The Woman and the Priest/Chapter 13
Once more Paul found himself ascending his own staircase; but now the danger was past, or at least the fear of danger.
Nevertheless he halted before his mother's door, deeming that it would be advisable to tell her the result of his interview with Agnes and of her threat to denounce him. But he heard the sound of regular breathing and passed on; his mother had quietly fallen asleep, for henceforth she was sure of him and felt that he was safe.
Safe! He looked round his room as though he had just returned from a long and disastrous journey. Everything was peaceful and tidy, and he moved about on tiptoe as he began to undress, for the sake of not disturbing that orderliness and silence. His clothes hanging from their hooks, blacker than their shadows on the wall, his hat above them, stuck forward on a wooden peg, the sleeves of his cassock falling limply as though tired out, all had the vague appearance of some dark and empty phantom, some fleshless and bloodless vampire that inspired a nameless dread. It was like the shadow of that sin from which he had cut himself free, but which was waiting to follow him again to-morrow on his way through the world.
An instant more, and he perceived with terror that the nightmare obsessed him still. He was not safe yet, there was another night to be got through, as the voyager crosses a last stretch of turbulent sea. He was very weary and his heavy eyelids drooped with fatigue, but an intolerable anxiety prevented him from throwing himself on his bed, or even sitting down on a chair or resting in any way whatever; he wandered here and there, doing small, unusual, useless things, softly opening drawer after drawer and inspecting what there was inside.
As he passed before the mirror he looked at his own reflection and beheld himself grey of face, with purple lips and hollow eyes. "Look well at yourself, Paul," he said to his image, and he stepped back a little so that the lamplight might fall better on the glass. The figure in the mirror stepped back also, as though seeking to escape him, and as he stared into its eyes and noted the dilated pupils he had a strange impression that the real Paul was the one in the glass, a Paul who never lied and who betrayed by the pallor of his face all his awful fear of the morrow.
"Why do I pretend even to myself a security which I do not feel?" was his silent question. "I must go away this very night as she bade me."
And somewhat calmer for the resolve he threw himself on his bed. And thus, with closed eyes and face pressed into the pillow, he believed he could search more deeply into his conscience.
"Yes, I must leave to-night. Christ himself commands us to avoid creating scandals. I had better wake my mother and tell her, and perhaps we can leave together; she can take me away with her again as she did when I was a child and I can begin a new life in another place."
But he felt that all this was mere exaltation and that he had not the courage to do as he proposed. And why should he? He really felt quite sure that Agnes would not carry out her threat, so why should he go away? He was not even confronted with the danger of going back to her and falling into sin again, for he had now been tried and had overcome temptation.
But the exaltation took hold of him again.
"Nevertheless, Paul, you will have to go. Awaken your mother and depart together. Don't you know who it is speaking to you? It is I, Agnes. You really believe that I shall not carry out my threat? Perhaps I shall not, but I advise you to go, all the same. You think you have got rid of me? And yet I am within you, I am the evil genius of your life. If you remain here I shall never leave you alone for one single instant; I shall be the shadow beneath your feet, the barrier between you and your mother, between you and your own self. Go."
Then he tried to pacify her, in order to pacify his own conscience.
"Yes, I am going, I tell you! I am going—we will go together, you within me, more alive than I myself. Be content, torment me no more! We are together, journeying together, borne on the wings of time towards eternity. Divided and distant we were when our eyes first met and our lips kissed; divided were we then and enemies; only now begins our real union, in thy hatred, in my patience, in my renunciation."
*****
Then weariness slowly overcame him. He heard a subdued, continuous moaning outside his window, like a dove seeking her mate: and that mournful cry was like the lament of the night itself, a night pale with moonlight, a soft, veiled light, with the sky all flecked with little white clouds like feathers. Then he became aware that it was he himself who was moaning; but sleep was already stealing over him, calming his senses, and fear and sorrow and remembrance faded away. He dreamed he was really on a journey, riding up the mountain paths towards the plateau. Everything was peaceful and clear; between the big yellow elder trees he could see stretches of grass, of a soft green that gave rest to the eyes, and motionless upon the rocks the eagles blinked at the sun.
Suddenly the keeper stood before him, saluted, and placed an open book on his saddle-bow. And he began to read St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, taking it up at the precise point where he had left off the previous night: "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise and that they are vain."
*****
On Sundays Mass was later than on other days, but Paul always went early to the church to hear the confessions of those women who wished to attend Communion later. So his mother called him at the usual time.
He had slept for some hours, a heavy dreamless sleep, and when he woke his memory was a complete blank, he only had a supreme desire to go to sleep again immediately. But the knocks on his door persisted, and then he remembered. Instantly he was on his feet, numb with dread.
"Agnes will come to church and denounce me before all the people," was his one thought.
He did not know why, but somehow whilst he slept the certainty that she would carry out her threat had taken firm root in his consciousness.
He dropped down in his chair with trembling knees and a sense of complete helplessness. His mind was clouded and confused: he wondered vaguely if it would not be possible even now to avert the scandal—he might feign illness and not say Mass at all, and thus gain time in which he might endeavour to pacify Agnes. But the very idea of beginning the whole thing over again, of suffering a second time all his misery of the previous day, only increased his mental torment.
He got up, and his head seemed to hit the sky through the glass of his window, and he stamped his feet on the floor to dispel the numbness that was paralysing his very blood. Then he dressed, drawing his leather belt tightly round his waist and folding his mantle round him as he had seen the hunters buckle on their cartridge-belts and wrap themselves up in their cloaks before starting out for the mountains. When at last he flung open his window and leaned out he felt that only then were his eyes awaking to the light of day after the nightmare of the dark hours, only then had he escaped from the prison of his own self to make his peace with external things. But it was a forced peace, full of secret rancour, and it sufficed for him to draw in his head from the cool fresh air outside to the warm and perfumed atmosphere of his room for him to fall back into himself, a prey again to his gnawing dread.
So he fled downstairs, wondering what he had better tell his mother.
He heard her somewhat harsh voice driving off the chickens who were trying to invade the dining-room, and the fluttering of their wings as they scattered before her, and he smelt the fragrance of hot coffee and the clean sweet scents from the garden. In the lane under the ridge there was a tinkle of bells as the goats were driven to their pasture, little bells that sounded like childish echoes of the cheerful if monotonous chime wherewith Antiochus, up in the church tower, summoned the people to wake from sleep and come to hear Mass.
Everything around was sweet and peaceful, bathed in the rosy light of early morning. And Paul remembered his dream.
There was nothing to hinder him from going out, from going to church and taking up his ordinary life again. Yet all his fear returned upon him; he was afraid alike of going forward or of turning back. As he stood on the step of the open door he felt as if he were on the summit of some precipitous mountain, it was impossible to get any higher and below him yawned the abyss. So he stood there for unspeakable moments, during which his heart beat furiously and he had the physical sensation of falling, of shrugging at the bottom of a gulf, in a swirl of foaming waters, a wheel that turned helplessly, vainly beating the stream that swept on its relentless course.
It was his own heart that turned and turned helplessly in the whirlpool of life. He closed the door and went back into the house, and sat down on the stairs as his mother had done the previous night. He gave up trying to solve the problem that tortured him and simply waited for some one to come and help him.
And there his mother found him. When he saw her he got up immediately, feeling somehow comforted at once, yet humiliated, too, in the very depths of his being, so sure was he of the advice she would give him to proceed upon his chosen way.
But at the first sight of him her worn face grew pale, as though refined through grief.
"Paul!" she cried, "what are you doing there? Are you ill?"
"Mother," he said, walking to the front door without turning into the dining-room, "I did not want to wake you last night, it was so late. Well, I went to see her. I went to see her.…"
His mother had already recovered her composure and stood looking fixedly at him. In the brief silence that followed his words they could hear the church bell ringing quickly and insistently as though it were right over the house.
"She is quite well," continued Paul, "but she is very excited and insists that I shall leave the place at once: otherwise she threatens to come to church and create a scandal by denouncing me before the congregation."
His mother kept silence, but he felt her at his side, stern and steadfast, upholding him, supporting him as she had supported his earliest steps.
"She wanted me to go away this very night. And she said that … if I did not go, she would come to church this morning.… I am not afraid of her: besides, I don't believe she will come."
He opened the front door and a flood of golden light poured into the dark little passage, as though trying to entice him and his mother out into the sunshine. Paul walked towards the church without turning round, and his mother stood at the door looking after him.
She had not opened her lips, but a slight trembling seized her again, and only with an effort could she maintain her outward composure. All at once she went up to her bedroom and hurriedly dressed for church: she was going too, and she, too, drew in her belt and walked with firm steps. And before she left the house she remembered to drive out the intruding chickens again, and to draw the coffee-pot to the side of the fire; then she twisted the long end of her scarf over her mouth and chin to hide the obstinate trembling that would persist in spite of all her efforts to overcome it.
So it was only with a glance of the eyes that she could return the greetings of the women who were coming up from the village, and of the old men already seated on the low parapet round the square before the church, their black pointed caps standing out in sharp relief against the background of rosy morning sky.