Chapter XXVI (2)

“When I came out of the chapel into the _hotellerie_ I met our guest--I do not say his name. What would be the use?--in the corridor. It was almost dark. There were ten minutes before the time for locking up the door and going to bed. Francois, the servant, was asleep under the arcade.

“‘Shall we go on to the path and have a last breath of air?’ the stranger said.

“We stepped out and walked slowly up and down.

“‘Do you not feel the beauty of peace?’ I asked.

“I wanted him to say yes. I wanted him to tell me that peace, tranquillity, were beautiful. He did not reply for a moment. I heard him sigh heavily.

“‘If there is peace in the world at all,’ he said at length, ‘it is only to be found with the human being one loves. With the human being one loves one might find peace in hell.’

“We did not speak again before we parted for the night.

“Domini, I did not sleep at all that night. It was the first of many sleepless nights, nights in which my thoughts travelled like winged Furies--horrible, horrible nights. In them I strove to imagine all the stranger knew by experience. It was like a ghastly, physical effort. I strove to conceive of all that he had done--with the view, I told myself at first, of bringing myself to a greater contentment, of realising how worthless was all that I had rejected and that he had grasped at. In the dark I, as it were, spread out his map of life and mine and examined them. When, still in the dark, I rose to go to the chapel I was exhausted. I felt unutterably melancholy. That was at first. Presently I felt an active, gnawing hunger. But--but--I have not come to that yet. This strange, new melancholy was the forerunner. It was a melancholy that seemed to be caused by a sense of frightful loneliness such as I had never previously experienced. Till now I had almost always felt God with me, and that He was enough. Now, suddenly, I began to feel that I was alone. I kept thinking of the stranger’s words: ‘If there is peace in the world at all it is only to be found with the human being one loves.’

“‘That is false,’ I said to myself again and again. ‘Peace is only to be found by close union with God. In that I have found peace for many, many years.’

“I knew that I had been at peace. I knew that I had been happy. And yet, when I looked back upon my life as a novice and a monk, I now felt as if I had been happy vaguely, foolishly, bloodlessly, happy only because I had been ignorant of what real happiness was--not really happy. I thought of a bird born in a cage and singing there. I had been as that bird. And then, when I was in the garden, I looked at the swallows winging their way high in the sunshine, between the garden trees and the radiant blue, winging their way towards sea and mountains and plains, and that bitterness, like an acid that burns and eats away fine metal, was once more at my heart.

“But the sensation of loneliness was the most terrible of all. I compared union with God, such as I thought I had known, with that other union spoken of by my guest--union with the human being one loves. I set the two unions as it were in comparison. Night after night I did this. Night after night I told over the joys of union with God--joys which I dared to think I had known--and the joys of union with a loved human being. On the one side I thought of the drawing near to God in prayer, of the sensation of approach that comes with earnest prayer, of the feeling that ears are listening to you, that the great heart is loving you, the great heart that loves all living things, that you are being absolutely understood, that all you cannot say is comprehended, and all you say is received as something precious. I recalled the joy, the exaltation, that I had known when I prayed. That was union with God. In such union I had sometimes felt that the world, with all that it contained of wickedness, suffering and death, was utterly devoid of power to sadden or alarm the humblest human being who was able to draw near to God.

“I had had a conquering feeling--not proud--as of one upborne, protected for ever, lifted to a region in which no enemy could ever be, no sadness, no faint anxiety even.

“Then I strove to imagine--and this, Domini, was surely a deliberate sin--exactly what it must be to be united with a beloved human being. I strove and I was able. For not only did instinct help me, instinct that had been long asleep, but--I have told you that the stranger was suffering under an obsession, a terrible dominion. This dominion he described to me with an openness that perhaps--that indeed I believe--he would not have shown had I not been a monk. He looked upon me as a being apart, neither man nor woman, a being without sex. I am sure he did. And yet he was immensely intelligent. But he knew that I had entered the monastery as a novice, that I had been there through all my adult life. And then my manner probably assisted him in his illusion. For I gave--I believe--no sign of the change that was taking place within me under his influence. I seemed to be calm, detached, even in my sympathy for his suffering. For he suffered frightfully. This woman he loved was a Parisian, he told me. He described her beauty to me, as if in order to excuse himself for having become the slave to her he was. I suppose she was very beautiful. He said that she had a physical charm so intense that few men could resist it, that she was famous throughout Europe for it. He told me that she was not a good woman. I gathered that she lived for pleasure, admiration, that she had allowed many men to love her before he knew her. But she had loved him genuinely. She was not a very young woman, and she was not a married woman. He said that she was a woman men loved but did not marry, a woman who was loved by the husbands of married women, a woman to marry whom would exclude a man from the society of good women. She had never lived, or thought of living, for one man till he came into her life. Nor had he ever dreamed of living for one woman. He had lived to gain experience; she too. But when he met her--knowing thoroughly all she was--all other women ceased to exist for him. He became her slave. Then jealousy awoke in him, jealousy of all the men who had been in her life, who might be in her life again. He was tortured by loving such a woman--a woman who had belonged to many, who would no doubt in the future belong to others. For despite the fact that she loved him he told me that at first he had no illusions about her. He knew the world too well for that, and he cursed the fate that had bound him body and soul to what he called a courtesan. Even the fact that she loved him at first did not blind him to the effect upon character that her life must inevitably have had. She had dwelt in an atmosphere of lies, he said, and to lie was nothing to her. Any original refinement of feeling as regards human relations that she might have had had become dulled, if it had not been destroyed. At first he blindly, miserably, resigned himself to this. He said to himself, ‘Fate has led me to love this sort of woman. I must accept her as she is, with all her defects, with her instinct for treachery, with her passion for the admiration of the world, with her incapability for being true to an ideal, or for isolating herself in the adoration of one man. I cannot get away from her. She has me fast. I cannot live without her. Then I must bear the torture that jealousy of her will certainly bring me in silence. I must conceal it. I must try to kill it. I must make the best of whatever she will give me, knowing that she can never, with her nature and her training, be exclusively mine as a good woman might be.’ This he said to himself. This plan of conduct he traced for himself. But he soon found that he was not strong enough to keep to it. His jealousy was a devouring fire, and he could not conceal it. Domini, he described to me minutely the effect of jealousy in a human heart. I had never imagined what it was, and, when he described it, I felt as if I looked down into a bottomless pit lined with the flames of hell. By the depth of that pit I measured the depth of his passion for this woman, and I gained an idea of what human love--not the best sort of human love, but still genuine, intense love of some kind--could be. Of this human love I thought at night, putting it in comparison with the love God’s creature can have for God. And my sense of loneliness increased, and I felt as if I had always been lonely. Does this seem strange to you? In the love of God was calm, peace, rest, a lying down of the soul in the Almighty arms. In the other love described to me was restlessness, agitation, torture, the soul spinning like an atom driven by winds, the heart devoured as by a disease, a cancer. On the one hand was a beautiful trust, on the other a ceaseless agony of doubt and terror. And yet I came to feel as if the one were unreal in comparison with the other, as if in the one were a loneliness, in the other fierce companionship. I thought of the Almighty arms, Domini, and of the arms of a woman, and--Domini, I longed to have known, if only once, the pressure of a woman’s arms about my neck, about my breast, the touch of a woman’s hand upon my heart.

“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 passing 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 hell!’ 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 pass 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 passion that was mainly physical. I will not say entirely. I do not know whether any great passion can be entirely physical. But it was the history of the passion 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. ‘God 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 snatched 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 God that passeth 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 glasses 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 God. If there is a God 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:

“‘God hates no being whom He has created.’

“‘How can you know? Almost every man, perhaps every living man hates someone. Why not--?’

“‘To compare God 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!’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Since you have been here?’

“‘Yes, since then.’

“‘And you would tell me that the feeling passed, that hope came again, and the dream as you call it?’

“‘I would say that what has lived in a heart can die, as we who live in this world shall die.’

“‘Ah, that--the sooner the better! But you are wrong. Sometimes a thing lives in the heart that cannot die so long as the heart beats. Such is my passion, my torture. Don’t you, a monk--don’t dare to say to me that this love of mine could die.’

“‘Don’t you wish it to die?’ I asked. ‘You say it tortures you.’

“‘Yes. But no--no--I don’t wish it to die. I could never wish that.’

“I looked at him, I believe, with a deep astonishment.

“‘Ah, you don’t understand!’ he said. ‘You don’t understand. At all costs one must keep it--one’s love. With it I am--as you see. But without it--man, without it, I should be nothing--no more than that.’

“He picked up a rotten leaf, held it to me, threw it down on the ground. I hardly looked at it. He had said to me: ‘Man!’ That word, thus said by him, seemed to me to mark the enormous change in me, to indicate that it was visible to the eyes of another, the heart of another. I had passed from the monk--the sexless being--to the man. He set me beside himself, spoke of me as if I were as himself. An intense excitement surged up in me. I think--I don’t know what I should have said--done--but at that moment a boy, who acted as a servant at the monastery, came running towards us with a letter in his hand.

“‘It is for Monsieur!’ he said. ‘It was left at the gate.’

“‘A letter for me!’ the stranger said.

“He held out his hand and took it indifferently. The boy gave it, and turning, went away through the wood. Then the stranger glanced at the envelope. Domini, I wish I could make you see what I saw then, the change that came. I can’t. There are things the eyes must see. The tongue can’t tell them. The ghastly whiteness went out of his face. A hot flood of scarlet rushed over it up to the roots of his hair. His hands and his whole body began to tremble violently. His eyes, which were fixed on the envelope, shone with an expression--it was like all the excitement in the world condensed into two sparks. He dropped his stick and sat down on the trunk of a tree, fell down almost.

“‘Father!’ he muttered, ‘it’s not been through the post--it’s not been through the post!’

“I did not understand.

“‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

“‘What----’

“The flush left his face. He turned deadly white again. He held out the letter.

“‘Read it for me!’ he said. ‘I can’t see--I can’t see anything.’

“I took the letter. He covered his eyes with his hands. I opened it and read:

“‘GRAND HOTEL, TUNIS.

“‘I have found out where you are. I have come. Forgive me--if you can. I will marry you--or I will live with you. As you please; but I cannot live without you. I know women are not admitted to the monastery. Come out on the road that leads to Tunis. I am there. At least come for a moment and speak to me. VERONIQUE.’

“Domini, I read this slowly; and it was as if I read my own fate. When I had finished he got up. He was still pale as ashes and trembling.

“‘Which is the way to the road?’ he said. ‘Do you know?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Take me there. Give me your arm, Father.’

“He took it, leaned on it heavily. We walked through the wood towards the highroad. I had almost to support him. The way seemed long. I felt tired, sick, as if I could scarcely move, as if I were bearing--as if I were bearing a cross that was too heavy for me. We came at last out of the shadow of the trees into the glare of the sun. A flat field divided us from the white road.

“‘Is there--is there a carriage?’ he whispered in my ear.

“I looked across the field and saw on the road a carriage waiting.

“‘Yes,’ I said.

“I stopped, and tried to take his arm from mine.

“‘Go,’ I said. ‘Go on!’

“‘I can’t. Come with me, Father.’

“We went on in the blinding sun. I looked down on the dry earth as I walked. Presently I saw at my feet the white dust of the road. At the same time I heard a woman’s cry. The stranger took his arm violently from mine.

“‘Father,’ he said. ‘Good-bye--God bless you!’

“He was gone. I stood there. In a moment I heard a roll of wheels. Then I looked up. I saw a man and a woman together, Domini. Their faces were like angels’ faces--with happiness. The dust flew up in the sunshine. The wheels died away--I was alone.

“Presently--I think after a very long time--I turned and went back to the monastery. Domini, that night I left the monastery. I was as one mad. The wish to live had given place to the determination to live. I thought of nothing else. In the chapel that evening I heard nothing--I did not see the monks. I did not attempt to pray, for I knew that I was going. To go was an easy matter for me. I slept alone in the _hotellerie_, of which I had the key. When it was night I unlocked the door. I walked to the cemetery--between the Stations of the Cross. Domini, I did not see them. In the cemetery was a ladder, as I told you.

“Just before dawn I reached my brother’s house outside of Tunis, not far from the Bardo. I knocked. My brother himself came down to know who was there. He, as I told you, was without religion, and had always hated my being a monk. I told him all, without reserve. I said, ‘Help me to go away. Let me go anywhere--alone.’ He gave me clothes, money. I shaved off my beard and moustache. I shaved my head, so that the tonsure was no longer visible. In the afternoon of that day I left Tunis. I was let loose into life. Domini--Domini, I won’t tell you where I wandered till I came to the desert, till I met you.

“I was let loose into life, but, with my freedom, the wish to live seemed to die in me. I was afraid of life. I was haunted by terrors. I had been a monk so long that I did not know how to live as other men. I did not live, I never lived--till I met you. And then--then I realised what life may be. And then, too, I realised fully what I was. I struggled, I fought myself. You know--now, if you look back, I think you know that I tried--sometimes, often--I tried to--to--I tried to----”

His voice broke.

“That last day in the garden I thought that I had conquered myself, and it was in that moment that I fell for ever. When I knew you loved me I could fight no more. Do you understand? You have seen me, you have lived with me, you have divined my misery. But don’t--don’t think, Domini, that it ever came from you. It was the consciousness of my lie to you, my lie to God, that--that--I can’t go on--I can’t tell you--I can’t tell you--you know.”

He was silent. Domini said nothing, did not move. He did not look at her, but her silence seemed to terrify him. He drew back from it sharply and turned to the desert. He stared across the vast spaces lit up by the moon. Still she did not move.

“I’ll go--I’ll go!” he muttered.

And he stepped forward. Then Domini spoke.

“Boris!” she said.

He stopped.

“What is it?” he murmured hoarsely.

“Boris, now at last you--you can pray.”

He looked at her as if awe-stricken.

“Pray!” he whispered. “You tell me I can pray--now!”

“Now at last.”

She went into the tent and left him alone. He stood where he was for a moment. He knew that, in the tent, she was praying. He stood, trying to listen to her prayer. Then, with an uncertain hand, he felt in his breast. He drew out the wooden crucifix. He bent down his head, touched it with his lips, and fell upon his knees in the desert.

The music had ceased in the city. There was a great silence.