He became aware that some one was knocking at the door.
Paul started as though suddenly awakened from sleep and sprang up from
his bed with the confused sensation of one who has to depart on a
journey and is afraid of being too late. But directly he tried to stand
up he was forced to sit down weakly on his bed again, for his limbs
gave way under him and he felt as if he had been beaten all over whilst
he lay asleep. Crouched together with his head sunk on his breast, he
could only nod faintly in response to the knock. His mother had not
forgotten to call him early, as he had requested her on the previous
day: his mother was following her own straight path, she remembered
nothing of what had happened during the night and called him as though
this were just like any other morning.
Yes, it was like any other morning. Paul got up again and began to
dress, and gradually he pulled himself together and stood stiff and
erect in the garments of his order. He flung open the window, and his
eyes were dazzled by the vivid light of the silvery sky; the thickets
on the hill-side, alive with the song of birds, quivered and sparkled
in the morning sun, the wind had dropped and the sound of the church
bell vibrated through the pure air.
The bell called him, he lost sight of all external things, although
he sought to escape from the things within him: the scent of his room
caused him physical distress and the memories it evoked stung him to
the quick. The bell went on calling him, but he could not make up his
mind to leave his room and he wandered round it almost in a fury. He
looked in the mirror and then turned away, but it was useless for him
to avoid it; the image of the woman was reflected in his mind as in a
mirror, he might break it in a thousand fragments, but each fragment
would still retain that image entire and complete.
The second bell for Mass was ringing insistently, inviting him to come:
he moved about here and there, searching for something he could not
find, and finally sat down at his table and began to write. He began by
copying out the verses which said, “Enter ye in by the narrow gate,”
etc.; then he crossed them out and on the other side of the paper he
wrote:
“Please do not expect me again. We have mutually entangled each other
in a net of deception and we must cut ourselves loose without delay, if
we want to free ourselves and not sink to the bottom. I am coming to
you no more; forget me, do not write to me, and do not try to see me
again.”
Then he went downstairs and called his mother, and held out the letter
towards her without looking at her.
“Take this to her at once,” he said hoarsely, “try and give it into her
own hands and then come away immediately.”
He felt the letter taken out of his hand and hurried outside, for the
moment uplifted and relieved.
Now the bell was ringing the third time, pealing out over the quiet
village and the valleys grey in the silvery light of the dawn. Up the
hilly road, as though ascending from the depths of the valley, came
figures of old men with gnarled sticks hanging from their wrists by
leather straps, and women whose heads wrapped in voluminous kerchiefs
looked too large for their small bodies. When they had all entered the
church and the old men had taken their places in front close by the
altar rails, the place was filled with the odour of earth and field,
and Antiochus, the youthful sacristan, swung his censer energetically,
sending out the smoke in the direction of the old men to drive away the
smell. Gradually a dense cloud of incense screened the altar from the
rest of the little church, and the brown-faced sacristan in his white
surplice and the pale-faced priest in his vestments of red brocade
moved about as in a pearly mist. Both Paul and the boy loved the smoke
and the scent of the incense and used it lavishly. Turning towards the
nave, the priest half closed his eyes and frowned as though the mist
impeded his sight; apparently he was displeased at the small number of
worshippers and was waiting for others to arrive. And in fact a few
late comers did enter then, and last of all his mother, and Paul turned
white to the lips.
So the letter had been delivered and the sacrifice was accomplished:
a deathlike sweat broke out upon his forehead, and as he raised his
hands in consecration his secret prayer was that the offering of his
own flesh and blood might be accepted. And he seemed to see the woman
reading his letter and falling to the ground in a swoon.
When the Mass was ended he knelt down wearily and recited a Latin
prayer in a monotonous voice. The congregation responded, and he felt
as though he were dreaming and longed to throw himself down at the foot
of the altar and fall asleep like a shepherd on the bare rocks. Dimly
through the clouds of incense he saw in her glass-fronted niche the
little Madonna which the people believed to be miraculous, a figure
as dark and delicate as a cameo in a medallion, and he gazed at it as
though he were seeing it again for the first time after a long absence.
Where had he been all that time? His thoughts were confused and he
could not recollect.
Then suddenly he rose to his feet and turned round and began to address
the congregation, a thing he only did very occasionally. He spoke
in dialect and in a harsh voice, as though he were scolding the old
men, now thrusting their bearded faces between the pillars of the
altar rails in order to hear better, and the women crouching on the
ground, divided between curiosity and fear. The sacristan, holding the
Mass-book in his arms, glanced at Paul out of his long dark eyes, then
turned them on the people and shook his head, threatening them in jest
if they did not attend.
“Yes,” said the priest, “the number of you who come here grows ever
less; when I have to face you I am almost ashamed, for I feel like a
shepherd who has lost his sheep. Only on Sunday is the church a little
fuller, but I fear you come because of your scruples and not because
of your belief, from habit rather than from need, as you change your
clothes or take your rest. Up now, it is time to awake! I do not expect
mothers of families, or men who have to be at work before the dawn, to
come here every morning, but young women and old men and children, such
as I shall see now when I leave the church, standing at their own doors
to greet the rising sun, all those should come here to begin the day
with God, to praise Him in His own house and to gain strength for the
path they have to tread. If you did this the poverty that afflicts you
would disappear, and evil habits and temptation would no longer assail
you. It is time to awake early in the morning, to wash yourselves and
to change your clothing every day and not only on Sundays! So I shall
expect you all, beginning from to-morrow, and we will pray together
that God will not forsake us and our little village, as He will not
forsake the smallest nest, and for those who are sick and cannot come
here we will pray that they may recover and be able to march forward
too.”
He turned round swiftly and the sacristan did the same, and for a few
minutes there reigned in the little church a silence so intense that
the stone-breaker could be heard at his work behind the ridge. Then a
woman got up and approached the priest’s mother, placing a hand on her
shoulder as she bent down and whispered:
“Your son must come at once to hear the confession of King Nicodemus,
who is seriously ill.”
Roused from her own sad thoughts, the mother raised her eyes to the
speaker. She remembered that King Nicodemus was a fantastic old hunter
who lived in a hut high up in the mountains, and she asked if Paul
would have to climb up there to hear the confession.
“No,” whispered the woman, “his relations have brought him down to the
village.”
So the mother went to tell Paul, who was in the little sacristy,
disrobing with the help of Antiochus.
“You will come home first and drink your coffee, won’t you?” she asked.
He avoided looking at her and did not even answer, but pretended to be
in a great hurry to go to the old man who was ill. The thoughts of both
mother and son dwelt upon the same thing, the letter which had been
delivered to Agnes, but neither spoke of it. Then he hastened away,
and she stood there like a block of wood whilst the sacristan busied
himself in replacing the vestments in the black cupboard.
“It would have been better if I had not told him about Nicodemus until
he had been home and had his coffee,” she said.
“A priest must get accustomed to everything,” replied Antiochus
gravely, poking his head round the cupboard door, and then he added as
though to himself as he turned back to his work inside:
“Perhaps he is angry with me, because he says I am inattentive: but
it’s not true, I assure you it’s not true! Only when I looked at those
old men I felt inclined to laugh, for they did not understand a word of
the sermon. They sat there with their mouths open, but they understood
nothing. I bet you that old Marco Panizza really thinks he ought to
wash his face every day, he who never washes at all except at Easter
and Christmas! And you’ll see that from now on they will all come to
church every day, because he told them that poverty would disappear if
they did that.”
The mother still stood there, her hands clasped beneath her apron.
“The poverty of the soul,” she said, to show that she at least had
understood. But Antiochus only looked at her as he had looked at the
old men, with a strong desire to laugh. Because he was quite sure that
nobody could understand these matters as he understood them, he who
already knew the four gospels by heart and intended to be a priest
himself, which fact did not prevent him from being as mischievous and
inquisitive as other boys.
As soon as he had finished putting everything in order and the priest’s
mother had gone away, Antiochus locked the sacristy and walked across
the little garden attached to the church, all overgrown with rosemary
and as deserted as a cemetery. But instead of going home to where his
mother kept a tavern in one corner of the village square, he ran off to
the presbytery to hear the latest news of King Nicodemus, and also for
another reason.
“Your son scolded me for not paying attention,” he repeated uneasily,
whilst the priest’s mother was busy preparing her Paul’s breakfast.
“Perhaps he won’t have me as sacristan any longer, perhaps he will take
Ilario Panizza. But Ilario cannot read, whereas I have even learnt to
read Latin. Besides, Ilario is so dirty. What do you think? Will he
send me away?”
“He wants you to pay attention, that is all: it is not right to laugh
in church,” she answered sternly and gravely.
“He is very angry. Perhaps he did not sleep last night, on account of
the wind. Did you hear what an awful wind?”
The woman made no reply; she went into the dining-room and placed on
the table enough bread and biscuits to satisfy the twelve apostles.
Probably Paul would not touch a thing, but the mere act of moving about
and making preparations for him, as though he were sure to come in as
merry and hungry as a mountain shepherd, did something to assuage her
trouble and perhaps quiet her conscience, which every moment stung her
more and more sharply, and the boy’s very remark, that “perhaps he
was angry because he did not sleep last night,” only increased her
uneasiness. Her heavy footsteps echoed through the silent rooms as she
went to and fro: she felt instinctively that although apparently _all
was over_, in reality it was all only just beginning. She had well
understood the words he spoke from the altar, that one must awake early
and wash oneself and march forward, and she went to and fro, up and
down, trying to imagine that she was marching forward in very truth.
She went upstairs to put his room in order; but the mirror and the
perfumes still vexed and alarmed her, in spite of the assurance that
everything was now at an end, while a vision of Paul, pale and rigid
as a corpse, seemed to meet her eyes from the depths of that cursed
mirror, to hang with his cassock on the wall and lie stretched lifeless
upon the bed. And her heart was heavy within her, as though some inward
paralysis prevented her breathing.
The pillow-slip was still damp with Paul’s tears and his fevered
anguish of the night, and as she drew it off to replace it with a fresh
one the thought came to her, for the first time in her life:
“But why are priests forbidden to marry?”
And she thought of Agnes’s wealth, and how she owned a large house with
gardens and orchards and fields.
Then suddenly she felt horribly guilty in even entertaining such
thoughts, and quickly drawing on the fresh pillow-slip she went away
into her own room.
Marching forward? Yes, she had been marching since dawn and was yet
only at the beginning of the way. And however far one went, one always
came back to the same place. She went downstairs and sat by the fire
beside Antiochus, who had not moved and was determined to wait there
all day, if needs be, for the sake of seeing his superior and making
his peace with him. He sat very still, one leg crossed over the other
and his hands clasped round his knee, and presently he remarked, not
without a slight accent of reproach:
“You ought to have taken him his coffee into the church, as you do when
he is delayed there hearing the women’s confessions. As it is, he will
be famished!”
“And how was I to know he would be sent for in such a hurry? The old
man is dying, it seems,” retorted the mother.
“I don’t think that can be true. His grandchildren want him to die
because he has some money to leave. I know the old chap! I saw him
once when I went up into the mountains with my father: he was sitting
amongst the rocks in the sun, with a dog and a tame eagle beside him
and all sorts of dead animals all round. That is not how God orders us
to live!”
“What does He order, then?”
“He orders us to live amongst men, to cultivate the ground, and not to
hide our money, but to give it to the poor.”
The little sacristan spoke with a man’s confidence, and the priest’s
mother was touched and smiled. After all, if Antiochus could say such
sensible things it was because he had been taught by her Paul. It was
her Paul who taught them all to be good, wise and prudent; and when
he really wished to he succeeded in convincing even old men whose
opinions were already fixed, and even thoughtless children. She sighed,
and bending down to draw the coffee-pot nearer the glowing embers, she
said:
“You talk like a little saint, Antiochus; but it remains to be seen if
you will do as you say when you’re a man, whether you really will give
your money to the poor.”
“Yes, I shall give everything to the poor. I shall have a great deal of
money, because my mother makes a lot with her tavern, and my father is
a forest keeper and earns pretty well, too. I shall give all I get to
the poor: God tells us to do that, and He Himself will provide for us.
And the Bible says, the ravens do not sow, neither do they reap, yet
they have their food from God, and the lily of the valley is clothed
more splendidly than the king.”
“Yes, Antiochus, when a man is alone he can do that, but what if he has
children?”
“That makes no difference. Besides, I shall never have children;
priests are not allowed to have any.”
She turned to look at him; his profile was towards her, against the
bright background of the open doorway and the courtyard outside; it was
a profile of pure, firm outline and dark skin, almost like a head of
bronze, with long lashes shading the eyes with their large dark pupils.
And as she gazed at the boy she could have wept, but she knew not why.
“Are you quite sure you want to be a priest?” she asked.
“Yes, if that is God’s will.”
“Priests are not allowed to marry, and suppose that some day you wanted
to take a wife?”
“I shall not want a wife, since God has forbidden it.”
“God? But it is the Pope who has forbidden it,” said the mother,
somewhat taken aback at the boy’s answer.
“The Pope is God’s representative on earth.”
“But in olden times priests had wives and families, just as the
Protestant clergy have now,” she urged.
“That is a different thing,” said the boy, growing warm over the
argument; “_we_ ought not to have them!”
“The priests in olden times...” she persisted.
But the sacristan was well-informed. “Yes, the priests in olden times,”
he said, “but then they themselves held a meeting and decided against
it; and those who had no wives or families, the younger ones, were the
very ones who opposed marriage the most strongly. That is as it should
be.”
“The younger ones!” repeated the mother as if to herself. “But they
know nothing about it! And then they may repent, they may even go
astray,” she added in a low voice, “they may come to reason and argue
like the old priest.”
A tremor seized her and she looked swiftly round to assure herself that
the ghost was not there, instantly repenting for having thus evoked it.
She did not wish even to think about it, and least of all in connexion
with _that matter_. Was it not all ended? Moreover, Antiochus’s face
wore an expression of the deepest scorn.
“That man was not a priest, he was the devil’s brother come to earth!
God save us from him! We had best not even think about him!” and he
made the sign of the cross. Then he continued, with recovered serenity:
“As for repenting! Do you suppose that _he_, your son, ever dreams of
repenting?”
It hurt her to hear the boy talk like that. She longed to be able to
tell him something of her trouble, to warn him for the future, yet
at the same time she rejoiced at his words, as though the conscience
of the innocent lad were speaking to her conscience to commend and
encourage it.
“Does he, does my Paul say it is right for priests not to marry?” she
asked in a low voice.
“If _he_ does not say it is right, who should say so? Of course he says
it is right; hasn’t he said so to you? A fine thing it would be to see
a priest with his wife beside him and a child in his arms! And when he
ought to go and say Mass he has to nurse the baby because it’s howling!
What a joke! Imagine your son with one child in his arms and another
hanging on to his cassock!”
The mother smiled wanly; but there passed before her eyes a fleeting
vision of lovely children running about the house, and there was a
pang at her heart. Antiochus laughed aloud, his dark eyes and white
teeth flashing in his brown face, but there was something cruel in his
laughter.
“A priest’s wife would be a funny thing! When they went out for a walk
together they would look from behind like two women! And would she go
and confess to him, if they lived in a place where there was no other
priest?”
“What does a mother do? Who do I confess to?”
“A mother is different. And who is there that your son could marry? The
granddaughter of King Nicodemus, perhaps?”
He began to laugh merrily again, for the granddaughter of King
Nicodemus was the most unfortunate girl in the village, a cripple and
an idiot. But he instantly grew serious again when the mother, forced
to speak by a will other than her own, said softly:
“For that matter, there is some one, Agnes.”
But Antiochus objected jealously: “She is ugly, I don’t like her, and
he does not like her either.”
Then the mother began to praise Agnes, but she spoke almost in a
whisper as though afraid of being overheard by anyone except the boy,
while Antiochus, his hands still clasped round his knee, shook his head
energetically, his lower lip stuck out in disgust like a ripe cherry.
“No, no, I don’t like her—can’t you hear what I say! She is ugly and
proud and old. And besides...”
A step sounded in the little hall and instantly they both were silent
and stood waiting.