman as is met daily on the croquet lawns in our suburbs, probably one of three plain sisters, and never could have doubted her vocation.