Meanwhile Paul had gone into the church.
A few eager penitents were waiting for him, gathered round the
confessional; the woman who had arrived first was already kneeling at
the little grating, whilst the others waited their turn in the benches
close by.
Nina Masia was kneeling on the floor under the holy-water stoup, which
looked as though it were resting on her wicked little head, while
several boys who were early astir were gathered in a circle round her.
Hurrying in with his thoughts elsewhere the priest knocked up against
them, and his anger rose instantly as he recognized the girl, who had
been placed there by her mother on purpose that she might attract
attention. She seemed to be always in his way, at once a hindrance and
a reproach.
“Clear out of this instantly!” he bade them, in a voice so loud that
it was heard all over the church; and immediately the circle of boys
spread itself out and moved a little farther off, with Nina still in
the middle, but they grouped themselves round her in such a way that
she could be seen by every one. The women all turned their heads to
look at her, though without interrupting their prayers for an instant:
she really looked as if she were the idol of the barbaric little
church, redolent of the smell of the fields brought in by the peasants
and flooded with the rosy haze of a country morning.
Paul walked straight up the nave, but his secret anguish grew ever
greater. As he passed, his cassock brushed against the seat where Agnes
usually sat; it was the old family pew, the kneeling-stool in front of
it richly carved, and with his eyes and measured paces he calculated
the distance between it and the altar.
“If I watch for the moment when she rises to carry out her fatal threat
I shall have time to get into the sacristy,” was his conclusion, and he
shivered now as he entered.
Antiochus had hurried down from the belfry to help Paul robe himself,
and was waiting for him beside the open cupboard where his vestments
hung. He had a pale and serious, almost tragic air, as though already
overshadowed by the future career which had been settled for him the
previous evening. But the gravity was transient and a smile flickered
over the boy’s face, just fresh from the wind-swept belfry; his eyes
sparkled with joy beneath their decorously lowered lids, and he had
to bite his lips to check the ready laugh; his young heart responded
to all the radiance, the inspirations, the joyousness of that festal
morning. Then his eyes clouded suddenly as he was arranging the lace of
the alb over the priest’s wrist and he shot a quick look at his master,
for he had perceived that the hand beneath the lace was trembling and
he saw that the beloved face was pallid and distraught.
“Do you feel ill, sir?”
Paul did feel ill, although he shook his head in denial. He felt as
though his mouth were full of blood, yet a tiny germ of hope was
springing up in the midst of his distress.
“I shall fall down dead, my heart will break; and then, at least,
there will be an end of everything.”
He went down into the church again to hear the confessions of the
women, and saw his mother at the bottom of the nave near the door.
Stern and motionless she knelt there, keeping watch over all who
entered the church, over the whole church itself, ready, apparently, to
support and hold it up were it even to collapse upon her head.
But he had no more courage left: only that tiny germ of hope within his
heart, the hope of death, grew and grew till the breath in him stifled
and failed.
When he was seated inside the confessional he felt somewhat calmer;
it was like being in a grave, but at least he was hidden from view
and could look his horror in the face. The subdued whispering of the
women behind the gratings, broken by their little sighs and their warm
breath, was like the rustling of lizards in the long grass on the
ridge. And Agnes was there too, safe in the secret retreat where he had
so often taken her in his thoughts. And the soft breathing of the young
women, the scent of their hair and their gala dress, all perfumed with
lavender, mingled with his distress and further inflamed his passion.
And he gave them all absolution, absolved them from all their sins,
thinking that perhaps before many days had passed he himself would be a
suppliant to them for their compassion.
* * * * *
Then he was seized with the craving to get out, to see whether Agnes
had arrived. But her seat was empty.
Perhaps she was not coming after all. Yet sometimes she remained at the
bottom of the church, kneeling on a chair which her servant brought for
her. He turned to look, but saw only his mother’s rigid figure, and as
he knelt before the altar and began the Mass, he felt that her soul was
bending before God, clothed in her grief as he was clothed in his alb
and stole.
Then he determined not to look behind him again, to close his eyes each
time he had to turn round to give the blessing. He felt as if he were
climbing ever higher up some steep and stony Calvary, and a sensation
of giddiness seized him whenever the ritual obliged him to face the
congregation. Then he closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the
abyss that yawned at his feet; but even through his closed eyelids he
saw the carven bench and the figure of Agnes, her black dress standing
out in relief against the grey wall of the church.
And Agnes was really there, dressed in black with a black veil round
her ivory-white face; her eyes were fixed on her prayer-book, the gilt
clasp of which glittered in her black-gloved hands, but she never
turned a page. The servant with the head of a slave was kneeling on the
floor of the aisle beside the bench, and every now and then she raised
her eyes, like a faithful dog, to her mistress’s face, as though in
silent sympathy with the sad thoughts that possessed her.
And he beheld everything from his place at the altar and hope died
within him; only from the bottom of his heart he told himself it was
impossible that Agnes would carry out her insane threat. He turned the
pages of the Gospel, but his faltering voice could scarcely pronounce
the words; he broke into a sweat of apprehension, and caught hold of
the book as he felt himself fainting.
In a moment he pulled himself together. Antiochus was looking at him,
watching the awful change that came over his face as over the face
of a corpse, keeping close beside him to support him if he fell, and
glancing at the old men by the altar rails to see if they had noticed
the priest’s distress. But nobody noticed it—even his mother remained
in her place, praying and waiting without seeing anything amiss with
her son. Then Antiochus drew still closer to him with a protecting
movement, so that Paul looked round startled, but the boy gave him a
reassuring glance out of his bright eyes, as much as to say:
“I am here, it’s all right, go on——”
And he went on, climbing that steep Calvary till the blood flowed back
into his heart and the tension of his nerves relaxed. But it was the
relaxation of despair, the abandonment to danger, the quiet of the
drowning man who has no more strength to battle with the waves. When he
turned again to the congregation he did not close his eyes.
“The Lord be with you.”
Agnes was there in her place, bent over the page she never turned,
the gilt clasp of the book shining in the dim light. The servant was
crouching at her feet and all the other women, including his mother at
the bottom of the church, were sitting back on their heels on the bare
floor, ready to resume their kneeling position immediately the priest
should move the book.
And he moved the book and went on with the prayers and the slow
gestures of the ritual. And a feeling of tenderness crept into his
despair at the thought that Agnes was bearing him company on his road
to Calvary, as Mary had followed too, that in another moment she would
mount the altar steps and stand beside him once again, having overcome
their transgression, to expiate together as together they had sinned.
How could he hate her if she brought his punishment with her, if her
hatred was only love disguised?
Then came the Communion, and the few drops of wine went down into his
breast like quickening blood; he felt strong, revived, his heart
filled with the presence of God.
And as he descended the steps towards the women the figure of Agnes
in her seat stood out prominent amidst the crowd of bowed heads. She,
too, had bowed her head upon her hands; perhaps she was summoning her
courage before she moved. And suddenly he felt infinite pity for her;
he would have liked to go down to her and give her absolution, and
administer the Communion as to a dying woman. He, too, had summoned his
courage, but his hands shook as he held the wafer to the women’s lips.
* * * * *
Immediately the Communion was ended an old peasant began to intone a
hymn. The congregation sang the verses after him in subdued voices,
and repeated the antiphons twice out loud. The hymn was primitive and
monotonous, old as the earliest prayers of man uttered in forests where
as yet scarcely man dwelt, old and monotonous as the breaking of waves
on a solitary shore; yet that low singing around her sufficed to bring
Agnes’s thoughts back, as though she had been rushing breathless by
night through some primeval forest and had suddenly emerged upon the
seashore, amidst sandhills covered with sweet flowers and golden in the
light of dawn.
Something stirred in the very depths of her being, a strange emotion
gripped her throat; she felt the world turning round with her as
though she had been walking head downwards and now resumed her natural
position.
It was her past and the past of all her race that surged up and took
hold of her, with the singing of the women and the old men, with the
voices of her nurse and her servants, the men and women who had built
and furnished her house, and ploughed her fields and woven the linen
for her swaddling clothes.
How could she denounce herself before all these people who looked up
to her as their mistress and held her even purer than the priest at
the altar? And then she, too, felt the presence of God around her and
within her, even in her passion itself.
She knew very well that the punishment she meant to inflict upon the
man with whom she had sinned was her own punishment too; but now a
merciful God spoke to her with the voices of the old men and women and
the innocent children, and bade her beware of her own self, counselled
her to seek salvation.
As her people round her sang the verses of the hymn, all the days of
her solitary life unrolled themselves before her inward vision. She saw
herself again a little child, then a young girl, then a grown woman in
this same church, on this same seat blackened and worn by the elbows
and knees of her forefathers. In a sense the church belonged to her
family; it had been built by one of her ancestors, and tradition said
that the image of the Madonna had been captured from Barbary pirates
and brought back to the village by a far-away grandfather of hers.
She had been born and brought up amidst these traditions, in an
atmosphere of simple grandeur that kept her aloof from the smaller
people of Aar, yet still in the midst of them, shut in amongst them
like a pearl in its rough shell.
How could she denounce herself before her people? But this very
feeling of being mistress even of the sacred building rendered more
insufferable still the presence of the man who had been her companion
in sin, and who appeared at the altar wearing a mask of saintliness and
bearing the holy vessels in his hands—tall and splendid he stood above
her as she knelt at his feet, guilty in that she had loved him.
Her heart swelled anew with rage and grief as the hymn rose and fell
around her, like a supplication rising from out some abyss, imploring
help and justice, and she heard the voice of God, dark and stern,
bidding her drive His unworthy servant out of His temple.
She grew pale as death and broke into a cold sweat; her knees shook
against the seat, but she bowed no more and with head erect she watched
the movements of the priest at the altar. And it was as though some
evil breath went out from her to him, paralysing him, enveloping him in
the same icy grip that held her fast.
* * * * *
And he felt that mortal breath that emanated from her will, and just as
on bitter winter mornings, his fingers were frozen and uncontrollable
shivers ran down his spine. When he turned to give the benediction
he saw Agnes gazing at him. Their eyes met as in a flash, and like a
drowning man he remembered in that instant all the joy of his life, joy
sprung wholly and solely from love of her, from the first look of her
eyes, the first kiss of her lips. Then he saw her rise from her seat,
book in hand.
“Oh God, Thy will be done,” he stammered, kneeling—and he seemed to be
actually in the Garden of Olives, watching the shadow of an inexorable
fate.
He prayed aloud and waited, and midst the confused sound of the
people’s prayers he thought he could distinguish Agnes’s step as she
moved toward the altar.
“She is coming—she has left her seat, she is between her seat and the
altar. She is coming... she is here—every one is staring at her. She is
at my side!”
The obsession was so strong that the words failed on his lips. He saw
Antiochus, who had already begun to extinguish the candles, suddenly
turn and look round, and he knew for certain that she was there, close
to him, on the chancel steps.
He rose to his feet, the roof seemed to fall down upon his head and
fracture it; his knees scarcely upheld him, but with a sudden effort he
managed to get up to the altar again and take the pyx. And as he turned
to enter the sacristy he saw that Agnes had advanced from her seat to
the railing and was about to mount the steps.
“Oh, Lord, why not let me die?” and he bowed his head over the pyx as
though baring his neck to the sword that was about to strike it. But as
he entered the sacristy door he looked again and perceived Agnes bowed
at the altar railing as she knelt on the lowest step.
* * * * *
She had stumbled at the lowest step outside the railing, and as though
a wall had suddenly risen up before her, she had dropped on her knees.
A thick mist dimmed her sight and she could go no further.
Presently the dimness cleared and she could see the steps again, the
yellow carpet before the altar, the flowers upon the table and the
burning lamp. But the priest had disappeared, and in his place a ray of
sunlight smote obliquely through the dusk and made a golden patch upon
the carpet.
She crossed herself, rose to her feet and moved towards the door. The
servant followed her and the old men, the women and the children turned
to smile at her and bless her with their eyes; she was their mistress,
their symbol of beauty and of faith, so far removed from them and yet
in the midst of them and all their misery, like a wild rose amongst the
brambles.
At the church door the servant offered her holy water on the tips
of her fingers, and then stooped to brush off the dust of the altar
steps which still clung to her dress. As the girl raised herself again
she saw the ashen face of Agnes turned towards the corner where the
priest’s mother had knelt through all the service. Then she saw the
mother sitting motionless on the ground, her head sunk forward on her
breast, her shoulders leaning against the wall as though she had made
a supreme effort to uphold it in a great collapse. Noticing the fixed
gaze of Agnes and the servant, a woman also turned to look, then sprang
quickly to the side of the priest’s mother, spoke to her in a whisper
and raised her face in her hand.
The mother’s eyes were half-closed, glassy, the pupils upturned; the
rosary had dropped from her hand and her head fell sideways on to the
shoulder of the woman who held her.
“She is dead!” shrieked the woman.
And instantly the whole congregation was on its feet and crowding to
the bottom of the church.
Meanwhile Paul had gone back into the sacristy with Antiochus, who
was carrying the book of the Gospel. He was trembling with cold and
with relief; he actually felt as though he had just escaped from a
shipwreck, and he wanted to energize and walk about to warm himself and
convince himself that it had all been a bad dream.
Then a confused murmur of voices was heard in the church, at first
low, then growing quickly louder and louder. Antiochus put his head
out of the sacristy door and saw all the people collected together at
the bottom of the nave, as though there were some obstruction at the
entrance, but an old man was already hastening up the chancel steps and
making mysterious signs.
“His mother is taken ill,” he said.
Paul, still robed in his alb, was down there at one bound and threw
himself on his knees that he might look more closely into his mother’s
face as she lay stretched on the ground, with her head in a woman’s lap
and hemmed in by the pressing crowd.
“Mother, mother!”
The face was still and rigid, the eyes half-closed, the teeth clenched
in the effort not to cry aloud.
And he knew instantly that she had died of the shock of that same
grief, that same terror which he had been enabled to overcome.
And he, too, clenched his teeth that he might not cry aloud when he
raised his head; and across the confused mass of the people surging
round, his eyes met the eyes of Agnes fixed upon him.