All that night the two aged monks whose cells were one on each side
of Father Palemon's heard him tossing in his sleep. At the open
confessional next morning he did not accuse himself. The events of the
day before were known to none. There were in that room but two who
could have testified against him. One was Father Palemon himself; the
other was a small dark-red spot on the white bosom of his cowl, just by
his heart. It was a blood-stain from the wounded head that had lain on
his breast. Through the dread examination and the confessions Father
Palemon sat motionless, his face shadowed by his hood, his arms crossed
over his bosom, hiding this scarlet stain. What nameless foreboding
had blanched his cheek when he first beheld it? It seemed to be a dead
weight over his heart, as those earth-stains on the hem had begun to
clog his feet.
That day he went the round of his familiar duties faultlessly but
absently. Without heeding his own voice, he sang the difficult ancient
offices of the Church in a full volume of tone, that was heard
above the rich unison of the unerring choir. When, at twilight, he
lay down on his hard, narrow bed, with the leathern cincture about
his gaunt waist, he seemed girt for some lonely spiritual conflict
of the midnight hours. Once, in the sad tumult of his dreams, his
out-stretched arms struck sharply against some object and he awoke; it
was the crucifix that hung against the bare wall at his head.
He sat up. The bell of the monastery tolled twelve. A new day was
beginning. A new day for him? In two hours he would set his feet, as
evermore, in the small circle of ancient monastic exactions. Already
the westering moon poured its light through the long windows of the
abbey and flooded his cell. He arose softly and walked to the open
casement, looking out upon the southern summer midnight. Beneath the
window lay the garden of flowers. Countless white roses, as though
censers swung by unseen hands, waved up to him their sweet incense.
Some dreaming bird awoke its happy mate with a note prophetic of
the coming dawn. From the bosom of the stream below, white trailing
shapes rose ethereal through the moonlit air, and floated down the
valley as if journeying outward to some mysterious bourn. On the dim
horizon stood the domes of the forest trees, marking the limits of the
valley--the boundary of his life. He pressed his hot head against the
cold casement and groaned aloud, seeming to himself, in his tumultuous
state, the only thing that did not belong to the calm and holy beauty
of the scene. Disturbed by the sound, an old monk sleeping a few feet
distant turned in his cell and prayed aloud:
"_Seigneur! Seigneur! Oubliez la faiblesse de ma jeunesse! Vive Jésus!
Vive sa Croix!_"
The prayer smote him like a warning. Conscience was still torturing
this old man--torturing him even in his dreams on account of the sinful
fevers that had burned up within him half a century ago. On the very
verge of the grave he was uplifting his hands to implore forgiveness
for the errors of his youth. Ah! and those other graves in the quiet
cemetery garth below--the white-cowled dust of his brethren, mouldering
till the resurrection morn. They, too, had been sorely tempted--had
struggled and prevailed, and now reigned as saints in heaven, whence
they looked sorrowfully and reproachfully down upon him, and upon their
sinful heaps of mortal dust, which had so foiled the immortal spirit.
Miserably, piteously, he wrestled with himself. Even conscience was
divided in twain and fought madly on both sides. His whole training had
left him obedient to ideas of duty. To be told what to do always had
been for him to do it. But hitherto his teachers had been the fathers.
Lately two others had appeared--a man and a woman of the world, who had
spoken of life and of duty as he had never thought of them. The pale,
dark hunchback, whom he had often seen haunting the monastery grounds
and hovering around him at his work, had unconsciously drawn aside for
him the curtains of the world and a man's nobler part in it. The woman,
whom he had addressed as a devil, had come in his eyes to be an angel.
Both had made him blush for his barren life, his inactivity. Both had
shown him which way duty lay.
Duty? Ah! it was not duty. It was the woman, the woman! The old
tempter! It was the sinful passion of love that he was responding to;
it was the recollection of that sweet face against which his heart had
beat--of the helpless form that he had borne in his arms. Duty or love,
he could not separate them. The great world, on the boundaries of which
he wished to set his feet, was a dark, formless, unimaginable thing,
and only the light from the woman's face streamed across to him and
beckoned him on. It was she who made his priestly life wretched--made
even the wearing of his cowl an act of hypocrisy that was the last
insult to Heaven. Better anything than this. Better the renunciation
of his sacred calling, though it should bring him the loss of earthly
peace and eternal pardon.
The clock struck half-past one. He turned back to his cell. The ghastly
beams of the setting moon suffused it with the pallor of a death-scene.
God in heaven! The death-scene was there--the crucifixion! The sight
pierced him afresh with the sharpest sorrow, and taking the crucifix
down, he fell upon his knees and covered it with his kisses and his
tears. There was the wound in the side, there were the drops of blood
and the thorns on the brow, and the divine face still serene and
victorious in the last agony of self-renunciation. Self-renunciation!
"Lord, is it true that I cannot live to Thee alone? And Thou didst
sacrifice Thyself to the utmost for me! Consider me, how I am made!
Have mercy, have mercy! If I sin, be Thou my witness that I do not know
it!--Thou, too, didst love her well enough to die for her!"
In that hour, when he touched the highest point that nature ever
enabled him to attain, Father Palemon, looking into his conscience and
into the divine face, took his final resolution. He was still kneeling
in steadfast contemplation of the cross when the moon withdrew its last
ray and over it there rushed a sudden chill and darkness. He was still
immovable before it when, at the resounding clangor of the bell, all
the spectral figures of his brethren started up from their couches like
ghosts from their graves, and in a long, shadowy line wound noiselessly
downward into the gloom of the chapel, to begin the service of matins
and lauds.