Two Summers in Guyenne: A Chronicle of the Wayside and Waterside

by Edward Harrison Barker

The storm continued all night with intervals of calm. A little before two o'clock the bell was rung for matins. The clang of the metal must have been heard clear and shrill far over the Double, even when the storm seemed to be rending the black sails of the clouds asunder. The postulant fetched me, as he had promised, and he led me through a labyrinth of passages to the church. Although the building was almost in darkness, I could see that it was in the Pointed style, and that it was marked by a cold elegance befitting its special purpose. The nave was divided near the middle by a Gothic screen of wood artistically carved, although the ornamental motive had been kept in subjection. The half that adjoined the sanctuary was somewhat higher than the other, and here the Trappist fathers had their stalls. The brothers' stalls were in the lower part. I was led to a place below the screen. The office had already commenced; the monotonous plain-chant by deep-toned voices had reached me in the corridors. Perhaps it was half an hour later when the chanting ceased. The lamps were darkened in the stalls above the screen—in the lower part there was but one very small light suspended from the vault—then the monks knelt each upon the narrow piece of wood affixed to his stall for this purpose, and for half an hour with heads bent down they prayed in silence, while the thunder groaned outside, and the lightning flashed through the clerestory windows. To the Trappists, who day after day, year after year, at the same hour had been going through the same part of their unchanging discipline, heedless whether the stars shone overhead or the lightning glittered, there was nothing in all this to draw their minds from the circle of devotional routine: I alone felt as if I was going down into my grave. The gray light that was now making the ribs of the vaulting dimly visible was like the dawn of eternity breaking through the brief night called Death, which is not perhaps so dark as it seems. At three o'clock the chill and awful silence was broken by the white-robed prior, who rose from his low posture like a dead man in his shroud, and began to chant in another tone and measure from what had gone before. It had in it the sadness of the wind that I heard moaning in the pine-tops on the moor before the storm broke. The voice was strong and clear, but so solemn that it was almost unearthly; and it seemed in some strange way to mingle with the purity of the cold dawn that comes when all the passions of the world are still, but which makes the leaves tremble at the crime and trouble of another day.

When the prior stood up, the brothers left to begin their manual labour, each one in his allotted place. The fathers remained in their stalls until after the four o'clock mass, and then they, too, fell to work until six o'clock—the hour of prime. I soon followed the brothers, although not so far as the fields, the cheese-rooms, and farm-buildings. I returned to my room; but as I had to pass on the upper side of the screen on leaving the church, I looked at the two rows of white figures standing in their stalls. It may have been the effect of the mingled daylight and lamplight: whatever the reason, I thought during those few seconds that I had never before seen such a collection of strange and startling faces. They were those of sombre men who had walked through hell like Dante, and who bore upon their calm and corpse-like features the deep-cut traces of the flame and horror.

I took up my old place by the window, and watched in the twilight of morning an aged brother, with frock hitched up above his naked ankles and his feet in great sabots, fetch sack after sack of what I supposed to be bran, and carry it away on his shoulders. He passed close to me, and looked at me with an expression which I interpreted to mean: 'You must be a lunatic to stare at me instead of going to bed—you, who have Monseigneur's soft bed, and are at liberty to sleep.' But no word passed between us. At length I did go to bed again, and slept.

I was awakened by a noise in my room, and on opening my eyes I saw a long figure in white two or three yards from me, and I realized that a Trappist father was watching me. Then, when he perceived that I was awake, he glided from the room without saying a word. Had I spoken, he would have replied, and explained what he wanted; but I had not recovered sufficiently from my surprise to remember the rule until he was gone. I now called to mind that the postulant had told me over-night that a certain father would show me round the monastery after prime. This, then, was he, and I was doubtless keeping him waiting, for it was seven o'clock. A few minutes later he returned. I was then at my ablutions.

Now, although I have grown pretty well accustomed to go through this daily duty with the aid of salad-bowls and slop-basins while living in the French provinces, I think it good for the mind to keep up the illusion of a thorough wash even when this is practically impossible. When, therefore, the Trappist stalked again into my room without giving me warning, his costume, simple as it was, was surpassed by the simplicity of mine. I told him that I would be with him in two or three minutes, and he retired with a slow and stately nod. I tried very hard to keep my word, for I expected every moment to see the door open again. When I opened it myself, I found the father pacing slowly in the passage. Knowing that there is not much to be had in a Trappist monastery without asking, I opened the conversation by making some delicate allusions to breakfast. The truth is that the bread-and-cheese supper was nothing to me now but an unsatisfactory recollection, and, with the sense of vacuum that distressed me, I was unwilling to follow the monk upon the promised round, lest I should die of inanition on the way. He asked me what I would like to eat, and I said, 'Anything that is near at hand.' Had I suggested that a chop or a steak would be suitable after so light a dinner, I should not have had it; but I might have received a large measure of silent reprobation for my bad taste in asking for it, and also for having reminded a Trappist of such vanities of the past.

The father—he was becoming fatherly indeed—went to a cupboard of the salle à manger already described, and brought out what I had left of the bread and cheese set before me the previous evening. Having placed this on the table, with a bottle of beer—the postulant had led me to hope for coffee and milk, but there was evidently no escape from malt liquor here—he withdrew to a little office close by where he was wont to perform the daily duty of keeping the cheese accounts of the monastery. I felt sure that when he had reckoned up a few figures he would be coming round to tear me away from the bread and cheese, so I endeavoured to hasten the consumption with as much speed as I could decently put on. I was right in my conjecture. I had not been seated five minutes, when he came back and wandered half round the table.

'J'aurai fini dans un petit moment, mon père,' said I, as I cut off another piece of cheese. By-the-bye, nobody should call a Trappist 'monsieur,' because the monk has ceased to have even a name of his own other than his religious one, and has become a father or brother to everybody. He returned to his accounts; but he had not gone very deeply into them when he saw me standing at the door of his little den. He left his books at once, and we walked side by side where he chose to lead me. He was a rather tall man, with a face that was an enigma. The features were so like those of the late Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, that if the English Freethinker had disappeared mysteriously I might have strongly suspected him of having turned Trappist.

This father volunteered no information whatever; it had all to be drawn out of him. He spoke in a low voice, and, as it appeared to me, with something of the hesitation of a man who is recalling his mother tongue after many years of disuse. His face was large and heavy; but there was a keen light in his eyes which at times was that of gaiety well kept under. He soon let me see that even a Trappist may give out an occasional flash of humour. I was questioning him respecting the help that the monastery gave to the poor, and he told me that in addition to thirty or forty persons living in the locality who received regular assistance every day, about the same number of wanderers stopped at the gate and waited for the bread and cheese which was never refused them.

'Men looking for work?' I asked innocently.

'Yes,' replied the monk, without moving a muscle of his stolid face; 'and who pray to God that He will not give them any.'