Part 24 (2/2)
”The sisters have no doubt forgotten all about it by now.”
But Evelyn wanted to know which of the sisters had complained, so that she might beg her pardon.
”She doesn't want you to beg her pardon.”
”I beg you to allow me, it will be better that I should. The benefit will be mine.”
The Prioress shook her head, and listened willingly to Evelyn, who told her of her letter to Monsignor. ”Now, wasn't it extraordinary, Mother, that I should have written like that about Sister Bridget, and to-day you should tell me that the lay sisters complained about me? If the complaint had been that I was inclined to put the active above the contemplative orders and was dissatisfied with our life here--”
”Dissatisfied!” the Prioress said.
”Only this, Mother: I have been reading the story of the Order of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and it seems to me so wonderful that everything else, for the moment, seems insignificant.”
The Reverend Mother smiled.
”Your enthusiasms, my dear Evelyn, are delightful. The last book you read, the last person you meet--”
”Do you think I am so frivolous, so changeable as that, dear Mother?”
”Not changeable, Evelyn, but spontaneous.”
”It would seem to me that everything in me is of slow growth--but why talk of me when there is Jeanne to talk about; marvellous, extraordinary, unique--” Evelyn was nearly saying ”divine Jeanne,”
but she stopped herself in time and subst.i.tuted the word ”saintly.”
”No one seems to me more real than this woman, no one in literature; not Hamlet, nor Don Quixote, not Dante himself starts out into clearer outline than this poor servant-girl--a goatherd in her childhood.” And to the Prioress, who did not know the story of this poor woman, Evelyn told it, laying stress--as she naturally would-- on Jeanne's refusal to marry a young sailor, whom she had been willing to marry at first, but whom she refused to marry on his returning after a long voyage. When he asked her for whom she had refused him, she answered for n.o.body, only she did not wish to marry, though she knew of no reason why she should not. It was not caprice but an instinct which caused Jeanne to leave her sweetheart, and to go on working in humble service attending on a priest until he died, then going to live with his sister, remaining with her until she died, and saving during all these long twenty years only four-and-twenty pounds--all the money she had when she returned to the little seaport town whence she had come: a little seaport town where the aged poor starved in the streets, or in garrets in filth and vermin, without hope of relief from any one.
It was to this cruel little village, of which there are many along the French coast, and along every coast in the world, that Jeanne returned to rent a garret with an old and bedridden woman, unable to help herself. Without the poor to help the poor the poor would not be able to live, and this old woman lived by the work of Jeanne's hands for many a year, Jeanne going every morning to the market-place to find some humble employment, finding it sometimes, returning at other times desperate, but concealing her despair from her bedridden companion, telling her as gaily as might be that they would have to do without any dinner that day. So did they live until two little seamstresses--women inspired by the same pity for the poor as Jeanne herself--heard of her, and asked the _cure_, in whom this cruel little village had inspired an equal pity, to send for Jeanne. She was asked to give her help to those in greater need than she--the blind beggars and such like who prowled about the walls of the churches.
On leaving the priest it is related that she said: ”I don't understand, but I never heard any one speak so beautifully.” But next day when she went to see the priest she understood everything, sufficient at all events for the day which was to take to her garret a blind woman whom the seamstresses had discovered in the last stages of neglect and age. There was the bedridden woman whom Jeanne supported, and who feared to share Jeanne's charity with another, and resented the intrusion; she had to be pacified and cajoled with some little present of food, for the aged and hungry are like animals-- food appeases them, silences many a growl; and the blind woman was given a corner in the garret. ”But how is she to be fed?” was the question put to Jeanne next morning, and from that question the whole Order of the Little Sisters of the Poor started. Jeanne, inspired suddenly, said, ”I will beg for them,” and seizing a basket she went out to beg for broken victuals.
”There is a genius for many things besides the singing of operas, painting pictures, and writing books,” Evelyn said, ”and Jeanne's genius was for begging for her poor people. And there is nothing more touching in the world's history than her journey in the milk-cart to the regatta. You see, dear Mother, she was accustomed to beg from door to door among squalid streets, stopping a pa.s.ser-by, stooping under low doorways, intruding everywhere, daring everything among her own people, but frightened by the fas.h.i.+onable folk _en grande toilette_ bent on amus.e.m.e.nt. It seems that her courage almost failed her, but grasping the cross which hung round her neck, she entered a crowd of pleasure-seekers, saying, 'Won't you give me something for my poor people?' Now, Mother, isn't the story a wonderful one? for there was genius in this woman, though it was only for begging: a tall, thin, curious, fantastic figure, considered simple by some, but gifted for her task which had been revealed to her in middle age.”
”But why, Evelyn, does that seem to you so strange that her task should have been revealed to her in middle age?”
Evelyn looked at the Reverend Mother for a while unable to answer, then went on suddenly with her tale, telling how that day, at that very regatta, a man had slapped Jeanne in the face, and she had answered, ”You are perfectly right, a box on the ears is just what is suited to me; but now tell me what you are going to give me for my poor people.” At another part of the ground somebody had begun to tease her--some young man, no doubt, in a long fas.h.i.+onable grey frock-coat with race-gla.s.ses hung round his neck, had ventured to tease this n.o.ble woman, to twit her, to jeer and jibe at her uncouthness, for she was uncouth, and she stood bearing with these jeers until they apologised to her. ”Never mind the apology,” she had answered; ”you have had your fun out of me, now give me something for my poor people.” They gave her five francs, and she said, ”At that price you may tease me as much as you please.”
Evelyn asked if it were not extraordinary how an ignorant and uncouth woman, a goatherd during her childhood, a priest's servant till she was well on in middle age, should have been able to invent a system of charity which had penetrated all over Europe. Every moment Evelyn expected the Prioress to check her, for she was conscious that she was placing the active orders above the contemplative, Jeanne above St. Teresa, and, determined to see how far she could go in this direction without being reproved, she began to speak of how Jeanne, after having made the beds and cleaned the garret in the morning, took down a big basket and stood receiving patiently the remonstrances addressed to her, the blind woman saying, ”I am certain and sure you will forget to ask for the halfpenny a week which I used to get from the grocery store, you very nearly forgot it last week, and had to go back for it.” ”But I'll not make a mistake this time,” Jeanne would answer. Her bed-ridden friend would reprove her, ”But you did forget to ask for my soup.” To bear patiently with all such unjust remonstrances was part of Jeanne's genius, and Evelyn asked the Reverend Mother if it were not strange that a woman like Jeanne had never inspired some great literary work.
”I spoke just now of Hamlet, Don Quixote, but Falstaff himself is not more real than Jeanne, and her words are always so wonderful, wonderful as Joan of Arc's. When the old woman used to hide their food under the bed-clothes and sell it for food for the pigs, leaving the Little Sisters almost starving, Jeanne used to say, 'So-and-so has not been as nice as usual this afternoon.' How is it, Mother, that no great writer has ever given us a portrait of Jeanne?”
”Well, Jeanne, my dear Evelyn, has given us her own portrait. What can a writer add to what Nature has given? No one has ever yet given a portrait of a great saint, of St. Teresa--what can any one tell us that we do not already know?”
”St. Teresa's life pa.s.sed in thought, whereas Jeanne's pa.s.sed in action.”
”Don't be afraid, Evelyn,” the Prioress said, ”to say what you mean, that perhaps the way of the Little Sisters of the Poor is a better way than ours.”
”It seems so, Mother, doesn't it?”
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