CONFESSION
Somewhere I have read or heard of a marine invertebrate, which, when
its stomach disturbs it, throws the oppressive thing away and gets a
new one. It is a beautifully simple solution of the problem of
life--which problem unquestionably has its centre in those
regions--and as triumphant in its utter banality as the method of
Columbus with his egg or of Alexander with his Gordian knot. Without
doubt, if man had been constructed on that principle, his history
would have needed not a thousandth part of the apology which is now a
necessary accompaniment of its recital. The myriad ills attendant on
digestion, the brutalities, the tremors and the hallucinations, would
have entirely lacked their excuse. Conceive the practical humour of
the statement that one had no stomach for an enterprise; conceive such
a solution of the saturnalian difficulty as Vitellius never dreamed. A
permanent and undetachable stomach was certainly the actual curse
which Satan inflicted on mankind.
The nearest approach to this impossibly beatific condition consists,
as popularised by the Catholic and Universal Church, in throwing away
one’s conscience and getting a new one. The priest conducts the
process, and the medium is the confessional. Therein the distressing
load may be cast, and therefrom the patient be discharged re-equipped.
It has all the efficacy of the other, though at the same time hardly
its simplicity. For one thing, one cannot do it alone by oneself; for
another, a dose of penance is conditional on the treatment--usually a
trifle, but sufficient to leave a taste in one’s mouth. However, it is
a useful alternative.
Fanchette’s conscience did not often oppress her; but, on the rare
occasions when it did, there was always this means at hand to rid
herself of its burden. She would go to the little church in the
village, ring up Father Leone, and empty her reservoir of sins upon
that good man’s devoted head. Then, cleansed and chastened, she would
come forth in a rare condition for fresh frolics, the first taste
whereof would be comparable with that of a cigarette after a Turkish
bath.
These moral “drenchings,” however, though easeful in their results,
were painful enough in their process to make a resort to them
unwelcome. Fanchette had a constitutional dislike to confessing
herself guilty of anything--except of the best intentions; and it was
only the recognised destination of those abstract virtues which drove
her from time to time to appeal to Providence in the matter of their
better understanding, so far as she was concerned. It was in some
ways, in this connection, a convenience that Father Leone was both old
and deaf; that he was, moreover, an absorbed herbalist, and, if the
truth must be spoken, far more interested in vegetable physiology than
in Christian ethics. Yet again, to accuse oneself to dull ears had its
drawbacks, since the self-exposure necessitated could command no
consolation of sympathy to ameliorate its own ugly nakedness. On the
whole, perhaps, she would have preferred an intent and properly
responsive listener; but, since that was not to be had, she must put
up with what was. After all, to confess was the thing; and, if the
priest was deaf, it was no business of hers to question Providence as
to its selection or affliction of its own ministers.
Fanchette’s conscience had been troubling her, and one afternoon
Fanchette went across to the church to renew it. She went very staid
and unapproachable, paying no heed to the jests of rude men or the
quizzings of gossips. A cavalier, walking up the street, espied the
demure figure at a distance away, and dodged behind a corner to avoid
recognition by it. Peeping thence, he saw the young woman approach the
church, and disappear within its portals, when, convinced of her
mission, he immediately came forth and followed in pursuit.
The church of Santa Maria was a dull little edifice, and had been
rendered duller by the former duke, Don Philip’s elder brother, who,
on his promotion to the crown of Naples, had transferred everything of
value from it to his new capital. Without, it was a mere whited
sepulchre; within, its necessary appointments exhibited just what
decency demanded and no more. Don Carlos had fairly pillaged the
building, in fact, and the dross of plate and pinchbeck which remained
was hardly worth the considering. From its tinselled high altar to its
little paper-petticoated Virgin in an alcove near the door, it was all
cheap and tawdry. There were some depressing “stations of the cross”
on the walls, and, in a dark place under a painted window, a single
confessional box, having a stall for the priest in the middle, and on
either side a curtained recess for penitents. When one of these latter
desired relief, he or she must pull a little bell-handle in the wall
near the altar-rails, the sound caused by which summoned the
sacristan, who in his turn summoned the priest from his presbytery
hard by.
The cavalier, passing the church portals, went straight up to this
presbytery and knocked on its door. He was a little pinchbeck in
seeming, like the candlesticks--eloquent somehow of polish without and
cheap metal within. He was rather short than tall, neatly built, with
very black eyebrows, and in his face a pert insolence suggestive of a
popular _café-chanteur’s_. Perfumed, self-assured, and brilliantly
veneered, M. la Coque was able to pass with the vulgar for a very
complete gentleman. Women, who alone in nature exceed their lords in
the gorgeousness of their plumage, found his fine colouring vastly
attractive: Fanchette, we know, found it irresistible.
After a short interval the door was opened by Gaspare, the sacristan,
who was also general servitor to the meagre household. He was a snuffy
old fellow, hoarse-spoken, and with a leery acquisitive eye. He
greeted the visitor, with an air as of being on a footing of sly
pleasantry with him.
“Ha, signore! What plenary indulgence now for what mischief? Is the
market closed to your worship in Parma, that you must come all the way
here to get relief?”
La Coque pushed the old man within and closed the door after them.
“Coquin!” he whispered: “be quiet! The indulgence I ask is at your
disposal and worth to you just a silver ducat. Come along now. Is his
reverence safe bestowed?”
“What wickedness is forward? I don’t budge until I know.”
“Hark to that chink, Gaspare! A double silver ducat to line your old
breeches withal! Where is his reverence, I say?”
“Where the last trump wouldn’t disturb him. In the garden, reading.”
“Excellent. When the bell rings for confession I will go and be his
substitute.”
The sacristan fairly gasped in his breath.
“What, you will! Do you understand that at the first word the devil
will pull you down by the legs through the floor?”
“O, the devil loves a jest, Gaspare, as much as you do!”
“O! A jest is it?”
“Of course--what else. Quick--there goes the bell! Find me a hood and
cassock.”
“Who is it?”
“Well, there is no harm in confessing. Mademoiselle Becquet.”
“Ah-ha!” The old rascal’s face puckered like a monkey’s. “An
assignation?” He shook his head and waved his hands in rebukeful
protest; then turned, and shuffled before, sighing, sighing:
“It is sacrilege; I wash my hands of it; you will pay in advance,
signore?”
Fanchette, kneeling in the church alone, gabbled little prayers, and
reviewed her programme between whiles. Then she rose, rang the bell,
summoned the sacristan, stated her requirements, and withdrew to the
confessional-box, where she disposed herself on her knees behind one
of the curtains. Shortly she heard the altar rail click, a slow step
approach, and her view through the grating towards the chancel was
suddenly obscured by the interposition of a bowed, scarce
distinguishable head. She settled herself for the ordeal.
“Please, father, give me absolution for what I am about to confess.”
“A timore inimici eripe animam tuam,” responded the seated figure, in
a low, mumbling voice. “Deliver yourself, my daughter.”
The penitent hesitated a moment, as if calling up her nerve; bit her
lower lip, and began:
“I have to accuse myself, first and foremost, of infidelity.”
“That is bad. Is it spiritual or secular infidelity to which you
refer, my child?”
“Infidelity to my lover, father.”
A sudden cough seemed to catch the listener; he crowed a little as he
answered:
“To be sure. There will be some good reason for this apostacy, no
doubt.”
“It is to be found, father, in my own conscience, which shrinks from
the load he would have put upon it.”
“What load? Be specific, child. Has he tempted you to wrong?”
“Not in that way--he knows better. But he desired to use me as his
instrument in the ruin of a man he hated.”
“It is admitted, my daughter, that it is lawful sometimes to do evil
that good may come of it. Possibly this lover of yours may have seen
in his enemy one of those human abnormalities whose destruction,
though demanded by every moral law, can only be compassed by craft. In
that case you would be doing a positively pious work in helping him.
But, as to this infidelity: the word implies, according to my reading
of it, a positive no less than a negative sentiment; an attraction as
well as a repulsion.”
“Yes, father.”
“May it conceivably be hinted, then, that you have turned not so much
_from_ one lover as _towards_ another, his rival in your fleeting
affections?”
The penitent did not answer.
“Speak, daughter,” said the confessor, rather violently clearing his
throat.
“I cannot, with confidence,” answered Fanchette, thus adjured, with an
air of distressed hesitancy. “Certainly I have felt pity for the man;
and I have heard it said that pity excites in one a feeling of
fondness for the pitied--but I do not know.”
“You do not? This is not confession, but equivocation. Tell me the
truth at once, if you would be absolved.”
“How unsparing you are, father! What if I do love him--a little? It is
the fault of the first one for imposing such a task on me. He knew my
tender heart--he might have foreseen the inevitable result.”
“I think he might indeed.”
“Besides, though the first one is a musical-box, the second is a
nightingale.”
“Damnation!” said the confessor.
“Father! What do you mean?”
“I mean that you may go to the devil, Mademoiselle Fanchette Becquet.”
“After you, if you please, M. Charles la Coque.”
“What! you know me?”
“I saw you first in the street; I saw you afterwards through this
grating as you approached. Could I mistake you, you wicked wretch? May
you be cursed to all eternity for your profanation of this sacred
office!”
La Coque sank back a little into the shadows, then bent forward again,
and spoke softly:
“Do you know, Fanchette, I think I am coming out to strangle you.”
The young lady, now verging on hysteria, answered with a scornful
gasp:
“It would be worthy of a man who could commit such an unutterable
meanness--and without a shadow of excuse.”
“O, I had my excuse! I was uncertain of your fidelity; and you see how
I was justified in my doubt. Then this opportunity offered, and I
couldn’t resist taking it.”
“It was Gaspare, I suppose. You corrupt everybody and everything you
touch. Well, you know now I hate you.”
“All’s one for that. It’s not your hate but your love that we’ve got
to reckon with. A nightingale, forsooth! That hired automaton--that
painted jackdaw mimicking his betters! You shall answer for the
insult.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I told you.”
Actually, with the words, he unbuttoned the hatch and stepped forth.
She crouched away from him, huddled within the curtain, her breath
coming quick. The church was quite empty and silent.
“Come to my loving arms, Fanchette.”
She uttered a little whimper.
“If you were not such a vain fool you would understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That, knowing who you were, I should not so have betrayed myself, if
it had been true.”
“It is not true, then?”
“It is true I _do_ pity him--and her.”
“Pity excites a fonder feeling. You have said it.”
She hesitated, saw no way out of the _impasse_, and took refuge in the
long-threatened collapse. He succumbed at once.
“O, hush, girl, for heaven’s sake! All the world will hear you.”
“O--O! I don’t care. To be so doubted and put upon; to have served
this man as I have; stifled my better feelings for his sake; sought to
ruin a mistress, who has never shown me anything but kindness; as good
as offered to be the chevalier’s abettor and their go-between--and
then to be treated as if I were a perfide and a wanton! I will never
give my heart to anyone again; I will beg admission into a convent and
end my days a spouse of heaven! O--O!”
He was terrified. He knelt down by the struggling figure, and crushed
it within his arms, seeking to suffocate its outcries.
“Fanchette--you are betraying us--for God’s sake compose yourself!
There, there, girl--I did not mean it. I believe you, on my soul, to
be true to me. We must make our compact binding--indissoluble--never
to be questioned from this time by either of us. Come with me--through
the sacristy. Gaspare is always my friend--he will be my friend
again--and the priest is safe elsewhere. Any moment may bring
discovery upon us. Come, lovely and adorable--let us kiss and forgive.
Fanchette!”
Little by little, coaxing and caressing, he got her to her feet and
away with him. Father Leone, pacing his garden, was left undisturbed
to his vegetable meditations, and Fanchette’s conscience had to defer
its unloading to a more convenient opportunity.