Taking the Veil
Mansfield
.. 

  It seemed impossible that anyone should be unhappy on
such a beautiful morning. Nobody was, decided Edna,
except herself. The windows were flung wide in the houses.
From within there came the sound of pianos, little hands chased
after each other and ran away from each other, practising
scales. The trees fluttered in the sunny gardens, all bright
with spring flowers. Street boys whistled, a little dog barked;
people passed by, walking so lightly, so swiftly, they looked
as though they wanted to break into a run. Now she actually
saw in the distance a parasol, peach-cloured, the first parasol
of the year.
  Perhaps even Edna did not look quite as unhappy as she felt.
It is not easy to look tragic at eighteen, when you are extremely
pretty, with the cheeks and lips and shining eyes of perfect
health. Above all, when you are wearing a French blue frock
and your new spring hat trimmed with cornflowers. True,
she carried under her arm a book bound in horrid black leather.
Perhaps the book provided a gloomy note, but only by accident;
it was the ordinary Library binding. For Edna had made going
to the Library an excuse for getting out of the house to think,
to realise what had happened, to decide somehow what was
to be done now.
  An awful thing had happened. Quite suddenly, at the theatre
last night, when she and Jimmy were seated side by side in the
dress-circle, without a moment's warning -- in fact, she had
just finished a chocolate almond and passed the box to him
again -- she had fallen in love with an actor. But -- fallen -- in
 -- love....
  The feeling was unlike anything she had ever imagined


before. It wasn't in the least pleasant. It was hardly thrilling.
Unless you can call the most dreadful sensation of hopeless
misery, despair, agony and wretchedness, thrilling. Combined
with  certainty that if that actor met her on the pavement
after, while Jimmy was fetching their cab, she would follow
him to the ends of the earth, at a nod, at a sign, without giving
another thought to Jimmy or her father and mother or her
happy home and countless friends again....
  The play had begun fairly cheerfully. That was at the
chocolate almond stage. Then the hero had gone blind.
Terrible moment! Edna had cried so much she had to borrow
Jimmy's folded, smooth-feeling handkerchief as well. Not that
crying mattered. Whole rows were in tears. Even the men
blew their noses with a loud trumpeting noise and tried to peer
at the programme instead of looking at the stage. Jimmy, most
mercifully dry-eyed -- for what would she have done without
his handkerchief? -- squeezed her free hand, and whispered
"Cheer up, darling girl!" And it was then she had taken a
last chocolate almond to please him and passed the box again.
Then there had been that ghastly scene with the hero alone on
the stage in a deserted room at twilight, with a band playing
outside and the sound of cheering coming from the street. He
had tried -- ah! how painfully, how pitifully! -- to grope his way
to the window. He had succeeded at last. There he stood
holding the curtain while one beam of light, just one beam,
shone full on his raised sightless face, and the band faded away
into the distance....
  It was -- really, it was absolutely -- oh, the most -- it was
simply -- in fact, from that moment Edna knew her life could
never be the same. She drew her hand from Jimmy's, leaned
back, and shut the chocolate box for ever. This at last was love!
  Edna and Jimmy were engaged. She had had her hair up for
a year and a half; they had been publicly engaged for a year.
But they had known they were going to marry each other ever
since they walked in the Botanical Gardens with their nurses,


and sat on the grass with a wine biscuit and a piece of barley-sugar
each for their tea. It was so much an accepted thing that
Edna had worn a wonderfully good imitation of an engagement-ring
out of a cracker all the time she was at school. And up
till now they had been devoted to each other.
  But now it was over. It was so completely over that Edna
found it difficult to believe that Jimmy did not realise it too.
She smiled wisely, sadly, as she turned into the gardens of the
Convent of the Sacred Heart and mounted the path that led
through them to Hill Street. How much better to know it now
than to wait until after they were married! Now it was possible
that Jimmy would get over it. No, it was no use deceiving
herself; he would never get over it! His life was wrecked, was
ruined; that was inevitable. But he was young....Time,
people always said, Time might make a little, just a little
difference. In forty years when he was an old man, he
might be able to think of her calmly -- perhaps. But she,
 -- what did the future hold for her?
  Edna had reached the top of the path. There under a newleafed
tree, hung with little bunches of white flowers, she sat
down on a green bench and looked over the Convent flower-beds.
In the one nearest to her there grew tender stocks,
with a border of blue, shell-like pansies, with one corner a
clump of creamy freesias, their light spears of green criss-crossed
over the flowers. The Convent pigeons were tumbling
high in the air, and she could hear the voice of Sister Agnes who
was giving a singing lesson. A_h_-_m_e_, sounded the deep tones
of the nun, and A_h_-_m_e_, they were echoed....
  If she did not marry Jimmy, of course she would marry
nobody. The man she was in love with, the famous actor --
Edna had far too much common-sense not to realise that would
never be. It was very odd. She didn't even want it to be.
Her love was too intense for that. It had to be endured, silently;
it had to torment her. It was, she supposed, simply that kind
of love.


  "But, Edna!" cried Jimmy. "Can you never change?
Can I never hope again?"
  Oh, what sorrow to have to say it, but it must be said. "No,
Jimmy, I will never change."
  Edna bowed her head; and a little flower fell on her lap, and
the voice of Sister Agnes cried suddenly A_h_-n_o_, and the echo
came, A_h_-n_o_...
  At that moment the future was revealed. Edna saw it all.
She was astonished; it took her breath away at first. But,
after all, what could be more natural? She would go into a
convent....Her father and mother do everything to dissuade
her, in vain. As for Jimmy, his state of mind hardly bears
thinking about. Why can't they understand? How can they
add to her suffering like this? The world is cruel, terribly
cruel! After a last scene when she gives away her jewellery
and so on to her best friends -- she so calm, they so broken-hearted
 -- into a convent she goes. No, one moment. The very
evening of her going is the actor's last night at Port Willin.
He receives by a strange messenger a box. It is full of white
flowers. But there is no name, no card. Nothing? Yes, under
the roses, wrapped in a white handkerchief, Edna's last
photograph with, written underneath,
  The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
  Edna sat very still under the trees; she clasped the black
book in her fingers as though it were her missal. She takes the
name of Sister Angela. Snip! Snip! All her lovely hair is
cut off. Will she be allowed to send one curl to Jimmy? It
is contrived somehow. And in a blue gown with a white headband
Sister Angela goes from the convent to the chapel, from
the chapel to the convent with something unearthly in her look,
in her sorrowful eyes, and in the gentle smile with which they
greet the little children who run to her. A saint! She hears it
whispered as she paces the chill, wax-smelling corridors. A
saint! And visitors to the chapel are told of the nun whose


voice is heard above the other voices, of her youth, her beauty,
of her tragic, tragic love. "There is a man in this town whose
life is ruined...."
  A big bee, a golden furry fellow, crept into a freesia, and the
delicate flower leaned over, swung, shook; and when the bee
flew away it fluttered still as though it were laughing. Happy,
careless flower!
  Sister Angela looked at it and said, "Now it is winter." One
night, lying in her icy cell, she hears a cry. Some stray animal
is out there in the garden, a kitten or a lamb or -- well, whatever
little animal might be there. Up rises the sleepless nun. All in
white, shivering but fearless, she goes and brings it in. But next
morning, when the bell rings for matins, she is found tossing
in high fever...in delirium...and she never recovers. In
three days all is over. The service has been said in the chapel,
and she is buried in the corner of the cemetry reserved for the
nuns, where there are plain little crosses of wood. Rest in
Peace, Sister Angela....
  Now it is evening. Two old people leaning on each
other come slowly to the grave and kneel down sobbing,
  "Our daughter! Our only daughter!" Now there comes
another. He is all in black; he comes slowly. But when he is
there and lifts his black hat, Edna sees to her horror his hair is
snow-white. Jimmy! Too late, too late! The tears are
running down his face; he is crying n_o_w_. Too late, too late!
The wind shakes the leafless trees in the courtyard. He gives
one awful bitter cry.
  Edna's black book fell with a thud to the garden path. She
jumped up, her heart beating. My darling! No, it's not too
late. It's all been a mistake, a terrible dream. Oh, that white
hair! How could she have done it? She had not done it. Oh,
heavens! Oh, what happiness! She is free, young, and nobody
knows her secret. Everything is still possible for her and Jimmy.
The house they have planned may still be built, the little solemn
boy with his hands behind his back watching them plant the


standard roses may still be born. His baby sister...But when
Edna got as far as his baby sister, she stretched out her arms as
though the little love came flying through the air to her, and
gazing at the garden, at the white sprays on the tree, at those
darling pigeons blue against the blue, and the Convent with its
narrow windows, she realized that now at last for the first time in
her life -- she had never imagined any feeling like it before -- she
knew what it was to be in love, but -- in -- love!