Part 7

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.

_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.

Life is a constant carnival to Mrs. Merrysmile, and love is a delightful pastime which is necessary for her entertainment. There is no harm in it; her love-making is, indeed, of the most innocent kind, in fact, it is purely psychological, without a suspicion of passion, which would only seem incongruous to her. To be loved is essential to her; every one who comes in contact with her must give her of his heart’s best affection. She is satisfied with nothing else, and though she and her husband are on terms of mutual affection and perfect confidence, she takes all the love she can get as her absolute right. That she should give any in return never occurs to her; it is sufficient that she scatters her cheeriness broadcast, relieves her friends and relations of all their depressions, keeps them in good spirits, and, if they be dull or ill, bullies them with a view to mending their ways. But she loves, in her own way, as the butterfly loves the flower that it casually kisses in the garden, and surely the flower is all the sweeter for the butterfly’s kiss. I know I feel all the better for having touched hearts with Mrs. Merrysmile, though her way of loving was not my way, and my sentimental devotion was as congruous with her butterfly heart-flutterings as the Nasmyth steam-hammer with the tin-tack.

The humour of the situation was always uppermost in her mind though it had to compete for this place with the gratification of her vanity and the pleasure of passing the time cheerfully for us both, and she could not understand that the whole affair did not present itself to me in exactly the same light. As immunity from contradiction of any kind had been hers throughout her life, both as maid and as wife, my frequent failure to fall in with her ideas as to the humour of our flirtation—for to her it was really nothing more, though in her innocent way she pretended to regard it as a real love-affair—it was not to be wondered at that our confidential communings became less constant, until my lover-like attitude developed into that of the elderly friend. You cannot go on loving desperately a woman to whom everything is simply funny, or, at least, suggestion for a jest. And that is one of the drawbacks of a _par excellence_ cheery woman. You want to love the woman rather than her jokes, or even her bright spirits, charming as the faculty for these undoubtedly is. But as a man’s moods vary so does he expect the woman he loves to respond to them. Incessant cheeriness and readiness to see only the quaint or comic side of things, if unchecked in expression, is apt to turn life into a farce, and even the merriest farce jars when one is only in the temper for romantic drama, or when pathos is the dominant note of the moment.

Yet with all her irresponsibility of feeling, with all her irrelevance of mood, Mrs. Merrysmile is quite one of the most delightful companions for man or woman. She is a woman’s woman quite as much as a man’s, but I would specially recommend her at times of joy and frolic rather than of sorrow—however excellent her intention to cheer you and help you make the best of everything. For so casual is her nature that troubles will scarcely present their actual aspect to her in relation to all the surrounding facts of life; she will think they are not really as heavy and important as you think them, but rather chide you for making such a fuss. It is from no lack of sympathy that this charming little woman will not always understand your feelings, but simply that her native cheerfulness is so superabundant; she cannot realise that things can ever be as bad as less optimistic persons imagine. And if, when you feel ill, she tells you bluntly that there is little or nothing the matter with you, it is only because she believes too much sympathy is not conducive to effort towards recovery, and she hates to see people ill. It is perhaps very irritating, but it is her way, and it is quite good-natured.

I should hardly recommend Mrs. Merrysmile as a consoler in a house of mourning; the very brightness of her disposition might clash with the grief of the bereaved ones, and an obstinate contrariness of spirit, coupled with a desire to make everybody as cheerful as herself, might, perhaps, give pain where she intended comfort. Nor would Mrs. Merrysmile be a suitable wife for a man of melancholy mood or morose temper, for she would jar upon him with her intemperate cheerfulness and unmuzzled mirth, while he would bore her unutterably. But she is just happily placed as she is, with a husband ready to worship the ground she walks upon, with a host of friends and relations that defer to her autocratic word with infinite pleasure, and a friend, who is glad to have loved her, but is just as content, and after all, perhaps happier, to have won her friendship through the more subtle and intimate insight into her nature gained as a lover. She is a delightful little creature, but she should always live in the sunshine and amid the roses. There she is perfectly appropriate, and life is the richer and the fairer for her presence.

_THE UNCONJUGAL WOMAN_

Lady Gladys Parchment is one of the most familiar, as she is one of the most admired, figures in London society, and to the ordinary observer she is one of the most happy and fortunate. For is she not exceedingly beautiful? Does she not come of an old and noble family, though it be more distinguished in these hard times for pedigree and nobility, perhaps, than for property? And is she not wedded to a man of splendid fortune and reputation? True he is some twenty years her senior; but then, if he were not, he would hardly be of sufficiently mature age to have attained the dignity of a judgeship, and in this intensely practical age we are obliged to pay a price for everything. In her case, Lady Gladys, the daughter of a poor Irish earl, had to pay for the advantage of marrying a wealthy English judge the price of heavy disparity in years, with its consequences. And was Sir Drury Parchment worth the price?

Had Lady Gladys not been born in the purple, so that, by the conventional aspirations of her order, and a kind of fictional duty to her rank and station, she was constrained to make a wealthy marriage or suffer social obscurity, would she not rather have wedded less advantageously, from a worldly point of view, and more congruously in a heart sense? But it is very difficult for a girl—with little experience of the world beyond the ball-room, the tennis-lawn, and the hunting-field, who cannot possibly realise all that matrimony means—to argue successfully against the logic of wealth and position, when her heart remains an unconcerned auditor. Yet marriage either makes or mars the life of the individual, it cannot leave it _in statu quo_, but must either complete or disintegrate it. Irrespective of material fortune, the life of a man or woman may be adjudged a success or a failure according as it is blessed with the right mate or cursed with the wrong one. So long as it remains actually mateless, and without the response of love, it is simply unfinished.

Now, when a beautiful and brilliant woman, with apparently every worldly advantage at her command, takes a pessimistic view of life, and assumes a cynical attitude towards the world, you may be sure that she has married the wrong man, and made a failure of her life. And you cannot converse long and familiarly with Lady Gladys Parchment without perceiving this. Her talk may sparkle with wit, and ripple over with humour, but it will be the keen, biting wit of the cynic, the bitter humour of the pessimist, and there is no mistaking it for the pleasantry of cheerful content. Her sarcasm has a grim laughter in it, but it is as the mocking laughter of disappointed genius when it hears superficial talent winning the popular plaudits. In society Lady Gladys shines because of her personal and mental gifts, she loves society simply for the enjoyment of conquest which it affords, and this has to make up for so much else in her life. Indeed, she finds so little else in life at all.

Sir Drury Parchment is a man of violent temper and dyspeptic temperament, but his moods are various, inconsequent, and unexpected. It is impossible to foresee the changes of his temper. He will sulk for days without any apparent cause, he will, for weeks together, exhibit no interest whatever in the doings of his wife and child, and then suddenly he will evince a fierce jealousy of every detail that concerns them, but this will never be accompanied by any show of affection. Sentiment of any kind is foreign to his nature, and, whatever his mood, it is always pure egotism that dominates it. How such a confirmed egotist came to be married at all has always been a puzzle to me, especially how he ever came to marry Lady Gladys, who is about the last woman in the world he should have chosen, if marriage means communion of any kind.