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Blue Review  Volume 1   Issue: 3  July 1913  Page: 153
 
 Sister Barbara By Gilbert Cannan
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SISTER BARBARA

By GILBERT CANNAN
 
GENERAL BRIERLEY had very definite ideas as to how a gentleman should live, and in the realisation of them had surrounded himself with many possessions, two houses, a wife, two daughters and a son who should follow in his footsteps. When he retired and found his income reduced by two-thirds, he clung to all his possessions, for without them he felt that he could not maintain his position as a gentleman. His son married early and wisely and, when his father looked to him for assistance in those difficulties which beset a gentleman, quarrelled with him, transferred himself to another regiment and went to India. Of the two daughters, one was pretty and attractive to men, and to her whims and desires the other, Barbara, was sacrificed. When the General's difficulties grew to such proportions that he had to rid himself of one of his possessions, he decided that Barbara must go out into the world to earn her living. She had had only the most foolish kind of education and possessed no craft nor art nor marketable accomplishment. Further, she was a lady and therefore cut off from the practice of many trades. She was very religious and solved the problem by returning to a girlish aspiration and becoming a nun. She thought no ill of her father, who protested his affection and bemoaned their harsh necessity. He took her to the station and paid for her third-class ticket.

II

She was in the convent for eleven years. In the beginning she found it a little difficult to fall in with the monotonous routine of the place and to overcome her repulsion from the rough domestic labours which she had to undertake. She learned to cook and sew and darn and mend and clean, and when she was entrusted with the care of the children her education began. Her refinement and sensitiveness made her successful with them and little by little the Mother Superior promoted her to full control of that part of
Blue Review  Volume 1   Issue: 3  July 1913  Page: 154
 
 Sister Barbara By Gilbert Cannan
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the convent's activity. She was so absorbed and busy that she had little time for thought of the outside world and she rarely communicated with her family. She heard that her sister was married — “a splendid position” — and wrote to congratulate her. Then she did not write again for years. She was neither very happy nor very unhappy: her busy life left no room for violent variations of moral temperature and she was puzzled and distressed by the emotional fervour which some of the sisters brought to the practice of their religion.

The convent belonged to a world-wide sisterhood, and twice the Mother Superior sent Sister Barbara over to houses in France and Belgium. She displayed excellent tact and business capacity and the supreme authority marked her out for diplomatic missions. Far rather would she have stayed with her children, but obedience was an element in her vow and she obeyed. She was sent to New York, to South Africa, to Manila, and she saw the activity of the outside world and was excited by it. She counted her excitement for a sin and her conscience scourged her, but it was not long before she saw that the business organisation of the sisterhood was neither better nor worse than other commercial undertakings, and therefore in flat contradiction to the principles of religion. In the simplicity and directness of her nature she hated to have her life broken up into two portions, between profession and practice.

When she consulted the Mother Superior on her scruples, she was told that the Mother Church must be maintained and had to fight for her existence: was she not the Church Militant? Sister Barbara procured a promise that she should not be sent abroad again for some time, and she returned to her children. Then, however, she found herself thinking of them in a new way. Not as little units in the Church, but as individuals, who would grow up and go out into the warm, bright, multicoloured movement of the world. It was that, or the pure white radiance of the cloistered life. But the cloistered life, as she could not but admit to herself, was neither pure nor white.
Blue Review  Volume 1   Issue: 3  July 1913  Page: 155
 
 Sister Barbara By Gilbert Cannan
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A girl who had come to the convent to hide away from her grief and shame in an unhappy love-affair, confided in her, told all the story of her love. She did not tell the truth and it was not a beautiful story, but there was warmth in it and a tiny spasm of passion. It filled Sister Barbara's thoughts and she was very unhappy. She found herself going over the eleven years, wiping them out as though they had never been and living again in her father's house. If she had stayed … If she had stayed?…

She told the Mother Superior that she must return. There was no room for argument: she must return to the world.

III

She found no welcome. Nothing had changed in her home. Still her father was spending twice his income. Still her mother was ruled by her sister, who had left her husband and taken up her old position at home, filling the house with men, young and old, seeking pleasure at every turn. She found no welcome. They were in the midst of a financial crisis and by way of retrenchment had dismissed two of their servants. The cook demanded more wages and was dismissed. Barbara undertook the cooking and the housekeeping. The waste, the extravagance offended her, and she could not but try to reform the household. The greatest leakage was through her sister, who always seemed to have money for her every whim. Where before she was indulged on the prospect of a successful marriage, now she was humoured on the score of her conjugal failure. She was still spoiled and pretty and there was no alteration in her character or her conduct. Barbara found her father every day more pompously querulous, her mother more foolish, her sister self-willed and thoughtless. Accustomed as she was to the acute economy of the convent, the thriftlessness of this household appalled her and she could not see how a catastrophe had been averted. Her father did not know either, but he supposed that the danger would be avoided as others had been avoided before. Certain reforms Barbara was able to accomplish. On the
Blue Review  Volume 1   Issue: 3  July 1913  Page: 156
 
 Sister Barbara By Gilbert Cannan
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strength of them her father bought a motorcar, which her sister monopolised.

More even than her changes, Barbara's family resented her competence and thoroughness. A storm gathered, grew, broke and Barbara's mother declared that one or other of the sisters must leave the house. It was Barbara who went, and she took a room in a cheap Bloomsbury boarding-house, her father making her an allowance of one pound a week until she should be in a position to maintain herself. She set herself to learn typewriting and shorthand, and often she told herself that it had been folly to leave the convent, that life in the world was impossible and mean and dull. Her co-inhabitants in the boarding-house were all in as poor a plight as she, and they were shy and awkward with each other or took refuge in the traditional humour of the place.

When she had mastered her new work she was faced with the impossibility of finding a situation. Always the youth or prettiness of her competitors thrust her into the background. She took herself in hand, watched other women for the tricks she had forgotten or never acquired, recollected her sister's ways for the details and subtle refinements which had gone to the making of her charm. She imitated these things but despised them because they were not part of herself. Her luck did not turn and she began to think that something of the nunnery must cling about her. She was too vigourous to feel that her age might be a handicap.

In four months she had not earned a penny and her family seemed completely to have forgotten her, except that once her sister drove up in the motorcar and left her a parcel of clothes that “might be useful to her”. She saw the car as she was coming wearily home in the afternoon and waited until her sister had gone.

Three days later she had the excitement of finding a letter on her plate at breakfast. The other boarders eyed her as she opened it. She felt them watching her and gave no sign, folded it up and laid it on the table. It was short, and a bare statement from her mother that her father was so straitened for money that it would
Blue Review  Volume 1   Issue: 3  July 1913  Page: 157
 
 Sister Barbara By Gilbert Cannan
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be impossible to continue her allowance. . . . In her purse she had five shillings and three-pence halfpenny. She gulped down her breakfast and one by one the other boarders went away until she was left alone except for the quiet man with the brown eyes who always sat at the other end of the table. With her eyes staring in front of her she sat and she felt hard and withered. It was the tone of her mother's letter that had hurt her so, that she could hardly realise its contents.

The quiet man came towards her, stood by her side and said:

“We seem to be in the same boat. I should like to be able to help you.”

She resented his intrusion but she could make no reply. Even an impertinence was something to fill the emptiness about and within her. He went on:

“You can't talk about trouble straight off. At least, I can't. Will you dine with me to-night at the Tellier in Soho? You can get a very good dinner there for a shilling.”

She looked up at him and there was a twinkle in his eyes and much friendliness. A shilling dinner seemed a good joke and instinctively they agreed to laugh at it together, and so use it to brush aside awkwardness and embarrassment and the savage egoism of loneliness.

Yes. She would dine with him that night at seven.

“I, too”, he said, “am going to look for work.”

That also was a joke and it appealed to her as a humorous coincidence that another creature should spend the day in looking for work. The day passed quickly and she was punctual, to find him waiting for her at the Tellier.

“Any luck”? he said.

“No.”

“Neither had I. How much money have you got? ''

“Five shillings.”

“I have fourteen and sixpence. We'd better pool it and then it will go farther for both of us.”
Blue Review  Volume 1   Issue: 3  July 1913  Page: 158
 
 Sister Barbara By Gilbert Cannan
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She agreed and he said:

“Now I'll tell you my story. I was married until a year ago. I was in business in Leicestershire and we had a fine house, land, horses, people we called friends and all that. I'd been married eight years. For various reasons, the most fundamental of which were probably physical and therefore impossible for my wife to face, we drifted apart, so far that we shared nothing but the habit of marriage. That was deadly. My wife couldn't or wouldn't see it and was outraged when I suggested a separation. She didn't want to lose her position. She cared about the people we called friends and the money and the house, and as I couldn't make her see the reason for throwing it all up and trying another arrangement, in a fit of desperation I said she could keep all that if she'd only let me go. She couldn't see why I wanted to go, but she did feel that to keep me might be dangerous, so she agreed to that. I kept my word. I took just enough to keep me for a year, for I had an idea the best thing for me was to make my own way and not to go on living padded in with stocks and shares in other people's work. I cut away pretty thoroughly, perhaps too thoroughly. Anyhow, here I am. I haven't got any work. I shan't be able to pay my rent, but I'd rather sleep on the Embankment than appeal to anyone for money. The only thing I miss is the horses. I walk in the Park sometimes and hate the people who have got them.”

She told her story.

“The only thing I miss is the children. I was always learning from them. You know, growing.”

“I know.”

He took her hand in his.

That night they walked miles through the streets of London. She was the first to procure work at thirty shillings a week, and with the confidence this gave her she pocketed her pride and worried her father's distinguished and busy friends until they gave her extra work in the evenings. Upon that she took three
Blue Review  Volume 1   Issue: 3  July 1913  Page: 159
 
 Sister Barbara By Gilbert Cannan
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rooms in a shabby district, high up with a view of Hampstead from her windows. She saw her friend every day. Every night they dined together and very soon, through her, he too obtained a situation. They pooled all their earnings and it was at her suggestion that he came to lodge in her rooms.

For long they hovered in the outer dreamland of unspoken love, but love was theirs and would not be denied. Out of their misery grew wonders and they were born again, his old life and hers lost in the new life they had together builded.

Often they walk together in the park and gaze at the horses, and every penny they can save is put by for the purchase of a little house in the country where they can keep a horse and trap. That is all his desire and with his happiness she will be content.