IRENE
I spent the whole harvest season at Tyringham, and when it was over I
went with Chairo to New York in order to get some ocular understanding
of their factory system. It was there that I understood one of the
reasons that made Lydia hesitate, for I met there another woman--a
Demetrian also--whose history had been intimately interwoven with
Chairo's.
Lydia had decided, much to Chairo's disappointment, that she would spend
October in the Demetrian cloister attached to the temple. She said she
felt the need of seclusion. It was one of the functions of the
cloistered to attend the daily rite at the altar, and I often went at
the sacred hour to attend the service, doubtless drawn by the desire to
see Lydia engaged in her ministration. One afternoon, as I sat in the
shadow of a pillar, I was struck by the singular majesty of one of the
ministrants. She headed the procession of women who carried the
censers, and it was she who offered the incense at the altar.
I was living with Chairo and Ariston in bachelor quarters and described
the priestess to the latter on my return home. Ariston's face flushed as
he answered: "That must be Irene of Tania; she is a Demetrian and is the
mother of a boy by Chairo."
Noticing that my question had moved Ariston I was unwilling to push my
inquiries; but after a few moments of silence Ariston, who after his
laconic answer had lowered his eyes to the book he was reading, looked
up and seeing the question in my eyes that I had refrained from putting
into words, added:
"Her story is a sad one. She was selected by Demeter not on account of
any special gifts, but because of her splendid combination of qualities;
she was a type; she represented a standard it was useful to reproduce.
Chairo for similar reasons was selected as her bridegroom; she chose to
know him and became deeply enamored. How should she not? He remained
devoted to her until her boy was weaned and then did not renew his vows.
She bore his decision with dignity; indeed, so well did she disguise her
disappointment that for a long time no one knew whether it was Chairo
or herself who had decided to separate. But when Chairo began to show
his love for Lydia, Irene sickened; there was no apparent reason for it
and no acute disease; her appetite failed and she lost strength and
color."
Ariston paused, as though he were going over it all in his mind,
unwilling to give it utterance. Finally, he arose and walked to the
window, and after looking out a little, turned to me and said:
"The fact is, I was consumedly in love with her myself; her illness gave
me an excuse for being a great deal with her, and at last in a moment of
folly--for I might have guessed--I told her of my love. I shall never
forget her face when I did so: the sadness on it deepened; she held out
her hand to me and said: 'I am fond of you, Ariston--and am grateful!
But I love Chairo and shall never love anyone but him.'" Ariston's voice
became hoarse as he repeated Irene's words. But he paused, cleared his
throat, and went on.
"Since then she has made a great effort over herself. She was told that
she was allowing sorrow to unfit her for her duty to her child, and that
she was suffering from no malady beyond that most pernicious of all
maladies--the malady of the will. She collected herself, regained
control, and has now recovered her health--and all her beauty. Was
there ever beauty greater than her's?"
"She is very beautiful--more than beautiful--she filled me with a kind
of wonder. But tell me, won't she object to your having told me her
secret?"
"It is not a secret; these things are not regarded as secrets; we hold
it unworthy to blab of such things, but we never make an effort to
conceal them. Often since then Irene has spoken of Chairo in such a
manner as to leave no doubt as to her feelings for him; and yet she has
probably never in terms admitted it to anyone but me. In confiding to
you my love for her, she would not complain at my also confiding to you
her love for him."
Ariston's simplicity filled my heart with tenderness for him.
I went to him, put my hands on his shoulders, and said:
"I am sorry for you."
For a moment he seemed taken aback by this expression of sympathy; but
when our eyes met his were dimmed. In a moment, however, he had
recovered control, and said:
"It doesn't make any difference in one way. I see her still; and one of
these days she will be sorry for me and become my wife; she will then
end by loving me. I mean to work to this end; the hope of attaining all
this gives me courage."
It seemed all the worse to me that Ariston, with his gayety and humor,
should be in his heart so sad. And yet, if it was to be, better that it
should come to one who had a fund of joyousness within himself, on which
he could draw.
The next day Lydia sent word to Ariston that she would like to see him,
and Ariston suggested that I should go with him to the cloister. "I
shall, of course," he said, "wish to see Lydia alone for a little, but
you will have an opportunity of seeing the cloister and what they do
there."
The cloister of Demeter and all the institutions which clustered around
it were situated in the neighborhood of what was in my time Madison
Square. All the buildings between Twentieth Street and Thirty-fourth
Street, north and south, and between Sixth Avenue and Fourth Avenue,
east and west, had been cleared away; and upon the cleared space had
been constructed a building dedicated to the cult. The temple of
Demeter, closely resembling the Pantheon, was surrounded by a grove of
ilex trees. At a short distance from the temple and connected with it by
a columned arcade, was the cloister, built also of white marble, around
a court carpeted with lawn; this cloister was the dwelling place of the
priestesses of Demeter and of all those women who were either in retreat
or in novitiate. A short distance from the cloister was a large
building, similar to the other large buildings of which New York now
mainly consisted. Twenty stories in height, covering acres of ground and
built around a large open court, these buildings were no longer open to
the objection alleged against them in my time, owing to the fact that
they were now removed from one another by large spaces planted with
trees. This particular building was devoted to the education of youth,
and particularly all children who, for any reason, became what was
termed "children of the state." The building was so large that it
permitted of a running track within the court of four laps to the mile.
New York had been transformed by the construction of these enormous
buildings, each one of which constituted practically a city of itself.
Some of them, such as the one in which I was living with Ariston, were
devoted exclusively to bachelors and childless widowers; others were
entirely for unmarried women and childless widows; others, on the
contrary, were set aside for the use of families and consisted of
apartments of different sizes.
Although the inmates of these buildings constantly met after the
fulfillment of their daily task, every family had as separate a home as
in my day. Almost every building had a dramatic corps of its own, a
musical choir of its own, a football club, a tennis club, and other
athletic, amusement, and educational clubs of its own, and all these
clubs contributed to the amusement one of the other, each colony
contributing its share to the enjoyment of the whole community.
Lydia was in the hospital ward of the state children's building, where
at last we found her, for though in retreat she was by no means idle.
She was not discountenanced when she saw us; nor would she even allow me
to leave them, but told Ariston what she had to say simply and in a few
words. It was this: She had come to the cloister, she said, very largely
for the purpose of seeing Irene there; she took it for granted that
Irene's duties at the temple would bring them together. Lydia feared,
however, that Irene was avoiding her, and wanted Ariston to arrange a
meeting between them.
Ariston promised to do this, and then we all three walked through the
buildings, Lydia taking great pride in her share of the work there.
Ariston did not find it easy to arrange this meeting. Irene freely
confessed that she did not want to speak to Lydia at this moment; she
was unwilling to give her reasons, but we both easily guessed them.
Irene, however, did not refuse to see Lydia and promised to go to her on
the following day.
The following day was the first of the Eleusinian festival. In the daily
rite, incense was offered to the goddess as a token of sacrifice, but at
the Eleusinian festival there was added a note of thanksgiving to the
rite, which substituted perfumes and flowers in lieu of incense. It was
the privilege of Irene to select from among the ministrants the one who
was to hand her the gifts brought by the rest, and it was from the hand
of the chosen one that Irene took the gifts and laid them upon the
altar.
On this opening day Irene selected Lydia for this privilege, for she
meant this joint ministration at the altar to serve as prelude and
preparation for their meeting. The temple was crowded.
Lydia trembled a little as she followed Irene to the altar; a priest
stood on either side as the priestesses, postulants, and novices of the
Demetrian procession went up the steps to it. Arrived at the foot of the
altar they formed a group about it, dividing one-half on one side, the
other half on the other; between the altar and the body of the temple
stood only Irene and Lydia.
Lydia took the perfumes and handed them to Irene, who sprinkled them
first upon the altar, then upon the priests, and then toward the
congregation; then she took the flowers, some of them in vases, others
in wreaths, and handed them to Irene, who arranged them upon the altar;
when the last gift had been taken there Irene kneeled and Lydia kneeled
by her side. There was a deep silence in the temple. At this point in
the ritual there was a pause, during which it was the privilege of the
postulants and novices to have a prayer offered in case of special
anxiety. Irene, though unsolicited, at this moment offered the following
prayer:
"Mother of Fruitfulness, to her who now asks for thy special grace,
grant that she may neither accept thy mission hastily nor reject it
without consideration; for thy glory, O Mother, is the glory of all
thy people."
There was a word in this prayer which did not fail to strike the
attention of every worshipper in the temple that day. The words of the
ritual were "Grant that she may neither accept the mission
_unworthily_." Irene had substituted "hastily" for the word
"unworthily." She had paused at this word and given it special emphasis.
It was usual for the Demetrian procession to remain kneeling after the
service was over and the congregation dismissed; and it happened that
the procession and the priests left the temple, leaving Irene and Lydia
alone there. For Irene did not rise with the other Demetrians, and
Lydia, feeling that she had been chosen as ministrant for a purpose,
remained beside Irene. The two knelt alone in the temple, Irene praying
and Lydia waiting on her. At last Irene arose and Lydia also, and they
both walked out into the covered way.
Neither spoke until they were in the seclusion of the cloistered court.
Then Irene said: "You wanted to speak to me, Lydia."
"And you have been avoiding me," said Lydia.
"Yes," answered Irene. "You have a matter to decide regarding which you
have already guessed I am not altogether unconcerned."
Lydia lowered her voice as she said: "You still love Chairo?"
Irene answered in a voice still lower, but firm, "I do."
For a few minutes they paced the cloister. Lydia was trying to decide
how to confess her own secret, but she did not find the words. At last
Irene said:
"When the mission of Demeter was first tendered to me I was eighteen,
and, although I had often preferred certain of my playmates to others, I
had not known love. The honor of the mission made a great impression,
and as it slowly came upon me that I was chosen to make of myself a
sacrifice, the beauty of it filled my heart with happiness. It hardly
occurred to me possible to refuse the mission; I was absorbed by one
single desire--to make myself worthy of it. I thought very little about
the sacrifice itself. I had the legend of Eros and Psyche in my mind;
one day I should hear heavenly music and be approached as it were by an
unknown god. And passing from the pagan to the Christian myth, I saw the
Immaculate Conception of Murillo--that of the young maiden at the Prado
in Madrid--and I felt lifted into the ecstasy of a mystic motherhood. So
until I accepted the mission at the Eleusinian festival I lived in a
rapture--the days passing in the studies and ministrations of our
novitiate, the nights in dreamless sleep. But once the vows taken and
the bridal night fixed, there came upon me a revulsion as it were from
the outside and took control of my entire being so as to make me
understand what the ancients meant when they described certain persons
as 'possessed by an evil spirit.' The thought of the approaching crisis
was a pure horror to me. I lost my appetite and sleep; or, if I slept,
it was to dream a nightmare. Neither our priest nor priestess could
console me, the legend of Eros and Psyche became abominable, the
Immaculate Conception absurd, and, believe me, Lydia, nothing but pride
kept me to my word. It was a bad pride, the pride that could not look
forward to the humiliation of refusing a sacrifice I had once accepted.
That pride held me in a vice and accomplished what religion itself would
never have accomplished."
Irene paused--and Lydia passed her arm around Irene's waist as they
continued to pace the solitary cloister, whispering "Go on" in Irene's
ear.
"You know the rest," continued Irene. "The unknown god came to me in my
terror and converted my terror into love; and as I look back at it now I
am struck by two things: One, how unaccountable and unfounded the terror
was; the other, how little my pride would have sufficed to overcome it
had the terror been enforced by love."
Lydia looked at Irene askance.
"I mean," said Irene, "love for some one else!"
A sigh broke from Lydia. This was what she had been waiting for.
"And you think," said Lydia, "that a woman should not accept the mission
if she already loves?"
"I don't _think_ it; I _know_ it!"
Lydia felt a burden taken from her--the burden of doubt as well as the
burden of sacrifice. But suddenly she remembered that Irene in advising
the refusal of the mission was making a sacrifice of her own love, and
she said very low in Irene's ear:
"But, Irene, it's Chairo----"
"I know," answered Irene, "and this is all the greater reason for
refusing. Had you loved a lesser man you might have doubted the trueness
of your love, but having loved Chairo once you can never cease to love
him. I speak who know"; and Irene turned on Lydia a look of immortal
sorrow.
But the tumult of emotion in Lydia's heart could no longer be
restrained. Her own great love for Chairo, her inability to sacrifice
it, contrasted with the dignity of Irene's renunciation, started a
torrent of tears. She fell on Irene's neck and sobbed there. Irene's
strong heart beat against her's as they stood in close embrace under the
cloister, and calmed Lydia. She slowly disengaged herself, and looking
into Irene's face, said:
"And so you tell me to refuse the mission?"
"You cannot do otherwise."
Then Lydia kissed Irene and withdrew.
Lydia went to her chamber and sat in the window seat, looking across the
lawn to the temple of Demeter.
What did it all mean? She had felt the beauty of the mission; had glowed
at the thought of sacrifice; had taken pride in it. But such was the
strength of her love for Chairo that so long as he was in her mind the
mission seemed a sacrilege and her heart had responded to Irene's advice
with a bound of gratitude and delight. And yet now as she looked at the
white columns of the temple at which she would never again be worthy to
minister, an unutterable sadness came over her, as though she were
parting from the dearest and most precious thing in her existence.
She was unwilling to mingle that night with the other novices, and
retired without seeing them. The night was filled with conflicting
dreams and she woke up next morning with the guilty conviction that she
had committed a crime.