The world had ceased for Paul. He felt himself sinking slowly, swept
down by a whirlpool through luminous depths to some dazzling iridescent
place beneath the sea. Then he came to himself again and drew his lips
away from hers, and found himself, like a shipwrecked man upon the
sand, safe though maimed, and shaking with fear and joy, but more with
fear than joy. And the enchantment that he thought had been broken for
ever, and for this very reason had seemed more beautiful and dear, wove
its spell over him afresh and held him again in thrall. And again he
heard the whisper of her voice:
“I knew you would come back to me....”
He wanted to hear no more, just as he had tried not to hear the
servant’s tale in the house of Antiochus. He put his hand over Agnes’s
mouth as she leaned her head upon his shoulder and then gently caressed
her hair, on which the lamplight threw golden gleams. She was so
small, so helpless in his grasp, and therein lay her terrible power to
drag him down to the bottom of the sea, to raise him to the highest
heights of heaven, to make of him a thing without will or desire of
his own. Whilst he had fled through the valleys and the hills she had
remained shut up within her prison-house, waiting in the certainty that
he would come back to her, and he came.
“You know, you know...” She tried to tell him more; her soft breath
touched his neck like a caress, he placed his hand on her mouth again
and with her own she pressed it close. And so they remained in silence
for a while; then he pulled himself together and tried to regain the
mastery over his fate. He had come back to her, yes, but not the same
man she had expected. And his gaze still rested on her gleaming hair,
but as on something far away, as on the bright sparkle of the sea from
which he had escaped.
“Now you are happy,” he whispered. “I am here, I have come back and I
am yours for life. But you must be calm, you have given me a great
fright. You must not excite yourself, nor wander on any account from
the straight path of your life. I shall cause you no more trouble, but
you must promise me to be calm and good, as you are now.”
He felt her hands tremble and struggle between his own; he divined that
she was already beginning to rebel and he held them tightly, as he
would have liked to hold her soul imprisoned.
“Dear Agnes, listen! You will never know all I have suffered to-day,
but it was necessary. I stripped off all the outward shell of me, all
that was impure, and I scourged myself until I bled. But now here I am,
yours, yours, but as God wills that I should be yours, in spirit....
You see,” he went on, speaking slowly and laboriously, as though
dragging his words up painfully from his inmost depths and offering
them to her, “it seems to me that we have loved each other for years
and years, that we have rejoiced and suffered the one for the other,
even unto hatred, even unto death. And all the tempests of the sea and
all its implacable life are within us. Agnes, soul of my soul, what
wouldst thou have of me greater than that which I can give thee, my
soul itself?”
He stopped short. He felt that she did not understand, she could not
understand. And he beheld her ever more detached from him, as life from
death; but for this very reason he loved her still, yea, more than
ever, as one loves life that is dying.
She slowly raised her head from his shoulder and looked him in the face
with eyes grown hostile again.
“Now you listen to me,” she said, “and tell me no more lies. Are we or
are we not going away together as we settled last night? We cannot go
on living here, in this way. That is certain!... That is certain!” she
repeated with rising anger, after a moment of painful silence. “If we
are to live together we must go away at once, this very night. I have
money, you know, it is my own. And your mother and my brothers and
every one else will excuse us afterwards when they see that we only
wanted to live according to the truth. We cannot go on living like
this, no, we cannot!”
“Agnes!”
“Answer me quick! Yes or no?”
“I cannot go away with you.”
“Ah—then why have you come back?... Leave me! Get away, leave me!”
He did not leave her. He felt her whole body shaking and he was afraid
of her; and as she bowed herself over their united hands he expected to
feel her teeth fasten in his flesh.
“Go, go!” she insisted, “I did not send for you! Since we must be
brave, why did you come back? Why have you kissed me again? Ah, if you
think you can play with me like this you are mistaken! If you think
you can come here at night and write me humiliating letters in the day
you are mistaken again! You came back to-night and you will come back
to-morrow night and every night after that, until at last you drive me
mad. But I won’t have it, I won’t have it!”
“We must be pure and brave, you say,” she continued, and her face,
grown old and tragic, became now pale as death; “but you never said
that before to-night. You fill me with horror! Go away, far away,
and go at once, so that to-morrow I can wake up without the terror of
expecting you and being humiliated like this again.”
“O God, O God!” he groaned, bending over her, but she repulsed him
sharply.
“Do you think you are speaking to a child?” she burst out now: “I
am old, and it is you who have made me grow old in a few hours. The
straight path of life! Oh, yes, it would be going straight if we
continued this secret intrigue, wouldn’t it? I should find myself a
husband and you should marry me to him, and then we could go on seeing
each other, you and I, and deceiving every one for the rest of our
lives. Oh, you don’t know me if that is your idea! Last night you said,
‘Let us go away, we will get married and I will work.’ Didn’t you say
that? Didn’t you? But to-night you come and talk to me instead about
God and sacrifice. So now there is an end of it all: we will part. But
you, I say it again, you must leave the village this very night, I
never wish to see you again. If to-morrow morning you go once more into
our church to say Mass I shall go there too, and from the altar steps
I shall say to the people: ‘This is your saint, who works miracles by
day and by night goes to unprotected girls to seduce them!’”
He tried in vain to shut her mouth with his hand, and as she kept
on crying aloud, “Go, go!” he seized her head and pressed it to his
breast, glancing with alarm at the closed doors. And he remembered his
mother’s words and her voice, mysterious in the darkness: “The old
priest sat beside me and said, I will soon turn both you and your son
out of the parish.”
“Agnes, Agnes, you are mad!” he groaned, his lips close to her ear,
whilst she struggled fiercely to escape from him: “Be calm, listen to
me. Nothing is lost; don’t you feel how I love you? A thousand times
more than before! And I am not going away, I am going to stay near you,
to save you, to offer up my soul to you as I shall offer it up to God
in the hour of death. How can you know all that I have suffered between
last night and now? I fled and I bore you with me: I fled like one who
is on fire and who thinks by fleeing to escape the flames which only
envelop him the more. Where have I not been to-day, what have I not
done to keep myself from coming back to you? Yet here I am, Agnes, and
how could I not be here?... Do you hear me? I shall not betray you, I
shall not forget you, I do not wish to forget you! But, Agnes, we must
keep ourselves unsoiled, we must keep our love for all eternity, we
must unite it with all that is best in life, with renunciation, with
death itself, that is to say, with God. Do you understand, Agnes? Yes,
tell me that you understand!”
She fought him back, as though she wanted to break in his breast with
her head, till at last she freed herself from his embrace and sat rigid
and upright, her beautiful hair twisted like ribbons round her stony
face. With tight-shut lips and closed eyes, she seemed to have suddenly
fallen into a deep sleep, wherein she dreamed of vengeance. And he was
more afraid of her silence and immobility than of her frenzied words
and excited gestures. He took her hands again in his, but now all four
hands were dead to joy and to the clasp of love.
“Agnes, can’t you see that I am right? Come, be good; go to bed now and
to-morrow a new life will begin for us all. We shall see each other
just the same, always supposing you desire it: I will be your friend,
your brother, and we shall be a mutual help and support. My life is
yours, dispose of me as you wish. I shall be with you till the hour of
death, and beyond death, for all eternity.”
This tone of prayer irritated her afresh. She twisted her hands
slightly within his and opened her lips to speak. Then, as he set her
free, she folded her hands in her lap and bowed her head and her face
took on an expression of the deepest grief, but now a grief that was
desperate and determined.
He continued to gaze steadfastly at her, as one gazes at the dying, and
his fear increased. He slid to his knees before her, he laid his head
in her lap and kissed her hands; he cared nothing now if he were seen
or heard, he knelt there at the feet of the woman and her sorrow as at
the feet of the Mother of Sorrows herself. Never before had he felt
so pure of evil thought, so dead to this earthly life; and yet he was
afraid.
Agnes sat motionless, with icy hands, insensible to those kisses of
death. Then he got up and began to speak lies again.
“Thank you, Agnes—that is right and I am very pleased. The trial has
been won and you can rest in peace. I am going now, and to-morrow,” he
added in a whisper, bending nervously towards her, “to-morrow morning
you will come to Mass and together we will offer our sacrifice to God.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him, then closed them again. She was
as one wounded to death, whose eyes had opened wide with a last menace
and appeal before they closed for ever.
“You will go away to-night, quite away, so that I shall never see you
again,” she said, pronouncing each word distinctly and decisively, and
he realized that for the moment at least it was useless to oppose that
blind force.
“I cannot go like that,” he murmured: “I must say Mass to-morrow
morning and you will come and hear it, and afterwards I will go away,
if necessary.”
“Then I shall come to-morrow morning and denounce you before all the
congregation.”
“If you do that it will be a sign that it is God’s will. But you won’t
do it, Agnes! You may hate me, but I leave you in peace. Goodbye.”
Even yet he did not go. He stood quite still, looking down at her, at
her soft and gleaming hair, the sweet hair he loved and through which
so often his hands had strayed, and it awoke in him an infinite pity,
for it seemed like the black bandage round a wounded head.
For the last time he called her by her name:
“Agnes! Is it possible that we can part like this?... Come,” he added
after a moment, “give me your hand, get up and open the door for me.”
She got up obediently, but she did not give him her hand; she went
direct to the door through which she had entered the room, and there
she stood still, waiting.
“What can I do?” he asked himself. And he knew very well that there was
only one thing he could do to appease her: to fall at her feet again,
to sin and be lost with her for ever.
And that he would not do, never never more. He remained firm, there
where he stood, and lowered his eyes that he might not meet her
look, and when he raised them again she was no longer there; she had
disappeared, swallowed up in the darkness of her silent house.
* * * * *
The glass eyes of the stags’ and deer’s heads upon the walls looked
down at him with mingled sadness and derision. And in that moment of
suspense, alone in the big melancholy room, he realized the whole
immensity of his wretchedness and his humiliation. He felt himself
a thief, and worse than a thief, a guest who takes advantage of the
solitude of the house that shelters him to rob it basely. He averted
his eyes, for he could not meet even the glassy stare of the heads
upon the wall: but he did not waver in his purpose for one moment, and
even if the death-cry of the woman had suddenly filled the house with
horror, he would not have repented having rejected her.
He waited a few minutes longer, but nobody appeared. He had a confused
idea that he was standing in the middle of a dead world of all his
dreams and his mistakes, waiting till some one came and helped him to
get away. But nobody came. So at last he pushed open the door that led
into the orchard, traversed the path that ran beside the wall and went
out by the little gate he knew so well.