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.
IV
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.
V
He did not return with them when at the close of day they wound upward again to their solemn sleep. He slipped unseen into the windings of a secret passage-way, and hastening to the reception-room of the abbey sent for the abbot.
It was a great bare room. A rough table and two plain chairs in the middle were the only furniture. Over the table there swung from the high ceiling a single low, lurid point of light, that failed to reach the shadows of the recesses. The few poor pictures of saints and martyrs on the walls were muffled in gloom. The air was dank and noisome, and the silence was that of a vault.
Standing half in light and half in darkness, Father Palemon awaited the coming of his august superior. It was an awful scene. His face grew whiter than his cowl, and he trembled till he was ready to sink to the floor. A few moments, and through the dim door-way there softly glided in the figure of the aged abbot, like a presence rather felt than seen. He advanced to the little zone of light, the iron keys clanking at his girdle, his delicate fingers interlaced across his breast, his gray eyes filled with a look of mild surprise and displeasure.
"You have disturbed me in my rest and meditations. The occasion must be extraordinary. Speak! Be brief!"
"The occasion is extraordinary. I shall be brief. Father Abbot, I made a great mistake in ever becoming a monk. Nature has not fitted me for such a life. I do not any longer believe that it is my duty to live it. I have disturbed your repose only to ask you to receive the renunciation of my priestly vows and to take back my cowl: I will never put it on again."
As he spoke he took off his cowl and laid it on the table between them, showing that he wore beneath the ordinary dress of a working-man.
Under the flickering spark the face of the abbot had at first flushed with anger and then grown ashen with vague, formless terror. He pushed the hood back from his head and pressed his fingers together until the jewelled ring cut into the flesh.
"You are a priest of God, consecrated for life. Consider the sin and folly of what you say. You have made no mistake. It would be too late to correct it, if you had."
"I shall do what I can to correct it as soon as possible. I shall leave the monastery to-night."
"To-night you confess what has led you to harbor this suggestion of Satan. To-night I forgive you. To-night you sleep once more at peace with the world and your own soul. Begin! Tell me everything that has happened – everything!"
"It were better untold. It could only pain – only shock you."
"Ha! You say this to me, who stand to you in God's stead?"
"Father Abbot, it is enough that Heaven should know my recent struggles and my present purposes. It does know them."
"And it has not smitten you? It is merciful."
"It is also just."
"Then do not deny the justice you receive. Did you not give yourself up to my guidance as a sheep to a shepherd? Am I not to watch near you in danger and lead you back when astray? Do you not realize that I may not make light of the souls committed to my charge, as my own soul shall be called into judgment at the last day? Am I to be pushed aside – made naught of – at such a moment as this?"
Thus urged, Father Palemon told what had recently befallen him, adding these words:
"Therefore I am going – going now. I cannot expect your approval: that pains me. But have I not a claim upon your sympathy? You are an old man, Father Abbot. You are nearer heaven than this earth. But you have been young; and I ask you, is there not in the past of your own buried life the memory of some one for whom you would have risked even the peace and pardon of your own soul?"
The abbot threw up his hands with a gesture of sudden anguish, and turned away into the shadowy distances of the room.
When he emerged again, he came up close to Father Palemon in the deepest agitation.
"I tell you this purpose of yours is a suggestion of the Evil Spirit. Break it against the true rock of the Church. You should have spoken sooner. Duty, honor, gratitude, should have made you speak. Then I could have made this burden lighter for you. But, heavy as it is, it will pass. You suffer now, but it will pass, and you will be at peace again – at perfect peace again."
"Never! Never again at peace here! My place is in the world. Conscience tells me that. Besides, have I not told you, Father Abbot, that I love her, that I think of her day and night? Then I am no priest. There is nothing left for me but to go out into the world."
"The world! What do you know of the world? If I could sum up human life to you in an instant of time, I might make you understand into what sorrow this caprice of restlessness and passion is hurrying you."
Sweetness had forsaken the countenance of the aged shepherd. His tones rung hoarse and hollow, and the muscles of his face twitched and quivered as he went on:
"Reflect upon the tranquil life that you have spent here, preparing your soul for immortality. All your training has been for the solitude of the cloister. All your enemies have been only the spiritual foes of your own nature. You say that you are not fitted for this life. Are you then prepared for a life in the world? Foolish, foolish boy! You exchange the terrestrial solitude of heaven for the battle-field of hell. Its coarse, foul atmosphere will stifle and contaminate you. It has problems that you have not been taught to solve. It has shocks that you would never withstand. I see you in the world? Never, never! See you in the midst of its din and sweat of weariness, its lying and dishonor? You say that you love this woman. Heaven forgive you this sin! You would follow her. Do you not know that you may be deluded, trifled with, disappointed? She may love another. Ah! you are a child – a simple child!"
"Father Abbot, it is time that I were becoming a man."
But the abbot did not hear or pause, borne on now by a torrent of ungovernable feelings:
"Your parents committed a great sin." He suddenly lifted the cross from his bosom to his lips, which moved rapidly for an instant in silent prayer. "It has never been counted against you here, as it will never be laid to your charge in heaven. But the world will count it against you. It will make you feel its jeers and scorn. You have no father," again he bent over and passionately kissed his cross, "you have no name. You are an illegitimate child. There is no place for you in the world – in the world that takes no note of sin unless it is discovered. I warn you – I warn you by all the years of my own experience, and by all the sacred obligations of your holy order, against this fatal step."
"Though it be fatal, I must and will take it."
"I implore you! God in heaven, dost thou punish me thus? See! I am an old man. I have but a few years to live. You are the only tie of human tenderness that binds me to my race. My heart is buried in yours. I have watched over you since you were brought here, a little child. I have nursed you through months of sickness. I have hastened the final assumption of your vows, that you might be safe within the fold. I have stayed my last days on earth with the hope that when I am dead, as I soon shall be, you would perpetuate my spirit among your brethren, and in time come to be a shepherd among them, as I have been. Do not take this solace from me. The Church needs you – most of all needs you in this age and in this country. I have reared you within it that you might be glorified at last among the saints and martyrs. No, no! You will not go away!"
"Father Abbot, what better can I do than heed the will of Heaven in my own conscience?"
"I implore you!"
"I must go."
"I warn you, I say."
"Oh, my father! You only make more terrible the anguish of this moment. Bless me, and let me go in peace."
"Bless you?" almost shrieked the abbot, starting back with horror, his features strangely drawn, his uplifted arms trembling, his whole body swaying. "Bless you? Do this, and I will hurl upon you the awful curse of the everlasting Church!"
As though stricken by the thunderbolt of his own imprecation, he fell into one of the chairs and buried his head in his arms upon the table. Father Palemon had staggered backward, as though the curse had struck him in the forehead. These final words he had never thought of – never foreseen. For a moment the silence of the great chamber was broken only by his own quick breathing and by the convulsive agitation of the abbot. Then with a rapid movement Father Palemon came forward, knelt, and kissed the hem of the abbot's cowl, and, turning away, went out.
Love – duty – the world; in those three words lie all the human, all the divine, tragedy.
VI
Years soon pass away in the life of a Trappist priest.
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
Another June came quickly into the lonely valley of the Abbey of Gethsemane. Again the same sweet monastery bells in the purple twilights, and the same midnight masses. Monks again at work in the gardens, their cowls well tied up with hempen cords. Monks once more teaching the pious pupils in the school across the lane. The gorgeous summer came and passed beyond the southern horizon, like a mortal vision of beauty never to return. There were few changes to note. Only the abbot seemed to have grown much feebler. His hand trembled visibly now as he lifted the crosier, and he walked less than of yore among his brethren while they busied themselves with the duties of the waning autumn. But he was oftener seen pacing to and fro where the leaves fell sadly from the moaning choir of English elms. Or at times he would take a little foot-path that led across the brown November fields, and, having gained a crest on the boundary of the valley, would stand looking far over the outward landscape into imaginary spaces, limitless and unexplored.
But Father Palemon, where was he? Amid what splendors of the great metropolis was he bursting Joy's grape against his palate fine? What of his dreams of love and duty, and a larger, more modern stature of manhood?
Late one chill, cloud-hung afternoon in November there came into the valley of Gethsemane the figure of a young man. He walked slowly along the road towards the abbey, with the air of one who is weary and forgetful of his surroundings. His head dropped heavily forward on his breast, and his empty hands hung listlessly down. At the iron gate of the porter's lodge entrance was refused him; the abbey was locked in repose for the night. Urging the importance of his seeing the abbot, he was admitted. He erased a name from a card and on it wrote another, and waited for the interview.
Again the same great dark room, lighted by a flickering spark. He did not stand half in light and half in shadow, but hid himself away in one of the darkest recesses. In a few moments the abbot entered, holding the card in his hand and speaking with tremulous haste:
"'Father Palemon?' – who wrote this name, 'Father Palemon?'"
Out of the darkness came a low reply:
"I wrote it."
"I do not know you."
"I am Father Palemon."
The calm of a great sadness was in the abbot's voice, as he replied, musingly:
"There —is– no – Father Palemon: he died long ago."
"Oh, my father! Is this the way you receive me?"
He started forward and came into the light. Alas! No; it was not Father Palemon. His long hair was unkempt and matted over his forehead, his face pinched and old with suffering, and ashen gray except for the red spots on his cheeks. Deep shadows lay under his hollow eyes, which were bloodshot and restless and burning.
"I have come back to lead the life of a monk. Will you receive me?"
"Twice a monk, no monk. Receive you for what time? Until next June?"
"Until death."
"I have received you once already until death. How many times am I to receive you until death?"
"I beseech you do not contest in words with me. It is too much. I am ill. I am in trouble."
He suddenly checked his passionate utterance, speaking slowly and with painful self-control:
"I cannot endure how to tell you all that has befallen me since I went away. The new life that I had begun in the world has come to an end. Father Abbot, she is dead. I have just buried her and my child in one grave. Since then the one desire I have had has been to return to this place. God forgive me! I have no heart now for the duties I had undertaken. I had not measured my strength against this calamity. It has left me powerless for good to any human creature. My plans were wrecked when she died. My purposes have gone to pieces. There is no desire in me but for peace and solitude and prayer. All that I can do now is to hide my poor, broken, ineffectual life here, until by God's will, sooner or later, it is ended."
"You speak in the extremity of present suffering. You are young. Nearly all your life lies yet before you. In time Nature heals nearly all the wounds that she inflicts. In a few years this grief which now unmans you – which you think incurable – will wear itself out. You do not believe this. You think me cruel. But I speak the truth. Then you may be happy again – happier than you have ever been. Then the world will resume its hold upon you. If the duties of a man's life have appealed to your conscience, as I believe they have, they will then appeal to it with greater power and draw you with a greater sense of their obligations. Moreover, you may love again – ah! Hush! Hear me through! You think this is more unfeeling still. But I must speak, and speak now. It is impossible to seclude you here against all temptation. Some day you may see another woman's face – hear another woman's voice. You may find your priestly vows intolerable again. Men who once break their holiest pledges for the sake of love will break them again, if they love again. No, no! If you were unfit for the life of a monk once, much more are you unfit now. Now that you are in the world, better to remain there."
"In Heaven's name, will you deny me? I tell you that this is the only desire left to me. The world is as dead to me as though it never existed, because my heart is broken. You misunderstood me then. You misunderstand me now. Does experience count for nothing in preparing a man for the cloister?"
"I did misunderstand you once; I thought that you were fitted for the life of a monk. I understand you now: I do not make the same mistake twice."
"This is the home of my childhood, and you turn me away?"
"You went away yourself, in the name of conscience and of your own passion."
"This is the house of God, and you close its doors against me?"
"You burst them open of your own self-will."
Hitherto the abbot had spoken for duty, for his church, for the inviolable sanctity of his order. Against these high claims the pent-up tenderness of his heart had weighed as nothing. But now as the young man, having fixed a long look upon his face, turned silently away towards the door, with out-stretched arms he tottered after him, and cried out in broken tones: "Stop! Stop, I pray you! You are ill. You are free to remain here a guest. No one was ever refused shelter. Oh, my God! what have I done?"
Father Palemon had reeled and fallen fainting in the door-way.
In this life, from earliest childhood, we are trained by merciful degrees to brave its many sorrows. We begin with those of infancy, which, Heaven knows, at the time seem grievous enough to be borne. As we grow older we somehow also grow stronger, until through the discipline of many little sufferings we are enabled to bear up under those final avalanches of disaster that rush down upon us in maturer years. Even thus fortified, there are some of us on whom these fall only to overwhelm.
But Father Palemon. Unnaturally shielded by the cloister up to that period of young manhood when feeling is deepest and fortitude least, he had suddenly appeared upon the world's stage only to enact one of the greatest scenes in the human tragedy – that scene wherein the perfect ecstasy of love by one swift, mortal transition becomes the perfect agony of loss. What wonder if he had staggered blindly, and if, trailing the habiliments of his sorrow, he had sought to return to the only place that was embalmed in his memory as a peaceful haven for the shipwrecked? But even this quiet port was denied him.
Into the awful death-chamber of the abbey they bore him one midnight some weeks later. The tension of physical powers during the days of his suspense and suffering, followed by the shock of his rejection, had touched those former well-nigh fatal ravages that had prostrated him during the period of his austere novitiate. He was dying. The delirium of his fever had passed away, and with a clear, dark, sorrowful eye he watched them prepare for the last agony.
On the bare floor of the death-chamber they sprinkled consecrated ashes in the form of a cross. Over these they scattered straw, and over the straw they drew a coarse serge cloth. This was his death-bed – a sign that in the last hour he was admitted once more to the fellowship of his order. From the low couch on which he lay he looked at it. Then he made a sign to the abbot, in the mute language of the brotherhood. The abbot repeated it to one of the attendant fathers, who withdrew and soon returned, bringing a white cowl. Lifting aside the serge cloth, he spread the cowl over the blessed cinders and straw. Father Palemon's request had been that he might die upon his cowl, and on this they now stretched his poor emaciated body, his cold feet just touching the old earth-stains upon its hem. He lay for a little while quite still, with closed eyes. Then he turned them upon the abbot and the monks, who were kneeling in prayer around him, and said, in a voice of great and gentle dignity:
"My father – my brethren, have I your full forgiveness?"
With sobs they bowed themselves around him. After this he received the crucifix, tenderly embracing it, and then lay still again, as if awaiting death. But finally he turned over on one side, and raising himself on one forearm, sought with the hand of the other among the folds of his cowl until he found a small blood-stain now faint upon its bosom. Then he lay down again, pressing his cheek against it; and thus the second time a monk, but even in death a lover, he breathed out his spirit with a faint whisper – "Madeline!"
And as he lay on the floor, so now he lies in the dim cemetery garth outside, wrapped from head to foot in his cowl, with its stains on the hem and the bosom.