Eyes Like the Sea Part 53

"How did you come by this resolution? There is no Catholic church in the town where you reside."

"But there is a monastery quite close to it, a sweet, quiet, pleasant place. I am wont to go there when they are not watching me. A mere accident moved me at first. Curiosity led me into the church when I heard the holy chants through the door; but now it is devotion which leads me there. Ah! how much more sublime a place it is than our bald, bare place of wors.h.i.+p. Wherever I look I see groups of holy figures who bless and beckon me. And those sublime chants, which seem to come from the angelic chorus of heaven, and ravish my soul away to a world unknown--but oh, how ardently desired! And then the deep silence, which is scarcely broken by the solemn sanctus-bell; and then the form of the priest himself, who, like a supernatural being, speaks before the altar in a language which men may not, but G.o.d does, understand. When I come out of such a church it seems to me as if I have been speaking to G.o.d."

I began thinking what would be the end of it all. The lady became insistent.

"What do you advise? What shall I do? My soul compels me to it."

"My dear friend," I replied, "you know that I am a Protestant--and as a Protestant I am liberally and indulgently inclined towards every other creed. I _advise_ n.o.body to change his religion, neither do I dissuade him from so doing. I have a real veneration for the Catholic faith. I consider its ritual majestic and sublime, and its ceremonies are undoubtedly imposing and touching. Had I been born a Catholic, I should have been an ardent champion of my Church. But how can I approve of the conversion of a person in your position? Do you not reflect that your husband is an officer of the Calvinist communion?"

"But it is the very prosaic nature of this communion which offends me.

For in what a dull manner do our elders and deacons perform their sacred functions! Prayer, sermon, hymns--everything is with them a mere matter of enforced routine. How can they inspire others who have not themselves the gift of grace? Such people can only mock at and speak scornfully of their neighbours' faith because they have no real faith of their own."

"But pray recollect that a Protestant schoolmaster loses his post if his wife changes her religion."

"He may lose his material comforts, but I lose the repose of my soul."

"My dear Bessy, I can imagine that a woman with extraordinarily sensitive nerves may find no consolation in Puritan simplicity. If you would seek refuge in true devotion, procure Allach's prayer-book--the manual of Catholic prayers, you know. In that book you'll find everything that is sublime, majestic, and heavenly in Catholic theology.

Pray out of that book when you are alone and n.o.body sees you."

"That is not enough for me. Religion does not consist in prayers and singing alone."

"Then perhaps it is the pomp of the external ceremonies which has such an effect on your mind?"

"That affects me least of all. But there is in the Catholic Church an inst.i.tution as sublime as it is comforting, an inst.i.tution sufficient of itself to spread the Catholic religion all over the round world wherever there are hearts that bleed, wherever there are those who suffer from other than merely material aches and pains. That inst.i.tution is _confession_. It was a gross blunder of John Calvin not to have retained that inst.i.tution for the faithful. He did not know the heart, especially the female heart. There is no greater torture in this world than to carry about in one's soul night and day an evil thought which hara.s.ses and pursues, and be unable to tell it to anybody. A Catholic woman can always find a word of consolation for her despair, a hand stretched out to raise her when she falls; _she_ has a refuge against the accusations of her own conscience; if she has sinned, she can beg for absolution, and her soul is lightened of its load. But who can absolve me? To whom can I tell that which tortures me within?"

Her eyes were fixed and staring like the eyes of a somnambulist who sees nothing before her but a visionary world which others do not see, and at the same time she raised her index finger and laid it on her parched and cracking lips, as if to keep back the moanings of her dumb distress.

I was deeply grieved for her. She had no need to tell me what she felt; her features spoke for themselves, and said how much she must have suffered since the last change in her life.

"My dear friend," I said at last, "you have now known me for a long time, and you know that I have always been your well-wisher. If you have any bitter thought which oppresses you, confess it to me. _Amongst Protestants every man is a priest._ That is our fundamental dogma.

Confess to me!"

She smiled strangely; just as a sick man smiles when the doctor tries to persuade him that he really is well, while he himself is thinking all the time: "Just you wait a bit, and I'll turn the joke against you and--die!"

"You will receive my confession, then?"

"Yes; and rest a.s.sured that I'll keep the solemn secret as sacred as a consecrated priest."

"As long as I am alive, at any rate. After I am dead, I don't care what you do. You may then proclaim it to the world if you like. When I am dead, I authorize you to write a romance about me, a romance like mine you have never written yet. But _till_ then, not a word to any one of what you will now hear from me. To n.o.body, not even to your wife!

Promise me that! Your word of honour on it!"

"My friend, there is a crypt within my breast for buried secrets. Your secret shall repose among the rest."

She bent down to my ear, her burning breath scorched my face, and she whispered: "I confess to you that I wish _to kill my husband_."

Horrified, I looked into her eyes, they flashed up at me like the eyes of devils. That wish of hers was a real living wish.

"And what I've said, I'll do"--and she pressed her lips together till they were quite thin, and her eyes distended into orbs filled with threatening fire.

"Good Heavens! what thought is this?"

She looked at me with a malicious smile.

"There, you see you are no priest, and can give no absolution."

"Nor would a priest give you absolution either. A priest can impose penance for sin repented of, but he cannot give indulgence beforehand for a meditated crime. A priest could only say to you what I say now: 'Fly to G.o.d and cleanse your soul from this dark thought!' How could you ever have suffered it to enter your soul, that good and gentle soul of yours that used always to love and never to hate?"

"Yes, such I ever was, was I not? I was indeed a loving fool. You once wrote a tale which I remember reading when a child. In this tale a distracted heart relates how many ways there are of extinguis.h.i.+ng life.

Amongst other things written there is this: that if honey is allowed to stand till it rots, it turns into the deadliest venom. This is quite true as to the honey with which the heart of a poor credulous woman is full, but it is _not_ true with regard to the honey of the field. I have tried and found that it is not true."

"Believe me, neither case is true. In married life there is no such sea of bitterness as cannot be made sweet again by a single drop of love."

"Alas! what I suffer exceeds even the power of your imagination.

Contempt, degradation, is my daily bread. Insult follows upon every step I take. When I speak, my words are misinterpreted; when I am silent, I am chided; when I weep, I am bullied and brow-beaten."

"Do you think that perhaps your husband suspects your intention of changing your faith?"

"So much he knows, that I frequently visit the monastery, and often have talks with one of the monks. I solemnly swear that I've talked to him about nothing but religion and holy things. He, however, accuses me of the nastiest things. Then when we sit together at table, he poisons every dish I eat by singing the most derisive songs he can think of about those women who rave about cowls and ca.s.socks; in fact, he is _always_ singing such songs in my presence."

"But, my dear friend, you take these things too tragically. These derisive songs have been sung time out of mind. Your husband has not invented them for your special aggravation. Laugh at him to his face, and he'll hold his tongue."

"Very well, then. Let what he does to ridicule _me_ be forgiven. But ever since he has begun to suspect my spiritual condition, he leaves no stone unturned to disturb my devotions. If in the afternoon or evening, when the chiming of the cloister bell is wafted over to us, I involuntarily join my hands together, he laughs at me: 'Ha! ha! ha! they are ringing the bells to call you to prayer, are they?' Now, the Calvinists do not ring for evening prayers, neither do they sound the Angelus, and this is a great grief to me. It is like rolling my bread in the mud and then making me eat it. This continual ridiculing clings to me like tar; it chokes, it nauseates. I feel just as if I were swimming in a sea of glue. He relates to me the most villainous anecdotes about the holy images. Last Sat.u.r.day it rained the whole morning, and I could not go to town. He saw my impatience, and said to me derisively, 'Never mind, _thou female_, it will clear up this afternoon, for the Virgin Mary wants to dry her son's little s.h.i.+rt for Sunday!' It was well for him that he left the room that instant, for I was very near driving my knife into his heart!"

I tried to quiet the excited creature by saying that though this was no very reverent jest, yet it was not an invention of Esaias's. This jest about the breaking out of the suns.h.i.+ne on Sat.u.r.day afternoon was a common saying among the Hungarian country folk, and, taken seriously, had really nothing impious about it, representing, indeed, that sacred figure, whom all of us are bound to reverence, as a provident mother from the homely, rustic point of view.

"I don't like to hear _that_ name on _his_ lips. Why, I sent away an old servant of mine called Marcsa for no other reason than because her master was always calling her Maria, and every such time it was as if a dagger were piercing my heart."

I saw that the woman was really suffering. It was a case where a heroic remedy was required.

"My dear friend," I said, "I cannot blame your husband. Your religious extravagance, which has been not a little stimulated by the irritability of your nerves and the nostrums which the provincial doctors have made you drink, is a question of 'to be or not to be' for your husband. If you cling to the saints, poor Esaias will feel the earth giving way beneath him. You are bound to one another, remember. If you go and seek heaven in another church, you will only install h.e.l.l in your own house.

Believe me, if your husband discovers your design, he will fly into a fury and tear you to pieces. If I were you I should go to some medicinal watering place and get your nerves braced up a bit."

"I see--I see. You do not understand what is the matter with me. You think it is a mere feminine ailment, which is, generally, half affectation. Look at that recipe. The most famous doctor in the capital prescribed it for me. I went to him, he diagnosed me. He said that the country doctors had not treated my case properly. They had stuffed me full of quinine, he said, and it was not the medicament that I wanted.

So he prescribed me another. Read it!"

I looked at the prescription and saw it was a.r.s.enic.

"The doctor prescribed six drops for the first day, and a drop more every other day up to twenty drops, and then back by single drops to six again. Then my fever will return no more. But he cautioned me to keep most strictly to his prescription, as the remedy was a very dangerous one. Is that so?"

"It is."

"I have had it made up in the Jozsefvaros dispensary." And with that she drew out the flask from her pocket and showed it me.

"That will do for me. I will now go with this prescription to all the ten apothecaries in the town and have it made up by every one of them.

_Ten times the strength will certainly do for him._"

Horrified, I seized her hand.