Once more Paul found himself ascending his own staircase; but now the
danger was past, or at least the fear of danger.
Nevertheless he halted before his mother’s door, deeming that it would
be advisable to tell her the result of his interview with Agnes and of
her threat to denounce him. But he heard the sound of regular breathing
and passed on; his mother had quietly fallen asleep, for henceforth she
was sure of him and felt that he was safe.
Safe! He looked round his room as though he had just returned from a
long and disastrous journey. Everything was peaceful and tidy, and
he moved about on tiptoe as he began to undress, for the sake of not
disturbing that orderliness and silence. His clothes hanging from their
hooks, blacker than their shadows on the wall, his hat above them,
stuck forward on a wooden peg, the sleeves of his cassock falling
limply as though tired out, all had the vague appearance of some dark
and empty phantom, some fleshless and bloodless vampire that inspired
a nameless dread. It was like the shadow of that sin from which he had
cut himself free, but which was waiting to follow him again to-morrow
on his way through the world.
An instant more, and he perceived with terror that the nightmare
obsessed him still. He was not safe yet, there was another night to be
got through, as the voyager crosses a last stretch of turbulent sea.
He was very weary and his heavy eyelids drooped with fatigue, but an
intolerable anxiety prevented him from throwing himself on his bed,
or even sitting down on a chair or resting in any way whatever; he
wandered here and there, doing small, unusual, useless things, softly
opening drawer after drawer and inspecting what there was inside.
As he passed before the mirror he looked at his own reflection and
beheld himself grey of face, with purple lips and hollow eyes. “Look
well at yourself, Paul,” he said to his image, and he stepped back a
little so that the lamplight might fall better on the glass. The figure
in the mirror stepped back also, as though seeking to escape him,
and as he stared into its eyes and noted the dilated pupils he had a
strange impression that the real Paul was the one in the glass, a Paul
who never lied and who betrayed by the pallor of his face all his awful
fear of the morrow.
“Why do I pretend even to myself a security which I do not feel?” was
his silent question. “I must go away this very night as she bade me.”
And somewhat calmer for the resolve he threw himself on his bed. And
thus, with closed eyes and face pressed into the pillow, he believed he
could search more deeply into his conscience.
“Yes, I must leave to-night. Christ Himself commands us to avoid
creating scandals. I had better wake my mother and tell her, and
perhaps we can leave together; she can take me away with her again as
she did when I was a child and I can begin a new life in another place.”
But he felt that all this was mere exaltation and that he had not the
courage to do as he proposed. And why should he? He really felt quite
sure that Agnes would not carry out her threat, so why should he go
away? He was not even confronted with the danger of going back to her
and falling into sin again, for he had now been tried and had overcome
temptation.
But the exaltation took hold of him again.
“Nevertheless, Paul, you will have to go. Awaken your mother and depart
together. Don’t you know who it is speaking to you? It is I, Agnes. You
really believe that I shall not carry out my threat? Perhaps I shall
not, but I advise you to go, all the same. You think you have got rid
of me? And yet I am within you, I am the evil genius of your life. If
you remain here I shall never leave you alone for one single instant; I
shall be the shadow beneath your feet, the barrier between you and your
mother, between you and your own self. Go.”
Then he tried to pacify her, in order to pacify his own conscience.
“Yes, I am going, I tell you! I am going—we will go together, you
within me, more alive than I myself. Be content, torment me no more! We
are together, journeying together, borne on the wings of time towards
eternity. Divided and distant we were when our eyes first met and our
lips kissed; divided were we then and enemies; only now begins our real
union, in thy hatred, in my patience, in my renunciation.”
* * * * *
Then weariness slowly overcame him. He heard a subdued, continuous
moaning outside his window, like a dove seeking her mate: and that
mournful cry was like the lament of the night itself, a night pale with
moonlight, a soft, veiled light, with the sky all flecked with little
white clouds like feathers. Then he became aware that it was he himself
who was moaning; but sleep was already stealing over him, calming his
senses, and fear and sorrow and remembrance faded away. He dreamed
he was really on a journey, riding up the mountain paths towards the
plateau. Everything was peaceful and clear; between the big yellow
elder trees he could see stretches of grass, of a soft green that gave
rest to the eyes, and motionless upon the rocks the eagles blinked at
the sun.
Suddenly the keeper stood before him, saluted, and placed an open book
on his saddle-bow. And he began to read St. Paul’s Epistle to the
Corinthians, taking it up at the precise point where he had left off
the previous night: “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise and that
they are vain.”
* * * * *
On Sundays Mass was later than on other days, but Paul always went
early to the church to hear the confessions of those women who wished
to attend Communion later. So his mother called him at the usual time.
He had slept for some hours, a heavy dreamless sleep, and when he woke
his memory was a complete blank, he only had a supreme desire to go to
sleep again immediately. But the knocks on his door persisted, and then
he remembered. Instantly he was on his feet, numb with dread.
“Agnes will come to church and denounce me before all the people,” was
his one thought.
He did not know why, but somehow whilst he slept the certainty that she
would carry out her threat had taken firm root in his consciousness.
He dropped down in his chair with trembling knees and a sense of
complete helplessness. His mind was clouded and confused: he wondered
vaguely if it would not be possible even now to avert the scandal—he
might feign illness and not say Mass at all, and thus gain time
in which he might endeavour to pacify Agnes. But the very idea of
beginning the whole thing over again, of suffering a second time all
his misery of the previous day, only increased his mental torment.
He got up, and his head seemed to hit the sky through the glass of his
window, and he stamped his feet on the floor to dispel the numbness
that was paralysing his very blood. Then he dressed, drawing his
leather belt tightly round his waist and folding his mantle round him
as he had seen the hunters buckle on their cartridge-belts and wrap
themselves up in their cloaks before starting out for the mountains.
When at last he flung open his window and leaned out he felt that only
then were his eyes awaking to the light of day after the nightmare of
the dark hours, only then had he escaped from the prison of his own
self to make his peace with external things. But it was a forced peace,
full of secret rancour, and it sufficed for him to draw in his head
from the cool fresh air outside to the warm and perfumed atmosphere of
his room for him to fall back into himself, a prey again to his gnawing
dread.
So he fled downstairs, wondering what he had better tell his mother.
He heard her somewhat harsh voice driving off the chickens who were
trying to invade the dining-room, and the fluttering of their wings as
they scattered before her, and he smelt the fragrance of hot coffee and
the clean sweet scents from the garden. In the lane under the ridge
there was a tinkle of bells as the goats were driven to their pasture,
little bells that sounded like childish echoes of the cheerful if
monotonous chime wherewith Antiochus, up in the church tower, summoned
the people to wake from sleep and come to hear Mass.
Everything around was sweet and peaceful, bathed in the rosy light of
early morning. And Paul remembered his dream.
There was nothing to hinder him from going out, from going to church
and taking up his ordinary life again. Yet all his fear returned upon
him; he was afraid alike of going forward or of turning back. As he
stood on the step of the open door he felt as if he were on the summit
of some precipitous mountain, it was impossible to get any higher
and below him yawned the abyss. So he stood there for unspeakable
moments, during which his heart beat furiously and he had the physical
sensation of falling, of struggling at the bottom of a gulf, in a swirl
of foaming waters, a wheel that turned helplessly, vainly beating the
stream that swept on its relentless course.
It was his own heart that turned and turned helplessly in the whirlpool
of life. He closed the door and went back into the house, and sat down
on the stairs as his mother had done the previous night. He gave up
trying to solve the problem that tortured him and simply waited for
some one to come and help him.
And there his mother found him. When he saw her he got up immediately,
feeling somehow comforted at once, yet humiliated, too, in the very
depths of his being, so sure was he of the advice she would give him to
proceed upon his chosen way.
But at the first sight of him her worn face grew pale, as though
refined through grief.
“Paul!” she cried, “what are you doing there? Are you ill?”
“Mother,” he said, walking to the front door without turning into the
dining-room, “I did not want to wake you last night, it was so late.
Well, I went to see her. I went to see her....”
His mother had already recovered her composure and stood looking
fixedly at him. In the brief silence that followed his words they could
hear the church bell ringing quickly and insistently as though it were
right over the house.
“She is quite well,” continued Paul, “but she is very excited and
insists that I shall leave the place at once: otherwise she threatens
to come to church and create a scandal by denouncing me before the
congregation.”
His mother kept silence, but he felt her at his side, stern and
steadfast, upholding him, supporting him as she had supported his
earliest steps.
“She wanted me to go away this very night. And she said that... if I
did not go, she would come to church this morning.... I am not afraid
of her: besides, I don’t believe she will come.”
He opened the front door and a flood of golden light poured into the
dark little passage, as though trying to entice him and his mother
out into the sunshine. Paul walked towards the church without turning
round, and his mother stood at the door looking after him.
She had not opened her lips, but a slight trembling seized her again,
and only with an effort could she maintain her outward composure. All
at once she went up to her bedroom and hurriedly dressed for church:
she was going too, and she, too, drew in her belt and walked with firm
steps. And before she left the house she remembered to drive out the
intruding chickens again, and to draw the coffee-pot to the side of the
fire; then she twisted the long end of her scarf over her mouth and
chin to hide the obstinate trembling that would persist in spite of all
her efforts to overcome it.
So it was only with a glance of the eyes that she could return the
greetings of the women who were coming up from the village, and of the
old men already seated on the low parapet round the square before the
church, their black pointed caps standing out in sharp relief against
the background of rosy morning sky.