"And of all this I never spoke at confession. I committed the deadly sin of keeping back at confession all that." He stopped. Then he said, "Till the end my confessions were incomplete, were false.
"The stranger told me that as his love for this woman grew he found it impossible to follow the plan he had traced for himself of shutting his eyes to the sight of other eyes admiring, desiring her, of shutting his ears to the voices that whispered, "This it will always be, for others as well as for you." He found it impossible. His jealousy was too importunate, and he resolved to make any effort to keep her for himself alone. He knew she had love for him, but he knew that love would not necessarily, or even probably, keep her entirely faithful to him. She thought too little of pa.s.sing intrigues. To her they seemed trifles, meaningless, unimportant. She told him so, when he spoke his jealousy.
She said, "I love you. I do not love these other men. They are in my life for a moment only."
""And that moment plunges me into h.e.l.l!" he said.
"He told her he could not bear it, that it was impossible, that she must belong to him entirely and solely. He asked her to marry him. She was surprised, touched. She understood what a sacrifice such a marriage would be to a man in his position. He was a man of good birth. His request, his vehement insistence on it, made her understand his love as she had not understood it before. Yet she hesitated. For so long had she been accustomed to a life of freedom, of changing _amours_, that she hesitated to put her neck under the yoke of matrimony. She understood thoroughly his character and his aim in marrying her. She knew that as his wife she must bid an eternal farewell to the life she had known. And it was a life that had become a habit to her, a life that she was fond of. For she was enormously vain, and she was a--she was a very physical woman, subject to physical caprices. There are things that I pa.s.s over, Domini, which would explain still more her hesitation. He knew what caused it, and again he was tortured. But he persisted. And at last he overcame. She consented to marry him. They were engaged. Domini, I need not tell you much more, only this fact--which had driven him from France, destroyed his happiness, brought him to the monastery. Shortly before the marriage was to take place he discovered that, while they were engaged, she had yielded to the desires of an old admirer who had come to bid her farewell and to wish her joy in her new life. He was tempted, he said, to kill her. But he governed himself and left her.
He travelled. He came to Tunis. He came to La Trappe. He saw the peace there. He thought, "Can I seize it? Can it do something for me?" He saw me. He thought, "I shall not be quite alone. This monk--he has lived always in peace, he has never known the torture of women. Might not intercourse with him help me?"
"Such was his history, such was the history poured, with infinite detail that I have not told you, day by day, into my ears. It was the history, you see, of a pa.s.sion that was mainly physical. I will not say entirely.
I do not know whether any great pa.s.sion can be entirely physical. But it was the history of the pa.s.sion of one body for another body, and he did not attempt to present it to me as anything else. This man made me understand the meaning of the body. I had never understood it before.
I had never suspected the immensity of the meaning there is in physical things. I had never comprehended the flesh. Now I comprehended it.
Loneliness rushed upon me, devoured me--loneliness of the body. "G.o.d is a spirit and those that worship him must worship him in spirit." Now I felt that to worship in spirit was not enough. I even felt that it was scarcely anything. Again I thought of my life as the life of a skeleton in a world of skeletons. Again the chapel was as a valley of dry bones.
It was a ghastly sensation. I was plunged in the void. I--I--I can"t tell you my exact sensation, but it was as if I was the loneliest creature in the whole of the universe, and as if I need not have been lonely, as if I, in my ignorance and fatuity, had selected loneliness thinking it was the happiest fate.
"And yet you will say I was face to face with this man"s almost frantic misery. I was, and it made no difference. I envied him, even in his present state. He wanted to gain consolation from me if that were possible. Oh, the irony of my consoling him! In secret I laughed at it bitterly. When I strove to console him I knew that I was an incarnate lie. He had told me the meaning of the body and, by so doing, had s.n.a.t.c.hed from me the meaning of the spirit. And then he said to me, "Make me feel the meaning of the spirit. If I can grasp that I may find comfort." He called upon me to give him what I no longer had--the peace of G.o.d that pa.s.seth understanding. Domini, can you feel at all what that was to me? Can you realise? Can you--is it any wonder that I could do nothing for him, for him who had done such a frightful thing for me? Is it any wonder? Soon he realised that he would not find peace with me in the garden. Yet he stayed on. Why? He did not know where to go, what to do. Life offered him nothing but horror. His love of experiences was dead. His love of life had completely vanished. He saw the worldly life as a nightmare, yet he had nothing to put in the place of it. And in the monastery he was ceaselessly tormented by jealousy. Ceaselessly his mind was at work about this woman, picturing her in her life of change, of intrigue, of new lovers, of new hopes and aims in which he had no part, in which his image was being blotted out, doubtless from her memory even. He suffered, he suffered as few suffer. But I think I suffered more. The melancholy was driven on into a gnawing hunger, the gnawing hunger of the flesh wishing to have lived, wishing to live, wishing to--to know.
"Domini, to you I can"t say more of that--to you whom I--whom I love with spirit and flesh. I will come to the end, to the incident which made the body rise up, strike down the soul, trample out over it into the world like a wolf that was starving.
"One day the Reverend Pere gave me a special permission to walk with our visitor beyond the monastery walls towards the sea. Such permission was an event in my life. It excited me more than you can imagine. I found that the stranger had begged him to let me come.
""Our guest is very fond of you," the Reverend Pere said to me. "I think if any human being can bring him to a calmer, happier state of mind and spirit, you can. You have obtained a good influence over him."
"Domini, when the Reverend Pere spoke to me thus my mouth was suddenly contracted in a smile. Devil"s smile, I think. I put up my hand to my face. I saw the Reverend Pere looking at me with a dawning of astonishment in his kind, grave eyes, and I controlled myself at once.
But I said nothing. I could not say anything, and I went out from the parlour quickly, hot with a sensation of shame.
""You are coming?" the stranger said.
""Yes," I answered.
"It was a fiery day of late June. Africa was bathed in a glare of light that hurt the eyes. I went into my cell and put on a pair of blue gla.s.ses and my wide straw hat, the hat in which I formerly used to work in the fields. When I came out my guest was standing on the garden path.
He was swinging a stick in one hand. The other hand, which hung down by his side, was twitching nervously. In the glitter of the sun his face looked ghastly. In his eyes there seemed to be terrors watching without hope.
""You are ready?" he said. "Let us go."
"We set off, walking quickly.
""Movement--pace--sometimes that does a little good," he said. "If one can exhaust the body the mind sometimes lies almost still for a moment.
If it would only lie still for ever."
"I said nothing. I could say nothing. For my fever was surely as his fever.
""Where are we going?" he asked when we reached the little house of the keeper of the gate by the cemetery.
""We cannot walk in the sun," I answered. "Let us go into the eucalyptus woods."
"The first Trappists had planted forests of eucalyptus to keep off the fever that sometimes comes in the African summer. We made our way along a tract of open land and came into a deep wood. Here we began to walk more slowly. The wood was empty of men. The hot silence was profound.
He took off his white helmet and walked on, carrying it in his hand. Not till we were far in the forest did he speak. Then he said, "Father, I cannot struggle on much longer."
"He spoke abruptly, in a hard voice.
""You must try to gain courage," I said.
""From where?" he exclaimed. "No, no, don"t say from G.o.d. If there is a G.o.d He hates me."
"When he said that I felt as if my soul shuddered, hearing a frightful truth spoken about itself. My lips were dry. My heart seemed to shrivel up, but I made an effort and answered:
""G.o.d hates no being whom He has created."
""How can you know? Almost every man, perhaps every living man hates someone. Why not--?"
""To compare G.o.d with a man is blasphemous," I answered.
""Aren"t we made in His image? Father, it"s as I said--I can"t struggle on much longer. I shall have to end it. I wish now--I often wish that I had yielded to my first impulse and killed her. What is she doing now?
What is she doing now--at this moment?"
"He stood still and beat with his stick on the ground.
""You don"t know the infinite torture there is in knowing that, far away, she is still living that cursed life, that she is free to continue the acts of which her existence has been full. Every moment I am imagining--I am seeing--"
"He forced his stick deep into the ground.
""If I had killed her," he said in a low voice, "at least I should know that she was sleeping--alone--there--there--under the earth. I should know that her body was dissolved into dust, that her lips could kiss no man, that her arms could never hold another as they have held me!"
""Hush!" I said sternly. "You deliberately torture yourself and me." He glanced up sharply.
""You! What do you mean?"
""I must not listen to such things," I said. "They are bad for you and for me."
""How can they be bad for you--a monk?"
""Such talk is evil--evil for everyone."
""I"ll be silent then. I"ll go into the silence. I"ll go soon."
"I understood that he thought of putting an end to himself.
""There are few men," I said, speaking with deliberation, with effort, "who do not feel at some period of life that all is over for them, that there is nothing to hope for, that happiness is a dream which will visit them no more."
""Have you ever felt like that? You speak of it calmly, but have you ever experienced it?"
"I hesitated. Then I said:
""Yes."
""You, who have been a monk for so many years!"