Then Maria Paska got up quickly and went into the house, and the big man followed her and shut the door.
* * * * *
Paul never forgot his terrible agitation as he walked about in the little garden and thought of those two shut up in that squalid house in the lane. It was a sort of uneasy sadness, a sense of discomfort that made him want to be alone and to hide himself like a sick animal, and during dinner he was unusually silent amidst the cheerful talk of the other guests. Directly dinner was over he returned to the garden: the woman was there, on the look-out again and in the same position as before. The sun never reached the damp corner where her door was, and she looked as if she were so white and delicate because she always lived in the shade.
When she saw the seminarist she did not move, but she smiled at him, and then her face became grave as on the arrival of the big man. She called out to Paul, speaking as one would speak to a young boy:
"I say, will you come and bless my house on Saturday? Last year the priest who was going round blessing the houses refused to come into mine. May he go to hell, he and all his bag of tricks!"
Paul made no answer, he felt inclined to throw a stone at the woman, in fact he did pick one up from the wall, but then put it back and wiped his hand on his handkerchief. But all through Holy Week, whilst he was hearing Mass, or taking part in the sacred function, or, taper in hand, escorting the Bishop with all the other seminarists, he always seemed to see the woman's eyes staring at him till it became a veritable obsession. He had wanted to exorcize her, as one possessed of the Devil, yet at the same time he felt somehow that the spirit of evil was within himself. During the ceremony of feet-washing, when the Bishop stooped before the twelve beggars (who looked as though they might really have been the twelve apostles), Paul's heart was moved by the thought that on the Saturday before Easter of the previous year the priest had refused to bless the house of the lost woman. And yet Christ had pardoned Mary Magdalene. Perhaps if the priest had blessed the lost woman's house she might have amended her ways. This last reflection presently began to take hold of him to the exclusion of all other thoughts, but on examining it now at this distance of time he perceived that here his instinct had played him false, for at that period he had not yet learnt to know himself. And yet perhaps, even if he had known himself, he would still have gone back on the Saturday to see the lost woman in the lane.
* * * * *
When he turned the corner he saw that Maria Paska was not sitting on her doorstep, but the door was open, a sign that she had no visitor. Involuntarily he imitated the big man and went down the lane in the shadow of the wall, but he wished she had been there on the look-out and that she had risen up with a grave, sad face at his approach. When he reached the end of the lane he saw her drawing water from a well at the side of the house, and his heart gave a jump, for she looked just like the pictures of Mary Magdalene; and she turned and saw him as she was drawing up the bucket, and blushed. Never in his life had he seen a more beautiful woman. Then he was seized with a desire to run away, but he was too shy, and as she re-entered the house carrying the jug of water in her hand she said something to him which he did not understand, but he followed her inside and she shut the door. A little wooden staircase ending in a trapdoor gave access to the upper room, the one with the window over which hung a cross as a protection against temptation, and she led him up, snatching his cap from his head and tossing it aside with a laugh.
** ****
Paul went to see her again several times, but after he had been ordained and had taken the vow of chastity he had kept away from all women. His senses seemed to have grown petrified within the frozen armour of his vow, and when he heard scandalous tales of other priests he felt a pride in his own purity, and only thought of his adventure with the woman in the lane as an illness from which he had completely recovered.
During the first years passed in the little village he thought of himself as having already lived his life, as having known all it could offer, misery, humiliation, love, pleasure, sin and expiation; as having withdrawn from the world like some old hermit and waiting only for the Kingdom of God. And now suddenly he beheld the earthly life again in a woman's eyes, and at first he had been so deceived as to mistake it for the life eternal.
To love and be loved, is not this the Kingdom of God upon earth? And his heart swelled within him at the remembrance. O Lord, are we so blind? Where shall we find the light? Paul knew himself to be ignorant: his knowledge was made up of fragments of books of which he only imperfectly understood the meaning, but above all the Bible had impressed him with its romanticism and its realistic pictures of past ages. Wherefore he could place no reliance even on himself nor on his own inward searchings: he realized that he had no self-knowledge, that he was not master of himself and that he deceived himself ever and always.
His feet had been set upon the wrong road. He was a man of strong natural instincts, like his forbears, the millers and shepherds, and he suffered because he was not allowed to obey his instincts. Here he got back to his first simple and correct diagnosis of what ailed him: he was unhappy because he was a man and was forbidden to lead man's natural life of love and joy and the fulfilment of life's natural ends. Then he reflected that pleasure enjoyed leaves only horror and anguish behind it; therefore it could not be the flesh that cried out for its chance of life, but rather the soul imprisoned within the flesh that longed to escape from its prison. In those supreme moments of love it had been the soul which had soared upward in a rapid flight, only to fall back more swiftly into its cage; but that instant of freedom had sufficed to show it the place to which it would take its flight when its prison days were ended and the wall of flesh for ever overthrown, a place of infinite joy, the Infinite itself.
He smiled at last, saddened and weary. Where had he read all these things? Certainly he must have read them somewhere, for he had no pretensions to evolve new ideas himself. But it was of no consequence, the truth is always the same, alike for all men, as all men's hearts are alike. He had thought himself different from other men, a voluntary exile and worthy of being near to God, and perhaps God was punishing him in this way, by sending him back among men, into the community of passion and of pain.
He must rise up and pursue his appointed way.
CHAPTER V
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 ent
ire 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 Mother Page 5