And the idea of a bell sounding across the evening landscape was in
the mind of the congregation when Sister Mary John played the octave;
and the broken chords she played with her right hand awoke a
sensation of lights dying behind distant hills.
It is almost night, and amid a lonely landscape a harsh rock appears,
and by it a forlorn woman stands--a woman who is without friend or
any mortal hope--and she commends herself to the care of the Virgin.
She begins to sing softly, tremulous, like one in pain and doubt,
"Ave Maria, hearken to the Virgin's cry." The melody she sings is
rich, even ornate, but the richness of the phrase, with its two
little grace notes, does not mitigate the sorrow at the core; the
rich garb in which the idea is clothed does not rob the song of its
humanity.
Evelyn's voice filled with the beauty of the melody, and she sang the
phrase which closes the stanza--a phrase which dances like a puff of
wind in an evening bough--so tenderly, so lovingly, that acute tears
trembled under the eyelids. And all her soul was in her voice when
she sang the phrase of passionate faith which the lonely,
disheartened woman sings, looking up from the desert rock. Then her
voice sank into the calm beauty of the "Ave Maria," now given with
confidence in the Virgin's intercession, and the broken chords passed
down the keyboard, uniting with the last note of the solemn octaves,
which had sounded through the song like bells heard across an evening
landscape.
"How beautifully she sings it!" a man said out loud, and his
neighbour looked and wondered, for the man's eyes were full of tears.
"You have a beautiful voice, child," said the Prioress when they came
out of church, "and it is a real pleasure to me to hear you sing, and
it will be a greater pleasure when I know that for the future your
great gift will be devoted to the service of God. Shall we go into
the garden for a little walk before supper? We shall have it to
ourselves, and the air will do you good."
It was the month of June, and the convent garden was in all the
colour of its summer--crimson and pink; and all the scents of the
month, stocks and sweetbriar, were blown up from St. Peter's Walk. In
the long mixed borders the blue larkspurs stood erect between
Canterbury bells and the bush peonies, crimson and pink, and here and
there amid furred leaves, at the end of a long furred stalk, flared
the foolish poppy, roses like pale porcelain clustered along the low
terraced walk and up the house itself, over the stucco walls; but
more beautiful than the roses were the delicate petals of the
clematis, stretched out like fingers upon the walls.
An old nun was being wheeled up and down the terrace in a bath-chair
by one of the lay sisters, that she might enjoy the sweet air.
"I must say a word to Sister Lawrence," the Prioress said, "she will
never forgive me if I don't. She is the eldest member of our
community; if she lives another two years, she will complete half a
century of convent life."
As they drew near Evelyn saw two black eyes in a white, almost
fleshless face. The eyes alone seemed to live, and the shrunken
figure, huddled in many shawls, gave an impression of patriarchal
age. Evelyn saw by her veil that Sister Lawrence was a lay sister,
and the old nun tried to draw herself up in her chair as they
approached, and kissed the hand of the Prioress.
"Well, Sister, how are you feeling? I have brought you our new
musical postulant to look at. I want to know what you think of her.
You must know, Evelyn," said the Prioress, "that Sister Lawrence is a
great judge of people's vocations; I always consult her about my new
postulants."
Sister Lawrence took Evelyn's hands between hers and gazed into her
face so earnestly that Evelyn feared her innermost thoughts were
being read. Then, with a little touch of wilfulness, that came oddly
from one so old and venerable, the Sister said:
"Well, Reverend Mother, she is pretty anyhow, and it is a long time
since we had a pretty postulant."
"Really, Sister Lawrence, I am ashamed of you," said the Prioress
with playful severity; "Sister Evelyn will be quite disedified."
"Mother, if I like them to be pretty it is only because they have one
more gift to bring to the feet of our dear Lord. I see in Sister
Evelyn's face that she has a vocation. I believe she is the
providence that God has sent to help us through our difficulties."
"We are all praying," said the Prioress, "that it may be so."
"Well, Hilda, you'll agree with me now, I think, that we have every
reason to hope."
"Hope for what, dear Mother?"
"That we shall discover a vocation in Evelyn. You heard what Sister
Lawrence said, and she has had great experience."
"It is possible to God, of course, that an opera singer may find a
vocation for the religious life, and live happily in a community of
nuns devoted to Perpetual Adoration."
"But you don't believe God desires that such a thing should come to
pass?"
"I shouldn't like to say that, it would be too presumptuous; but it
would be entirely out of the ordinary course."
The Prioress began to wonder if Mother Hilda suspected that some
great sin committed while she was in Rome was the cause of Evelyn's
nervous breakdown; and the Mistress of the Novices, as she walked by
the side of the Prioress, began to wonder why the Prioress wished
that Evelyn should become a nun. It might be that the Prioress, who
was a widow, was interested in the miracle of the great shock which
had caused Evelyn to relinquish her career and to turn to the Church!
That might be her motive, she reflected. Those who have lived in the
world are attracted and are interested in each other, and are to some
extent alien to the real nun, to her who never doubts her vocation
from the first and resolves from the first to bring her virginity to
God--it being what is most pleasing to him. It might be that the
Prioress was influenced, unconsciously, of course, by some such
motive; yet it was strange that she should be able to close her eyes
to Evelyn's state of mind. The poor woman was still distracted and
perplexed by a great shock which had happened before she came to the
convent and which had been aggravated by another when she went to
Rome; she had returned to them as to a refuge from herself. Such
mental crises often happened to women of the world, to naturally
pious women; but natural piety did not in the least mean a vocation,
and Mother Hilda had to admit to herself that she could discover no
sign of a vocation in Evelyn. How were it possible to discover one?
She was not herself, and would not be for a long while, if she ever
recovered herself. Mother Prioress had chosen to admit her as a
postulant.... Even that concession Mother Hilda did not look upon
with favour. Why not go one step farther and make Miss Dingle a
postulant? It seemed to her that if Mother Prioress insisted that
Evelyn should take the white veil at present, a very serious step
would be taken. It was the Mistress of the Novices who would be
responsible for Evelyn's instruction, and Evelyn was hardly ever in
the novitiate; she was always singing, or working in the garden.