“To begin with, I had, at twenty, a pretty definite philosophy. I thought of life and all its functions, as created by the divine hand of God, to be essentially perfect. Man was created, according to the teaching of the Church, in God’s image and likeness. The very highest good, to me, was to live in an accord as close as possible to the universal laws of nature. Man’s natural state is good, and when he violates this state he undergoes a physical reaction, called shame, over which he has no control whatsoever. I had this underlying belief, which was clarified more or less by reading Walt Whitman and Carlyle, though I added some ideas of my own which I found in neither of these. But I can’t swear that they aren’t there. I drew no such sharp lines as are generally drawn between physical and spiritual love, but visualized, or rather, believed in, an ideal love in which both are combined, and which, by this combination raise each other to far higher levels, both collectively and individually. I rejected a purely abstract affection of the spirit as weakness, since it does accept and is out of tune with nature. That was Carlyle. And there was the only point of the whole matter that I have since come to question, though I have not actually put it aside. I wonder if I could still hold to it had I married. But if I reject this, the whole thing breaks down, so I must cling to it, though it does waver. I had always been a Catholic, and as far as I could see there was no conflict between my doctrine and that of the Church. In addition, though I realized that this was a personal viewpoint and couldn’t be brought to bear too closely on the other, beauty was to me rarely seductive. My moments of desire were, for the most part, connected with the most intense ugliness.
“At this time I was in love with a girl who was exactly the ideal of it all. She too was a Catholic and had been educated in a convent for the greater part of her life. She had not the clarity of feature that generally characterizes beauty, but possessed something infinitely more subtle than this. If you’ve ever seen one of those glorious green Irish hills that look as if they’ve been drawn up fresh from the depths of the earth by the hand of God, you’ll understand what I mean. She had the same original force of beauty in the rough mold of her face, which was at the same time miraculously soft, and free from cold line. Her whole head was clothed in a sort of cloudiness, like Venus, the mother of Aeneas, appearing to her son. Her body, and mind, and voice were so harmonious an expression of good that goodness was with her almost a physical quality. She had almost never come in contact with wrong, but I know she would have been the same under any circumstances. It’s easy to understand how I could hold to my beliefs here; I loved her as much for her body as for her spirit. She had the same sweet curves and moved with the same music as a green, young tree bent in the wind.”
He was silent for a moment, and gazed into the thick purple sky, underneath which the sea beat tirelessly at the rocks which fringed the bottom of the cliff.
“Unfortunately, she didn’t love me, but had the same sort of affection a girl has for a very good friend of the opposite sex. However, as we were both quite young (she eighteen) I had plenty of hope that as soon as I was in a position to ask her to marry me, she would accept.
“Then, in the summer after her graduation from the convent, I learned that she was determined to return there in the fall as a nun! For two or three days after this discovery I was in a state of almost continual mental anguish, that she, a creature so beautifully alive, should keep the precious gift of herself from the world, and especially from me,—though curiously enough I looked at it from the general rather than the individual point of view. I was completely stunned.
“I had never definitely settled in my mind the question of priests and nuns remaining unmarried. This was through nothing more nor less than overlooking it, which I cannot understand, since it should have been so vital to me. But now I came out dead against it. To me it seemed that, since those who served God and were supposed to be leading the highest life possible to man were not permitted to marry, the Church put a mark of disapproval on the married state and the begetting of children. It was not the actual celibacy of the priests and nuns that concerned me most, but the disapprobation of what I considered the most spiritual act of life. I suppose I should have gone to a priest to learn the defense for it, but I became so prejudiced myself that I imagined that his point of view or any explanation he might make could be nothing else but prejudiced.”
He paused again, this time to light his pipe, which he pulled on for many long seconds before resuming the story, while I held my tongue and gazed into the vast plain of darkness.
“After a while the pain ceased, and I lapsed into a state almost of indifference, though the day she was to leave for the convent was pretty nearly always on my mind. Strangely enough I can’t for the life of me think what it was now, though I shall never forget what happened on the day itself.