XI Father Stein’s Tale

Old Father Stein was a figure that greatly fascinated me during my first weeks in Rome, after I had got over the slight impatience that his personality roused in me. He was slow of speech and thought and movement, and had that distressing grip of the obvious that is characteristic of the German mind. I soon rejoiced to look at his heavy face, generally unshaven, his deep twinkling eyes, and the ponderous body that had such an air of eternal immovability, and to watch his mind, as through a glass case, laboring like an engine over a fact that he had begun to assimilate. He took a kind of paternal interest in me, too, and would thrust his thick hand under my arm as he stood by me, or clap me heavily on the shoulder as we met. But he was excellently educated, had seen much of the world, although always through a haze of the Fatherland that accompanied him everywhere, and had acquired an exceptional knowledge of English during his labors in a London mission. He used his large vocabulary with a good deal of skill.

I was pleased then when Monsignor announced on the following evening that Father Stein was prepared to contribute a story. But the German, knowing that he was master of the situation, would utter nothing at first but hoarse ejaculations at the thought of his reminiscences, and it was not until we had been seated for nearly half an hour before the fire that he consented to begin.

“It is of a dream,” he said; “no more than that; and yet dreams, too, are under the hand of the good God, so I hold. Some, I know, are just folly, and tell us nothing but the confusion of our own nature when the controlling will is withdrawn; but some, I hold, are the whispers of God, and tell us of what we are too dull to hear in our waking life. You do not believe me? Very well; then listen.

“I knew a man in Germany, thirty years ago, who had lived many years away from God. He had been a Catholic, and was well educated in religion till he grew to be a lad. Then he fell into sin, and dared not confess it; and he lied, and made bad confessions, and approached the altar so. He once went to a strange priest to tell his sin, and dared not when the time came; and so added sin to sin, and lost his faith. It is ever so. We know it well. The soul dare not go on in that state, believing in God, and so by an inner act of the will renounces Him. It is not true, it is not true, she cries; and at last the voice of faith is silent and her eyes blind.”

The priest stopped and looked round him, and the old Rector nodded once or twice and murmured assent.

“For twenty years he had lived so, without God, and he was not unhappy; for the powers of his soul died one by one, and he could no longer feel. Once or twice they struggled, in their death agony, and he stamped on them again. Once, when his mother died, he nearly lived again; and his soul cried once more within him, and stirred herself; but he would not hear her; it is useless, he said to her; there is no hope for you; lie still; there is nothing for you; you are dreaming; there is no life such as you think; and he trampled her again, and she lay still.”

We were all very quiet now. I certainly had not suspected such passion in this old priest; he had seemed to me slow and dull and not capable of any sort of delicate thought or phrase, far less of tragedy; but somehow now his great face was lighted up, his eyebrows twitched as he talked, and it seemed as if we were hearing of a murder that this man had seen for himself. Monsignor sat perfectly motionless, staring intently into the fire, and Father Brent was watching the German sideways; Father Stein took a deliberate pinch of snuff, snapped his box, and put it away, and went on.

“This man had lived on the sea coast as a child, but was now in business in a town on the Rhine, and had never visited his old home since he left it with his mother on his father’s death. He was now about thirty-five years of age, when God was gracious to him. He was living in a cousin’s house, with whom he was partner.

“One night he dreamed he was a child, and walking with one whom he knew was his sister who had died before he was born, but he could not see her face. They were on a white, dusty road, and it was the noon of a hot summer day. There was nothing to be seen round him but great slopes of a dusty country with dry grass, and the burning sky overhead, and the sun. He was tired, and his feet ached, and he was crying as he walked, but he dared not cry loud for fear that his sister would turn and look at him, and he knew she was a—a revenant, and did not wish to see her eyes. There was no wind and no birds and no clouds; only the grasshoppers sawed in the dry grass, and the blood drummed in his ears until he thought he would go mad with the noise. And so they walked, the boy behind his sister, up a long hill. It seemed to him that they had been walking so for hours, for a lifetime, and that there would be no end to it. His feet sank to the ankles in dust, the sun beat on to his brain from above, the white road glared from below, and the tears ran down his cheeks.

“Then there was a breath of salt wind in his face, and his sister began to go faster, noiselessly; and he tried, too, to go faster, but could not; his heart beat like a hammer in his throat, and his feet lagged more and more, and little by little his sister was far in front, and he dared not cry out to her not to leave him for fear she should turn and look at him; and at last he was walking alone, and he dared not lie down or rest.

“The road passed up a slope, and when he reached the top of it at last he saw her again, far away, a little figure that turned to him and waved its hand, and behind her was the blue sea, very faint and in a mist of heat, and then he knew that the end of the bitter journey was very near.

“As he passed up the last slope the sea-line rose higher against the sky, but the line was only as the fine mark of a pencil where sea and sky met, and a dazzling white bird or two passed across it and then dropped below the cliff. By the time he came near his sister the dusty road had died away into the grass, and he was walking over the fresh turf that felt cool to his hot feet. He threw himself down on the edge of it by his sister, where she was lying with her head on her hands looking out at the sea where it spread itself out, a thousand feet below; and still he had not seen her face.

“At the foot of the cliff was a little white beach, and the rocks ran down into deep water on every side of it, and threw a purple shadow across the sand; there were birds here, too, floating out from the cliff and turning and returning; and the sea beneath them was a clear blue, like a Cardinal’s ring that I saw once, and the breeze blew up from the water and made him happy again.”

Father Stein stopped again, with something of a sob in his old heavy voice, and then he turned to us.

“You know such dreams,” he said; “I cannot tell it as—as he told me; but he said it was like the bliss of the redeemed to look down on the sea and feel the breeze in his hair, and taste its saltness.

“He did not wish his sister to speak, though he was afraid of her no more; and yet he knew that there was some secret to be told that would explain all—why they were here, and why she had come back to him, and why the sea was here, and the little beach below them, and the wind and the birds. But he was content to wait until it was time for her to tell him, as he knew she would. It was enough to lie here, after the dusty journey, beside her, and to wait for the word that should be spoken.

“Now, at first he was so out of breath and his heart beat so in his ears that he could hear nothing but that and his own panting; but it grew quieter soon, and he began to hear something else—the noises of the sea beneath him. It was a still day, but there was movement down below, and the surge heaved itself softly against the cliff and murmured in deep caves below, like the pedal note of the Frankfort organ, solemn and splendid; and the waves leaned over and crashed gently on the sand. It was all so far beneath that he saw the breaking wave before the sound came up to him, and he lay there and watched and listened; and that great sound made him happier even than the light on the water and the coolness and rest; for it was the sea itself that was speaking now.

“Then he saw suddenly that his sister had turned on her elbow and was looking at him; and he looked into her eyes, and knew her, though she had died before he was born. And she, too, was listening, with her lips parted, to the sound of the surge. And now he knew that the secret was to be told; and he watched her eyes, smiling. And she lifted her hand, as if to hold him silent, and waited, and again the sweet murmur and crash rose up from the sea, and she spoke softly.

“‘It is the Precious Blood,’ she said.”

Father Stein was silent, and we all were silent for a while. As far as I was concerned, at least, the story had somehow held me with an extraordinary fascination, I scarcely knew why.

There was a movement among the others, and presently the Frenchman spoke.

“Et puis?” he said.

“The man awoke,” said Father Stein, “and found tears on his face.”

It was such a short story that there were still a few minutes before the time for night-prayers, and we sat there without speaking again until the clock sounded in the campanile overhead, and the Rector rose and led the way into the west gallery of the church. I saw Father Stein waiting at the door for me to come up, and I knew why he was waiting.

He took my arm in his thick hand and held it a moment as the others passed down the two steps.

“I was that man,” he said.