Every morning the entire Trappist brotherhood meet in a large room for
public confession and accusation. High at one end sits the venerable
abbot; beside him, but lower, the prior; while the fathers in white and
the brothers in brown range themselves on benches placed against the
wall on each side.
It was near the close of this impressive ceremony that Father Palemon
arose, and, pushing the hood far back from his face, looked sorrowfully
around upon the amazed company. A thrill of the tenderest sympathy
shot through them. He was the youngest by far of their number and
likeliest therefore to go astray; but never had any one found cause to
accuse him, and never had he condemned himself. Many a head wearing
its winter of age and worldly scars had been lifted in that sacred
audience-chamber of the soul confessing to secret sin. But not he.
So awful a thing is it for a father to accuse himself, that in utter
self-abasement his brethren throw themselves prone to the floor when
he rises. It was over the prostrate forms of his brethren that Father
Palemon now stood up erect, alone. Unearthly spectacle! He began his
confession. In the hushed silence of the great bare chamber his voice
awoke such echoes as might have terrified the soul had one gone into
a vast vault and harangued the shrouded dead. But he went on, sparing
not himself and laying bare his whole sin--the yielding to weariness
in the garden; the listening to the conversation; most of all, the
harboring of strange doubts and desires since then. Never before
had the word "woman" been breathed at this confessional of devoted
celibates. More than one hooded, faded cheek blushed secret crimson
at the sound. The circumstances attending Father Palemon's temptation
invested it with an ancient horror. The scene, a garden; the tempter, a
woman. It was like some modern Adam confessing his fall.
His penance was severe. For a week he was not to leave his cell, except
at brief seasons. Every morning he must scourge himself on his naked
back until the blood came. Every noon he must go about the refectory on
his knees, begging his portion of daily bread, morsel by morsel, from
his brethren, and must eat it sitting before them on the floor. This
repast was reduced in quantity one half. An aged deaf monk took his
place in the garden.
His week of penance over, Father Palemon came forth too much weakened
to do heavy work, and was sent to relieve one of the fathers in the
school. Educated there himself, he had often before this taught its
round of familiar duties.
The school is situated outside the abbey wall on a hill-side several
hundred yards away. Between it and the abbey winds the road which
enters the valley above and goes out below, connecting two country
highways. Where it passes the abbey it offers slippery, unsafe footing
on account of a shelving bed of rock which rises on each side as a
steep embankment, and is kept moist by overhanging trees and by a small
stream that issues from the road-side and spreads out over the whole
pass. The fathers are commanded to cross this road at a quick gait,
the hood drawn completely over the face, and the eyes bent on the
ground.
One sultry afternoon, a few days later, Father Palemon had sent away
his little group of pious pupils, and seated himself to finish his
work. The look of unawakened innocence had vanished from his eyes.
They were full of thought and sorrow. A little while and, as though
weighed down with heaviness, his head sank upon his arms, which were
crossed over the desk. But he soon lifted it with alarm. One of the
violent storms which gather and pass so quickly in the Kentucky skies
was rushing on from the south. The shock of distant thunder sent a
tremor through the building. He walked to the window and stood for a
moment watching the rolling edge of the low storm-cloud with its plumes
of white and gray and ominous dun-green colors. Suddenly his eyes were
drawn to the road below. Around a bend a horse came running at full
speed, uncontrolled by the rider. He clasped his hands and breathed a
prayer. Just ahead was the slippery, dangerous footing. Another moment
and horse and rider disappeared behind the embankment. Then the horse
reappeared on the other side, without saddle or rider, rushing away
like a forerunner of the tempest.
He ran down. When he reached the spot he saw lying on the road-side
the form of a woman--the creature whom his priestly vows forbade him
ever to approach. Her face was upturned, but hidden under a great wave
of her long, loosened, brown hair. He knelt down and, lifting the hair
aside, gazed down into it.
"_Ave Maria!_--Mother of God!" The disjointed exclamations were
instinctive. The first sight of beautiful womanhood had instantly
lifted his thought to the utmost height of holy associations. Indeed,
no sweet face had he ever looked on but the Virgin's picture. Many a
time in the last few years had he, in moments of restlessness, drawn
near and studied it with a sudden rush of indefinable tenderness and
longing. But beauty, such as this seemed to him, he had never dreamed
of. He bent over it, reverential, awe-stricken. Then, as naturally
as the disciple John might have succored Mary, finding her wounded
and fainting by the wayside, he took the unconscious sufferer in his
arms and bore her to the school-room for refuge from the bursting
storm. There he quickly stripped himself of his great soft cowl, and,
spreading it on the bare floor, laid her on it, and with cold water and
his coarse monk's handkerchief bathed away the blood that flowed from a
little wound on her temple.
A few moments and she opened her eyes. He was bending close over her,
and his voice sounded as sweet and sorrowful as a vesper bell:
"Do you suffer? Are you much hurt? Your horse must have fallen among
the rocks. The girth was broken."
She sat up bewildered, and replied slowly:
"I think I am only stunned. Yes, my horse fell. I was hurrying home out
of the storm. He took fright at something and I lost control of him.
What place is this?"
"This is the school of the abbey. The road passes just below. I was
standing at the window when your horse ran past, and I brought you
here."
"I must go home at once. They will be anxious about me. I am visiting
at a place not more than a mile away."
He shook his head and pointed to the window. A sudden gray blur of rain
had effaced the landscape. The wind shook the building.
"You must remain here until the storm is over. It will last but a
little while."
During this conversation she had been sitting on the white cowl,
and he, with the frankness of a wondering, innocent child, had been
kneeling quite close beside her. Now she got up and walked to one of
the windows, looking out upon the storm, while he retired to another
window at the opposite end of the room.
What was the tempest-swept hill outside to the wild, swift play of
emotions in him? A complete revulsion of feeling quickly succeeded his
first mood. What if she was more beautiful--far more beautiful--than
the sweet Virgin's picture in the abbey? She was a devil, a beautiful
devil. Her eyes, her hair, which had blown against his face and around
his neck, were the Devil's implements; her form, which he had clasped
in his arms, was the Devil's subtlest hiding-place. She had brought
sin into the world. She had been the curse of man ever since. She had
tempted St. Anthony. She had ruined many a saint, sent many a soul
to purgatory, many a soul to bell. Perhaps she was trying to send
_his_ soul to hell now--now while he was alone with her and under her
influence. It was this same woman who had broken into the peace of his
life two weeks before, for he had instantly recognized the voice as
the one that he had heard in the garden and that had been the cause of
his severe penance. Amid all his scourgings, fasts, and prayers that
voice had never left him. It made him ache to think of what penance he
must now do again on her account; and with a sudden impulse he walked
across the room, and, standing before her with arms folded across his
breast, said in a voice of the simplest sorrow:
"Why have you crossed my path-way, thus to tempt me?"
She looked at him with eyes that were calm but full of natural surprise.
"I do not understand how I have tempted you."
"You tempt me to believe that woman is not the devil she is."
She was silent with confusion. The whole train of his thought was
unknown to her. It was difficult, bewildering. A trivial answer was out
of the question, for he hung upon her expected reply with a look of
pitiable eagerness. She took refuge in the didactic.
"I have nothing to say about the nature of woman. It is vague,
contradictory; it is anything, everything. But I _can_ speak to you of
the lives of women; that is a definite subject. Some women may be what
you call devils. But some are not. I thought that you recognized the
existence of saintly women within the memories and the present pale of
your church."
"True. It is the women of the world who are the devils."
"You know so well the women of the world?"
"I have been taught. I have been taught that if Satan were to appear
to me on my right hand and a beautiful woman of the world on my left,
I should flee to Satan from the arms of my greater enemy. You tempt me
to believe that this is not true--to believe that the fathers have lied
to me. You tempt me to believe that Satan would not dare to appear in
your presence. Is it because you are yourself a devil that you tempt
me thus?"
"Should you ask me? I am a woman of the world. I live in a city of
more than a million souls--in the company of thousands of these
women-devils. I see hundreds of them daily. I may be one myself. If you
think I am a devil, you ought not to ask me to tell you the truth. You
should not listen to me or believe me."
She felt the cruelty of this. It was like replying logically to a child
who had earnestly asked to be told something that might wreck its faith
and happiness.
The storm was passing. In a few minutes this strange interview would
end: he back to his cell again: she back to the world. Already it had
its deep influence over them both. She, more than he, felt its almost
tragical gravity, and was touched by its pathos. These two young human
souls, true and pure, crossing each other's path-way in life thus
strangely, now looked into each other's eyes, as two travellers from
opposite sides of the world meet and salute and pass in the midst of
the desert.
"I shall believe whatever you tell me," he said, with tremulous
eagerness.
The occasion lifted her ever-serious nature to the extraordinary; and
trying to cast the truth that she wished to teach into the mould which
would be most familiar to him, she replied:
"Do you know who are most like you monks in consecration of life? It
is the women--the good women of the world. What are your great vows?
Are they not poverty, labor, self-denial, chastity, prayer? Well, there
is not one of these but is kept in the hearts of good women. Only, you
monks keep your vows for your own sakes, while women keep them as well
for the sakes of others. For the sake of others they live and die poor.
Sometimes they even starve. You never do that. They work for others as
you have never worked; they pray for others as you have never prayed.
In sickness and weariness, day and night, they deny themselves and
sacrifice themselves for others as you have never done--never can do.
You keep yourselves pure. They keep themselves pure and make others
pure. If you are the best examples of personal holiness that may be
found in the world apart from temptation, they are the higher types of
it maintained amid temptations that never cease. You are content to
pray for the world, they also work for it. If you wish to see, in the
most nearly perfect form that is ever attained in this world, love and
sympathy and forgiveness, if you wish to find vigils and patience and
charity--go to the good women of the world. They are all through the
world, of which you know nothing--in homes, and schools, and hospitals;
with the old, the suffering, the dying. Sometimes they are clinging to
the thankless, the dissolute, the cruel; sometimes they are ministering
to the weary, the heart-broken, the deserted. No, no! Some women may be
what you call them, devils--"
She blushed all at once with recollection of her earnestness. It was
the almost elemental simplicity of her listener that had betrayed her
into it. Meantime, as she had spoken, his quickly changing mood had
regained its first pitch. She seemed to rise higher--to be arraigning
him and his ideals of duty. In his own sight he seemed to grow smaller,
shrink up, become despicable; and when she suddenly ceased speaking, he
lifted his eyes to her, alas! too plainly now betraying his heart.
"And you are one of these good women?"
"I have nothing to say of myself; I spoke of others. I may be a devil."
For an instant through the scattering clouds the sunlight had fallen in
through the window, lighting up her head as with a halo. It fell upon
the cowl also, which lay on the floor like a luminous heap. She went to
it, and, lifting it, said to him:
"Will you leave me now? They must pass here soon looking for me. I
shall see them from the window. I do not know what should have happened
to me but for your kindness. And I can only thank you very gratefully."
He took the hand that she gave him in both of his, and held it closely
a while as his eyes rested long and intently upon her face. Then,
quickly muffling up his own in the folds of his cowl, he turned away
and left the room. She watched him disappear behind the embankment
below and then reappear on the opposite side, striding rapidly towards
the abbey.