Paul had gone home too, and was feeling his way upstairs in the dark:
he dimly remembered going up some stairs in the dark like this when he
was a boy, but he could not remember where it had been. Now, as then,
he had the feeling that there was some danger near him which he could
only escape by strict attention to what he was doing. He reached the
landing, he stood before his own door, he was safe. But he hesitated an
instant before opening it, then crossed over and tapped lightly with
the knuckle of his forefinger at his mother’s door and entered without
waiting for a reply.
“It is I,” he said brusquely; “don’t light the candle, I have something
to tell you.”
He heard her turning round in her bed, the straw mattress creaking
under her: but he could not see her, he did not want to see her; their
two souls must speak together in the darkness as though they had
already passed to the world beyond.
“Is it you, Paul? I was dreaming,” she said in a sleepy yet frightened
voice; “I thought I heard dancing, some one playing on the flute.”
“Mother, listen,” he said, paying no attention to her words. “That
woman, Agnes, is ill. She has been ill since this morning. She had a
fall; it seems she hurt her head and is bleeding from her nose.”
“You don’t mean it, Paul? Is she in danger?”
In the darkness her voice sounded alarmed, yet at the same time
incredulous. He went on, repeating the breathless words of the servant:
“It happened this morning, after she got the letter. All day long she
was pale and refused to eat, and this evening she grew worse and fell
into convulsions.”
He knew that he was exaggerating, and stopped: his mother did not
speak. For a moment in the silence and the night there was a deathlike
tension, as though two enemies were seeking each other in the darkness
and seeking in vain. Then the straw mattress creaked again; his mother
must have raised herself to a sitting position in the high bed, because
her clear voice now seemed to come from above.
“Paul, who told you all this? Perhaps it is not true.”
Again he felt that it was his conscience speaking to him through her,
but he answered at once:
“It may be true. But that is not the question, mother. It is that I
fear she may commit some folly. She is alone in the hands of servants,
and I must see her.”
“Paul!”
“I must,” he repeated, raising his voice almost to a shout; but it was
himself he was trying to convince, not his mother.
“Paul, you promised!”
“I know I promised, and for that very reason I have come to tell you
before I go. I tell you that it is necessary that I should go to her;
my conscience bids me go.”
“Tell me one thing, Paul: are you sure you saw the servant? Temptation
plays evil tricks on us and the devil has many disguises.”
He did not quite understand her.
“You think I am telling a lie? I saw the servant.”
“Listen—last night I saw the old priest, and I thought I heard his
footsteps again just now. Last night,” she went on in a low voice, “he
sat beside me before the fire. I actually saw him, I tell you: he had
not shaved, and the few teeth he had left were black from too much
smoking. And he had holes in his stockings. And he said, ‘I am alive
and I am here, and very soon I shall turn you and your son out of the
presbytery.’ And he said I ought to have taught you your father’s trade
if I did not wish you to fall into sin. He so upset my mind, Paul,
that I don’t know whether I have acted rightly or wrongly! But I am
absolutely sure that it was the devil sitting beside me last night,
the spirit of evil. The servant you saw might have been temptation in
another shape.”
He smiled in the darkness. Nevertheless, when he thought of the
fantastic figure of the servant running across the meadow, he felt a
vague sense of terror in spite of himself.
“If you go there,” continued his mother’s voice, “are you certain you
will not fall again? Even if you really saw the servant and if that
woman is really ill, are you sure not to fall?”
She broke off suddenly; she seemed to see his pale face through the
darkness, and she was filled with pity for him. Why should she forbid
him to go to the woman? Supposing Agnes really died of grief? Supposing
Paul died of grief? And she was as wracked with uncertainty as he had
been in the case of Antiochus.
“Lord,” she sighed; then she remembered that she had already placed
herself in the hands of God, Who alone can solve all our difficulties.
She felt a sort of relief, as if she had really settled the problem.
And had she not settled it by entrusting it in the hands of God?
She lay back on her pillow and her voice came again nearer to her son.
“If your conscience bids you go, why did you not go at once instead of
coming in here?”
“Because I promised. And you threatened to leave me if I went back to
that house. I swore...” he said with infinite sadness. And he longed to
cry out, “Mother, force me to keep my oath!” but the words would not
come. And then she spoke again:
“Then go: do whatever your conscience bids you.”
“Do not be anxious,” he said, coming close up to the bed; and he
stood there motionless for a few minutes and both were silent. He had
a confused impression that he was standing before an altar with his
mother lying upon it like some mysterious idol, and he remembered how,
when he was a boy in the Seminary, he was always obliged to go and
kiss her hand after he had been to confession. And something of the
same repugnance and the same exaltation moved him now. He felt that
if he had been alone, without her, he would have gone back to Agnes
long since, worn out by that endless day of flight and strife; but his
mother held him in check, and he did not know whether he was grateful
to her or not.
“Do not be anxious!” Yet all the time he longed and feared that she
would say more to him, or that she would light the lamp and, looking
into his eyes, read all his thoughts and forbid him to go. But she said
nothing. Then the mattress creaked again as she stretched herself in
the bed.
And he went out.
He reflected that after all he was not a scoundrel: he was not going
with any bad motive or moved by passion, but because he honestly
thought that there might be some danger he could avert, and the
responsibility for this danger rested upon him. He recalled the
fantastic figure of the servant running across the moonlit grass, and
turning back to look at him with bright eyes as she said:
“My little mistress will take courage if only you will come.”
And all his efforts to break away from her appeared now base and
stupid: his duty was to have gone to her at once and given her courage.
And as he crossed the meadow, silvery in the moonlight, he felt
relieved, almost happy, he was like a moth attracted by the light. And
he mistook the joy he felt at the prospect of seeing Agnes again in a
few moments for the satisfaction of doing his duty in going to save
her. All the sweet scent of the grass, all the tender radiance of the
moon bathed and purified his soul, and the healing dew fell upon it
even through his clothes of deathlike black.
Agnes, little mistress! In truth, she was little, weak as a child, and
she was all alone, without father or mother, living in that labyrinth
of stone, her dark house under the ridge. And he had taken advantage of
her, had caught her in his hand like a bird from the nest, gripping her
till the blood seemed driven from her body.
He hurried on. No, he was not a bad man, but as he reached the bottom
of the steps that led up to the door he stumbled, and it was sharply
borne in upon him that even the stones of her threshold repulsed him.
Then he mounted softly, hesitatingly, raised the knocker and let it
fall. They were a long time coming to answer the door, and he felt
humiliated standing there, but for nothing in the world would he have
knocked a second time. At last the fanlight over the door was lit up
and the dark-faced maid let him in, showing him at once into the room
he knew so well.
Everything was just as it had been on other nights, when Agnes had
admitted him secretly by way of the orchard; the little door stood
ajar, and through the narrow opening he could smell the fragrance
of the bushes in the night air. The glass eyes in the stuffed heads
of stags and deer on the walls shone in the steady glow of the big
lamp, as though taking careful note of all that happened in the room.
Contrary to custom, the door leading to the inner rooms stood wide
open; the servant had gone through there and the board flooring could
be heard creaking under her heavy step. After a moment a door banged
violently as though blown by a gust of wind, making the whole house
shake, and he started involuntarily when immediately afterwards he
beheld Agnes emerge from the darkness of the inner rooms, with white
face and distorted hair floating in black wisps across it, like the
phantom of a drowned woman. Then the little figure came forward into
the lamplight and he almost sobbed with relief.
She closed the door behind her and leaned against it with bowed head.
She faltered as though about to fall, and Paul ran to her, holding out
his hands, but not daring to touch her.
“How are you?” he asked in a low voice, as he had asked at former
meetings. But she did not answer, only stood trembling all over her
body, her hands pressed against the door behind her for support.
“Agnes,” he continued after a moment’s tense silence, “we must be
brave.”
But as on that day when he had read the Gospel words over the frenzied
girl, he knew that his voice rang false, and his eyes sought the ground
as Agnes raised hers, bewildered, yes, but full of mingled scorn and
joy.
“Then why have you come?”
“I heard that you were ill.”
She drew herself up proudly and pushed back the hair from her face.
“I am quite well and I did not send for you.”
“I know that, but I came all the same—there was no reason why I should
not come. I am glad to find that your maid exaggerated, and that you
are all right.”
“No,” she repeated, interrupting him, “I did not send for you and you
ought not to have come. But since you are here, since you are here, I
want to ask you—why you did it... why?—why?”
Her words were broken by sobs and her hands sought blindly for support,
so that Paul was afraid, and repented that he had come. He took her
hands and led her to the couch where they had sat together on other
evenings, placing her in the corner where the weight of other women of
the family had worn a sort of niche, and seated himself beside her, but
he let go her hands.
He was afraid of touching her; she was like a statue which he had
broken and put together again, and which sat there apparently whole
but ready to fall in pieces again at the slightest movement. So he was
afraid of touching her, and he thought to himself:
“It is better so, I shall be safe,” but in his heart he knew that at
any moment he might be lost again, and for that reason he was afraid
of touching her. Looking closely at her beneath the lamplight, he
perceived that she was changed. Her mouth was half-open, her lips
discoloured and greyish like faded rose-leaves; the oval of her face
seemed to have grown longer and her cheekbones stood out sharply
beneath eyes sunk deep in their livid sockets. Grief had aged her by
twenty years in a single day, yet there was something childlike still
in the expression of her trembling lips, drawn tightly over her teeth
to check her weeping, and in the little hands, one of which, lying
nerveless on the dark stuff of the couch, invited his own towards it.
And he was filled with anger because he dared not take that little
hand in his and link up again the broken chain of their two lives. He
remembered the words of the man possessed with a devil, “What have I to
do with Thee?” and he began to speak again, clasping his hands together
to prevent himself taking one of hers. But still he heard his voice
ring false, and as on that morning in church when he read the Gospel,
and when he carried the sacrament to the old hunter, he knew himself to
be lying.
“Agnes, listen to me. Last night we were both on the brink of
destruction—God had left us to ourselves and we were slipping over the
edge of the abyss. But now God has taken us by the hand again and
is guiding us. We must not fall, Agnes, Agnes,” and his voice shook
with emotion as he spoke her name. “You think I don’t suffer? I feel
as if I were buried alive and that my torments would last through all
eternity. But we must endure for your good, for your salvation. Listen,
Agnes, be brave, for the sake of the love which united us, for God’s
goodwill toward us in putting us through this trial. You will forget
me. You will recover; you are young, with all your life still before
you. When you think of me it will be like a bad dream, as though you
had lost your way in the valley and met some evil creature who had
tried to do you harm; but God has saved you, as you deserved to be
saved. Everything looks black at present, but it will clear up soon and
you will realize that I am only acting for your good in causing you a
little momentary pain now, just as we are sometimes obliged to seem
cruel to those who are ill....”
He stopped, the words froze in his throat.
Agnes had roused herself and was sitting upright in her corner, gazing
at him with eyes as glassy as those in the stags’ heads on the walls.
They reminded him of the women’s eyes in church, fixed on him as he
preached. She waited for his words, patient and gentle in every line of
her fragile form, yet ready to break down at a touch. Then speechless
himself, he heard her low voice as she shook her head slowly.
“No, no, that is not the truth,” she said.
“Then what is the truth?” he asked, bending his troubled face towards
her.
“Why did you not speak like that last night? And the other nights?
Because it was a different kind of truth then. Now somebody has found
you out, perhaps your mother herself, and you are afraid of the world.
It is not the fear of God which is driving you away from me!”
He wanted to cry out, to strike her; he seized her hand and twisted the
slender wrist as he would have liked to twist and stifle the words she
spoke. Then he drew himself up stiffly.
“What then? You think it does not matter? Yes, my mother has discovered
everything and she talked to me like my conscience itself. And have
you no conscience? Do you think it right that we should injure those
who depend on us? You wanted us to go away and live together, and
that would have been the right thing to do if we had not been able to
overcome our love; but since there are beings who would have been cut
off from life by our flight and our sin, we had to sacrifice ourselves
for them.”
But she seemed not to understand, caught only one word, and shook her
head as before.
“Conscience? Of course I have a conscience, I am no longer a child! And
my conscience tells me that I did wrong in listening to you and letting
you come here. What is to be done? It is too late now; why did not God
make you see things clearly at first? I did not go to your home, but
you came to mine and played with me as if I had been a child’s toy. And
what must I do now? Tell me that. I cannot forget you, I cannot change
as you change. I shall go away, even if you will not come with me—I
want to try and forget you. I must go right away, or else...”
“Or else?”
Agnes did not reply; she leaned back in her corner and shivered.
Something ominous, like the dark wing of madness, must have touched
her, for her eyes grew dim and she raised her hand with an instinctive
movement as though to brush away a shadow from before her face. He bent
again towards her, stretching across the couch and his fingers gripping
and breaking through the old material as though it were a wall that
rose between them and threatened to stifle him.
He could not speak. Yes, she was right; the explanation he had been
trying to make her believe was not the truth—it was the truth that was
rising like a wall and stifling him, and which he did not know how to
break down. And he sat up, battling with a real sense of suffocation.
Now it was she who caught his hand and held it as though her fingers
had been grappling-hooks.
“O God,” she whispered, covering her eyes with her free hand, “if there
be a God, He should not have let us meet each other if we must part
again. And you came to-night because you love me still. You think I
don’t know that? I do know, I do know, and that is the truth!”
She raised her face to his, her trembling lips, her lashes wet with
tears. And his eyes were dazzled as by the glitter of deep waters, a
glitter that blinds and beckons, and the face he gazed into was not the
face of Agnes, nor the face of any woman on this earth,—it was the face
of Love itself. And he fell forward into her arms and kissed her upon
the mouth.