Fifteen—twenty years ago he sat where you sat, small, heavy-bearded, black eyed—always sleepy looking.
Francois: (his eyes closed—his voice trailing off) Always sleepy, sleepy, slee—
Chandelle: (dreamily) He was a poet unsinging, crowned with wreaths of ashes. (His voice rings with just a shade of triumph.)
Francois: (talking in his sleep) Ah, well Chandelle, are you witty tonight, or melancholy or stupid or drunk.
Chandelle: Messieurs—it grows late. I must be off. Drink, all of you (enthusiastically) Drink until you cannot talk or walk or see. (He throws a bill on the table.)
Destage: Young Monsieur?
(Chandelle dons his coat and hat. Pitou enters with more wine. He fills the glasses.)
Lamarque: Drink with us, Monsieur.
Francois: (asleep) Toast, Chandelle, toast.
Chandelle: (taking a glass and raising it aloft). Toast (His face is a little red and his hand unsteady. He appears infinitely more gallic than when he entered the wine shop.)
Chandelle: I drink to one who might have been all, who was nothing—who might have sung; who only listened—who might have seen the sun; who but watched a dying ember—who drank of gall and wore a wreath of shadow laurels—
(The others have risen, even Francois who totters wildly forward.)
Francois: Jean, Jean, don’t go—don’t—till I, Francois—you can’t leave me—I’ll be all alone—alone—alone (his voice rises higher and higher) My God, man, can’t you see, you have no right to die—You are my soul. (He stands for a moment, then sprawls across the table. Far away in the twilight a violin sighs plaintively. The last beam of the sun rests on Francois’ head. Chandelle opens the door and goes out.)
Destage: The old days go by, and the old loves and the old spirit. “Ou sont les neiges d’antan?” I guess. (Pauses unsteadily and then continues. ) I’ve gone far enough without him.
Lamarque: (dreamily) Far enough.
Destage: Your hand Jaques! (They clasp hands).
Francois: (wildly) Here—I, too—you won’t leave me (feebly) I want—just one more glass—one more—
(The light fades and disappears.)
(Curtain.)
The Ordeal.
Nassau Literary Magazine (June 1915)
I.
The hot four o’clock sun beat down familiarly upon the wide stretch of Maryland country, burning up the long valleys, powdering the winding road into fine dust and glaring on the ugly slated roof of the monastery. Into the gardens it poured hot, dry, lazy, bringing with it, perhaps, some quiet feeling of content, unromantic and cheerful. The walls, the trees, the sanded walks, seemed to radiate back into the fair cloudless sky the sweltering late summer heat and yet they laughed and baked happily. The hour brought some odd sensation of comfort to the farmer in a nearby field, drying his brow for a moment by his thirsty horse, and to the lay-brother opening boxes behind the monastery kitchen.
The man walked up and down on the bank above the creek. He had been walking for half an hour. The lay-brother looked at him quizzically as he passed and murmured an invocation. It was always hard, this hour before taking first vows. Eighteen years before one, the world just behind. The lay-brother had seen many in this same situation, some white and nervous, some grim and determined, some despairing. Then, when the bell tolled five, there were the vows and usually the novice felt better. It was this hour in the country when the world seemed gloriously apparent and the monastery vaguely impotent. The lay-brother shook his head in sympathy and passed on.
The man’s eyes were bent upon his prayer-book. He was very young, twenty at the most, and his dark hair in disorder gave him an even more boyish expression. A light flush lay on his calm face and his lips moved incessantly. He was not nervous. It seemed to him as if he had always known he was to become a priest. Two years before, he had felt the vague stirring, the transcendent sense of seeing heaven in everything, that warned him softly, kindly that the spring of his life was coming. He had given himself every opportunity to resist. He had gone a year to college, four months abroad, and both experiences only increased within him the knowledge of his destiny. There was little hesitation. He had at first feared self-committal with a thousand nameless terrors. He thought he loved the world. Panicky, he struggled, but surer and surer he felt that the last word had been said. He had his vocation—and then, because he was no coward, he decided to become a priest.
Through the long month of his probation he alternated between deep, almost delirious, joy and the same vague terror at his own love of life and his realization of all he sacrificed. As a favorite child he had been reared in pride and confidence in his ability, in faith in his destiny. Careers were open to him, pleasure, travel, the law, the diplomatic service. When, three months before, he had walked into the library at home and told his father that he was going to become a Jesuit priest, there was a family scene and letters on all sides from friends and relatives. They told him he was ruining a promising young life because of a sentimental notion of self sacrifice, a boyish dream. For a month he listened to the bitter melodrama of the commonplace, finding his only rest in prayer, knowing his salvation and trusting in it. After all, his worst battle had been with himself. He grieved at his father’s disappointment and his mother’s tears, but he knew that time would set them right.
And now in half an hour he would take the vows which pledged him forever to a life of service. Eighteen years of study—eighteen years where his every thought, every idea would be dictated to him, where his individuality, his physical ego would be effaced and he would come forth strong and firm to work and work and work. He felt strangely calm, happier in fact than he had been for days and months. Something in the fierce, pulsing heat of the sun likened itself to his own heart, strong in its decision, virile and doing its own share in the work, the greatest work. He was elated that he had been chosen, he from so many unquestionably singled out, unceasingly called for. And he had answered.
The words of the prayers seemed to run like a stream into his thoughts, lifting him up peacefully, serenely; and a smile lingered around his eyes. Everything seemed so easy; surely all life was a prayer. Up and down he walked. Then of a sudden something happened. Afterwards he could never describe it except by saying that some undercurrent had crept into his prayer, something unsought, alien. He read on for a moment and then it seemed to take the form of music. He raised his eyes with a start—far down the dusty road a group of negro hands were walking along singing, and the song was an old song that he knew:
“We hope ter meet you in heavan whar we’ll
Part no mo’,
Whar we’ll part no mo’.
Gawd a’moughty bless you twelwe
Me-et agin.”
Something
