“‘I will help you to find the peace which you have lost.’
“Was it a presumptuous thought, Domini? Was it insolent? At the time it seemed to me absolutely sincere, one of the best thoughts I had ever had—a thought put into my heart by God. I didn’t know then—I didn’t know.”
He stopped speaking, and stood for a time quite still, looking down at the sand, which was silver white under the moon. At last he lifted his head and said, speaking slowly:
“It was the coming of this man that put the spark to that torch. It was he who woke up in me the half of myself which, unsuspected by me, had been slumbering through all my life, slumbering and gathering strength in slumber—as the body does—gathering a strength that was tremendous, that was to overmaster the whole of me, that was to make of me one mad impulse. He woke up in me the body and the body was to take possession of the soul. I wonder—can I make you feel why this man was able to affect me thus? Can I make you know this man?
“He was a man full of secret violence, violence of the mind and violence of the body, a volcanic man. He was English—he said so—but there must have been blood that was not English in his veins. When I was with him I felt as if I was with fire. There was the restlessness of fire in him. There was the intensity of fire. He could be reserved. He could appear to be cold. But always I was conscious that if there was stone without there was scorching heat within. He was watchful of himself and of everyone with whom he came into the slightest contact. He was very clever. He had an immense amount of personal charm, I think, at any rate for me. He was very human, passionately interested in humanity. He was—and this was specially part of him, a dominant trait—he was savagely, yes, savagely, eager to be happy, and when he came to live in the hotellerie he was savagely unhappy. An egoist he was, a thinker, a man who longed to lay hold of something beyond this world, but who had not been able to do so. Even his desire to find rest in a religion seemed to me to have greed in it, to have something in it that was akin to avarice. He was a human storm, Domini, as well as a human fire. Think! what a man to be cast by the world—which he knew as they know it only who are voracious for life and free—into my quiet existence.
“Very soon he began to show himself to me as he was, with a sort of fearlessness that was almost impudent. The conditions of our two lives in the monastery threw us perpetually together in a curious isolation. And the Reverend Pere, Domini, the Reverend Pere, set my feet in the path of my own destruction. On the day after the stranger had arrived the Reverend Pere sent for me to his private room, and said to me, ‘Our new guest is in a very unhappy state. He has been attracted by our peace. If we can bring peace to him it will be an action acceptable to God. You will be much with him. Try to do him good. He is not a Catholic, but no matter. He wishes to attend the services in the chapel. He may be influenced. God may have guided his feet to us, we cannot tell. But we can act—we can pray for him. I do not know how long he will stay. It may be for only a few days or for the whole summer. It does not matter. Use each day well for him. Each day may be his last with us.’ I went out from the Reverend Pere full of enthusiasm, feeling that a great, a splendid interest had come into my life, an interest such as it had never held before.
“Day by day I was with this man. Of course there were many hours when we were apart, the hours when I was at prayer in the chapel or occupied with study. But each day we passed much time together, generally in the garden. Scarcely any visitors came, and none to stay, except, from time to time, a passing priest, and once two young men from Tunis, one of whom had an inclination to become a novice. And this man, as I have said, began to show himself to me with a tremendous frankness.
“Domini, he was suffering under what I suppose would be called an obsession, an immense domination such as one human being sometimes obtains over another. At that time I had never realised that there were such dominations. Now I know that there are, and, Domini, that they can be both terrible and splendid. He was dominated by a woman, by a woman who had come into his life, seized it, made it a thing of glory, broken it. He described to me the dominion of this woman. He told me how she had transformed him. Till he met her he had been passionate but free, his own master through many experiences, many intrigues. He was very frank, Domini. He did not attempt to hide from me that his life had been evil. It had been a life devoted to the acquiring of experience, of all possible experience, mental and bodily. I gathered that he had shrunk from nothing, avoided nothing. His nature had prompted him to rush upon everything, to grasp at everything. At first I was horrified at what he told me. I showed it. I remember the second evening after his arrival we were sitting together in a little arbour at the foot of the vineyard that sloped up to the cemetery. It was half an hour before the last service in the chapel. The air was cool with breath from the distant sea. An intense calm, a heavenly calm, I think, filled the garden, floated away to the cypresses beside the graves, along the avenue where stood the Fourteen Stations of the Cross. And he told me, began to tell me something of his life.
“‘You thought to find happiness in such an existence?’ I exclaimed, almost with incredulity I believe.
“He looked at me with his shining eyes.