He became aware that some one was knocking at the door.
Paul started as though suddenly awakened from sleep and sprang up
from his bed with the confused sensation of one who has to depart on
a journey and is afraid of being too late. But directly he tried to
stand up he was forced to sit down weakly on his bed again, for his
limbs gave way under him and he felt as if he had been beaten all
over whilst he lay asleep. Crouched together with his head sunk on
his breast, he could only nod faintly in response to the knock. His
mother had not forgotten to call him early, as he had requested her
on the previous day: his mother was following her own straight path,
she remembered nothing of what had happened during the night and
called him as though this were just like any other morning.
Yes, it was like any other morning. Paul got up again and began to
dress, and gradually he pulled himself together and stood stiff and
erect in the garments of his order. He flung open the window, and his
eyes were dazzled by the vivid light of the silvery sky; the thickets
on the hill-side, alive with the song of birds, quivered and sparkled
in the morning sun, the wind had dropped and the sound of the church
bell vibrated through the pure air.
The bell called him, he lost sight of all external things, although
he sought to escape from the things within him: the scent of his room
caused him physical distress and the memories it evoked stung him to
the quick. The bell went on calling him, but he could not make up his
mind to leave his room and he wandered round it almost in a fury. He
looked in the mirror and then turned away, but it was useless for him
to avoid it; the image of the woman was reflected in his mind as in a
mirror, he might break it in a thousand fragments, but each fragment
would still retain that image entire and complete.
The second bell for Mass was ringing insistently, inviting him to
come: he moved about here and there, searching for something he could
not find, and finally sat down at his table and began to write. He
began by copying out the verses which said, "Enter ye in by the
narrow gate," etc.; then he crossed them out and on the other side of
the paper he wrote:
"Please do not expect me again. We have mutually entangled each other
in a net of deception and we must cut ourselves loose without delay,
if we want to free ourselves and not sink to the bottom. I am coming
to you no more; forget me, do not write to me, and do not try to see
me again."
Then he went downstairs and called his mother, and held out the
letter towards her without looking at her.
"Take this to her at once," he said hoarsely, "try and give it into
her own hands and then come away immediately."
He felt the letter taken out of his hand and hurried outside, for the
moment uplifted and relieved.
Now the bell was ringing the third time, pealing out over the quiet
village and the valleys grey in the silvery light of the dawn. Up the
hilly road, as though ascending from the depths of the valley, came
figures of old men with gnarled sticks hanging from their wrists by
leather straps, and women whose heads wrapped in voluminous kerchiefs
looked too large for their small bodies. When they had all entered
the church and the old men had taken their places in front close
by the altar rails, the place was filled with the odour of earth
and field, and Antiochus, the youthful sacristan, swung his censer
energetically, sending out the smoke in the direction of the old men
to drive away the smell. Gradually a dense cloud of incense screened
the altar from the rest of the little church, and the brown-faced
sacristan in his white surplice and the pale-faced priest in his
vestments of red brocade moved about as in a pearly mist. Both Paul
and the boy loved the smoke and the scent of the incense and used it
lavishly. Turning towards the nave, the priest half closed his eyes
and frowned as though the mist impeded his sight; apparently he was
displeased at the small number of worshippers and was waiting for
others to arrive. And in fact a few late comers did enter then, and
last of all his mother, and Paul turned white to the lips.
So the letter had been delivered and the sacrifice was accomplished:
a deathlike sweat broke out upon his forehead, and as he raised his
hands in consecration his secret prayer was that the offering of his
own flesh and blood might be accepted. And he seemed to see the woman
reading his letter and falling to the ground in a swoon.
When the Mass was ended he knelt down wearily and recited a Latin
prayer in a monotonous voice. The congregation responded, and he felt
as though he were dreaming and longed to throw himself down at the
foot of the altar and fall asleep like a shepherd on the bare rocks.
Dimly through the clouds of incense he saw in her glass-fronted niche
the little Madonna which the people believed to be miraculous, a
figure as dark and delicate as a cameo in a medallion, and he gazed
at it as though he were seeing it again for the first time after a
long absence. Where had he been all that time? His thoughts were
confused and he could not recollect.
Then suddenly he rose to his feet and turned round and began to
address the congregation, a thing he only did very occasionally. He
spoke in dialect and in a harsh voice, as though he were scolding the
old men, now thrusting their bearded faces between the pillars of the
altar rails in order to hear better, and the women crouching on the
ground, divided between curiosity and fear. The sacristan, holding
the Mass-book in his arms, glanced at Paul out of his long dark eyes,
then turned them on the people and shook his head, threatening them
in jest if they did not attend.
"Yes," said the priest, "the number of you who come here grows ever
less; when I have to face you I am almost ashamed, for I feel like
a shepherd who has lost his sheep. Only on Sunday is the church a
little fuller, but I fear you come because of your scruples and not
because of your belief, from habit rather than from need, as you
change your clothes or take your rest. Up now, it is time to awake!
I do not expect mothers of families, or men who have to be at work
before the dawn, to come here every morning, but young women and old
men and children, such as I shall see now when I leave the church,
standing at their own doors to greet the rising sun, all those should
come here to begin the day with God, to praise Him in His own house
and to gain strength for the path they have to tread. If you did this
the poverty that afflicts you would disappear, and evil habits and
temptation would no longer assail you. It is time to awake early in
the morning, to wash yourselves and to change your clothing every day
and not only on Sundays! So I shall expect you all, beginning from
to-morrow, and we will pray together that God will not forsake us
and our little village, as He will not forsake the smallest nest, and
for those who are sick and cannot come here we will pray that they
may recover and be able to march forward too."
He turned round swiftly and the sacristan did the same, and for a few
minutes there reigned in the little church a silence so intense that
the stone-breaker could be heard at his work behind the ridge. Then
a woman got up and approached the priest's mother, placing a hand on
her shoulder as she bent down and whispered:
"Your son must come at once to hear the confession of King Nicodemus,
who is seriously ill."
Roused from her own sad thoughts, the mother raised her eyes to the
speaker. She remembered that King Nicodemus was a fantastic old
hunter who lived in a hut high up in the mountains, and she asked if
Paul would have to climb up there to hear the confession.
"No," whispered the woman, "his relations have brought him down to
the village."
So the mother went to tell Paul, who was in the little sacristy,
disrobing with the help of Antiochus.
"You will come home first and drink your coffee, won't you?" she
asked.
He avoided looking at her and did not even answer, but pretended to
be in a great hurry to go to the old man who was ill. The thoughts of
both mother and son dwelt upon the same thing, the letter which had
been delivered to Agnes, but neither spoke of it. Then he hastened
away, and she stood there like a block of wood whilst the sacristan
busied himself in replacing the vestments in the black cupboard.
"It would have been better if I had not told him about Nicodemus
until he had been home and had his coffee," she said.
"A priest must get accustomed to everything," replied Antiochus
gravely, poking his head round the cupboard door, and then he added
as though to himself as he turned back to his work inside:
"Perhaps he is angry with me, because he says I am inattentive: but
it's not true, I assure you it's not true! Only when I looked at
those old men I felt inclined to laugh, for they did not understand a
word of the sermon. They sat there with their mouths open, but they
understood nothing. I bet you that old Marco Panizza really thinks he
ought to wash his face every day, he who never washes at all except
at Easter and Christmas! And you'll see that from now on they will
all come to church every day, because he told them that poverty would
disappear if they did that."
The mother still stood there, her hands clasped beneath her apron.
"The poverty of the soul," she said, to show that she at least had
understood. But Antiochus only looked at her as he had looked at
the old men, with a strong desire to laugh. Because he was quite
sure that nobody could understand these matters as he understood
them, he who already knew the four gospels by heart and intended to
be a priest himself, which fact did not prevent him from being as
mischievous and inquisitive as other boys.
As soon as he had finished putting everything in order and the
priest's mother had gone away, Antiochus locked the sacristy and
walked across the little garden attached to the church, all overgrown
with rosemary and as deserted as a cemetery. But instead of going
home to where his mother kept a tavern in one corner of the village
square, he ran off to the presbytery to hear the latest news of King
Nicodemus, and also for another reason.
"Your son scolded me for not paying attention," he repeated uneasily,
whilst the priest's mother was busy preparing her Paul's breakfast.
"Perhaps he won't have me as sacristan any longer, perhaps he will
take Ilario Panizza. But Ilario cannot read, whereas I have even
learnt to read Latin. Besides, Ilario is so dirty. What do you think?
Will he send me away?"
"He wants you to pay attention, that is all: it is not right to
laugh in church," she answered sternly and gravely.
"He is very angry. Perhaps he did not sleep last night, on account of
the wind. Did you hear what an awful wind?"
The woman made no reply; she went into the dining-room and placed on
the table enough bread and biscuits to satisfy the twelve apostles.
Probably Paul would not touch a thing, but the mere act of moving
about and making preparations for him, as though he were sure to
come in as merry and hungry as a mountain shepherd, did something to
assuage her trouble and perhaps quiet her conscience, which every
moment stung her more and more sharply, and the boy's very remark,
that "perhaps he was angry because he did not sleep last night,"
only increased her uneasiness. Her heavy footsteps echoed through
the silent rooms as she went to and fro: she felt instinctively that
although apparently _all was over_, in reality it was all only just
beginning. She had well understood the words he spoke from the altar,
that one must awake early and wash oneself and march forward, and
she went to and fro, up and down, trying to imagine that she was
marching forward in very truth. She went upstairs to put his room in
order; but the mirror and the perfumes still vexed and alarmed her,
in spite of the assurance that everything was now at an end, while
a vision of Paul, pale and rigid as a corpse, seemed to meet her
eyes from the depths of that cursed mirror, to hang with his cassock
on the wall and lie stretched lifeless upon the bed. And her heart
was heavy within her, as though some inward paralysis prevented her
breathing.
The pillow-slip was still damp with Paul's tears and his fevered
anguish of the night, and as she drew it off to replace it with a
fresh one the thought came to her, for the first time in her life:
"But why are priests forbidden to marry?"
And she thought of Agnes's wealth, and how she owned a large house
with gardens and orchards and fields.
Then suddenly she felt horribly guilty in even entertaining such
thoughts, and quickly drawing on the fresh pillow-slip she went away
into her own room.
Marching forward? Yes, she had been marching since dawn and was yet
only at the beginning of the way. And however far one went, one
always came back to the same place. She went downstairs and sat by
the fire beside Antiochus, who had not moved and was determined to
wait there all day, if needs be, for the sake of seeing his superior
and making his peace with him. He sat very still, one leg crossed
over the other and his hands clasped round his knee, and presently he
remarked, not without a slight accent of reproach:
"You ought to have taken him his coffee into the church, as you do
when he is delayed there hearing the women's confessions. As it is,
he will be famished!"
"And how was I to know he would be sent for in such a hurry? The old
man is dying, it seems," retorted the mother.
"I don't think that can be true. His grandchildren want him to die
because he has some money to leave. I know the old chap! I saw him
once when I went up into the mountains with my father: he was sitting
amongst the rocks in the sun, with a dog and a tame eagle beside him
and all sorts of dead animals all round. That is not how God orders
us to live!"
"What does He order, then?"
"He orders us to live amongst men, to cultivate the ground, and not
to hide our money, but to give it to the poor."
The little sacristan spoke with a man's confidence, and the priest's
mother was touched and smiled. After all, if Antiochus could say
such sensible things it was because he had been taught by her Paul.
It was her Paul who taught them all to be good, wise and prudent;
and when he really wished to he succeeded in convincing even old men
whose opinions were already fixed, and even thoughtless children. She
sighed, and bending down to draw the coffee-pot nearer the glowing
embers, she said:
"You talk like a little saint, Antiochus; but it remains to be seen
if you will do as you say when you're a man, whether you really will
give your money to the poor."
"Yes, I shall give everything to the poor. I shall have a great deal
of money, because my mother makes a lot with her tavern, and my
father is a forest keeper and earns pretty well, too. I shall give
all I get to the poor: God tells us to do that, and He Himself will
provide for us. And the Bible says, the ravens do not sow, neither
do they reap, yet they have their food from God, and the lily of the
valley is clothed more splendidly than the king."
"Yes, Antiochus, when a man is alone he can do that, but what if he
has children?"
"That makes no difference. Besides, I shall never have children;
priests are not allowed to have any."
She turned to look at him; his profile was towards her, against the
bright background of the open doorway and the courtyard outside; it
was a profile of pure, firm outline and dark skin, almost like a head
of bronze, with long lashes shading the eyes with their large dark
pupils. And as she gazed at the boy she could have wept, but she
knew not why.
"Are you quite sure you want to be a priest?" she asked.
"Yes, if that is God's will."
"Priests are not allowed to marry, and suppose that some day you
wanted to take a wife?"
"I shall not want a wife, since God has forbidden it."
"God? But it is the Pope who has forbidden it," said the mother,
somewhat taken aback at the boy's answer.
"The Pope is God's representative on earth."
"But in olden times priests had wives and families, just as the
Protestant clergy have now," she urged.
"That is a different thing," said the boy, growing warm over the
argument; "_we_ ought not to have them!"
"The priests in olden times...." she persisted.
But the sacristan was well-informed. "Yes, the priests in olden
times," he said, "but then they themselves held a meeting and decided
against it; and those who had no wives or families, the younger ones,
were the very ones who opposed marriage the most strongly. That is as
it should be."
"The younger ones!" repeated the mother as if to herself. "But they
know nothing about it! And then they may repent, they may even go
astray," she added in a low voice, "they may come to reason and argue
like the old priest."
A tremor seized her and she looked swiftly round to assure herself
that the ghost was not there, instantly repenting for having thus
evoked it. She did not wish even to think about it, and least of all
in connection with _that matter_. Was it not all ended? Moreover,
Antiochus's face wore an expression of the deepest scorn.
"That man was not a priest, he was the devil's brother come to earth!
God save us from him! We had best not even think about him!" and
he made the sign of the cross. Then he continued, with recovered
serenity:
"As for repenting! Do you suppose that _he_, your son, ever dreams of
repenting?"
It hurt her to hear the boy talk like that. She longed to be able to
tell him something of her trouble, to warn him for the future, yet
at the same time she rejoiced at his words, as though the conscience
of the innocent lad were speaking to her conscience to commend and
encourage it.
"Does he, does my Paul say it is right for priests not to marry?" she
asked in a low voice.
"If _he_ does not say it is right, who should say so? Of course he
says it is right; hasn't he said so to you? A fine thing it would be
to see a priest with his wife beside him and a child in his arms! And
when he ought to go and say Mass he has to nurse the baby because
it's howling! What a joke! Imagine your son with one child in his
arms and another hanging on to his cassock!"
The mother smiled wanly; but there passed before her eyes a fleeting
vision of lovely children running about the house, and there was a
pang at her heart. Antiochus laughed aloud, his dark eyes and white
teeth flashing in his brown face, but there was something cruel in
his laughter.
"A priest's wife would be a funny thing! When they went out for a
walk together they would look from behind like two women! And would
she go and confess to him, if they lived in a place where there was
no other priest?"
"What does a mother do? Who do I confess to?"
"A mother is different. And who is there that your son could marry?
The granddaughter of King Nicodemus, perhaps?"
He began to laugh merrily again, for the granddaughter of King
Nicodemus was the most unfortunate girl in the village, a cripple and
an idiot. But he instantly grew serious again when the mother, forced
to speak by a will other than her own, said softly:
"For that matter, there is some one, Agnes."
But Antiochus objected jealously: "She is ugly, I don't like her,
and he does not like her either."
Then the mother began to praise Agnes, but she spoke almost in a
whisper as though afraid of being overheard by anyone except the boy,
while Antiochus, his hands still clasped round his knee, shook his
head energetically, his lower lip stuck out in disgust like a ripe
cherry.
"No, no, I don't like her--can't you hear what I say! She is ugly and
proud and old. And besides...."
A step sounded in the little hall and instantly they both were silent
and stood waiting.
* * * * *